I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Harry would apologize for every single thing he'd ever done in the entirety of his life if he could just leave this place.
I'm sorry.
He was sorry for being born. For causing James and Lily Potter to die for him.
I'm sorry.
He was sorry for binding so many people to him- painting targets on their back.
I'm sorry.
He was sorry for every injury, every death, that happened because he was impulsive, stupid, weak, worthless.
I'm sorry.
He was sorry that nobody believed him when he said he didn't kill Goyle.
I'm sorry.
He was sorry that all the pain he caused others had finally caught up to him now.
imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry.
Monday, February 2
Harry was going to die in Azkaban.
He had accepted that already.
One day, someone would say 'whatever happened to Harry Potter anyway?' And someone else would laugh about how the dementors ultimately killed him.
That was really the last mostly rational thought Harry had.
Everything after that was merely a mishmash of events he couldn't be entirely sure happened in his past, events he couldn't be entirely sure weren't happening at Hogwarts now in his absence, and a smooth voice speaking to him in nonsensical words that occasionally included the word 'Draco'.
Draco was important, Harry was sure of it. But then Harry wasn't entirely sure that he was Harry. Was he Draco? What made him believe Draco was a person?
Was he a person?
Or was he just misery? A ball of magical misery being held underwater, struggling to breathe?
He didn't really want to breathe anymore anyway.
"Harry? Harry, can you hear me? I'm here to take you home."
Harry laughed and curled in himself more tightly. He didn't have a home. Everything was cold. Harry never had a home- he only dreamt that. This was reality; this cold, aching, desperate sort of loneliness.
Everything else was only a dream.
"It isn't a dream, I swear it. C'mon, Harry, come with me. Don't you want to go home? Go to Severus and Sirius?"
Had he always argued with himself in such a feminine voice? He struggled to remember, but he was certain that at some point of his life he had wanted to sound masculine. Why did he sound so girly now?
"You aren't arguing with yourself. Pick your head up, please. I don't want to touch you if I don't have to."
What a daft thing to say. Harry wasn't a person, capable of being touched. He was...
Something else entirely, probably.
"Just grab him, he's out of his mind," someone snapped. Someone that sounded more masculine, thankfully. Harry wasn't entirely sure he was a person, but he did know that if he was a person, he'd like to sound masculine when he argued with himself.
The masculine voice chuckled, and Harry felt someone strong, someone with large hands, grip him.
Did that mean he was a person?
If he was, he didn't want touched.
If he was, then Harry desperately wanted touched.
"Let go." Harry pulled weakly against the grip, knowing in his heart it didn't matter. He couldn't put together any puzzles, the pieces weren't even there anymore.
"I'm going to take you home, to Susan, to Fred," the masculine voice whispered as Harry felt another arm wrap around him. "Come on, Potter, don't you want to go home? Go see your friends, your family? They're waiting for you."
"They're d-dead," Harry cried. He looked around a bit and realized that he'd somehow dreamt up a vision of his friend Johnny and Snape's friend Tonks. Why he dreamt those two, instead of Fred or Susan or Theo, he'll never know. "They're all dead!"
He saw them die. He was certain of it.
Susan bled to death from a curse on her arm. Luna drowned in a lake. Fred had been bitten by the same snake that killed Trent and Hermione with just a look. Theo's father killed him, transfigured him in to a bone and buried him. Snape was struck down by Timmy.
Harry watched all of their deaths over and over while someone whispered to him that they didn't have to die, that he would save them.
How could he save the dead?
Draco was the only one left. The only one who talked to him sometimes. The only one who cared about him.
Harry didn't want to dream of Tonks and Johnny, he wanted to dream about when his friends were alive and they loved him.
"We aren't a dream," Tonks told him with sad eyes that made Harry cringe almost as badly as the feeling of their arms under his. "They aren't dead. Nobody is dead. You'll see Fred and Susan and Theo soon, I swear. This is real, Harry."
Was Harry speaking out loud?
He didn't understand the rules to these dreams.
This felt much more real than the ones of Lily Potter kicking him as he laid on the floor, broken and bruised. But those dreams had felt more real than the ones of Snape sneering at him, spewing every bit of hate that he could think to use to inform Harry that not only had he made a mistake in being in his life, but that Harry's entire life had been a mistake.
'It would be better if you were dead. You are a plague.'
And then Harry died.
So now he just wasn't really sure if his imagination had gotten better or worse.
"Dear God, is it really that bad here?" Johnny murmured.
"Depends on your life story," Tonks said softly.
Tonks and Johnny drug Harry from his cell, exactly as Harry dreamt that his friends had done, and Harry paused as he saw Draco sitting in a cell.
Which really solidified the whole dream aspect because people didn't hate Draco like they did Harry; Draco would never be in Azkaban.
"'M gonna get you out," Harry told him. He tried to grab him, to drag him with his rescue team, but Draco just shook his hand and released it.
