Eternus Somnium

Eternus Somnium

King's Cross was a theme in his head and he could only sit on that empty, dirty, plastic seat in that white waiting room. The baby's wails were warbles of distant anger, regret, pain- something which was unbelievably disgusting. His arms ached from rocking back and forth, and it was grotesque because the baby wouldn't stop bleeding.

"Shhhh," he would croon in his sleep, then hold it closer and there would be stains on his shirt, but his arms did not draw away.

It was a dream where Dumbledore was not there to tell him, "beyond help...". They were dreams about kindness, something virtuous he could never remember feeling before, even after he had saved the world...from...him.

And he would turn over, his forehead would sink into Ginny's hair, and he wouldn't forget what death smelled like.

0-0-0

They didn't want to bury Voldemort.

Shacklebolt and the rest of Order insisted it was best if the body was burned and the ashes burned in turn. Everyone expected Harry to nod, to acquiesce, to agree completely.

Harry shook his head, looking them all in the eye.

"Let him be buried."

"Harry," Professor McGonagall said, her eyebrows drawing together at the look on Harry's face. "We want to make sure there's no chance of his return."

"He's dead! People don't come back from the dead!" he shouted at their stupid faces.

0-0-0

Of course, the dreams had started the very night of his death. The first night there was no baby, just the empty room, those dirty seats, and Harry, sitting there pretending to be dead because he remembered that it was fine-death was just fine. The second night, he walked into the room, and there was the baby, same as before, shoved roughly beneath the seat, and its cries were personal, sick, hateful.

He couldn't pick it up, that skinless baby, but he did lie down next to it. It flailed and writhed, reaching out its pinched and flayed arms, just wanting relief. Harry had never had a child before; he didn't know what to do with babies. He knew it was proper to pick it up, proper to sing it to sleep, but...

0-0-0

He always woke up, and he knew he had been imitating the baby's sounds, writhing in his own sleep, pretending to have been dead.

0-0-0

Voldemort did not decay, the tissue of his body was made of something so strange, so developed that decomposition would never come upon him. Dust, perhaps, but the Dark Lord would never rot. So even after those three days where he lay, awaiting his body's fate, that nacreous skin remained pearl-like, his crimson eyes wouldn't shut, and his insides seemed to remain in a state of frozen nothing. Harry, just from looking at it, began to doubt death's power as well.

0-0-0

Then Voldemort was in his dream waiting for him, seated carefully on those plastic seats.

He had a strange way of sitting, his long legs were drawn up, his spidery fingers resting on his knees. He seemed to be thinking, as his eyes looked straight through Harry. Harry stared as he started to walk toward the seats, and Voldemort finally looked up at him.

"Vol..demort," Harry began.

He could never tell whether the snake-like being smiled just then. His mouth stretched, his teeth were bared, but it could have been a grimace for all Harry knew.

"You can call me Tom here," Voldemort said. "There's no one named Tom here besides me, is there?"

Harry was still staring, and Voldemort's bright eyes pierced him with a questioning look. "So? What are you doing here?" Voldemort demanded.

"I-I'm dreaming, I think...but you-you're dead."

Voldemort rocked from side to side, drawing his legs even closer as his spidery fingers clenched into fists. He was grimacing again, but Harry noticed that when those eyes widened, they shone like rubies.

"You are dead, aren't you?"

"Well, didn't you kill me?"

"No. I didn't kill you. You killed yourself- your spell backfired...and...."

Tap. Tap. Tap. Voldemort hit Harry on the head three times rapidly. "You killed me, so don't pretend to be innocent!"

Harry rubbed his head incredulously. "I wasn't!" he snapped, feeling a little cowed. "Anyway, that is basically the truth. If your spell backfired, then you killed yourself."

"Ah, then it was a tragic accident."

Harry didn't feel generous at that statement so he sneered a little. "I wouldn't call it tragic."

"I don't like you, Potter."

