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lomonaaerenTitle: The Dreamers of the Day
Pairings: Harry/Theo, background mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU starting in the summer after first year, dreams, angst, references to violence and character deaths, present tense, underage kissing
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Lost and alone after his first year, with no one sending him owls, Harry begins to have dreams of another boy who obviously recognizes him, but won’t give Harry his name. On beginning his second year, Harry learns that the boy is Theo Nott, but that it would be dangerous to meet in reality. Harry tries to enjoy the friendship that continues in his sleep every night, without bringing his feelings—including his intense crush on Theo—into the daylight hours.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “More Harry/Theo in the World Project” series. It will have five parts, the next one to be posted in a week or so. The title comes from a quote by T. H. Lawrence.
The Dreamers of the Day
Harry opens his eyes and sits up, staring around. For the first time since he left Hogwarts, he’s seeing the inside of a room that isn’t his one at the Dursleys.
Granted, he’s not sure where he actually is. It looks more like Hogwarts than anywhere else, given the stone walls, but he thinks every stone wall he’s seen at Hogwarts is grey, not shining white like these are. There’s a green rug in the middle of the floor, and a fire burning on the far wall, and two chairs near the fireplace.
And standing in between Harry and the chairs is another boy.
Harry blinks at him. This boy is sort of familiar, but Harry has to admit that he never paid much attention at Hogwarts to people who weren’t his friends, Malfoy, or professors.
At least Harry is pretty sure that he isn’t a Gryffindor.
“Er, hello?”
“Hello,” the boy says. His voice is a low, rich rustle. Harry thinks his own voice sounds stupid some of the time, high and cracking and too young, and he envies this boy his ability to sound older.
“Who are you?”
The boy shakes his head. “My name isn’t important. But I know yours.” His eyes go to the scar on Harry’s forehead.
Harry scowls and flattens his fringe over it. Sometimes he still can’t believe that he used to like that stupid scar. “Okay. So how did we get here? Did someone cast a spell on you to make you find me or something?”
“You think this is a real room?” The boy blinks. His hair is dark, like Harry’s, but not as wild, and his eyes are a deep blue. An unusual color, Harry thinks, like the sunset sky he glimpses outside his window at the Dursleys’ sometimes. “No. It’s a dream.”
“Have you ever had a dream this real?”
“No.”
The boy offers no other information. Harry turns around with a sigh and stares at the fireplace. The warmth is sort of nice, but on the other hand, it’s disappointing to realize that he hasn’t escaped Privet Drive after all.
“What do you look so sad for?”
Harry blinks and glances at the boy over his shoulder. He’s closer to Harry now, studying Harry as if he’s a lot more interesting than the fact of the dream. “Why can’t I look sad?”
“You have friends. I would kill for friends like that.”
There’s a flat tone to the boy’s voice that makes Harry wonder uneasily how literal that killing would be. He shifts. “Well, maybe. But neither of them has written to me all summer. So they’re not my best friends the way I thought they were.”
“Do they not have owls?”
“I tried sending them a letter. Hermione might not have an owl, even though I’m sure her parents would have bought her one if she asked. But she could have replied with Hedwig. And she didn’t.”
Harry isn’t sure why he’s telling the boy this. But it’s just a dream. It isn’t real. And the boy won’t even tell Harry his name. So it’s not like Harry knows whether he will keep the secrets or not.
“Hermione? Oh, the Mudblood.”
“Shut up.”
The boy gapes at Harry. Harry didn’t expect to swing around and yell quite that loudly, so that’s sort of fair. But he has his fists clenched, and he’ll yell again if the boy says that name. He doesn’t know exactly what it means, but he knows it’s bad.
The boy used exactly the sort of tone that Petunia uses when she calls Harry a freak. That’s how Harry knows.
“I—fine,” the boy says at last, his eyes darting back and forth between Harry’s face and his fists. Harry wonders if the boy doesn’t know how to fight with his fists. Probably not. “Do you realize that the conflict between Muggleborns and purebloods has deep roots, and can’t be solved by you shouting at me to shut up?”
“Then it can’t be solved by you calling Hermione a nasty name, either.”
“I’m not trying to solve it.”
“Neither am I!”
“What? Yes, you are.”
“You get more confusing by the second,” Harry tells the boy, because, once again, this is a dream, and he really doubts that the boy will get that much attention if he goes around telling people this in real life.
“You’re the Boy-Who-Lived,” the boy says slowly, his eyes narrowed as if against a strong light. “That means that you’re trying to end the conflict between purebloods and Mud—Muggleborns by killing the Dark Lord.”