"I believe that you believe that," he said. "Go home, Harry."
Even dream Draco didn't believe Harry anymore.
"This is going to be really unpleasant," Tonks said when Harry was blinking through the burning light of what he thought might be the sun.
"Everything is," Harry murmured. He tried to lift a hand, to shield the sun from burning his eyes, but it wouldn't cooperate. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to dream a different landscape. Somewhere sunny, but not bright.
Just... warm.
"His place or Hogsmeade?" Johnny asked.
Harry didn't think he was talking to him. Even in his dreams, people didn't ask him questions. They just did whatever they wanted.
Harry could never be stronger than them.
He could never be free from them.
"Harry, do you want to go home, or do you want to go to my home in Hogsmeade? I'm not doing whatever I want, you just aren't exactly helping me much."
Harry wished he'd dreamt of Fred instead of Tonks. Fred would know what Harry wanted without him having to decide on his own. And Tonks... Tonks should be with Snape. Sleeping on Harry's couch and making Snape smile.
"Scary to imagine, Snape smiling," Johnny snorted. "His place then? I can take him, if you want to go get Snape and the others."
"I'll take him," Tonks said. Her slim arm tightened around Harry's torso. "You take the bag of his belongings, go to my place and floo Sev, let him know we've got him. Harry might not want you touching him once he realizes he isn't dreaming."
Daft thing to say. Harry died a long time ago. He's just been dreaming ever since. And even his dreams hated him, because Harry was suddenly lurched forward, twisted in the air, and his lungs were shut down as he was forced through a straw sized tube.
When Harry hit the ground, it hurt. And that ache caused a small amount of the fog in his head to lift. His hands were on the ground, and it wasn't cold and smooth, it was cold and wet. Which was a shocking change from how it had always been.
"Up you get," Tonks said, grabbing Harry's arm and lifting him to his feet. "C'mon, Harry, Fred's inside."
Tonks was a liar.
Fred died almost as long ago as Harry did.
Except... Oh.
Harry was swaying on his feet and saw a spot of red on the endless scene of white and his frozen heart beat just once.
"Harry!"
Harry's dreams were finally cooperating with him, at least a little bit, because Fred was running to him.
"Don't grab him," Tonks snapped when Fred stopped in front of Harry and Harry could examine him closely. In his other dreams, Fred's eyes were never so blue. He had never been so pale, and worried. In his dreams, Fred always smiled.
He liked it better when Fred smiled.
"Dreams?" Fred reached out slowly and traced the side of Harry's face with his fingers, drawing a needy whine from Harry who desperately leaned in to the touch. Had anyone ever touched him before he died? Or had that all just been fantasies he dreamt up as well? "You're not dreaming, darlin, this is real."
Harry laughed, causing Tonks to flinch and Fred to step backwards. "Nothing is real," Harry said. He dropped his head, feeling the visual change of everything in this dream to cause him to be abruptly exhausted.
"Is he- is he asleep?"
"I have no idea."
"Was it horrible there?"
"You don't even want to know. Help me get him inside."
Harry felt himself being drug through the snow and then—
"Warm," he whispered. When was the last time his dreams were warm? Even with Tonks around, this was a real improvement to all his recent dreams.
"What'd you do to him?" Fred asked as he helped drag Tonks up what felt like a set of stairs.
"Slept on his sofa once, apparently," Tonks sighed.
Fred chuckled, "That'll do it."
Harry ignored them and focused on the pleasant smells surrounding him. All his other dreams smelt like mildew, sweat, and copper. This one smelled like citrus and jasmine and treacle.
As far as dreams went, this one was nice. Nobody was dying. Nobody was drowning him. Everything smelt good. And it was warm.
His overall pleasure at his dreams being a bit more pleasant increased when he was plucked up in a pair of citrusy scented arms and laid on a soft and fuzzy surface.
"This is real, love, you're home now."
That was just the sort of thing that his dreams always said, right before they stabbed Harry in the chest with an ice dagger.
"Nobody is stabbing you, just rest, darlin. You're safe."
Harry laughed at such a stupid thing to say, then he fell asleep.
"Dear God- what happened to him?"
"He's mad. You didn't see him, Sev, he was talking to the walls. Screaming at them. Crying. It was horrible. He thinks this is all a dream."
"Don't call him fucking mad, Tonks. It's just the dementors, they- they kill him."
Harry floated in a peaceful sort of slumber- if this was still death, it was much better than it used to be.
You cannot die, little Horcrux. You can never die. Live now. Live and come to me. I will keep you safe.
Aah. Not death then.
Just more dreams.
"Harry, wake up. You are at home, you are safe."
It was hard, but not impossible, to laugh in his dreams. Harry humored his imagination and opened his eyes.
