The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones,

Chapter Nine

Where Out Hero Learn How hard it is to Get Stubborn Stains Out.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter.

\"Students made it long ago,\" said Rincewind. \"Handy way in and out after lights out.\" \"Ah,\" said Twoflower, \"I understand. Over the wall and out to brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?\" \"Nearly right except for the singings and the poetry, yes,\" said Rincewind.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


The thick grey mist from the night before was back. It curled around Harry like thick smog. The spine-tingling sound of sharpening steel echoed oddly in the mist. Lifting his hands in the air Harry laughed. \"Right, I was having this great dream about Lavender and a bowl of cherries, whoever has decided to stuff around with my dreams can just get lost.”

The oppressive weight of despair hung heavy on his head, but in his anger and frustration he shrugged it off.

\"Look I’m a growing boy, I need some sort of subconscious outlet for my sexual fantasies and unlike Ron, I cannot jerk off in the same room as five other guys.\" With a scream he stuck a hand up in the air giving the unseen presence the finger \"I need me time!\"

The force he could sense passing through the mist, paid his ranting no attention in fact the mist thickened and the red tint grew more solid.
The warmth of the pooling blood at his feet struck Harry as it rose higher than his thighs; inching it’s way upwards. \"If this is Voldemort. Come out here and face me, you bigoted, sado - masochistic, bastard. \"

As with the night before, the fog surrounding him remained the same and the weight drove his head forward. It took all his effort not to go down on one knee. An action that would have placed his face in the rising blood, which was now at his waist.

\"Right if I pay no attention to it, this will all go away.\" Harry stuck his fingers in his ears and began singing. \"This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing, not knowing what it was and they’ll continue singing it for ever just because. This is the …\"

If there was a sentient force somewhere in that mist, even if it didn’t care if Harry paid attention or not, the song would surely drive them to do something. Eventually, after even boring himself Harry stopped.
\"Right you asked for this. I could be satisfy the demands of my teenage hormones at this very moment, but no.\" Reaching into his pocket Harry brought his wand out.

‘fugo, moueoe!’ A burst of blue light fed into the mist springing outwards like a firework unseen by Harry.

A shudder ran through Harry’s world. The best way to describe it was if he were standing on a bed sheet that was being shaken, just before being laid on the mattress; the ground rose and fell in a giant wave. The cloying warmth of the surrounding liquid rose around him in a wave crushing over his head.
Harry gasped and was driven under by the fluid rolling head over heels in the rush. His mouth was filled with the sickly sweet taste of blood, chocking him. His senses went on overload as the taste touched his tongue. His fangs, an inconvenient gift from his ancestors, sprung out

He covered his mouth with a hand, ‘No, this was not happening. One of his dopey roommates was going to wake him any moment now’. A dark red light was beginning to form around Harry\'s head, when the ground stopped rolling, and Harry scrambled to his feet.

With the mist and the blood his perception of the dream world was distorted and when he heard a noise off to his left, or what he thought was his left, he fell again trying to get away. He spluttered and spat out the liquid filling his mouth. Scrambling around he dove, splashing away from the noise.

Falling again he spluttered as blood filled his mouth and nose. With a cry, he pushed his way through the mist yelling when he ran into a figure.

\"Please not Voldemort, Please not Voldemort, Please not Voldemort.\"
The other figure grunted at the weight of the boy-that-screamed-like-a-girl hit him.

Harry felt an arm come around his waist clutching him as they fell into the blood around them. Fighting to stand up, Harry jumped away but was caught by the arm; rubbing his eyes he didn’t know what to do.

Raising his arm, he curled his hand in a fist and hoped whatever it was could be hurt by a simple punch to the jaw. As his vision cleared he heard an indrawn breath \"Potter!\" Harry cleared his eyes; standing before him dripping in gore was the always-perfect Draco Malfoy.

\"Malfoy?\" With this the world again began to move and Harry swore, clutching at dream-Draco’s shoulder. \"Of all the people that I could dream about it had to be Malfoy!\"

\"Yes, I am a figment of your imagination. Don‘t pay any attention to me.\"

Harry snorted. \"My imagination is not that perverted; Mother Nature made you, and she has a worse sense of humour than me.\"

\"I am not really here; this is all a dream. Just ignore me\" As they swayed with the rising and falling ground Harry laughed.

\"Well I guess I have dreamed about you before. The school was invaded by flesh eating zombies and you were there and your head was ripped off.\" To Harry, Draco looked ill

\"That‘s lovely. I‘ll just be going now.\"
Draco stepped forward and raised a hand drawing it down in a sharp motion. Before him a gash in the mist appeared leading to a star sparkled sky.

Harry wondered what the hell that was, but hey if it was his dream then it must mean something. As dream-Draco stepped through the hole the world again shuddered. He must have hurt something with that spell. The ground rose up and threw Harry into Draco, pushing them both through the gap in the mist.

To Harry, The world spun around him, as though he were in a top. He could not tell left from right, up from down. His stomach protested it’s movements; he screamed and grasped Draco’s shirtsleeve His eye’s tightly closed. With a shout and a thud he found himself sitting in his bed in Gryffindor’s tower.

The curtains closed around him, quiet in the rest of the room. Grasping his throat he laughed. It was all a dream, just a dream. The bed shifted, he looked down at his hands covered in blood the up; sitting on the end of the bed was Draco Malfoy. Dripping in thick clots of rapidly drying blood, with a very worried look on his face.

OOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOooOO

Earlier that night . . . . .

