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The next three days were torture.

They were torture for Draco, who had nearly wept with frustration – of all sorts – when he had caught himself humming, ‘Kitty of Coleraine’, and who was furious with his own reactions to phrases from the innocuous – ‘Coming, Malfoy?’, and, ‘pecking order,’ and, ‘dominance’ – to the less so – ‘does puss want milk?’ and the like.  They were especially a torture whenever he recalled the truth about himself that had been borne in upon him, one that he could no longer pretend was gratitude or even a disgraceful and unspoken hero-worship; and still more as he raged against his inability to solve the medical case Harry presented.

They were, for Severus Snape, now reduced to pigment and canvas, an erotic torture of unattainabilities, and of unrelished arousals caused by unsuitable objects of denied affections.

They were an intellectual torture for Hermione Granger-Weasley, MMA, D. Mag., and Muggle DPhil (Oxon), who was infuriated at the intellectual impasse Harry’s Unfortunate Condition had reached.

They were a constant irritation to Poppy Pomfrey for reasons readily apparent to anyone who – as, clearly, Minerva did not – gave a moment’s thought to the sheer inconvenience the whole mess created in her nice, orderly Hospital Wing.

Albus, by contrast, was in the merriest fig anyone could recall seeing, and Harry himself seemed wholly unbothered by it.  Partly that was to Neville’s credit, he having braved Poppy’s wrath to smuggle some magical catnip into the Isolation Ward for Harry and Draco on the Saturday; largely, however, it was because, as Harry explained to all who asked, this situation, compared to defeating Voldemort and helping clean up British Wizard-dom, was such a doddle as to count as a holiday.

In the spirit of holidaying, Harry had taken to inducing a sneeze regularly, and transforming into a panther for hours on end; and Draco, all the while protesting that he was merely keeping Potty company, transformed with him, and was greatly comforted by their time together as felines.

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‘You were quite right, kitten.’

Draco glared – in an adorably kittenish way.  Harry chortled.

‘I would never cheat on Ginny – or ask you to be involved in anything of the sort, least of all now that you’re planning to marry Waldorf.’

‘Asteria.  Not Astoria, and that wouldn’t have been funny then, either.’

‘Rum name, really, either way.’

‘Which is why I and her family call her, “Stella”.’

‘Swiftian of you.  Or are you thinking of yourself as Stanley Kowalski?’

‘Oh, get knotted, Potter.’

‘We could knot a string, and chase it.’

‘Sod off.’

‘Or that.’

Draco reached for the brandy.

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The research, for all that, and in the teeth of all frustrations and failures, continued apace.

In the end, it was Hermione who solved it – of course.  And yet, credit may actually be due to another.  Crookshanks, increasingly old now and accordingly grumpy with it, and creaking in every joint, was off his feed, and the magizoologist-cum-vet attributed it to a new strain of feline influenza now making the rounds.  When asked by Molly, who was perpetually in a fret over her grandchildren’s health, if the virus was capable of jumping species, he had pulled a long face – and he was a coffin-faced man to begin with, a Northern Ireland Prod who was third cousins with the late Mad-Eye Moody – and shrugged.  ‘Perhaps in an Animagus, although no one knows or, I imagine, has sought to know, but I cannot conceive it would be a concern in the average Wizarding household.’

It was at this point that Hermione had sallied forth, more frazzled than ever, and rounded up Hagrid to assist, with Snape and Poppy, in brewing a specific series of antiviral potions.

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Harry had hoped, although he had known better than to invest much hope in it, that he might be the first recorded dual-Animagus in history; it had been his ambition, in isolation, to master the change without being set off by sneezing.  (‘What’s your other form, then,’ Draco had asked, startled; and, ‘That would be telling,’ Harry had replied, with a brief reference, when Draco had bridled, to the Magical Secrets Act.)  When Hermione, her hair untidier than ever, brought them the news – Draco, having been exposed to any possible contagion, had been debarred from working on the problem after all, and relegated to the Isolation Ward with Harry – Harry had taken it well.  The prospective cure, Hermione was certain, would cost him his panther, but that was all, and he would continue as he had been, an Animagus still, and free from the current hampering condition.

The first series of potions had freed the two of them from Poppy’s sterile imprisonment, at least, as they were no longer a danger to Crookshanks, Mrs Norris, or anyone or anything else, and the two made a point of poking around Hogsmeade and the school, looking alert and investigatory, Harry sometimes in uniform and sometimes in mufti.  Harry had also spent a fair amount of time with Aberforth, and had Ginny arrive and take rooms – separate rooms – in the castle.  Harry and Draco had together put on a rather tense but instructive seminar for the Defence classes, and a rather less tense and still more instructive seminar, with Ginny, on the Quidditch pitch.  The upshot had been that the researchers, bar Severus, had been much more cheerful, the students, better informed, and the underworld so unnerved that five several suspects had gone down the local nick and turned themselves in for fear that Harry was after them.

And in the next week, Dean (and Seamus, of course, with him), had appeared at the school, at Harry’s behest, and set to work.