This was both better, and worse, than the cold dreams. This one was warm, it smelled good, it had everyone Harry cared about in it, but they looked all wrong.
His mind really had cracked.
"Nothing is cracked," Susan said quickly, reaching out to him then dropping her arm before she reached him.
People didn't touch Harry.
He didn't like it.
He didn't deserve it.
Even in his dreams.
Come with me, I will give you all the things you deserve.
"Death?" Harry hissed back to the only living friend he had left. The only person who didn't die in his dreams, over and over. Someone who swore they would save him.
The world.
Harry shook his head. He didn't deserve the world. That was mad.
"Who's he talking to?" Sirius asked Snape.
Why'd he sound so panicked?
"Damnit," Snape swore and after a moment, a glass bottle full of something lavender colored came flying to him. "His occlumency barriers are shot."
"You can't just drug him!" Fred cried.
Why did people keep acting like anyone couldn't do anything they wanted to him anytime they wanted?
"I am not doing 'whatever I want to you'," Snape said, his dark eyes soft and pitying. "This is for your protection, Harry. Goodnight."
Harry blinked twice. He felt something spelled directly in to him. It made his eyelids droop and his torso go slack.
And then he was asleep again.
Had he ever really been awake?
When Harry woke next, it was dark. Which made sense. What didn't make sense, were the men seated on a little green sofa that was pulled up beside his bed.
It was supposed to be further away, Harry was certain of it.
"I moved it," Sirius said, stretching from his tense position on the sofa. "I'll put it back."
Was everyone legilimizing Harry or were his thoughts pouring out like little thought bubbles? He'd seen that, once, in a comic book.
Maybe Harry was in a comic book now. He wouldn't be Superman, with his muscles and his justice. Harry would be Lex Luthor with his force fields, his weapons, and his desire to burn the earth to ashes.
"You are speaking aloud, and you are not a comic book villain," Snape said. He leaned forward and raised his hand to Harry's forehead, placing it there softly and causing Harry to tilt his face up to keep his hand there. "Do you know where you are?"
"M-my room—"
"Excellent."
"—in Hell, I sup-suppose."
"Not so excellent then," Sirius said, frowning at him. "Harry, Pup, you're at home. You're not dead, or dreaming."
Harry was sick of this annoying change in his dreams. They didn't usually spend their time convincing him of his continued life, they just died or killed him.
If Snape and Sirius were going to kill him, he wished they'd get on with it. His head ached fiercely.
"We are not here to kill you," Snape said. He pulled his hand away causing Harry to let out a pathetic noise of unhappiness. Snape sighed and put his hand back on Harry's forehead and carefully shifted from the sofa to the edge of Harry's bed. "Would you like a potion for the headache?"
Harry humored them, as it was sometimes easier to do in these dreams.
"No," he said quietly. "It'll g-go away." Harry looked around and felt ice freeze in his chest. "Dray? Where's Dray?"
"Draco?" Snape asked. "He is downstairs with your other misfits, would you like Black to go retrieve him?"
"He's in p-prison," Harry told him. "'S cold there. He hates it."
"Draco's downstairs," Sirius said slowly. "I swear, I just saw him. He was gathering drinks and snacks for your friends."
"HE'S IN PRISON!" Harry screamed. "DRAY! DRACO! DRAAAAY!" He tried to get up, but Sirius held him down, causing Harry to thrash and scream more. "SAVE HIM! DRACO! DRACO!"
The door to his room burst open, and someone blonde with pointy features and soft hair stepped in, his wand drawn. "Harry?"
Harry went still. His heart beat quickly beneath Sirius' hands. "Who are you?" he whispered.
The pointy bloke with the wand looked from Sirius to Snape to Harry with his brows so high on his forehead, Harry couldn't find them beneath his hair. "Draco?" he said.
As if Harry was meant to believe someone who couldn't even remember the right lines to his speech.
"Harry, this is Draco," Snape said slowly, bending over to put himself in Harry's line of vision now. His hand moved from Harry's forehead to his cheek. "He is here. Not in prison."
That wasn't Draco.
"Yes I am," the imposter said slowly.
Harry could prove it.
"You are my sunshine, my only..."
The imposter blinked at Harry for an impossibly long moment before he opened his mouth and sang the next word, "Sunshine." The imposter looked at Snape and Sirius and shook his head. "My father," he said. "Harry wants my father."
Then he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
"Lucius?" Snape said quietly, applying a bit of pressure to Harry's cheek bone with his thumb. "You want Lucius?"
"You make me happy, when skies are grey," Harry sang. He thought he sounded like Dray, smooth and soothing, but Snape's flinch told him otherwise, so Harry quit singing.
"Someone kill me," Harry whispered instead. His breath was filled with wheezes and his chest ached as badly as his head. "If you k-kill me, I'll reset."
Nobody killed him.
