To Sleep, To Dream

AKA: The Crow: Dogs and Demons

Chelle: Trust me, if I owned HP I wouldn't be writing fan fiction, I wouldn't be driving my husband's old beat up car, and I wouldn't be taking student loans out the whazoo for college.

Authors: Dimitri Aidan, Aloysha Star, and Rochelle B

Beta: Mechante Fille

Rating: T/PG-13 at first, M/R or NC-17 eventually. Depends on where you encounter it.

Pairings: Remus/Sirius, Snape/Narcissa, Harry/Bill, Ron/Hermione, Draco/Ginny, Charlie/Tonks, and some other things that are still being worked out.

Warnings: …Dark Fiction is the name of the game. You're in the hands of an admittedly sick freak, an obsessed fan girl, and a boy whose mind is always on. It could get odd.

Notes: Harry might be a wee bit fucked up. I blame Plot Boy and Comic Man. Not that you should call Dimi Plot Boy to his face, he's taking the whole 'boy' thing really seriously these days.

Inspirational Lyrics: Could you let your hair down be transparent for a little while, just a little while, to see if you're human after all… Well let me be the first to say I don't have a clue I don't have all the answers. But I gotta pretend like I do.

"Speech"

'Thoughts/inner voices'

Flashbacks/Flash 'forward'

'Written things'

XX Scene Change XX

00 Passage of Time 00

Summary: Sometimes a person dies and not even coming back as a ghost can satisfy the soul. Sometimes a spirit is allowed another chance to make things right. Sometimes death is just the beginning.

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Chapter Two

All the Answers

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Harry pushed up his glasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, then looked across the room at Ron and Hermione, who had fallen asleep curled up on the couch. Ron had fingers curled around a lock of Hermione's hair, while her face was buried in the crook of his neck.

They'd wake up blushing, stuttering, and denying, but, for the moment anyway, it seemed very right. He let his gaze drift back to the essay he was supposed to writing for Professor Annica for History of Dark Arts. He was two years out of Hogwarts and had allowed Hermione to convince him to come to Avalon University of Further Magical Study. He was in the first few months of his second year.

It hadn't taken much convincing on her part, to be fair. He'd been considering it before she'd insisted it would be good for him.

He let his quill drop and leaned back in his chair, eyes drifting over to the window. The moon was bright, in spite of only a sliver being lit.

Halloween was a day away and he'd been thinking of leaving the campus and checking in on Remus again. He tried to stop by once a month at least, though rarely more. Remus was…different than he used to be. He wasn't the same man who'd taught Harry in his third year or even the same man who'd seen him into his uncle's custody after his fifth year.

He was just…a shadow. An echo of the real Remus. Remus was gone. It'd taken time for Harry to really understand it, but Remus was dying. Purposefully. The man thought that Harry couldn't see it, was truly so dense that his poor health, drinking, and the like would just go over his head. To Remus' credit they had gone unnoticed for a while, but he wasn't the same naïve child he'd once been.

Sometimes he wished he was.

Being that boy would mean that Sirius was still alive, that Neville was still alive, that the twins were still alive, that Dumbledore was still alive. Being this…this man, who had seen his best friends and family die before his eyes, meant that it was all real. He would love to pretend, for just a little while, that everything was right with the world.

But it wasn't. Maybe it never would be.

Dumbledore was gone and so Voldemort had become more bold, kidnapping and torturing Muggles and Muggleborn wizards whenever he felt the urge, having his followers become more outspoken in their views of pureblood rule, even going so far to have those who followed him in the Ministry work together to have Lucius Malfoy acquitted and released. The Ministry was completely out of control and Fudge was descending into a frantic sort of madness.

He was targeting everyone except the Death Eaters in order to deflect from his own inability to actually do anything semi-useful. His latest project was against magical creatures. Some kind of containment act. Harry would have paid more attention, for Remus' sake, but Hermione assured him there was no way it would pass and to just ignore it.

She rarely steered him wrong and so he'd done just that.

"Man I wish I had my camera." Harry jumped and whirled around to stare at Ginny, who smiled at him sweetly. She was taller, almost his height, with the same brown eyes as her mother and all of her family, save Ron and Bill who had somehow ended up with a bright blue, and hair that reached to about mid-back. She'd grown into herself nicely and gave Harry and Ron quite the time when it came to threatening to beat the tar out of leering men.

"What for?"

"Those two." She sighed and pulled out a chair, sitting next to him. She tugged on her skirt lightly then shrugged. "They are so obvious. They aren't fooling anyone except each other."

"And only when they're conscious." Harry said, indicating the way they were sleeping. "So. Where's Malfoy?"

She blinked at him, eyebrow going up. "Are you trying to imply something?"

"That it's not really an orgy if he isn't here?" Harry smiled as he spoke, amused at the way her nose wrinkled in disgust. Whenever he or Ron said something she thought was gross she'd make that face and he found it amusing to try and make her do it quicker than the time before.

His record was thirteen seconds.

"Eww, Harry, that's sick."

