A sense of urgency filled him to his very core for some reason Harry was unable to place. The heavy door was in front of him. He was all but nose to nose with it. Close enough to reach out and touch it. The door led to the spiral staircase down from the Astronomy tower. The spiral staircase that he needed to descend. Needed to descend and find help. Find help for…for…for something! Something urgent. It didn't matter that he couldn't remember why or for who.
Snape. Find Snape. He hated the man but needed potions. Harry reached out quickly, the silvered fabric of his Invisibility Cloak flowing like water over the skin of his arm, and wrapped his thin fingers around the cold metal door knob.
Voices. Loud and harsh, accompanied by heavy footsteps rushing up the stairs outside. People were coming. Dangerous people.
Wait…how did he know that they were dangerous? Why was he up on top of the Astronomy Tower to begin with?
Before either of these questions could ruminate, let alone be answered, his body went rigid as a board and he fell back against the nearest wall just as the door burst open and Draco Malfoy spilled across the threshold closely followed by his mad Aunt, Fenrir Greyback and the other Death Eaters who had been there that night.
That night. Damn it! Why was he reliving that night again, just when he'd thought his usual plague of nightmares-if not ever gone-had at least moved on to something more…varied. All of the details of the events of the Battle of the Lightning Struck Tower rushed back to him all at once. Returning from the cave and ending up in Hogsmead. Flying back to the castle on Rosmerta's brooms in hopes of thwarting an attack in progress. Draco showing up. Dumbledore sacrificing the chance to defend himself in order to instead prevent Harry from intervening by putting him under a Full Body Bind Curse. And then him saying "Malfoy."
Those weren't the right words. That wasn't Dumbledore's voice. Wasn't the aged grandfatherly tone that he was used to hearing from the elderly wizard but rather a familiar dark baritone, its normal slight purring quality replaced by a tremor induced by the horrible potion from that awful cave.
'No.'
It wasn't the Headmaster that was up on top of the tower with him. He knew, without having to look, who it was. Would know him anywhere just by that voice alone. Didn't want to look. Didn't want to see. But his eyes were drawn to his companion anyway.
Tom looked unnaturally pale beneath the effect of the Draught of Despair and the greenish glow of the Dark Mark hanging in the sky overhead. Slightly bent at the waist and propped up against the ramparts of the tower. Wandless. Weak. Alone, against the Death Eaters, with Harry frozen as he was. He turned his head slightly-the motion carefully made so that their attackers wouldn't catch it and realize that he was there-and met his eyes. Wide, terrified emerald meeting with resigned and apologetic lapis blue. A gaze which communicated a clear, heart-rending message.
'I love you.'
'No! No, please, no! No! I've already lost enough! Not him! Not him too!' Harry wanted desperately to somehow free himself. To draw his wand. Attack the Death Eaters. Run to Tom. Protect him. But the spell was too strong. Or he was too weak. He was trapped.
Forced to watch the other man become consumed in a flash of emerald light and vanish over the rampart's edge.
"No!" Harry sat bolt upright with a scream which was surely loud enough to disturb the sleep of every man woman and child in London-Muggle and Magical alike-and threw himself blindly onto the opposite side of the bed. Rolling with absolute abandon onto his front-had the dark brunet still been there he would have ended up on top of him-and curling around the pillow he'd been sleeping on without giving his mind much chance to process the fact that Tom wasn't there. Breathing in desperate lungfulls of the other man's scent left behind on the must and mothball scented pillow as he burrowed deep into the slowly cooling sheets where the dark brunet had been laying when Harry had fallen asleep.
Alive. Alive. Alive. He was alive. Tom was fine. It was just a dream. Only a nightmare. Just a nightmare.
For now.
No! No, stop it! Don't you dare think about that! The thought was vicious and acerbic. Fingers contorting tightly in the old fabric. Tom is going to survive. You're going to survive. You're both going to survive!
Harry himself didn't fully believe it, he was lying to himself and was well aware of the fact, yet it served its purpose to repeat it over and over again in his head. Coupled with the fading warm and the faint scent of Tom it calmed him down.
The raven fell back into a fitful sort of half-sleep for another few hours. Waking again when the sun had begun to stain the sky outside the dusty windows of number twelve a pale grey. Blessedly there had been no further nightmares during this time.
