Chapter Eleven: Grieving the Lost

"Dreams are a setting with unlimited possibility. They can help us sort through the problems our waking selves have not yet conquered; they can allow us to experience things that we would otherwise be unable or unwilling to. But more than that, so many dreams are premonitions to those who know how to read the signs."

"There it is!" whispered Clint with an excited grin.

Bucky rolled his eyes, turning his attention back down to his notebook as Professor Heimdall strode past their table and continued to explain the principles of dream predictions. Clint loved Divination purely to make fun of it, and he didn't believe a lick of what they learned about. When they started reading tea leaves, he would make up the most fanciful, extraordinary predictions he could think of while Heimdall looked on and nodded. Bucky was almost positive the man was just humoring his friend, knowing that he found it all to be a joke, when he called Clint up for a palm reading at the start of their next unit.

What he told Clint had been soft enough that no one else heard, but Bucky could honestly say he'd never seen Clint turn that shade of green, not even when he'd eaten twice his weight at the Halloween feast the previous year and been sick all night as a result.

As soon as Heimdall was a reasonable distance away, T'Challa glanced up from his notes with a marginally irritated glower on his face.

"Why do you take this class if you think it's stupid?" he breathed, but Bucky shushed them with a finger to his lips as Heimdall explained their assignment. He didn't want to say that he'd been paranoid about his grades in the last few weeks since the article had run in the Prophet, but he was possibly being more careful to pay attention and had maybe doubled (or tripled) down on his efforts.

"Many times, it is difficult to remember your dreams, especially as time passes after waking. That is why your project for the next two weeks may be difficult for some of you, but I expect that you will put in some effort," Heimdall warned, looking around at all of them before he continued. "From now until the second week of November, you will be keeping a dream journal. You will describe the setting and events of each dream, whether you believe it was a dream to predict or to resolve conflict, and what you interpret it to mean. I will be checking your journals every day we have class, so do not fall behind. At the end of these two weeks, you will make a comprehensive analysis of your dreams. Now, we will start with last night, and I will give you time to work on this in class. Think about what dreams you had and record as much as you can remember on a length of parchment. I will come around should any of you require my assistance."

Even if Divination was admittedly a little sketchy in Bucky's opinion, he usually liked the class well enough and found it fascinating to think that people spent their whole lives relying on things like this when they frequently either misread signs or were incorrect altogether. Regardless, he just barely managed to keep from groaning aloud at this assignment and let his head hang low over the parchment with a sigh. His dreams were always weird, and they weren't things he told anyone else about. Hell, it had been years since he'd told his parents what he dreamt about when he had night terrors as a child, and now he was expected to record it all and share it with a professor?

Screw that.

T'Challa appeared to have the same level of enthusiasm for their assignment as Bucky—but Clint, on the other hand, looked like Christmas had just come early. He dug out his parchment with fervor and a grin that spanned most of his face. "Alright, guys," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's do this."

Bucky exchanged a cautious glance with T'Challa. This won't end well.

They spent most of class working on their journals, Heimdall stopping at each table to glance over their writing and either commend their efforts or prompt them gently to add more detail. More than once, he told the class not to be afraid of judgment as they recorded the facts of their dreams on the paper, and that even the most subjectively embarrassing minutiae could be objectively important. Bucky had a hard time believing that, but he tried as best he could to put together an account of his dreams last night sans some of the more specific information. (He'd been cold, alone in the dormitory, and there had been something moving in the shadows. He didn't say what it looked like or the words it said—that was between him and the lamppost.)

Clint's "dream" was, to put it bluntly, an absolute mess.

"'I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and in the valley below was a sea of puppies, but all the puppies had vampire teeth. When I tried to get a closer look, they all disappeared and I was in a Muggle ball pit instead, but as soon as I dove underneath it turned into water and I was drowning until one of the vampire puppies saved me. They took me back to their colony and I met their leader, who declared me to be a god. They worshipped me and made ritual blood sacrifices of cats to praise me. They tried to sacrifice Bucky's cat, Winter, but when I told them to stop, they said I was a false deity and burned me at the stake.'"

