Rating: PG for now.
Disclaimer: This is mine. JK is a fraud…Oh and did I say I was a malignant liar? No profit is being made out of this. No copyright infringement intended.
Category: Romance, general
Notes: I thought this up while taking a bath. Surprise, surprise! Got really drunk with too much computer radiation last night that I was having hallucinations this morning. Nothing really lecherous and fluffy as of the moment, so don't get mad. Greetings go to my sister, Joy and her gang from UST. Enjoy this one. Just read on and drool smiles and yawns. Thoughts and emphasis in italics. Omniscient perspective.

THIS IS AN UPDATE OF THE CHAPTERS THAT I THOUGHT NEEDED CLEANING UP BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF PAGE BREAKS. ALSO I DID MY BEST TO INCORPORATE VERY HELPFUL COMMENTS (WHICH IS WHY I LOVE REVIEWS) FOR A SMOOTHER FLOW OF THE STORY AND FOR 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS', SO TO SPEAK. I GOT A NICE SURPRISE SEEING A NEW BATCH OF REVIEWS WHEN I RE-UPPED A CHAPPIE SO BEING THE JUNKIE THAT I AM, I THOUGHT I'D FIX THE PAGE BREAKS OF THE OTHERS AS A FORM OF UPDATE. SO ENJOY! PLEASE SEE MY PROFILE PAGE FOR STORIES I AM CURRENTLY WORKING ON-I HAVE SEVERAL INQUIRIES THERE THAT I NEED ANSWERS FOR FROM YOU, NICE PEOPLE!

-emeraldine x12x01x10x

DREAMCATCHER: CHAPTER ONE

A blade glinted from above, suspended in midair by thick ropes. He grunted in effort to free his hands from the strings cutting through his wrists, but it was futile. The guillotine blade was threateningly quivering and a strong wind was blowing over the desolate and barren fields. There was someone behind him; he knew who it was. He'd been seeing this over and over, in different settings, different times but somehow he'd always manage to wake up in cold sweat before he could see how it ended. The wind blew more furiously. And the guillotine ropes trembled. Cold enveloped his whole body. I want to see how it ends this time. Voldemort is dead… I'd like to believe that he is, but why do the dreams go on? He was fumbling behind his back to loosen the knots of the strings that bound him to his nightmare. His skin felt raw but the strings were still grinding his wrists tighter than ever.

The ropes were released and he heard the distinct sound of a blade falling, cutting through the air towards his neck and he screamed. He couldn't hear himself above the din of the turbulent winds and the whooshing of a blade ready for the kill.

Harry Potter awoke to the thundering of his own heart and the coldness of his own sweat. He knew he had been screaming. Hands clammy and limbs trembling, he turned the lamp beside his bed on. Neville was looking at him from a couple of feet away, wide-eyed and uncertain. "Have you had another nightmare, Harry?"

Harry held his knees close to his chest and buried his sweaty face on the crook of his legs. Why haven't the nightmares stopped?

"It was so scary, Neville. I was about to be beheaded by a guillotine and I was screaming and…and I don't know why the dreams haven't stopped." He had never been more afraid and disoriented. His heart was still hammering against his chest, his breathing shallow and laborious.

"You should talk to the Headmistress about what's been happening to you. I, for one, am getting so worried. You haven't gotten a single, peaceful, dreamless night for a couple of weeks now. It might be serious."

Harry combed his hands through his hair, wet with perspiration and squeezed. His temples were throbbing, but he had learned to ignore it. He had gotten used to it. Sniffing, Harry brought a hand to cover his mouth. He's still alive… Voldemort is still alive. I'm still having terrible dreams because he's still alive. And he started biting his cuticles.

Neville had already fallen asleep. There's just no point trying to make him more worried than he already was. Harry just felt so tired, but he dared not go to sleep again in fear that in the next one, he wouldn't be so lucky as to wake again.

#####

It was always a different dream. Night after night.

And yet it was always the same. He'd always wake breathless and he'd always wake with anger. How could his dreams be invaded like a disease that was eating through his unconscious? The dreams that had always involved one person. And somehow, the way every dream would end up was always the same. He'd always wake up, half-wishing that what he had dreamed of was a joke—a joke and yet… he'd always go back to sleep after every dream, half-hoping it'd be there to haunt him again. And when sleep would manage to elude him, he'd be awake until morning, in silent reverie, relishing the feel of the smooth hands on his skin and the soft 'I love you' in his ear.

He had never tried controlling his dreams. Because if he had known himself to be capable of doing so, he wouldn't think twice about altering his dreams—the dreams that were always different and yet always the same, would always end the same way and would always leave him wanting for more and abhorring that he even had it in the first place.

The cave would still be dark even after seeing it over and over; the pond of crystal clear water under a blanket of falling stars would still be as picture-perfect as he had last seen it; the violent and refreshing stream would still have water in furious rampage and eternal flow; the mesa of thick, green grass and rose petals with the picturesque horizon of twinkling stars against the azure sky and the gleaming white, horse tethered to the bare tree trunk would always look as magical as if he was seeing it for the first time one dream after another; the dingy and dark room of peeling gray wallpaper amidst the rain shower and brilliant flashes of lightning in contrast to the darkness of the night would still look as dingy and dilapidated; the magnificent acacia with a rickety swing on a hilltop overlooking the most gorgeous sunset would never turn anything short of magnificent; and the cozy and comfortable tent in the wide expanse of bare brown earth that smelled of tangy firewood would always pose the same coziness no matter how much of the same dream he had already seen.

Draco Malfoy had always had these dreams: one and the same and yet different. And in every one of them Harry Potter would always be present.

So this night didn't have to be an exception.

