The Astronomy Tower
Out of all of the things he could have nightmares about, this one is always the worst. Draco looks down from his spot at the top of the Astronomy Tower and for a moment he almost swears he can see Dumbledore falling again. Sometimes in these dreams it's Draco falling instead. He steps away from the ledge and hears something shift behind him. He whips around, almost expecting to see Death Eaters coming to witness Dumbledore's death, but instead he finds Potter. This is starting to become a worrying trend of dreams.
The two stand in silence for a while, the same companionable silence that took up most of the last dream this happened in. Somehow, Potter's presence does serve to put Draco more at ease in this place. Another worrying trend.
Eventually, Potter walks over to the ledge and looks over it, looking entirely comfortable. “You didn't kill him, you know.”
Great. Now Draco's consciousness was trying to, what? Reconcile his guilt through Potter? Draco just rolls his eyes. “Obviously I didn't. Snape was the one who cast the spell.”
“No, I know that, I just meant that nothing you did that year could have saved him. Even if you had somehow escaped your situation and not let the Death Eaters in or any of it. Dumbledore was already dying, he would have been dead by the end of the year no matter what anyone did.”
Something about this is weird. The past two dreams like this one have been weird, but now… this isn't something his mind would come up with. He's too aware, Potter is too… human. It's not a caricature of the boy that normally appears in his dreams. Draco can feel something inside himself start to unravel, his throat closing up, chest feeling tight, all the emotions he's been forcing himself to bottle up since returning back to this damned school are suddenly threatening to burst forth.
“Why are you telling me this?” He bites out at Dream Harry Potter, because it's not really Harry Potter, it's just a dream. Just a dream.
Potter looks away from him, back over the side of the tower, like he wants to let Draco have a semblance of privacy for his impending breakdown. Then Potter shrugs. “I guess I've wanted to tell you for a while. I know you blame yourself for a lot of stuff, especially that year, and yeah, some of it was you, but I guess I just needed you to know that at least this wasn't.”
Draco feels his control slipping, he’s gripping onto the shreds of it that he can. “What does it matter who killed that old bastard? I did plenty of harm regardless. Being a nasty person is in my blood.”
Potter turns to look at him again, nothing but raw sincerity in his eyes as he says confidently, “Evil isn’t inherent in anybody. Your father might have been a piece of work, but I owe your mother my life. Hell, I owe you my life.”
The last sentence Potter spoke barely even registers to Draco. “What do you mean you owe my mother your life?”
“Voldemort thought he’d killed me in the Forbidden Forest and it was your mum he sent to make sure I was dead. She lied to him. That was the only reason I was able to leave the forest alive that day.”
At that, the tightness in Draco's chest does unravel and he finds himself dropping to his knees in a sob so violent that he wakes up.
He has just enough awareness to grab his wand out from under the pillow and cast a wordless silencing spell around himself before the panic attack hits him full force. It feels like it takes ages for him to finally calm back down. What he's sure was probably only 10 minutes at most, feels like hours of panic and sobbing and gasping for breath and shaking so bad he's half convinced he's going to fall apart at the seams.
But the feeling subsides enough for him to breathe again and for the tears to finally stop and Draco drags himself out of bed by his still shaking hands to lock himself in the bathroom. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror as he places a hand to his chest. His scars ache.
Why in merlins name is he allowing himself to get this worked up over a dream? Because that's all that they are, stupid, strange dreams. There's no way any of what Potter said to him is true, none of it was real. So why does his heart still feel like it's trying to beat its way out of his chest? This is ridiculous and he needs to get over it.
He does not manage to get over it. His performance I'm his classes suffers for the rest of the day because his mind keeps drifting back to the things that Potter had said in the dream. As ridiculous as the whole thing is, if Draco could just confirm whether it was true or not, he's sure the stupid thoughts would stop plaguing him, but he can't very well go up to the real Harry Potter and say,
“Hello there, I dreamt of you last night and in the dream you told me that my mother saved your life, is that true?”
Absolutely not. He would sound insane. But… it has been a week or so since he last wrote his mother. If he happened to send her a letter, updating her on how he's been and he happens to mention in the letter that he heard a rumor she'd saved Harry Potter… Then she could reply with a rebuttal to the obviously false claim and they could laugh at such a ridiculous “rumor” and Draco's brain can finally let go of this idiotic idea that somehow these Potter dreams are in any way real. Yes, that's exactly what he'll do.
His mother's response is as prompt as always. A mere one day later and Draco finds himself unable to breathe once more as he reads his mother's words.
What an odd rumor to be going around, who exactly did you hear it from? As far I was aware, no one knew I had done such a thing. Nonetheless, the rumors you have heard ring true. I did lie to save Harry Potter's life in the Forbidden Forest. He had confirmed for me that you were still alive and knowing that I still had something worth fighting for made all the difference to me. If there were even a small chance that that boy could in fact defeat the Dark Lord, then that was the world I wanted you to live in. I am still incredibly thankful that that gamble paid off in the end.
It's true. The impossible thing that Dream Harry Potter had told him is true. But how is that possible unless those dreams are somehow… real?