8. HELLISH NIGHTMARES 2.

"Now, now … that just won't do!" Harry recognized the voice immediately. It was the voice of the man, if he could be called as such, from Mrs. Thompson's dream. The tall man with white alabaster skin, dressed in green.

The door Mr. Thompson had inspected originally opened, and in walked the creature itself. Unlike Harry and Howard, it was at a size appropriate for the room's furnishings, making it appear as tall as Hagrid when Harry had been just eleven years old.

Through the door, Harry could see a long hallway filled with doors and fire. The fire was slowly approaching their location.

Taking a step in front of Mr. Thompson, Harry drew his wand and faced the creature.

"Back again, I see, little sorcerer?" the creature asked as it dropped itself heavily onto the sofa.

"We didn't really have a chance to chat last time you were in my realm," he explained, gesturing around.

"We've never met," Harry began.

"Oh, but we did! It was briefly, and you so rudely left before we had a chance for a proper little chat," the creature interrupted. "I don't often have new playthings pop in unexpectedly like you did."

'Oh! What do we have here? A new plaything to add to my collection?' the words the creature had spoken inside Mrs. Thompson's memory of the dream.

"You weren't talking to Mrs. Thompson … you were talking to me. But that was a memory, not a dream …"

"My power... lingers... you could say," the creature replied, waving its hand dismissively.

"Mr. Thompson, run! I'll try to hold this creature off and find you later. Try to leave me a trail so I can follow you."

The man didn't hesitate and ran through the nearest door.

"And what do you think that will accomplish, little sorcerer?" the creature asked, seemingly amused.

"Do you really think he can escape from here? I control this realm; it does my bidding!"

As the creature spoke, the fire in the hallway stopped spreading and seemed to change direction.

"But you... you're quite interesting, aren't you?" Suddenly, Harry could feel some kind of mental probing. It wasn't Legilimency in any form he had ever experienced, nor was it Riddle's attempts at possession. It was something else entirely.

Harry mustered his meager mental defenses and tried to keep the creature out of his thoughts.

"Huh! Well, that's interesting," the creature exclaimed, leaning forward with interest.

"You're not a sorcerer, are you... no, you're quite different. Now, let's find out what fuels YOUR nightmares."

With a casual wave of its hand, Harry felt his defenses crumble and his mind laid bare.

"Oh, this is fascinating! You're not just a weak little sorcerer, but a traveler from another dimension," the creature remarked, its amusement turning into something unreadable.

"Hmm, you don't have too many fears, do you?" the creature asked, its expression morphing from amusement to something indecipherable.

"Zombies? Really? That's boring!" the creature hummed and hawed for a few more moments.

"Ah! What are THESE?!"

Shadows began to gather in the middle of the room, and within moments, a Dementor had materialized.

"Now, these... Dementors... are quite intriguing and would make a fascinating addition to my... collection."

Harry could feel the Dementor's influence as a profound despair settled over his mind.

Focusing on a happy memory proved to be much more difficult than he anticipated. The joy of Sirius offering him a home had dimmed considerably since his passing, creating only a thin shield of mist.

Trying a different memory, Harry recalled the day he and Ginny had first made love in the Room of Requirement. It had been an awkward encounter, filled with blushes and fumbling, but the intimacy of the act, more than the act itself, had filled Harry with joy. Harry and Ginny had opened up to each other in a way Harry had never imagined before.

But as the joy evoked by that memory began to fill him, it swiftly dissipated as Harry remembered that he would most likely never see her again.

The Dementor drew closer, causing the air to freeze despite the heat from the burning hall just beyond. Harry desperately searched for a happy memory.

Delving deeper into his past, Harry found a memory that wasn't as strong as his older memories but remained untainted.

Harry summoned the memory of Hermione rushing into the Great Hall in their second year after being restored from her petrification and giving him a hug. It was the first hug Harry had received that he hadn't flinched away from.

This memory was unaffected by Harry's new reality. No matter what happened, Harry had saved his best friend, and he remembered the joy and relief of knowing she was safe and sound.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A silvery snowy owl burst from Harry's wand, flooding the living room with bright

 silver light.

To Harry's surprise, when he was asked to teach a class on the Patronus Charm in his last year, his Patronus had changed from Prongs to Hedwig. It was a fitting transformation, as Hedwig had given her life to protect him, taking a death curse meant for him during his final escape from Privet Drive.

The fear and despair lifted as the Dementor was chased out of the room and into the hallway. Once the Dementor was gone, Harry magically sealed the door.

"Like I said, interesting, but you don't truly fear them. You understand the danger they pose, but you know how to fight them. What do you truly fear?"

Harry could feel the creature's mental probe intensify, digging deeper into his mind, reaching for his most guarded thoughts.