Because it was a dream, he didn't think anything of that, but he couldn't help feeling the surrealism of it. He was standing over Voldemort, having a conversation with him. It was anything but amicable as Voldemort kept shooting him scathing looks, but it was...normal.

"Tell me something, Harry; if you saw a baby crying, alone and scared, wouldn't you pick it up?"

He had stepped back quickly at this, and it wasn't difficult to remember the writhing baby. He shuddered.

"Answer my question."

"I wanted to-I just...but wait a minute! What about you? I don't see you treating babies like anything special."

"Hah! If there was a crying child...I would pick it up!"

"You wouldn't!"

"How do you know? Don't presume, Harry Potter."

"You tried to kill me when I was a baby," he pointed out softly. "So much more the reason to believe you wouldn't."

Voldemort grimaced/smiled, and his shining eyes glittered. "Well, Harry; you weren't crying, were you?"

Harry stared at him. "What?"

"Your expression was much the same it is now. Glaring, violent, and mean. You were defiant the moment you were born, and you were not crying!"

A long pause followed this.

"You mean to tell me," Harry breathed out slowly. "That if I had cried that night, you would have dropped your wand and picked me up?"

Spidery hands reached out suddenly for Harry's wrists. "Idiot, simple idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I did pick you up. You would have died with me holding you."

0-0-0

Harry woke up, and Ginny came to visit. He promptly asked her to marry him. She said no, but sat beside him until he recovered. He didn't understand why she kept patting his hand, and shaking her head sadly when she thought he wasn't looking.

0-0-0

Shacklebolt signed the decree that Voldemort would receive a private burial, and Harry decided he would attend. He asked Ginny to come with him, and of course she agreed, and then he wondered vaguely whether he should ask her to marry him. He went to see the body again, and Voldemort was on his back, a black cloth thrown over him, but Harry decided he wanted to feel what that skin felt like.

It didn't feel like scales at all.

0-0-0

The next dream he had was the first time he picked up the baby. It clapped its hands, and three drops of blood splashed onto Harry's glasses and in the dream, he heard applause because Voldemort was somewhere clapping. He looked down on the baby that was an angry red, and the corners of his mouth tugged, and he said, "You'll die with me holding you."

Then Ginny was screaming and pushing him away, and for some reason Harry couldn't help getting mad at her for waking him up. So he was a sleep-talker; that didn't mean she had to overreact.

Looking back on that night when Ginny lay under him, his arms crushing her, he remembered with some subtle amusement why Ginny didn't want to marry him. He'd read somewhere that the number one cause for divorce was snoring in the marital bed. He still didn't get Ginny; he didn't snore at all, and she shouldn't have tried to snuggle while he was sleeping. She didn't break up with him, though, and for that, Harry bought an engagement ring, hoping she would see sense.

0-0-0

"What would you say if I said I was sorry?"

Tom Riddle had been handsome when he was young and it made Harry a little more comfortable to sit beside him. Tom had smiled at him, white teeth glittering as he pushed at Harry's shoulder playfully, "Come on, what would you say?"

Harry rolled his eyes, and pushed back. "I'd tell you to sod off because you're not sorry."

Tom grinned, and his thin arms wrapped around Harry's chest as he leaned on Harry's back. "Yeah, I'm not sorry. Isn't it weird, though? Seems that you're as sorry as I should be."

0-0-0

"Harry, we think you should see a psychiatrist," Hermione began the next morning. "There's this woman-she's a squib, but she specialises in magical psychiatry."

Ron wouldn't meet his eyes, but Hermione was holding his hand. "Why would you think I need to see her?" he queried politely because Hermione's hand was warm and Ron had finally looked him in the eye.

Hermione looked at Ron, though-a sudden cry for help as if Harry had said something outrageous she didn't know how to fix. "Harry...mate, Ginny told me you've been having nightmares...screaming all the time."

He grinned at Ron. Surely he was joking. "Ron, I've been having nightmares since school; you should know. It's because of Voldemort."

