Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Chapter 4: Dawn

The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.

--Emily Dickinson

The dreams come to Malfoy with disturbing frequency.

The emotions change, and sometimes the resolution, but there is almost always a lake, a sun-burnt sky, and Potter.

Sometimes there is snow, sometimes rain. Sometimes it's fair. Sometimes it's warm. Sometimes the only heat is in Potter's gaze.

There are dreams where Malfoy is the one to walk away, dreams where it is Potter. There are dreams where they look at each other with almost a sort of kindness, and other dreams where Potter grabs him and yanks him forward to...what?

He wakes up unbearably aroused, and curses himself.

"Such language," says a voice in the dimness, and Malfoy freezes.

It is not quite dawn, and the room is still mostly dark, just a bare hint of pale light creeping in around the edges of the curtains. It is just enough to glint off the glasses of the person seated in the chair by the window. "Potter," Malfoy says, his voice hoarse with sleep.

"Good morning," Potter says, his tone no indication that it really is.

"What the bloody fuck are you doing here?" he grunts, dragging himself into a seated position and tugging the covers into his lap.

"Must have been a good dream," Potter says blandly.

Malfoy is mortified to feel his face flushing, and is grateful for the darkness. Irritated, he snaps, "Dreaming about torturing Muggles always gives me a hard on."

Potter's response comes like a lash. "Don't even joke about that." Malfoy can hear Potter's breath whistling in and out. After a few moments, it begins to even out. Potter turns his face away, and the early morning light limns his profile in hazy blue. "You were saying my name," he murmurs, and Malfoy stops breathing.

Potter turns to look at him, and once again his face is veiled in shadows. Malfoy stares back at the blankness of him, unsure how much Potter can see of his expression. He coughs and looks away. "Morning wood," he offers.

Potter makes a vague sound that might be assent. "Were you dreaming?" he asks.

Malfoy hesitates. "I don't remember."

"Do you dream often?"

He growls low in his throat. "Unless you're here on an official Auror visit, I don't have to answer your questions, Potter."

"That can be arranged. Would you prefer to do this on the record?"

Malfoy glares at him, clenching his fists in frustration. Potter holds his gaze.

Digging his nails into the blanket, Malfoy finally bites out, "Yes."

"Yes, you prefer to do this on the record?"

"Yes, I dream!" Malfoy spits.

"Ah." Potter shifts, reclining further in the small, stiff chair. "What are these dreams about?"

"Water," he says. "The sun." He pauses. "You."

"Me?"

"Yes."

"What am I doing in your dreams?"

Malfoy snorts. "Sitting, mostly."

"Where?"

"By some sort of lake, I think."

Potter has gone perfectly still. "Just sitting?"

"For the most part, yeah."

"Are you there too?"

"Yes."

"And what are you doing?"

"Sitting."

"Huh," Potter says. "Very exciting dreams, then."

"I never claimed otherwise."

Potter tugs at the sleeve of his robes. "What are you thinking in these dreams? Or feeling?"

"Sad," Malfoy admits.

"Why sad?" The room has begun to brighten, and he can see that Potter is watching him closely.

He shrugs. "I'm not sure. There's just a sense of...inevitability. Loss." He grapples for the right word. "Futility."

"How old are we in these dreams?" Potter's voice sounds odd. Strained.

He ponders briefly. "Teenagers, I think. Maybe around eighteen?"

Potter turns his face away. "And we're just sitting?" he says.

Malfoy hesitates. "Mostly, yeah."

Potter half-turns back to him. "Mostly?"

"Yeah."

"Are we doing other things, Malfoy?"

"That's not important."

"Who are you to decide what's important!" Potter shouts.

They stare at each other in the misty half-light of dawn.

Potter turns away, and it is clear that his voice is lowered only through Herculean effort. "I need to know," he says, "whether you're really remembering or just...imagining."

Malfoy's eyes narrow. "So that lake really exists? All that really happened?"

"Maybe. What do you remember about the dreams?"

"There's...a sense of being alone, even when you're there."

"Do we talk?"

"Rarely."

"Do you remember anything about what we've said in the dreams?"

Malfoy tries to focus, but shakes his head. "It's all hazy. I just remember you grinning and me being annoyed with you over something."

"Ah." Potter is silent for a few moments, his brows knit. "So, do we do anything at all other than sit around and almost never talk?"

Malfoy hesitates. "I...well, there's this one...."

Potter watches him, green eyes sharp behind his glasses.

Malfoy takes a breath. "We're standing on the shore of the lake, and I'm upset about something. You're angry with me, I think." He pauses. "The sun is setting."

