The Price of Magic

by Acid and Sinick

Haunted by the ghost of a student, a former wizard struggles to preserve magical knowledge for the future generations.

6. Chapter 6: A Dream within a Dream

Chapter 6: A Dream within a Dream

---

It's peaceful tonight: dark and quiet. The fresh, open air and the sweet-smelling grass is a welcome change after grimy streets choked in exhaust vapours and factory smoke. The airborne filth of Muggle industrialism lingers everywhere at home: dulling my hair, contaminating my clothes, my books, my very life. How eager I was to escape the squalor of Weston-Super-Mare for the magical world. But flee my tainted heritage as I might, I often feel that no matter where I go I will still reek of Weston-Super-Mare all my life, forever shadowed beneath a cloud of petroleum fumes and clad in a skin of tarry grime.

I Apparate amid the grey monoliths and pass in between them, walking away from them onto grass, instead of the footpath to the car park. I suppose that even here, at Stonehenge, the world cannot escape from the Muggle invasion. As I walk down the hill, leaving the stones behind me, I also emerge from the illusion of an untouched, purely magical world that the major crossing of ley-lines within the circle had produced. Now, a highway lies before me, carrying with it the usual racket and stench of the city, but I pay it no mind. After exposure throughout my childhood, I have learned to ignore this inconvenience, as if it were an irritating, but ultimately insignificant parasite. Instead I walk toward the primitive gate made of one flat rock supported by two: a slice of Stonehenge separated from the others and moved here centuries ago. I was only able to see it after Lucius altered the Manor wards.

A cool breeze combs through the short grass and pushes my hair back from my face as I walk through the dolmen and into a different place. Though it's just as dark on the other side, now the air is warm and humid as a greenhouse, heavy with the fragrance of roses drifting from the garden. Somewhere behind the Manor a nightingale sings.

Far above, constellations stretch and sprawl across the sky, travelling in their familiar arcs. I trace the line from Ursa Major to Polaris, and then my gaze comes to rest on Draco. Lucius particularly likes this constellation. He asked me to find it once as I was writing a first-year Astronomy paper; he watched me look over half the sky for it before he pointed it out with a teasing, superior smirk, the same kind he always uses when talking about his numerous ancestors. Ever since that day I've always known exactly where to find Draco: a long scatter of stars whose meanderings reminded the ancient Greeks of a dragon.

What does Lucius see in me? I'm not like him at all. I'm not rich and my parents aren't famous. Why does he even let me visit him here, in his home; why did he adjust the wards this summer, now that he has my confirmation of what I am? He is ten generations pureblood and a grown wizard with his Manor and his house elves and his fortune. And I'm just a boy from some Muggle town, a boy without a name, without a father. Oh how I wish I could have kept my mother's surname! At least the Wizarding world would recognise my name then, and no father at all would've been better than the one I have.

But I know better than to wish for something that will never happen. I'm a boy who keeps trailing along after a housemate six years his senior. That's the way it was for me, throughout my schooling, and it's naïve of me to think that anything will be different now. In Hogwarts or away from it, I'll never be anything other than a boy to him.

That's why I have to go to Vienna. Vienna is my only true chance to prove to Lucius that I am someone else, perhaps someone worthy. If I stay here, I'll be a nonentity forever. Leaving now is the only way I can ever be his equal. I'll return after five years of apprenticeship and then I won't be just some lad with an unrecognisable surname, but an established, maybe even acclaimed, professional. I'll be the youngest Potions expert ever to receive recognition since that fraud Damocles Belby. And I'll be able to study the Dark Arts: the real discipline, and not this sorry excuse for a subject that they kept trying to teach us at Hogwarts. We covered doxies and grindylows in our third year, hinkypunks and kelpies in our fourth, boggarts in our fifth and they called it Defence. Ha! I can do so much better than the rest of those fools trying to stay awake through Professor Longbottom's chatter. I might not have the name necessary to be accepted in certain circles, but I have my knowledge and my skills, and one of the brightest wizards in Europe has offered me an apprenticeship. I only need this one opportunity and then I won't care about carrying my father's surname. I'll make that name mean something in the magical world, all by myself!

I have to go to Vienna. They'll be waiting for me to owl my confirmation tomorrow at noon and even Mum's stopped nagging by now about leaving her for five years.

Leaving Britain: that's what everything comes to. I'll be gone for a long, long time.

Damnation! I wish there was another way. I wish there was a way to do this without leaving Lucius. Without having to say good-bye to him tonight. Five years! I'll never manage that long. It's been a week since I saw him last and already it's been too long for my liking. How am I going to survive in Vienna without our conversations, without reading countless books in his library waiting for him to return from some jaunt, without him constantly criticising my hair or teasing me that I never smile? In five years everything will change. I'll be twenty-three and he'll be almost thirty and for all I'll know, he'll finally give in to Mrs. Malfoy's arguments and marry that impossible Narcissa Black.

I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him when we don't see each other; if he'll miss me while I'm in Vienna. I'd never know if he did. I can't tell if his mind is the only one strong enough to keep me out, or if deep down I don't really want to know what he thinks of me after all, but my Legilimency doesn't work on him. But even without it, I know that he wouldn't write, or floo – ever – not until five years are up. I'm certain of that. It's a pity, really. I think that Lucius would like Vienna, Wizarding and Muggle – its sombre streets with apothecary storefronts, its universities and lecture halls and its museums – if he weren't too stubborn to give in on one of his ultimata just this once. What would he think if I suggested that he Apparate back to Britain every week? He'd probably laugh in my face.

I search my mind for something to say to Lucius as I take the familiar footpath winding through the dark rose maze all the way to the doors of Malfoy Manor. This chance at an apprenticeship in Vienna is incredible: nothing like it has ever happened to me. And it won't happen again. It's a brilliant and terrifying thing.

I wish I could stay. Lucius said that to me once, when his final year at Hogwarts was almost over and I was just a firstie trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the next year when I came back, the prefect who kept the rest of my House from hexing me to bits wouldn't be there. He took me to the pasture near the Forbidden Forest, past Hagrid's hut, and together we watched the thestrals, the entire herd, take off and fly all at once. I didn't see them of course, but I could hear the low thudding of their hoofbeats, then the leathery drum and hiss of their wings, and I could feel the cool rush of them disturbing the air. I told Lucius that it wasn't fair that he could see them and I couldn't, and that the next time he knew someone was dying, he should ask me to come and see. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and said that if he ever had a little brother, he hoped that he'd be a bossy and bitter little git just like I am, a terror who'd drive his father to an early grave and leave Lucius in charge of the family estate.

Then my second and my third year went by. I saw Lucius for winter hols and my birthday, and then again, for Easter. During the school year I went to the pasture but never again did I witness the thestrals fly off all at once. I may never have that experience again, but I don't mind much because without Lucius with me it wouldn't have been the same.

That's what this apprenticeship is: a once in a lifetime chance to get close to something brilliant and terrifying, like the thestrals. How can I not want this? How can I even doubt myself? But when I think of everything I'll be giving up for that chance, I realise that I may not want it after all.

What should I do? I wish that for once Lucius would make the decision easier on me. If he tells me to stay, if he just asks me this once, I'll stay without a thought. But I know better than to expect him to make anything in my life simple.

No, I'm going to do exactly what I've set out to do all along. I'll walk in there and say my farewells to Lucius, and then I'll write that blasted letter at last and owl my consent in the morning. That's the only thing I can do. I know it's right. Why am I so stunned at the fact that I have to leave? I knew I had to do this sooner or later. I can't wait any longer.

I try not to get my robes caught by the barbs on the rose bushes. No matter when I come here, these are the only kind of roses I ever see in the garden mazes of Malfoy Manor: pure white with a bittersweet scent and thorns sharp and strong enough to leave the edges of my cloak in tatters.

I follow the narrow footpath until it ends at the door, and try to keep my hand steady as I raise it to knock. I have to do this. We've both changed, and a lot of things have happened since the day two boys stood watching and listening to the thestrals taking flight. I'm not a child any more, and Lucius hasn't been one for a long, long time. I have to tell him good bye and learn to live my life without constantly walking in his footsteps or waiting for his approval.

---

I haven't seen this place in Snape's dreams yet. Usually it's either the Hogsmeade ruins or the tunnel, and I'm used to both of them by now. But this one's new. He came in here through some sort of door by the large circle of stones. It looked a bit like pictures of Stonehenge. Maybe it was Stonehenge, who knows?

