Chapter 3 – The Unending Nightmare

"Ginny, oh my god."

Even without seeing the destruction of the living room, Harry would have known that something was terribly wrong by the feeling of dread that gripped him. It was a feeling he knew all too well, having experienced it many times during the war.

When he apparated into Grimmauld Place however, his heart plummeted through his feet. The wooden table that he and Ginny had spent many happy meals at was splintered into pieces. The chairs were upturned and the paintings shredded. Blood coated the walls; the dripping sounds the only noise in the home.

Harry followed the dark bloodstains through the hallway into the kitchen, skidding to a sudden halt to avoid stepping on his wife who was curled into a ball face down. Kreacher was nowhere to be found. Harry fell to his knees, his breath tearing from his chest in hard gasps.

"Ginny", Harry sobbed as he fell to his knees, ignoring the bloodstains on his pants. He rolled his wife over gently, her vibrant red hair stained with the darker red of her lifeblood seeping into the floor. "No!"

Ginny's eyes were open and unseeing. Her hands, now limp against her stomach, pressed against a wound that was so horrific Harry knew he would never forget the sight. It looked like somebody had attempted to rip his wife open from the inside out, spilling her onto the floor. The wound was jagged and torn as if someone had hacked at her with a serrated knife.

This had been personal.

Harry staggered to the floo, screaming Ron's name, begging him to help.

"Ron!"

Harry jerked upright, hands blindly reaching in front of him. Gasping, he reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow. Just a nightmare, he told himself as he fought to control his racing heart. This was his unending nightmare, with the last vision he had of Ginny coming to him most nights.

Harry cast a tempus spell and groaned. It was three in the morning and he knew after a nightmare he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. When Teddy had been younger sleeplessness was simply part of his life, but as time moved forward, he found himself more sleep deprived than not. With a yawn, he swung his feet out of the bed and flinched when they touched the cold wooden floorboards. Too lazy to cast a warming spell, Harry pulled on a pair of socks and padded into his bathroom. He studiously avoided looking at the mirror and seeing the reflection of his face, taking care of business as fast as possibly before moving to the living room.

Harry made himself a coffee the muggle way, taking his time to boil the water. He didn't need to work until eight in the morning, so he was not in a hurry. After the loss of Ginny and Ron's accusations that Harry had ruined all their lives, he had been unable to remain in the wizarding world as an auror, continuously exposed to dark magic and by association placing those around him at risk. Although it was something he would never say aloud, Harry also knew he couldn't bear to face Ron again.

Instead, Harry worked in a muggle university as an archivist. It wasn't a job that he had ever seen himself doing, but it was easy to lose himself in old manuscripts and tapes. Harry had enjoyed the simplicity and anonymity of the work when he attended muggle university for a number of years after quitting the auror force, and it was the perfect job to keep him hidden in back offices and rooms out of the public eye.

It also helped that Harry was able to silently transcribe languages and symbols with a flick of his wand beneath his cloak, which made him very good at what he did and somewhat of a genius to the muggles he worked with. The role allowed Harry to live comfortably without needing to touch his galleons, which suited him perfectly.

Lost in his thoughts and without Teddy to distract him, Harry took his favourite seat on the sofa and turned on the television. He didn't follow wizarding news any longer, and so satisfied himself with watching the early morning muggle reports.

Harry ran his hand through his hair as he stared out into London, seated in his usual spot at the bar. His day had been ordinary in the extreme – another reminder that the excitement of the wizarding world had been left behind long ago. Harry snorted at himself. He never seemed to be able to make up his mind – he missed the excitement, and yet craved anonymity. He was a paradox to his own mind.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even notice the door to the pub open, until it hit him.

Harry might have left his world behind, but it didn't mean that his power had been left as well. He knew he was a powerful wizard even by pureblood standards, which was one of the reasons he couldn't simply blend into the background around other magical people. Since Voldemort's defeat his magic had continued to grow almost uncontrollably – a glamour wouldn't hide his magical aura and even an untrained wizard would feel attracted to the heady rush being around his magic caused.

So when he felt the weight of the aura of the other wizard press up against his own, he panicked.

Turning his head away sharply, Harry pulled his cloak tightly around himself to hide the outline of hi body. Pulling his wand from his pocket, he muttered "visum" below his breath. It was a clever spell that he had picked up from a grimoire in Grimmauld Place and it served its purpose perfectly.

The spell allowed Harry to see through the eyes of another without them knowing, and he chose the bartender currently serving scotch to the other man. Harry swore under his breath when the spell took effect as he would recognise the man in his sleep (and quite often did in his nightmares).

Draco Malfoy looked… good. It was the only word to describe him that came to Harry's mind. Although still the slight figure he had been in school, time and age had moulded him into a very attractive man. The first thing Harry noticed was that his usual sneer had softened since Hogwarts. When Malfoy's face wasn't curled in contempt, Harry could see the chiselled jaw and high cheekbones that defined the Malfoy family and made Draco's features striking. His ice blue eyes caught the light as he looked around the room and ash blond hair fell to his shoulders and was neatly styled. In expensive black robes he looked refined, elegant and quite stunning.

Harry scoffed and withdrew from the spell. Malfoy's apparent happiness caused his drink to curdle in his stomach and his anger to boil to the surface. The thought that Malfoy could be happy after what he had done during the war, the betrayals and deaths he had caused, and Harry himself was miserable after the sacrifices he had made, seemed the epitome of irony. Maybe Malfoy had changed, but that wasn't something Harry was willing to find out.

Harry kept his stormy face turned away until Malfoy's searching gaze moved on. There was no way the other man hadn't recognised his magic, especially being trained in the dark arts, however Harry hoped he wouldn't recognise the magic as his own given how much it had evolved since they had seen one another. He was extremely surprised but grateful when the smaller man paid for his drink and left – he had been certain that a Malfoy wouldn't have been able to resist the lure of power.

Waiting only until he could no longer recognise Malfoy's magic, Harry followed him out of the building. Anger aside, it was time to return to the safety of his apartment away from the world, where he could too easily be recognised. He could only hope that Malfoy lost interest and didn't try to seek him out- and try to ignore the part of his brain that thought maybe having the attractive man follow him wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.