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Chapter Three—Creatures in the Night

Harry twists, deep in the middle of an uneasy dream. This doesn't feel like an ordinary nightmare, and it doesn't feel like one of the visions that Voldemort sends him, either. This is somewhere in between, real enough to give him the grainy texture of a floor under his feet, dream-like enough to make him unaware of what's watching him.

And something is watching him. He's absolutely certain of it.

Harry looks around. He's in the middle of a corridor that looks like a mishmash of one at Grimmauld Place and one at Hogwarts, and he clenches his hands over that, even though he's trying to keep his face calm. He wouldn't dream like this most of the time.

This is someone else's dream, he thinks, the way he has about the visions of Voldemort, and then he sees a drifting shadow out of the corner of his eye and changes his mind.

This is something else's dream.

A low sound comes to him. Harry thinks of it as thunder or a drum played far away, and then recategorizes it. No, it's the growl of a large, hidden predator.

Imagining what Chaos would have done, Harry turns to face the sound. It seems to be coming from a wall that's an amalgamation of stone, wood, paper, plaster, and fronds, like something in an old jungle.

The fronds attempt to twist and warp and become tall trees. Harry doesn't let them. He stares steadily, and says, "Come out, if you aren't afraid."

The growl doesn't repeat, but Harry is absolutely sure there are ferocious eyes watching him. It feels like an animal, not a human being. It feels like—and Harry grimaces as he thinks of it—the difference between a werewolf in beast form and human form.

He's growing more familiar with that than he'd like, thanks to Voldemort's latest nightmares about recruitment.

He feels something sailing towards his back, and he ducks down to the odd floor, which is carpet and stone and grass, and slams his arm down sharply, hissing, "Come to me!" The floor writhes and turns into a group of grass-green snakes.

Granted, it's likely that the Speakers never thought of him using this trick in dreams when they taught it to him, but that doesn't mean Harry can't use it that way. He stands up with snakes curling around his feet and says, "Seek out my enemy."

The serpents surge away from him towards the walls. The fronds fade as Harry watches, and so does the sensation of watching eyes.

And there's no trace whatsoever of the thing that leaped at him.

Harry takes a slow step away, and the dream slips and surges. He wakes up in his bed, and blinks for a moment at the canopy above him before turning towards the door. Lion is awake and hissing excitedly on Harry's pillow, nonsense about "the great enemy" and "we drove him away."

"Yes, yes, we did," Harry says wearily, stroking down Lion's neck and only raising his eyebrows a little as the door bursts open with Theo right behind it.

"What dream was that?' Theo demands, striding towards him. He plops down on the end of Harry's bed and stares at him as if he thinks it's likely Harry goes around classifying his dreams by how weird they are or something.

"I don't know," Harry says, and touches Lion to calm him down. "Lion is saying something about 'the great enemy.' I don't think it was Voldemort, but something else that intruded into my head."

Theo shakes his head. "Only you would have two people who can do that. Wait, you said, something. Why?"

Harry describes the jungle fronds, and the growl, and the sensation that something was leaping at his back. "It was like being stalked by a predator," he finishes. "A cat, maybe. I doubt it was human."

"Maybe not, but I don't know any creature who could do what that one did, if it really is an animal." Theo sounds almost offended.

Harry starts to say something else, but ends up yawning instead. He shifts back into the bed, and Lion curls around his wrist and hisses, "Sleep." "I really am tired," Harry says. "Can I wait until the morning to tell—Severus?" Sometimes he's still shy about calling the man by his first name, even though Theo's heard him do it before.

Theo looks at him and then nods. "As long as you're aware that if you don't tell him right away, then I will."

Harry nods back. "I promise, I'll tell him first thing at breakfast next morning."

Severus listens to Harry's account of the dream, aware even as he does so of the four other pairs of listening ears at the table: Mr. Nott, Mr. Zabini, and the two Misses Greengrass. Little Astoria is so wide-eyed that Severus fully expects to deal with nightmares from her tonight. But Daphne, at least, is stroking her sister's hair and whispering reassurances about how it couldn't have been bad because Harry is sitting here, and that means that he must have beaten the thing.

"Have you ever heard of anything like that?" Harry finishes with. He tries to sneak a piece of the spinach from his omelet to Lion. Severus watches him, and Harry sighs and puts it back on the plate and finishes it—not that his snake was showing a sign of taking it anyway.

"No," Severus says slowly.

Harry looks startled, and worried in a way that makes Severus wish he could have lied. "I thought—you have so much knowledge about Occlumency and the mind."