The footpath winds through a hedge maze made out of rose bushes, and all the way to a dark building several storeys tall. It takes me awhile just to get through the maze, even though I jump over a couple of hedges as a shortcut. Bloody thorns! Snape's dreams are never comfortable, even if he's not actually having a nightmare.

I don't see him anywhere. He must've gone inside already.

There's a door but it's locked. And the house is huge and quiet and dark except for a faint light in one of the windows on the ground floor by the corner. The room looks like some sort of library, but I can't tell for sure 'cause the curtains are almost closed and the window's too high off the ground for me to see. The light moves and flickers; through the thick glass I can just barely hear the sound of two voices arguing. Then something heavy hits the wall right next to the window and there's a cry. And another: more of a gasp this time, shocked.

I reckon it's a fight. It must be. I hope Snape's not hurt. He'd probably go completely spare if he saw me spying on his dreams again, but how else can I be sure it's not another one of his nightmares? I'd better make sure he's all right before I leave.

I've got to get in. It was never that hard to get into Snape's other dreams. But in this one the door's locked and there's nothing to climb onto to get in through the windows. In someone else's dream I'm pretty much powerless.

By the time I've looked around both corners for another way in, the room's gone completely quiet. Then the door opens.

"I don't know that I could ever trust someone who is so unsure of his own decisions. Go and think about it, and do make up your mind," the voice drawls. It's not Snape's voice but I'm sure I've heard it before: that bored and haughty tone.

Lucius Malfoy. Of course! He sounded just like that when I heard him talking to Dobby. I run closer to the door and try to look inside the house: Malfoy Manor, it has to be.

"I'm certain. I've told you before. I haven't changed my mind." Snape interrupts him. He's standing in the doorway, skinnier and scruffier than I've ever seen him in the real world. His clothes don't quite fit right and his overgrown, greasy hair is tousled instead of hanging down limply around his ugly nose and furrowed eyebrows. He looks young, my age or maybe even younger: more like the boy taking his OWLs in Snape's pensieve than the real Snape, the man I know.

"Have you now?" Lucius Malfoy sneers, as though he's mocking the whole world with every word. I don't know what he's talking about, but he sounds like he's making fun of Snape's reply. Arrogant prick!

"I have," Snape's voice is quiet and determined, and his eyes are large and black and trusting in the wand light. "Good bye," he adds softly as he steps outside.

Malfoy doesn't answer him at all. Instead the door slams loudly behind Snape and leaves him startled in the dark, on the doorstep. He even turns around, as if he can't believe Malfoy really shut him out.

Snape stares at the door for awhile.

This dream doesn't look like like any of his nightmares I've ever seen before, but I'd better hang about for a while, just in case it turns horrid. I sneak closer until I'm standing right behind Snape. It's a lot like looking at one of his memories in the pensieve, 'cause this young Snape doesn't notice me at all.

That's weird. Why's he still staring at the door like that? I stand on tiptoe and look over his shoulder to try and see what he's staring at.

It's a heavy door covered in glossy black lacquer, with a silver knob in the shape of a snake's head. Exactly the sort of door you'd expect Malfoy Manor to have. It's nothing special. Snape still has his wand lit with Lumos and the light falls just right against it. Like a mirror the shiny surface reflects back Snape's shocked glare. He lifts his wand and brings it closer to his face.

Oh. I reckon Snape isn't staring at the door at all: he's staring at himself, his own reflection. Faded and dark, it's still recognisable and it's staring back and looking completely gobsmacked. Snape leans forward, almost bumping his nose against the door. He's acting as if he's just noticed that great big nose in the middle of his face: peering at it like he is from every possible angle. Then it looks like he's decided that it's not quite so bad after all, if he looks at it straight on and close up. His studying look turns into a smile, awkward and hesitant. It shows the edges of his uneven front teeth and makes his long, beaky nose stick out even further. Wow! He actually smiled, for once without keeping his lips pressed together in a thin line, the way he always does. What did Lucius say to him? The Snape I know's never smiled like that, not even once.

Snape runs his hand through his hair a few times, trying to slick down the tangled mess, and he's still grinning. He moves his hand lower, to his collar, unbuttoned at the neck. Finally his smile fades and instead there's this faraway look in his eyes. I never thought I'd say this, but there's something about him – his eyes – that reminds me of Parvati, the way she always looked during Lockhart's lessons. Ron made fun of her all year!

But this is Snape, not Parvati Patil. And it's bloody disturbing to imagine him sighing and pining for . . . No! I can't imagine him sighing and pining for anyone. Even at my age, even after brewing and drinking a full glass of Amorentia on a bet! The only thing he'd ever obsess over would be one of his nasty potions, or some Dark Arts book full of curses and dried spiders between the pages.

But there are no books or potions in this dream of his and Snape's still staring at Malfoy's door with that same faraway look, and then he blinks and finally takes his eyes off it and starts fiddling with his collar again. But he doesn't button it. Instead he pulls it even wider apart, baring his neck completely, and his face is still dreamy and gobsmacked and a bit smug. He turns around, and when his hand lowers from his neck I can finally see what his fingers had covered before.

A bruise. Small, but definitely there. Just like the one Ron had in sixth year, when he stumbled into the dorm at four in the morning grinning from ear to ear and wouldn't say a word, but when Seamus asked him about his precious Lav-lav his face went so red I couldn't even see his freckles. He refused to use Healing charms on the mark even though we teased him for days.

But that was Ron, and this . . . this is Snape! I can't bloody believe it!

Snape walks down the front stairs and heads towards the garden path. It's just as well he can't see me, cause I bet I look like a right prat standing here and staring at his back. But I can't stop staring. He reaches the middle of the hedge maze and then stops and turns around. All of a sudden he takes a wild leap over the nearest hedge and sprints back toward me. Wow! Is this really how Snape was when he was young? Skinny and awkward and leggy as a colt with his tangled mane of greasy hair flying all around his face. He's so eager to get back here, it's a wonder he doesn't trip over his own feet. I never thought he could move this fast at all. He's wide-eyed and short of breath as he races back up the front steps and starts pounding on the door.

"Lucius, let me in! I've made up my mind."

Bloody hell!

Wonder what Snape'd say if I pull him out of this dream right now! 'Cause that's what I want to do. I can't leave him here. Should I? Oh, sod it, this is mental! I should leave him alone before he notices me, 'cause if he does then there's gonna be hell to pay. Should've left a long time ago. I can still leave. I'll just let him go back to the manor, back to Malfoy and . . . and . . . bloody hell! I've got to get him out of this before Malfoy opens the door. No! This isn't a nightmare. Since when did I start acting like Mrs. Weasley? Next thing I know, I'll be sending him a howler for staying out past his bedtime. Why am I so worried? It's just a dream.

The pounding stops.

Snape turns around and he isn't a young bloke any more. He's back to normal. His collar is buttoned all the way up now and he looks just like he always does. Same beaky nose and sour grimace, but it's much more intimidating now than on his younger self: something in his face and his stance and the way he glares down his nose. For once, even though he's alone and I never was a prefect, I feel like someone who's just walked in on a couple of seventh-years snogging in some deserted corner of the library. I never realised until now how awkward it must've felt to catch people, as well as getting caught yourself. Hermione always whinged about it in sixth year but Ron and I just laughed.

"Potter!" Snape rakes the night with a sharp, glowering stare. "Show yourself!"

I flinch: he doesn't have to yell so loud. How'd he know I was here anyway? I think of getting out of his dream, but it's too late. If he already suspects me, I'll never convince him otherwise. Better get this over with now.

When I appear he spots me right away and gives me the iciest look. "Did you see enough?" he snarls.

Did I see? Did I! Enough to have far too much of an idea of what I didn't see. And I won't pretend I'm OK with it just 'cause Snape is mad at me. "Yeah, I saw you. With Malfoy! I don't bloody BELIEVE it! What were you doing in there?"

His eyes narrow. "What do you think I was doing? Playing Exploding Snap?" he spits.

"I didn't want to think anything about it!" I just thought they were fighting. What else was I supposed to think? Not with Malfoy. "But now I am thinking about it and ugh!"

His face turns cold and indifferent. "Dear me." He raises an eyebrow and examines me like something he's about to stew in a cauldron. "Were you repulsed by witnessing something you weren't supposed to in the first place?"

