Draco's getting frustrated. He sits in his office all day fielding letters, trying to comfort patients, and otherwise generally losing his grasp on professionalism. He's never gone this long at work without having something to occupy him, something to tinker on or cast a web of complex charms over.

His hands itch for something to do. Even though he knows there's no use in creating more prosthetic eyes right now, not when he can't trust them to work properly, he takes a base model off the shelf.

Draco reaches for his Reveliospecs and flips the first lens down, studying the latent magic potential of the acrylic sphere in his hand. He rolls it around in a circle on the desktop with his palm, then casts the first spell of many.

A halo of green appears over the eye like usual, but as Draco watches, it splinters and fractures into broken pieces, leaving sharp, jagged edges.

He reaches out with a single finger, half convinced he'll be able to touch the magic, but all he feels is a hot tightness to the space.

Draco flips down the second lens.

He flexes his hand, watching the lines of yellow winding towards the prosthesis again and again, only to snag on something invisible just a breath away.

He rolls the eye slowly, then flicks back to the first lens.

The halo is trying to re-knit itself, cracks glowing solid yellow as they close, only to split open again in new places.

He pushes the second lens back down, then the third and final one.

The room goes dark, until all he can see is the steady pulsing of something in a sea of nothingness. It would be wrong to call the nothingness black. It's the absence of any colour at all. It would be wrong to call the something red. It's more like the sensation of heat creeping up his fingers and in through his eyes, filling Draco's head like an hourglass.

The pulsing gets stronger as he lifts the eye closer to him, until it's barely a few centimetres from his nose.

Hand shaking, Draco raises his wand and casts.

"Profundus."

A burst of heat floods his senses, then the darkness swallows it up so fast he feels dizzy.

Draco rips the goggles off, panting.

Potter. He needs to talk to Potter.

~

Draco is not expecting Weasley to open the door.

He does a double take, leaning back to examine the house number and make sure he has the correct address. Of course, he does, but that doesn't make it any less strange.

"Oh," says Weasley, "it's you."

Draco doesn't know how to respond to that. He decides on addressing the topic at hand without any cushioning.

"I need to use my Reveliospecs to have a look at Potter's paintings. And his eye."

"Er..."

"I know you want to figure this out as much as I do."

"More, surely."

"Right," Draco says, though he doesn't agree. "So, may I please come in and look at the portraits? These glasses here" — he holds them up — "they can see magic. I can look at the spellwork behind the malfunctions, see what's causing them. It might even tell me how to fix it."

"I don't think Harry wants to see you."

"He can close his eyes."

Weasley gives him one more long, wary look, then shrugs, disappearing into the bowels of the house. He leaves the door open behind him, which Draco takes as an invitation. One issued from a person with atrocious manners, but an invitation nonetheless.

Potter is sitting in an alcove, legs stretched out on the bench by the window, still in a pair of pyjama pants with little flying Snitches on them. He looks up when Draco enters, eyes zeroing in on him and holding the stare.

Absently, Draco feels rather grateful Potter had decided to go with the brown paint, after all. He's not sure he could handle all that green pointing at him at once. Not today.

Granger is beside him, but she straightens up from her sprawl when Draco enters, greeting him with a bright smile. It seems a little forced, though he can hardly blame her.

"Malfoy," she says.

"Granger."

"Malfoy," Potter echoes. Then, "Did something happen?"

"No, but I've got an idea. I'll need to take a look at your portraits using my Reveliospecs and see if I can tell what's causing the problems."

Weasley hasn't sat down yet, and Draco finds the way he's standing guard a bit unnerving. Not to mention that Draco can't possibly deserve it, because he hasn't done anything bad.

Potter gets to his feet and crosses to the other side of the room. Draco gets a whiff of faint, minty cologne as he passes.

He hasn't done anything bad yet, Draco amends.

Potter begins pulling portraits out of a large metal chest that Draco suspects has an Undetectable Extension Charm while Granger and Weasley set them up all around the room. They work as a team without even needing to speak to one another. He's almost jealous, in a way, of their easy camaraderie.

Which is silly. He's a grown man. He shouldn't be envious of Potter and his friends.

"Why'd you put them all away?" Draco asks.

"Couldn't stand looking at them," Potter says. "It's horrifying, seeing them all weird."

Draco bites back an apology. This isn't his fault. It isn't. There's something else going on here, and he's going to fix it.

