Exchange FIC for Extension: What Nightmares Are Made Of

[mieronna]

Recipient: extension
Author: jessicaqueen
Title: What Nightmares Are Made Of
Pairing: Voldemort/Harry, Voldemort/Draco/Harry (if you squint)
Rating: R
Warnings: Dubious consent
Summary: After the war, Ginny still has terrible nightmares. Harry attempts to ease her mind, but is instead caught up in it.
Disclaimer: This may be an anonymous exchange, but I can tell you now that my name isn't J. K. Rowling. I don't own Harry Potter or his world. And I'm not profiting from this, or there would potentially be more money in my bank.

What Nightmares Are Made Of

Harry often awoke to his wife thrashing violently in his arms. His skin seemed permanently marked with fingernail gouges from where she lashed out defensively as she awoke, always with a start and a gasp.

Harry didn't mind that she'd hurt him. It only stung for a few seconds anyway. He'd certainly had worse. He did, however, mind that she wouldn't be up front about what had her so terrified.

"It's just dreams," she said with a nervous laugh.

Harry wished he could have shrugged and left it at that. It was obvious she was dreaming, and perhaps another man would have taken her upon her word. But he knew that the things those left alive after the war saw when they closed their eyes at night were rarely just dreams. Ginny's nightmares seemed to haunt her even when she was perfectly awake. The blackness under her eyes grew darker with each passing day, just as the contrast of freckles against her pale face deepened.

Harry would be the first to admit that he wasn't as brilliant as, say, Hermione had been. But he was suspicious enough to not believe her when she claimed that she was just tired. Especially as there were other signs.

There had been a time not long ago when it had been Harry's thinness that had startled their family and friends. Now they barely noticed him compared to the way her cheekbones jutted out too prominently and her shoulders looked like they would snap with the barest touch.

Harry was hardly willing to touch her anymore for fear that he would break her. It was that that drove him to finally confront her.

"You need help," he said. He didn't dare suggest Healers or St Mungo's in general considering what they'd watched her brother go through after the war. "If you would just tell me what your dreams are about, we could talk about it. I could help you."

"I can't," she said without meeting his eyes.

Harry sighed. "Well, all right. What about if you don't actually tell me? I could just use Legilimency on you to see your dreams."

"No!"

She covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers as if embarrassed at her outburst. "You can't see it," she continued more quietly. "I won't let you. It's my burden, and I'll deal with it."

He knew it wasn't meant to sound like a challenge, but that didn't stop his eyes from narrowing in resolve.

He wasn't equipped to deal with this - or rather, to stand back and let her deal with this herself. It hadn't been so long ago that their roles had been reversed. He stopped himself from sighing again. Instead, he wound his arms around Ginny's narrow frame and whispered that it would be all right.

Though he wished that could be the case, he didn't honestly believe a word of what he was saying.

Every so often, Harry caught Ginny looking at him strangely. Well, that wasn't precisely true. There was nothing out of ordinary about the way she was looking at him. It was more that there was a kind of glint in her eyes that seemed somehow … off. It wasn't something he'd ever seen in her expression.

And yet it was somehow familiar.

But, Harry decided each time with a shake of his head, he was probably just imagining it. He was, after all, almost as tired as she was these days. It had been too long since he'd made it through a night without her waking him with a kick or a pained moan.

Harry knew that the easy solution would be to use the guest room, just while they were asleep. Each and every night as she fell asleep there was a moment during which he considered slipping out of the bed. She'd never miss him then anyway, and he was hardly helping her when he could barely stay upright but for exhaustion. But she'd been there for him when he needed it. She still was. They were each all the other really had anymore.

However, he could hardly ignore that the nightmares were obviously persisting, as she would have him do. Harry suspected that they might even be getting worse, judging from the way Ginny occasionally jumped and made strange squeaking sounds when Harry startled her even slightly.

Harry didn't know how much longer he could take watching her suffer.