He smiled wider, nodding. "It is isn't it? So where is he? No point in his paying rent for the apartment if he's never here, is there?"

The apartment was a small building in Muggle London, with four actual bedrooms and the basement which Harry had modified to suit his needs when Ginny had moved in. In their seventh year Dumbledore had made him, Ron, and Hermione swear to try and make nice with Malfoy because he had led a rough life and didn't have anyone else. Narcissa had suffered a very public breakdown and Malfoy had been transferred to the custody of his Godfather, Professor Snape.

The Slytherins had made him an outcast and a target in his own house. With his father in Azkaban and his mother in St. Mungos all of his 'power' had vanished. The Slytherins had no longer needed to respect him or follow his orders because he was useless to their cause. He was suddenly on par with Neville, at best, when it came to his family situation.

Rather unexpectedly, Neville had been Malfoy's first true friend. He understood what it like to have people avoid you, talking about you and your parents, and had even gone so far as to accompany Draco the first time the Slytherin had visited his mother at St. Mungos.

Living with Snape and being close to Neville had led to Malfoy choosing sides and becoming a member of the order. He had, thanks to Hermione's amazing ability to forgive and forget mostly, managed to become part of their group. Harry and Ron hadn't exactly been happy with the idea, but with Hermione willing to try it would have been nothing short of childish to not try as well.

After Hogwarts Dumbledore had decided the three of them, along with Neville, Malfoy, and Ginny, would make up a group in the Order.

They didn't have very many other friends and hadn't really been motivated to keep in touch with anyone from Hogwarts. As far as Harry knew, other than Luna Lovegood and Blaise Zabini, the only people any of them communicated with regularly were members of the Order.

"He's working late."

Harry leaned back in his seat, craning to see the clock hanging in the kitchen. Four of the hands were on home and, as Ginny had said, one was fixed on 'Working'. There was still something deeply bewildering about Malfoy working.

He and Ginny worked at a bookshop. While officially it was a Muggle shop specializing in Occult items, it also doubled as a supply store for Wizards. Hermione and Ron worked near them, at a restaurant, and Harry had the esteemed honor of being secretary to some guy in an office building.

"It's almost eleven."

"I know."

"Shouldn't one of us walk him back?"

It wasn't that Harry was paranoid…okay, he was. But with cause. He would never forget the Ministry messenger standing on the front step and telling him that Neville had been killed in a broom incident. He'd apparently fallen from his broom and broken his neck. It was bullshit of course, Neville was terrified of heights and flying, but that was the official story. Harry couldn't help but think that if he'd stayed at school a little later, agreed to wait until Neville finished his Herbology final, that he could have done something.

Could have saved the other teen. Neville hadn't deserved to die. Most people didn't, of course, but Neville had been virtually harmless. Innocent, in spite of the way his life had gone. He'd still had hope that everything would work out and never stopped visiting his parents in St. Mungos, even though it was hopeless.

Malfoy had been hit hard as well, maybe even worse than Harry had. Harry thought sometimes that Draco's optimism had died with Neville. God knew Harry hadn't really felt true hope since then. All he had was anger and fury and paranoia to keep him going. A bitter mix, but it worked.

Harry had been wary of letting his friends go places alone ever since. He couldn't stand to lose anyone else. He wasn't sure he could take much more.

"Actually, he said 'Tell Dad not to worry, I'm taking the floo back.'" She smirked at him widely. "Something's been bugging me Harry. How is that we have to go around in pairs but you can wander around at midnight all alone?"

Harry blinked at her mildly. "I'm immortal." Her eyebrow went up. "Only Voldemort can kill me so I'm not really worried about his lackeys. When Voldemort decides to kill me it won't be on a street corner in Muggle London, I assure you. That man can't scratch his ass without making a big deal out of it."

"Harry!" Ginny looked as if she wasn't sure whether to scold him or laugh. He shrugged.

"It's true. If I was him I would have ended all of this the moment I had a body of my own and killed me, minus the wizarding duel, but he's too busy mucking about." Harry put his hands on the table and shook his head, a small smile quirking his lips. "Lucius is the one running everything these days. Voldemort just isn't as bright as he claims to be, you know?"

"It's a good thing he isn't. You don't want to be dead, do you?"

Harry was silent for a moment, eyes darting over to where Hermione and Ron lay. He knew he was taking much too long on a relatively simple question and when Ginny's hand covered his he could practically feel the worry rolling off of her. Ginny had never been particularly good at hiding her emotions; she projected so fiercely that even Ron, who was even more dense to 'emotional things' than Harry pretended to be, could pick up on it.

"Harry-"

What could he say to her? One of them was going to die and his odds aren't exactly great. Voldemort came back from the dead, or at least managed to keep his soul from passing on long enough to get a new body, and no one else had cheated death like that.

Much to Harry's dismay. There were so many things he wanted to do over, so many things he wished to God he had said before he'd lost the people important to him. He wished he'd told Sirius that he meant more to him than anyone else in the world. He wished he had told Neville that he wasn't really a screw up, but one of the best people Harry had known. He wished he'd told Dumbledore how much the man had changed his life. He wished he'd been able to tell the twins how important they had been to his continued sanity.