By the time he finished reading it aloud, Heimdall's voice was flat and his expression resigned as he just continued to stare down at the parchment. Bucky could feel his mouth hanging open and saw that T'Challa and a few other students looked the same as he was sure he did. Clint just waited with a smugly innocent smile on his face.

"You are quite the storyteller, Mr. Barton. I look forward to hearing more about your fascinating mind," Heimdall eventually informed him, setting the parchment down and moving on to T'Challa's without another word.

Fascinating. That's a really nice word for it.

At the end of the class, Heimdall instructed them to take their journals with them and log their dreams as soon as they woke up the following morning. "It is important to remember," he added as they were packing up their belongings, "that any number of factors can influence the dreams you have and what they mean. Before you sleep, make sure you limit the amount of sugar you eat—" (there was a collective groan at that) "—take some time to be by yourself, do something that you enjoy or that makes you feel at peace, and meditate for a few minutes. This will help you to clear your mind for the dreams to come naturally."

"Meditate?!" grumbled Clint on their way to Charms after he'd subjected them to a thorough rant about the no-sugar warning. "The hell do we need to meditate for?"

T'Challa shot him a sidelong glance and shrugged. "For most of us, it's to clear our minds. Yours seems fairly clear as it is, so I'm sure you can skip that part."

"Hey, Luke?"

"Yes?"

"Screw you."

It had been a few weeks since the incident with the Prophet and Bucky's fight with his mom, but he found himself opening Sarah's letter again anyway. Heimdall had said to do something that made them relax, so this was probably as good as it was going to get.

True to her word, his mom had made sure that nothing else was written about him (yet), and she'd apologized so many times in Fury's office that he had started to think those might be the only words she knew at the time. Somehow he'd managed to scrape by without getting in trouble for yelling at her and being disrespectful; he figured it had something to do with her realizing she hadn't exactly acknowledged just how earth shattering it all was to him outside her stupid campaign. And no, there wasn't a way to take the article back or fix the things it had set in motion (like Bucky's newfound insecurity regarding his grades, lack of confidence on the Quidditch pitch, and utter disinterest in going to Hogsmeade with the rest of his friends for fear of being hounded by someone with a camera), but he had to keep going. So did his mom and her campaign. She'd all but ignored the story, giving a passing statement when asked during a rally that it was nonsense, and they'd moved forward.

It hadn't been easy, but Sarah's letter had made it a little less hard.

My dearest Bucky,

I'm sure you can already guess why I'm writing and sending you a pretty ridiculous amount of sugar, so I won't bother talking about it here except to say it's the biggest bucket of steaming horseshit I've ever seen printed—and I've seen a LOT of garbage in my life. (Don't you repeat that, young man, and if you do, do NOT tell your parents where you heard it.) I'm not writing to badmouth an idiotic "journalist," though. Instead I figured it was about time I told you a story, one that Steve heard a long time ago.

When Steve's father was still alive, a long time before you both were born, he was given special orders by one of his superior officers. They were so special that he was never allowed to tell me what they were, and to this day I have no idea. But when they gave him these orders, he told them that he wouldn't obey them and that they went against everything he stood for as a soldier, an American, and a human being. They threatened him with a court martial and throwing him out of the army if he refused, but he still wouldn't do it.

They did what they said: they brought him up on charges of insubordination and disobeying direct orders of a superior officer (among other things). They dragged it out over months, finding new and entertaining ways to dishonor, shame, and humiliate him in front of everyone he knew and who respected him. They said he lied about the orders he was given and did everything they could to discredit him, even if it meant lying themselves. But he refused to give in. He told me it didn't matter what they said; he didn't care if everyone in the army decided that he should have done something WRONG, claiming it was something RIGHT. They pushed him and told him to move, but he stood strong and stared them in the face and told the whole damn army, "No, YOU move."

You want to know what happened? He won. He even got a promotion, all because he wouldn't be cowed by the fear and shame someone else wanted him to feel. It was both the hardest and proudest time of his life.