"No! YES!" Honestly! Did it have to be a snobbish, scheming bastard like Malfoy? Snape could've at least found someone who wouldn't slam a door in his face. Someone who wouldn't put a Dark Mark on his arm; didn't he say that Malfoy initiated him into the Death Eaters? How could he have been so blind? "It's Lucius Bloody MALFOY! What were you thinking?"

I stare at him; I just don't get him at all. He's good about rationalising things – or so I used to think before tonight – so I want an answer from him: some sort of explanation so I'll stop feeling like the world's turned upside-down. But he doesn't say anything, though his anger seems to fade, shifting to thoughtfulness; his stare slips from me to the ground. At last, he mutters, "I wasn't," and just for a moment he looks as shocked at having admitted that as I know I am at hearing it.

"What?"

"I wasn't thinking. All right?" he snaps, lifting his hand to his eyes, frowning and rubbing his forehead. "I was beyond any trace of sensible thought at the time, or hadn't you noticed?"

With his slumped shoulders and empty look, Snape seems almost guilty, defeated. I've never seen him like this. He probably hates that I found him in this dream at all. The grumpy git never could stand being ridiculed or put on display. "Er, yeah," I reply, quieter, awkward. "S'fine. Really." It happened years ago, and who doesn't make a fool of himself occasionally? I'm a fine one to talk! I think back to fourth year and can't help smiling. "One time I had it bad for this Ravenclaw girl and acted like a right berk for months. Nothing that bad but . . ." at least she never treated me like dirt.

"Potter!" he barks and I wince and forget what I was about to say next. Obviously what I said before didn't work too well at calming him down.

"What?" What'd I do wrong?

I almost expect him to yell or tell me to leave him alone but he only stares – not at me 'cause the look in his eyes is empty and distant and it's as if he doesn't see me at all. At last, he bites out, "Drop it."

Oi! "Or what?" I'm only trying to understand! And what's he going to do to me if I refuse? I won't give in that easy. Let him glare!

Snape looks like he's about to say something harsh or important, but he doesn't and we just stare at each other in the dark. He blinks first and looks around at the trees and the roses, and at the door with the silver knob that looks like a snake. Quickly he backs away from me and the door, as if he expects it to bite him, which wouldn't be surprising. It's Malfoy Manor after all.

"Nothing," he mutters with a brief shake of his head. "Get me out. I have no wish to stay here any longer." He crosses his arms and his fingers dig hard into his forearms.

I know better than to offer him my hand like I did in the tunnel. It'll take more time, but I'd rather try harder to dissolve this dream than get close to him when he's like this.

---

It's barely four in the morning and I'm still weary, but sleep is the last thing I need. Not with Lucius invading my dreams. Not with Harry watching him do so.

What did the whelp expect? Apparently not this. Not the sight of me obsessing over Lucius like the last fool on earth. Lucius: the biggest mistake of my youth, the wrong that gave rise to so many others, the error so tragic and so treasured that I had to repeat it over and over without learning my lesson. I wonder how different my life would've been if I'd managed to stop chasing after Luce for just long enough to see reason amid the allure of endorphin-induced dreams; if I'd gone to Vienna after all.

Enough! I've had enough of this madness in my past; enough of dreams, of unreachable places and unattainable people. I was obsessed; I wasn't thinking. I recall Harry's reply to that admission of mine, the mockery behind his overdone guilelessness. No! Enough of that as well. What did I expect from him: surely not understanding?

I head for the kitchen, fill a pot with water, light the stove. I move silently around the room, lit only by the blue glow of the gas flames, getting out two slices of bread and measuring two spoonfuls of ground coffee. I stand at the window, watching the darkness outside turn into a bleak light-grey haze, until I hear the water bubbling, then I stir sugar and milk into my coffee and inhale the smell of toasting bread. This is my life, the mundane reality that I must hold onto if I wish to stay sane.

The next time I turn around, Harry is sitting on his usual chair. "Good morning," he mutters, caution and anxiety clear in his expression. I knew he'd turn up sooner or later. In some ways, my kitchen is Switzerland or the Forbidden Forest during the last days of the war: neutral ground. Very well, then, it's a truce. I drop a black and smoking square of toast onto a plate and set it in front of him.

He blinks at it, as surprised as if I'd burned it with an Incendio.

"Morning, Mister Potter," I reply, but only after I've turned away, hiding my face from him.

He is silent. He remains silent as I butter my own piece of toast, as I sit down across from him with a hot cup of coffee and a plate. I continue to observe him through the steam rising of my coffee cup and he still doesn't speak. Instead he bends his head over his toast, revelling in the bitter smoke spreading through the kitchen. I am wasting food on a ghost, a sensible, sarcastic voice in my head whispers, just as I'm wasting my time and my trust. But I stopped listening to that voice ages ago; when it comes to Harry, it never says anything that I want to hear.

I think of the first time I saw Harry sitting here, with his elbows running through the tabletop and his chair pushed in too far. Right now his chair is a comfortable distance from the table's edge – I've left it that way for a while now – and Harry's transparent hands are curled around his plate of toast like a young lion's overlarge paws protecting his food.

There hasn't been a time in decades when I've had breakfast with anyone else for company. Anyone apart from Harry. I won't count Minerva, chattering at Hogwarts' high table with anyone and everyone who cared to sit next to her, or Albus offering me the blackcurrant jam. I won't count Lupin showing up out of the blue at Spinner's End on occasional mornings or evenings, looking starved and haunted, bringing with him the stench of sewers and of beasts – his kind – until I no longer wanted breakfast at all. No, I can't recall a morning when I've sat and had breakfast with someone else, not since I was a boy. It's been too long since I had anything resembling family. So, now that I think in those terms, perhaps filling my kitchen with smoke every morning is worth having someone like him around.

Harry doesn't talk. Occasionally he gives me a curious look when he thinks I'm not watching. There's obviously something on his mind, and I'm afraid I know precisely what it is. There's no sense in putting it off; better to get this over and done. "If you have questions, I'd rather you ask them now."

He glances up from his black square of toast and for the first time this morning looks me directly in the eye. "Why Malfoy?" he asks.

Harry does that a lot. He just looks up and asks a question as if he honestly expects me to believe that he cannot comprehend the answer. "Is this your way of mocking me?" I have to be sure.

"Is that what you thought I was doing! You did, didn't you? Paranoid git." He shakes his head. It sends his unruly hair flying. "I'm only trying to understand," he assures me earnestly, "Why him?"

He seems sincere enough. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he truly wants to hear my reasons, but how can I explain them to him, when I can't really explain them to myself? "I can't give you an answer."

"Why not?"

"The world would be much easier to live in, if we could choose the object of our affection according to logic."

Harry blinks and stares at me. It seems I've managed to surprise him. "Yeah, I reckon it would," he finally agrees. "I never had a chance to really figure that out before I died, but of course it'd be simpler." He nods and understanding gleams in his eyes. "I s'pose I just… I never could picture you liking anyone when you were my age, or anyone liking you back. You looked like the sort of bloke who spent all your time at school with your nose in a book or trying to avoid bullies, so why would it be any different after Hogwarts?"

"Indeed." I give him my iciest glare. He's strayed too close to the truth for my liking.

"And then you go off to Malfoy Manor and snog the owner," Harry continues, with a bemused headshake. "Honestly, what were you thinking?"

I thought we'd established that already! I wasn't thinking at all. The most thinking I could manage whenever I was with Lucius in those days, was something like 'Yes! Again!' Doesn't Harry realise that? "Potter, I've already had a mother; one was quite enough for one lifetime. I don't need another one to lecture me on sensibility and conscience." I especially don't need Harry of all people to mother me.

"M'not!" He pauses, blinks. "Oh, hell, I am. Sorry!"

"For someone who's 'only trying to understand', you aren't making that much effort," I try to keep the displeased grimace on my face.

"So what happened after?" Harry interrupts.

"After what?"

"After you went back in there."

Prying imp! "Would you like me to describe my actions step by step in chronological order?"

My inquiry has the desired effect. He looks down and spends the next few seconds inspecting the charred toast on his plate and his own hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that." he mumbles, "Not right after. Just later."

"Quite a lot happened," I tell him, the memories of that summer still fresh in my mind after all this time. "I reconsidered many things. My mother was satisfied. She owled Lucius a thank you note for talking me out of leaving. I never went to Vienna."