Sirius sat on one side of the bed and stroked Harry's hair while Snape sat on the other side and held his face. They communicated silently over Harry's head so he closed his eyes and did his own silent communication.
Why won't they kill me?
They will eventually. Come with me. I will never allow you to be killed.
"Then you d-don't have what I n-need," Harry whispered.
When he woke up next, he was reset.
It was bright now, and unbearably warm.
Not unbearably, actually. Harry was drenched in sweat, but his bones were still cold. The ice in his blood was still flowing through his veins, causing goosebumps to erupt on his arms.
He turned his head, looking for the source of the heat, and met blue eyes.
"Hi," Fred whispered.
This was the best dream yet.
Harry reached out to touch Fred's face, knowing he wouldn't be able to, and let out a surprised gasp at feeling his soft skin beneath his hand. Fred closed his eyes as Harry's tentative fingers explored his face, causing Harry to frown. He wanted Fred's eyes to be opened, he wanted to see those blue eyes that never came through his dreams just right.
Not like they were now.
"This isn't a dream," Fred said, opening his eyes and causing Harry's frown to fade. "If anyone would be dreaming here, it would be me anyway, love. Do you have any idea how much I've missed you? How much I worried that I'd never see you again?"
Harry understood. That was how he felt when Fred died. "When I d-died," he whispered knowingly. "Yeah."
Fred's eyes swam in Harry's vision, a film of wet muddling up the blue that Harry wanted to see so badly.
"You aren't dead," Fred said quietly. He reached up and ran his hand through Harry's hair, driving out another desperate noise of need. "You were in Azkaban, and now you're home. You're alive."
"They're lying to you," Harry breathed. "T-time to wake up, Fred. You're d-dead." Harry swiped the tear off Fred's cheek. "Dream something b-better."
Fred tilted his head forward until his forehead was touching Harry's. "I don't know how to help you," he said in a harsh whisper.
You can't save the dead.
"You aren't dead," Fred said.
Harry just laughed.
They'd find his body in Azkaban soon.
The two of them laid there for a while. Harry recommitted himself to memorizing the freckles on this Fred's face. One of his dreams had a freckle-less Fred and it had disturbed Harry nearly as much as the giant snake ripping his throat out, so he hoped to memorize these markings now so his other dreams would follow suit.
Eventually the soft sound of a door opening had Harry clenching his eyes shut, memorization be damned.
They were back.
Which meant that Harry's peaceful dream of lying in a bed with Fred would end soon and either Fred would be killed right in front of him or Harry would be killed by Fred.
That's how they always ended when the dementors came around.
"Nobody is going to kill you and nobody is going to kill Fred."
Harry flinched while he waited for the room to freeze and the scene to reset.
Anytime now...
Harry shifted uneasily when the temperature didn't change any. He opened his eyes slowly and saw Fred still right in front of him. He picked his head up and saw Theo and Susan beside his bed, a large tray covered in stacks of various foods in Theo's hands.
"There are no dementors here," Theo said quietly. "There is food though, are you hungry?"
Harry laughed, causing everyone else to flinch. "It's poison," he told Theo. "And you're a bone. I saw you. Abracadabra, bone of the brother, buried in the forest."
"Theo is not a bone, he isn't dead, and nobody is buried in the forest," Susan said. She sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed a piece of toast off the tray and held it out to Harry. "This isn't poison, I swear."
Yeah, Harry was going to believe a ghost.
"For fucks sake," Susan sighed. She took a bite of the toast and swallowed it before Harry could stop her. "Can ghosts eat toast?" she asked him. "Here," she held it out to him, "it's good. Mavis made it."
Harry sat up and snatched the toast out of her hand before throwing it as far as he could. "I k-killed you," Harry told her, "don't m-make it worse."
"Sirius was fine when he was released!" Susan cried, throwing her hands in the air, catching Harry's attention.
Did Susan always sparkle?
"Sirius isn't Harry," Fred said. "And yes, it's her arm, the fancy gold one. Remember, darlin?"
Harry shook his head and inched backwards until he was sitting against the post of the bed. "Ghosts don't sp-sparkle," he said. "Draco?"
"Draco or Lucius?" Theo asked Harry. "Who do you want?"
"I hope they m-make you truly miserable," Harry murmured. He leaned forward then smacked his head back on the metal post repeatedly. "Get Draco! HE'S COLD! THEY'RE KILLING HIM!"
"You go get Snape, Fred and I are going to get Lucius, apparently."
"You can't yank him from his position as a spy because Harry's lost his marbles!"
"HE DID NOT LOSE HIS MARBLES, THEO!"
Harry never had any marbles.
Someone laughed, and they sounded hysterical, so Harry hit his head one more time before it went black.
Did you die too?
I can never die. I am eternal. We are eternal.
Why didn't he understand that Harry didn't want to be eternal?
"Potter, wake up."
'What makes you happy?'