So I know it's difficult, Bucky. I know it can make you want to hide under a rock and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. But you just remember that the people who really matter and who love you more than anything know the truth, and there are so many of us out here supporting you. You've always been my baby boy in everything but blood, just as Steve is to your mom and dad, and I am so proud of the young man you're growing into. So you just remember: when you see someone telling lies or trying to make you feel ashamed and embarrassed, you stand up straight and tall. You hold yourself with pride and dignity even though it might be the hardest thing you've ever had to do. When they tell you to move, you plant yourself like a tree and tell them no, YOU move.

I love you so much, Bucky, and so do your parents. We'll all be here fighting for you.

Love always,

Sarah

P.S. – Yes, I'm well aware that this story probably has a lot to do with Steve's inability to keep himself out of trouble. I can't regret telling it, though.

P.P.S. – Don't even think about eating all those cookies at one time, James Buchanan Barnes, and don't you give me that innocent little face either.

Bucky smiled down at the letter, smoothing the slightly curling edges from where he'd repeatedly pulled it out and perused it. The cookies were long gone, and he'd eaten them in two sittings instead of one, thank you very much. This letter was what he'd been expecting from his mother, what he would have expected back before she was running for the most important office in Great Britain, but it hadn't come. Before they went home, he'd had a private moment with his dad where he said something similar, reminding him to keep his chin up and remember who he was instead of listening to what anyone else said he was.

His mom, though… In spite of her apologies, he wasn't really sure she'd fully grasped the fact that for Bucky, this had nothing to do with the election. He'd always been proud to be a Hufflepuff; he had friends, he learned a lot at school, and he had talent on a broom. There hadn't been a moment when he'd felt insecure about who he was since he came to Hogwarts, not until that article had placed him on a plinth and shredded him into pieces. All for the sake of bringing his mother's political aspirations down a few notches.

If being in politics meant tearing down other people, Bucky wanted no part of it.

He tried not to dwell on it, though. When he started feeling stressed or thinking that the two points Professor Hill had taken off his History of Magic paper for mixing up the names of two ancient battles was the end of the world, he pulled out Sarah's letter and tried to remember that she really believed what she said. And deep down, even though he was still angry with his mother, he knew she believed them too. Sometimes he just needed to step back for a second and remind himself that that was enough.

So Bucky took a deep breath and held it as he carefully slipped the letter back into its envelope and placed it in his wardrobe. He emptied his lungs as he got back on his bed, let Winter curl up in his lap, and closed his eyes. Heimdall had said to relax and meditate, and thinking about all that wasn't going to help. There wasn't much to meditation—breathe in, breathe out, good in, bad out, set your thoughts aside for another time—and in combination with Sarah's words he was able to calm himself enough to finally feel the stress of the day leech out. His shoulders drooped, losing the stiffness they'd adopted while he focused on classes, and his mind cleared out.

Pulling back his quilt, Bucky set Winter up on the pillow and slipped between his sheets, already warm from where he'd been sitting atop them. For the first time in a while, sleep came quickly as he was lulled by the rhythmic purring beside his ear.

The house was on fire, but the flames didn't touch him. He just walked calmly through the blaze, hunting for what he'd been looking for, but he couldn't see it anywhere. The fire was simultaneously too bright and casting shadows so dark that he couldn't see into them; they almost looked like voids, opening up to another dimension where nothing existed but the vacuum of space. He walked into the living room of their Brooklyn brownstone, tossing the magazines on the coffee table into the flames as he kept up the search, but what he was looking for wasn't there. He checked below the table, upended all the couch cushions, and even ducked beneath the television stand, but it wasn't there either. Frowning, he shook his head and wondered, both aloud and to himself, "Where the hell is it?"

