Part 2:

The Dream Walker

Chapter 11:

'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.'

-'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost

2000

Memory is a strange thing, Draco wrote as he put his quill to parchment. His evening had been full of false starts and crossed out beginnings, but with that one line, the words began to flow. The quiet played a balancing act with the far-off, rising roar in his mind. There was a kind of serenity to this that he hadn't expected. It made everything recede to the background, the crackle of the hearth and the scratching of his quill distant things. By candlelight, the words seemed to have a life of their own. He started sentences that formed as he wrote them.

It has the tendency to make us obsess over our darkest moments. Its whispering refrain of past mistakes and guilt is a well-worn friend. I know I dwell more than I should on those memories, the scuffed shame and its ringing litany in my ears. But it's time to put a finger to its lips. I can't go on overlooking the price of sitting still, ignoring the weight. I can't let those memories be side-lined anymore. They shaped me just as much.

And if I don't watch myself, this burden will become my son's. That's reason enough to change.

So I write, because it's the only way I can do our story justice, Albus. This way, I can keep you safe.

It begins with a shadow, cast by greater men than I.

As a child, it had yet to settle on me but I could feel it coming. I knew it in my heart like I knew clouds meant rain. But I was young enough that life happened in the moment and not in what-ifs.

I had no reason then to think of myself as different. My mother saw to it that it was so. Sometimes I find myself wondering, when I've a child of my own, whether she had the right of it or not. It gets harder to remember the details. Maybe they could've given me the answers and allowed my adult mind a chance to see what a child's couldn't.

It makes me weary, thinking like that though. Because it's a trap I fall into every time. I won't ever know if my mother knew how much I needed her that day she let go. If she had, I like to think that perhaps she would've done differently, fought harder. Her husband's orders be damned.

When I think of my mother, I prefer my earliest memories of her. It had been a mid-morning ritual to sit on her lap while she drank tea in her parlour. It was there that I told her about my dreams. They were 'pictures in my head' then because I didn't have all the right words yet. The memories are light, broken up into bits and pieces: mother laughing softly, playing with my hands, inviting me with solemn nods and smiling eyes to continue my retelling. And when the dreams became nightmares, as they sometimes did, my mother was there to hold me close, my head on her shoulder, a hand running up and down my back.

The nightmares would be replaced with the warmth of sunlight shining through big bay windows, the smell of mother's perfume and lullaby murmurings that were the closest she came to singing.

And then the shadow moved one day and I remember my father standing by the doorway with dark, inscrutable eyes. The noose was drawn by his hand, though he didn't see it that way. He slipped it over my head with an immovable 'no', mistaking the effects of its tightening as success, the air, the fight leaving me in a terrified rush.

The years passed and I became colder, prouder in the shadow of my father. I didn't knock on mother's parlour door anymore: what was once a sanctuary became a shameful secret. That room reminded me of moments of weakness of a kind that I could no longer allow myself. There were certain standards to be maintained as heir, of course. And father was always there, watching, measuring me up against the heights of our House.

Part of me withered in that shadow, as the days didn't change and fell on one another like autumn leaves. The anger made it easy to assure myself that it'd been implicit in the way I had sought mother out day after day as a child that I never forgot what I dreamt. My days were branded with the chaos of dreams uncontrolled and disturbing. But I soon learned that silence has its place and it wasn't meant for the space between my mother and I.

I was a coward, hoping that she would offer comfort without being asked.

The dreams and nightmares stayed and grew, went wild in the search for light. There was no respite in sleep. The lines blurred between waking and dreaming until I didn't know which one was which. It was a time in my life that didn't feel real, like it was one long nightmare I couldn't surface from. Dream or not, I faced everything with the same ferocity that I'd set aside for my waking hours. It was my way of surviving.

I carried on. I dismissed my dreams as irrelevant as my father told me to. I wiped away the tears.

I was a Malfoy, after all.

But it took one night and a stranger to change everything. A tectonic shift that sent earthquakes rumbling throughout my life, taking years to subside. What was left was a world remade.

xXx

1991

They were staring. They always stared.

