This stone room, Harry instantly recognised, was the one from his dreams.

An instant after Malfoy had thrust him inside, the narrow vertical gap between the stones vanished. Hoping the solid surface was just an illusion, Harry threw himself against the wall, but of course it was useless. Malfoy wouldn't knowingly leave him a way out.

Time to take stock, Harry thought.

Not that there was much to take stock of. This was more a cell than a room, and so tiny that he could sit down only if he bent his legs. A soft glow emanating from the blocks meant that he could see despite the absolute lack of natural light, but there were no windows, no doors, no openings of any kind, just solid block, and all of it several feet thick if the gap he'd been thrust through was any indication.

Now that he was secured in the cell, there were no doubt anti-Apparition wards up all around to keep him in place, not that he had ever Apparated on his own, or had the slightest idea how to go about it, even. But such wards would keep anyone else from showing up to rescue him. Knowing Voldemort, they'd even prevent the use of Portkeys, though of course only Voldemort's closest henchmen were likely to have one linked to this place. Closest henchmen . . .

Still Occluding his mind, though less fiercely than before, Harry carefully avoided thinking anything that would incriminate . . . anyone. Not even in his deepest mind did he permit himself to attach a name or an image to the vague hope stirring deep in his soul. Truth to tell, he tried to squash the hope, too, just in case it was too much a giveaway.

He concentrated on his own situation, such as it was. Even that required him to tread carefully through his mental fire, lest Voldemort, unbeknownst to him, was attempting to access his true thoughts. Was the ugly git such a skilled Legilimens that he could, without using eye contact, or even being physically present, sneak past Harry's formidable defences, undetected? Harry simply didn't know, but he was all too aware that just a few months earlier, Voldemort had actually possessed him. Not that he'd been Occluding at the time, but still . . .

Harry saw no reason to take any chances, so he deliberately didn't think about having lost proper access to his magic. He merely pondered, at the forefront of his mind, I don't have my wand. Malfoy took it, and refused to consider the greater issue at stake.

Stretching his arms as high as he could reach, he began to systematically pound on each and every one of the stones encasing him. Up and down the walls he struck and shoved, testing for weaknesses which, he found to his disgust, didn't exist, at least not physically.

What about magical weaknesses? he wondered. Of course he didn't have his wand, but he'd just recently been thinking about all the times during his childhood when he'd done magic without one. Accidental magic, perfectly normal for a wizard child. All it had taken was enough emotion, and the fierce, instinctive desire to do something with it.

Closing his eyes, Harry tried his best to summon those surges of fury that had plagued his childhood. From memory after memory --ones he didn't care if Voldemort saw-- he called forth the rage that used to make the glass over Dudley's photos shatter. The anger that had momentarily silenced Aunt Petunia once, that had more than once blown the door of the cupboard clear off its hinges.

Dark thoughts, dark memories, the dark core of himself, the one he hid from everyone else, the one that had started creeping forth after he'd seen Cedric die. Harry reached deep down into it, all the way through the fire shielding it, and reached for his power, for the magic he knew was there, the magic that was coming forth in dreams almost every time he slept.

All around him, the stone walls rippled, as though they were water disrupted by a falling rock.

Eyes closed, Harry didn't see it, but he felt it, that surge of magic flowing from his soul.

Reaching even deeper, he tried again, tried for an emotion worse than anger, worse than rage. A longing to kill, to murder, to destroy as he had been destroyed, day past endless day of never having had a family, never having had a home, nobody to care, nobody to give him the love that any child, even a freak, craved with every fibre of his soul . . .

Annihilate the dwelling standing at Number Four, Privet Drive, he heard Malfoy say again. Harry laughed, a harsh cackling sound more reminiscent of an insane old man than a sixteen-year-old boy, and snapping his eyes open, watched the laughter claw the walls. The air itself vibrated with the force of magic spilling past its confines. The blocks rippled again, then shimmered, the surface layers glowing translucent until it seemed he could see the very heart of the stones.

By that time, though, Harry had drained himself of all he was. His legs giving way beneath him, he slumped in the cell, falling gracelessly to the stone floor, gasping for breath. Every muscle in his body felt as though he'd been straining on his broom for hours, and his mind itself seemed to have become some mushy substance that could hardly even sustain Occlusion.

Somehow, though, he managed to keep that wall of fire up, right up to the moment when he lost consciousness and his head hit the wall with an ugly thump.

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Harry awoke to one thought only, and it wasn't fire.

Thirst.

Horrible, gut-draining thirst, his very bones parched with it.

How long had he been confined in this cell, how long had he lain unconscious, dreaming---

That was when it hit him, something that should have been obvious far, far sooner. My dreams! Remus was wrong; they aren't symbolic. They aren't about ambivalence, or being in a dark place emotionally, though by now I suppose I truly am. My dreams, though, are something else. They're literal. They're coming true . . .

