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Linked by Philyra912
 Books » Harry Potter Rated: T, English, Romance, Draco M., Hermione G., Words: 61k+, Favs: 4k+, Follows: 920, Published: Jun 18, 2005 Updated: Jan 5, 2006
 2,542 Chapter 17: The Children of the Damned
A/N: Hey, everyone! Sorry it was a day later than expected. I was intending to write this all out Saturday night, but I was suddenly IM'd by an old summer fling of mine I hadn't heard from in years and we ended up talking far into the night. Sigh If parts of this chapter seem rather sappy, please blame it on him and his sweet, silly words that neither of us believed for one second.
This chapter is slightly longer than mine usually are. What ended up happening was that I started out writing from Draco's POV and then realized that I didn't have anything more to say from his side of the story at that point. I therefore switched over to Hermione's POV, but it evolved into a memory chapter, and I couldn't cut that short. So what you basically have is a normal memory chapter with a little half-chapter at the beginning. Sorry if that doesn't sit well with you, but them's the breaks I guess. I think that, really, the Draco POV part should go with the previous chapter. When I do some editing and reposting when I'm done with the story, I'll probably do that. It will flow better that way.
Chapter 16: The Children of the Damned
A few weeks after the Partis Sensus had turned his world on its ear, Draco had experienced something that, until then, he could not remember experiencing before; he woke up from a dream, not terrified or in pain, but with a sense of comfort and peace. A good dream. It was a concept as foreign and alien to him as cell phones and orthodontics.
He had quickly surmised that the dream must have been a product of Hermione's subconscious, for he highly doubted that all of his accumulated happy memories could provide his own with enough material to work with in the "good dream" department. Normally, the dream-sharing phenomenon, which he had gleefully termed "REM rape" (Hermione was not amused, which only made him say it more), pissed him off, but it was such a relief to wake up without his heart racing in terror that he almost wished it would happen again. It had, several days later, and then, to his great surprise, he'd had a good dream of his own.
In this dream world, he had been flying, and he had been wonderfully, joyfully free. He did not want to give Hermione credit for this newfound happiness, but he suspected that it was her gentle influence on his sleeping mind that had resulted in this change of dream scenery. Initially, that had pissed him off as well, but that too had soon faded. Now he was simply grateful for the brief respites from nightmares and reality (which was sometimes worst of the two) that his new dreams could give him.
As he'd slept in the library, he had been dreaming pleasantly again, but this had not been a flying dream, as all of his good dreams had been thus far. This time, the happiness was mellow, comforting. He had been at peace, or he supposed he had; he had never known peace in his waking life, and therefore had nothing to compare it to.
More disturbing than this unfamiliar emotion was the fact that it did not recede immediately when he woke. His sleep-muddled brain, still basking in the serenity of his dream world, had not seen blood-lines or principles or a less-than-friendly seven-year history. Instead, it has registered a quiet voice, a gentle smile, a familiar face, and, damn it all, he had smiled back at her. He knew the action had surprised her; hell, it had surprised him. He blamed it on the dream, on his disorientation, on anything but the fact that he had been glad to see her. That made it easier, but it didn't make it okay.
Several minutes after the incident had occurred, he was still attempting to justify it to himself, and therefore almost skipped right over perhaps the most important words he'd ever read in his life. He was just about to turn the page when a distant alarm sounded in his head, breaking through the muffling fog of his self-justification. He read the lines again, didn't believe them, and read them once more. He might have continued to stare at them all day if he hadn't felt Hermione soft hair brush the side of his face as she leaned over him.
