The Night Whispers

The Night Whispers

viii.

Harry Potter woke up to the weight of a thousand lost breaths on his chest, pressing against his lungs like solidified black smoke. His bones felt splintered in every joint, his legs had mostly likely been pulled apart and roughly sewn back together in the night, in the shadows.

But when his vision cleared through its veil of thin spider webs, his scream was much more than just pain.

vi.

Blood, mud, clean gray sky, blood.

War.

"Harry!"

Hermione.

A Death Eater had caught hold of his shoulders and was shaking him like a broken doll, over and over and over.

"Harry!"

Hermione.

He whispered the Killing Curse. The shaking stopped, the Death Eater fell.

Blood.

ii.

Harry Potter was leaning calmly against the wall outside the Gryffindor common room.

Neville Longbottom, poor unfortunate soul, stumbled upon him on his way in.

"Neville," Harry said, now a tad embarrassed. He looked uncomfortable and the shadows shifted across his features.

"Yeah?"

Harry coughed and smiled sheepishly. "I sort of, well not really forgot, just can't recall, the, uhm, the--"

"Password?" Neville said and smiled gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. Something reverberated through Harry at his touch and he almost pulled away but Neville was too busy grinning his head off to notice. "Don't worry. Happens to the best of us."

Harry nodded awkwardly and tried a smile. It came out lopsided and slightly demented.

Neville leaned in and whispered the password into his ear when he saw Crabbe and Goyle.

Today, Harry Potter had asked for his help. The hot rush of pride that was easily confused with bravery filtered through his blood.

"Where's Malfoy?" Neville called to them.

i.

"What's it do?"

"It's very complex and requires immense intelligence to understand, Crabbe. And intelligent you are not," Draco muttered, holding the fragile vial in his hand. He tilted it toward the sparse light and searched it depths, but even light could not pass through its dark walls.

"He means he doesn't know," whispered Goyle.

"Neither are you, Goyle, if you're going to make comments like that within my earshot," Draco said and stepped up to them. His eyes shone with demonic puerility. "It manipulates dreams."

"Dreams?" Goyle said.

"Or rather, nightmares."

iii.

The empty hallways echoed his footsteps as those of a giant troll skulking about in the dead of the night. He leaned close and whispered the password he had acquired from Neville urgently at the portrait of the Fat Lady, "Dreaming dragons."

She grunted as she lifted her double chin and opened her small squinty eyes. "My, my. What time is it?"

"Dreaming dragons," he said again.

"Yes, I heard you the first time," she mumbled, still disoriented. The door swung open and Draco hastily climbed through the ominous hole.

Something occurred to her, "You're a Slyth--"

Draco had come armed with a silencing spell.

v.

"Harry! HELP!"

This time it was Ron's voice, desperate and raw against the maddening roar of the Death Eaters. One came rushing toward him, wand outstretched and Harry could hear the voice of his thoughts, clear and frighteningly unimpaired by fear.

Kill him.

Blood.

"Crucio," Harry heard himself say, even before he could think to raise his wand.

This time though, unlike in fifth year when he had still managed to salvage that part of him that felt compassion, he meant it.

The Death Eater fell.

Ron was silent.

iv.

Draco crept up the stairs into the seventh year boys' dormitory. He drifted silently over to Harry's bed and watched Harry's chest rise and fall in a monotonous bliss. Harry's mouth lay slightly open as unsightly saliva leaked from it onto the pillow.

Snarling, Draco pulled the vial out of his robes and watched as the black liquid languorously made a path into Harry's open mouth.

Harry only needed to swallow one drop for the magic to weave its way into his dreams but just to be sure, Draco poured a little more. A whole vial's worth of more.

"Dream of war and Death Eaters and the death of Hermione and Ron," he said into Harry's ear.

vii.

Something, someone, was pulling at his left arm. Death Eater.

Blood, mud, sky. Screaming, endless screaming.

Another was on his right, trying to capture his madly swinging right arm. The others formed a circle of tall black figures around him, looming and ominous but strangely hesitant. They seemed to be chanting his name.

"Harry! Harry!"

Ron and Hermione. They were missing.

He wrenched his arm viciously away from the Death Eater and started to yell, an animal call of pure hatred as he cursed them all, one by one, the Avada Kedavras leaving his lips like the twisted words of a long forgotten song.

Blood.

"HARRY! WAKE UP!"

Avada Kedavra.

Silence.

ix.

Harry woke up.

He woke up to the rubble of his doing, the shrieking agony in his bones and the silent bodies of the seventh years. He waited for the soft rise and fall of their chests but there was none.

Ron. Hermione. Silent, not breathing, blood.

The fear seemed to become a psychical presence in his mind, a solid wall of brick crumbling onto his body. Its fine dust invaded his nostrils, crept into his mouth and left a taste much like dry rust.

He could hear the rush of footsteps moving up the stairs toward the dorm. Dumbledore, he hoped. Dumbledore could certainly sort everything out.

At first, he couldn't understand how all this could have happened. Then slowly, fragment by excruciating fragment, the nightmare came back to him. He had been dreaming, and he had killed Death Eaters.

Death Eaters. Not his friends. Death Eaters.

And yet, unfortunately for him, this was no nightmare.