Tom still isn't back. Harry thought almost numbly, pushing himself up into a sitting position and blinking sleep from his still-heavy eyes. I wonder where he's gotten off to. And Ron and Hermione. Are they up yet?
He supposed that he may as well get up and go looking; number twelve wasn't a particularly large house-though he supposed it was still easy enough to get lost in-and he was sure to run into one of them eventually. The little raven dragged himself up off the bed, put his glasses on, made a half-hearted and certainly futile effort to tame his hair and then exited the bedroom. Setting out into the halls. Looking for Tom. For Nagini. For Hermione or Ron.
The first floor was empty so Harry moved to the second. Ascending the stairs by the pale glow of his wand. Stopping only a few steps passed the top of the stairs to peer through the open doorway of the room in which he'd stayed the last time that they were in the house. It had been relatively neat back then-at least so far as anything inhabited by two teenaged boys for any period of time could have been-but now the wardrobe stood open and the bedclothes were ripped back with what almost amounted to violence.
He was really starting to believe that the toppled troll's leg umbrella stand was not the result of the Order's evacuation of the house. But if not the members of the Order of the Phoenix then who?
Had Snape been there before them after all? Had he made it passed the protections, then left after finding what he was looking for, or after failing to? Or had it been the thief, Mundungus, who had raided the house on more than one occasion both before and after his Godfather had died? He supposed that it was better not to think about that now. For the time being at least, it didn't matter.
Almost of their own accord his eyes found the portrait of Sirius' great-great-grandfather; nothing but a mud brown back drop ensconced in a gilded frame. The occupant was no doubt spending the night in the Headmaster's study at Hogwarts. All the better. Had he seen him, the bloody Git would all but certainly have reported it to Snape.
He exited the bedroom and closed the door before continuing to the top floor. There was nothing here but for two doors; heavy, wooden, as darkly painted as the rest in the old house and adorned with nameplates of tarnished silver.
The nearest one denoted the owner of the room beyond as SIRIUS. He'd stumbled on his Godfather's bedroom. Without even so much as a thought to the fact that he might be invading the privacy of the dead he pushed open the door and rushed inside, wand held high overhead to shed as much light across the room beyond as possible.
A large bed and curved headboard. A tall window observed by dusty curtains of heavy velvet. A tarnished chandelier frosted with solid wax from the melted candle stubs still seated in their holders. It was a spacious room and had probably once been handsome but had since fallen into disrepair along with the rest of the house; a long strand of gossamer webbing stretched from one arm of the chandelier to the top of the wooden wardrobe and a loud scurrying of disturbed mice scattered away from him as he entered.
Very little of the grey-silver silk walls were visible beneath the posters which plastered them, no doubt kept in place by Permanent Sticking Charms else Sirius' parents would have all but surely removed them. Several faded Gryffindor banners hung amidst pictures of Muggle motorcycles and large posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls. The only Wizarding photograph in the room was of four students standing arm in arm as they laughed at the camera.
Stepping closer and with a swooping feeling of mixed happiness and sadness, Harry realized that the students in the picture were the Marauders. His father with the same untidy black hair which stuck up in the back and round glasses. Sirius, handsome without having to try and slightly arrogant face far younger and happier than he had ever seen it alive. Remus, even then a little shabby looking but with the stress-induced wrinkles and premature grey hair still a long time coming.
Pettigrew.
Hissing mutinously under his breath Harry turned abruptly on his heel, no longer wanting to look at the photograph. At his father and his two real friends arm in arm with the man who was equally as responsible for destroying their lives as Voldemort was. How had they ever trusted him? How couldn't they have seen the truth? Was it not obvious enough when his Animagus was a rat.
Needing something to distract himself with and in utter desperation Harry cast his eyes to the floor: the sunlight had strengthened since he'd left the room where he and Tom had slept and now revealed that the wood paneling of the room was scattered with mangled books, papers and small objects. Sirius' bedroom had been searched as well, though by the look of things whoever had done so ultimately determined its contents to be worthless.
He bent down and began to pick up the scattering of papers and book pages. Turning them over or upright in his hands. Examining them. A couple were part of an older copy of A History of Magic, another few originated from an instruction manual on motorcycle care. The third was obviously handwritten and crumpled into a ball; he unfolded it and smoothed it out only to receive a considerable shock.