Harry struggled to swim to the surface, opening his eyes with a loud gasp. "Dray?"
"Lucius," Draco corrected him with a heavy sigh. "Sit up. Eat."
Harry looked around, trying to find the dementors, and slowly moved in to a sitting position when he only saw ghosts.
"They aren't ghosts, idiot," Draco said. "Here." He handed Harry a slice of toast and Harry was struck with the feeling that he had dreamt this exact scenario recently.
"You did not dream it, it happened," Draco said. "Apparently moments before your friends decided that I am of more use as a nursemaid than a spy."
"Snitches get stitches."
"Quite," Draco agreed. "Eat, now."
Harry looked between the toast in his hands to Draco to the ghosts filling the room then back to the toast. "They've p-poisoned it."
"It's poisoned to keep the dementors away," Draco whispered. "Eat it."
The ghosts never helped Harry before, but maybe they were doing him a favor in exchange for killing him later. Harry took a bite and chewed it as he stared hard at Lupin, who was standing between Sirius and Snape at the foot of his bed.
"I d-don't dream ab-about him."
"Why would you?" Fred grinned from the side of Harry's bed. "He's no one special."
Harry nodded in agreement and squinted hard at the tall woman with the blonde hair and the grey eyes. "Or her."
"That is your cousin, Narcissa," Draco told him. "My wife."
Harry laughed, spraying a bit of the toast still in his mouth on his lap. "Cissa is married to Lucius. Lucius is dead."
Draco rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and then turned to the wall of ghosts. "I don't know what you expect here, he's broken. They drove him mad."
Harry nodded in agreement again. He's always been broken. Everyone knows that. They remind him right before they rip him in half.
"He wanted you," Snape told Draco. "And, as you have already made more progress than the rest of us have, I believe he is fixable."
Harry laughed. "You can't fix the d-dead. You live for a little bit, then you g-get killed, then you're a ghost. Abracadabra!"
"Every time he says that, I expect one of us to fall over dead," Theo said.
"That's how rabbits come out of hats when you have magic," Harry told him. "You can't kill a ghost."
"You have magic, Potter," Draco said. "Eat and perhaps it will come back eventually."
That was a dream. Warmth in his chest that spread to his fingers, eager and happy to do his bidding. Just a dream.
"Eat," Draco snapped. "Now."
"Don't talk to him like that," Susan snapped, her eyes looking like the fire that killed her one time.
"Oh?" Draco raised a brow at Susan then looked at Harry, who was absently eating the toast as he waited to see if ghosts could kill Draco or not.
They hadn't, not before, but dreams and ghosts didn't follow scripts. They didn't know the right lines.
A bit like Harry back when he'd been a person.
"'M tired, Dray," Harry said. He sagged back against the pillows and watched Draco carefully. "Wake me up when they come b-back?"
"The ghosts or the dementors?" Draco asked.
"The ghosts d-don't leave," Harry said.
"The dementors then," Draco said. He smoothed Harry's fringe off his forehead and pushed his head down to the pillows. "Sleep, you madman. I will wake you if the dementors come back." Draco got to his feet and turned to Snape. "Perhaps we should talk."
"Perhaps we should," Snape agreed, his eyes trained on Harry.
Harry caught Draco's sleeve before he could leave. "You make me happy, when skies are..."
Draco looked down at Harry and his face went abruptly red. "I hate you," he told Harry. He flicked his hand irritably towards the doorway. "Everyone else, go."
"Mm, I'll stay, thanks," Fred said. He slowly pulled Harry against him and that was why Harry would rather dream about Fred than Tonks. He didn't have to tell Fred what he wanted. He just knew somehow.
"Everyone else," Draco snapped. He waited until the others left with small smiles and quiet snickers then. "You too, Severus. I'll not humiliate myself in front of an audience."
"He isn't real," Harry told him, "he's just a ghost."
Draco scowled and Snape smiled and conjured a chair to sit in.
"I should obliviate you," Draco told Harry. Harry just waited, certain that he'd give in like he usually did when Harry was being haunted by ghosts. And he did, after another heavy sigh and a dramatic roll of his eyes.
Harry closed his eyes. Warm in Fred's arms. Content by Draco's song. Confused by it all.
Were the dementors on break? Did dementors take smoke breaks? Sirius took smoke breaks. Harry should smoke. Maybe they'd let him leave his cell if he did.
Sirius left his cell. The dementors killed him, they stuffed his soul in to a dog, and Sirius left. Then he took all the smoke breaks he wanted.
"I don't know what to tell you, Severus, he just screamed."
"Why does he want you though?"
"Perhaps because we are prison mates. Or he decided he hates me and desperately wishes for the Dark Lord to kill me."
"His occlumency barriers are shot. We would have had to pull you regardless. It was only a matter of time before the Dark Lord discovered your true alliance through his mind."
