After several glasses of water and some brief conversation about the weekend, Harry and I fell asleep in each others' arms. This time, our dream invited us somewhere I didn't recognize. The darkness of night spread across a neighborhood street as I stood facing an unfamiliar house. I glanced to my left, to see Harry. Suddenly reminded this was a dream, my unease relaxed. However, his face reflected a panic that infected me.

"Oh… Oh no."

"What? Where are we?"

He swallowed before turning his eyes to me.

"This isn't good. My subconscious is beginning to… Infiltrate."

"Infiltrate how? Aren't you the one Legillimensing me?"

"Of course, you couldn't Legillimens me if your life depended on it. I have no idea why this is happening, only that it is."

"Okay… So where are we?" I struggled to resist his panic, reminding myself fervently that this is a dream.

"My house."

Confusion drew my brow together as I turned back to the house in question. Once the realization sunk in, my brow relaxed.

Oh… Not his aunt and uncle's house… His house…

"This… Might be very bad." I looked back to see a fearful, yet apologetic, expression on his face. "I'm sorry."

Instinctively, I took his hand.

"It's only a dream," I asserted. A resolute expression appeared on his face as he gripped my hand.

"Right." We both looked back at the house bathed in moonlight. "M-maybe we should… Just walk away, though, right? There's nothing compelling us to go in."

"There's not, but… Don't you want to?"

I was very curious to see his childhood home, but he seemed to wrestle with himself a moment.

"This… Is where my parents died. What if their corpses are in there?" I saw him swallow and blanch.

"What if they're not? What if your subconscious stored happy memories of this place and wants to show them to you?"

Harry cast a skeptical glance at me before returning a more terrified expression back at the house. His mouth opened and closed thrice before I remembered, His Patronus memory is his parents talking to him. That memory is from this house.

"Let's go," I decided as I started toward the garden gate, tugging him along with me.

"Wait, Draco…"

"If it's bad, I'm here with you. Doesn't that make a difference?"

I didn't stop or look back at him as I led him through the gate, up the walkway to the front door.

"I… I dunno if I can…"

Ignoring Harry's second-guessing, I turned the knob and the door swung open. The interior was dark, but as I stepped across the threshold, all the lights illuminated. I turned back confidently to Harry's cautious eyes.

"See? It's fine," I lied. I have no idea what could be waiting here, but it's at least worth discovering.

"Draco…" Harry began, but still he allowed me to pull him into the house. "This is a bad idea."

I rolled my eyes.

"If you keep saying that, you'll jinx it. Just… Come on!"

Insistently, I pulled him into the living room, when his hand dropped from mine. All seemed normal for a living space as I explored the room, but when I looked back to Harry, his expression was a frozen shock. I saw his eye twitch, and suddenly a woman holding a toddler waltzed in from a different direction.

"You'll have to cut the noodles short so he doesn't choke," she said.

"I know, Lily!" Came a distant reply. My eyes searched for the source of this answer, and found an open door that seemed to lead into a kitchen.

The woman came to sit on the couch, bouncing the child in her arms. Tenderness gripped my heart at baby Harry's face.

"No noodle will suffocate my son, will it?" She asked the child, who giggled back at her. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, and as she did, the scene flickered. Harry falling to his knees in the doorway caught my attention, and I rushed back to his side.

"Harry?"

He'd begun hyperventilating, and I briefly wondered if this was affecting him in the real world.

Just then, a man strolled into the room, bearing a dish of spaghetti with mittens.

"Careful! It's hot," he cautioned as he set it down on the table before the couch. He removed his mittens before swiping a hand across his brow and returning toward the kitchen.

Harry's mother continued cooing at, and kissing the child in her arms. The warmth of this family dynamic struck my heart with envy, but I was distracted with the continuing scene. The woman had lifted the child above her, gazing up at him lovingly.

"Who's my big, strong boy?" She lowered him to nuzzle his face, resulting in another giggle from the child. "You! You are, Harry!"

A cry of anguish brought my eyes back to real-Harry, and the whole house suddenly went dark. He was clutching his chest as he leaned over his knees.

"Bad idea," he reiterated as a sob caught in his throat. My gaze was brought up behind him as a hooded figure ascended the staircase. If his mother and father couldn't see us, certainly He can't, right?

Silently, I watched the figure disappear upstairs.

"Harry," I whispered. "We were in the middle of such a pleasant memory, why bring this night up now?"

He started to answer, but was swiftly cut off by a sudden shout from upstairs, and the sound of a body falling to the floor. We both winced, but Harry's hands raised to grip either side of his head. Silently, I held him against me as more footsteps could be heard above us. His erratic breathing worried me, so I stroked up and down his back.

"Shh, it's just a dream," I reminded him.

Just as I'd finished my sentence, a blood-curdling scream tore through the silence of the house, followed by another final thud. My arms tightened around Harry. That was when his trembling began.

During the silence that followed, Harry suddenly ripped himself from my arms and sprinted upstairs.

"Harry-!" I called after him, but my legs carried myself much more slowly after him.

"Fuck you, you piece of shit!" His voice paused my ascent as a flash of green light emitted from the right-most room. The sound of fist against flesh reached my ears as my legs started working again, and I rushed up to the scene.

Harry stood, panting, over the crumpled, hooded figure on the floor. The child behind him in the crib began weeping incessantly as he, too, crumpled to the floor, holding his weeping face in his hands.

I stood motionless for far too long before finally, I stepped around the body on the floor to drop to my knees beside Harry, pulling him into my arms.

"Fuck him… Fuck him…" He uttered repeatedly into my chest. I clutched his trembling form into my arms as he wept. A new facet of him had opened up to me, and I embraced it totally. The frantic wailing of the child behind him eventually faded, and we were left in a dark, empty house.

"I-I'm… So sorry…" He gasped, but I understood that these words were not for me. I merely held him as his sobs wracked his body.

"Harry, it's not your fault," I promised quietly.