Down from their places upon the walls with eyes that weren't kind. They were painted eyes within moving portraits to be sure, but his racing heart and the pounding blood in his ears would not listen to reason.

He ran, barefoot on the marble floor, panting, gasping to keep back the tears. The fear was like a bear trap around his throat. The hallway stretched out long and dark before him and had a feeling of forever about it. He knew what would happen next because it always ended up this way, but he couldn't help the violent trembling of his hands, his legs, the wide-eyed shiver up his spine. There was a noise – a burst – and the surfaces of the portraits broke. There was an instant of light, an explosion of sound, a sickening twist in his gut.

He was on his knees and he didn't know how he had gotten there. He scrambled backwards, anywhere to be away from the ghosts pulling themselves out of their portraits with sharp wailing gasps. They were wrong. He couldn't recognise any of them. They didn't share their likeness with the austere faces who watched him with every step he took through the Manor from their frames up on high. All his childhood his ancestors had looked down and found him lacking.

He didn't know what he'd done to garner their contempt. He never knew.

He let out the strangled breath that'd been stuck in his throat. They shouldn't be able to hurt him. They were just ghosts. But the sight of their half-faces, rotted to the bone, full of an eerie fluorescent glow, stoked a frantic terror instead. Did it always have to end this way? His knees against his chest. His head between them. Scrambling hands covering ears. Mindless. Alone.

There were whispers upon whispers that built up to a din. All he heard was a muffled roar through his hands. They were circling, crowding closer until all he could see was them. He bit his lip hard enough to hurt. He couldn't let the scream boiling in his chest out.

Then there was silence.

It was as if time had stopped for everything but him.

This has never happened before, he thought, not quite letting himself dare to hope.

A shaking rush went down his spine and there was a sparking warmth in his eyes before the tears. Draco looked up to see a little boy standing in front of him. He furiously rubbed his eyes clear, uncertain under that wide brown-eyed stare. There was something about him that made him think of the cherub murals at home. They had the same freckles scattered across nose and cheek. The boy looked no more than five or six, reminding Draco of Potter with that black, unruly hair.

With that thought, he felt a weight settle on him. He tried to dismiss it but couldn't. He had failed. The one simple task his father set him and he had failed. He'd been left standing in that train compartment like a fool, hand out, disbelieving, his offer disdained. He was found lacking again. The anger had been a swift comfort, displacing everything else. It hadn't let him crumble.

But how could he face his father after this? Why couldn't have Potter just taken his hand?

'I could hear you,' the boy said softly.

It was stupid and obvious but still he retorted, 'I didn't make a sound.'

'You don't always need a voice to be heard.'

Draco frowned. He tried to muster up a response, but there was something in the corner of his eye. Something he'd never noticed before. The edges of this place blurred, ebbed like they were made from living shadows lying in wait. A thought struck him like lightning.

This isn't real. I'm dreaming.

The certainty of this reality that had gripped him slipped away like drinking something cool and sweet, lingering on the tongue, a gliding cold in the chest. The boy reached out and stroked the head of a ghost, thoughtful and gentle, before turning to stare down the hallway with an unreadable expression.

'There are others coming. You're not safe here,' the boy said, offering him a hand. 'Come with me.'

When Draco's frown deepened into a scowl at the gesture, the boy grabbed his hand anyway and tugged him off the floor with surprising strength. A golden glow enveloped the boy and it trickled like streams of water down Draco's arm until it covered him too. And then they were off, sprinting down the hallway, grabbing shadows chasing at their heels.

It took a blink and the hallway was gone. Draco lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the sudden light. He heard a crack underfoot and paled when he saw the narrow bridge they were running on, its base swaying dangerously with the wind and disappearing into the clouds down below. The sky was impossibly blue all around them. An involuntary glance behind them made Draco gape. The shadows had followed them right here. They dashed along the planks, clawing their way up the beams, colouring the clouds black below, moving closer like a great, terrible wave.