“I just wanted to live! If I tried to kill him at the end of the year, then it was just because he was trying to kill me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
They stare at each other in silence for long enough that Harry thinks the dream will probably end and they’ll just both wake up. But then the boy sighs and runs his hand through his dark hair in what’s a pretty familiar gesture. Ron does the same thing all the time. “The Dark Lord was trying to make sure that purebloods had their voices respected,” he says quietly. “You ended his life. That means that you must want to save the Muggleborns, and you’re on their side of the war.”
Harry thinks about sitting down and putting his head in his hands, but they’ve already wasted enough time in silence when the dream might end any second. He shakes his head impatiently. “I didn’t know anything about that, boy. I was one year old. And anyway, he’s not dead.”
“What?”
Harry enjoys the sensation of getting to smile while the boy stares at him with his mouth slightly open. “Yeah. He was on the back of Professor Quirrell’s head. Just a disgusting-looking face sticking out like a pimple. I burned Professor Quirrell’s body with my hands, and he died, but Voldemort is still alive.”
The boy yelps and scrambles backwards, nearly hitting his arm on one of the chairs. “You can’t just say the Dark Lord’s name!”
“Sure I can. It’s a name. A stupid one.”
The boy apparently thinks this is an entirely new idea that no one has ever had before, and just stares at Harry with his lips slightly parted.
“Maybe you can say it,” he finally whispers, “because you’re the Boy-Who-Lived. You probably grew up with people who told you not to fear it. But not all of us are as lucky as you are.”
“I grew up with Muggles, so it’s more that I just never heard that the name was special and I should be afraid of it in the first place.”
“What?”
“You say that a lot.”
The boy draws himself upright, bristling like a small offended cat. Harry grins at him and waits for him to say something else stupid about Muggleborns. At least this is more fun than arguing with Dudley.
But instead, the dream darkens around them and vanishes with a yank so abrupt that Harry sits up in his bed feeling like his heart is trying to claw its way out of his chest. He gasps and slaps a hand over it.
Then he stares wildly around his room. But the dream is gone, and with it the boy.
*
“You’re being childish.”
“You won’t even tell me your name. I can be childish all I want.”
Harry stands and stares into the fire, with his arms folded, the way he’s been doing since he woke up in the dream with the boy again. The boy sighs impatiently and walks around in front of Harry.
“I want to tell you, but it would be dangerous.”
“For me or you?”
The boy pauses a second as if he didn’t expect the question, which is silly to Harry. After all, it’s a basic question, isn’t it? But after a second, the boy shakes his head and says, “For both of us. If my father found out I was associating with the Boy-Who-Lived…”
Harry sighs. All right, that makes him a little more sympathetic to the boy. “Fine. But you’re here. So you should get out of the dreams, right?”
“I don’t know what’s causing this, but the dreams simply occurring isn’t a problem. My father isn’t a Legilimens. It’s you possibly calling me by name in public or acting like you know me that would be.”
“What’s a—Leggymens?”
“I can’t believe you don’t know.”
“I told you last time! I grew up with Muggles.”
The boy narrows his eyes. Then he says slowly, “A Legilimens is someone who can look into someone else’s mind and read the memories there. Professor Snape is one, for example. They can sense lies. My father is quite good at detecting lies on his own, but there’s no reason that he would think I was having dreams like this, and so no reason for him to ask me or for me to have to lie.”
“What?”
“Now who’s the one saying that?”
Harry scowls at the boy. He’s very annoying. “I just didn’t know that that could even exist! Although it doesn’t explain why Snape hated me so much.”
“Why would they be connected?”
“He ought to have been able to look into my mind last year and see that I didn’t know the answers to the questions he was asking me the first day of class! Hermione said later on they were really complex questions and she was probably the only one who would have known them other than Snape. And he could have seen that I grew up with Muggles. So him hating me is even stupider, given that.”
The boy is silent for a long moment, his eyes wide. Then he says, “Do you want to talk about something else?”
“Like what?”
“I—don’t know.”
Harry feels a bit of pity for the boy. He seems to be almost as bad at talking about ordinary subjects as Harry is. Maybe he really doesn’t have siblings or friends himself. “Well, what about our pets? Do you have a pet?”
“I have an owl. She’s a familiar, not a pet.”
“What’s a familiar?”
