The nightmare ends in green. Tom gasps and sits up in bed, pupils dilated and irises round and grey like the moon beyond the curtains. Beside him, Harry wakes up and reaches for his wand with Auror reflexes.

"I'm sorry," Tom mumbles, disoriented. "Bad dream. Go back to bed."

Harry relaxes, sets his wand on the bedside table. "Same one?" he asks, settling back against the pillows.

"Yeah, the one about the war…"

Harry knows about the dream of the war, he's known about it since the first time they slept together, really slept together- that is, years and years ago back at Hogwarts, when Tom turned to reach for his clothes after sex and Harry put his hand on the small of Tom's back and simply said, "Stay", and Tom stayed, even let Harry hold him while they slept. And in the middle of the night Tom had the dream for the first time, and when Harry finally coaxed him into talking about it and Tom told him everything, that was how Harry knew Tom loved him too.

This is how the dream goes:

There's a man with a cruel face who's hunting Harry like prey, and there's nothing Tom can do to stop him. Tom tries to plead with him, "Take me instead," he begs, but it's like he's invisible and mute; the man keeps his red eyes trained on Harry. Inevitably he catches up with him. Tom begs and begs, grovels at the man's feet even. He's always known what will happen next, and Harry must too but Harry isn't begging, he's looking death in the eye with a calmness that makes Tom want to scream. The red eyed man raises his wand and says the words, and with a flash of harsh green light he takes away all that was ever precious to Tom.

"I'm here, Tom," Harry says quietly in the here and now, where the light is muted and soft and late-summer crickets chirp in the fields outside. He pulls Tom to him, and the other man obliges, laying his head on Harry's chest and letting Harry run his fingers through his dark hair, dispelling with his touch the reality of the nightmare that has haunted him for seven years now.

"I love you, Tom, I won't leave you," Harry says, because he thinks fear of abandonment is what keeps the nightmares coming. Tom doesn't know if this is true, but he does know that the steady beat of Harry's heart beneath his head is something reassuring.

They lay in bed like that, listening to the crickets and holding each other like no one else has ever held them before. Harry waits for Tom to fall asleep, then he gives in to his own dreamless sleep.


If there ever was a time when they could have met and become friends it was when Tom was younger and less cruel. Yes he was always cruel, never showed a bit of compassion to an animal unless it was a snake and even then only because snakes were of use to him, but there was a time when his soul was still a soul, not cut up into pieces and buried like treasure in forgotten parts of England. Maybe Harry could have saved him then. Maybe Tom could have grown to care about Harry in his own way, which is to say he could have become fond of him, loved him even.

But Harry grows up to fight a war, and Tom is not at his side. Tom has already grown up, alone and unloved in the middle of another war that taught him no lessons about what happens to men who care about power more than they do other people. Tom has become the reason Harry is fighting. Tom is why Harry's friends are dying.

By the time the red eyed man descends upon Harry he has made himself unlovable. He thinks it's Harry that it's too late to save, but really, it's he who is beyond salvation.

Everything ends in green.