Dream It Is Not Death

Chapter One

The water was unbearably hot; Harry Potter didn't move to adjust it. From where he sat on the shower floor, the water hit his bowed head, dripping down through his hair. He stared at his open palm, but even if his vision hadn't been blurred without his glasses, he still wouldn't have been see clearly; the steam swirled around thick, heavy, and choking.

He had been at number four, Privet Drive for well over a month now; it was a sweltering July eighteenth. Wherever he came into the kitchen, his aunt or uncle would let their eyes flick to the calendar on the wall and then back to him with a small, forced smile.

They were counting down the days to his birthday just as intently as he was.

Funny, the first time they would acknowledge his birthday would be to throw him out. What they didn't know was that he planned on leaving much sooner than that.

Tonight. He would leave tonight. He was planning on hitchhiking into London, spending a night or two in The Leaky Cauldron, and then taking the train over to Wiltshire. Godric's Hollow was in Kennet, on the southern edge.

He was going home.

Harry turned off the tap and shook the water from his hair. The air was thick still with steam, and the mirror was fogged opaque, which he wiped away with a towel. The fuzzy image of himself in the damp mirror made him stop and stare for a moment, dripping on the tile floor.

There was no way that the man looking back at him could have been confused with the boy of ten he kept remembering back to, the boy who hadn't seen death and who didn't know any prophecies and who only had to worry about Dudley and his gang and the punches they threw. More and more often he wondered what would happen if he could return to those days, before he had been forced to grow up a hero to some and a villain to others, and just take it all back. Not become a wizard, and instead attend Stonewall. Go through life without magic, go through life being average and have a normal job and a normal wife and normal children, and then die in a normal way.

But he wasn't, and he couldn't be. He would always be Harry Potter, the chosen one, and everything that went it.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed his clothes from their heap on the floor before leaving the humid bathroom behind.

It was late, but no one was home. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had gone to a well-to-do fundraiser in

Canterbury for the weekend, leaving the two boys with strict orders not to throw parties, not to drive the car, not to open the liquor cabinet, and not to do anything unusual (with a meaningful look in Harry's direction), and they had abided by these rules - for the first half hour. Dudley had invited all his mates over and was now off in the car with Piers and their dates, two giggly blonds with more of an interest in the drugs Dudley carried in his pockets than who they were with; Harry was the one responsible for jimmying open the cabinet and taking what looked like the oldest bottle of whisky and the half handle of vodka from the back, both of which were now at the bottom of a bag of clothes.

The unusual thing would come when they came home Sunday afternoon and he was gone.

Hedwig's cage was empty. The cause was both to keep her from making a racket after being confined for so long, and so that she would be gone tonight, when he left. She had been sent off two weeks ago with a letter to Hermione and Ron over at the Burrow saying that he would be present for the wedding. Devon was a quick hop from Wiltshire anyway, and the thought of Ottery St. Catchpole made his heart skip a beat in longing, because he had really been alone here in Little Whinging all summer.

It would be nice to see everyone, before leaving them again to track down the remaining Horcruxes.

The clock on the nightstand told him it was nearly ten o'clock. Dudley would be out for hours longer, and Harry made a point of not thinking of his cousin and his girl doing anything questionable in the backseat, because Harry would really rather not Obliviate himself.

In the beginning, he had thought about bringing his trunk, but quickly thought better of it after realizing it would be a heavy burden to hitchhike with. If he found he would really need it, he would come and pick it up later, but for now, a satchel with some clothes and his essentials would be all he would need. Harry stuffed a few shirts and trousers in over the bottles of liquor already there, and a few extra pairs of socks, before the other items.

The locket from the cave went into one of the balls of socks, but not before he ran his fingers over it for the thousandth time that summer. This was the inane cause of Dumbledore's death, this little necklace of metal and lies, and hot tears pooled in his eyes as he shook his head and put it away. Next was his father's cloak, wrapped around the shards of Sirius' mirror. He didn't know why he kept the mirror, as it was broken -and useless and why hadn't he been thinking that day?- but he did. Maybe he just liked keeping things from the dead, because he also put his parent's photo album in there.

No school books went in, no vials or scales for potions, nothing at all that gave any indication that he was a student at Hogwarts, because he wasn't. Technically, yes, but you couldn't be a student if you didn't go back, and why would he have to go back and learn things that were pointless when there was a war going on? A bloody war, and there were students discussing plant pruning techniques and what certain alignments of certain stars foretold. Rubbish.

A dead man didn't need to know that, and he was all but a walking dead man.

Another set of clothing was bundled into the bag along with a pouch containing what wizarding money he had on him, his wand was slipped out of the dresser drawer and into his jeans pocket, and Harry Potter strode out of his room and down the stairs, hair still wet but eyes wiped dry.