"Where?" Harry interrupts.

"That's where I always wanted to go after Hogwarts. I was offered an apprenticeship in Vienna." But I joined the Death Eaters instead; Mum wasn't nearly so happy about that.

"Oh," Harry frowns. "I know so little about you, it's a bit shocking when I learn too much at once. Lucius Malfoy, Vienna, and I didn't even realise you had a mum until now."

I raise an eyebrow at that. Did he think that I hatched out of a basilisk egg, or was conceived in an alchemical flask like an homunculus?

But before I can say something suitably sarcastic he's already nattering on. "What am I saying? 'Course you had one," he cries. "What's her name?"

I inspect my almost empty coffee cup and my untouched piece of toast before looking up. "Eileen," It's a name I haven't heard spoken in years. "Eileen Prince."

---

"Tired of reading already?" I ask, after I've grown tired of watching Harry floating in aimless circles around the tall stack of books I left for him, without sparing any of them a second glance.

"What?" he turns and looks at me quizzically. "Oh. No. Tired of turning pages, more like. S'not that easy, y'know."

"Very well," I sigh and pick up the book on the top of the stack, "but don't expect me to do this every day."

"Do what?"

"What do you think?" I arch an eyebrow at him and flip to the right page. I begin reading a story about the American Minister who came to England with his family and very foolishly bought a haunted property by the name of Canterville Chase.

Harry settles down on the floor at my feet. He seems interested enough by the tale of a cranky old apparition haunting a mansion suddenly invaded by a noisy family from the States. I suspected that Harry would like the Canterville Ghost. That's why I left out the book of Wilde's short stories for him in the first place.

Once in a while, when I read yet another of the Ghost's antics, Harry gives me a cautious glance: 'hope you don't think I'm like that!'

He certainly isn't like the story's Ghost, and I doubt he will be even if he lives to be three hundred, although I cannot help but slip into Harry's hurried, energetic and slurred manner of speaking when I read another of Wilde's characters. I recall Harry in one of the first dreamscapes that I ever saw – the Hogwarts entrance with its twin gargoyle statues and the sunset – and remember him complaining of spiders and moths at the castle. I remember him in my flat, going on and on about something or other: magic or Hogwarts or the horror of my company most likely, always arguing, and accusing, and protesting against every bit of common sense. After those memories, the needed tone of voice comes to me almost naturally: "'Stop!' cried Virginia, stamping her foot, 'it is you who are rude, and horrid, and vulgar and as for dishonesty, you know you stole the paints out of my box to try and furbish up that ridiculous blood-stain in the library.'"

Harry catches onto my plan swiftly. He stares in recognition as his mouth forms a surprised 'o'. I just smirk and continue the act. "First you took all my reds, including the vermillion, and I couldn't do any more sunsets, then you took the emerald-green and the chrome-yellow, and finally I had nothing left but indigo and Chinese white, and could only do moonlight scenes, which are always depressing to look at, and not at all easy to paint," I conclude, slurring the words together and speaking the entire line on a single breath, like Harry would.

He gives me a rather wicked glare and jumps up from the floor. Then he pokes his nose over my shoulder and starts searching for the next sentence on the page. It doesn't take him long.

"It is a very difficult thing to get real blood nowadays," he enunciates every consonant, assigning the Canterville Ghost a mediocre copy of my own sardonic drawl, the one I always employed to scare some sense into my students. He even raises an eyebrow and puts a spiteful sneer on his face. "'And, as your brother began it all with his Paragon Detergent, I certainly saw no reason why I should not have your paints. As for colour, that is always a matter of taste: the Cantervilles have blue blood, for instance, the very bluest in England; but I know you Americans don't care for things of this kind.'"

I wonder if this is what Harry thinks me to be: a pureblood wizard with a pureblood set of mind. He must: how else would he ever rationalise my consent to the Dark Mark on my arm? Harry ends his performance and plops down on the floor again with a satisfied grin. Impossible brat! Now it's a matter of carrying on the competition.

I continue reading Virginia's advice to the Ghost on immigrating to the States, making it sound like Harry's foolish ideas of reopening Hogwarts. "No ruins! No curiosities!" he mocks in his turn the horrors of America, doing a rather good impression of my critical tone. "You have your navy and your manners." It's just the same.

"Indeed." The Ghost is right. "Dreadfully appalling manners they are," I say pointedly. Americans certainly aren't the only ones to have those.

"Oi! That's not in the text!" he protests, with a stubborn scowl.

I snap the book shut and arch an eyebrow at the insolent fool in silence until he gives in and mumbles "Go on then. What's next?"

I test his patience for a while longer, but afterwards I do continue reading the story, coming to the part describing the Ghost's dream, a dream of someone who hasn't had a moment's sleep in three hundred years.

"Far away beyond the pinewoods," I keep my voice low and soft at the description of the Garden. "There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers."

All the while I watch Harry's face as it grows sombre and thoughtful as his imagination completes the image of the Garden of Death in his mind. Years ago, when I read this passage for the first time, I pictured the Garden as lying beyond the outer wards of Malfoy Manor, where the endless rose mazes gave way to the hemlock and the yew-trees: a hidden sanctuary somewhere in the distance where the nightingale always sang. The impressionable mind of the eighteen-year-old imbued his visions of it with his idealistic and dream-like state at the time, but these days I could hardly care less for the way it looks. I do, however, continue to think with longing of a place that is quiet and dark and calm. I wonder if Harry has his own version of the Garden in his mind, if he even wants to find it waiting for him at the end, as much as I wait for its comfort. "To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace," I read to him as the Ghost pleads with Virginia to help him find and open the Garden's gate, to let him have his eternal rest at last. "For Love is always with you, and Love is stronger than Death is."

"S'nice to listen to you read," Harry murmurs when I finish the story and close the cover. He is stretched out on the floor with his hands folded behind his head and his eyes closed. "You've got a good voice."

I take my time finding the right place on the shelf for the book. "As I said, don't expect me to do it every day," I mutter. But there's no way to ignore that content smile lingering on Harry's lips. Suddenly I find myself seeking out other books that Harry might enjoy hearing, but not now: later, perhaps tomorrow.

---

I wake up in the middle of the night in my own bed under the rough woollen blanket. The lumpy pillow in its ragged pillowcase holds the humid warmth of my breath and the scent of my hair. The feel of its threadbare cloth is so familiar pressed against my cheek.

I feel tired – and that's nothing new, I often do – but tonight I do not feel awake.

I lift my head. The room is silent, with its rows upon rows of dusty books filling the shelves that line the walls. Here is the Selected Works of Oscar Wilde that I inserted back in its place just a few hours ago. Tracks of wax from the burnt-out candles stain the floor and the arms of the old leather chair. Not one of the candles is burning, but the room is lit all the same: by the pale glow spilling from the windows of the nearby building, the street lights, and the moon, a large yellow sphere. So bright that it seems one could easily turn it off simply by flipping the right switch.

I never draw the curtains apart far enough to let in so much light, but now they are completely gone. The window frame is exposed and the wall looks empty, except for the scratches and cracks that spread unconcealed across its surface.

Harry huddles in my leather chair, with his feet pulled up and his chin resting on one knee. In the glow from the bared window it's easy to see that his form is solid. It blocks the light completely. Even the shadow he casts on the floor seems alive, a moving and breathing creature, the tangled mess of limbs and unruly hair – something with a body and a beating heart.

Nothing of this is real, and I'm in another one of Harry's dreamscapes.

I come closer. There is something different about him tonight. Is it his glasses? His hair? No. His usual clothes are gone and instead he is wrapped in black from head to toe, and it looks awkward and bulky on his skinny form. His attire looks like a cassock or suspiciously like my own old teaching robes.

"What is the meaning of this?" I'm not amused at all by his mockery and I make sure that my tone shows it.

He shrugs. "M'just trying to understand." He slides a hand over the front of his new robes; the movement is as fumbling and uncertain as a worldly man trying to comprehend the ascetic vows of a priest.

"Understand what?"

"You. Thought this might help."

Is he still shocked by what he saw spying on my dreams? "I already told you, I wasn't thinking."

"No," he shakes his head, quick and emphatic. "That I understand just fine. It's what happened after. You were so . . . normal when you were my age. You smiled: a real smile, not like you do now. And you made mistakes like any of us. And you jumped over rose bushes and tripped over your feet. And now you're . . . you. What happened?"

