Tall, pale tree trunks rise around him, the wide gaps between them belying their sheer size. Though he does not walk a clear path, no underbrush bars his way; he continues in a meandering line, golden brown leaves drifting to the ground around him in lazy arcs and swoops. A small harp rests in his hands, shaped in elegant, curving lines from silver metal. He does not remember learning how to play the harp, but nonetheless his fingers twist deftly across the strings, plucking at the silver to produce a haunting melody he has never heard before.

Dark blue, silver-embroidered robes he cannot remember donning swish gracefully around his legs, gently stirring the fallen leaves. Black doeskin boots he does not remember receiving leave no impression in the dirt as he walks. His long black hair, gently curled, hangs unbound past his collarbone, though he cannot remember allowing it to grow out. He does not know how long he has been walking through the pale, unchanging woods before the urge to sing overtakes him.

O Gil-galad i Edhelchír
dim linnar i thelegain:
Im Belegaer a Hithaeglir
Aran ardh vethed vain a lain.

Gariel maegech Gil-galad,

Thôl palan-gennen, ann-vegil;
A giliath arnoediad
Tann thann dîn be genedril.

Danio-anannos si gwannant

Amas, ú-bedir ithronath;
An gîl dîn na-dúath di-dhant,
vi Mordor,ennas caeda gwath.

He does not recognize the song, or the language, or even his own voice, but somehow he understands; as the hauntingly beautiful voice that cannot possibly belong to him weaves in and out of the harp's mournful notes, he weeps for Gil-Galad the Elvenking. It is only as the final note rings out, clear as a crystal bell, that something finally changes in the unchanging wood.

"Daro."

An ethereal, velvety woman's voice intones the word with absolute authority. Stop. He turns smoothly on his heel to face the speaker, his fingers at last stilling on the harp strings.

She stands a few lengths away, a tall and graceful figure in a sweeping, shimmering silver dress, glowing like a fallen star against the pale wood. Long silver-gold hair spills in waves over her shoulders, threaded through with glimmering wire and gems that culminate in a circlet on her brow. Intense, unnaturally blue eyes pierce him through. A mind brushes against his own, inquisitive, and he knows without knowing that it is her mind he feels, and her mind that gave the command its ethereal double timbre.

He cants his head to the side curiously.

"Man le?" she asks, making no move to come closer. Who are you?

Silence falls over the woods as he considers the question. When he does speak, a language he does not remember learning rolling smoothly from his tongue, he is quite surprised by the answer.

"Ú-iston," he whispers, lowering his gaze. I don't know.

Then the pale wood fades away, and suddenly it is Harry James Potter who is blinking up at the ceiling of the Hospital Wing, awake a scant few hours after Voldemort's defeat.

Not even a day, he thinks somewhat hysterically, sitting upright and burying his face in his hands.

Harry remembers having these dreams as far back as he can remember, though he can recall only vague impressions of places and songs he had never even heard of, either before or since. Early in his childhood, he attempted to tell his Aunt Petunia about the strange, beautiful places he couldn't quite remember, but he tried only once; all it earned him was a sharp smack, a command to dispense with his "freakishness," and a day spent locked out of Privet Drive in the blistering sun. Little Harry prudently kept his odd dreams—along with all the rest of his "freakishness,"—to himself after that.

He considered telling one of the Professors once he had come to Hogwarts, but as an insecure eleven-year-old child it had seemed just one more thing to set him apart from his already distant peers, and as he grew older that feeling had only intensified. So he simply accepted the dreams and moved on.

But this dream… he knows this dream is important. This dream is the first where a sentient being appeared, and the first that he remembers with such clarity.

Contrary to popular perception, Harry is not an idiot. A bit impulsive, sure, but he's actually quite an intelligent wizard, if not a particularly studious one. The part of Harry that's tired of mystery and destiny and all that ludicrous mumbo-jumbo desperately wants to dismiss the dream as a product of the extreme trauma he just endured, a subconscious attempt to complete his remaining mystery. But the intelligent part knows the dream for what it is, no matter how unpleasant, and this dream is clearly a portent of things to come.

If there's one thing he's familiar with, it's harbingers of doom, and this one's a doozy.

So, Harry James Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, Man-Who-Conquered, wizard-who-is-actually-quite-intelligent, and person-who-really-hates-hyphenated-titles reaches around his back, snags the pillow, buries his face in it, and screams in muffled rage.

Not even a bloody day—!

A/N 1/22/18

For the sake of my mental health and motivation to continue this story, please don't review.