"Kreacher," Potter calls, stopping his work and dusting off his hands.

With a crack, the ugliest house-elf Draco's ever seen appears. He actually has to blink back tears as he tries to look directly at it.

The elf doesn't seem to have the same problem, staring him down with unflinching distaste. "Kreacher is not knowing the young Master Malfoy is here."

"Do I know you?" Draco asks, because he's fairly sure if he'd ever encountered this house-elf, the memory would be burned into his brain.

"Bad child. Ill-behaved," Kreacher says.

"I was not ill-behaved," he says, though, frankly, he might have been.

"Poor Mistress Narcissa, always caring for the boy, keeping him out of trouble. Why would Master let him into the house? He will dirty the floors, he will—"

"I need Regulus's portrait, Kreacher," Potter interrupts.

"Master promised he would not be messing about with Kreacher's things."

"Of course. But, see, this is a special occasion. He's not working properly, remember? And Draco here is going to help fix him."

Kreacher gives Potter a shrewd look. "Master will make sure his guest keeps his hands to himself."

"Regulus won't be harmed. It's an order, Kreacher. Bring him to us."

The elf rolls his eyes and disappears with a pop.

"Harry, I really think if you tried being nicer again—" Granger begins, and Weasley lets out a sharp bark of a laugh.

"Yeah, you're not getting anywhere with that one, love. With either of them."

"He doesn't need me to be nice," Potter agrees. Then, louder, "Kreacher, hurry up with it, would you?"

The house-elf appears again, letting out a big sigh, a large portrait in his hand. It's not one that Draco has seen before. The subject looks vaguely familiar, a slight young man with dark hair and a haughty look.

Regulus Black. Draco's heard his name before. He was on the family tapestry.

Kreacher places the portrait among the others grudgingly, then backs away. He does not leave the room, keeping a tense eye on Draco, who rather wishes he wouldn't.

"I painted it for him so he'd shut up sometimes," Potter says to him in an undertone. "It's not perfect, since I hardly knew anything about him, but he makes Kreacher happy, and that keeps Kreacher away from me. Plus, he's one of the only ones that hasn't gone silent."

The young man flicks his eyes up towards them, and Draco notices that there's nothing odd about him at all. He's not melting or burning. He's not frozen or screaming.

"Hey, Regulus. We're gonna have a quick look at you, yeah?"

Draco takes the cue and slips on the Reveliospecs. He gasps. The room is like nothing he's ever seen before.

The portraits are inscribed with symbols that look as if they've been penned in black ink, only the shade of it is so dark that it has no depth, no texture, just sloughs of emptiness.

The colour isn't a colour at all; it's a bit of the nothing, stolen from the magic of the third lens.

Draco flips the slides of the Reveliospecs down until he reaches it, almost frightened of what he'll see.

He can't possibly put it into words. Where before the symbols had been black holes, now they are light itself, colours he's never seen, never even heard of.

Draco's ears feel warm, and he reaches up to make sure there isn't blood coming out, which is how he knows there's no one there when he starts to hear whispers.

It's nothing distinctive, not at first.

"Can any of you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Granger asks.

The words come to him from a thousand miles above water, whereas the hissing is just centimetres away.

It's like a steaming tea kettle decided to learn Latin. Utterly incomprehensible, even if he understood the language, but achingly familiar.

The portrait of Regulus Black is still in sharp focus, even through the distraction of the symbols on its surface. Not able to stand the light anymore, Draco flips back to the first lens.

The man in the painting makes an eerie grating sound, as though he's chewing scrap metal in his mouth, and then his jaw begins to jerk open in tiny increments.

"Not perfect?" Draco whispers dully. He wonders if Potter can hear this sound.

The question is answered when Potter murmurs back. "He wasn't like that before."

"Go," the man creaks out, voice thin as a gust of wind.

Draco pauses. He supposes they should leave it alone if that's what the portrait wants, but he doesn't feel good about the idea.

Then the words continue.

"To the North Moor." A long pause. Regulus locks eyes with him, irises dark as tar, pleading for something he cannot name. "They are waiting."

A chill spiders up Draco's back. He steps closer to Potter without realising he's doing it.

"Who?" Potter says.

"Go to the North Moor." The portrait shudders. "They are waiting."

"Who?"

"Go to the North Moor." This time, the words spill like sand from a bag. "They are waiting. Go to the North Moor. They are—"

"Would you shut it with that already?" Potter snaps.

