What Else Can We Do?

Part 2:

The Dream Walker

Chapter 19:

'Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.'

-'Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold

2000

How shall I begin?

It has been the question on my mind for some time now. How do you even start to explain being reborn, experiencing a fundamental shift in thinking, in feeling, in simply being?

After much agonising, I came to the conclusion that you cannot explain it. You can only try, stumbling all the way. You'll end up meandering across lengthy descriptions that only make real sense to you. You can only hope someone will understand some measure of what you're trying to convey. And above all, you must ignore the inevitable feeling of isolation that comes with such an act because in truth there is no one else who has experienced the same. I've wandered the Dreaming enough to know that. So bear with me as I ramble, for it's the only way I know how to say this:

There are moments in your life when everything changes.

They seem so obvious in retrospect. And that is the danger, the trap we all fall for. You think less of your past self for not realising the importance of those moments sooner. One day, you'll decide that can pin it down to a very second, think to yourself 'oh, yes' and sit back with a nod because you've figured it out. There is comfort in knowing the cause of things. But you don't know it when it happens. You're too much in the moment. Standing back and realising that everything would change, that you would never be the same again, is impossible.

But I wonder sometimes . . . if we purposely shy away from the horror of overthinking without knowing it. Certainly, it seemed natural to me. There is enough horror in the moment itself. I guess some would call it cowardice, letting fear rule you like that, but I think it takes a different kind of courage to live a terrible moment fully, to do what needs to be done before you can fall apart, face what've you lost and let your heart break. It takes strength to not grieve before the deed is done.

I wish I had that kind of strength.

xXx

1996

Draco felt his mouth stretch wide, the skin pulled taut, jaw muscles locking. He was screaming – somewhere out there his body was screaming – while his mind couldn't. There simply wasn't enough time. Too much. It was too much. His legs nearly gave out, buckling once, twice. He grabbed at Brand's hand on his chest, but it wouldn't budge. A mind wasn't made to hold this much. It'd break. It'd –

There was weightlessness. Then something grabbed him whole. He fell through the dark like a bullet, like an asteroid meeting the atmosphere, ripping apart his Occlumency shields upon impact, one by one. He was burning but the fire was under his skin. Scrambling hands and nails scratched everywhere as the glow flickered and spread, his veins backlit, his organs dark shapes, the heart beating too fast beneath his ribcage. Shock made his back arch, his body rigid, but not here, not in his mind – he'd never been aware of his physical body before while in the Dreaming, but he was now. His mindscape unravelled, was remade and he could only watch as years of work were destroyed in a matter of seconds. What had been the point? Why did they teach him only to do this? Grief seared him, and there was anger like he'd never known. The fall slowed as he was pulled into orbit of a blinding white sun. Claws of light pierced it, tugging it apart until it split, rumbling, cracking, crumbling as if there were an earthquake beneath its surface. Silvery fire burst out, escaping in great torrents. Clouds of smoke overtook him, flattening the world like fog.

That's my core!

Coldness spread from his chest as shivering wracked him, leaving his limbs weak, useless. There was a growing roar, a screech that went on and on, rattling his soul, scattering thoughts, stirring a mindless rage that hissed and boiled under his skin. He curled into a ball, covering his ears, eyes shut tight. He could feel it. Feel it all. This couldn't go on. Red was right – he couldn't do this. He was just a child. One that wouldn't survive this. What had he been thinking? He'd -

Small hands pried his own from his ears. Hands that held his tightly. Draco opened his eyes and there was Albus with wide frantic eyes. The boy squeezed his hand once, hard enough to hurt, then in that moment when all sound died, as time slowed, Al's arm darted out to pull Draco against him, head to chest.