His best friends exchanged another look.

Hermione offered him a weak smile. "Harry, You-Know-Who's dead."

Harry didn't smile back. "Yes, I'm the one who killed him."

0-0-0

Harry used to think that kissing was an "okay" thing to do with one's girlfriend. Now he finds it to be a bit versatile. When he's asleep, Voldemort is there, but Harry can't see him, can't touch him. There is only white, and just as he's about to panic, he feels a cool pair of lips settle on the right corner of his mouth. The feeling is so erotic that he turns, looking for the owner.

"Again," he murmurs, and it happens again and again and again.

Until his mouth opens the sixth time and his hands are tracing circles on pearly-white skin.

0-0-0

"You can't sleep in every day, Harry. As your roommate, I'd like to have you join me for breakfast once in a while." Ginny poked him playfully, and he turned over, gathering her to him, still feeling a little...aroused.

"What time is it?" he murmured against her chest.

"Nearly one in the afternoon, Harry. You're supposed to be at the Ministry in half an hour."

He pulled her under the covers with him easily, and his appointment with the Auror's Department was missed. They didn't postpone it, and Harry didn't go after them for it. He stayed in Ginny's flat, sleeping most of the time.

0-0-0

"Why'd you get rid of your hair, Tom? I always liked it," Harry said, smiling.

Voldemort's glittering red eyes sparkled just a little more. "What on earth are you talking about, Harry?"

Harry hesitated, worried. "Hmm, for a minute there, I thought..."

"Thought what? We were childhood friends?" The Dark Lord's head on his shoulder didn't mean much next to the kisses he administered, soft, admonishing kisses on his shoulder-it was just so strange because of their warmth. "Well, why not, then. Destiny has made us know each other before our actual existence. We are childhood sweethearts then, aren't we? We are God and mortal, Adam and Eve, Zeus and Ganymede - a romance of unspoken detail merely devotion and time-consuming."

Harry didn't quite get it. He liked how it all sounded in his head. "God and mortal. Does that make me the mortal?"

"Of course."

"You're not as immortal as you thought, though."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed, but he was still Tom, and Harry wrapped his hand around the skeletally thin fingers, winding his own imperfect ones about those luminescent ones. Voldemort was Tom Riddle then suddenly and Harry touched his hair. Yes, he always liked the other man's hair.

"Am I not immortal, then, Harry?" Voldemort whispered in Parseltongue.

"Esssth," Harry replied, which, of course, meant "yes".

It was sometimes easier not to wonder what his friends would say if they knew.

0-0-0

"Ginny, will you marry me?"

Ginevra dropped the files she was holding, papers scattered all over the place. "What, Harry?" she said, and this was upsetting for poor Harry.

"I-I asked if you would marry me? I bought this ring, you see."

"Harry..."

He grinned. "I'll understand if you need time to think about it. I mean, I've never asked anyone before, but things are finally settling down. I want to share my life with you, you know, be normal."

Ginny ignored the papers underfoot as she took two sharp steps toward him. Her hands came up to his face and her big, brown eyes were looking and looking at him...like he was crazy or something. "Harry, don't you remember?"

"Sorry? Remember what?"

She was getting teary. "You asked me this last week; I told you I didn't want to marry you so you could be normal. I want us to get married when you're sure you really love me."

He blinked at her. "I-no, I-you never said anything like that! I would have remembered it!"

A sob escaped her. "Harry, Harry, what's happening to you?" Her hands were in his hair, though, and her small lips pressed against his. He didn't know what she was talking about, and this worried him. Perhaps Ginny, his Ginevra was going a bit mad. He would have to ask Tom.

0-0-0

He didn't know what made him say it, but he did. "I can't really love you anymore than I do."

A beautiful, sepulchral, immortal god glared at him. "Don't press such things upon me."

"I'll stay forever here with you, Tom."

"Stop it!"

"Everything you've told me, whispered to me, given me, I just can't give anymore in return. It's only that I love you!"