"You will not be shouting at Master Regulus in my presence," says a croaky old voice Draco vaguely recognises as the house-elf.

"Fine," Potter agrees, but the portrait has stopped talking.

Draco sighs, taking a long breath. Onto the next order of business.

Draco looks at Potter and feels an intense yank, like someone pulling a plug out of his core. Just like last time, the air around him is lit up in buttery yellow, smoothing over his curls and glinting off of his glasses.

This time, though, Draco is looking at his eye, watching the ring of green light in front of it piece together and shatter over and over again.

He feels the pull towards Potter from the very pit of his stomach, asking him to do things he's not let himself think about before, asking him to wonder what it might be like to put his lips against the soft lines of Potter's body.

Draco forces it away, focusing on the symbols in the air.

"I need a quill and some parchment," Draco says, and moments later, they're pressed into his hands.

He suspects Granger is to thank.

He scribbles down the shapes as fast as he can, but most of them disappear and take a new form before he finishes. By the end, he has maybe five complete drawings he'll be able to examine.

Draco finally rips off his Reveliospecs and almost tips over from sudden vertigo.

Potter grabs his arm to steady him. His grip is warm and harsh enough to pull him back to Earth.

Abruptly, the voices stop.

"You all right, there? It seemed like you lost yourself," Potter says.

He doesn't sound far away any longer, but the sudden closeness is hard on his ears, much too loud.

"I'm ... fine."

Slowly, the room comes back into focus. Potter pulls him to the sofa and lets go of his arm.

"The North Moor?" Potter asks gently. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I've no idea," Draco replies. "I mean, I've heard of it. It's a very popular setting for stories about fictional creatures, but no wizards live on the land. I don't know why we'd be summoned there."

"What did you see?" Granger asks. "With the glasses?"

How can he even begin to explain it? "The magic that's making the portraits act up ... it isn't anything like normal wizarding magic. The closest comparison I can make is house-elf magic."

Draco glances at Kreacher, who has already grabbed Regulus back and is holding onto the portrait frame tightly, muttering to himself in the corner.

"It has different patterns than what I'm used to seeing," Draco continues. Then, he remembers what he asked of Potter last time. "Have you kept writing down the words you're seeing?"

Potter nods. "Ron, will you grab the—"

Weasley tosses him a leather-bound journal from a shelf on the wall.

"Thanks." Potter opens it, turning to the front page. "I've got a couple written down here, but I didn't get all of them. There were too many."

"Did they disappear as you were trying to get them down, too?"

Potter gives him a quizzical look. "Er ... no?"

Interesting.

Comparing the journal and his sketches side by side, it's hard to find anything in common. The symbols don't look remotely similar, and Draco doesn't think it's a stylistic choice.

"Are they runes?" Granger asks.

"Idiot Mudblood," Kreacher grouses. "Doesn't even know what a proper rune looks like. Oh, if Mistress saw the filth allowed in her house—"

"Quiet, Kreacher," Potter orders.

"They don't look like any runes I've seen," Draco says. "But that doesn't mean they aren't."

"Reckon Harry's finally started seeing what Luna does?" Weasley jokes, leaning over the back of the sofa to examine the papers. "This looks like an article in The Quibbler, mate. I mean that in the gentlest way possible."

"I'm sure," Potter returns. "But no, Luna's never mentioned seeing any mysterious words, just creatures. Right?"

"As far as I remember," Granger agrees, and it's nothing Draco can contest.

"Well, we can't just go to North Moor without knowing what we're up against," Potter decides. "Especially if it's some kind of magical creature."

Kreacher looks like he's going to say something again, so Draco speaks over him.

"Perhaps we should pull Lovegood in on this," Draco says. "Scorpius may be able to help too."

"Good," Potter agrees, "so we just—"

"Kreacher cannot believe Master and his friends are so dull," Kreacher mutters from the corner. "Master and his friends do not even know of Wallygagglers, hideous beasts."

Potter lets a long, drawn-out sigh escape. "What's that?"

"Now Master has lost his grip on the English language. Kreacher does not think there's much hope for him yet."

"Tell me what Wallygagglers are, Kreacher."

The name tickles some memory in the back of Draco's mind, but he can't quite grab hold of it.

"Master does not even hold the basic knowledge of a child. Kreacher is doing his best to educate him, but the gaps are far too numerous, and Master is far too unpleasant."