Potter nods slightly in encouragement, his eyes never leaving Malfoy's face.

He looks down, his gaze unfocused as he tries to remember the details. "I...you step up close to me and grab me by the tie and pull me forward so we're almost nose to nose. You're saying something I can't understand. I can feel your breath on me." He stops.

A pause. "What happens next?"

Malfoy looks up at him and shrugs. "I wake up."

He gazes at Malfoy, pensive, then looks away. When he speaks again, his voice is light, as if the answer doesn't really matter. "How did you feel, in that dream?"

Malfoy's hand clenches, but he doesn't look away from Potter's profile. "I wanted you."

Potter's face closes, and he stands. "That's it then," he says brusquely. "It's all pure imagination."

Malfoy doesn't realize how high his hopes have risen until he hears Potter's abrupt dismissal. "But why?" he insists. "How can you be so sure?"

Potter's gaze spears him, his expression darker than Malfoy has ever seen it, even in his strange, recurrent dreams. His voice is low, angry. "Because you never really wanted me, Malfoy." He slams the door behind him as he leaves.

* * *

When Ginny reports to the hospital at 7 a.m., she hears from one of the Mediwitches going off duty that Harry already has been there and gone today. "How did he look?" she asks, absently pulling on her Healer's robes.

"Distracted," the Mediwitch responds.

Ginny almost laughs. "More so than usual?"

"Yes," she says, and Ginny's expression sharpens.

"How long was he here?"

"Well, I know he spent an hour in your brother's room, just silent. At least, I never heard anyone talking. Then he left my ward, but I understand he didn't leave the building until about four hours later."

"Four hours! Where was he?"

"I don't know. We had a lot of commotion upstairs this morning; it's a wonder I noticed Potter come and go at all. Lia in Emotional Distress said she saw him walk out of the building about an hour ago. I have no idea where he spent the rest of that time." She leans a hip against the doorframe and eyes Ginny. "Doesn't he spend a lot of time in your ward?"

Ginny ignores the question.

"You're always so secretive, and there are dozens of shielding charms on that corner of the building," the other woman murmurs. "Must be someone either important or dangerous there." She raises an eyebrow. "Or both."

"I have no choice but to be silent," Ginny says, her gaze direct.

The Mediwitch looks at her for a moment, then nods.

Ginny proceeds to the Obscure Maladies ward and pauses to talk with another Healer. "Harry?" she says.

The Healer sighs. "Four hours in Malfoy's room."

"Did you hear anything?"

"I didn't hear voices at all until around dawn."

"So...what, was he watching Malfoy sleep?"

"Near as I can tell."

She shakes her head. "What did they talk about?"

"I don't know."

"Weren't the recording charms working?"

"Potter seems to have turned them off."

"What? Why?"

He shrugs. "Don't know."

"But he couldn't have been here on official Auror business. Not that early." She rubs her temple, then shakes her head again. "I'm sure it wasn't important. Thank you." She touches his arm and walks away.

It is only through sheer willpower that she doesn't head to Malfoy's room first, but by the time she does get there, she's agitated. "Sleep well last night?" she asks as he slides off his pajama top to prepare for her examination.

"As well as can be expected in a hovel like this."

"Huh," she says, using her wand to shine a light into each of his eyes, yet somehow not really looking at him. "I take it you were disturbed?"

He is silent until she reluctantly draws back to make actual eye contact with him. His expression is bitter. "I'm sure you know exactly what disrupted my sleep last night."

"Were you dreaming again?" she asks, almost innocently.

"Yes," he growls, "but that isn't the point. The point is, your little lapdog was here again--"

"Don't call him that," she snaps.

"What do you care? I thought you said you weren't involved with him."

"I'm not. But he's my friend, and you have no right to call him anything. No right!"

He leans forward. "That's an awfully vehement reaction for a pretty tame epithet. Are you sure there isn't something you're not telling me?"

She is breathing hard, and just glares.

As she watches, his face loses some of its sharpness, and his expression is tired, careworn, making him look older than she's ever seen him, like a century of wear imprinted over a child's features. "Why?" he asks, his long-fingered hands curling into fists in the pajama top on his lap. "Why does he come here at all?" He looks at her, almost pleading. "Did you tell him to come?"

"No," she says, surprised enough at the question to add, "I tried to persuade him not to come."

A short bark of laughter. "Yes, that makes a lot more sense." He shrugs, a tired gesture. "Did he tell you why he wanted to come here?"

"No." That much is the truth.

"Do you have any idea why?"

That hits closer to the mark. "I might," she admits, grudgingly, "but it's not something I'm at liberty to tell you."

"Why not?"

"Harry Potter's business is his own."