'You don't fear for your own life,'" the creature said, and an image of Harry kneeling in front of a basilisk when he was just twelve years old materialized in the center of the room. It was the moment Harry came to face his own mortality, accepting his death after saving his best friend's sister.

"You're not afraid of monsters or maniacs," the creature continued, and images of dragons, Dementors, Boggarts, werewolves, Barty Crouch Jr., Bellatrix, and Riddle appeared and quickly vanished.

"You don't fear your friends dying or abandoning you since they are in another reality," the creature added.

"So what DO you fear?"

Three items materialized in the center of the room: a cloak, a ring, and a wand.

Harry sprang into action, sending a cutting curse followed by a bludgeoning curse through the three floating objects. The spells sliced through the items and then slammed the creature through the living room wall into a child's bedroom.

"Did I strike a nerve? Well, not literally, of course... not yet, anyway," the creature taunted, pulling itself out of the hole Harry's spells had created.

It seemed unharmed by Harry's attacks.

"Your reality had such interesting creatures!"

Two large acromantulas burst through the door Harry and Mr. Thompson had entered from.

Harry transfigured the living room table into a large black dog and was about to send it at the acromantulas when the creature made a dismissive gesture and the acromantulas crumbled to dust.

Harry transformed the living room table into a large black dog, surprised that it had taken the form of Padfoot.

Without letting his surprise slow him down, Harry followed that spell with a series of cutting curses at one of the spiders while Padfoot charged the other.

Harry's cutting curses severed most of the spider's legs, causing the creature to flop helplessly onto the floor. This allowed Harry to focus back on the alabaster-skinned being.

Harry narrowly rolled out of the way to avoid a beam of purple light that shot from the creature's hand. Harry retaliated with a series of powerful explosive spells.

The being dodged one spell, swatted the second away, but was thrown backward by the third.

Without waiting to see if the spells had affected his opponent, Harry turned around and sprinted through the door that Mr. Thompson had used to leave the room.

Harry stopped and sealed the door, then began searching the room for any sign of where Mr. Thompson had gone.

The creature's voice echoed through the room, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. "No, it's not the items themselves you fear, is it?"

Harry noticed that one of the door frames had a mark on it as if it had been hit by a blunt object. Harry ran towards the door and opened it.

Beyond the door was a long apartment hallway with twelve doors and no stairway doors at each end, unlike a normal apartment hallway. To his right, Harry could see flames rapidly approaching.

Hoping Mr. Thompson had gone left, Harry started running down the hallway. None of the doors on the left had any markings.

"No, it's what they represent... what they COULD mean for you..." the voice had transformed from a taunting tone to a more cautious one.

Facing the rapidly approaching flames, Harry cast a charm.

"I hope this works."

Harry stepped into the flames. Instead of pain and unbearable heat, Harry was greeted by a soft summer breeze and a slight tickling sensation as the Flame-Freezing Charm worked its magic.

Harry followed this charm with a Bubble-Head Charm to protect himself from the smoke.

"NO!" the creature's voice echoed through the hallway in rage as the flames seemed to intensify, but Harry remained unharmed.

"I RULE the dream dimension! My will is LAW!" the words were full of authority, but Harry could also detect a hint of fear.

Harry burst through the next door and found himself in a circular room with walls covered in doors, twenty-two in total. The room was already engulfed in flames.

"Oh, come on! That's cheating!" Harry huffed in frustration as he searched for any sign of Mr. Thompson. "Homenum Revelio!"

Harry received a ping and opened the corresponding door, revealing a child's bedroom. Flames and smoke filled the small room.

Mr. Thompson huddled in a corner of the room, as far away from the flames as possible.

"Mr. Thompson! I'm here to help you. Take my hand!" Harry exclaimed as he offered his hand.

"NO!" The creature's voice thundered through the room, warping reality. The walls and floor began to ripple and eventually shatter, causing the two men to plummet into darkness.

"LUMOS SOLEM!" Harry cried out, pouring more power into the spell as the air whooshed past.

The darkness receded to the overpowered Lumos spell, and Harry could see the pajama-clad form of Mr. Thompson still falling further down.

Instinct acquired from years of whizzing about in the air on broomsticks kicked in, and Harry changed his body angle to greatly accelerate his descent. Slowly, Harry caught up to Mr. Thompson and grabbed his arm.

"Mr. Thompson!" Harry screamed against the whistling wind. "This is just a dream or a nightmare. You need to take control of it."

Looking over the man's shoulder, Harry noticed a small floating piece of land appear in the distance below them.

As the ground grew closer, Harry shouted, "Yes, he's powerful, but I don't think his power is absolute. I think there are rules and limitations. Hang on!"

The spell "ARRESTO MOMENTUM" caught both men, slowing their descent to a gentle fall only about 10 meters from the surface of the small floating island. They landed softly a few moments later.