Afterwards, he'd remember the sound of Al's hammering heart more that sharp intake of breath he took just before the explosion, the blinding light, the feeling of deepness that settled at the back of his mind. There was a profound, terrifying emptiness before it all poured in. Albus was gone, his yell of fury echoing, ricocheting everywhere like machine gun fire. Draco reached out to find him, never wanting to hear that sound from him again, but Red, Light and Brand stood in his place. Draco stared back at them. He was broken, beyond fixing, but he trusted them – damn it, he trusted them even after what they'd done. They'd known it would be like this and yet they still let him go through with it.

There's no one else.

He remembered those words, how they had chilled him to the bone. Draco nodded, not breaking eye contact, ignoring every part of him that screamed no. Brand turned, hand held aloft. He'd never seemed so alien, so far away. I'm a thing to them, a means to an end, his fear whispered. What could he say to contradict that? What proof did he have besides what he thought he knew?

Lightning shot out of the ruin of his core in a blur, crystallising solid, dispersing the smoke, leaving to disappear into the dark. A storm of magic surged through him, billowing up from below, and as the clouds swallowed the remains of his core, took the jagged arms of glowing crystal from sight, there was a second where he was gone and they were him.

Or were they gone and he was them?

It receded just as quickly as it came. He stumbled backwards, head in his hands, stunned. It was all there though, pressing against him from all sides, the weight of four minds becoming one. Draco could feel the memories bearing in on him, a blur of information not yet processed, eager to pounce like a predator in wait. What felt like a rope slipped over his head and tightened around his neck. He lurched upwards, the air leaving him in a rush, the pain daggering down his spine and up into his skull agonisingly.

He woke with a strangled gasp. There was panic - blind panic that only pain can muster - before his eyes adjusted to the dark. The first thing he registered was an orange-red glow shining through material, and he realised piece by piece that it was from the coals burning in the heater. It settled on him, familiar, comforting. He was in his dormitory, the curtains of his four-poster bed drawn closed like always, a silencing charm slipping over them as glossy sheen. The scar on his chest was open again, bleeding black and red blood. With shaking hands and a whisper, he managed a healing spell, but the wound refused to close. Draco wrapped his chest with strips of torn bed sheets, numb, head heavy, body small and far away.

He left the room like a ghost, pale and silent, passing the beds, leaving behind the soft snores, the humming presence of dreaming minds, all the while shrugging on a robe over his pyjamas and slipping on his school shoes. The Slytherin Common Room was empty except for a seventh year sitting by the fire, who frowned at Draco before shaking his head disapprovingly and going back to his homework.

There was a sensation of sliding, of settling further into himself. His body moved. He went up, out of the dungeons, scaling flights of stairs, trailing fingertips on the railings, the moon lighting the way. Somewhere inside, he felt like he'd finally come home. And with it came a bittersweet ache, a gust of yearning that nearly brought tears to his eyes. He frowned, because Hogwarts had never been that to him. Wherever Albus went was home. He'd known that for a long time now. The feeling stayed all the same, but it was wrong, not his. Just as he reached the top of a stair, he gasped, grabbing at his head, almost stumbling on the spot. When he felt as if he were about to fall, he groped in the dark and found a wall, using it to hold himself up.

You travelled back in time.

Yes, their voices answered, blending into one.

As he stood there, trying to slow his breathing, to control it, more memories erupted unbidden to the surface, electrifying his nerve endings, leaving them raw. Another life, another Draco flashed before his mind's eye. Did he have it in him to be that cruel? He hadn't believed it until now. Why was that Draco – that boy he could've easily been – like that? He seemed so . . . lonely. Angry. Why? He had his father still. There were friends in those memories too. His mother could smile. Merlin, he hadn't seen her smile like that in years.

Why?

It was a loneliness of his own making. You aren't him, Draco. You've lived too much of a different life to be him.