"It's called aging. Be glad you never had to put up with it."

"Oi! Just that?" he looks up and narrows his eyes at me. "Funny, I don't see myself gaining a couple of decades and being a bitter bastard about it."

And then, as if to illustrate his point, Harry's face transforms in the light from the window, sudden and swift as an overdose of Aging Potion. The shadows and planes of his face become harsher, more prominent. Wrinkles fan out from the corners of his eyes and mouth and stretch across his forehead. His hair hangs limply around his aged face, with more than a trace of silver amid the black. He looks older than me now; only his eyes are the same, vivid despite his glasses. He smiles faintly. "S'just a face, see? Old, new, doesn't matter."

It doesn't suit him at all. "Whatever you were trying to prove with this charade, you've failed." I scowl. "Don't disfigure yourself like that again."

He sighs and discards this aged face for his usual features with one quick motion of his hand, like a glamour spell or a mask. "You always do this! For once, can't you say something like 'That's brilliant, Harry! Let's see another one.'?"

"Potter, this is absurd," I sneer, trying to ignore the disappointment written plainly on his face. It's just another one of his tricks, that's all. "At least make it believable," I grumble under my breath, trying not to make it sound so apologetic. "Your father had already begun to go bald at twenty. What makes you think genetics would've spared you?"

"You're just saying so 'cause he was a school bully and you hated him," he mutters as his hands lift to slick back his fringe. A second later he looks up at me with my own face, pressing his lips together in a thin line and mimicking my most irritated expression. "I know what you're doing. Stop avoiding the question! I still want to know what happened. I want to understand what made you this bitter."

It's disturbing to hear my own voice, to see my own double sitting in my chair: long limbs and sharp angles and dull black hair hanging down the sides of my face. Harry's mannerisms still remain in the subtle tilt of his head and the way he keeps trying to arrange his feet on the floor and stop his hands from moving restlessly about.

So he wants to figure me out. Perhaps he is especially bored tonight and I've presented a challenge. Or perhaps even – although I don't dare to hope – he really wants to understand me just as he claimed. It doesn't matter. It's only the past. When I was a boy I dreamed like a boy, but then I awoke from pretty dreams and grew up. These awakenings can be cruel sometimes; always they transform us beyond recognition.

"Roll up your left sleeve," I tell him quickly, before I change my mind. He does, displaying pale skin marked only by the pattern of veins and sinews beneath. It's just as I expected. Wordlessly I roll up my own sleeve to reveal my Dark Mark, faded but still visible, etched into my left forearm since I was eighteen. "You may keep trying to comprehend what changed me," I inform him gravely, "You may even think you understand. But you won't ever know." How can he? "You copied my external trivialities – my face, my voice, my build – well enough to do you credit for observation, but you didn't even remember the essential truths about me: that I was a Death Eater, that I will be Marked by that allegiance forever. I cannot allow myself the luxury of such forgetfulness."

He remains silent, staring at my exposed forearm and tracing the contours of a non-existent mark on his own.

"Let me know when you are tired of imitating me, yourself, but most of all that fraud Nymphadora Tonks. I'll be in the kitchen."

"No, wait, don't go!" he cries, with his own voice and his own face this time. "Here, you can have your chair back."

"That won't be necessary."

"Stubborn git!" He jumps up and motions at the empty seat. "Here!"

With a shake of my head I turn and walk to the bared window instead, crossing the creaky floorboards. My room is deceptively familiar, yet seeing the lack of curtains is as disorienting as seeing Harry's face stretch without warning into my own. Whatever reasons he had for creating this particular dreamscape, I don't like them already.

He stands behind my chair, arms crossed over the head rest, staring through the glass. Somewhere from the darkness below I hear a train whistle. Soon enough it comes rushing along the tracks with the usual racket and roar and passes at full speed, leaving us in silence once again.

"Funny, I used to think if people had magic they could make all their dreams come true," Harry says suddenly in that silence. "Then I came to Hogwarts and learned it wasn't that simple." He blinks and his face turns serious, thoughtful. "If you could have anything, what would you want?"

What wouldn't I want? "Reassurance, I suppose."

"Reassurance?"

"Yes. That at the very end I'll be able to forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

He remains silent for a while, as if trying to decipher my answer. "Like the Garden?"

Precisely, like the Garden. "Whatever happens to me tomorrow, I want to know that I'll find rest after it's all over. Certainty can be comforting."

"It doesn't seem very comforting to me," he frowns at my words. "Seems lonely."

Sometimes it is, but so is life. "What would you want?" I interrupt before Harry has a chance to expand on his words. I don't want to discuss my answer any further.

He blinks and furrows his eyebrows, considering the question. At last, just after I've concluded that he won't answer at all, he replies, and there's a pang of desperate sincerity in his voice. "A second chance. At life."

Life! Daydreaming fool! He shouldn't hold on to these false hopes. They will only hurt him when he finally realises they are impossible.

He doesn't give me a chance to say a word. "I know," he nods and smiles sadly. "It's OK. I know it won't ever happen, but that can't stop me from wanting it. I can't help it."

I don't have anything to say in return. I wish he were alive as well. I wish he had that second chance to live. But there isn't anything I can say or do that would help. I look around instead and narrow my eyes at the bare window. "Is there a reason why my curtains are missing?"

"Yeah. Look," Harry comes to stand next to me and waves at the view outside.

"Where?"

"Just look," he nods at the window. "Want to show you something. Look at the lights."

"Any in particular?"

"Just all of them, I s'pose. I watch them from the kitchen window a lot when you're asleep." Harry points at the glitter of lights to the left of us in the distance: highways and buildings and traffic lights in the busy part of the city where the people keep awake all through the night and the noise from the cars and the trains never dies down. I look to the right instead where the nearby building across the alley still has several dimly lit windows, glowing faint yellow against the black mass.

"S'a brilliant view, innit?" Harry slurs absently, with a pensive smile and a faraway look in his eyes. "Makes you think. Each light, each window's a home to someone. I can't even count all those little lights. And the people behind them: all living their own, different lives out there. Ever wondered what all those people're thinking or doing? What they're like?"

I never really cared about other people. I had enough of my own worries and I am perfectly content to shield myself from the world with my curtains. If some impressionable young fool somewhere in the city looked at my own window wondering what kind of person lives here, he'd see nothing but the dark, empty square. Candles do not put out much light and the curtains keep that light inside. And that's exactly the way I prefer it to be.

"S'all connected," Harry murmurs over my shoulder. "Places and people are alike, ever noticed that? Makes you wonder if people find just the right places for themselves wherever they go."

What? I turn my head slightly and catch a glimpse of messy hair and half-moon glasses shining right next to me in the dark. "You aren't making any sense."

"S'true! Weird sometimes, but true." he mumbles. "Think about it. Remember the wall mosaic at the tube station where Dumbledore was? Didn't it remind you of Fawkes, all yellow and red and with wings like a phoenix? That can't be just a coincidence. Out of all the walls in all the tube stations Dumbledore picked that one! It's like he knew it was the right place."

"Dumbledore has always been rather unconventional."

"It's not just him. Mrs. Weasley works in a pub that even smells like her kitchen at the Burrow and their flat building matches Ginny's hair. S'funny Ginny always said she didn't like Quidditch as much as she liked heights and now she lives on the very top. Or take Reading for example. Pepper Lane looks like one giant Greenhouse. Neville must feel right at home there and so would Hermione, so close to Uni. She always wanted to go to Uni after Hogwarts, even though there weren't any in Britain that taught magic."

"I imagine that no matter where we go, we'll always find something that fits some aspect of ourselves."

"I dunno," he shrugs. "Maybe I'm wrong, but don't you think it looks like there's something else behind it all? Some greater purpose?"

Harry is rambling without sense or reason, as usual, but I don't stop him. It's soothing to listen to him natter at times. The distant lights in the window and his calm voice, almost a whisper, remind me of another dream: the one with the boat sliding across the lake toward Hogwarts and a multitude of lights swirling above us.

"I always thought this place is a lot like you," Harry says.

Really? "In what way?"

"It's dark and plain," he waves his hands around with his usual energetic imprecision. "No pictures on the wall. Not even a knickknack on the table: nothing of yours. Take away your candles, books, and bottles and it'd look completely bare."