He was back-handed, clear across the face and his cheek burned. "Idiot! Don't you see? When they bury me, I'll be gone. You shouldn't love! And you shouldn't love a dead man!"

When he woke, his cheeks were wet and his left cheek was still burning. Ginny was sleeping in the living room for some reason.

0-0-0

He was looking for Ginny. She didn't come home so he assumed she must be with Hermione. He apparated soundlessly into Ron and Hermione's flat, then he heard them talking in the kitchen.

"I don't know what to do, Hermione. He keeps asking, and he asks the same way each time; he doesn't remember asking before. This is the fourth time now, and when he's sleeping...he keeps saying his name. I want to-I have to leave him, but I don't know how to do it because I...love him."

Hermione's voice was just as broken as Ginny's. "Ginny, please! Just wait a while; he'll come around, it's just the after-effects of You-Know-Who's death. Be patient; he really does love you, and the nightmares will stop, he'll start working, and...all will be well."

Harry turned and apparated back to Ginny's flat. Disbelief clouded his expression. How could he have been so selfish? He should have been aware that she thought he didn't love her. He did love her, and he would prove it too. Smiling to himself, he reached for the engagement ring stashed in his bedside drawer.

0-0-0

"Does this mean you forgive me?" Voldemort whispered.

"It means that it all doesn't matter anymore."

"You're right. It can't matter anymore. You had your vengeance; I'm dead."

"You're not dead!"

"Am I not?"

"If you were, you wouldn't be here with me! You're immortal, you're my god!"

Bitter laughter.

"Your god, eh? A god of what?"

Harry shrugged, and administered a kiss on the right corner of Voldemort's white mouth. "Eternity. My eternity."

"You're too sentimental, Potter. In fighting for my eternity, I died, and from this you must learn that even love cannot have immortality."

The kiss is returned, and Harry remembered how erotic the first time was as he let his tongue slide over translucent skin.

Harry hisses in the language they cannot lie with. "Don't you get it, Tom? Love isn't fighting for immortality; it is one of those that administer it."

"Ugh. How lackadaisical. Well, if that is so, Harry Potter. Use some of that to keep them from killing me again."

"Killing you...your burial, you mean?"

"Eternity, hmm? Eternity in a box...I've always been a little claustrophobic."

"Seriously? That's funny."

Voldemort's tears were no different from Harry's. They trailed down his cheeks, causing salty streaks on that skeletal skin.

0-0-0

Voldemort would be encased in a stone sarcophagus and lowered into the ground. Then, six or seven feet of earth would cover him forever. And only Harry, Ginny, Shacklebolt, and his attendees would witness this.

It hits him as they close the lid.

"NO!" he yells, and he practically throws himself at the box, hurting his fingernails as he scratches at the stone. Three or four pairs of arms grab the back of his coat; one pair of arms grabs his torso as he kicks. "NO!" he screams again, pulling his arms until they strain from their sockets.

Voldemort is lowered into the earth, and Harry can hear his cries, his fear. He fights even more as the soil is thrown into the hole, huge piles of it thunder down and Harry's scar is blazing, but he continues to cry, kick, and sob.

Shacklebolt is shouting, "Stun him! Stun him!" and Ginny is screaming his name.

He shoves someone in the stomach, and aims three stunners at random. He is distraught by the time he reaches the soft earth. His fingers dig deep as he pulls at the newly packed earth, casting it aside, murmuring frantically, "I'm coming, Tom; don't worry, I'm here!"

The last word on his lips before Shacklebolt's own stunning curse hits him is, "Tom."

0-0-0

They wouldn't incarcerate him. He was Harry Potter. He killed Voldemort. Instead, they took him to Ginny's flat. Ginny tucked him into bed, her face white and her expression stricken.

When he slept, there was nothing-blank, empty nothing.

He woke up screaming, and every night after that, he could not keep himself awake from the nightmare of his immortal gone from the world. It was his fault too; that was the biggest torment in his heart. He could have stopped it.