"Mr. Thompson, I might not be here for much longer. My assistant might wake up and break my connection at any time. I don't know if time passes normally here. This is your dream! You need to take control! You need to..."

"NO!" The sky filled with a vision of the creature who controlled the dream dimension. Its eyes were the size of small houses. "You DARE invade MY REALM and impose YOUR WILL! I don't care what power you are, I... will... not... be... DENIED!"

Hundreds of acromantulas, ranging in size from large dogs to small cars, began crawling onto the floating island from all sides. Their numbers were increasing rapidly.

Harry snapped his wand out, creating a ribbon of fire over 50 feet long. He twirled his wand overhead, causing the flame whip to clumsily twirl and lash about in a circle.

The first acromantula it hit was sliced cleanly in two.

"See! If he was all-powerful, he'd have snuffed us already. He wouldn't bother with spiders and mazes..."

Harry made an awkward flick of his wand, causing the flame whip to hit a spider that had attempted to jump. The whip also came very close to Mr. Thompson's legs.

"... he holds no power over you... or only as much power as you let him have. Remember, you were saved from the fire at your parents' home."

The spiders continued to advance, and Harry's fire whip proved ineffective. Raising both arms in the air, he summoned a firestorm, the same spell that Dumbledore had used against the Inferi.

Slowly waving his wand over his head, a torrent of flame quickly encircled the two men, incinerating the acromantulas and setting the island ablaze.

"SAY IT!" Harry cried out, not daring to pull much of his focus away from the dangerous spell.

"NO!" the voice cried out in anger.

"You have no power over me!" As soon as these words were spoken, everything around them vanished, and Harry fell backward from his chair in the hospital ward.

"Bloody Hell!" Harry swore as he gathered his senses. His body was covered in sweat.

"Boss?" Domino asked as she slid down to sit next to Harry.

"I'm fine, Domino. That was just unexpected."

"What... what do we do next?"

Before Harry could answer, a cacophony of beeps and wails erupted from the monitoring equipment around the room. All the patients except for Mr. Thompson appeared to be convulsing, their vital signs flashing red and alarming.

A sudden screech filled the ward, and the temperature dropped to freezing. Shadowy tendrils emerged from the patients' oxygen masks, engulfing the entire room in darkness.

A crushing sense of fear and despair washed over Harry, causing him to fall to his knees.

"Nothing you can do can save you from this," a sly, insidious voice whispered in his ear. "You are alone, and you will always be

 alone, for the rest of your short, meaningless life."

Drawing strength from within, Harry managed to fight through the despair and fear. He lit his wand, casting a soft, feeble light that illuminated only a small circle around him.

Turning his head, he saw Domino, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hand trembling as she raised a pistol to her jaw.

"She's going to die, just like everyone else in your life," the voice taunted.

Harry focused on the fear and despair. He had faced these emotions countless times before. Pain and fear were familiar to him—Boggarts, Dementors... death. He had conquered them all!

Harry focused on his happiest memory, a night in the forest with Sirius, and cast the Patronus Charm.

Hedwig, Harry's owl, emerged from his wand, glowing brightly in the darkness.

The fear and despair faded as the darkness retreated, letting out a piercing screech. Hedwig's light pushed the darkness into a corner, shrinking it until it vanished with a painful cry.

The powerful magic caused medical equipment to spark and explode, bringing a moment of silence.

Harry ended the spell, rushed to Domino, and gently took the gun from her trembling hands.

"It's okay. Everything's fine. It's gone," Harry reassured her.

"W... What the hell was that!" Domino exclaimed.

"I'm not sure. It was like a demon from my world, maybe a stronger version of a Dementor or Boggart. One feeds on happy memories and souls, and the other uses your fears to protect itself. This was like that, but a hundred times worse."

Harry hugged Domino, cast a cheering charm, and pulled her to a secluded spot, where he draped his invisibility cloak over them and removed the wards he had quickly conjured.

"Be quiet. They won't see us," Harry whispered.

In a matter of seconds, the doors burst open and a large group of nurses, doctors, and security personnel flooded the room.

"What on earth happened here?" a male nurse inquired, surveying the room's extensive damage.

"Patients first, gawking later, Willis!" the previous doctor snapped as he approached the nearest patient and attached them to some equipment brought into the room.

Harry and Domino observed silently as the medical teams tended to each patient.

"Christine, are you getting the same results as me?"

"This makes no sense! I want them transferred to another ward, and we need to perform a comprehensive battery of tests that we can't do with the portable equipment, but... they seem better? What on earth happened here, Stephen?"

After overhearing enough, Harry pulled Domino up, hoping they wouldn't be noticed in the darkened corner, relieved that the magical battle had destroyed all the light fixtures as well as the sensitive medical equipment.

"Take a deep breath and hold on tight." Harry whispered into Domino's ear before teleporting them both back to their house with a soft crack.

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(edited chapter.)

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