Their words were a balm. It made sense now why they'd been so wary of him at first, all those years ago, not wanting Albus to befriend him. They'd only known me as a coward, he thought grimly. Still, he envied that Draco for all that had still. He pushed himself off the wall, then made his way down the hall, heading for the girls' bathroom. A ghost wailed when she saw him enter, flitting into a stall and darting into a toilet by the sounds of it. Draco didn't go check, but he did stare at the water that began to flood the room. Hadn't the girls called her Moaning Myrtle? A strangled hissing left his mouth, startling him. It left his throat dry and aching, unable to shake the feeling of wrongness. Parseltongue . . . It had sounded like that, but it couldn't be.

Why not?

Draco shied away from the question with all his being, from what that hiss reminded him of: red eyes, a spell, then pain. Pain no nightmare could've prepared him for. He would've welcomed the shadow nightmares instead of it.

The sink split, rumbling as it slid open to reveal a tunnel. A stone spiral stairway rose up out of the darkness before slotting into place with a groan. Draco hid his nose and mouth in the crook of his elbow to escape the dust, the foul combination of must and stagnant water that came up with it.

'Lumos,' he murmured, holding his wand high.

He walked down into the gloom, aware of what he was doing but knowing there was no conscious decision to do so, unable to shake the feeling of being a puppet on a string. The steps seemed endless, the reach of his wand-lighting charm not nearly far enough for comfort. At the bottom, something crunched under his shoe and he swung his wand down to see bones littering the ground, tiny brittle things bleached of colour, sinking into mud underfoot. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, then let it out.

So this was the Chamber of Secrets. He'd heard the tales of the monster in its depths, and those ridiculous rumours of its demise at Potter's hands in their second year. His father's hushed warnings rang in his ears. He remembered staring up at the blood on the wall: enemies of the heir, beware. It'd been in the dreams of many a student that year. He revisited the scene through them again and again, until he couldn't forget the words, even if he wanted to. Hogwarts was nearly closed because of this place. That something they needed him to get must be important indeed.

His robe felt strangely heavy, his chest hot, but the skin cold. He pressed his palm against it and his hand came away red. He peeled the material back - the bandages were soaked through. He stared at them blankly. The reason why was there suddenly as if it had always been there: blood was the anchor of the rune and it needed to burn for it to be maintained. Time was limited. The vessel couldn't sustain the rune for long.

Draco rolled his hand into a fist. You were human once, weren't you?

We were.

He could sense them now. He'd never known how close the three of them were to being one. Their bond was pulling the walls down between them and they knew. The bastards knew. Like mother knew she had the Sickness. Draco wanted to hit something, make them hurt all of a sudden. What about Albus? Had they even thought of what it'd mean for their son? Oh, gods, they were going to abandon him. They'd known all along. How could they?

Not now, Draco.

His thoughts scattered. They gathered again only to find themselves redirected, overwhelmed by memories of running through tunnels, water splashing underfoot, of a faceless boy heaving out one desperate pant to the next, a great blinded beast over his shoulder, one look away. It could hear him, smell him. Draco's body moved, following the boy's path, while his mind reeled, bewildered by the change, the swift culling of his anger, of those memories he wasn't supposed to see. They had such control over him . . .

You gave us that power.

What if I want it back?

They had no answer for that, as he knew they would. It'd been years since he'd needed to exert this much effort to separate himself from the pervasiveness of a memory, unstitching his and their emotions, the echoes of physical sensations, the confusion it inevitably brought. There was something wrong with those memories though. The boy in them was faceless, his voice distorted. He couldn't dispel the overwhelming sense that he was missing something, a feeling as annoying as Longbottom's Remembrall in first year, a constant mess of flashing, swirling red shining through his pocket. Gods, he had so wanted to throw that cheap contraption into the forest. He very nearly did.

He tried to shake off the annoyance, the disquiet it caused, but it remained on the tip of his tongue, in the forefront of his mind, an anxious fretting scattering up his spine. What were they hiding from him?