0-0-0

As promised, Hermione and Ron took him to the psychiatrist, but Lavinia Melmera turned out to be an idiot. She wrote down everything he said, and employed upsetting words like, "manic-depressive illness," and, "dysthymia." He just wanted her to understand that eternity didn't exist because he could kill, because people killed, and couldn't she see that he was dying as they spoke?

"Harry, just listen to Lavinia. She wants to help you."

He glared at Hermione. "I just need sleep, that's all."

"Harry, your friend Ron tells me that all you do is sleep...but if it's sleep you would like, I can prescribe a dreamless sleep potion..."

He stood up, and his fists were clenched. "Why would I want dreamless sleep when that's all I have left?!"

Once he said that, he realised he also had Ginny, and he had better take good care of her because she was his only normal thing left, and he should marry her. Yes, they would be happy- she would be happy with him.

When Ginny looked down at the ring, and her eyebrows drew together, and her mouth sagged with an expression of exhaustion, Harry shook his head in disbelief.

"No, Harry. I've told you...I don't think I can marry you, and I don't think you really want to marry me. Please don't ask me again."

He frowned at her, but gathered her into his arms. "If we get married, we'll be very happy, Ginevra."

Something about his tone made something in her snap. Her brown eyes threw sparks as she pushed him away. "No! We won't be happy! Don't you dare say that! We won't be happy ever again and it's your fault! You're crazy, don't you get it? You've lost it!"

Harry thought this was going too far. What would Tom say? Well, Tom would have slapped her silly for saying such a thing, but Harry wasn't really like that.

0-0-0

The third week from the burial, Harry muffled his scream with his pillow and Ginny wasn't there again, and his scar hurt. He took three gulps of air, and sat up, massaging his forehead vigorously. Another empty night-blank with nothing and he wanted to scream until the walls shattered, until Ginny came running because...because Ginny had Tom's scent, because he loved Ginny, and he loved Tom and enough was enough.

0-0-0

The Graveyard.

Voldemort's tombstone was blank except for the words, "Haud vir est Nex victum." Grass had already begun to take its hold over the grave, and the dew sank into his jeans as he knelt there.

"Give me a reason...one reason to believe you're gone," he whispered. The sob was already in his throat, but he swallowed it as his fingers dipped into the earth and his cheek rested on the cold grass. "They don't know you can't leave me, Tom. They don't know....

And it was easier than he had hoped because a shadow descended on his soul in warm comfort, saying desperate pleading words. "Harry, you said you'd stay with me. Where are you?"

"I'm here," he gasped, clawing at the dirt once more. He rose, rising into a squat as he used his nails as shovels to pulls the grass away, digging deeper and deeper.

0-0-0

When Ginny walks into their bedroom, she screams and Harry wakes up.

"Oh! You're awake," he says cheerfully, sitting up. "Ginny, you've met Tom before, of course. Don't worry, he loves you; he won't hurt you..."

0-0-0

In St. Mungo's, there's a section dedicated to the clinically insane. The walls are not padded or anything like that. Normal rooms magically reconstructed to look like the patient's home. Harry Potter sleeps in the third to last room, sedated as he is a danger to himself most of all. His file says that he makes frequent attempts at suicide, screaming the words, "It's not forever!" He is prone to addressing people with the name, "Voldemort" and crying. He is sedated to prevent any further disturbance.

The healers at St. Mungo's decided it would be best to keep The Boy Who Lived sedated because that was when he was most happy. The most fortunate thing is that they administer potion injections every three days, allowing Harry to dream.

This is rather nice of them because Harry Potter smiles in his sleep.

0-0-0

In his dreams, he is married to Ginny, who smiles the same way his Tom does. They have three kids: James, Lily, and Albus. Ginny is happy so Harry is happy, and in the night, Tom, who resides within her, whispers to him after he tucks Albus into bed.

And the scar had not pained him in nineteen years.

All was well.