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A fortnight later, Harry’s condition was not yet fully cured, although it was controlled and the symptoms suppressed.  He had intended to have his godson, now rising six, and Andromeda, to the castle, for a dinner en famille and including Draco – and Narcissa – as guests: Harry was determined that the remnants of the Black family should be reunited.  Andromeda had been dubious: not, she carefully explained, of dining with Draco and Cissy, but because the full moon was that night, and it made Teddy so fussy….

That was Harry’s eureka moment, and he had hastily put the dinner back by one night and raced to find Hermione.  If the feline influenza were, truly, similar to the vector for lycanthropy….

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Hermione – and Severus, Poppy, and indeed Hagrid, to be sure, with the willing assistance of Minerva, Nev, and Filius – had come up trumps, as ever.  The next night was a memorable one: the tired researchers, hollow-eyed but triumphant, had been able to dine out on their success, one that brought tears to Andromeda’s eyes, of not curing Harry only, but of having as well a new and promising route towards a cure for lycanthropy itself.  The dinner was a joyous one, and if there were any in the castle who were not delirious with excitement and hope, they were Draco and Severus.

Harry was not one to let that pass unremarked and unameliorated.

Very early the next morning, as the revellers slumbered in just content, Harry went down to the dungeons and knocked Draco up.

‘Come along, kitten,’ he smiled.  Stumbling and grumbling, bleary-eyed and adderish in temper, Draco had followed, protesting the while.

Harry stopped at the rooms in which Dean had been working undisturbed, and ushered Draco in.  Before them was a diptych, life-sized and a bit over.  In the leftmost panel, two men slumbered: a dark-polled lad, Severus as he had been before the taint of Dark magic had entered him, aquiline rather than ugly, his hair clean and fine, young and hale and quite surprisingly attractive, and, holding him loosely in his arms, an auburn-haired young man of rare beauty, Albus as he had been when he and Gellert had been lovers.  The rightmost panel of the diptych showed two sleeping beasts, a powerful panther with a lilac-point Siamese curled trustingly in his mighty paws.

‘Ginny once said that having even a part of me was better than having the whole of someone else.  Balls, but wives take these notions.  But you’re a good man now, my kitten, and neither of us is the sort to betray a marriage.  I don’t have any need left for my panther – no, never fear, your form is yet with you, and Dean will never say a word of any of this.  Come, let’s wake them.  Albus?  Severus?  It’s morning.’

The portrait sleepers woke, slowly, and sat blinking – and, realising their position, blushing, and shy.

‘My dear boy.’  Albus’s voice was young and clear and strong.  ‘What is this gift you have given us?’

‘Hail, Lilyson,’ said Severus, at peace at last, relaxing tentatively and then luxuriantly in Albus’s arms.

‘Ave, Imperator et Princeps.  It’s really a gift to us all.  I’ll ward the room, of course, to all save us, and take it off of a certain map that we’ll not mention.  Excuse me, though.  Draco?  If you would tickle up our feline friends?’

Hesitantly, Draco touched the panther, lightly.  Both cats sprang to instant wakefulness, and then, tails lashing, began to play and tussle.  As instantly, they transformed within the panel, to Harry and Draco forever young, and the human Harry of the portrait pounced upon his painted human prey: Well, hullo, Kitten.  Whatever shall I do with you next….

‘I’m not certain,’ said a furiously blushing Snape, his voice thick, ‘that I am prepared to watch that for eternity.’

‘We’ll watch together,’ said the young Albus, serenely, his eyes beginning already to twinkle as he pressed soft kisses along Severus’s throat.

‘After time,’ said Harry, diffidently, ‘you four will manage to cross over from panel to panel – if you like, and aren’t by then, er, fully committed to your present partners.  Albus, you once said, or will say, it is a dangerous thing to live in dreams and forget to live.  So.  Draco?  Kitten?  Know that a part of you has a part of me, always, but only here and on this plane.  Yes, and you as well, Albus, Severus.  Hmm.  I shall want to name a son that.  Never mind: Draco, we would like you and – God, you two,’ said he, glaring at the diptych Harry and Draco, ‘you needn’t be quite that loud and enthusiastic – Draco, do come to dinner with us, and bring Stella, it’s time we got all that sorted.’

Draco looked at Harry, at the diptych, and again at Harry, and went very pink.

‘And bless you for your help, I wouldn’t have made it without you, my kitten.  Don’t stay here too long or become too rapt in the dream.  We’ll be in touch about dinner.’  And Harry, with panther-like strides, started towards the door, spun ’round, and returned swiftly to Draco.  Pouncing, he took Draco in his arms and kissed him passionately and so thoroughly that their painted avatars, Albus, and Severus, all alike stopped their own erotic explorations and simply watched, gasping.

As Harry left, Draco standing thunderstruck in the midst of the room, before the diptych, they heard him repeat, ‘Dinner, kitten.  Next week.  And thanks.’

It was several hours before an intolerably cheerful Draco Malfoy joined the rest of staff for a very late breakfast.

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END

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