Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

The Long Reveille

Sæpe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit [Often it is not even advantageous to know what will be].

- Cicero

I hear the steps of Modred in the west,

And with him many of thy people, and knights

Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown

Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee.

- Tennyson, of course:

The Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur

The third injunction on the card was one which seemed to me, if interpreted exactly and according to its words, to undermine the very foundations of our politics. It told me that I must not 'threaten a voter with any consequence whatever.' No doubt this was intended to apply to threats of a personal and illegitimate character; as, for instance, if a wealthy candidate were to threaten to raise all the rents, or to put up a statue of himself. But as verbally and grammatically expressed, it certainly would cover those general threats of disaster to the whole community which are the main matter of political discussion. *** What is the use of being a politician or a Parliamentary candidate at all if one cannot tell the people that if the other man gets in, England will be instantly invaded and enslaved, blood be pouring down the Strand, and all the English ladies carried off into harems. But these things are, after all, consequences, so to speak.

- GKC,

'The Vote and the House', All Things Considered

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;

For thou must die.

- Geo. Herbert

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i. Harry

A dream fading, breaking up, tearing apart like clouds in a gale, as day broke and the darkness disappeared....

'Well,' said Harry Weasley the Younger, once Captain of the England side and Fellow, now, of Paracelsus. There was a hitch in his voice. 'Well. Draco Malfoy has scored, and Harry Potter has caught the Snitch.'

So ended the mortal lives of the last of the Victors over the Dark. Their name liveth forevermore.

And their family filed slowly away from the ever-fruitful trees and the deep, lush grass beneath.

But for Harry, he opened his eyes and saw: Albus, and Minerva, and Hagrid, James and Lily, Sirius and Remus, Ron and Hermione and all the Weasleys, in a light that had no one source but that welled from within all things, dappled in leaves and green in grass and stem and meadow and flower, the Platonic ideal of that lesser light that falls upon the fields we know, and he felt the light touch of a young and now ageless hand upon his own, now itself no longer spotted with age and corded with many winters: and he took Draco once more into his arms and they went to meet all those who had preceded them there, and who were calling now in welcome.

'Hullo, son.'

'Hey, Harry!'

'Ah, my dear boys, here you are, then.'

'Wotcher, Harry!'

'Weeell, Harry Potter?'

'Harry!'

'Harry!'

'Harry!'

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'Harry! Harry! HARRY! Wake up, mate!'

'Wha- - what is't?' He struggled to free himself from a tangle of sheets, and groped for his glasses.

Ron's face came into focus, concerned and dubious.

'Was I having a nightmare?' Harry's heart warmed to Ron. You could always count on Ron to be concerned.

'Nah. Not that I could tell. Sounded all right, really: you muttered something about the Ferret scoring but you caught the Snitch. Sounds like winning to me,' Ron shrugged, 'and that's good, right?'

Harry's appreciation of Ron's concern vanished. 'Then - Christ, Ron, it's the arse-crack of bloody dawn! On a Saturday! Not even Hermione's up at crack of sparrow-fart on a Saturday! What the hell -'

'Sorry, mate, sorry! Okay? Sorry. But. Dumbledore wants to see you. Now. His office. You, um, haven't done anything?'

'NO!' Harry flushed as he hopped about on one leg, try to put his trousers on in haste. Having dreams wasn't 'doing anything', was it?

'Hell,' Ron said. 'I was hoping you had done. Well, I mean, if it's not that, it's. Probably the War. You-Know-Who.'

'His name is Tom Riddle, Ron, if you can't say Voldemort.'

Ron winced. 'Yeah, all right. But. Do you think this means ... you think this means it's started?'

Harry's legs got tangled up in his trousers and he fell back onto his bed, heavily, all colour leaving him.

'I hope not, Ron. God. I hope not.'

'Yeah, well. Hurry.'

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ii. Draco

Draco Malfoy had not lived an exemplary life, and his home life had been such as to inure him to most horrors. One is not raised in a Death Eater family without being subjected to ugly sights from an early age.

Still, nothing can prepare one to be awakened from dreams - and such dreams! - by the ghastly pre-dawn horror of Severus Snape's sour face looking through one's bed-curtains.

'Aaaah!'

'Isn't it, though. Good morning to you also, Mr Malfoy. The Headmaster wishes to see you in his office.' Snape's tone conveyed the simplest of messages: if Draco had done anything that in any way reflected upon Slytherin House, he would wish he had not done, preparatory to wishing he had never been born. 'Immediately, if you please.'

Not for nothing was Draco Malfoy a Slytherin. If he had secrets, if he had infringed upon rules in dreaming, who could possibly know? Surely not that old fool whom his father had so often toyed with, as a cat with a mouse. Surely not.

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iii. Dumbledore

The day was come. It was past time that he seized it.

'Ah, gentlemen. Please. Tea? Cocoa? My apologies for such an early rouse, but we are in some haste.'