“I thought your owl was your familiar.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
And somehow, they end up sitting in front of the fireplace that the dream conjures and talking about owls, and the difference between familiars and ordinary pets. Apparently, familiars are bonded to you and can understand you and communicate with you in body language better than normal animals. Harry nods when the boy explains that.
“Then Hedwig is definitely my familiar.”
“Hedwig is a lovely name.”
“Er, thanks,” Harry says, and can’t help the smile that slips over his face. “What’s your owl’s name?”
And they talk until some force, as mysterious as the last time, pulls him out of the dream. Harry lies in the middle of his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and decides that he has come up with a name for the boy.
My friend.
*
“Hey, friend, what do you know about house-elves?”
Harry’s friend, who’s been sprawled on his stomach in front of the fireplace and drawing runes with a stick in the soot, starts and turns his head to look at Harry. “What? House-elves? I thought you lived with Muggles!”
“Right, but this mad house-elf showed up today and said that he’s been stealing my post so I would be lonely and think my friends weren’t my friends anymore and wouldn’t want to go back to Hogwarts. He keeps claiming that there’s something evil happening at the school this year and I have to stay home. Anyway, it means my relatives are angry at me.”
His friend ducks his head. His voice is muffled, and it seems to have lost a lot of the emotion he has most of the time. “Your friends were writing to you? Are you going to stop coming into the dreams then?”
“Why would I?”
Maybe it’s the genuine astonishment in Harry’s voice, but his friend rolls over on his side and stares at Harry. “Because they’re your real friends. And you have them back. You know they were always writing to you, and it was only the house-elf that kept you from receiving their letters. So you won’t need me anymore.”
“I still don’t know exactly why the dreams started, but I’d like you to keep coming! Just because I have two friends doesn’t mean I can’t have three.”
The boy closes his eyes and turns his head away. Harry watches him uncertainly, then adds, “Unless you don’t want to keep coming yourself? I wouldn’t blame you. I’m sort of boring.”
“You’re not boring.” His friend’s voice is low, and he turns around and stretches out a hand that Harry takes. “I just—wanted to make sure that you would want to keep seeing me.”
Harry smiles at him. “I can’t imagine giving you up now.”
His friend smiles as if he doesn’t want anyone to see, so Harry turns and looks at the fire.
*
They keep meeting throughout that summer, discussing Harry’s wild trip in a flying car to the Weasley Burrow, and his confrontation with Lockhart in the bookshop at Diagon Alley, and the way that he accidentally Flooed to Knockturn Alley. Harry’s friend finds it hard to believe that he didn’t know what the Floo was, either.
In contrast, his friend doesn’t talk a lot about his own life. Harry doesn’t want to pry, but he does wonder who his friend lives with, and which House he’s in, and what his favorite class is. The only things Harry knows for sure are that he’s pureblood, has an owl named Keppler, and likes Runes.
And he likes being friends with Harry.
Sometimes, Harry thinks he should mention his friend to Ron and Hermione. They might want to know.
But they might also want to pry, and Hermione would definitely want to find out the cause of the dreams, and Harry just doesn’t want to worry about that. He’s so sick of worrying about everything. Dobby and the plot at the school and the Dursleys and getting Mrs. Weasley angry when they flew in the magical car.
Keeping it secret is better.
*
“You missed the Sorting.”
“I know. Sorry.” Harry sighs and stretches out near the fireplace.
“Is that all you have to say?”
His friend’s voice is harsh in a way that makes Harry start and stare at him. He hasn’t sounded like that in months, since the dreams first started. And there are dark designs growing down the marble walls now, like vines. Harry thinks they’re reaching out thorn-studded branches for him.
“I—I am sorry.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Harry sighs again and sits up. “The barrier that was supposed to let Ron and me onto the train platform didn’t work. It shut us out. I don’t know why. It had let Ron’s family go through just before us. So Ron and I flew that magical car the Weasleys have to school.”
“And you landed it?”
“Er. It crashed into a tree and we got out all right, but no, we didn’t exactly land it. Snape was pretty angry.”
His friend sighs and lifts a pale hand to tuck it over his face. Harry blinks. He’s not used to this quiet kind of worry. Mrs. Weasley and Hermione are the only ones who really worry about him, and it’s usually loud when they do it.
“You know that you could have waited and someone would have come to fetch you and bring you to the school with Apparition?”