He gave up the living room as a lost cause and slipped past the dining room table into the kitchen of their London townhouse. The flames were licking at the ceiling, and he sighed in disappointment—that would make it a pain to look in here. Still, he couldn't just stop so he pushed his way through the smoke and fire to peek into the cabinets. He pulled out the plates, glassware, silverware—he dumped it all in the middle of the floor where it shattered with a resounding crash, but none of it mattered if he couldn't find what he needed. It didn't appear to be in the kitchen, though, and he ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He'd had it not that long ago, so why couldn't he find it now?

One of the support beams collapsed into the living room as he ducked back through and made his way up the staircase to the second floor, glancing both ways down the hallway and trying to decide where the most likely place to look would be. The fire was thinner up here, but the smoke was dense and dark where it floated above the bodies lining the hallway on either side. They stared up at him as he walked past, their eyes following under their foreheads carved with Ws and Ms. The heat from below was cooking them slowly, and their skin melted to the floor in a stinking, grotesque mess. One of them reached out to grab at his ankle, but Bucky easily stepped right over and continued on his way.

The door to his room was standing open, but it was empty when he glanced inside. He peered into the closet; it was just another void of darkness, and that would take forever to search, so he'd save it for later.

Becca's room was similarly devoid of everything—furniture, toys, clothes. There was nothing to be found in there, so he made a quick stop in the hall bathroom to check the medicine cabinet before he retraced his steps and opened the door to his parents' room.

Bucky Bear was on the floor just inside the door, and he picked it up gingerly, brushing the soot and ash off its discolored fur. The little blue and red outfit it was wearing was in tatters, but the bear itself was still intact as he clutched it close and looked around. Unlike his and Becca's rooms, all his parents' belongings were still here, and he gave the scene a cursory glance before he began to hunt in earnest. The nightstands were empty, and the quilt on the bed had been burned to the point that it was reduced to merely rags falling sideways onto the floor. The clothes in the closet were similarly destroyed, and his mother's makeup table was a mess of melted color.

He was just about to give up when he spotted it: a black chest on the other side of the room right underneath the window. It was the only thing that wasn't on fire or falling to pieces, so he knew that it held what he'd been looking for—finally.

That's why it was no surprise to find that it was locked when he tried to lift the handle. He endeavored to wedge his fingers between the lid and the box itself, but after a few tries, he drew back his hands to see them bleeding copiously with his fingernails dangling off. Rolling his eyes, he set Bucky Bear down on the lid and glanced around the room to see if there was something he could use to pry the top open. On his father's desk was a razor-sharp letter opener with a jewel encrusted handle—that would do the trick.

The letter opener was suddenly in his hand, and he turned back around to cram it into the locking mechanism when something hard and unyielding tightened around his midsection and yanked.

He went sliding across the floor on his stomach, clawing at the ground as he tried to get back and finish—he was so close, it was just right there! It was no use, though; whatever had hold of him tightened, making it difficult to breathe, and he felt like it grabbed onto his ankles and around his neck as well. He tried to call out, but it was like there was a bubble over his mouth, and it made him choke on the air around him like it had turned to liquid entering his lungs. The letter opener lay abandoned, and Bucky Bear just watched with his sad button eyes as Bucky was dragged out of the room and the chest exploded into fire and ash.

Bucky woke with a shout, and there was a loud thump before pain erupted in his hip and shoulder. He couldn't seem to get his breathing under control as his eyes darted feverishly around the room, unable to take in his surroundings or notice anything aside from dark. There were other sounds, then something wet on his fingers. That didn't make sense—what could possibly still be wet when there was fire everywhere?

It took a moment before he realized that there wasn't. The fire he'd seen in his head had just been part of the dream; he was in his dormitory, hyperventilating on the floor where he'd fallen out of bed, and Winter was licking at his fingers in an attempt to get him to stop trembling. If she was irritated to be woken up in the middle of the night, she gave no indication.

Her big eyes eventually looked up at him, saw he was more aware of his surroundings, and immediately moved closer as she sank her claws into the front of his pajamas and climbed up his chest. He didn't even think about it, mechanically wrapping an arm around her while she nuzzled at his face and let him get his bearings.

"You okay, man?"

