Dreams of the Not-future
By Tanzy
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Description: An attempt at a second person narrative with varying degrees of success. Draco's dreams begin to swallow him whole.
Pairing: Harry/Draco implied very lightly.
Warnings: Spoilers for GoF. Slash.
Authors Notes: The Kwisatz Haderach is from Frank Herbert's Dune. Yes, I know that Paul wasn't technically the Kwisatz Haderach, but if you only had read the first book (like Draco) you might think so.
You were sixteen when the dreams started. Dreams of all kinds, dreams of life, of death, of events, some in such horrific detail you'd have given almost anything to stop remembering them. Not that you just started having dreams out of the blue where there had been nothing before, but you started seeing trends in your dreams that showed up in your life. You hated it because it made you feel so helpless. It wasn't as if you could see the future, because for every dream that did come true there were a dozen that didn't. You could see paths into what you came to think of as the not-future; which one would be taken you could never tell.
Sirius Black's death was when you realized you were seeing possible futures. You'd had a gory dream about a person, half transfigured into dog, being dismembered by a short vicious man as a tall skeletal figure with a disfigured face watched dispassionately. The images of the death continued to burn themselves onto your eyes long after you woke up. Pansy shrugged and passed your mood off as hormones when you refused to eat for the rest of the day.
What little the papers had said about Black's death a month later sounded enough like your dream that you had needed to pry open your eyes and stare blindly around the Great Hall so the images couldn't overcome you again. You went looking for Snape after that, desperate for someone to talk to. When you found him he had been talking to Granger, Weasley and Potter. They were asking how Black had died, though how they knew that Snape had been present at his death or why they cared you had no idea. A comment about 'a fitting end for a criminal' had barely left Snape's mouth before Granger had broken down and Potter had tried to assault him. Weasley had barely been able to hold Potter back, telling him it wasn't worth it, that getting expelled was just playing into Snape's hand. The scene had frozen at the sound of your laughter, you couldn't help it, how oddly appropriate that Potter had some secret connection with one of the wizarding world's most wanted fugitives. When you had asked Snape if Black had been transfigured into a beast before he'd been tortured Snape had given you a telling look before informing you it was none of your damn business.
Potter's words had been much more blunt. He had called you a worthless pawn of Voldemort not worth even a breath of Sirius' life as his friends had held him back. Much later you remembered those words and wondered if he was right.
You came to think of yourself as something like Paul Muad'Dib. You discovered him, the Kwisatz Haderach, between the yellowed pages of a Muggle book, tucked back into the corner of a family friend's library. It took almost no time at all for you to devour the book and what you saw in your mind's eye as you processed the words and images was nothing short of a new world vision. Trained properly, you could become a key member of the Dark Lord's favor, rising in rank and brining glory for yourself. With you as his asset the Dark Lord could bring ruination upon all your enemies. One thing you realized quickly was that if you were Paul Muad'Dib then Harry Potter was your mélange, your spice, without him you had no dreams. During the summer before your 7th year that you spent almost entirely in France you stopped having dreams of the not-future. For a short while you thought they were gone, that it had just been a phase, a passing insanity to distract yourself with, but when you returned to school they returned with a vengeance. Potter had no idea what he did to you; he only saw what he wanted to, so he never noticed the haunted look in your eyes from too much knowledge and too little sleep.
When you went home for Christmas you met your reborn leader for the first time. The stench of rotting flesh that permeated the air around him turned your stomach as you were forced to kneel before him in a sign of your servitude. You spent most of the evening vomiting up what few illusions you had left. For some reason you had never connected the gaunt disfigured person from your non-futures with the man standing before you. You had expected someone more in line with the image of your status. Not someone who could barely stand without assistance, whose voice smelled and sounded of decay. All the dreams you had had about this man, figure, monster, this thing, you wondered how many of them had become reality. You had no doubt , he was capable of all that you had dreamed. The dream you had that night was the most vivid you'd had yet, it's sound and feeling and smell bleeding slowly into your consciousness when you finally woke up. All through the rest of the holidays you kept a close watch on the papers, waiting for the Weasleys' death to be reported, found murdered in their bed like you had dreamed it. You couldn't have explained your relief that you never saw it even if you'd tried.
It was just after Christmas when you stopped sleeping. There was no reason, your dreams invaded your waking hours and sleep had little effect on your peace of mind. They finally noticed the effect it was having on you when you broke down in Charms one day. McGonagall wanted to see you trained, convinced as she was that you had a Gift. Snape was convinced it was some kind of spell that your father or the Dark Lord was behind. Dumbledore didn't say anything at all. Potter, who had already been in the infirmary when you'd been dragged in, just looked at with you with eyes that said he thought he understood you. You had tried to punch him for that look.
Disillusioned as you were, you reluctantly agreed to tell them about the contents of your dreams and the not-future. When you saw your own death, you didn't tell them. Your life had no more value beyond your dreams, if they caused them to stop, who were you to object?
Potter and his friends stared at you with such horrified betrayal when you reached over and touched the Portkey hidden in a false letter from the Weasley family. It had sent you all to the Dark Lord a split second after you'd grasped it. Snape somehow managed to come along as well; he'd been watching you for the past week, convinced you were going to do something drastic. He had always known you better than almost anyone else, but that wasn't that hard when he had been the only one who had bothered to try.
The Dark Lord had been bemused when he'd discovered you'd tagged along. He had laughed that dry gasping laugh of his and cast a killing curse in your direction with all the attention one might use while stomping on an ant. It wasn't the Boy Wonder or one of his friends who jumped in front of you at the last second, judging your life more important than their own; it was your beloved Potions Professor. Potter killed the Dark Lord before Snape's body had even hit the ground, he wasn't going to wait for a second opportunity. You knew on some level he'd been training for this ever since fourth year and Diggory, but you hadn't realized to just what level. While the three of them searched for a way to get back you were left with the corpse of a man you could never replace.
In the celebrations following you wondered if you were the only one mourning Snape's death. Shortly after the dreams stopped. Potter told you it had been part of the Dark Lord's power, that it wasn't your fault, because by that point Potter had starting talking to you like a real human being, now that you were a cast off from the other side. You wondered if you'd always been a pawn or if you'd just made yourself into one when left to your own devices.