"Not if it concerns me!"

She gives him a sharp look. "Yes, even if it concerns you, Malfoy."

His fingers dig into his thigh. "Why," he says, biting off each word, "will no one in this place tell me a goddamned thing?"

She sighs. "Because even if we were allowed to tell you, most people here don't know anything of the sort you want to know. They only know you as a name, a photograph in the Prophet--they don't know you personally."

His gaze bores into hers. "You do, though."

She doesn't try to deny it. "Not as well as others," she says.

"Like Potter."

She inclines her head.

"But why would he bother with me if we weren't friends?"

"Did he say you weren't?"

"Yes."

She shrugs and turns away. "I don't know," she lies. "Hero complex, maybe?"

"Guilt, maybe?"

She spins to face him. "Harry Potter has nothing to feel guilty about where you're concerned."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?"

"Yes, I am."

They stare at each other for several seconds, a contest of wills, before he is the one to shrug and look away. "Why, then, if not some sort of strange atonement?"

"Maybe he's just a masochist," she mutters, but he overhears her and laughs.

"Surely," he murmurs, "a masochist would crave something sharper than the reception he gets from me."

She stares, eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

He looks up at her, and his--sad? could it be sad?--expression drops and is replaced by his customary sneer. He spreads his arms and jerks his head. "Well, let's get on with it, then. Surely you've other patients to torture."

She proceeds with the examination, but her expression is considering.

* * *

"Sometimes I just miss watching him sleep," Remus had said as he and Harry settled into the spindly wooden chairs in Remus's kitchen yesterday, Harry with a Butterbeer, Remus a goblet of Wolfsbane. He has an agreement now with the Ministry's Head Potions Researcher, who can brew the potion almost as well as Snape did once. But Snape brewed his last Wolfsbane almost eight years ago now, after Harry's final year at Hogwarts. Voldemort does not take betrayal lightly, and Snape's death had served as an example to all his followers. Only the bravest or most foolhardy Death Eaters, seeing what had remained of the Potions Master, would have thought to cross the Dark Lord after that.

The goblet sat smugly on the table, smoking, and Harry shook off the memories as Remus downed the potion with a wince and a shudder. He took a deep breath and looked at Harry again. "Isn't it odd how you miss the trivial things, the things you took for granted?"

"Like Ron swatting at Pigwidgeon," Harry said, thinking of the small owl whose cage resides in Harry's flat now. Pig doesn't twitter as much as he once did.

Remus laughed. "I wonder if Sirius knew what a love-hate relationship he was beginning when he offered that owl to Ron." His grin faded and he sighed. "Foresight was never one of his strong points."

Harry wrapped his fingers around the Butterbeer bottle and didn't say anything.

Remus's eyes were distant. "After Azkaban, every moment was precious. Every moment. I hated to sleep for fear that I would wake up and realize it had all been a dream, and he was still in that terrible place, still guilty. Some nights I would lie awake just to watch him sleep, and see his face lose a little of that tension, watch some of the lines smooth out. But he never entirely relaxed, even when he was asleep. I knew he dreamed of Azkaban. He would thrash about until he sensed me near, and he would say my name like it was the only thing in the world that brought him comfort."

Harry felt the sick hollow of old pain again. "Did he ever dream of anything but Azkaban?"

A surprised grin twitched unexpectedly at the corner of Remus's mouth before he caught and suppressed it. "Sometimes," he said with a gleam in his eye. Harry hadn't pressed the question further.

Now Harry sits in his office at the Ministry and stares at the face of Draco Malfoy. It's been almost three months since the successful (officially, it is a success--no Aurors or other DMLE agents killed, and all suspected Death Eaters either captured or killed) raid on Malfoy Manor, and the surprise discovery of the missing Malfoy heir, long thought dead, but Harry hasn't yet taken down the photograph. Malfoy's schoolboy face sneers and preens, laughs as Harry watches with shadowed eyes, the work on his desk untouched.

He feels a presence behind him, and sighs as Tonks pulls up a chair and sits to his right, resting her head on his shoulder. Her hair is carroty orange today, so similar to Ron's he almost asks her to change it. But that would be petty. She looks at the photo of Malfoy--her cousin, of course, though it's a family tie recognized by neither side--and her voice is matter-of-fact. "You must hate him."

He checks to make sure the door to his office is closed. Not even all the other Aurors have access to the classified information on Malfoy. As far as most of the wizarding world is aware, Malfoy is still missing, if not dead. "What makes you say that?" he asks, tone neutral.

"He almost killed your best friend. He tried to kill you."

"We don't know that for sure."