Harry feels his tongue tangle up behind his teeth. That probably is true, but on the other hand, he’s just so used to—
To things not going right. To having his post interfered with and people who are supposed to help ignore him and people hate him for no reason or because of stupid lies. It seemed equally likely to him that he would get blamed for somehow ruining the barrier, and he would be sent back to the Dursleys’, even if Ron got taken to the school.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” his friend says abruptly, and sits down next to Harry. “One thing we should discuss.”
“Yes?”
“You’ll see me in reality here. I’m sure that we’ll be in some of the same classes. I need you not to reveal that you know me.”
Harry bites his lip and nods. He wasn’t specifically thinking of that, but now that his friend said that, it makes sense. “Okay. But can you at least tell me why we have to pretend not to know each other?”
His friend stares at the floor. Harry waits. He let it go the other times, but now, he wants to know more about why his friend thinks it would be dangerous to be friends in reality. If he’s just an ordinary boy, then it wouldn’t be. So it has to be something else.
“My father was a Death Eater.”
The whisper is so soft that Harry can barely make it out. He blinks. “What do you mean?”
“What else can I mean? He supposed the Dark Lord.”
Harry gasps sharply. He stares at the boy and says, certain that he’s right as he says it, “You’re a Slytherin, aren’t you?”
“Going to exile me from friendship with you now?”
Harry shakes his head frantically. “No! But—I just didn’t expect it.”
“Why not? Surely it should have been clear that I was no Gryffindor.”
“Yeah, but the Slytherins who talk to me make fun of me. So I didn’t think one would be willing to talk to me even in dreams. If you hadn’t known who I was when we started having them, then maybe.”
His friend gives him a strained smile. There are shadows in his eyes and on his face that Harry wishes weren’t there. “I suppose I might as well tell you my name. I just—please don’t react to me in the corridors or in classes. Please.”
“Your father would be upset?”
“Upset is not the word I would use.”
His friend seems to have withdrawn even more, to the point that Harry thinks he might vanish from the dream-room. He controls his own curiosity and nods. “All right, I won’t show that I know you. But please, can I have your name?”
“Theodore Nott. Please call me Theo.”
His friend—Theo—is watching him so narrowly that Harry is sure he’s prepared for a negative reaction. But honestly, Harry hasn’t heard or thought much about Theodore Nott, which was the reason he didn’t recognize him when they started having these dreams. Ron sometimes complains about Nott, but mostly for the reasons that he used to complain about Hermione. Nott has his nose in a book all the time.
“All right, Theo. Thanks for telling me your name. I’m glad you’re my friend, and I won’t show that I know you in reality.” Harry’s pretty sure that will be hard, but he doesn’t want to get Theo in trouble.
Theo catches his breath and stares at Harry with wide eyes as if he didn’t expect that. Then he licks his lips and nods. “Thank you, Harry.” He hesitates, and Harry waits, because even not knowing his friend’s name until now, he’s got pretty good at reading Theo. “I—I wish we could talk openly. I just don’t want to risk either of our lives.”
Harry shivers at the notion that Theo’s father might attack Harry for just existing. “Yeah. Thanks. Do you want to tell me what the train ride was like, since I didn’t get to go?”
Theo sits down next to him, staring at Harry as if he’s a miracle. Harry flushes. But he remembers what Theo has said about Ron and Hermione sometimes, and he reckons it’s because Theo doesn’t have any friends in reality.
For the first time, Harry really thinks that Theo might be worse off than he is. And it makes him just as glad that they have a dream-space to talk and laugh and spend time together, since they can’t do it in reality.
*
“Harry, mate, why you are looking at the Slytherin table?”
Harry turns his head and pretends to yawn. It turns into a real yawn soon enough, because that’s the kind of thing that happens with yawns. “Sorry, Ron, I was just sort of staring off into space. And, well, Malfoy was glaring at me.”
That’s not actually true, but when Ron looks at the Slytherin table, sure enough, Malfoy notices and does start glaring.
“Git,” Ron mutters under his breath, and then begins retelling the story of the fight between Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy in Flourish and Blotts to Seamus and Dean. Harry keeps his head down over the porridge.
He forgot, or maybe he really never had to pay attention to the fact before, but people do watch him. And if he’s suddenly acting in a way that he never has before, Ron and Hermione will notice and ask him why.
Theo was wise to ask Harry not to pay him any attention in public, as far as he can.
Harry hates it. He should be able to say that a certain Slytherin is his friend, and Theo should be able to associate with Harry all he wants. But it’s the way things are, and Harry can’t endanger Theo’s life just because he would like things to be different.
At least he knows they have the dreams where no one knows they’re talking.
And at least he and Theo both have plenty of practice at living with things they wish were different.