In a rush of panic, Harry raised his wall of fire, scattering thoughts of loneliness and despair above it as he dove beneath to contemplate his dreams. Annihilate the dwelling standing at Number Four, Privet Drive . . . that must have happened by now; Malfoy gave the order hours and hours ago, if my thirst is any indication. So is Dudley safe? He wasn't inside when the house began to crumple, not that it means anything . . . The clearing, somebody coming, something coming . . . I was seeing the site of the Death Eater meeting . . . this cell, the awful thirst . . . it's all come true.

And so, what's coming next? The answer should have frightened him; it was terrifying enough. But somehow, it didn't. It gave him strength.

I'll survive, Harry realised. Whatever happens on Samhain, I will survive. I'll get back to Hogwarts . . . in the hospital wing. I'll be blinded, though, and my body horribly broken, but none of that will last. I've healed before; I'll heal again. I saw myself later, doing fine, though I was still kept away from the Tower, from my regular classes, for some reason. I was down in the dungeons, and I actually seemed comfortable being there . . . Oh, no, oh crap, it's true . . . I'm going to hit Ron for insulting Slytherins and laugh when Malfoy calls us brothers, and it wasn't a you-are-such-an-idiot laugh, either, it was more of a yeah-we-sure-are-brothers laugh . . .

I'm going to be screaming like a man possessed, screaming in Parseltongue . . . if that one was a seer dream, that is . . .

Something Trelawney had said impinged on his consciousness, then:
Dreams show you what may be, not what must be . . .

Harry groaned out loud, deciding that now was probably not the time to decide the Divination teacher knew what she was talking about. He had to cling to his dreams, even if the last few were more disturbing than he cared to think on. He could deal with that later. For now, he had to focus on the first few, and believe that no matter Voldemort's filthy plans for him, he would come through it alive.

It helped, knowing what was going to happen, at least in part. He'd be tortured, but not killed. He'd be blinded, but he would escape. Somehow. No need to dwell on the who or how, thoughts that were, at the very least, a peril he'd better avoid.

All he could do was prepare himself as best he could, Harry decided. Since knowing some things had really helped, he decided to figure out what else Voldemort had in store for him. He had more than dreams to help him with that; he had Lucius Malfoy's vicious comment about cupboards, about what else the Death Eaters might have learned from Uncle Vernon.

Uncle Vernon, who wanted nothing more than to see Harry suffer and die. Uncle Vernon, who was certainly dead himself by now, having chosen the wrong allies in his fight against Harry. Hmm, what would Vernon Dursley have talked about, besides cupboards? Of course, maybe he hadn't talked at all; everything Lucius knew could have been gleaned by means of Legilimency, but as far as Harry was concerned, it boiled down to the same thing. Uncle Vernon had meant him ill, after all.

So what could he reveal that would tend to really, really hurt Harry?

Hmm . . . Realizing he was getting distracted, Harry bolstered his wall of fire, spreading above it a few innocuous memories of learning to paint at primary school. Then, deep down in a safe place, he resumed his contemplations. Funny that Lucius would think the cupboard would frighten him. It didn't, though come to think of it, Harry had made the same assumption before, thinking that . . . certain people . . . who heard about it would believe him claustrophobic. Strange how life turned out. Sure, sure, he'd blasted the door off the cupboard a few times, but not because the enclosed space frightened him. He'd just wanted to show Uncle Vernon who was really in charge. The little bedroom itself was actually sort of comforting. Cosy. Back when he was little, and he used to wish he could have a hug, he'd huddled under his blankets at night and fantasized that the walls close in were cuddling him, that he was sleeping in a warm, safe embrace. Besides, even when it was daylight out, and he was playing with broken toys filched from the rubbish bin, he was relatively happy under the stairs. Nobody else ever came into his cupboard, so there was nobody in there to call him a freak and a misfit. And really, it wasn't like the cupboard had been a prison. He wasn't always locked in there. Most of the time he'd stayed in there by choice, because compared to a house full of Dursleys, a little room all to himself was a haven.

Anyway, Lucius had got it wrong when he'd decided that being locked in a tiny cell would demoralize Harry. Definitely, his current surroundings weren't comforting, but they didn't really bother him, either, except insofar as they were keeping him here to wait for whatever Voldemort had planned.

So, what did Voldemort have planned? That was the real question. What had Lucius told him? And what did Samhain really involve? Wishing that he'd paid a bit more attention in History of Magic, Harry wracked his brains for anything Binns might have mentioned about cross-quarter days in general, or Samhain in particular. Hmm, it predated Halloween, didn't it? Yeah . . . once Muggles started depending more on their calendars and less on the stars, they'd fixed All Hallows Eve to fall on a particular day. But Samhain still varied a bit, though it tended to presage the same sorts of things. In particular, death. Harry had a strange idea that fire was somehow associated with Samhain as well, but he couldn't really remember how it fit in. Too bad Binns wasn't interesting enough that you could actually pay attention to his lectures. And anyway, it wasn't like Harry had heard any of this recently. When you score a grade of Troll on an O.W.L., you don't tend to go on in the subject, do you?