The day that she snapped and literally hissed at him to get the fuck away from her, Harry decided there was something very wrong. Firstly, because Harry had never heard her swear in all the time he'd known her. And then, more the point, because for a second he could almost have sworn she'd spoken in Parseltongue.

That might have seemed ridiculous, but the thought wouldn't leave his head.

Something clearly had to be done.

Ginny might have repeatedly turned down his offers of therapeutic Legilimency (as she'd mockingly called it) but she was hardly acting in her own best interest lately. It was time he took things into his own hands.

Harry was glad at that moment that he'd been about as successful in teaching her Occlumency as Snape had been with him before everything went to hell.

When Harry finally worked up the resolve to cast the spell, Ginny seemed to see him raising his wand before he even began the motion.

"Don't -" she tried to say, but Harry wasn't letting her denials put him off this time. It would take more than words, and Ginny didn't presently have her wand on her.

Her eyes widened, though they remained trained on his.

"Legilimens."

He was somewhat mystified when the usual too-fast rush of memories prompted by the spell lasted mere seconds. It was interrupted by the sound of a moan and the flicker of candlelight, and Harry found himself unwillingly dragged into one particular memory, as if he was in a Pensieve. Though perhaps it was actually a thought, or a delusion, rather than a memory, because Harry was quite certain this scene had never taken place in reality, and that it wouldn't ever do so in the future.

Lying on his back on the presumably hard stone floor was an image of a man who was clearly himself. He looked slightly younger, though, as he had when he'd just finished school. When he'd defeated Voldemort. It felt like decades had passed since that moment of empty triumph.

And, more alarmingly, he was naked.

He wasn't alone, either. Harry couldn't fail but notice that the second man in the room, who was straddling Harry's near-doppelganger's thighs, was none other than Voldemort himself. He, too, had somehow manifested as a younger version of himself. Harry had only ever seen him in that form during his own second year at Hogwarts.

Though he'd never seen quite so much of him then, admittedly. Harry tried valiantly not to focus on his nudity.

He tried even harder not to notice that what appeared to be a resurrected Tom Riddle was putting his fingers to good use in preparing Harry's twin for something that Harry himself had never actually taken part in.

Well, maybe the fingers part, but even that had been only very occasional. And that thought was not at all helpful in prying his attention away from the spectacle the other two men - boys, really - were creating.

Before he could bring himself to look away, one of the other two pairs of eyes in the room unexpectedly shot open and met his own. Harry felt immediately lost in their depths. The other version of himself seemed to fade out of existence as Tom's eyes narrowed ever so slightly at him. A low voice in his head called for him to come forward. Harry found his feet moving almost against his will.

Oddly, it felt like he was being stalked, though it was really Harry who was closing the gap between them. Despite his stillness, Riddle was easily distinguishable as the predator in this particular scenario.

Still locked in that gaze, Harry was overtaken by a strange feeling that he could only describe to himself - and only then with the benefit of hindsight - as his body melting into a pool of near nothingness before combining with another body. He shut his eyes against the sensation. A moment later, however, the feeling ended, and Harry allowed his eyes to flicker open once more, almost cautiously. He found that Tom's eyes were only inches away now, and that he was quite obviously pinned under Tom's body in place of the second version of himself, who was now nowhere to be seen.

Also nowhere to be seen now were Harry's clothes. He would have liked to have panicked, but his muscles seemed to be somehow too heavy for him, and he was incapable of using his determination to move them.

"I've been waiting for you," Tom hissed as he penetrated Harry with his fingers in a way that nothing other than Harry's own fingers had ever done before then.

Then the fingers disappeared and were replaced, and Harry groaned loudly; the first movement his body had made seemingly voluntarily since he'd entered this strange nightmare.

"Oh, Harry," he heard Ginny's voice say dejectedly from what sounded like miles away. It couldn't be too far away, though, since Harry was presumably still trapped inside Ginny's own mind.

He wondered whether Ginny had this strange dream often, and whether it was perhaps what distressed her so much.

