He'd meant to read, really he had, but the muted thrum of the waves against the rocky shore was like a low, calming chant and his eyelids began to feel incredibly heavy. He briefly wondered about the potion he had recently swallowed—was it making him groggy?—but had little time to consider as he drifted off to sleep. He didn't wake when Professor Snape re-entered the room, giving him only a passing glance, not at all surprised to find his charge sleeping, as he moved to the windows and quietly cranked open the three in the center. He looked back at Harry as the sea air began to push into the room. The thrum of the waves grew louder as the professor stooped to pick up the Grindewald book from the floor where it had fallen from Harry's hand. He placed it back on the lounge chair, tucking it in beside the sleeping boy and left quietly again through the kitchen door.

With the hypnotic sound of the ocean providing a background chorus in his head, Harry dreamed.

In the dream, he was helping Luna locate her missing belongings during the end of year feast. They found her shoes tied together and slung across the back of a thestral which was quietly eating a dead rat in a 3rd floor corridor.

"You don't have to see what others see, Harry," she told him as she retrieved her shoes. "You just need to see what's really there." She climbed on the back of the thestral and its black, leathery coat turned to silver in a slow wash from withers to flank, until she was sitting on a unicorn rather than a thestral. It paced back and forth three times until a sturdy wooden door appeared, then disappeared through it. The entire wall then shimmered into transparency and was gone. And Harry saw the sea before him, not a rough and rocky and turbulent ocean but a vast expanse of golden sand, warmed by the sun and kissed by gentle waves. He discovered that he was barefoot and the warm sand felt pleasant beneath his feet as he walked tentatively toward the beckoning water. He sat down cross-legged a few meters from where the waves washed in, ebbing water draining back out, and watched seagulls skim the water, lifting small sea creatures in their beaks then dropping the shells on the rocks to crack them open. But as he watched them dip and soar, the seagulls morphed into white owls and the shells into letters. The letters drifted downward slowly, catching air currents, some of them even rising again before spiraling down. One of the letters fell right into his hands as he sat…not on the beach but on the inside ledge of the Astronomy Tower. The letter was addressed to "Harry Potter, #4 Privet Drive, Surrey, The Cupboard Under the Stairs."

"Let me see that," said a rough voice beside him and a thin hand with dirty, broken nails reached out and took the letter from him. Sirius. "You would have had your own room with me," he said as he sat beside Harry, holding the letter. "You would have had friends, and clothes that fit you, and enough to eat and a father's love." Harry reached for the letter then but it turned to ashes as he touched it, and Sirius turned to ashes too and the ashes mixed together and blew away with the wind toward the lake. Harry reached for the ashes, trying to catch them up in his hands, but they blew through his fingers as he grabbed at the air. He opened his right hand and it was empty, but his left hand, mysteriously covered in a white glove, had tiny dark ash spots dotting the palm.

And Luna was suddenly there, mounted again on a thestral, reaching for his gloved hand and pulling him up behind her on the black beast. It spread its wings and launched itself over the tower railing, falling in a rush of wind then catching an updraft and gliding out to skim the ocean before beating its mighty wings to rise above the shore. He held onto Luna as the creature dove again, then raised his hands in the air, exhilarated, as his toes skimmed the water but found, when he tried to grab onto Luna again, that he was on his broom, feet dangling above the water, racing wildly to shore. He landed in the foam, and he found when he dismounted that his broom was really only a piece of twisted driftwood. He held it up and buffed the metal "Firebolt" plate on it with the cuff of his sleeve before tossing it out into the ocean and watching it drift away. He stood there, ankle-deep in the water, his trainer laces floating on the surface, his robe hem wet. Something in the water caught his eye and he reached down to pick up a sparkling palm-sized stone at his feet. His gloved hand looked distorted as it grasped the stone and then the glove melted away as if made from sugar and the scar on the back of his hand—I must not tell lies—seemed magnified. He drew his hand out of the water, turned it over to observe the blood-red stone and watched, mesmerized, as the stone melted away to leave a golden snitch and the snitch opened on a little hinge to reveal a reborn phoenix in a pile of smoldering ashes.

Dream Harry smiled and brought his hands together to cup the tiny bird. The ashes fell through his fingers into the water and were carried out to sea and it was like a burial of sorts, for Harry saw Sirius in the ashes, and the tiny phoenix reborn shed a tiny tear that fell into the water amid some darting minnows. The minnows turned into gossamer strands of memories and a stone basin rose from the water, minnows-turned-memories floating inside it, memory-tails still flicking from side to side. Images formed in the basin, insubstantial and changing like pictures in clouds. A familiar voice said "Harry, are you ready?" and he looked up to see Professor Dumbledore standing opposite him. The Headmaster stretched out the gloved hand to him, and Harry looked down at his own hands. A golden feather was all that remained of the phoenix and he let it fall into the basin as he reached out toward Dumbledore's hand.

But the basin was gone now and the feather drifted down to the water, only it wasn't a feather any longer but a brilliant sword with jeweled handle, resting quietly beneath the water on the sandy ocean floor. Harry gazed at it a moment, suddenly chilled to the bone, then grasped the Headmaster's hand before him.

"Mr. Potter!"

Harry opened his eyes. Professor Snape was standing above him. They locked eyes.

"Legilimens."