Bucky nearly jumped out of his skin a moment before he realized it was just Sam, who was halfway sitting up in bed and peering blearily in his general direction, obviously not fully awake yet.

Swallowing hard, Bucky nodded jerkily and managed to get his voice working enough to whisper, "Yeah. Dreaming. Sorry."

Sam grunted in what Bucky took as forgiveness and face-planted back into his pillow.

It was a dream, he repeated to himself shakily, eyes still darting this way and that until they acclimated enough to see through the darkness. It was just a stupid dream.

So then why did he feel so empty?

They didn't have Divination on Fridays, but Bucky found himself standing outside Professor Heimdall's classroom regardless. Classes had long since let out for the day, so the corridors were empty as most students had already gone down to dinner; Bucky had been distraught since he'd woken up from that crazy dream, however, and thought Heimdall might be the only person who could help.

That didn't mean he wasn't reluctant. Nothing had changed since the previous day: he hated talking about his dreams. Sometimes they were pretty normal—playing Quidditch, hanging out with his friends, pulling Steve out of fights—but other times they were just plain bizarre. They even put Clint's puppy-god kitten massacre to shame, and that was saying something.

The nightmare he'd had the night before, however, was the worst in a while and far surpassed any other dream—good or bad—that he could remember. Not only that, but it was different in other ways. Usually he knew he was in a dream, even if he couldn't control it or do a damn thing to wake himself up. Contrarily, this one had felt like reality, even though it didn't make any sense. And unlike normal nightmares where he could distract himself for a few hours and feel relatively normal again, this one had wound around his throat like the unseen force in the dream and refused to let go.

Steve had asked what was wrong countless times throughout the day, but he just couldn't find the words to say anything. Not for lack of trying, either. So here he was, standing outside the Divination classroom wondering what the hell was wrong with him and if it was even worth it to discuss.

"Can I help you, Mr. Barnes?"

Starting, Bucky whipped around to see Heimdall standing behind him in the corridor, watching with the same distant yet curious eyes as always. The man could cut an intimidating figure (unless you were Clint Barton, who seemed immune to sense), but Bucky had never been as unsettled by him as he was by Fury, even when he got that thousand-yard stare during class. Bucky wasn't sure if he was seeing into the future, faking them out, or just trying to decide what to have for dinner, but it could be a little creepy at times.

"Um," Bucky began, lacking all articulate thought as he tried to figure out how to say I had a bad dream and think I might be losing my mind, any advice? without sounding like a freak or a baby.

Seeming to sense his discomfort, Heimdall held out an arm and gestured toward the classroom. "Why don't we talk inside? It might be more comfortable than standing out here."

"Yes, sir."

He followed Heimdall past the rows of tables and through the door into his office. Contrary to popular belief, it looked surprisingly ordinary for someone who made a living teaching one of the most abstract forms of magic (not to mention one that hardly anyone believed in anymore). There were a few details that stood out, but they appeared to be just personal preference rather than based on any mumbo jumbo. The room was shaped like a dome with carvings in the gold-painted walls; they looked almost like gears in Muggle contraptions if Bucky had to compare them to anything. There was a dais in the center of the room where his desk was situated, facing out the window onto the grounds below. A spiral staircase stood to the side, which Bucky knew led up to a second entrance to the Astronomy Tower, but everything else was surprisingly open. Most of the bits and bobs Heimdall required them to use were stored in the classroom itself or in the Astronomy Tower, so there wasn't much need to pack his office with magical gadgets from the looks of things.

Heimdall strode calmly up to his desk and sat down, waving to the black leather chair opposite him. "Have a seat and tell me what's troubling you."

Bucky obeyed immediately but frowned as he tensely inquired, "What makes you think something's troubling me?" I swear, if he can read minds, I'm outta here.

"As your Divination professor, I should probably tell you that I gazed into my crystal ball this morning and knew that something upsetting would happen to drive you to come speak with me outside of normal class time," Heimdall offered sagely before his lips quirked to the side. "But that would be a lie. It's a Friday night and instead of being with your friends, you've come here. You were standing outside the classroom as though the gods might descend and smite you down if you set a foot inside, and you are defensive about having come here to ask, I assume, for my advice."

