Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (Then tell him that his lonely nights are over)

by Madu

Summary:

There's an all-glass cage in the center of the basement, practically a bubble held up above an intricate runic circle on the floor by an iron frame and thick chains. But that's not what really got Harry's attention, oh no.

There is a man inside the glass globe, sitting naked and motionless in the center with his legs hugged to his chest, and the only thing Harry can see of him other than pale white skin is the bush of black hair almost as or more messed up than his own.

Going to the cage is like being pulled by a magnet, and Harry's hand moves almost by itself to press against the glass.

The man looks up, locking eyes with Harry, and slowly unrolls to his feet, all the while looking Harry in the eyes with irises as black as the space between the stars with a single tiny point of light in the pupil. And then... And then he reaches out, placing his own palm flush with Harry's against the glass, and presses back.

•••

For eighty-one years, Morpheus rotted in a glass cage in Roderick Burgess's basement, with no hope of escape now that Jessamy was dead.

At least not until his big sister's favorite accidentally finds him.

Chapter 1

Summary:

Edited grammatically on 16/NOV/2023

You hurt. It's okay. I hurt too. Hold my hand.

– Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

 

---

 

Maybe if they hadn't figured this out – if for the first time in a long time Harry's cursed luck hadn't smiled on them –, things would have ended in several wildly different ways. But as it is, this might have been for the best. What changed everything, in case you were wondering, dear reader, was this:

Roderick Burgess attempted to summon and capture Death herself. Unfortunately, due to an error – deliberate as it was provided in the first place by a certain Nightmare with hungry mouths for eyes – somewhere in the ritual, what he summons is not the Death of the Endless, but rather, her younger brother – the Dream.

And from the Dream of the Endless, he steals his robes – which weren't very important or a symbol of power after all, just clothes, really –, a locket with a ruby pendant, a helmet made from the skull and backbone of an enemy, and a pouch full of golden sand.

And so Roderick Burgess trapped the Dream of the Endless in a glass sphere suspended over a runic circle that under no circumstances should be disturbed, as a simple failure in the matrix would be sufficient for Dream to escape back to the Dreaming.

At a time between the 1950s and 1970s, a certain Tom Marvolo Riddle visited the Burgess Mansion to satisfy his curiosity about the infamous demon that Roderick Burgess – who, in Tom Riddle's very biased opinion, was a simple-minded wizard little stronger than a squib – trapped in his cellar when he tried to capture Death.

In 1997, a few days after Ron's departure, Harry and Hermione make a stopover in Preston, Lancashire, and Hermione is in the town library doing a little light reading while Harry buys groceries when she finds on the cover of an old edition of the local newspaper a picture with a young Tom Riddle's standing in the back, barely visible in the shadows of the ballroom. The almost completely faded caption tells the date and place of the dinner ball, and Hermione almost squeals with excitement when she realizes that the place is a few miles out of town, that if Tom Riddle has been there being the Muggle-hater that he is, there must be something important there – like a Horcrux or a clue to one, for example. Hermione then hurriedly jots down all relevant information, meticulously puts all journals and reference books back in their proper places, and exits the building before running to the nearby market where Harry was shopping.

She doesn't know it yet, but this serendipitous discovery is just the beginning of a much bigger and more dangerous quest than the one they're on now.

In the shadows of the library, a woman with an ankh necklace smiles.

 

---

 

"This is crazy, Hermione," Says Harry, shrinking the groceries and putting them into the bead bag after an excited Hermione dragged him into the tight alley behind the library. It was a stroke of genius that Hermione pulled all the money out of her savings account for college and packed up before they ran off to hunt the Horcruxes – at least that way they wouldn't starve as much as they might have, since the opportunity to get into Muggle towns were few. "What if they catch us? That place must be covered in security."

"It'll be fine, Harry. And I already explained why we need to go in there." Answers Hermione, zipping up her bag and tying it to her belt. "Tom Riddle..."

"Yes, yes. Tom Riddle was there, and he may have either left a Horcrux or a clue to one behind." Harry repeats, tugging on the Slytherin locket a little before dropping the damn thing. "I just don't like to blindly jump into something that has to do with him."

"I know, I know. But it'll be quick, okay? We'll put on some don't-notice-me charms and the cloak, go in, investigate a bit, and get out. Easy, and shouldn't take more than an hour, if that, since it's very improbable that he has gone somewhere other than the ballroom and the basement."

