What Souls Are Made Of

Chapter Five - Private Lessons

One night the nightmares came back. Gone was the blackness, which he so comfortingly fell into. Peaceful and empty, his mind blissfully blank. What he got instead was ugly.

Harry used to dream of Sirius and his final laugh as he fell. He used to dream of the graveyard – Cedric's body, still, limbs locked in place. Voldemort as he rose from the cauldron, gleaming white like a carved bone. Green light an inch from his face, both searing hot and ice cold, brushing past, never to know what it felt like.

These nightmares were different. They were something conjured from his imagination not experience. Nightmares of dark, shadowy figures that never got too close. They lurked, just in the corner of his eye. They waited. Like Dementors in the distance; shapes that disappeared when you blinked. He imagined being in a small room with nothing but fear – fear so overwhelming it woke him up, cold, shaking and covered in gooseflesh.

One of these mornings, Harry woke to brightness. He could still hear odd laughter in his head but the sound was beginning to fade, along with the remnants of the dreams. He rubbed his head, purely out of habit, but there was no headache.

Light was flooding in from a crack in his curtains, so much that he wondered how he had managed to stay asleep at all. He got up, quietly crossing the dorm. Rosier was talking in his sleep, but Harry couldn't make out the words. When he finished in the bathroom, he checked the time. 5:30.

But he couldn't sleep anymore and with one forlorn look at his bed, he left the dorm. Down the steps, to the Common Room . . .

And to Abraxas.

They both blinked, staring at each other.

'What are you doing up so early?' Abraxas said.

'Me?' Harry raised his eyebrows. 'What about you?'

Abraxas hesitated. He couldn't have looked more suspicious if he tried. Hovering on the spot, beginning to fidget, shuffling his feet.

'I was working,' Abraxas finally said.

'Doing what?'

'Well - '

He paused and Harry's eyebrows climbed higher. 'Don't worry about it. I'll leave you anyway.'

'No!'

Harry turned back. Abraxas had one moment where he seemed to struggle with a decision. 'I could explain or I could just show you?'

Harry nodded and they left the Common Room. The dungeons were quiet and Abraxas led him down a corridor he had never been before.

Harry tried to memorize where they were going. Surely this wasn't a trap? All the stone looked the same. All the sharp corners. Like the maze during the Triwizard Tournament.

'Where are we going?'

Abraxas - as absurd as it seemed - was his friend. He wouldn't lead him into a trap, would he? Abraxas didn't answer. His walking came to a halt. 'Here.'

They were at the end of the corridor with doors on both sides. Abraxas pulled open the one on the left and went inside. The room was more brightly lit than any in the dungeons. There was no torchlight but instead the light seemed to come from within. Circular windows lined the room, and out them -

'Is that merpeople?' Harry breathed.

There were ghostly shapes in the water, moving around. He made out dark, murky bodies, barely visible. Then the merpeople retreated and Harry tore his eyes away.

'Yes,' Abraxas said. 'We're right in the middle of the lake.'

Harry didn't answer. So distracted by the windows, he hadn't noticed the rest of the room. Or the large canvas taking up half the wall.