"Kreacher," Potter warns.

The old elf lets out a heavy sigh. "Surely Master has heard the children's stories of the Wandering Wallygagglers of North Moor?"

"Afraid not."

"Hey, I think I know those!" Weasley says. "My mum used to read us those stories until Percy thought he was too old for it."

"They're wizarding stories?" Granger asks.

"Oh yeah, some of the best, since Muggles never got to them. Er ... not that — well, you know what I mean."

Kreacher nods very seriously in agreement, and Granger shoots Weasley a look.

"Muggles like to change things up until you can't tell what's up or down anymore," Weasley explains. He turns to the house-elf with an unabashedly curious expression. "But I thought Wallygagglers were all made up."

"And now Master's friends are speaking to Kreacher. Oh, if his Mistress could see him now. Of course, Master keeps her covered, but if Kreacher could just lift the edge of her curtain—"

"No, Kreacher. That is an order from the Master of this house."

The elf harrumphs and disappears with a pop, taking Regulus's portrait with him.

"Wonder what he does with that," Weasley says. "Got to be something really nasty, doesn't it? Do house-elves ever get their rocks—"

"Oh-kay," Granger interrupts, forcing a laugh that does a remarkably good job of sounding like the words, 'Shut up, Ronald.' "That's enough of that topic of conversation. You were telling us about Wallygagglers?"

"I was? Oh, well, that's it, really. They're fictional. They're these little horned toad men that walk on two legs and make deals with wizards. And Muggles, on occasion, but they usually died by the end of the story."

The description brings up an image in Draco's head that he's sure belongs to a picture book. Maybe one that the house-elf nursemaid had read to him as a child. He'll have to do some research when he gets home.

"The first couple stories were about the Wallygagglers trying to find a new home. They live in these rocks that they can't transport themselves, so they have to make deals with humans to migrate. But they'd always find really sneaky ways around the agreements, and that's what made the stories good."

"And you're sure they're fictional?"

He shrugs. "As real as Luna's Blibbering Humdingers."

Granger bites her lip. "Well..."

"You can't be serious."

"What if she's right, Ron? She's been our friend for decades now, and I find it increasingly hard to believe that there's not something she sees that we don't."

"I'm sure she sees all kinds of things, 'Mione, but that doesn't mean they're there."

Granger scoffs, tucking her bushy hair behind her ear and fixing Weasley with a look.

"Harry, call Luna. Get Scorpius too. He'll need to be a part of this."

"Mate," says Weasley, "be reasonable. It's Luna. We won't be able to tell what's real once she's involved. If you use that fireplace, I'll ... I'll..." He falters.

"I'm very interested to see where that's going, but I'm gonna just give Luna a ring while you think it up, yeah?"

And so Draco is left alone with a fuming Weasley and an inordinately pleased Granger, which is not half as uncomfortable as he'd have thought.

~

It takes Luna and Scorpius a combined thirty seconds to declare what had taken the rest of them several weeks and a disgustingly cranky house-elf to figure out. The markings do, in fact, look like an unknown species' magic, though neither of them have seen Wallygaggler magic before.

"Definitely not from wizards," Luna proclaims.

"Then we need to go out to North Moor," he says. "Figure out what this is all about."

"I don't think we'll be able to convince any of the Creature's Council members to come with us," Scorpius frets.

Draco dismisses this. "So what if the Ministry won't send their own representative with you? We'll figure this out. The first thing you need is a reliable eyewitness, right?"

"It's got to be someone who works there," Scorpius says. "Preferably someone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"Okay. So..." Draco thinks through his mental list of contacts, feeling his stomach twist up in unease as he keeps stumbling back to the same name.

Lavender Brown.

But no, no. She's got to hate him right now. And getting her to tramp through a moor to take a look at some magical creatures that are supposed to be fictional? There isn't a single pure-blood witch alive who wouldn't laugh in his face at the idea.

So he keeps thinking. Doesn't that Finch-Fletchley fellow work somewhere in the Ministry? He didn't much like Draco, though. Goldstein? Last Draco heard, he was out of the country on business.

He returns to the one person that might work. Salazar, he does not want to do this. But Lavender is all he's got. If she were a bad option, he'd throw it out and force himself to find something better. But he knows she'll agree with a proper amount of grovelling, and he knows the Ministry will trust her with ease.

So there's nothing more to it.