He decided when she whispered, almost too quietly for him to hear, "I'm sorry," that it probably was.

He wondered why she sounded so hopeless. For all that it was very strange, it wasn't exactly the most unpleasant thing Harry had ever been put through.

He did wish, though, that he could open his mouth for some purpose other than to gasp with each subsequent thrust of Tom's hips, and grunt as his own hips thrust up without him meaning them to.

By the time Harry had enough control of himself to struggle against what was happening, he found that his hands and feet were bound with leather straps, though precisely to what those straps were attached, Harry had no idea. They seemed to fade into shadow a few feet down their length. They certainly held him down well enough, though, properly secured or not.

His arms and legs both jerked powerfully against the bindings in panic. It's only a dream, Harry reminded himself, and it's not real.

That didn't work to calm him much.

"Steady there, Potter," Tom taunted, his rhythm not faltering in the slightest. Hair just as dark as his own tickled his face sporadically as Tom occasionally seemed to go to kiss Harry, but then think better of it. Harry wondered if he'd forgotten who he was with in that moment.

Well he could go fuck himself, Harry thought spitefully. If he was going to fuck him against his will - or almost against his will, Harry amended almost sheepishly in his own mind as cock ground against Tom's abdomen just enough to further frustrate him - he could bloody well remember whose arse he was driving into.

Unless, of course, he kept hitting that spot … right … there … just like that! Then Harry admittedly wouldn't really give a toss what was going on in his head.

Harry cried out as Tom thrust extra hard into him, his climax finally overwhelming what little ability to think rationally he'd been clinging to.

"That's it, Potter," Tom laughed. "Moan for me. Moan like a whore."

"Fuck you!" Harry gasped, still feeling too disoriented to come up with any better response.

"No, Potter, fuck you, actually."

"I'm going to kill you," Harry finally managed to spit out. "I've done it once."

"You did a bad job," Tom reminded him, his voice erratic with his continuing efforts. "Your first and second attempts to end me were cocked up, in fact. You must feel like a … ah! … failure."

Harry didn't quite know what to say to that.

"But don't … ugh … worry too much, Potter. I can help you there. You won't … oh, yes … be a failure anymore, I promise."

Tom's eyes met his once more, pupils dilated so far that his eyes looked solid black, and he grinned in a manner reminiscent of the older and more skeletal version of himself.

Harry knew that Tom was coming inside him then, but it was more of an intellectual knowledge than anything. He couldn't feel it, for some reason. He couldn't feel much of anything.

He felt as if he was drifting aimlessly, like flotsam, for a long time. By the time feeling came back to him, however, he found himself looking at Ginny's eyes instead of Tom's, for he was clearly back in his own body.

"Harry?" Ginny asked apprehensively.

Harry grinned, or perhaps even sneered, at her.

"Dearest Ginny," he replied, though he couldn't remember thinking those words, or wanting to say them.

Ginny gasped, her hand coming to her mouth in shock. She ran from the room as if Voldemort himself was chasing at her heels.

Harry merely laughed, his cackle echoing throughout the now otherwise silent room.

Draco Malfoy opened the door to find, of all people, Harry Potter standing in wait. Not even standing, in fact. He was, rather, leaning against the door frame as if he had every right to be there. As if he owned the place.

"What do you want, Potter?"

"Why, you of course."

He should have suspected he would be in for the usual Potter melodramatics.

"Me?" he asked. "And how did you want me precisely, Potty? Flayed within an inch of my life with my tongue pulled out my eye socket?"

Potter actually smiled. "That's … commendably graphic. Though you really should watch your tone, or I might actually consider finding a similarly suitable use for your tongue. And we both know that that would be such a waste, with your tongue being as talented as it is."

"What would you know about it? You may have defeated the Dark Lord, but you aren't as smart as you seem to think you are. And I'll wager that your luck's run out by now."

"Quite the contrary," Potter countered. "This is a very lucky day indeed. Reunions are such rare and lucky occasions, don't you think, my young Dragon?"