"Thank you." Severus clasps his hands on either side of the mug of tea and watches Mr. Nott for a second. Mr. Nott gives his head a slight shake, and Severus's last hope that someone might know what this is dies. He sighs and faces Harry again. "Dream magic, however, is something else, and beyond my experience. I was approaching the limits of my expertise in tying your mind together with Mr. Nott's so that he could defend you in your nightmares."

"All right," Harry says, with an easy acceptance that Severus wishes he hadn't had to learn. "But we'll do research and find the answer eventually. I know that." He flashes Severus a smile and then turns to listen to something Daphne Greengrass is saying to him.

The faith in him settles something in Severus's stomach. He doesn't like that Harry is having these dreams at all, but yes, they will learn what the creature in them is sooner or later.

He isn't entirely surprised when Nott follows him into his lab after breakfast, but to his utter surprise, the boy doesn't want to talk about the dream he saw, or sensed. "I think I should speed up my training," Nott says, standing with his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier, or a professor. "I want to become an Animagus."

Severus stares at him for a long second. "Why?"

"I cast the spell on a mirror that allows you to catch a glimpse of what kind of Animagus you're going to be," Nott says coolly. "I know the clues are hard to interpret, usually, but I saw a spotted tail. I'm going to be a great cat—a jaguar or a leopard, probably. I could protect Harry that way, and I could probably combat the creature in his dreams if it turns out to be a predator of some kind."

"We do not even know for sure that some kind of beast is invading his sleeping mind."

Nott raises his eyebrows in the kind of sharp look that Severus thinks the Slytherins probably learned from him. Then again, he does prefer it to several of Nott's other possible expressions. "I wouldn't count on that, sir, or trust that supposition to protect Harry."

After a moment, Severus nods. "Very well. But you must understand that I am not an expert in Transfiguration."

"I know. But Sirius Black is. Could you recommend that he take over my training?"

Severus stares in silence. Nott looks back at him, with no sign that this is a joke. And Severus has to admit that of all Harry's friends staying here this summer, Nott is the last person who would play one.

"He may not take a recommendation from me in the way you would hope," Severus finally says, the only thing he can think of to say. "And he may not want to train a Slytherin."

"He puts up with Harry well enough."

"I believe that he thinks of Harry as a Gryffindor who unfortunately has to spend a lot of time in Slytherin House."

Nott considers that for a long moment, then nods. "All right. Well, I'd prefer that you ask him, sir, and then I'll see if he'd be agreeable to training me at all."

"Are you going to tell Harry about this?"

Nott's face makes a funny expression that Severus finds hard to read, despite all his expertise in Occlumency. "Of course, sir. It's the kind of thing that he'd expect me to tell him, and I wouldn't want him to know only when I show up in his head as a leopard or jaguar for the first time."

Severus frowns harder, but nods his dismissal, and Nott leaves. Severus narrows hie eyes after him, but Harry slips into the lab before Severus can make a plan to go in search of him, or anyone else.

Severus lifts his eyebrows a little higher. "Are you all right?"

Harry pauses and stares at him warily. "I told you what happened, right?" When Severus nods, Harry forges ahead. "And you're not going to get angry at me for not coming to tell you right away?"

"You needed your sleep. And you did tell me very soon. I don't blame you for not wanting to express all the emotions you might have expressed at breakfast."

Harry swallows and nods. "Good." He hesitates, and Lion twines out of his robes and up to his shoulder, fluttering his wings a little. "Did I—well, no, Theo couldn't tell you, because he doesn't speak Parseltongue. And I didn't know if I should mention it before the others?"

"It's all right," Severus says as gently as he can. He sits down in the chair nearest the table with the largest cauldron and focuses all his attention on his ward. "You can tell me anything that happened. Any details that Mr. Nott didn't know about are not your fault."

Harry slowly nods. "Lion told me that we defeated the great enemy." He nudges his snake and hisses to him in Parseltongue. Lion replies with a twist of his neck and goes back to peering around as if he's sure that the shadows hold more great beasts. Harry sighs and turns back to Severus. "He says that he can't tell me what that means. I'm sorry."

"Please do not be." Severus hears the desperate note in his own voice, and Harry blinks at him a little. Severus hesitates, glances over to make sure the door of the lab is shut, and then gets up and crosses the distance between him and Harry. "You underwent something horrible in the forest."

Harry nods. His hand wobbles to the side for a second, then folds in towards his ribs. Severus is sure that he's touching the firestone that Chaos left him, and which the Speakers are now teaching him how to use.