When Bucky just blinked and gaped at him like a fish, Heimdall shrugged in an incongruously informal gesture and finished, "I have taught you for three years, James. I know when there is something wrong."

Okay, that makes sense.

Clearing his throat, Bucky nodded and muttered, "Right," still not quite sure how to say it without sounding like a total baby. Starting from the beginning was probably the best, he figured, so after a minute he stammered, "Y-you know the…that journal we're doing in…for Divination?"

"The dream journal," Heimdall confirmed with a nod.

"Yeah. Well, I uh… I did what you said… The whole no sugar, meditating thing… And… I…"

The professor let him struggle to find the words for a bit longer before taking pity on him and prompting, "You dreamt something that disturbed you?"

Well, that's one way to put it. "Yeah. It was…really bad."

Heimdall nodded, surveying him in that way that made Bucky feel like he was looking right into his very soul, but the professor didn't speak again. Bucky wasn't sure if he was waiting for him to explain or just to collect himself (there was no denying that he felt like a complete wreck between the nightmare itself and the prospect of talking about it), though Bucky honestly had no idea how he was going to accomplish the former when he had enough trouble admitting that there was a problem to begin with.

The matter was taken out of his hands after another long minute of ineffectual stuttering, however. "Did you write about it in your journal?"

"Y-yes, sir," he managed to mutter. In an attempt to free his mind from the burden of the nightmare, he'd been excessively honest in listing every detail.

"May I see?"

Nodding in silence, Bucky dragged his schoolbag into his lap and dug around until he found the right length of parchment. He usually didn't carry anything he didn't need for classes that day, but the thought wouldn't leave him alone until he packed it inside.

Heimdall reached out a hand and took the journal from him, laying it out on his desk and leaving Bucky in silence as he read over the document. Although he was saved the trouble of having to verbalize his thoughts, Bucky was still vibrating out of his skin with nerves and bounced his foot up and down as he tried not to watch Heimdall's face for a reaction. It was increasingly difficult the further he read and the longer he remained silent, however, Bucky's mind swimming with the worst possible outcomes. Would he think Bucky was insane? Would he think he had made it up like Clint did? Would he say it was nothing and that he shouldn't worry? The last possibility was what Bucky had been hoping for when he came here, even if it was just a vague idea and not a solid thought at the time, but the notion of his nightmare being dismissed as nothing more than a fantasy was beginning to make him just as uncomfortable as anything else.

He was starting to wonder if he would have been better off taking Ancient Runes or Arithmancy or something normal instead of Divination if it was making him this paranoid.

It took a while for Heimdall to finish reading; by the time he raised his head, Bucky thought he might be going out of his mind. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long for Heimdall to speak.

Not so thankfully, it wasn't to offer answers.

"Have you had dreams like this before?"

Bucky shook his head. "No, sir."

"How did you feel when you woke?" The calm tenor of Heimdall's voice soothed Bucky's nerves a bit, and he was at least able to collect himself enough to speak succinctly this time, if a bit slower to hunt for the right words in his head.

"I was… I mean, I wasn't scared, not really? It was more like…I couldn't feel anything. Like there was a hole in my chest and nothing would fill it up?"

Heimdall inclined his head slightly, observing him with tranquil, nonjudgmental eyes. "Did that sensation go away or are you still feeling it now?"

"A little," Bucky murmured hesitantly, his face pinching up. "It was different after I woke up all the way. I, like…um… I didn't feel empty, but I still wasn't all there? Like I went to class and stuff, but it didn't really feel real."

"Not like the dream did."

"No."

Humming in acknowledgement, Heimdall was quiet for a minute or two. He glanced back at Bucky's journal, eyes skimming over the words once more. A small crease appeared between his eyebrows, the first show of emotion Bucky had seen from him since he finished reading the first time.