Pairings: Harry/Theo, background mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU starting in the summer after first year, dreams, angst, references to violence and character deaths, present tense, underage kissing
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Lost and alone after his first year, with no one sending him owls, Harry begins to have dreams of another boy who obviously recognizes him, but won’t give Harry his name. On beginning his second year, Harry learns that the boy is Theo Nott, but that it would be dangerous to meet in reality. Harry tries to enjoy the friendship that continues in his sleep every night, without bringing his feelings—including his intense crush on Theo—into the daylight hours.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “More Harry/Theo in the World Project” series. It will have five parts, the next one to be posted in a week or so. The title comes from a quote by T. H. Lawrence.
The Dreamers of the Day
Harry opens his eyes and sits up, staring around. For the first time since he left Hogwarts, he’s seeing the inside of a room that isn’t his one at the Dursleys.
Granted, he’s not sure where he actually is. It looks more like Hogwarts than anywhere else, given the stone walls, but he thinks every stone wall he’s seen at Hogwarts is grey, not shining white like these are. There’s a green rug in the middle of the floor, and a fire burning on the far wall, and two chairs near the fireplace.
And standing in between Harry and the chairs is another boy.
Harry blinks at him. This boy is sort of familiar, but Harry has to admit that he never paid much attention at Hogwarts to people who weren’t his friends, Malfoy, or professors.
At least Harry is pretty sure that he isn’t a Gryffindor.
“Er, hello?”
“Hello,” the boy says. His voice is a low, rich rustle. Harry thinks his own voice sounds stupid some of the time, high and cracking and too young, and he envies this boy his ability to sound older.
“Who are you?”
The boy shakes his head. “My name isn’t important. But I know yours.” His eyes go to the scar on Harry’s forehead.
Harry scowls and flattens his fringe over it. Sometimes he still can’t believe that he used to like that stupid scar. “Okay. So how did we get here? Did someone cast a spell on you to make you find me or something?”
“You think this is a real room?” The boy blinks. His hair is dark, like Harry’s, but not as wild, and his eyes are a deep blue. An unusual color, Harry thinks, like the sunset sky he glimpses outside his window at the Dursleys’ sometimes. “No. It’s a dream.”
“Have you ever had a dream this real?”
“No.”
The boy offers no other information. Harry turns around with a sigh and stares at the fireplace. The warmth is sort of nice, but on the other hand, it’s disappointing to realize that he hasn’t escaped Privet Drive after all.
“What do you look so sad for?”
Harry blinks and glances at the boy over his shoulder. He’s closer to Harry now, studying Harry as if he’s a lot more interesting than the fact of the dream. “Why can’t I look sad?”
“You have friends. I would kill for friends like that.”
There’s a flat tone to the boy’s voice that makes Harry wonder uneasily how literal that killing would be. He shifts. “Well, maybe. But neither of them has written to me all summer. So they’re not my best friends the way I thought they were.”
“Do they not have owls?”
“I tried sending them a letter. Hermione might not have an owl, even though I’m sure her parents would have bought her one if she asked. But she could have replied with Hedwig. And she didn’t.”
Harry isn’t sure why he’s telling the boy this. But it’s just a dream. It isn’t real. And the boy won’t even tell Harry his name. So it’s not like Harry knows whether he will keep the secrets or not.
“Hermione? Oh, the Mudblood.”
“Shut up.”
The boy gapes at Harry. Harry didn’t expect to swing around and yell quite that loudly, so that’s sort of fair. But he has his fists clenched, and he’ll yell again if the boy says that name. He doesn’t know exactly what it means, but he knows it’s bad.
The boy used exactly the sort of tone that Petunia uses when she calls Harry a freak. That’s how Harry knows.
“I—fine,” the boy says at last, his eyes darting back and forth between Harry’s face and his fists. Harry wonders if the boy doesn’t know how to fight with his fists. Probably not. “Do you realize that the conflict between Muggleborns and purebloods has deep roots, and can’t be solved by you shouting at me to shut up?”
“Then it can’t be solved by you calling Hermione a nasty name, either.”
“I’m not trying to solve it.”
“Neither am I!”
“What? Yes, you are.”
“You get more confusing by the second,” Harry tells the boy, because, once again, this is a dream, and he really doubts that the boy will get that much attention if he goes around telling people this in real life.
“You’re the Boy-Who-Lived,” the boy says slowly, his eyes narrowed as if against a strong light. “That means that you’re trying to end the conflict between purebloods and Mud—Muggleborns by killing the Dark Lord.”
