Dissolving into Grey

Dissolving into Grey

The vision came the night they left Hogwarts.

'Harry! Harry!' He could feel Ron's hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him out of the nightmare. 'What is it, mate? Is it You-Know-Who?'

After a year free from mental invasions, the pain was worse than Harry remembered. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, held his head in his hands and fought to control the sick feeling that was threatening to uncoil in his stomach.

'What did you see?'

Harry wondered what he might have been saying in his sleep for Ron's voice to be trembling the way it was. He closed his eyes and tried to figure out what Voldemort was playing at, but all he could see was the image of Draco Malfoy thrashing against the chains that held him suspended in some dark, windowless dungeon; he heard his screams and Voldemort's cold, forbidding laughter piercing the shadowy darkness as another bolt of unfamiliar amber light met its target. He needs help, Harry thought.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, wondering if he could even stand. And then he looked at Ron.

Harry couldn't count the number of times he had woken him up like this, but he did know that Ron had never once complained about it. And if his friend had sounded startled a few minutes ago, Harry now saw the effort he was making to compose himself. Concern was etched on his face, and he held himself almost as if at attention, clearly ready to follow through on his and Hermione's promise to stand by him no matter what.

Ron started to say something and then stopped. A moment passed before he seemed sure that he had found the right words.

'Whatever it was, it may not have been real,' he reminded Harry, then quickly added, 'but if you think it was, and you want to--'

'No.' Harry lay back down. 'It was nothing we need to worry about.'

Ron didn't look entirely convinced as he made his way back to bed, but Harry was grateful that he wasn't asking any more questions. He stared up at the ceiling, listening as Ron's breathing eventually settled back into the steady rhythm of sleep. He did not understand why Voldemort had decided to open his mind to him tonight, but he was sure, somehow, that what he had seen was real. Other than his pity, though, Harry had nothing to offer Malfoy. There were more important things to risk his and his best friends' lives for. And even if he could help him, why would he?

Harry pressed his palm against his still-throbbing scar, but Malfoy stubbornly remained there in his head -- marked and bound and irrevocably trapped in a war that, for him, could never have a happy ending. And for the first time, as the ink-black darkness began to dissolve into grey, Harry wondered if perhaps, in spite of everything that had been and everything that was yet to come, he and Draco Malfoy might actually have something in common.

-- The End --