Harry is right, but I never felt a need to fill my home with unnecessary trinkets. He steps closer and leans against the windowsill, staring off to the distance with a faraway look.

"When I hear the trains sometimes I think you're just passing through. Resting here after a long journey and waiting for your train to arrive. And when it finally comes you'll leave and never come back. Is that why you picked this place?" he asks suddenly. "'Cause you want to leave it one day?"

Sometimes he worries too much. "No."

"Good! I wouldn't want you to leave." he nods, and adds hastily after a few seconds of silence "If you ever do, can I come with you?"

Persistent brat. "I'm not going anywhere."

"S'fine with me," he grins. "But still, can I?"

"You may." I should hope that he 'can' but that's not really the question, is it?

He mutters a soft "Thanks," behind my back: quiet but just as startling coming from him as his hand that comes to rest against my shoulder. His touch is warm, much warmer than the air in the room, and as obscurely comforting as his soft voice, and the dim memory of a dream: gentle fingertips brushing against my skin. For a long while we stand at the window, looking out into the night; both of us quiet, just resting within that subtle, shared solace.

"Tell me something. Anything," he murmurs out of the blue. "What were your parents like?"

It's not a question I've had to answer often in my life, so I dig through my memories for the appropriate answer for quite a while before I speak. "They married young, and it didn't work out." For many reasons, but mostly because a pureblood witch shouldn't ever marry a Muggle. "Mother insisted on cooking appalling dishes, and the only decent thing Father ever did for her was to disappear for days at a time."

"Tell me more," Harry urges. "What happened to them?"

There isn't much to tell. "Dead."

He flinches: I can feel it through the hand still resting on my shoulder. "Sorry."

"Don't be. It happened long before you were born."

He shuffles his feet awkwardly and stares into the dark alley below. Just when I think that he's finished his questioning, he asks another one. "Your mum, Eileen. Did you like her?"

Did I? "She was as good as any mother, I suppose. Not the doting sort, like Molly Weasley, but she was kind enough. She bought my first cauldron when I was eight." I stayed up that night, trying to figure out the right ratio of ingredients for something I was making at the time. I didn't have many supplies and whatever I did have I gathered on my own. I had to use the bathroom sink for the mixture, and was in too much of a hurry. The potion reacted badly and splattered everywhere: stained the tiles and melted a hole the size of a knut right through the bar of soap.

Harry probably isn't that interested in hearing my childhood memories but he acts as though he is, nodding with a slight smile at all the right places of my story. "She bought me a cauldron after that: 'big enough to hide under if things went wrong'. Father wasn't pleased." No, he wasn't happy at all with yet another reminder that I wasn't normal, just like my mother. I spare Harry that particular tale. "She would've liked you, I think," I say instead and watch the surprised grin that lights up his face.

"I thought that the old Wizarding families didn't like ghosts?"

"Not her. She was good friends with Myrtle Brown, all throughout school, even after the girl was killed." Pity I didn't know that until after I started teaching at Hogwarts, and Mum was long gone by then. There were so many things about her that I didn't learn until it was too late.

"Ah," he nods. "Sounds like she was all right."

Yes. If only I'd understood that earlier. "I hated her at times. She didn't approve of my friends or my pastimes. Lucius was the only exception to that. He was quite the charmer when he wanted to be."

"'Course!" Harry replies with a short and rather sarcastic chuckle.

"Yes." He was. "And you needn't quite act so amused at the concept that I was once young and not entirely friendless."

"What? Once? Is that what you think?" Harry raises his eyebrows and stares at me with a faint smirk twisting his mouth. "You're still young, and you've got friends! You do! I mean – I guess – not like Malfoy was." He pauses and then continues on a single breath. "But that too! If you ever want that. I'm sure you'll find someone who likes you."

What? He can't be serious. "Ha! Take a good look at me."

"I am looking at you," he declares, peering at me stubbornly through his glasses. "And I don't see any reason why not."

Foolish brat. Does he even comprehend what he's talking about? Does he have the faintest idea? "Can you see anything with these on?" His glasses are covered with specks of dust and grime and his own fingerprints. I pluck them off his face by the nosepiece and breathe on the lenses before wiping the fog away on my sleeve. As I do so, Harry blinks and keeps staring at me in a startled, nearly-blind way, looking completely flabbergasted at his world that just turned into blur. I don't feel quite so much on display now, with him unable to examine me through these lenses. Perhaps I should take them away from him more often.

I arch my eyebrow at his hopeless fumbling to find his glasses by feel, before I take pity and settle them carefully onto his face once again. "Better now?"

Even after Harry has his glasses back, he still gapes at me for a moment, as if I had removed his ability to speak as well as see. "I meant it!" he shakes his head at last and frowns. "Every word. And I mean, not just 'a friend who likes you', 'cause I like you, but the, uhm, the other kind . . ." he stammers and grows silent. "Oh, hell! I'm doing this all wrong."

He bites his lip and stares at me as if he's just discovered an entire book of riddles but he doesn't quite know which one to begin with. "Can I ask you something?" he murmurs.

"What?"

"Did . . . did Lucius ever do this?"

Do what? I draw breath to ask, but before I can do so, Harry leans in. His hair is so soft, just brushing against my face. He's closer than he's ever been to me, and before I can gather my scattered wits, he kisses me: a brief touch of lips, dry and warm, to the corner of my mouth.

If that touch was just slightly to the side it would be much easier to mistake it for innocent affection, for loneliness, for some spontaneous, unpredictable, and foolish gesture of his, like Harry rushing through me and out the door or Harry tipping the bottle of water over my hand or Harry, open-mouthed, catching the rain. I wish I could mistake it for something other than what it is. Only this isn't some foolish, spontaneous act to be done with and forgotten the next moment, not at all. I can tell by the way he stares at me, cautious and wary and determined and prepared: to lunge ahead and conquer another fortress like Lucius would've done, to ride this storm for all it's worth, incapable of leaving well enough alone. At least Lucius always thought his campaigns through before launching them, always planned them well in advance. Lucius knew exactly what he wanted and what he had to do to take possession of it. Harry, on the other hand, doesn't plan anything. Irrational fool, he simply jumps off the cliff without even considering how far he has to fall.

Did Lucius ever do this? This foolhardy, impossible thing? No. "Not like that."

I've never seen Harry's face so close before. Of course I must have, but I didn't really look and notice the bottle green in his eyes, the oval red imprints that his glasses left on the bridge of his nose, never felt his unruly mane bristling against my forehead and my hand: my traitorous hand, which rises of its own accord to cup the side of his face, my fingers brushing over his ear and slipping into his tangled hair. I want to pull that hand away, but he keeps my palm pressed against his jaw, clutching my wrist with a desperation that reminds me I'm the first person to touch him in years. He moves closer yet, so close that his features blur, so close that his next words are whispered against my cheek, and I feel them as much as hear them.

"Did anyone? Ever?"

I should look away; I should push him away but I can't; I'm frozen in shock, turmoil, bewilderment. I rummage through my scattered thoughts, desperate for just one scrap of rationality. But I can't think, not like this. Another second and I'll choke on the lack of air in my lungs. If his thumb pressed any harder on my wrist, he'd surely feel my pulse pounding in my veins with the hammering of my heart. Too fast, too fast! My face feels flushed, feverish. And Harry's eyes burn with the same sort of fever and determination. His fingers dig into the back of my neck and his mouth presses into mine, full force. Ohh! This is madness: a surge of warm, exhilarating brilliance everywhere but one point of contact: sanity, a brief taste of wet salt on his lips and it would be oh so easy to give in and hold onto it amid all the chaos.

But I can't. For both our sakes, I can't.

Carefully, slowly, I slide my hands up his forearms, grip his shoulders firmly and push him away: hold him at arms' length, hold him still. I inhale, frantic for air as a drowning man. But even the air smells like him.

"Lucius never kissed you like this." Harry whispers, gazing at me with all of his boldness and resolve right there in his eyes. He shouldn't have known that, not well enough to say it like this: a statement instead of a question.

At a loss, I fall back on familiar sarcasm; use it to try to restore the safe distance between us. "He never wanted to. And you don't want to either."

"You don't know!" He glares stubbornly. "Maybe I do."

'Maybe'? It's working. "No. You don't. You may think you do, you might even want me to think so, but you don't."

"Maybe this is exactly what I want."

