Chapter Twelve

To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine,

Harry dreamed again that night.

He found that he was actually beginning to get quite used to the feeling of dreaming inside someone else's experience. What with the dreams of his mother's and Severus' past, along with the futures that might be awaiting them, it would have been hard not to. He rather thought that his growing familiarity with the feeling might be a bad sign, but he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter.

As he slipped into the dream, the surroundings gradually beginning to come into focus, he felt a decided sinking sensation. As he shivered in recognition, his body instinctively snuggled deeper under the covers, clutching an armful of them almost desperately closer to his chest as if they could protect him from the relentlessly advancing images.

He knew this room. He'd dreamt of it the night before, in almost excruciating detail. He recognised the people present too, and even before he saw them, he knew that they would be identically cloaked and masked, with the exception of the one seated just outside the circle. With something close to horror setting down roots in his heart, he realised that he already knew what he was going to have to see tonight.

He didn't want to see it again, he thought, willing himself to give himself a hard pinch on his left arm, without care for bruises. The action had no effect on his dream body. Forget again, he decided, he didn't want to see it now. Or ever, if it came down to that. He wasn't ready to deal with it yet. He needed a little time, some space.

Wasn't his life complicated enough already? Couldn't the bond give him just a little while to start to cope with all the other things he had on his plate before he had to face all of this again?

Apparently it couldn't. Despite his most desperate efforts, he failed to wake himself up. Eventually he simply had to give in and settle into the dream as best he could, accepting that it was going to show him what it wanted whether he liked it or not.

Unlike last night, it turned out that on this occasion he wasn't merely an outside observer, standing in a corner and simply watching the events as they played out before him, like some kind of horrific movie. This time he was riding inside Severus' head, seeing through his eyes, privy to his thoughts and feelings. He felt guilty, as if he was invading the man's privacy even though this had not been his choice. He knew Severus would hate it if he ever found out that this had happened.

Without having to think about it, Harry was aware of Severus's apprehension and worry, his speculations about what he would have to do this time. He felt, too, the other's immense gratitude that the cessation of his friendship with Harry had not destroyed their shields again, that his bond-mate would not ever come to know what he did here. Harry sighed mentally. Just what he needed – something to make talking about this even more difficult.

As if cued by Harry's reluctant capitulation to the demands of the dream, the events began to play out in earnest. It began with the arrival of Lucius Malfoy, the ill-fated Muggle captive. And, of course, the man Severus identified to himself and consequently to Harry as Thane.

Thane, the man who had tortured Severus later that night. Harry prayed he wouldn't have to see – feel? – that too, but had the sickening suspicion that he would. It wasn't as if it was ever made easy on him, after all.

He felt the sense of foreboding grow exponentially as Severus blocked out Voldemort's speech by contemplating the uses the woman might be put to, growing discouraged by the horrors that he came up with. Harry noticed that Ruin had no place on that list, terrible as it was.

Severus had not thought that even Voldemort would want to use that particular potion. Unlike the Unforgivable Curses, it had no real use apart from the sheer terror produced. Until then, Severus had thought that Voldemort was a practical man, if only because it was the best way to achieve his aims. Simply engineering terror rarely led to power.

Harry was completely submerged in the dream now, but still, thankfully, aware of its being one. He knew that it would all end terribly, but found that he couldn't remember the outcome when he tried.

When Voldemort's instruction was finally given, Harry felt, as if it was his own, the intense loathing Severus felt for the mere idea. He saw the desperate ideas and half-made plans that the man formulated and discarded in rapid succession during his too-short walk to the bench that had been set up in anticipation of the potion's needs.

Harry had thought that what he remembered as the relatively lengthy preparation process would provide him with some time to ready himself for what was to follow. However, it didn't turn out that way. Nothing tonight was turning out as he hoped.

Instead, the preparation seemed almost to be skimmed over. This dream had some purpose, and whatever awareness was guiding it wasn't going to run the risk of having him wake up before it had been completed. It knew what it wanted, and was going to have it. Harry felt he should have been frightened by that realisation of the sentience of the bond, but he was too busy worrying about what might come next in the dream to bother with that.

Harry's sleeping body shuddered in an expression of Severus' revulsion towards the actions he knew he would have to take, his disgust at what he would have to do to the Muggle woman if he was to allow himself any chance at all of surviving the next few hours. He experienced the man's terror as he contemplated just what he would have to do to save his conscience, and the pain he felt as he lied to her by implication.

It made an odd contrast to the way he had almost derided Harry for not wanting to lie, had seemed to do it quite easily in fact, earlier that day. It was strange that someone Harry now realised was inherently honest could lie so well – could indeed put his life on the line, trusting to his ability to lie about his whole life to protect him.

Harry watched the clinical, analytical part of his bond-mate's mind, constantly contemplating the next action that had to be made. That part saw it all as a problem to be solved, just like the potion. Harry experienced all of it as if the feelings were his own, and was torn between horror, reluctant admiration and sheer disgust.

Together, they felt the strange thrill of pride and power that surged through them as they held the Cruciatus on the woman, mingled with what Harry felt was a truly bizarre tenderness towards her, their prey. They experienced the disgust, the physical nausea that accompanied it, but whether it was because of the action or because of their reaction, they couldn't tell.