'Sir? Has - is it -'

He looked sharply at Harry from beneath his bristling brows. 'Has the war begun? Not in so many words, not yet.

'But it is coming.

'Now. I am sorry to ask this of you, and you may - or, again, you may not - find my request surprising.' He gestured with his wand, and parchment and quill appeared before them each. 'You will find three questions upon your parchment. I will thank you please to answer them.'

1. What is the name of Neville's eldest son?

2. What college is Hermione affiliated with?

3. What buildings are situated at Cold Kitchen Hill?

'I am reasonably certain,' Dumbledore said, still without the faintest hint of a twinkle in his eyes, 'that these are questions not covered in your regular course of study here.'

It was very still in the Headmaster's offices in that grey hour. Fawkes was asleep, his head tucked beneath a wing. Professor Dumbledore himself, they noticed, had thrown on the plainest of day-robes over his night things, mute testimony to his urgency. All his magical toys and devices were silent.

Slowly, reluctantly, as if under Imperio and struggling to resist, they took up their quills. The questions they had been set were sufficient to terrify them: it was evident that all was known, the deepest and darkest of fears and fantasies, of secret dreads and dreams. To answer these questions would be to make these things real, to cast away the last shreds of deniability.

Yet, clearly, as the very setting of these questions attested, it were pointless to try evasion. Grimly, they scrawled their answers and dropped their quills - indeed, Malfoy all but threw his from him, as if it were unclean.

With a flick of his wand, the most minimal of motions, Dumbledore summoned the parchments to him, and glanced at them. He nodded, slowly, as if to himself.

'There can be no doubt. Mr Potter, Mr Malfoy, it is as I have long suspected. Perhaps as you also have conjectured? You have been sharing dreams of a future.'

Malfoy looked as if he was about to be sick all over the Headmaster's Axminster.

'Professor -'

Dumbledore raised a long, lean hand. It trembled visibly as he held it up, praying silence of them. 'Harry. Prophecies and dreams - even precognitive dreams - are curious things indeed. Shared dreams, if they appear precognitive, are still more so. There is a tendency to work to fulfil them, even if they would not otherwise be fulfilled: but they are not, in themselves, fated, or destined. There is no absolute fate, gentlemen, we are the product of our choices. In this regard, such dreams are like the Mirror of Erised. They show what may be, not what must be, for nothing is ever absolutely fated to come to pass.

'What such dreams may do, however, is to clarify the choices one may make. To present options and possibilities.

'And now, I fear, we have delayed long enough. Choices already made have set events in motion, and there is little prospect - note that I do not say, No prospect - but there is little prospect that those events can be averted. It is unlikely that those now riding the course of those events will make the choice to avert them.

'You need not either of you choose this day. But I think we can no longer delay the beginning of your choosing. In this dawn, I think, you must begin to choose your paths and your futures.' Choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.

'I shall leave you to meditate your choices.'

They sat there in that still, hushed room, in the hour before dawn, together but each alone save for his thoughts.

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iv. Draco

Dreams. Silly, hormonal, weak dreams, nothing more. He was not a coward, he wasn't, he was a Malfoy, the son of an honoured father, the truest of sons. Not a blood-traitor. Not at all gay. And even had he been, not at all interested in Saint Potter and his insipid virtue. Not at all. Never.

Never to touch to feel to taste

Never the hot flesh cloven by hot hard flesh

Never the glint of emerald eyes and the flush like a blood orange

Never the salt and the slickness and the sharp scent

Never the sharp panting of exertion the hammering chest the runner's high

Never the spasm and the shouting

They said that women went into a trance during sex, that it was all in their minds; that it wasn't as it is for men, adrenaline and endorphins and the convulsions of pure physicality. Well, he was no woman, and he would not be entranced. He knew his duty and his destiny and the expectations of his family and what was due to their name.

Never the lust never the love never the longing the laughter

Blaise - if there were anything in dreams - would bear watching. Imagine. A filthy Mudblood Hufflepuff, interminably bleating of Eton. How utterly vile. Zabini wanted to watch his step damned carefully.

Never the friends and the faithfulness

Never the victory

Never the honour and the honours and the home and the hearth

Sodding Saint Potter. Some saint. Harry Poofter, the Boy Who Took It Up the Arse. Filthy halfblooded animal. Pervert.

He'd snubbed him in a shop, had the sainted Potter. He'd rejected and humiliated him on a train. And why? Prejudice, bigotry, on the basis of a name only newly heard in a world in which the filthy little half-blood had just arrived, a world of which he knew nothing. No, less than nothing, for what he'd thought he'd known was wrong.

A future in treason against the Dark Lord? With that? With the enemy of his house, his own personal enemy, the little bastard who had taken his father from him?

Never.

A life rubbing shoulders with blood-traitors and half-bloods and Mudbloods and beasts?