"Potter." I want to push him away, I want to shake some sense into him but all can I do is stand there as my hands grip his shoulders, unable to move them an inch even if I wanted to, unable to let go although I should.

"Don't," he whispers. "I've been cold and alone in the dark for too long. I don't want to be, ever again. And you shouldn't be either!"

This has gone on long enough. I can almost see reason in his words. "Wake me up."

He shakes his head and his hands fly up grasping my forearms, holding on. "No! I'm not cold anymore and I don't want to lose that."

"End this dream this instant you stupid boy!" I shout. Ah, but that's the problem, isn't it? Harry isn't a boy any longer. Life would be so much simpler if I could take points from his House and assign detention and forget about the incident the next day. But he had to turn into an infuriating, impossible young man who rushes ahead without even thinking it through for one instant. Well it's about time to force him to think twice instead of acting without any consideration of the consequences. "End it. NOW!"

He jumps, startled, and releases my arms. But he doesn't take his eyes off mine, and a second later I'm backed against the window with his fingers on my mouth. "No. Just . . . shh. M'not a boy," he whispers, hurriedly, breathlessly, not looking a day over seventeen and hopelessly besotted, as seventeen-year-olds all too often are. "M'twenty-five. You said so. You did. And you said there's no reason I shouldn't do something if I want it badly enough. Remember?" Captivated, I feel his fingers tremble and slide down from my mouth to my chin to my throat; watch him lean closer, his eyes wild and his breath coming in short gasps. "I want this. Never realised before how much I want this."

One look into his eyes and I know at once that he won't listen, won't end this. He's too far gone, too caught up in this dream of his to change his mind. So I must wake up. I have to. It's my dream and I can control it and I will end it. It's only a dream; I am dreaming and Harry's eyes aren't green – not any more – and his hands aren't warm, and in reality my own eyes are closed and I can't see anything but the blackness behind my eyelids and Harry is unable to breathe or feel warm or touch anyone and I am not standing next to the bared window in my room and kissing Harry Potter, I am in my bed, asleep, and I need to wake up from this dream as soon as I can. I will, if I only make myself – force myself – to want it enough. I must wake up. I will!

---

For one blissful moment I don't remember my dream, and then the memories crash down on me like a wave, with a shock of bitter cold and the taste of salt.

"Potter!" I almost stride through his transparent form in the dark hallway on my way to the kitchen. "What the hell was that?"

He recoils from the candlelight, wide-eyed and terrified. "Nothing! I don't know what I was thinking. Forget it!"

"We can't just ignore this."

"And why not?" he sneers, turning away. "It's over. It's just a dream."

If only it were as easy as that. "Stop and listen, you stubborn brat. Just listen for once!" My cry manages to stop Harry in his tracks. Frantically I search my mind for something to say that might force him to see reason. "I am forty-five."

He narrows his eyes and presses his lips together into a thin, stubborn line in a centuries-old act of defiance. "And I'm dead. What's it matter anyway?"

"Ah. Of course! I'm forty-five and you're dead and it's nothing of importance. Wake up, you fool!"

"Why should I wake up? That's what you do."

"Potter, this isn't some joke!"

"I'm NOT joking!" he shouts and his eyes are vivid and brittle, like chips of ice. I haven't seen Harry like this since the first time he showed up in my flat, desperate for someone to set the world back the way he wanted it to be. Just as before, I trap him beneath a silent glare, an eloquent and effective reply to such an outburst, on and on until he runs out of steam and the determination fades from his face and he breaks and looks down at last. I turn on my heel then, with the full intention of leaving him alone until he's had time to reconsider and think it through with a clear mind.

"Wait! Hear me out first. Please." He looks up at me and his fingers start tracing over the series of faint white scars on the back of his hand. The scars look a bit like a line of faded handwriting and his index finger shapes the letters over and over. "I know I'm a nuisance at times. And I know that half the time I'm no use to you. And I wish things were different, I wish I could offer more than . . . this. But if you'll let me, I promise, I'll be there for you every night. Every dream."

Naïve, innocent fool! It's just as I feared. "Potter . . ."

"No. Listen!" he interrupts, his expression growing more agitated and desperate by the second. "I've never . . . I haven't got a clue what to do half the time, but I want this. With you. I know it isn't much but it's all I have to give."

I may have a way of dealing with his outbursts and his temper, but I still haven't found a way of responding to his honesty. What can I do when he acts so ridiculously sincere? When did this urge to believe what he believes change from mere habit into compulsion? No matter how convincing, how tempting his offer is, I cannot give in. It's only dreams: he said so himself. And I mustn't, I cannot place my hope in dreams. I just wish that he didn't have to make this so damned difficult for me. It's more than difficult enough. "It's my fault." I sigh, "I should have never let this get so far."

"It's not your fault!" he cries, "How could you have known? Did you? I didn't even realise it until now."

"I should've realised it much sooner." I must've been blind not to. "This can't continue."

"What?" he looks up in shock. "How can you say that? You haven't even tried."

"This cannot amount to anything good." He must understand this! How can he not see?

Exhausted from thinking, from countless attempts at rationalising and classifying the events of last night, I collapse: my back against the wall, my fingers on the bridge of my nose. The mere sight of him stirs more confusion than my mind is prepared to deal with, so I shut my eyes and comb through my disturbed thoughts for the right thing to say. I must stay calm. I must retain my sanity. Just another deep breath and I'll be ready. I must get this over with.

"You probably think of me as terminally repressed – oh don't bother to deny it!" I scowl in irritable dismissal of his attempt to dispute my words, "The fact is, I'm rather bad at resisting temptation, and one way or another I always end up paying a heavy price after I give in." The fingers of my right hand automatically find the place on my left arm just below the elbow and clench tightly, just as they did countless times during the Summons. "I've let my heart rule my head precisely once before in my life, and I've spent most of my life enslaved to two masters, in an attempt to atone for that mistake."

"A mistake?" Harry cries. "Is that what you think this is? I might've been stupid or rash but this wasn't a bloody mistake to me!"

What else can it ever be but that? "Think about it. Just think. What happens if you get exactly what you wish? If we become ...close... in dreams?" If I love it? "I will start to live for the time I spend asleep. And I may not be able to mix a potion any more, but Muggles have managed to make their own versions of the Draught of Living Death. The Muggle potions are not difficult to obtain, and addictive."

"Then all I've got to do is not let you," he says, desperate and sincere and hopeful. "This can work. It has to. I want this to work."

Oh, but it can't. And I have to stop him: stop him from hoping, from fantasizing, stop him from convincing himself over and over that this might ever be real. I cannot let him make the same mistake I've already made. "Sometimes we can't have the things that we want. This is one of them."

Harry stares past me into the night. "Y'know," he says softly, "I couldn't ever have anything I wanted: my parents, my childhood, a normal life. And now nearly everyone I know is dead or doesn't care and I don't have any life at all." His gaze rests on me, thoughtful and sad, and his mouth curves into a soft smile. "Except when I'm with you, and then I feel normal. I feel good. So how can it be a mistake? I want this – and I know you do too. Don't even try to argue! Things can't get much worse for us than they already have."

"Oh, but they can. And I will not let them."

"So you'd rather give up?"

"Yes." If that's what he wishes to call it, then I will give up. "You may think that I'm heartless, but if I've learned nothing else from a life of servitude, I've learned one very hard lesson: nothing good can come of the heart overruling the head!" The heart is the most eloquent of liars; it only tells us what we wish to hear, it stops us from facing harsh reality until it's too late. He mustn't rely on it for guidance.

Harry draws his eyebrows together and looks up at me: as if I've given him another riddle too difficult to solve. "What else can you trust then," he asks, incredulous, "if not that?"

"You," I murmur. And I might just be as much of a fool as Harry, for placing my trust in him so unwisely and for admitting it.

"What?" he blinks.

"I trust you," I repeat. "It doesn't happen effortlessly, or often." So please don't let it be another mistake. "I trust you to respect my wishes and my privacy. And if you give me your word, I will trust that too."

"So do I," he nods. "But what's it . . ."

"I need you to promise me," I project all the gravity of the situation into my voice, "I need you to stay out of my dreams."

"WHAT?" he cries. "You can't be serious!"

I am. I have to be. "Give me your word. No more dreams."

"Don't do this!"

"Promise me, Harry!" His eyes widen: oh, I said 'Harry', didn't I? Too late now. "This might not be much of a life, but it's real, and it's mine. Do you want me to throw it away for dreams?"