Did you steal my follower, Little Horcrux?
I didn't do it.
I am not angry, you clever boy. Imagine the following we will have when we are partnered together.
I don't want followers. I want my friends back.
They're dead. I am all that is left. You and I, forever.
"You're trash," the woman said. "Disgusting! I died for you?"
"I'm sorry," Harry told her. He looked up at her through the iron bars and felt like her green eyes were direct knives in to his chest. "Mum, I'm sorry."
"You're no son of mine," Lily sneered. She turned to leave him in his cell and spat angrily over her shoulder. "I should have let you die."
As much as Harry didn't want to see her glaring so hatefully at him, he also didn't want her to leave him alone. "Mum, please, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'M SORRY!"
"That's the saddest damn thing I've ever heard."
"Lucius said it was a frequent nightmare in Azkaban. Harry believes she would hate him."
"Use the stone! Bring her back, or whatever it does. Let him talk to her."
"Excellent idea, Nymphadora, I'll bring back the spirit of a dead woman while Harry believes he is being haunted by ghosts. Truly, how did you pass the auror exams?"
"With my good looks, obviously. Not that it matters now, eh?"
"I apologize. I am... stressed. I do understand the sacrifice you made to retrieve him, Abbott as well. I suppose a thank you would be wildly understated?"
"A bit, yeah."
"Harry, wake up please."
Harry unscrewed his eyes and nearly smiled to see who was haunting him now. "Lue."
Luna smiled and climbed in his bed, curling in to him like a cat.
Cats aren't ghosts.
Which meant this was a dream.
"Isn't all of life a dream?" Luna hummed in to Harry's chest. "What would make you wake up?"
"I can't wake up," Harry told her. "You'll be gone and they'll be there."
"The dementors."
"Yeah."
"What if you woke up and they were gone?" she asked him. She pulled herself out of Harry's grip, causing an ache in the hollow spot of his chest where he used to have a heart, and peered up at him earnestly. "If you were awake and there were no dementors, what would happen?"
"Then..." Harry tried to puzzle through her riddle. "Then I'd be dead?"
"How do you know if you're dead?" she asked him softly. She lifted her hand and hovered it above his cheek. "Can dead men feel touch?"
"No," Harry whispered. "You can't touch a ghost."
Luna's hand came close enough to Harry's cheek for him to feel the heat and a needy whine to escape through his teeth.
"If I touch you, and you feel it, does that mean you're not dead and I'm not a ghost?"
"It... m-maybe," Harry allowed, tilting his face to reach her hand. She moved her hand though, keeping it tantalizingly close without making contact.
"But then how do you know this isn't a dream?" Luna said. "Tell me, Harry, and I'll touch you."
"Dementors?"
"I need a different way," Luna whispered. "Think, Harry. How do you know I'm not a dream?"
"Dreams can't hurt," Harry said after thinking it over for a while, "not really. They hide the p-pain, Lue. They bury it in the forest with Theo's b-bones."
"Dreams don't hurt at all," Luna agreed seriously. "Sorry, Harry."
Harry didn't know what she apologized for, she didn't even kill him yet, but then she pulled her hand back and abruptly slapped him in the face.
Someone howled from the foot of the bed, "Don't hit him!"
Harry blinked though as Luna's hand now cradled his stinging cheek. "I'm n-not dreaming?"
"No," Luna smiled, but it was all wrong because she was also crying. "Can you feel my hand?"
"Yeah," Harry breathed.
"So I'm not a ghost. You're not dreaming. Then what's going on?"
Aah.
Someone did their job wrong and Harry snuck in to Theo's afterlife.
"Wrong," Luna told him. Her soft thumb stroked the skin under Harry's eyes. "If this was the afterlife, wouldn't James Potter be here?"
Harry looked around carefully.
Theo. Susan. Fred. Sirius. Lupin. Snape.
"M-maybe?" Harry told her, uncertain and nervous now. "He d-doesn't like Snape." He probably wouldn't like Harry either, so maybe he was hiding.
"But he likes Sirius," Luna said. She grabbed the other side of Harry's face and turned him to face Sirius. "Remus too," she said. "If this was the afterlife and Sirius and Remus are here, wouldn't he be with them?"
That... yeah, that made a bit of sense.
"Exactly," Luna said encouragingly. "Okay, think, Harry. If you aren't dead. I'm not a ghost. This isn't the afterlife, and it isn't a dream, then what's going on?"
He had no idea.
"You're alive. You're home. You're safe."
What a mad thing to say. Luna always said mad things though. Harry used to love that about her, back when he'd been a person.
"Go," Snape sighed. "Let Lupin try."
"I'll be back," Luna said. She kissed his forehead and slid off Harry's bed, leaving him bereft and cold.
Harry watched the others follow Luna out the door, leaving him alone.
Alone with Lupin.