It was a letter. A letter to Sirius from his mother. She'd written to him thanking him for the toy broomstick which he'd given Harry for his first birthday. About how, suspiciously, Dumbledore still had his Father's Invisibility Cloak. About how Wormtail, the bastard, had seemed 'down' when he had visited likely because he'd known it was the last time he'd be seeing either of his parents alive. About how Bathilda Bagshot had visited often. Had doted on him. Had told stories about Dumbledore which were, apparently, 'incredible'.
She formed her g's like he did; such an inconsequential fact, yet more than enough to warm his heart. But he couldn't fully focus on the pleasant feeling that it engendered because the letter was incomplete. What was it about Dumbledore that his mother had found so 'incredible'? Was it something that Harry already knew about? Was it something that he didn't? The need to know was like a furious itch in the back of his mind.
The rest of the letter had to be around there somewhere.
He dove headlong into the remaining scattered papers. All but slithering through the mess on his front in a desperate search, treating what fell into his hands with the same lack of care that the person responsible for making the mess in the first place. Tossing documents about by the fistful. Falling into drawers. Crawling under the bed. Raiding the wardrobe.
Nothing.
It was only after he'd collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, lying face first on the ground, that he caught sight of something he hadn't noticed before in his rush. Something small, ripped and made of paper. Harry reached out and turned it over.
Not the remaining portion of the letter which his mother had written to his Godfather but the bottom half of the picture she had mentioned sending with it. Himself as a baby zooming around on a little toy broomsticks with a pair of legs-his father's?-chased him, making sure he didn't hurt himself, the cat that they'd had, or break anything else in the house like he had done to the apparently ugly vase Petunia had sent them for Christmas.
It wasn't what he had wanted to find but it was still a precious treasure. Harry slid the ripped photograph in between the folds of the old letter and slipped it into his pocket before resuming his search. After another quarter of an hour had passed he was forced to accept the fact that whatever remained of what could quite possibly be the last letter that his mother had ever written was gone.
Before he could give too much thought to the fact that he'd never know the full contents of the last letter to his Godfather a pair of familiar arms wound around his waist and pulled him back against a warm, hard chest.
"What are you doing all the way up here, Precious?" Tom asked him softly, nuzzling into his black hair. "I thought for sure that you would still be asleep, after all it's only five in the morning, so when I went back to our room and found you gone I was worried. What woke you up?"
"Bad dream." Harry turned in the other's arms and buried his face in his shirt; neither of them wanted to attempt to get anything out of Hermione's enchanted bag while she was still asleep for fear of disturbing whatever organization she'd set up inside it so both were left in the same badly rumpled clothing from the night before. "I couldn't really get back to sleep afterwards so I went looking for you."
"A nightmare? Or another vision regarding my counterparts' activities?"
"A nightmare."
"Would you like to talk about it?" The softness in the other's blue eyes reminded him sickeningly of the contents of the dream which had disturbed his sleep. His heart twisted in his chest.
"No." Harry told him, perhaps a bit too quickly. Tom raised an eyebrow and squeezed him gently but didn't comment on the matter. The raven twisted his fingers loosely in the fabric as the dark brunet rubbed gentle circles into the skin above his hipbones with his thumbs. "Where were you? When I woke up you were gone."
"I couldn't sleep." Tom admitted to him with a small sigh. "I spent most of the night just lying next to you, watching you sleep, but I got restless after a while and went to mess around with the piano in the drawing room; ended up losing track of time while fixing it I suppose." Gently prying one of Harry's hands free of his shirt he enclosed it delicately in one of his own much larger ones. "Come on, love. I'll play something for you. It might help you calm down.
Harry nodded, not resisting as Tom pulled him out of Sirius' bedroom and into the hallway. But as they moved towards the stairs he caught sight of the plaque which hung on the other door and stopped short.
DO NOT ENTER
WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION
OF
REGULUS ARCTURUS BLACK
"Harry?" the dark brunet questioned, confused at his sudden stop. "Precious, what's wrong?"
"Regulus Arcturus Black."
"Regulus…?" Tom repeated, looking from the plaque on the door to Harry and back again before his eyes widened in understanding. "R.A.B!"