He wished he could tell Remus how much he needed him, how he couldn't do this to himself, how Harry was this close to just cracking and losing it, how he was completely falling apart at the seams in the dead of night and could do nothing by the light of day but stitch himself together to suffer through another day.

But he couldn't. Harry just…wasn't that brave. People thought he was some great hero but he was inclined to disagree. People like Snape, as hard as it was to comprehend, were heroes. People who chose to be involved in utterly useless and futile fights were heroes; he was just some poor kid who'd been forced into destiny.

He'd never had a choice. Hell, he'd never had an actual life. From the moment Voldemort targeted him it had all been decided. Harry's life had been over before he was a year old. It was all over except the final battle where one, or both, of them would fall.

Harry was kind of hoping for both. That way the fight would fall on someone else's shoulders and he could just…move on. He was so tired.

He couldn't say any of this to Ginny of course. He turned his hand and squeezed hers lightly before standing up. He could see the concern swimming in her eyes and wanted so much to say something comforting but Harry had never been a very good liar. He had reached up to push the hair out of her eyes when he felt it. The darkly familiar tingle that always happened right before

They were slicing the skin from her back slowly, stripping it to expose rivulets of blood and the intertwinement of muscle and flesh. She was screaming, voice hoarse, as the white hot metal slid into her flesh. Her hair, sweat darkened brown, fell all around her naked form and she trembled violently. Her skin, what was left and visible through the blood and tissue, was sallow olive, oily.

He could feel the knife in his hand, the heat making his hands blister. He barely felt it though, skin toughened through magic. He brought it down again, adding the finishing touches to his 'masterpiece,' then took a step back, head tilted to the side. His mark, the Dark Mark, was carved in all it's glory into her body. He made a gesture and his servant rushed forward, hauling the large, bulky form of the barely conscious girl up before him with some effort. She stared with glazed vacant blue eyes, swaying dangerously on her feet.

The scent of blood and sweat clung to her in a thick cloud. Tears stained her cheeks, her hair clung to her face, and her lips moved though no sound emerged.

They always looked so pretty when they had just been broken. He reached out, touched her skin and smeared some of her blood on her cheek. Beautiful.

Harry jerked back to himself and realized he was standing before a pale Ginny, hand on her cheek. He stepped away, hand dropping to his side as an icy feeling swept over his body. She blinked at him and he'd never been so happy that her eyes were the usual Weasley brown than he was in that moment.

"'Arry?" Ron's sleep slurred voice rang out and he glanced at his friend to find the redhead half untangled from Hermione and slipping dangerously close to the edge of the couch. "Mate? Wot's going on? You okay?"

He snorted darkly.

"Harry?" Ginny's voice was hesitant, afraid.

He wasn't surprised. The visions that Voldemort sent to him were becoming more and more powerful. He no longer observed as if he were an outsider, but now felt and smelled and touched. He moved, mimicking the man who invaded his mind.

It was like the connection, whatever it was, was deepening. They were…he didn't even know what to call it, but he knew he no longer felt alone in his own body. He couldn't be sure of what he might do next because of it and…well, it was terrifying. Really, how could he be safe when his own body wasn't his own? His own mind just a playground for his enemy.

She had every right to be scared. He could kill her and never even know he was doing it until it was far too late. Ginny should have been terrified.

But God he wished she wasn't.

"Harry? What did you see?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of the girl staring at him with shattered eyes that seemed to reflect the world around him while no light came from inside. The feel of her slick skin under his fingertips and the hot knife in his hands.

"Nothing new." He said finally. "I'm going to bed."

He liked the basement. It was quiet and still and he could lay there with his eyes closed and pretend that he was nothing; vapor just waiting to rise into the sky and be blown away with the next breeze. He loved those moments.

Ginny's question chased him down the stairs to his room. Did he want to be dead? As he pulled his clothes off, he considered the question seriously. By the time he fell onto his bed and pulled the sheet over his body he had something resembling the answer.

He liked the quiet. (1)

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Chelle: (1) was a quote from Buffy (The series, not the movie) In the episode 'Zeppo' a zombie asks Xander if he was okay with dying. Xander gives him a half-smile and says 'I like the quiet'. I think Harry has that mentality at the moment…okay, and I'm a fan girl. Bite me.

Mechante: Losha: Waves

Dimi: Yeah, the dream was both pleasing and depressing but…it did kind of lead to this, so it's all good.

I live. My computer died and I finally saved up for a new one. It only took a few months…anyway, I should have it soon. 7 to 10 business days. And yeah, it just made sense to us. If someone gave Sirius Heaven or he had a chance to come back it's clear which he would take. I don't know about genius, but I suppose I can see the point with…you know, less genius insisted upon, because it just kind of clicked.

Polyester: Nah, doesn't matter. We probably won't see James again…at any point. And if we do it won't be for a while, I don't think.

Crazy: Glad you like it.