"I hope so." Says Harry, accepting the hand Hermione held out to him. "You know where you're Apparating us to, right?"

Instead of answering, Hermione just rolls her eyes and spins on her heels, disappearing with the two of them with a crack like a snapping branch to reappear behind some trees a few meters from a mansion of dark brown stone and a depressing gray aura over it.

"Do you feel it too?" Harry shudders, frowning at the house as if it had personally offended him. "Is it like being around a dementor, only less fear and more... Anger? That makes sense?"

"Yes, and what you're feeling are the remnants of whatever dark magic was done here, Harry." Explains Hermione, pulling the Invisibility Cloak out of her beaded bag and passing it to Harry before waving her wand at herself and almost disappearing against the surroundings behind her. "Okay, we'll meet here in...an hour and a half? That's more than enough time to snoop around, isn't it?"

"Let's hope so. You go up and I go down?" Hermione hums in agreement, and Harry pulls the hood of the Cloak over his head, disappearing completely under it. "If something happens, Disapparate to the alley behind the library, okay? I'll meet you there."

"You too." She replied, taking a deep breath before starting to walk towards the house, her spell making her look like a heat mirage. Harry waits for a side door nearby to open and close quickly before moving on, preferring to walk around until he finds the service door that leads to the kitchens. Miraculously, the room was empty when he peeked in, and Harry wasted no time in casting a Cleaning Charm on his feet before entering – it wouldn't do for him to leave footprints to be followed. He hoped Hermione had done the same.

The mansion is cramped and stuffy, decorated in that classic half-Victorian half-maximalist style full of gold and dark colors and crushed velvet and stuffed animal heads everywhere. It smelled strongly of potted flowers on almost every visible flat surface, and of mothballs too, and Harry grimaces as he thinks of how much work the poor servants must have had to do to clean up the place.

He goes from room to room, carefully peeking before entering to see if it's empty and making sure not to misplace anything at all – after all, neither he nor Hermione should have been there in the first place, as this whole side quest was nothing more than a valid excuse to avoid the current problem hanging around Harry's neck.

"Are you sure we should leave it there alone? I mean, the boss will be mad at us if he finds out." Says a voice from the hallway adjacent to the room Harry has been exploring, and he stands deathly still in the half-open doorway, listening to the conversation with barely a breath. "I don't want to get fired."

"You know the boss is too sick to get out of bed, and his son is a cowardly cunt, too busy looking at the gardener to pay attention to what the fuck is going on in that basement there. Relax, we're just going into town to grab a few beers and we'll be right back. No one will notice we're gone." Answers another voice, just as male as the first, and Harry thinks that Hermione maybe was right to have them come and investigate. "Come on, we don't have all day."

"Okay, fine. I'm coming, dammit."

Harry waits for the footsteps to have faded into the distance before exiting the living room he'd ducked into, licking his dry lips as he looks down the hall at both ends before opening the dark door at the front of the room he was in, which certainly led to Roderick Burgess's infamous basement.

He enters and quickly closes it behind him, locking himself in a tight staircase that leads down, down, down in almost complete darkness, except for the dim light coming from the basement below.

Without taking off his Cloak and with his wand in his hand, Harry goes down.

The cellar is more spacious than he thought it would be, and it practically reeks of dark magic, almost more than the locket slowly burning the skin at the hollow of Harry's throat.

There's an all-glass cage in the center of the basement, practically a bubble held up above an intricate runic circle on the floor by an iron frame and thick chains. But that's not what got Harry's attention, oh no.

There is a man inside the glass globe, sitting naked and motionless in the center with his legs hugged to his chest, and the only thing Harry can see of him other than pale white skin is the bush of black hair almost as or more messed up than his own.

Going to the cage is like being pulled by a magnet, and Harry's hand moves almost by itself to press against the glass.

The man looks up, locking eyes with Harry even though he is still mostly covered by the Invisibility Cloak, and slowly unrolls to his feet, all the while looking Harry in the eyes with irises as black as the space between the stars with a single tiny point of light in the pupil, like the North Star in the sky above Hogwarts during Midwinter's Night. And then... And then he reaches out, placing his palm flush with Harry's against the glass, and presses back.

Harry's magic unfurls from his core, and there are flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder and hailstorms, golden sunlight reflected off the Black Lake, the deadly acid of basilisk venom, and the healing burning of phoenix tears.