"I'm going to ask you a question, which you do not need to answer if you do not feel comfortable doing so," the professor finally told him, and Bucky swallowed hard in anxious anticipation. "Have you lost anything or anyone recently, James?"

Whatever Bucky was expecting, it certainly wasn't that. Frowning, he shook his head. "Not that I know of."

Heimdall nodded, thought for a moment, and asked, "Do you feel like you've lost something recently?"

Bucky opened his mouth to deny it again, to say that nothing had changed, but he was struck dumb when he realized that wasn't strictly true. Ever since he'd seen his parents in Fury's office, there had been something missing. Thinking back even further, he could probably say that it was absent earlier than that as well, that it hadn't been there since before he'd gone on summer vacation. He'd always had it, it had always been there, and now it was just as far removed from him as that chest in his parents' nightmare bedroom.

He'd lost his mom. It sounded silly even inside his own head, but that didn't mean it felt any less true. His mother had always been there for him growing up, a fierce defender of her family as well as the Wizarding world for years. In the last year, though, that changed so gradually that he hadn't even realized it was gone until that moment. He hadn't thought of the fact that his mom and dad were barely ever in the same room together anymore unless it was for publicity or to go to bed. He hadn't noticed that most of the quality time he'd had with his family that summer was with his dad and Becca. He hadn't counted all the times that he came home from school on holiday to find that his mother was at the Ministry in meetings from dawn to midnight for days on end. He hadn't appreciated that the woman who talked to him when he was clearly sad, baked cookies for no reason, and held him when it felt like he might break apart as he grew up wasn't there anymore.

His mother wasn't dead, but he felt like he'd lost her all the same.

"Yeah," he finally whispered, his eyes misty. "I guess I do."

Heimdall nodded, pushing his journal back across the desk towards him. "Then what do you think this dream is telling you?"

It took a minute to blink back the wetness in his eyes, so Bucky used the time to consider the question thoroughly before he speculated, "That the thing I lost is still there, I just… It's gonna be hard to get to?"

"Perhaps." When Bucky raised a bemused eyebrow, Heimdall clarified, "Dreams can mean many different things, James. As I'm sure your friend Mr. Barton would agree, Divination isn't an exact science. If that is what your dream means to you, then that is what you must believe."

It made sense, even if it was a really feeble answer, but something else occurred to Bucky as he glanced back over his writing and came to the very last thing he wrote. "But… The box exploded at the end…"

"Yes," agreed his professor gravely, "it did."

"So is this a vision?" he practically demanded, feeling himself growing more frantic as his mind began to race. "Does that mean it's gonna…it'll be gone?"

Heimdall paused, the first sign of reticence that he had shown throughout the whole conversation. Bucky thought maybe he was trying to think of a way to tell him gently, kindly, but he didn't want platitudes and comfort. He just wanted the truth.

"That could be one answer."

Copout.

"However," Heimdall continued when he saw the look on Bucky's face, "do you remember what it said in your textbook about destruction occurring in a vision or premonition?"

For once, Bucky was indescribably glad he did the reading. "New beginnings?"

"Precisely. Perhaps it means whatever it is will be lost to you, or…"

"Or maybe it'll come back and just be different from before," conjectured Bucky, feeling the knot in his stomach ease under the proud expression Heimdall wore.

The conversation didn't last much longer after that, and by the time Bucky was on his way downstairs to grab dinner his mind was awhirl with everything they'd spoken of. He hated that Divination didn't have a specific answer; he hated that dreams were so fickle and impossible to translate with complete certainty. Their discussion did make him feel better, though, and the emptiness in his chest began to fill in as he saw his friends waiting for him at the Slytherin table tonight. They didn't ask where he'd been, having known that he was acting strangely all day, although Steve shot him a questioning look when he was settled in. Bucky smiled back—he was okay.

He was even more okay when he got back to his dormitory that night and, shoving aside his recent anger and disappointment, wrote his first letter to his mother since the article incident. Admittedly, it wasn't much of a letter seeing as it only contained one sentence:

I love you, Mom.