Oh, no. These were merely dreams, probably the result of indigestion. He did not know his renegade aunt, or the foul Mudblood she'd mated with, nor did he wish to do, but he was willing to wager that they were nothing like these fantasies his mind or bellyache had conjured. False in the details was false in all, wasn't that logical? These were dreams, the mere firing of tired neurons, meaningless, in which faces one knew clothed phantasms that did not share their character or real selves. No one in these dreams was real, nor did they act as themselves. Rubbish, all of it. Utter balls.

He'd extended a hand, once, and had it slapped away. Never again.

Never.

He didn't even wish to do, now. Harry Poofter had outraged him too often, had stolen his father away from him, had ruined his life at every turn, had ruined - with his hangers-on, the Mudblood and the blood-traitor - his very birthdays. Never this fantasy of a warped future.

Never.

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v. Dumbledore

He was disappointed, but he would not despair.

He was saddened, but he was not surprised.

Perhaps there would be another opening, another opportunity. More likely, they would have to do this the hard way.

But he had tried. At least he had tried.

It wasn't enough.

They would try again, if he were spared.

Still. At least he had tried.

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vi. Harry

Evil, pointy, ferret-faced git.

Stupid dreams. Probably Voldemort's doing, anyway. Dumbledore wasn't precisely infallible, was he.

Besides, he wasn't gay.

Stupid idea, really. The fate of the world turning on two boys and their first meeting in a shop.

Malfoy was nothing but Dudley with side.

Ugly, pointy bastard. Vile, foul, Death Eater spawn.

He could never accept or befriend - that. And as for sleeping with the Ferret....

Besides. He wasn't gay.

Maybe Dream-Harry could overcome all this. Maybe Dream-Harry was gay, as far as that goes. Not that it made sense. The story wasn't even consistent. He knew some of the details were false. They had to be. And if he had been gay, well, there wouldn't be multiple versions of his coming-out, now, would there.

Just some stupid dreams. Dark Arts, probably.

Never the touch the taste the tenderness

Never the sweat and the sex

Never the fulfilment never the friendship

Never the love and the long living in it

The idea that the git's mum was a spy and a decent person deep down. Bollocks, that's what that was. And Neville and Luna? Nonsense. Nev was no coward, he knew that now, but Luna's more lunatic notions scared braver men than he.

The Ferret as a part of the Weasley family, his family, all that he had as a sort-of family? Disgusting. It soiled the very idea, the only ideal of family that he'd ever had. These were delusions, a curse, a Dark spell, tainting all they touched.

Redeemed Slytherins. Hah.

Hell, he still didn't trust Snape, the greasy bugger.

Damn it, what more did they want of him? A fucking saviour. Yeah. He wasn't Dream-Harry, elegant and smart and good with words and all that shower. He was Harry, just Harry, and they'd already asked enough of him: kill or be killed - more likely, kill and be killed. Live and let die. Yeah, well, he wasn't James Bond, he was a fucking orphan school-boy expected to save the world. It wasn't fair to saddle him with this, as well. IT WASN'T FAIR.

Never the completion never what was missing with Cho and Ginny

DAMN IT, IT WASN'T FAIR!

He wasn't even an adult yet. He probably never would be, he'd die before he made it to that age.

You couldn't blame Dumbledore for trying. Manipulative old bastard. Maybe he thought it would save lives, make the victory sure, make it clean and painless with almost no casualties.

Well, sod that.

Maybe if the Ferret made the first move.

He'd rejected that first, first move, on the train, and he'd been proven right to have done, every day since. He knew Malfoy, Lucius in miniature, and to know Malfoy was to loathe him.

Little poofter. Coward. Racialist little shit. Dark-worshipping, smarmy, slick-haired, boot-licking arse-bandit.

Maybe if Malfoy showed himself, proved himself reformed - not that he could ever be trusted, even less than Snape could be. But, yeah. Maybe if he proved himself. Like with the Pensieve stolen from Lucius in the dreams. Maybe that would save lives, make the victory sure, make it clean and painless with almost no casualties.

But maybe it wouldn't. You couldn't trust a Slytherin. You could never trust a Malfoy. You couldn't ever trust the Ferret, Lucius's puppet, Bellatrix's nephew.

Never.

He didn't have the right to trust the little bastard. Merlin's balls, probably more people would die, be slaughtered, Dark Marks hanging in the sky above them, if he ever made the mistake of trusting the little shit.

He glared at Malfoy, who glared back. Well, they agreed on one thing, then. Together but separately, assiduously avoiding so much as the brush of robes, they slammed out, not waiting for Dumbledore's return. (In his study, the old man winced, and buried his head in his hands).

Never, Harry thought. Never.

Mere dreams.

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THE END.

Acte Est Fabula. Plaudite.

And after? We shall see what comes, with the publication of Book Six....

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