"Don't go," Harry cried, struggling to climb out of the bed and follow the others. "Come back! LUE! COME BACK! HE'LL KILL ME! LUNA! LUNA! PLEASE! I'M SORRY! I'M SO SORRY! HE'S GOING TO HURT ME!"
"Harry, I'm not going to kill you," Lupin said lied. "Please, Harry, I swear to you. I will not hurt you."
Lupin held his hands up and came to the side of Harry's bed, but that was worse. Much worse.
"STOP! LUNA! LUNA HELP! PLEASE! I'M SORRY! Go away," he snarled at Lupin as he took another step towards Harry. "Don't- don't touch me!"
"I won't," Lupin said. He took a step away from Harry's bed and kept his hands up by his shoulders. "I will not touch you, at all."
God Harry was so sick of being lied to. He didn't know what this was anymore, but he couldn't take the lies.
"I'm not lying, Snape. Please, come back," Harry cried out. His legs were snarled by a Grindylow and he couldn't get out of the water. "Fleur, help. I'm sorry! Fleur! SAVE LUNA, FLEUR!"
The Grindylow abruptly freed Harry's legs and he hit the floor with a harsh thud that knocked the wind from his chest.
"Are you alright?"
"You lied," Harry whispered. He closed his eyes as Lupin grabbed his arms, lifting him to his feet. "Liar. Liar. Liar. L—"
"Get out," a sharp voice snapped after a door bounced off a wall. "Go, Lupin. You have made it worse."
"I... Severus, I don't think I can help him."
Nobody could.
There used to be pieces of Harry that could be glued back together, leaving scars as proof of his brokenness, but then the dementors ate the pieces this time and coughed up dust.
You can't glue dust back together.
"What do we do, Snape?"
"I... I truly have no idea."
"I know a healer, on the Janus Thickey Ward, Healer Strout. I could... I could talk to her, see if he could go there?"
"Piss off, Black. We are not sending him to St Mungo's. The Dark Lord would find him and kill him."
"What do we do then?"
"We... We arrange for someone to keep an eye on him. We send the students back to Hogwarts. Perhaps if there are fewer of us around, he will stop thinking he's being haunted."
"So we need babysitters?"
"We do."
"Not Moony, maybe... Fleur? Harry was crying for her earlier. And Fred. Cissa and Tonks?"
"It is better than nothing. You and I will fill in between classes, I suppose."
"I hate this."
"It is not ideal, no."
***
It was dark out.
Which Harry preferred.
The darkness was real, it wasn't a dream.
Nobody would dream of darkness. They dreamt of magic and friends and food that wasn't poisoned. They dreamt of flying broomsticks and potions and happiness.
Harry looked around and furrowed his brows. He didn't usually dream about his room, so quiet, either, but...
"Are you real?" he hissed to the snake curled up on the foot of his bed.
The snake lifted its head and flicked its tongue out. "I am."
"You're lucky then," Harry told it. "I'm not."
"You are."
The snake didn't understand, but they usually didn't.
Harry slipped away from the ghost sleeping on the sofa, the ghost sleeping on his bed. He let his fingers linger on the red hair on the pillow beside him.
It didn't matter what everyone said. They could claim Harry wasn't dreaming all they wanted, but they could be lying. If it was a dream, then that's exactly what they would say.
Harry snuck out of the room on light feet, instinctively knowing where not to step to prevent creaky floorboards from waking anyone, and made his way to the front door. He breathed in the cold air, so different than it used to be, and looked around for a proper tree.
There.
He quickly made his way to the tallest tree in the forest that surrounded the house and climbed up it. He relished the rough feeling of the frozen bark beneath his fingers as he climbed higher and higher. Harry was carefully stepping out on a branch a good distance from the ground when someone hollered at him, causing him to lose his footing and crouch down to maintain his balance.
"What are you doing?" Sirius yelled up at him. "Pup, it's freezing out here. Come inside."
"You aren't real," Harry called down to him, shaking his head furiously, sick of being tricked. "You're a d-dream and I need to w-wake up!"
"And breaking your legs will prove you're awake?" Sirius asked, his voice difficult to distinguish over the wind.
Or was it the wind talking to him?
That was a possibility.
"I have to wake up," Harry said again. He got to his feet and carefully edged down to the spot he wanted to fall from. "You're not real!"
Sirius sighed. He pulled his wand from his pocket and stepped backwards from the tree. "Go on then, jump," he said. "If this is what it takes to convince you that you're awake, that this is real, that you're alive, then do it. Jump, Harry."
Harry was more certain than ever that he was dreaming or dead now. Everyone in his dreams always wanted him to hurt.
They wanted him dead.
It was a blow, to have it confirmed, but Harry should have known.
He held his arms out at his side, wondering if flying in his dreams would ever feel as good as flying used to be when he had been a person, and then he let himself fall forwards.
Everything was a bit different after that.