He freezes, stunned, as if my point has finally sunk in; the moment lasts long enough for the echoes of my voice to fade. Then his expression sharpens and he narrows his eyes, as if he's noticed something important that I've missed in the silence between us. "Don't ask me to make a promise I'll have to break."

I stare at him: his transparent features rendered even paler by the dull light of the early dawn. His shoulders tense with unspoken defiance; his mouth twists in a thin, resolute line. "Then I was wrong," I reply without hiding the disappointment in my voice, "when I thought you were a man of your word."

Harry's own disappointment is clear when he finds his voice at last. "Looks like we were both wrong," he says, grim and quiet, as he fades into nothing. A second later I am left wondering whether he was there at all.

---

I'm a right idiot. The biggest idiot in the whole bloody universe! What was I thinking? What did I do? Oh, sod it. What am I going to do?

I'm insane. That's it! Absolutely bloody mental! A normal person would never do this, but normal people can't see Snape's dreams, and they don't know how it was to see him with Malfoy and want to punch a wall, or punch that arrogant blond prick. …OK, so normal people would want to punch Malfoy, but they wouldn't go and snog a bloke who used to be their teacher, and they certainly wouldn't go round afterwards promising bloody stupid things like dreams! Honestly, what did I expect?

But it just happened. Snape was there. And I was. And it was brilliant to have him listen for once and simply talk, and then he said this thing about being friendless and I thought that for a bloke his age he's really rather fun to be around, and that he was wrong about being an ugly bastard no one'd take a second look at. He isn't that bad! They'd at least look at him, and run later when they saw him in a temper. But, anyway. He was there, and I was there. And I said that thing about Malfoy and how someone would like him and how that wasn't the same way I liked him and it didn't seem right, and that made me think and it was too complicated to work out in my head and even more complicated to try and explain and then he took my glasses off and cleaned them and I couldn't really see but I couldn't look away either and I really wanted to ask him something and then . . . Oh, bloody hell!

Why do I always do stupid things when I'm confused? No. NO! I'm going to talk myself into regretting this. I don't! It's not my fault. What was I supposed to do after he reached out and touched my face like that? It's his fault: for being there, for breathing on my glasses, for kissing back, for being the only person who makes me feel alive. It's all his fault. All his bloody fault. For being so different from anyone else and for not giving in and for always expecting too much of me and for making it impossible to like him and for making me like him anyway.

Sodding bastard! He's brilliant like Hermione but sometimes he doesn't see obvious things like Ron. He touched me and it was so soft and so tender it hurt, and I had to press his hand harder into my skin so I could feel more of him 'cause it was years since that ever happened, and gentle was the last thing I wanted him to be but he was and I hate him for that! I hate him for kissing back and then staring at me afterwards like I'd punched him right in the face. I hate his warm energy and his cold words; I hate him for not saying my name sooner and for saying it when he did. I hate him for being so bloody right all the time and I hate him for making me hate him all over again.

If it was anyone else, I would've left by now, but there's something about Snape that makes me push back and keep on pushing 'till I can't think, 'till there's no hope left. And there still is; I know it. He didn't mean what he said. He couldn't've! Even though his flat turned cold since he woke up – bloody freezing like ice water dumped over my head – but when he said my name – 'Harry', not 'Potter'! – it was as warm as ever; just for a moment. I don't think he even realised he let his feelings show like that, but now I'm sure they're still there, and if I reach out to him I can almost feel that warmth again, and until I know it's gone for good, I'm not leaving him and I'm not giving up.

'Cause I can't give up on him. If I do, who's going to make sure he doesn't fuck up his life completely? And who's going to help him get magic back? Nobody. Nobody but me.

---

Harry said that it was warm in my flat. I wonder if he still thinks so after tonight. Perhaps he's already changed his mind. Because it wasn't warmth he felt but something else, something I felt as well coming from him, something I would have tried to conceal, had I a better grasp of the situation.

I've made a mistake.

I should have never asked him to stay. I should have hidden the fact that I've grown attached to him. I should have buried it deep and refused to bring it up, should have somehow made it impossible to sense as easily as heat.

But I did and now, by that accident, we are at the beginning of something, and as with all beginnings, I'm very tempted to go down that road, to take it slowly, carefully and see where this particular beginning might lead.

I should have seen this for what it was from the start.

Step by step, we've been learning to get along, and by complete accident we've been getting it right over and over. I feel as though all I've been doing is tracing and retracing a scant handful of letters on a page, memorising their loops and curves, and I'm only at 'C's and there's so much to this alphabet that I haven't learned yet: so many things to learn about Harry. He and I have been going around in circles, drifting down the slow current of his dreamscapes, like the boat sliding across the lake and toward the distant castle. And among all those games and innocent pranks and colourful make-believe, we've been getting dangerously close to the line I don't dare to cross, not anymore, not with anyone, and especially not with him.

It seems that dreams have once again tried to take over my life. I should have recognised it sooner. I should have prevented this.

Attachment and affection, as innocent and simple as they seem, aren't harmless. They can be used for someone's cruel purpose, created only to be abused and destroyed, manipulated and broken. That's one lesson that I've been taught well in my life: by my parents, by Lucius, by Dumbledore. It was perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. Caring for someone is a weakness. It leaves us defenceless when others – simply by the rules of human nature – do what they are capable of doing so well: deceiving, betraying and killing. The only chance to avoid being caught in this snare of human emotions is to severe all ties in the beginning, before one is drawn too deep to stand a chance of escape.

I cannot allow myself to believe that Harry is my second chance to find what I'd hoped to find in Lucius. I won't let him become my life-long addiction. I cannot be selfish and I won't allow myself to sink into this madness any deeper. I will not make the same mistake twice; I will not allow him to make the mistakes I've already made.

I will not do to him what Lucius did to me: allow him to follow me from day to day waiting for a miracle that will never happen; I can't let him retain hope. I will not have him chasing dreams for years, only to be left at the end with a stench of ash in his lungs and nothing but memories and loss.

Harry once said it was warm in my flat. I hope he can't feel it any longer, for both of our sakes. He does not need this; he deserves much better than this. Harry mustn't ever become like me.

---

I take my eyes off the bottle I've set on the kitchen table. Too long – for the past hour or more – I've been staring at the black bishop stoppering its neck. 'Do not get too attached to spirits, my boy.' But I did; I am. This particular one, in any case. It's ironic that after all these years Dumbledore still hasn't lost his prophetic sight. The old bugger's proven me wrong after all.

"Good morning."

There's no need to turn around. I know exactly who it is: I'd recognise his voice anywhere. "It's two-thirty in the afternoon," I mutter, in case he still doubts that he was heard, even after the way my shoulders tensed and my fingers clenched around the edge of the table.

"Good afternoon then," he parries rather viciously, and I am sure that if he had it his way my 'good' afternoon would be much worse than it already is.

"I thought you'd gone." He still might leave, but I won't ever ask him about it.

"M'not going anywhere. Not when I've still got things to do here. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

He circles round until he's standing before me, stubbornly refusing to let me look away as he says hotly, "Listen, you bastard. I'm going to stay around and make damn sure you don't throw away the rest of your life like you said. 'Cause if I have to give up something like this," a pang of loss flashes in his eyes before he resumes his determined look, "I'm going to bloody well make sure the sacrifice is worth it." He scowls at the bottle on the table. "From the look of things, you don't even need my dreams to waste your life, 'cause you're already doing a brilliant job of wasting it yourself. You owe it to me. A life debt, right? Every time you stuff up your life, every time you back away from things and won't let yourself live your life and enjoy it, just remember, you owe me to get it right, 'cause I'm not going to promise anything until I make sure of that."

All I can do is stare at him, thunderstruck. Just when I think I've finally figured him out…

"Come on," he coaxes, "eat something, drink your coffee. And put away that bloody bottle! We've got people to talk to and places to go. In case you forgot, magic is back and we've got to figure out how to make it work."

Notes:

The excerpts Snape reads to Harry are from Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde.

Harry's dreamscape scene is inspired by Angel by Sarah McLachlan.

Spend all your time waiting for that second chance,
For a break that would make it okay.
There's always some reason to feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day.
I need some distraction, oh beautiful release.
Let me be empty and weightless
And maybe I'll find some peace tonight.

The title of the chapter is borrowed from A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe.

You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.