Draco's eyes widened in recognition. "My Lord?" he asked hesitantly.

Potter - or rather the man that was using Potter's body like a marionette - quirked his eyebrow.

Draco bowed low, his eyes averted to the ground, an act that would hopefully be viewed as deference. "I'm so sorry, my Lord. If I'd had any idea … but I thought … only, I saw you dead."

"That's hardly stopped me before. And normally I would punish you for your mistake of not investigating further - especially since you have already stretched my patience with your past mistakes -" Potter reminded him with a dangerous sort of glare, the kind Draco had rarely seen adorning that face, "but I hardly think temporarily addling your brain with the Cruciatus Curse is the best way to reacquaint ourselves after so long apart."

"It's been years," Draco breathed.

"Yes. I had expected to be back to you sooner. However, the body I was previously occupying would have been far more repulsive to you than this one, considering your preferences, and I preferred to return in a form that you might appreciate, for all its downfalls. Unfortunately, the dratted boy took as long as ever to cotton on to the fact that something was amiss, and so it took longer than expected to get him into a position where I could transfer into his mind."

"Thank you for your consideration, my Lord. Your presence now is all that matters. And I find your present form quite attractive when I know who is behind the face."

Potter - well, the Dark Lord, really - smirked in a way that he doubted Potter himself would have been able to pull off.

"You flatter me," he said, though he obviously took it as his due. "Come here, my young Dragon."

Draco crossed the threshold, suddenly acutely aware - and embarrassed - that he hadn't gathered his wits enough to think of inviting the Dark Lord into his house.

Once he was standing with mere inches separating Potter's chest from his own, a hand ghosted down the side of Draco's face. Lips that were much thicker than Draco's subconscious had expected to find when kissing the Dark Lord met his insistently, and a blunt sort of nose caressed his cheek in a way that was even more unexpected.

No, Draco wasn't at all repulsed by Harry Potter when he was being possessed by the Dark Lord. In fact, he decided that this was definitely a change for the better.

"How?" he asked finally. "I know that I saw you die, and I was certain it would be for good this time. We all were."

"Yes. However, you will remember that I had several Horcruxes. It was fortunate that the portion of my soul in one of them, a diary, was cognisant enough to be able to save itself before destruction by transferring into a young girl, from whom it had been drawing power. Potter's girlfriend, incidentally. What was left of my present mentality after Potter temporarily dispatched of my body once more was able to seek out and combine with that other slice of my soul, which was until then still lying dormant in that girl's mind. It was quite simple - though time-consuming, I admit - to draw Potter into my trap from there.

"I find that the war has left him much more to my tastes than the last time I tried to possess him. He was so … pure then. Disgusting. But he's not so innocent now.

"Do you know," his partner breathed as Draco resumed his ministrations, kissing his neck, "that Potter's mind is not completely gone from this body? It is just below the surface, enough so that I can control him, and tune him out if I desire. Right now, he's living through this exactly as I am, and he's just as aroused, though he wishes he wasn't. Does that please you, my Dragon?"

"Nothing could please me more."

Well, perhaps that was a lie. It would have pleased him more if the Dark Lord had continued to relay Potter's emotions to him as he worked his way down the robes covering Potter's body, his mouth mapping this unknown territory as each clasp of the robes fell undone under his fingers.

It would have pleased him to hear that Potter was screaming inside, yet quietly also loving what he was being forced to take part in.

As Draco cupped Potter's erection through the half-buttoned robe, he looked up to meet his Lord's eyes, finding green instead of the red he'd half expected. They were now the colour rumour would have him believe they once were. The colour they should have been.

"I missed you," Draco said.

A hand fell down to his head, both gripping and caressing his hair all at once.

"Show me how much, and I'll make certain that you'll never have occasion to miss me again."

Draco reached for the last few buttons eagerly, deciding that that sounded like a very sweet deal indeed.

He hoped Potter was screaming in there.