He didn't know that it was the last time he'd see the place again.

::

The man in the red car gave Harry a friendly wave before speeding away, tires squealing in the puddles as it rounded the corner and out of sight. Harry watched as the driver left and looked up and down the street again for good measure to make sure he was alone, then stepped forward into the Leaky Cauldron.

Harry had been lucky, because the man had been going from Magnolia road all the way to London, even at that late hour. Their conversation had focused on the weather, as all good conversations did, touching briefly on politics and economics, ending on popular culture. It was very lucky that Harry had been reading the morning papers recently, out of boredom, or else he would have had no idea what Muggle politics, economics, or even music scene would have concerned. When Harry hadn't known of any men named Gerald, let alone a band by that name, the driver had immediately popped in a CD and that was what they had listened to the rest of the drive.

It hadn't been bad, either.

It was well past eleven. There wasn't a clock visible in the pub, and Harry hadn't really been paying attention to the electronic clock in the car while they talked, but it felt late and he was exhausted after the long drive in the car. Automobiles, for a reason he couldn't explain, seemed to wear at him the more he spent in the wizarding world. Maybe it was because he was so used to automatic action, that when it took time to travel from point A to point B, it was tiresome.

Being a Friday, the Leaky Cauldron was bustling. Every table was full, as was every seat at the bar, and Harry had to push his way through to the front to talk to Tom, the bartender and innkeeper. Before he had gotten one word out to Tom, who was beaming from ear to ear and already holding his hand out to shake Harry's, a drunken wizard next to him asked, "Aren't you Harry Potter, then?"

That sure quieted everyone down.

Harry felt his cheeks redden as he nodded his head and shook Tom's hand. He still wasn't used to the stares and whispers he received whenever he went out in the wizarding world, not even after six years. He doubt he'd ever get used to it. A few people went back to their conversations, but the majority watched Harry, who continued to grow more embarrassed by the moment.

"Mister Harry Potter, what can I get for you? A drink, perhaps? You of age yet?" Tom leaned in and whispered, "Doesn't really matter then, does it though? A drink for Harry Potter!" Tom threw his balding head back and laughed a chorus to the tune the bar cheered as they raised their glasses, and Harry's face could have easily passed for Weasley hair.

"Actually, I'm looking for a room for a couple of nights, if you have any?" But the drink was already poured and everyone was cheering again and Harry had no choice but to drink it. It was hard as it went down, almost like fire in his throat, and it certainly wasn't Butterbeer and certainly wasn't any cheap whisky like Seamus had smuggled into the dormitory in their fourth year, but he liked it. His stomach was now warm and his head was now a little hazy, and when Tom went to pour him another one, Harry didn't complain.

Eventually, the bar stopped cheering when he took the shots, so Tom stopped pouring them, and looked Harry over again. "A room? 'Course we do, for the likes of you!" He reached under the counter and pulled out a key. "Number thirteen. West hall to yourself, except for a quiet boy who's been there a week. Haven't seen neither hide nor hair of him though, so he shouldn't cause you trouble."

Harry mumbled a thank you and pulled his coin pouch out from his bag. He had no idea how much five shots of whatever that was cost, nor how much a room for two nights would be, so he laid four gold Galleons down and told Tom to keep the rest, which the man told him he certainly would do. Thankfully, no one followed him, or even tried to talk to him, as he weaved his way to the stairs and up to the West hall of the inn.

He'd never really had anything substantial to drink before. Butterbeer didn't get you tipsy in the least, unless you were a House Elf, and Seamus' whisky had been too acrid for any of them to drink much of. So now that his stomach was filled and his head was heavy and his legs didn't quite go in the direction he wanted them to, he was quite wondering why he was at the Leaky Cauldron in the first place, and why, when he slumped against door number thirteen, he felt ill.

"Potter." His head whipped around quickly, maybe a little too quickly, and he saw a boy at the end of the hallway. With tidy brown hair and narrowed brown eyes, Harry could have almost sworn it was - "Harry Potter!"

"No, that's my name." Harry rubbed his head, which was spinning, and the boy tilted his head to the side, obviously confused. "You're Roger Davis."

Roger's mouth formed a small 'o' for a second, and then quickly turned into a grin. "Got it right in one. What are you doing up here? Certainly you have a world to be off saving?" He leaned against the door of room eleven, a few feet from Harry, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Harry tried to remember everything he could about Davis. Ravenclaw, two years older. Quidditch captain. Something about Fleur. Oh. "Fleur is getting married in a few days!" Harry didn't know why that was the first thing he said, but it certainly seemed to be the most shocking to Roger, who's eyes opened wide. "You two got pretty happy at the Yule Ball, remember?"