The boy reached out before them with his free hand and seemed to find purchase in the air. Draco heard the tear and felt the force of its rupture just before they jumped. They landed on wet earth, the humidity hitting them like a wall, but the boy pushed on regardless. Ducking under branches and hanging vines, their path became paved, their turns too regular for it to be natural. The further they went, the surer he was that they were in a labyrinth. There was no uncertainty in the boy's decisions, but Draco still found he feared them lost. The shadows were welling up from the cracks between the flagstones, slipping out from beneath root and undergrowth, sucking the colour from everything they touched.

Pausing for a second, the boy let go and shoved Draco, his momentum making his careen forward. He fell on his shoulder and rolled on hard earth, kicking up red dust in his wake. Just as he got to his feet, the boy was there again to take his hand and drag him back into a run. A broken plain of a dying world spread out before them, the skeletons of a lost civilisation buried under red sand. Mountains yawned around them, melted and cracked, silhouetted by two blood red suns on the stormy horizon. The shadows were getting closer and closer with every second, swallowing the world behind them.

From one step to the next, they entered a dark place where the light was dim and warm as if a fire were casting it. The boy skidded to a stop, moving a step aside so Draco wouldn't barrel into him. Red-faced and panting, Draco sat down and put his head between his knees, closing his eyes as he did so. The demand for answers was on the tip of his tongue, but first he needed to catch his breath to ask them.

Instead, he heard a long suffering voice say, 'Oh, Albus, what have you found this time?'

A woman came out of the gloom. What struck him first was that she was the loveliest thing he'd ever seen. She stood tall above them, hair falling in waves and ending in dark ringlets, a stark contrast to luminous paleness of her skin. It was like she was lit from within. It was an alien kind of beauty the boy shared little of, but it was there in him all the same. Behind her, two men appeared and went to her side, their expressions shadowed and unwelcome.

'We have to help him. He's a Dream Walker, Momma. They'll tear him apart,' the boy said, taking a step forward with hands reaching for them.

The woman's eyes were almost black but she had the warmest gaze out of all of them. She knelt down and took Albus in her arms, whispering something to him with their faces close. Draco stared at the men, marvelling at their strangeness: their skin silver as if they were made of living metal, their swirling darkening eyes and those see-through areas at the neck, wrist and temple where layers of blue-black veins lay just beneath the surface. But he didn't like the suspicion with which they looked at him. The boy only barely resembled them, indeed, he seemed to be made up of their most human parts.

'That's not true! He's not him,' Albus said all of a sudden, not caring to whisper. 'And even if he is, he doesn't deserve to die.' He scrambled out of his mother's arms, her expression troubled and hurt, to go stand at Draco's side. He glanced between Albus and his parents, wondering what in Merlin's name he had done to deserve this from a stranger: a trusting hand and a ready defence.

'He's like me,' Albus stated fiercely.

'No one's like you, darling,' the woman said patiently, sadly. The boy looked lost at that, and it was then that the dark-haired man seemed to take pity on him. He crouched down in front of Albus and stared at him with old and ponderous eyes. There was no mistaking the love in them though. It made Draco ache deep in his chest.

'Papa. . .' Albus said quietly. 'You know he doesn't deserve to die.'

'I know,' the man replied just as solemnly. 'No child deserves that. We'll help him, but you must promise not to see him again, all right?'

'No.'

'Albus,' the man cut in, a clear note of warning in his tone.

'No,' Albus repeated. 'Your reasons are irrational and you know that, Papa.'

Draco tried to imagine how his own father would respond to such insolence and shivered. He watched as the man simply sighed and placed a kiss on Albus' forehead. 'Maybe they are, Al, but you can forgive an old worrywart like me for that, right?'

Albus nodded, his eyes still wide and worried. The man gave him a small smile and ruffled his hair. He stood up and lifted his hand, palm first, in one movement. A ball of light grew in his hand and Draco felt himself being lifted, hooked up by the chest. Frantically he looked down and saw a matching light there, pulsing with his racing heartbeat. Draco leant back but all that did was make him flop backwards and spin, his centre of gravity shifted to the light. The dark-haired man righted Draco with an unimpressed click of his fingers.

'What are you doing?!' Draco spluttered, the blood in his face leaving in a flood.

'Saving you.'

'Why?' he found himself asking faintly.

'Ask my son that.'