A/N: Thank you to Shakespeare's Muse for providing some information about the age question from the previous vignette. I didn't start out with an intended age for Draco and Ginny but if you want one it's probably around 21-ish, considering that they're married.

A little warning, this particular vignette might be a bit confusing. It's meant to convey a dream and the incoherence of them, but at the same time a constant of Draco's pain. Err, I don't know what I'm talking about. After I wrote this I realized how bad it was, and yeah…try to understand it but I won't blame you if I get reviews coming back asking me if I'd lost my mind and what the heck am I writing.

#4 Night Terrors

Draco walked down a path that he couldn't see but knew was familiar. It always started like this.

His mind was a fuzzy yet impossibly lucid that could only be achieved when it was unconscious, in its dream state. His heart was heavy with an unidentified burden. His feet moved him on the recognizable path. He wasn't sure where it was leading him, but he knew he would only discover pain when he reached his destination. Something was wrong, but what? His mind just wasn't quick enough to connect his thoughts through the fog and give him an answer. He couldn't figure it out, but he should know what was wrong because there was definitely something terribly amiss.

It was on the tip of his tongue, his mind, so close that he could reach out and grab it. Pull it out into the open. But at the same time, it was buried somewhere in his head. His subconscious didn't want him to remember. Now was the only time of day when he was free from the truth, he should bask in it.

But he couldn't leave it alone. Not with this suffocating ache in his heart. What was he pining for? What was he missing? He needed to know. No, you don't, his mind warned. Yes he did. It will only hurt you. A fading whisper. I don't care. There was no answer.

Then it didn't matter what his mind said, because he remembered.

Her.

Ginny Weasley. Ginevra. His angel.

She was gone. Dead. Separated from the living.

No!

Suddenly, the air became more than just suffocating. It overpowered him, boring down on him. The pain sliced through his heart. An idle thought occurred to him that in another dimension, he was thrashing about on the bed, but he didn't give the musing another thought and it was forgotten. He fell back into his deep unconsciousness.

His mind jumped to another place before he ever reached his final destination on that path. He'd never find out just what he was headed for. It didn't matter, because he already discovered the pain in advance.

He looked around and found himself in his Manor, only it wasn't the same one he lived in everyday. This one was darker, shadowed over by the slanted light of his biased mind.

In front of him stood Ginny. He saw her, she was a transparent reminiscent of herself. She wasn't the same as she used to be; there was a lack of luster in her hair, a lack of shine in her eyes, a lack of vibrancy radiating from her body, and a lack of a healthy tone in her skin.

Knowing she was only a ghost, he still reached out and tried to touch her. He needed something to stop the pain in his heart: a touch, a sound of her voice, a scent. She looked at him sadly, and watched his fingers pass through her without touching.

"I'm sorry, Draco." she whispered.

In the haze of his mind, Draco realized that she had spoken, and made sense of what she said. Sorry? No wait; there was nothing to be sorry about. Everything was going to be okay. She wasn't gone. She was coming back. If he repeated it enough in his head, he might actually start to believe himself. So why was he still hurting so much?

The picture changed again, this time very quickly. He was reaching the climax. Something was going to happen. An image of himself studiously reading a sinister looking book titled Resurrection, an idle musing of what it would feel like to reverse the wand and chant the deadly Unforgivable, to join with Ginny again. More images came, all in a blur and too fast for him to comprehend.

Draco felt lost, trying to keep up and hold onto something tangible. He blindly reached out, but only felt cold blankets and sheets. She isn't here, remember? His mind chided him.

Draco opened his eyes abruptly, drenched in a cold sweat. He had been having these night terrors for a while now. At least until he did something about them.

The haze in his mind was gone, but the pain he felt in his heart for the loss of Ginny was still present. It cut, stabbed, and tore his heart apart. He was desperate with despair. He couldn't breathe properly because he was drowning in his grief, his agony, his suffering, his distress. He could go on describing his misery forever, but it still didn't change the fact that he needed her. His life depended on her.

This gap separating them was slowly eating away at him.

Draco got up, going over to the restroom with a plan to try to wash his anguish away. It didn't work. Draco looked at his clock with despondency. 7 A.M. It was going to be a long torturous day today. And the day after today. And the day after that. His pain would last forever if she wasn't with him.

Good thing for him then, that he intended for the distance between them to be only temporary.

End

A/N: What does the last line mean? Well, I'll let you decide what he's going to do.