He was walking along a sandy plain. Dismembered heads dotted the sand all around him, no-one he knew.

He converged upon the graveyard; scenes from the battle flashed either side of him and he walked straight through without glancing to either side. Then he looked left, and saw Sirius had been crucified. A chill crept up on him. He turned and ran. He saw other faces, other corpses of people whom he knew, faces he'd killed. He began to shiver and he couldn't stop. Sweat, cold and sticky, beaded on him, drenching his clothing. He was running now, but it took an age to pass each corpse. He saw all of them; their faces twisted into death masks and the rictus of of pain and terror, but each set of eyes penetrating him, accusing him and saying why did you kill me? And theses stares became more and more accusatory. And as his legs felt like they were trying to move through tar, he slumped to his knees, gasping silently and uncontrollably. People approached him as he curled into a ball, naked and alone, wrists bound behind him with chain that burned with an icy flame, ankles the same. He was screaming forgive me, God please no I didn't mean to it wasn't me then they made me I never wanted to kill anybody nobody asked me if I wanted to take lives...

And he screamed and screamed, and ghosts came to him, faces he knew, saw and slaughtered, and he curled into a tighter ball in this black infinity of space, bound and bleeding as crimson liquid spilled from wherever these ghosts touched him. Back, legs, arms, chest, he tried to protect himself from these souls that he'd harboured inside himself for so long. They cried for revenge, for blood, hunger and thirst for his suffering. He had hurt them, killed them, maimed them, tortured them, and they wanted their payment. Each touch was a jolt of white, cold and pain, then a trickle of blood. His soul was drenched but he had not understood this. This was what they meant when he could not escape the lives he had taken, and through the red obscuring his vision, he saw a pale form of his mother come to him. Her hands tenderly touched either side of his face, holding him, and blood pooled over her fingers as he began to bleed. She touched her lips to his cheek.

You couldn't save me, she whispered, drawing back, and he could see her eyes were obsidian black. You couldn't save me.

Now he could see he gaping wound punched through her chest, spilling gore into the abyss. I tried, he cried, but no words came out. I tried honest to God I tried please listen to me forgive me I tried, I did...

The souls drew back, and he saw Lily clearly. Everyone he knew, everyone he was close to stood a little way back. Both Ron's eyes were gone; the back of Hermione's head was blown away; Lupin was missing both arms; Fred and George were both disembowelled and Cedric stared with eyes a vivid, all green. Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid had all been decapitated and their heads rolled forward. Sirius' eyes were all black, his face partially eaten away. Every wound bled as if fresh. There were other faces, so many more, of other people he knew but they were cloaked in the darkness and he couldn't see them properly, but he could hear them, he could hear them all right...

You did this to us, they said in a bad unison. You did this to us, with your own hands. What did you do? What did you do?

God, no, he tried to scream. I didn't - I never -

They all approached him, touched him, whispered words to him, made blood trickle into his eyes so he saw the world through a haze of red.

Then Sirius approached him, looked into his eyes with his own dead, lifeless ones, thrust his hand into Harry¹s chest and pulled out his heart. He fell, and as he looked upwards, he saw both his mother's and father's impassionate faces as Voldemort's hands reached out for them.

Harry woke, and sat bolt upright in bed, the tears streaming from his face, his shoulders hitching with unconstrained sobs. No sound escaped him.

This nightmare he recognised as something to do with his feelings of powerlessness. They came interspersed with his dreams about Cedric and Sirius. If anything, they were worse. He swung his legs out from bed and walked shakily over to the windowsill. This nightmare had been particularly vicious and with a new twist. Voldemort had never been indirectly involved before. Could it be that he was more scared for his friends than he was of his own death? It was entirely possible. He didn't not look forward to the day he could rest but it wasn't like he wanted to die; Nature could not breed a species that didn't want to live and Harry was no exception, but sometimes... sometimes it was all too much to bear. Sometimes the prospect of death was all too appealing.

He stared up at the sky, longing to fly on wings of his own. The moon pushed everything softly into monochrome, and for a second the face of the Golden Boy was all but Golden.

The Boy Who Lived was waiting until he didn't.

lllllllllllllll

When Harry awoke the next morning, he quickly scrubbed the tear marks from his face with a handful of water from the jug on his bedside table. He was the first up, and so he dressed quietly, then padded down to the common room. Glancing at the smouldering remains of the fire out of habit, expecting to see Sirius' head sat there, he swiftly climbed from the portrait hole. He headed at a brisk pace to the dungeons, taking a couple of concealed shortcuts. He glanced at the walls as he did, noting the sliminess and the darkness, and was forcibly reminded of his Potions Master. Pushing open the door the the classroom, he found it pleasantly empty, and was about to drop the essay on the table when he realised that Snape might just pretend he hadn't received it. Better bring it during the -

The door to the supplies room slammed open with an unnecessary amount of force, and Snape came out carrying a couple of glass jars. The door slammed shut again, but not before Snape had seen Harry, standing by his desk, had holding two rolls of parchment.

"What," he snarled, "Do you want?" Harry mutely raised his essay, as he had learned anything he said was usually used against him. He looked Snape straight in the eye, however; he didn't care that the Potions master could be probing his brain. He deliberately let some of his anger bubble up a little. He wanted the man inside his head, to show him he didn't care any more, to show him that he was tired of playing games and that he had grown up far more than Snape ever had.

Snape extended his hand for the two rolls of parchment, and Harry handed them wordlessly over. Snape, still keeping eye contact, ripped them apart and let them drift to the floor.

It was when Harry realised life became a grind he began to smile.

So he did. Still smiling, he took another two rolls of parchment from his pocket. This time, red handwriting could be seen through the thin paper-like material. Harry glanced at the strips of parchment on the floor. They were blank.

"I will never, ever stoop to your level," he said in a low voice. "But at least you're so low I can predict your every move."

Harry felt a thin rush of satisfaction at the look on the man's face, but this was quickly overpowered by his feelings of lethargy and the loneliness that had been plaguing him for several weeks.

Harry had been quite insular since the beginning of the year, but that still didn't mean he didn't crave the touch of a fellow human being. He smiled sardonically at the thought. Harry Potter wanted a hug.

Still smiling in a faintly bemused way, he turned and left the dungeon.

"Potter!"

The voice rang out as he put his hand on the latch of the classroom door.

"Yes, professor?" he asked evenly.

"What, Potter, do you think you will gain by these acts of foolish pride?" Harry opened the door, but as he did so, the irony hit him like a punch in the stomach, and he began to laugh. "And I could ask you exactly the same thing," he smiled quietly. Harry Potter shut the door behind him as he left the dungeons.