Draco remained gaunt over the following weeks; the incident still fresh in his mind. He had the feeling that Professor Snape knew exactly what had happened (he was the best Legilimens, second only to the Dark Lord), and when he was called to the professor's office, he wasn't in the slightest bit surprised.

"Draco," Snape offered as a curt greeting. Draco bowed his head in acknowledgement, and sank into the uncomfortable chair before Snape's desk at his invitation. "You are weary."

"Yes Sir," Draco replied. "And worried."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Anxious because you used an Unforgivable Curse on a friend, or the fact you erased his mind afterwards?"

"Both Sir. I don't know how to continue being his friend, because he's perfectly cheery again; he hasn't recalled the incident." Draco looked up at the Potions master pleadingly. Snape sighed.

"I did the same, once," the wizard eventually spoke. "I did something... unforgivable."

"Is it to do with Lily Evans, Sir? Father said you were friends with her."

Snape's eyes widened as much as they could (barely at all) in surprise. "Lucius reminiscing on old times, I gather?" Draco nodded, wary. "Yes. I called her a Mudblood, pretended I didn't care, when I did. We had been growing apart, over the last few months, and that did it. She didn't like who I was friends with: Mulciber and Avery. To be fair, Mulciber had recently cursed one of her friends; Mary MacDonald, a fellow Gryffindor. She despised my fellow Slytherins, but she wouldn't give up on me: she said I'd shown mercy that other Slytherins and Purebloods did not. I tried to apologise; I'd been taunted by... others, and I wanted forgiveness for my actions. But we both knew we'd passed a boundary. We could never go back. I loved her, and she loved him. James Potter."

Draco believed he'd never heard such bitterness in his professor's voice, and considering he was spiteful and angry half the time, that was quite an achievement.

"You never made up, did you?" Draco questioned carefully. He knew the story, after all. "She died, but you tried to save her."

"We never made up. It was too late: she was married; I was a Death Eater. I asked the Dark Lord to spare her, in exchange for the father and son." Draco was horrified. "I turned to Dumbledore. He merely offered the possibility they'd put their faith in the wrong person. Using traitorous Peter Pettigrew as Secret Keeper; I never knew Lily to be so ignorant. They liked to believe the best of people. Gryffindors never change."

"I agree," Draco whispered. "Otherwise we'd never have become friends, if she even sees it that way."

"She does," Snape replied in an equal state of quiescence. "She told you; you cursed Blaise to save your other friend: her. He cursed her. You kept your friends the only way you could. If only I'd done the same. I never had many friends. I never even counted them as friends. Mulciber and Avery were my allies, and Lily, my only friend. The only one who knew me."

"I know you, Sir," Draco pointed out. "I know your true loyalties: to her. I respect you with reverence, and I know you. And what I know, I admire."

"Such an eloquence with words..." Snape murmured, the s' hissing in the sentence, like snakes. "Uncannily like dear Lucius."

"I'm not like him," Draco said at once. "I won't. I don't want to. Where my loyalties lay hidden, my heart will remain hidden also. But I won't hesitate to listen to it. I won't simply save my own skin."

Snape gazed at the boy with regret written all over his face. 

"You may have no choice."