“I just wanted to live! If I tried to kill him at the end of the year, then it was just because he was trying to kill me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
They stare at each other in silence for long enough that Harry thinks the dream will probably end and they’ll just both wake up. But then the boy sighs and runs his hand through his dark hair in what’s a pretty familiar gesture. Ron does the same thing all the time. “The Dark Lord was trying to make sure that purebloods had their voices respected,” he says quietly. “You ended his life. That means that you must want to save the Muggleborns, and you’re on their side of the war.”
Harry thinks about sitting down and putting his head in his hands, but they’ve already wasted enough time in silence when the dream might end any second. He shakes his head impatiently. “I didn’t know anything about that, boy. I was one year old. And anyway, he’s not dead.”
“What?”
Harry enjoys the sensation of getting to smile while the boy stares at him with his mouth slightly open. “Yeah. He was on the back of Professor Quirrell’s head. Just a disgusting-looking face sticking out like a pimple. I burned Professor Quirrell’s body with my hands, and he died, but Voldemort is still alive.”
The boy yelps and scrambles backwards, nearly hitting his arm on one of the chairs. “You can’t just say the Dark Lord’s name!”
“Sure I can. It’s a name. A stupid one.”
The boy apparently thinks this is an entirely new idea that no one has ever had before, and just stares at Harry with his lips slightly parted.
“Maybe you can say it,” he finally whispers, “because you’re the Boy-Who-Lived. You probably grew up with people who told you not to fear it. But not all of us are as lucky as you are.”
“I grew up with Muggles, so it’s more that I just never heard that the name was special and I should be afraid of it in the first place.”
“What?”
“You say that a lot.”
The boy draws himself upright, bristling like a small offended cat. Harry grins at him and waits for him to say something else stupid about Muggleborns. At least this is more fun than arguing with Dudley.
But instead, the dream darkens around them and vanishes with a yank so abrupt that Harry sits up in his bed feeling like his heart is trying to claw its way out of his chest. He gasps and slaps a hand over it.
Then he stares wildly around his room. But the dream is gone, and with it the boy.
*
“You’re being childish.”
“You won’t even tell me your name. I can be childish all I want.”
Harry stands and stares into the fire, with his arms folded, the way he’s been doing since he woke up in the dream with the boy again. The boy sighs impatiently and walks around in front of Harry.
“I want to tell you, but it would be dangerous.”
“For me or you?”
The boy pauses a second as if he didn’t expect the question, which is silly to Harry. After all, it’s a basic question, isn’t it? But after a second, the boy shakes his head and says, “For both of us. If my father found out I was associating with the Boy-Who-Lived…”
Harry sighs. All right, that makes him a little more sympathetic to the boy. “Fine. But you’re here. So you should get out of the dreams, right?”
“I don’t know what’s causing this, but the dreams simply occurring isn’t a problem. My father isn’t a Legilimens. It’s you possibly calling me by name in public or acting like you know me that would be.”
“What’s a—Leggymens?”
“I can’t believe you don’t know.”
“I told you last time! I grew up with Muggles.”
The boy narrows his eyes. Then he says slowly, “A Legilimens is someone who can look into someone else’s mind and read the memories there. Professor Snape is one, for example. They can sense lies. My father is quite good at detecting lies on his own, but there’s no reason that he would think I was having dreams like this, and so no reason for him to ask me or for me to have to lie.”
“What?”
“Now who’s the one saying that?”
Harry scowls at the boy. He’s very annoying. “I just didn’t know that that could even exist! Although it doesn’t explain why Snape hated me so much.”
“Why would they be connected?”
“He ought to have been able to look into my mind last year and see that I didn’t know the answers to the questions he was asking me the first day of class! Hermione said later on they were really complex questions and she was probably the only one who would have known them other than Snape. And he could have seen that I grew up with Muggles. So him hating me is even stupider, given that.”
The boy is silent for a long moment, his eyes wide. Then he says, “Do you want to talk about something else?”
“Like what?”
“I—don’t know.”
Harry feels a bit of pity for the boy. He seems to be almost as bad at talking about ordinary subjects as Harry is. Maybe he really doesn’t have siblings or friends himself. “Well, what about our pets? Do you have a pet?”
“I have an owl. She’s a familiar, not a pet.”
“What’s a familiar?”