And as for what Lucius Malfoy might have learned from Uncle Vernon? Harry didn't really know. What did Uncle Vernon think he was afraid of, besides the cupboard? Hmm. Nobody on Privet Drive could think he feared hard work or insults. And while he was obviously smart enough to avoid a thrashing when he could, it wasn't like the thought of one made him hysterical, either.

There was one thing, though, that did make him hysterical . . . or at least, that used to. He'd done better with it lately, hadn't he? Of course he'd had help to cope, but still, he had done better. Uncle Vernon didn't know that, though. All he knew was that when Harry was too little to even understand what a needle did, he'd unleashed defensive magic and screamed to wake the dead, just because he'd seen one in a nurse's hand.

Needles, he thought with a gasp of horror. Bet you anything, anything at all, they're going to use needles.

All at once, he knew with blazing insight just how they were going to blind him.

Harry swallowed back the bile that had risen to his throat, and straightened against the wall, bending his legs into a more comfortable position. He wanted to escape, to get away before the worst could happen, but he knew he couldn't. His dreams were true, every one. He was going to be blinded, and he was going to somehow manage to endure it.

But he didn't want to go through that. He really, really didn't want to.

Harry thought of summoning once again that dark surge of magic, a stronger one this time, one that would do more than fade parts of the stones away. Something that would shatter them, or make them melt, so that he could run as fast as his feet would carry him.

It was hopeless though, and he knew it. It wasn't just the dreams that told him so, it was the fact that unleashing all that energy before had hurt him more than it had helped. It had weakened him, something he could ill afford. He had to stay strong, he sensed, to make it through whatever Voldemort had in store for him.

Right now, he had to stop thinking about needles, about blindness, about becoming some semi-Slytherin who punched his best friend in the face.

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Harry closed his eyes against the steady light, and shifted his Occlusion so that there was just the fire, with random thoughts drifting atop it, but nothing beneath. He let himself sink deeply into fire, into nothingness, into a mind cleared of all worry and fear. He closed down his thoughts, and let himself simply rest.

So that he would be ready, come what may.

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The light in the cell changed, became slightly brighter before it steadied again, and Harry opened his eyes to see that a gap, wider than before, had appeared in the wall. Beyond it stood a Death Eater in full meeting regalia, simple mask and robe, yet the whole effect was hideous.

Harry stared, bleary-eyed, but with enough presence of mind to realise that he was Occluding already.

He knew it was Malfoy even before the foul creature spoke with saccharine intent.

"Too weak to stand, Mr Potter?"

Harry pushed up from the floor, reeling. He didn't know how much longer had passed, only that the constant ache of thirst had gone numb by then. His tongue was thick in his mouth, his skin like a dry husk, but it no longer hurt. It just was, and he would survive it, as he would survive anything Voldemort cared to inflict. Not because he was famous Harry Potter, the Boy Who Bloody Well Wouldn't Die, but because of the magic still inside him. The magic that gave him dreams couldn't be wrong. His magic had never been wrong, had never truly failed him, though at times it might have seemed that way. Even when he'd thought it gone, it had been weaving a dark spell inside him, granting him dreams to keep his mind and soul free no matter that his body would be soon be subject to torments unspeakable.

"Come," Lucius beckoned, gloved fingers elegantly curved. "It's time."

Harry didn't move, but it didn't matter. Lucius entered the cell through the wider opening, and strangely, stroked a leather-clad finger straight down his cheekbone, tracing the raw scar he'd inflicted with his ring. His head tilted, he regarded next the holes torn in the shoulder of Harry's shirt, the blood spotting the pale fabric.

"Tsk, tsk," Lucius commented, shaking his hooded head from side to side. "These won't do at all." His wand out, he pulled Harry from the cell, turning him around to look at him from all angles.

"Contusio evanesco," he incanted, pointing his wand at the place where Harry's skull had collided with stone. Then he was sweeping his wand in an arc to encompass Harry's whole body. "Lavare. Sanare."

His skin tingled all over, the sensation painful as it coursed across the scar on his cheek and the small wounds scattered across his shoulder, and then Lucius was regarding him once again.

"The shirt could be made presentable," he lightly sneered, "but I should think the Dark Lord would prefer you without. Besides, if memory serves, it will soon be filthy again in any case. Remove it, Mr Potter."

Harry didn't, but again, it didn't matter. One quick spell later, and the shivering cool of the stone room was washing across his bare chest and back.

Lucius pulled him close, yanking him into a hideous parody of an embrace, and whispered, "Harry Potter, guest of honour at Samhain. Whoever would have thought?"

And then, the whole world dissolved, a sensation that was becoming rapidly familiar to Harry, though no less distressing.