They both recoiled mentally as they lifted the knife to kill… no, murder… her. It had to be done, yet…

Harry shied away from the action. Not even the dream could make him face that reality just now.

He was repulsed by the kiss, the stealing of the dying woman's last breath – the detached part of Severus' mind taking over completely - as if it were simply another ingredient for the potion, to be harvested in the prescribed manner, as others had been harvested from her in their turn. He didn't even try to resist the emotion. It was, in his opinion, completely deserved. Nothing could make him accept that.

Yet the feeling wasn't nearly as strong as his shock when he realised that the reason Severus had been so dismayed by it was because the action reminded him of his last kiss – with Harry. He couldn't help his repulsion at the swell of achievement Severus felt just before he ruined the potion. No matter the skill required to do it, no matter the fact that he could have done it perfectly, had he wished to, it was not something to be proud of.

How could you be proud that you had the ability to make something so destructive, that you had killed someone to accomplish it? That was just wrong, wasn't it?

After all of that, as if it wasn't enough already, came the 'mistake', the explosion, the unwilling return to groggy half-consciousness. Then the emergence of Thane as a major player in the dream, left to do what he would with the man who had failed his master.

Harry experienced again the progression of curses, the cuts and beatings and burnings. He whimpered and twisted in his sleep, struggling against the blankets tangled around him. He felt the frantic desire to escape through any method open to him, whether to unconsciousness or safety, and the despairing knowledge that there was no way that he could.

There was nowhere he could go that he could not be brought back from. And if he did escape? He knew too that when he was returned, he would be punished yet again for daring to attempt to flee.

Harry experienced Severus' sheer panic as Thane returned him to consciousness and produced the other equipment. It was the kind of emotion he had personally only felt once before, when he had faced Voldemort after Cedric's death. He thought he screamed when he felt the agony of the rod beginning to brand him. Some part of him that still remembered that this was a dream was distantly grateful for the silencing charm he now erected every night as a matter of course before he slept.

He reached desperately, with Severus, for the only person who had the slightest chance of helping him.

Escape. Darkness.

He drifted, remembering, wondering, noticing things he had not realised in the immediacy of the dream.

Even from the beginning and seeming like a thread running right through the dream, there had been the continual check of the shield whenever Severus had the merest instant of clarity to spare. Harry felt, as if it was his own, the man's almost stabbing relief that he at least could be spared this, that 'the boy' would not see what he did that night. That he would not see what he had done, and hate him, as was most natural response to someone who could commit such dreadful deeds. The smallest bit of distance he was granted from the horrors he accomplished and those which were committed upon him, always focused… on Harry, and hope.

Harry knew that when he woke, his pillow would be wet. He didn't know if the tears were the result of physical pain or emotional, disappointment or sympathy. Most likely, it was a little of all of them. The result of the grief he felt for them both, and for their impossible situation, a situation that was none of their fault or their making.

After Severus' escape from Thane, his dreams were less traumatic. He slipped into them with more than a hint of relief lacing his wandering mind and let them drift him where they would, as long as it was away from the events of the night before. They carried him away from any memory of Severus, the bond, or his mother.

He went with them, knowing that he would have to think about everything. Tomorrow.

***

In the morning, Harry decided to skip breakfast. He had finally accepted that he had to think about what he'd 'seen', or he'd have to experience it over and over again. One thing was certain about this bond; whatever it wanted, it wasn't afraid to bludgeon them into making it happen, without heed for the consequences it would have on them.

When he went down to the common room and told everyone that he wasn't going down Hermione, of course, tried to persuade him to come to breakfast with them. She offered a variety of completely sensible reasons that he was hard put to deny, especially as he was trying not to sound suspicious and end up making her stay with him.

Eventually he managed to persuade her that he truly wasn't hungry and he just wanted, needed even, some time alone to think. She looked searchingly at him before she nodded, and led Ron off to the Great Hall, promising to bring something back just in case he felt hungry later on. At least that was one good thing about needing to think about this, Harry realised – he would be able to avoid her questions for just a little longer.

He curled up in one of the large, cosy armchairs in front of the massive fireplace with his legs tucked under him, careless of the fact that he was creasing his robes. Getting as comfortable as he could make himself, he ultimately forced himself to face the incidents that had occurred two nights ago and the realisations that had been thrust upon him. He confronted all the things he hadn't wanted to realise, the things that had been done to and by his bond-mate that night, and the memories of the events he had experienced before that during his time as a Death Eater.

Severus had killed someone. Severus had killed people before, had made potions for Voldemort, potions that had atrocious effects and carried horrible consequences. He had seen some of those in Severus' memories as he listed potions that he might need to make.

Severus had been tortured mercilessly, and it hadn't been the first time, not by a long stretch. Severus saw him as someone to be protected, with little thought for costs. Severus cared what he thought – cared enough, at least, to be grateful that Harry wouldn't know that night's events.

Severus didn't want Harry to hate him.

Severus was a murderer. He was a Death Eater.

For the first time, Harry realised what being a Death Eater really meant when applied to that particular man, and he had no idea how to deal with it. What he did know was that he needed to speak to Severus, and yet he had no idea of how to approach the man on this topic.