Good. Teach him how to use everything and anything that you can, to keep him safe.

"But I want to make sure that you know you can always lean on me for—safety. Solace." The words are so hard to speak that Severus feels as if his lips have turned to wood. He sighs out. "Do you feel that way, Harry?"

"I feel that way," Harry says. "I just—don't want to distress you, and I think I might if it's something that you can't help with. Like these nightmares I can't learn Occlumency to defeat no matter how hard I try."

"Any amount of distress would be worth it to me if I could keep you safe." Severus licks his lips and then ends up pressing down with his hand on Harry's shoulder. He doesn't know what to say. He wishes he was better at this. He's been, so far, the guardian who takes ruthless action in defense of Harry. That's different from being a healer. "Please come to me if you need anything at all."

Harry nods. "All right." Then he pauses. "Did you want to see one of the ways that the Speakers have taught me to use the firestone?"

"I would much like to see it."

Again Severus feels like he's speaking through wooden lips, mostly because he's concerned about frightening Harry off, but Harry must not see anything wrong with it, because he nods and takes the firestone from his pocket. It sparks softly, and flame courses up his arm.

Severus draws his wand before he can think, but Harry only shakes his head at him. "I can control it. See? Lion isn't afraid."

A winged snake being fearless is not reassurance for Severus, but he puts his wand away as he watches the way Harry touches the fire, a wistful look in his eyes, before he lowers his hand and clenches it into a fist. The flames waft back and forth, then create a snake that coils around Harry's arm and stares at Severus with intelligent holes that could pass as eyes.

"Can you form it into a dragon?" he finds himself asking.

"Not yet." Harry touches the snake's head, and it turns and flicks out a tongue shaped like a lightning bolt before it dissolves back into the general fire. "That's a more advanced sort of thing. A snake I already know how to control. But a dragon will have to fly, and actually breathe out the fire, and—if I want it to look like Chaos, I need a lot more work."

"How strange," Severus says before he thinks better of it. "I would think that you could form whatever pictures you wanted once you knew how to control the fire."

Harry blinks, then smiles a little. "It's not pictures, sir. The snake existed, and the dragon will exist, too, once I know how to form her."

"Of course, I can see that," Severus says, a little puzzled. "The snake certainly looked as if it was really coiled around your arm, and as if it could burn someone to protect you."

Harry hisses something, pauses, and then turns and hisses at Lion. Lion just turns his head back and forth, obviously not concerned with helping Harry explain. Harry sighs. "It's more than that, sir. More than images, or even creating an animal of fire that could defend me by burning someone. It's about—being able to call a protector forwards at any time. A living creature, a spirit embodied in the fire."

Severus blinks. "So closer to using a ritual circle to summon help."

Harry nods enthusiastically, his eyes shining for a second in a way that Severus once thought he would never see again. "Exactly, sir. I should have known that you would find the right words for it."

"Severus," Severus says, before he can think better, but Harry doesn't flinch at the correction. He just grins and nods again. "But you won't need to build a ritual circle, and you won't need to worry that whatever you summon isn't under your control."

Oddly enough, that makes Harry grow silent and thoughtful again. He shakes his head and says, "Do you know, I don't think that I have them under control? I'll work with them as partners, the way I work with Lion." He thinks about it some more, then adds, "The way I worked with Chaos."

"Appropriate, then." Severus watches him for a second, then sighs. "Do you think you could ask the Speakers about ways to defend your mind? From the nightmares, the visions, and whatever this creature is that hunts you now?"

"I'll try." Harry looks earnest and sad. "But sometimes they're more interested in teaching me whatever they want to teach me instead of what I want to learn. Because they say that I'm going to need it."

Severus has to agree that the priorities of a group of possibly immortal snake shapeshifters are probably beyond him, as well. "If they concentrate on what you're going to need, then I cannot fault them."

Abruptly, Harry leans sideways and hugs him. Severus freezes, but does manage to shake that off and put his hands on Harry's shoulders before he can withdraw.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispers. "I know that this frightens you. I would master Occlumency tonight if I could, and I wouldn't care if I never saw anything from Voldemort again. I promise that I'm not keeping the connection open as—as some kind of attempt to spy on him or something."

"I never thought that," Severus whispers, and lets himself hold the boy that he thinks of as a son.

He can say that, in the privacy of his own head, if nothing else. It's something he can say. Protecting Harry is something he can do.

And if he must do more than that, he is sure that he can, as well. He would do anything.