"Yes, Potter, I remember that quite well. However, you seem to be having a bit of a hard time remembering anything at all. You're drunk."

"'m not."

"Liar."

"Alright, just a little bit. But not much. Why are you here?" Harry, who had been standing quite still a moment before, was now stumbling a bit forward, and then a bit back. "Oh."

"Get to bed, Potter, before you hurt yourself. Never been drunk before, I take it?" Harry didn't say anything. Roger sighed and walked over to him, pulling the key from Harry's hand and looking at the number. "Thirteen. Right, come on." Roger walked back over to the door marked thirteen and opened it for Harry, lighting the lamp with his wand. The mirror in the room said at once, "This room is only paid up for one! If you're both going to be in here, doing whatever it is two handsome young boys do at one in the morning, you'll have to-"

"Shut up. I'll curse you, so help me I will." Roger was obviously bristled about something, and Harry found it funny. Actually, he found everything quite funny at that moment, and couldn't stop laughing, no matter how hard he tried. "At least you're not an angry drunk."

"Not drunk."

"Potter, I'll curse you too." Harry shut up, and walked haphazardly to the bed. "Now sleep. There's a chamber pot under your bed if you need it to be sick up in, and Merlin help you if you think it's a good idea to come to me in the middle of the night because your first night pretending to be an adult went amiss."

There was really nothing more Harry wanted to say to Roger. He lay there with his eyes closed, because it made everything sound farther away, even when Roger said, "Forgot your bag out in the hall, too. You'd forget your scar if it weren't attached to your forehead."

"I'd rather not have the scar." Harry felt his hand go up to touch the scar, not knowing why he'd said it or why he'd done it.

"We'd all rather not have our scars, Potter. Goodnight." The sound of his bag being thrown to the ground and the door slamming was the last thing Harry heard of Roger. The mirror, on the other hand, made a hissing sound.

"That boy," it said, "Is trouble."

Harry didn't hear it, though, because he was already on his way to sleeping. In the back of his mind, he put together that drinking a lot while sleeping very little and on a very empty stomach was not the best of plans.

This was later reinforced by needing to use the chamber pot Davis had mentioned.

Harry decided he was never drinking again, and rolled back over to go to sleep again.

::

There was no way for Draco to have known who he would turn in to. Snape hadn't exactly been forward thinking enough to have told him someone which hair was whose, or even where they had come from. Of course not. It had just been vials of Polyjuice Potion and a bundle of hair tied with black ribbon waiting for him in the basement, and nothing else. Not even a cliché 'If you are reading this, I have passed away' note.

He had been bloody buggered.

Before he had called the Knight Bus he had popped the cork off a vial, thrown in a blond hair, and taken a fourth of the vile concoction, having the misfortune of then suddenly transforming rather violently into Luna Lovegood.

Bloody buggered indeed.

Of course, he hadn't been able to go anywhere like that, so had been forced to dump out the entire contents of the vial, the greenish brown ooze soaking into the mud at his feet, and choose a new hair, a little more tactfully this time.

Roger Davis had been a much better choice. No one on the Knight Bus had questioned why a Ravenclaw graduate and newly appointed second Chaser for the Wigtown Wanderers wanted fare to London from the coasts of France, and that was just the way Draco had wanted it.

The ride had cost twenty sickles and three knuts, and lasted just over two hours. When he had felt the effects of the potion fading he had taken another swallow, much smaller than before, and then again the next hour. By the time he had been deposited at the Leaky Cauldron, the vial had been half empty and the sun had begun to set.

Tom certainly hadn't had a problem holing him up in the inn's smallest room once Draco had shown him the bag of Galleons at his side, provided weeks before by Snape in case 'something had gone wrong', and Draco had figured nothing could possibly have gone worse.

So, for a week, he had stayed locked up in his room without any food and without any potion, not having dared use any until a plan had been thought up and he'd needed some. Or until Harry Potter's name had been cheered from the bar below and the boy had come stumbling loudly up the stairs.

Now, as Roger's face slowly began to slip away again as Draco leaned against the shut door of his own room, a plan began forming quickly in his mind.

He didn't like Potter. That fact was never brought into question. In fact, he could go so far as to say he hated Potter. But Potter knew people, people who could possibly help him.

Before anyone had come storming upstairs on the night of the attack on Hogwarts, to the tower where Draco had been alone with Dumbledore, Dumbledore had offered him redemption. He had offered him protection and safety, for both him and his mother. And Draco had been about to accept it, until interrupted, when he had to go back to be his father's boy again.

Being a Death Eater was what he had been born to do, but it didn't have to be what he died doing.

::