“I thought your owl was your familiar.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
And somehow, they end up sitting in front of the fireplace that the dream conjures and talking about owls, and the difference between familiars and ordinary pets. Apparently, familiars are bonded to you and can understand you and communicate with you in body language better than normal animals. Harry nods when the boy explains that.
“Then Hedwig is definitely my familiar.”
“Hedwig is a lovely name.”
“Er, thanks,” Harry says, and can’t help the smile that slips over his face. “What’s your owl’s name?”
And they talk until some force, as mysterious as the last time, pulls him out of the dream. Harry lies in the middle of his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and decides that he has come up with a name for the boy.
My friend.
*
“Hey, friend, what do you know about house-elves?”
Harry’s friend, who’s been sprawled on his stomach in front of the fireplace and drawing runes with a stick in the soot, starts and turns his head to look at Harry. “What? House-elves? I thought you lived with Muggles!”
“Right, but this mad house-elf showed up today and said that he’s been stealing my post so I would be lonely and think my friends weren’t my friends anymore and wouldn’t want to go back to Hogwarts. He keeps claiming that there’s something evil happening at the school this year and I have to stay home. Anyway, it means my relatives are angry at me.”
His friend ducks his head. His voice is muffled, and it seems to have lost a lot of the emotion he has most of the time. “Your friends were writing to you? Are you going to stop coming into the dreams then?”
“Why would I?”
Maybe it’s the genuine astonishment in Harry’s voice, but his friend rolls over on his side and stares at Harry. “Because they’re your real friends. And you have them back. You know they were always writing to you, and it was only the house-elf that kept you from receiving their letters. So you won’t need me anymore.”
“I still don’t know exactly why the dreams started, but I’d like you to keep coming! Just because I have two friends doesn’t mean I can’t have three.”
The boy closes his eyes and turns his head away. Harry watches him uncertainly, then adds, “Unless you don’t want to keep coming yourself? I wouldn’t blame you. I’m sort of boring.”
“You’re not boring.” His friend’s voice is low, and he turns around and stretches out a hand that Harry takes. “I just—wanted to make sure that you would want to keep seeing me.”
Harry smiles at him. “I can’t imagine giving you up now.”
His friend smiles as if he doesn’t want anyone to see, so Harry turns and looks at the fire.
*
They keep meeting throughout that summer, discussing Harry’s wild trip in a flying car to the Weasley Burrow, and his confrontation with Lockhart in the bookshop at Diagon Alley, and the way that he accidentally Flooed to Knockturn Alley. Harry’s friend finds it hard to believe that he didn’t know what the Floo was, either.
In contrast, his friend doesn’t talk a lot about his own life. Harry doesn’t want to pry, but he does wonder who his friend lives with, and which House he’s in, and what his favorite class is. The only things Harry knows for sure are that he’s pureblood, has an owl named Keppler, and likes Runes.
And he likes being friends with Harry.
Sometimes, Harry thinks he should mention his friend to Ron and Hermione. They might want to know.
But they might also want to pry, and Hermione would definitely want to find out the cause of the dreams, and Harry just doesn’t want to worry about that. He’s so sick of worrying about everything. Dobby and the plot at the school and the Dursleys and getting Mrs. Weasley angry when they flew in the magical car.
Keeping it secret is better.
*
“You missed the Sorting.”
“I know. Sorry.” Harry sighs and stretches out near the fireplace.
“Is that all you have to say?”
His friend’s voice is harsh in a way that makes Harry start and stare at him. He hasn’t sounded like that in months, since the dreams first started. And there are dark designs growing down the marble walls now, like vines. Harry thinks they’re reaching out thorn-studded branches for him.
“I—I am sorry.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Harry sighs again and sits up. “The barrier that was supposed to let Ron and me onto the train platform didn’t work. It shut us out. I don’t know why. It had let Ron’s family go through just before us. So Ron and I flew that magical car the Weasleys have to school.”
“And you landed it?”
“Er. It crashed into a tree and we got out all right, but no, we didn’t exactly land it. Snape was pretty angry.”
His friend sighs and lifts a pale hand to tuck it over his face. Harry blinks. He’s not used to this quiet kind of worry. Mrs. Weasley and Hermione are the only ones who really worry about him, and it’s usually loud when they do it.
“You know that you could have waited and someone would have come to fetch you and bring you to the school with Apparition?”
Harry feels his tongue tangle up behind his teeth. That probably is true, but on the other hand, he’s just so used to—
To things not going right. To having his post interfered with and people who are supposed to help ignore him and people hate him for no reason or because of stupid lies. It seemed equally likely to him that he would get blamed for somehow ruining the barrier, and he would be sent back to the Dursleys’, even if Ron got taken to the school.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” his friend says abruptly, and sits down next to Harry. “One thing we should discuss.”