She snorts. "You don't believe that any more than I do." She clasps his hand in hers, her palm trying to press comfort into his, as though it were as tangible, as transferable, as warmth. "Does it bother you that he's alive and awake when Ron, well, isn't?"

Tonks, Harry thinks wryly, never lacks for bluntness. "Every bloody day," he admits. "It'd be so much easier if he could remember everything he's done. Then I could just hate him free and clear."

"But it's complicated."

"Right." The photograph is scowling at him and Tonks now, and Harry scowls back. "Everything's fucking complicated."

"Hmm," she says, and turns his hand over, running her fingernails--short and round and silver--along the lines of his palm, tracing head and heart and life. "Ginny worries about you, you know." She lifts her head and waits until he turns to make eye contact. "So do I."

He smiles at her, laughs, but she frowns, unconvinced. "I'm fine," he says. "Really. Fine."

In response she only tilts his hand and traces cool fingers along the scars of a decade ago. I must not tell lies. She looks up at him and quirks one orange eyebrow.

He holds her gaze until she sighs and stands up, dragging the chair back to its usual place as she leaves. When he hears her speaking brightly to one of the Aurors down the hall, he looks back at the photo.

Malfoy winks.

* * *

It's almost dawn when Ginny returns to her flat, and her feet and head are sore. She leans her forehead against the door and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. She can still smell the hospital on her skin. She can always smell it, a hollow undertone of potions and hopelessness.

After her shift yesterday, she met her parents in the Incurable Hexes ward to spend an hour at Ron's bedside while her mother and father talked to him about Bill's new girlfriend, Charlie's troublesome Hungarian Horntail, Fred and Angelina's little boy, Arthur's work at the Ministry, Molly's new recipe for pumpkin tarts. No one mentioned that Percy's name still hasn't been cleared by the Ministry, even a year after his death, or that search teams have recovered another of George's fingers. Almost half his body has been found in the three months since the explosion in Diagon Alley. There are many of whom no trace has been found so far. The Weasleys are lucky to have closure, they've been told.

Ginny looked at the still figure on the narrow hospital bed and mentally hexed anyone who'd ever spoken to her of closure.

When prompted by her mother and father, Ginny tried to think of something positive to tell Ron, but her voice was flat. "None of my patients died today," she said. "That's a good day."

Molly and Arthur looked at her with pleading eyes, but she couldn't force cheerfulness. She clasped Ron's hand in both of hers and tried to ignore how cool and lifeless it felt.

Afterward she went to a Muggle pub and drank steadily until closing. But she isn't drunk now. Sometimes she thinks she can never drink enough.

Sighing, she tugs out her wand and unspells the lock to her flat. She walks through the darkened room and tosses her coat toward the sofa without a glance. When she hears a muffled grunt of surprise, she jumps and lifts her wand. "Lumos," she says, and her mouth falls open to see Tonks blinking at her in the sudden light, Ginny's coat half covering her head. "What are you doing here?" she gasps.

Extricating herself, Tonks replies, "I came to find you after work, and decided to wait." She glances at the clock, which indicates it is "Too early to be awake." "Guess I fell asleep."

"But I have anti-Apparation charms on the flat."

Tonks grins. "And I have a Swiss Army knife and Auror training." Ginny blinks at her, then sits down, hard, in an armchair on the other side of the room. Tonks's grin disappears. "Hey, are you all right?"

Ginny shakes her head, just slightly.

Tonks crosses the room to kneel at Ginny's feet, looking up at her so earnestly that Ginny wants to cry. Silly, she thinks. She hasn't cried in ages. Crying is a waste of energy. In the light of the wand Ginny still grips, Tonks's hair is clearly orange today, almost the same shade as her own. Ginny laughs a little and reaches to trail her fingers through it, feeling the subtle abrasiveness of the spikes against her skin. "This isn't a good color for you," she says.

"I like this color," Tonks says, but she closes her eyes and with a pop her hair is its own natural black again. Ginny's fingers stay where they are. "What can I do to help you?" Tonks asks, voice softer than Ginny has heard it in a long time. "What do you need me to do? To be?"

Her fingers tighten in Tonks's hair, and Tonks leans closer. Ginny sees herself reflected in the blue depths of her eyes, looking pale and drawn and older than she should. Tonks's face is close to hers, skin white and flawless, brows high and sharp. Ginny looks into the true face of the Metamorphmagus, and her breath hitches. There is no disingenuity there, nothing false, nothing concealed. She closes her eyes, and her mind whirls with thoughts of Ron, and her family, and Harry, and everything that goes unsaid. "You," she says at last, "you're exactly what I need." And when she begins to cry, Tonks is there to hold her.