Draco lay back in bed, his mother’s letter clutched in his hand. In it she had told him that any disturbance to the dreamscape capable of throwing him out meant great danger. Not just to him, as a Nyx, but to all the dreaming people.

\"My Draco.

I hope you are well. I was greatly worried by your words; in all my years of dream walking, I have never seen the landscape move by its own accord.

I do not say this to alarm you but to warn you my son. My mother told me of circumstances that could lead to mass changes in the dreams of man. Truly I hope that these have not occurred, for it would signal a great threat, to not only us but to all concerned. Many years ago my mother sat me down and explained that those who first shaped the dream; that moulded it from the unconscious minds of the human world, rebelled against a power of which we know not.

They had abused their creation and were punished; locked away in the bowls of the earth they wait. Not dead, not dreaming, just eternally aware, caught in their own minds.

These beings shaped the dreamscape and have the power to destroy it.

Inform Dumbledore of these events, while an annoying little man, he does know Hogwarts and may help you. Watch what you do. Beware their power.

I hope you heed this warning, do not walk the dreamscape. Leave it until you come home for Christmas and we can talk.

Your loving Mother

Rubbing a tired hand over his eyes, Draco sighed. Peering into the dreams of his peers was one of the few entertainments he had left. That, and annoying those self-righteous gits at Gryffindor. Pompous know-it-all little brats. Oh no! He sounded like Snape; it is not good to sound like a bitter old man when you’re only seventeen.

This was just wonderful, he couldn’t think of a better event to occur this year. Ancient evil rising up to destroy us all. It looked like Potter was going to have his work cut out for him. And he, Draco was going to tell the drug-addled headmaster what he was Yippy! Closing his eyes Draco sighed, he needed to sleep and was certainly staying as far away from the dreamscape as possible.

The last thing he heard before he drifted to sleep was the gentle tones of Goyle snoring in the next bed.

A thick silver mist surrounded Draco when he was aware of his surroundings again. The slick snick, snack of metal threaded through the fog, and heavy cloying liquid settled around his knees. To Draco the dream was real; he could feel the cold surrounding him and the unnatural warmth of the fluid rising around his knees.

\"Oh, this isn’t my dream; this is someone or something else\'s. Great.\" To his particularly special vision as a Nyx, the whole dream world was threaded with strings of light which were normally in a dream. He knew he was asleep but this was different, there were no connecting points to the other dreams it was dead.

Might this be the dream of a ghost? He did not know. \"Please let it not be some teacher’s strange sexual fantasy, one slip up, once, and I landed in Sprouts’ dream. I knew she loved plants, but what she did to that cucumber... Eww!\"

Suddenly the mist was cut away from his sight by a blinding flash of blue wizard fire. It looked like the dreamer wasn’t dead after all, well he was getting the hell out of here before anyone saw him, or what happened last night might happen again. With this in mind, he reached out to rip a whole in the dream wall. Normally he would just follow a dream line until he reached the tapestry and could exit peacefully, much less work.

But there were no dream lines here, forcing him to physically cut his way out so he could leave. As he raised his hand, the world around him rolled, driving him to his knees and forcing him under the warm liquid, of which he got a mouthful.

\"Oww, blood! That would be right.\" He spluttered as he tumbled head over heels. Once the world stopped shaking he rose to his feet and began wiping the clotting blood off his face.

\"Yuck, why is it always me that ends up covered in strange substances? Doesn’t anyone know how hard it is to get slime stains out of a lamb’s wool robe? Argghh.\" This dream was all wrong. Grumbling he went to leave once again and someone walked into him, muttering something about Voldemort. Fantastic.

The other scrambled around; he grunted when an elbow hit his stomach and reached around the other’s body so he would not fall. When he stood still, Draco finally got a chance to look at the stranger. It was Harry I live-to-annoy-Draco-Malfoy, Potter!

\"Potter!\"
Harry looked up at him blood dripping down his nose.

\"Malfoy! - Of all the people that I could dream about it had to be Malfoy.\"

Draco smiled and gritted his teeth, it had to be Harry Potter.” Yes, I am a figment of your imagination. Don‘t pay any attention to me.\"

Harry snorted. \"My imagination is not that perverted! Mother Nature made you, and she has a worse sense of humour than me.\"

‘Why the little bastard! It was his tainted dream they were stuck in, who was he calling a freak. Grinding his teeth together Draco smile widened.

\"I am not really here, this is all a dream. Just ignore me\" As they swayed with the rising and falling ground, Harry laughed.

\"Well I guess I have dreamed about you before. The school had been invaded by flesh eating zombies and you were there and your head had been ripped off.\"

Draco‘s upper lip turned up, great, Potter dreamed about him. \"That‘s lovely. I‘ll just be going now.\"

Draco stepped forward and raised a hand drawing it down in a sharp motion; before him, a gash in the mist appeared leading to a star sparkled sky.

The world rolled around them and as he reached out to leave, a flood of blood and a heavy Harry Potter flung him forward, out of control. \"Harry Bloody Potter, I’m going to kill you!\"

Through a cut in the air he tumbled inelegantly out of the dreamscape and on to Harry Potter’s bed, dripping in blood. This was not good.

The Gryffindor dormitory around him was silent. Then he saw Harry’s head move upwards and see his face. He could feel the drying blood slide down his nose. ‘I probably resemble what the muggle born call ‘a deer caught in the headlights’ right about now. How the hell am I going to explain this.’

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Authors Note
Harry is not in his own dream he is caught in the dreams of a presence as yet unnamed. it is not his dreams.

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