The mesa carpeted with thick, green grass was strewn with white and red rose petals as always. The horse was silent but the stars were in their eternal song of seemingly infinite life and radiance. Two people were on the mesa, moving their bodies in the timeless rhythm of love and passion. Their naked bodies were being bathed in the glorious, milky white of the millions of stars witnessing their bodies coming together as one in the rhapsody of making love. Sweat glistened on their pale skin as the beat their bodies were dancing to came to a crescendo. The feeling was all over him as the black-haired phantom moved faster, making him think that this was no dream… it was real. It was too real that the pleasure in the core of his soul, in his groin, in every part and surface of his body was making him ache for the climax that he knew would be inevitable. The whispers and moans were in unison with the wind as it kissed their bare bodies. And orgasm had come in writhing pleasure that left him thirsting for the feel of love and wild lovemaking still present within his body. The warmth, the pain, the pleasure, the yearning were in him as he breathed a deep sigh having attained the orgasm he has become all too familiar with. 'I love you,' came the whisper in his right ear that aroused him again like the softest of clouds kissing the lips of the horizon.

And just like every dream, it was then that he woke up… not in the violent, animalistic screams of horror, not even in the chilling lechery of common sexual dreams, but in a calm way of just opening his eyes for darkness to flood his vision and opening his ears for Crabbe's irritating snores somewhere in the dormitory. He was breathing just as furiously as all of the dreams of the past, but he could say he had grown quite accustomed to the feeling of waking up and realizing that no matter how real it felt, it was just a dream—it would always be. What was different this time was the unmistakable presence of tears that were cascading down the side of his face. He turned on his side and embraced his own body to drive the feeling of desolation and longing.

He had never cried before. He thought he'd have been used to waking up to the emptiness by now. But the memory of the smooth hands, the soft touch, the tearing pain in his insides, the searing passion of kisses, the teasing bites on the neck and earlobes and the throaty but mellifluous 'I love you' in his ear was too much for him to bear and let go.

This has to stop. I have to stop seeing it in my sleep and half-wishing I'd never wake up to reality again. Because it would never be reality. He bent into fetal position and cried, just cried to dry the tears and suppress the desire to make his dreams real, if not live in the passion of his dreams altogether giving up on life, on reality entirely.

Because what was the use of reality without that which you'd give up reality for? What's the use of reality if he has to live day in and day out with the knowledge that Harry Potter will never be his?

#####

"Finally—Hogsmeade weekend!" Ron was energetically folding his covers and quilts messily with a big smile plastered on his face.

"Boy, you look like you slept well," Dean Thomas, fellow Gryffindor observed, putting on his black socks on his part of the dormitory.

"Y—eah, which is more than I can say for myself. I envy you, Ron," Harry muttered as he pushed a comb through his wet but still unruly black locks. Neville stopped turning his trunk inside out in search of his hat upon Harry's confession.

"Don't tell me you had another one of those dreams again," Ron anticipated, his sheets thrown aside to lie forgotten for a while.

"It was even much worse last night. I could hear the blade rushing to meet my neck. It's never been released in my previous dreams but last night was so realistic, I had to check my neck thrice to see whether I would have to join Nick in his clamor to join the Headless Hunt," Harry joked. Nick, or Nearly Headless Nick, was the Gryffindor ghost with a semi-severed neck.

"That is so not funny, Harry. But you know, we should really do something about those nightmares," the redhead suggested.

"What do you propose we do, then? Spoon my brains out or take it out through the nose? I don't think dreams can be controlled—I haven't tried whether they can be."

But Ron wasn't able to answer Harry's comment anymore. The door burst open and Seamus stuck his head in to tell them that it was time to go.

While in Hogsmeade, Harry was able to momentarily drive the memory of his nightmare aside as they strolled through the common edifices of the Post, Zonko's, Three Broomsticks and Honeyduke's. He always enjoyed being in Hogsmeade with his friends because somehow right there, he'd always be able to forget his worries for the time being and enjoy.

Hermione, Ron and Harry stopped in front of a door to a new shop. "Magical Knickknacks," Harry read. "What do we need from here?" But before Harry's question could be answered, Hermione pushed him into the store.

"I think this place may have what you need, Harry," Hermione said, looking meaningfully at Ron.

"What do you mean?"

"For your nightmares."

"Look, it's hopeless. There's nothing that could possib—"

Hermione ran off for a short while but she was back very quickly and pushed a strange net with a handle thingy. "You want me to go fishing?"

"No, this is a dreamcatcher. I think this is what you need." The net thing was made of thick knitted ropes, intertwined and crisscrossing into a complex web. The middle had a big hole, while the empty space between the hole in the middle and the circumference of the device contained jewels and charms of various shapes and sizes. The handle was of dull black wood, with a practically undecipherable inscription and more carvings and charms. "Prop this on the head board of your bed and it'll sift through your dreams for you. The hole in the center catches good dreams, see?"

"And the charms on the space outside of the center hole, drive nightmares away," Ron finished Hermione's explanation.

Harry narrowed his eyes, "it sounds a bit dodgy to me. And what do you mean by sift?"

"You ought to know that our minds are even more open and receptive when we are asleep compared to when we are awake, which makes it open to see various things derived from our worst fears and our greatest desires. These fears and desires are mixed with each other that when your mind sees them, it is unable to sift through that which you want to see and that which you don't. The dreamcatcher will do that job for you now," she explained in her matter-of-fact voice.

"Look—there's nothing to lose if you try it out, mate," Ron suggested. "Just so we can be less worried of you."

Harry turned the dreamcatcher and scrutinized it. "OK, OK, I'll try it out," Harry said as he pulled out a few coins from his pocket to purchase the dreamcatcher.