"I can't believe you jumped," Sirius chuckled as Harry winced and pulled at the hair on his legs.
"I cannot believe you let him," Snape scowled. He gently grabbed Harry's hands and moved them away from his legs. "Regrowing bones is painful, you know that, quit making it worse, brat."
"I figured we could keep telling him that he wasn't dreaming for God knows how long, or we heal a few broken bones," Sirius shrugged. "This seemed quicker. I just didn't expect a compound fracture."
Harry listened to them bicker for a few minutes as he studied Snape.
"I did-didn't do it."
Snape immediately ended his bickering with Sirius and turned to Harry. "I know that," he said quietly. "Crabbe did it. Not you."
"You didn't b-believe me, when they arrested me. Or..." Harry felt a small wave of fuzziness hit his brain. "Or was that a dream?"
"It was real." Snape cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. "I did not believe you. I am unsure if an apology is sufficient, but I do apologize."
"You gotta admit, Pup, they did a hell of a job of framing you," Sirius said with a frown. "And you were planning on killing him. You can see why we didn't believe you."
"I don't care if you didn't b-believe me," Harry told Sirius. His voice felt hoarse all of a sudden as he tried to speak around the lump in his throat. "I lie to you all the time. But not you," he told Snape. "I n-never lie to you."
"I would have been in the same position, made the same decisions I did, even if you did kill him," Snape said. He leaned forward and reached for Harry's arm, but Harry jerked it away this time. No matter how much he craved feeling someone's touch to remind him that he was real, he didn't want Snape's right now. Snape looked mildly sad at Harry's rejection, but he cleared it away quickly. "You supposedly lying to me did not impact any of the events that followed. I did not leave you there because I believed you deserved it."
"But you d-didn't believe me," Harry said flatly. "Dream or real?"
"Real," Snape said. "You have lied to me in the past, you know."
"When?" Harry demanded, an itch of unhappiness prickling his eyes and his mind. "When have you ever asked m-me something and I lied right to your fa-face?"
"Barty Crouch Junior."
Harry sifted through his memories, attempting to sort through what was real, what he dreamt, and what happened. "I told you I'd t-tell you about it w-when I could," he said slowly, his face scrunched up in careful concentration. "I d-didn't lie."
"Hunting for Black."
Harry's eyes flicked to Sirius uncertainly, the nagging thought that this wasn't real striking him once more. "I d-don't remember hunting for Sirius," he said. "In Hogsm-m- Hogsmeade? With- with Tonks?"
Snape sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. "The summer before your third year. You told me you were with Susan and Amelia, and you were actually apparating around the country, hunting for Black."
"I don't- I don't remember that." Harry panicked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm—"
Sirius reached out for Harry this time, rubbing his arm soothingly.
"You were in the midst of a manic upswing, calm yourself," Snape said. "I do not hold it against you that you lied to me then. I doubt if it was your intentions."
"Sirius," Harry looked up at Sirius desperately, "dreaming?"
Sirius abruptly pinched Harry's arm, hard. "Not dreaming. Not dead," he said.
Harry's eyes welled up with tears- something he attributed to the pinch on his arm and not the punch to his gut- and he nodded gratefully to Sirius before turning back to Snape.
"I didn't do it."
"What was I meant to think, Harry?" Snape snapped, jumping to his feet and running an aggravated hand through his lank hair. "You were missing. You told Granger and Susan that you were going to kill him. You have surpassed even my own body count, Harry! What was I meant to think when the boy was found, shot in the chest?!"
"YOU WERE M-MEANT TO BELIEVE ME!" Harry screamed, the raw ache in his throat reminding him that this wasn't a dream at all. "I'M YOUR SON! YOU'RE MY DAD! YOU WERE MEANT TO BELIEVE ME!"
~Sirius blinked up at the ceiling, forcing back the tears that threatened him as Harry sat on his bed, his leg bones regrowing, crying about how Snape didn't believe him.
Crying how Snape was his dad.
He needs a dad, buddy, he thought up to James. God knows I wish it were you, but Snape's better than no one.
Sirius fancied that he felt a bit of a warm breeze ruffle his hair in the windowless room.
He also fancied that it was James reassuring him that he understood.~
Snape stopped his irritated pacing and stared down at Harry, his eyes wide with some sort of emotion that Harry was too tired to understand.
"Harry, I—"
"Was that all a d-dream too?" Harry asked, uncertainty causing his voice to shake. "You and I, a dream?"
"No." Snape's voice was confident and he strode over to Harry's bed, knocking Sirius' hand aside and grabbing Harry's arm firmly. "That was not- is not- a dream. You..." Snape glanced subtly at Black then apparently decided to pretend he didn't exist. "You are my son, Harry. I should have believed you when you said you did not do it."
Harry released a heavy sigh. "I don't have to go b-back. Real or dream?"
"Real."