From one step to the next, the tunnel opened up to a long hall with a high ceiling. Draco moved his wand up and in an arc, murmuring, 'Lumos maxima.' The sudden burst of light revealed a statue that dominated the far end of the space, sculpted out of a rock face, its edges petering off into the dark. He paused at the statue's gaping mouth, the shadows moving across its features like living things, before lowering his wand. Under it, there lay the rotted corpse of a basilisk. Draco went to it, gagging at the smell, the back of his hand covering his mouth, his nose. The jaw of the beast was mostly bone and teeth, its fangs stretched across the floor. Draco stared down at it, shivering, knowing well what he had to do, but couldn't bring himself to do it.

The silence was deafening, full of an eerie remembrance that didn't belong to him. Where did they begin and he end? The lines were blurring and they were seeping through on all fronts. Their feelings were becoming his. What would remain when they left this vessel? Something new, made of borrowed things, he thought to himself. He would never be the same. This fact settled on him in a distant way. He could learn to become what they'd made of him. But Draco didn't want to go back to being empty. Anything but that. He'd go mad if he had to peer again into that hole they'd made in his soul.

A memory blasted him out of his stupor. It consumed him: the basilisk was there, close enough to kill. An indescribable, searing pain daggered down his arm, setting his blood on fire. When he could see again, a sword pierced the roof of the basilisk's mouth. It was dead. Brand had killed it. Draco stumbled back, grabbing at his head, his breathing shallow. There was anger, there was fear. And a feeling of standing on a precipice.

Who were you?

Come now, Draco. Haven't you figured it out yet?

No.

He curled into himself, intent on hiding, on finding that silent place within him where there was no sound, no thought, no feeling. But they were there, as one figure that flitted from form to form, taking his hands in theirs and kissing his brow with a rare show of tenderness. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see their faces.

You can't hide from this, Draco. You already know the answer to your question. You knew the moment our minds touched.

Please don't make me face it.

That's a kindness we can't afford to give you. We can't do this alone.

He thought of that hand he offered Potter on the train in first year. How it was disdained. How angry and ashamed he'd been. How disappointed his father was. It was a failure that haunted him more than he had realised. He relived it every time he saw Potter and his friends striding through the hallways, when they sat huddled together as thick as thieves in the classroom, and when they joked over the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. They always had so much to laugh about. Unlike him. He had tried – Merlin knew he had tried - but he couldn't stop thinking how different his life would've been if Potter had taken his hand that day in the train. He couldn't help being convinced that Albus and Potter would've been fast friends, simply because the two of them were the most stubborn and loyal idiots he'd ever met. His chest ached at the thought of how hard he'd wished that all could've been, just so he could be close that light Potter had, the one that drew everyone in.

You did become friends with us in the end, Draco. Just not the way you expected.

And not in the way you expected either, right, Harry? Ron, Hermione?

Never in our wildest dreams.

They crowded close, welcoming, loving, warm. Their memories engulfed him and he slipped under the tide, the flood becoming his. The faceless took faces, the voices settled, grew distinct. He marvelled at this other world they'd lived in, at how familiar and strange it was, at how easily it could've all been if not for them.

Thank you.

The words weren't alone. They carried the weight of all he had wanted to say to them, but never knew how. It was a sentiment that had to be felt as well as heard to know its entirety. The love, the wonder, the awed disbelief that he out of all people had known them for the brief time they had had here. Before they had to pay the price for creating this world. Before the Dreaming took them.

He tugged four fangs out of the basilisk's jaw and left the chamber without looking back. Memories whispered in his ears, naming a horcrux, a shard of soul belonging to a monster that needed to be destroyed.

Xxx

Albus, you may not be able to see it now, but you have that strength.

I know you'd shake your head, frown in that way you do, but it's true. Yes, I can't deny you fell apart slowly, quietly. Perhaps you did ask for help later than you should have, but you did it without prompting. You grieved after the fact. You gave it a place and a time. I saw all of this and because of it I know you're stronger than me.

I know that in your darkest moments you fear you will crumble under the weight of your grief, but you've borne it too long for that. You have the strength to do this, Albus.

You're not alone. And I hope you know that. I really do.