“Yes?”
“You’ll see me in reality here. I’m sure that we’ll be in some of the same classes. I need you not to reveal that you know me.”
Harry bites his lip and nods. He wasn’t specifically thinking of that, but now that his friend said that, it makes sense. “Okay. But can you at least tell me why we have to pretend not to know each other?”
His friend stares at the floor. Harry waits. He let it go the other times, but now, he wants to know more about why his friend thinks it would be dangerous to be friends in reality. If he’s just an ordinary boy, then it wouldn’t be. So it has to be something else.
“My father was a Death Eater.”
The whisper is so soft that Harry can barely make it out. He blinks. “What do you mean?”
“What else can I mean? He supposed the Dark Lord.”
Harry gasps sharply. He stares at the boy and says, certain that he’s right as he says it, “You’re a Slytherin, aren’t you?”
“Going to exile me from friendship with you now?”
Harry shakes his head frantically. “No! But—I just didn’t expect it.”
“Why not? Surely it should have been clear that I was no Gryffindor.”
“Yeah, but the Slytherins who talk to me make fun of me. So I didn’t think one would be willing to talk to me even in dreams. If you hadn’t known who I was when we started having them, then maybe.”
His friend gives him a strained smile. There are shadows in his eyes and on his face that Harry wishes weren’t there. “I suppose I might as well tell you my name. I just—please don’t react to me in the corridors or in classes. Please.”
“Your father would be upset?”
“Upset is not the word I would use.”
His friend seems to have withdrawn even more, to the point that Harry thinks he might vanish from the dream-room. He controls his own curiosity and nods. “All right, I won’t show that I know you. But please, can I have your name?”
“Theodore Nott. Please call me Theo.”
His friend—Theo—is watching him so narrowly that Harry is sure he’s prepared for a negative reaction. But honestly, Harry hasn’t heard or thought much about Theodore Nott, which was the reason he didn’t recognize him when they started having these dreams. Ron sometimes complains about Nott, but mostly for the reasons that he used to complain about Hermione. Nott has his nose in a book all the time.
“All right, Theo. Thanks for telling me your name. I’m glad you’re my friend, and I won’t show that I know you in reality.” Harry’s pretty sure that will be hard, but he doesn’t want to get Theo in trouble.
Theo catches his breath and stares at Harry with wide eyes as if he didn’t expect that. Then he licks his lips and nods. “Thank you, Harry.” He hesitates, and Harry waits, because even not knowing his friend’s name until now, he’s got pretty good at reading Theo. “I—I wish we could talk openly. I just don’t want to risk either of our lives.”
Harry shivers at the notion that Theo’s father might attack Harry for just existing. “Yeah. Thanks. Do you want to tell me what the train ride was like, since I didn’t get to go?”
Theo sits down next to him, staring at Harry as if he’s a miracle. Harry flushes. But he remembers what Theo has said about Ron and Hermione sometimes, and he reckons it’s because Theo doesn’t have any friends in reality.
For the first time, Harry really thinks that Theo might be worse off than he is. And it makes him just as glad that they have a dream-space to talk and laugh and spend time together, since they can’t do it in reality.
*
“Harry, mate, why you are looking at the Slytherin table?”
Harry turns his head and pretends to yawn. It turns into a real yawn soon enough, because that’s the kind of thing that happens with yawns. “Sorry, Ron, I was just sort of staring off into space. And, well, Malfoy was glaring at me.”
That’s not actually true, but when Ron looks at the Slytherin table, sure enough, Malfoy notices and does start glaring.
“Git,” Ron mutters under his breath, and then begins retelling the story of the fight between Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy in Flourish and Blotts to Seamus and Dean. Harry keeps his head down over the porridge.
He forgot, or maybe he really never had to pay attention to the fact before, but people do watch him. And if he’s suddenly acting in a way that he never has before, Ron and Hermione will notice and ask him why.
Theo was wise to ask Harry not to pay him any attention in public, as far as he can.
Harry hates it. He should be able to say that a certain Slytherin is his friend, and Theo should be able to associate with Harry all he wants. But it’s the way things are, and Harry can’t endanger Theo’s life just because he would like things to be different.
At least he knows they have the dreams where no one knows they’re talking.
And at least he and Theo both have plenty of practice at living with things they wish were different.