The man in the glass globe takes it all and repays it with the blackness of space, with the glow of nebulae, with moving galaxies and collapsing stars, with screaming black holes, and the hum of moving comets and meteors.

And Harry takes that, accepts the full weight of the magic of something that is certainly not human at all, and lets it do what it wants with him, take what it wants from him because if there's one thing Harry is, it's being much, much more powerful than a wizard should be. Enough to feed a cosmic being of unknown origin trapped for who knows how long in a megalomaniac's basement and not even break a sweat at the end, it seems.

(In a place far removed from everyone and everything, Destiny of the Endless stops pacing for a second when certain pages of its Book unravel and rewrite.)

"Set me free." He whispers, inaudible, getting as close to Harry as the cage will allow. The glass does not fog up. "Please. Set me free."

"How?" Harry whispers back, magic going back and forth between them in endless feedback, and the locket burns and sizzles in fury around his neck, the tight chain nearly taking his breath away. Harry's head feels full of cotton wool, the scar on his forehead itching. Harry presses his forehead against the cold glass, and the surface fogs up from his wet breath. "How do I do this?"

"Just damage the circle. It's just chalk, so erasing a part will do." Replies the man, looking concerned, and Harry lets his magic drum against the man's in a perhaps comforting pattern. "Quickly, before anyone comes or the guards come back."

Harry stretches out his foot and rubs the toe of his shoe against the outside edge of the circle until the white chalk practically disappears under the friction. Harry looks up, and the man is smiling at him, a small, almost invisible thing, more apparent in his exulting magic than in his face.

"Now break the glass." He instructed, his hand pressing harder on the cage, reaching for Harry's hand, reaching for freedom.

Harry taps the tip of his wand against the glass and wordlessly transfigures everything, even the lead of the frames and chains that hold the cage up, into thin sand, thinner even than the finest dust.

And then the man is finally free, deafening alarms are blaring and Harry is being hugged. Tight and possessive, so much so that he can barely breathe.

"I am the Dream of the Endless." Murmurs the man against Harry's temple as running footsteps and screams can be heard on the basement stairs. "But you, little chosen one, can call me Morpheus."

 

---

 

There's a prophecy that was written in the Book of Destiny of the Endless back at the beginning of all things, crammed in barely legible chicken squiggles at the bottom of one of the first pages.

The one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord will be born in the death of the seventh month, born to those who thrice defied him, born with a power the Dark Lord is unaware of, and he will mark him as an equal, for one cannot live while the other survives, the one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord will be born when the seventh month dies.

And right at the top of the next page, in elegant, sharp pen-and-ink strokes:

 

HOPE

/ hōp /

noun

1. 1.

   a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

   "he looked through her belongings in the hope of coming across some information"

    

   Sinónimos:

    

   Desire
   

    

   Wish
   

    

   Expectation
   

    

   Ambition

    

   Plan
   

    

   Dream

    

   Pipe Dream

    

   Longing
   

    

   Yearning
   

    

   Craving

    

   Hankering
   

    

    
2.  
3. 2.

   ARCHAIC

   a feeling of trust.

   "our private friendship, upon hope and affiance whereof, I presume to be your petitioner"

    

verb

want something to happen or be the case.

1. "he's hoping for an offer of compensation"

 

There was a story that said that Hope never abandoned humanity, even after Pandora opened the box and released things that never should have been created in the first place if it weren't for making mankind as it was.

Hope dies last, mortals say.

It's a lie.

Chapter 2: Author's Note

So. The article happened. Honestly, I don't know what to think about it other than "omg, what a disgusting man". And I was really excited about this project, even though I'm a slow, ADHD-ridden writer who barely remembers to update anything and just goes where the muse takes me. But after the article I really, really don't want to touch anything to do with Neil Gaiman for a while, if ever again. I really loved what was being built here, but... It's not going to work anymore, guys. That said, I guess we're going into an indefinite hiatus here.

I'm really sorry.

Thanks for the kudos,

Madu

 

PS.: I won't delete the fic, don't worry.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 9 of cross your fingers and hope to die (enjoy and swallow a thousand needles) - A Harry Potter Crossover Fix It (because he deserves to be happy dammit) Series
• Part 3 of The one where Harry and Hermione Ride or Die™ for each other (fuck you, Ron)