N.B. -- Basically a step out of a dream I had this past weekend. I'll be writing a beginning and an ending to it, maybe several chapters worth, when I find the time. As it is, writing this much made me late on Sunday morning.

"But if it weren't for him I wouldn't be standing here as I am now, Prometheus Bound." He held up a printed flyer very close to Draco's face on which there was a lot of intricate lettering, the words "Prometheus Bound" very prominent among them. He didn't hold it long enough for Draco to see more, but set it on the table with a resounding smack and went about the business of making tea.

"In fact," the strangely handsome old man continued, "I wouldn't be standing here at all."

"Your name is Prometheus?" asked Draco, as always latching on to the part he personally found most interesting about the conversation.

"No no," said the man, "my name is Remus."

"But you just said..."

"Nevermind all that." He waved his hand impatiently and the room fell deathly silent. Draco considered for a moment that the man might simply be mad. But he shrugged this off quickly, remembering he'd wondered once already in the past hour if he himself might be losing his mind. Didn't someone once tell him that madness loved company? Or was that fools? In any case, Draco thought the silence was a thousand times worse now that someone had been speaking into it for a time.

He cleared his throat tentatively just to see if perhaps Remus would hurl things at him, but the old man graced him with a sideways glance and small smile, so he decided to speak. "How are you 'Bound'?" he ventured, and he pointed at the poster on the table next to him to draw the attention there rather than on himself.

Remus seemed a little pleased by the question. "It's a circus trick, boy. Harry Houdini? Though I'll bet you've never heard of him. Escape from chains whilst in a vat of water, before drowning of course. It's simple enough with a spell and the Muggles eat it up. Brings in the dosh."

It threw him for a second because Remus had said, "Harry," and his mind needed to catch up to everything he'd said after that. Shockwaves racked his body and he was hit with something like a violent deja vu. He knew this man; suddenly that was very clear. But from where, how could he know?

As if reading his thoughts, Remus gave him a curious look as he set a cup of tea on the table before him. Politely he said, "Sit, please, have some tea," but it was a matter of seconds between Draco's landing in a chair and Remus leaning close towards him with narrowed eyes.

"You look," he said slowly, as though Draco might startle easily, "a bit like someone I knew at school. But that was a long time ago and you're still quite young. Still I wonder..." With eyebrows furrowed deeply, he reached a single finger forward across the table and poked at Draco's lower lip. Draco, for his part, didn't move a single muscle nor even dare to breathe, both frightened and fascinated by the man's own fascination. His eyes had a glazed look to them, as a man deep in intense concentration, but all he was doing was pressing against Draco's lips much the way the matching lips of a lover might. As he watched with morbid interest, Remus' own lips parted to speak, but it wasn't the old man's voice that rang out and shattered the moment.

"Is this really appropriate?" said someone in the doorway to Draco's right. Instantly Remus' finger was gone and the air felt cool and empty in its wake. When he turned to see who had spoken, a boy was standing there, no older than eleven (which was a landmark year, along with five and seventeen, by which Draco measured the ages he couldn't believe he'd ever been) with a massive mess of dark hair and sarcastic eyes much like those Draco faced whenever looking in a mirror. He didn't seem intent on standing still to be scrutinized.

"Who is he?" the boy asked, not waiting for an answer to his first question. "Were you going to kiss him? You know this is when I get home every day." He stomped into the room, flinging a knapsack to one side, shrugging off a jacket and tossing it elsewhere, kicking his shoes off haphazardly on his way to the kitchenette where he poured himself a cup of tea. [...]

Remus raised an eyebrow in a way he must have thought was rather charming. "Yes, I know. No, I wasn't. And he hasn't told me yet who he is, but I suspect his name is Malfoy."