Ginny's Nightmares by JadeCade
A/N: This idea came to me and was originally going to be short and crack-y, my dislike of Ginny had me giddy over the thought of torturing her with nightmares of Harry being gay. I should have known it'd turn serious after the first line. Enjoy!
I have nightmares sometimes. They began in my third year I think. They have been haunting me since. In them, Harry has that spark in his beautiful green eyes. That spark that means he's engaged, he's impassioned, he's alive. I know, why would such a dream be considered a nightmare?
I'll tell you. Because I love him. I love Harry Potter. I have since I met him on the train station all those years ago. Maybe you don't believe in love at first sight, I sure didn't. At the tender age of ten my brothers had already thoroughly disillusioned me of such childish notions. But it happened to me just the same. The thing they fail to mention in the fairy tales is that the love isn't always requited.
That's what turns the dream of Harry's lovely emerald eyes into my own personal Hell. Harry's gaze is never directed my way. In my dream he's always gazing into the shadows where I can just see a vague, shifting form. Sometimes the form solidifies, taking on characteristics that tease me with their familiarity.
His fourth year, my first year of the nightmare, I was almost convinced the shape was Cho Chang. My main impressions of the form that year included a sense of distance and long dark hair, not much to go by really, but that's the way of dreams. The following year I swear it morphed itself into a shaggy, loyal black dog. His sixth year was perhaps the worst. It was made all the more unbearable but the sweet, shy, attention he showed me in real life. We would hold hands, whisper over dinner, share secret smiles and awkward laughs. I'd get a glimpse of all my wishes coming true. Then I'd have the dream again that night. Never did those eyes stray my way.
Also that year, the shadowy figure took a more distinct form and stopped shifting and morphing. It was tall, dark; I always had a sense of anxiety and foreboding when it was there. Sometimes I'd catch a glint of gold within the shadows.
The next year, Harry wasn't at school. The dream occurred with less frequency, my mind too fretful for his safety and helping Neville and Luna organize the other students for the fight of our lives. Not to mention, it's hard to dream when you feel the need to sleep with one eye open.
After the war I got a break from the dream. I had plenty newer, fresher nightmares to choose from. When the funerals and burying rites were finished and the grief period laid to rest, Hogwarts reopened, half its grandeur and missing even more of its previous occupants.
Professor Snape reappeared, stripped of his wand and under house arrest at the castle for the next seven years. No longer Headmaster, he returned to his Potions post, the only class that did not require use of wands. I couldn't understand why he wasn't rotting in Azkaban with the other Death Eaters, until I learned what Harry had done. The wonderful fool had used his newly claimed title of Savior, coupled with memories both from Snape and Dumbledore's Pensive, to get Snape a fair trial.
Harry and I now shared lessons and it was in one of these lessons with Snape, where the bitter truth behind my dreams slowly dawned on me.
Professor Snape stood at the front of the class, robes buttoned high around his mangled neck. His usual velvet tones now rough and uneven. I finished scribbling a few more lines in my notes while Snape took a detour from lecturing to berate Harry for some new perceived flaw of character. So like the bloody sod, Harry saved him from a life in Azkaban and he couldn't be arsed to show even a little gratitude.
Looking to Harry a few seats over, my stomach flipped and my eyes unfocused for a second. I had this strange feeling, like I had already lived this moment a dozen times and used a time-turner to revisit this exact scene.
Harry had a defiant sparkle in his eyes that said his entire being was affixed to Snape. A small, hesitant smile tipped his lips up as he let Snape's criticism wash over him and roll off his back. Harry had this new confidence as if nothing could deter him, nothing could faze him, where before he would have struck out in anger and frustration and earned himself detention.
Professor Snape's attitude towards Harry might not have changed after the war but the same couldn't be said for Harry. He showed Snape more respect that I believe he deserves and shrugged off Snape's acid remarks with this… cautious amusement. I'd be willing to put it all down to the connection that forms when one knowingly saves another's life but Harry has drilled into our heads, before and after Snape's trial, just how many times and in how many ways Professor Snape has saved his. Nothing changed on Snape's end though. He's still the same bitter, spiteful man.
That night the dream changed, Harry's gaze did not move from the shadowy figure, but the figure separated from the shadows. Tall, dark, and foreboding, my description from two years prior had been spot on. Snape stalks out of the darkness, his robes rippling out behind him like tendrils of black flames. A glinting crown of simple, tasteful gold rests upon his brow. The Half-Blood Prince. Of course. Harry had been spitting mad and strangely disheartened when he found out the Prince and Snape were one and the same.
He doesn't notice me any more than Harry ever has, even though I'm standing right theree, sometimes shouting out in my desperation to claim Harry's attention. Snape's gaze is locked on Harry's, a fierce fire smoldering in his dark eyes. With twin sparks flickering in their eyes, they begin circling each other in a slow dance. Every so often they drift closer to the center before widening the circle once more.
In this dream state, where everything is vague and disconnected and yet crystal clear and vividly lucid in the same instance, it was a simple matter to deduce; these two souls centered on each other. There was so much raw emotion between them, outside distractions were meaningless and insignificant. It hurt, to be faced with the truth, that no matter how hard I tried I could never compete with Professor Snape for Harry's center of attention.
That was the end of that particular nightmare. Now that Snape had come out of the shadows, so to speak, my imagination got creative. In short, I lost my bloody mind. This new dream never stayed consistent. One night I might get a glimpse of Harry and Snape meeting in the darkened Potions classroom, arms crossed, glaring daggers at the other, in the midst of a heated argument. The next night, I'd be peering into an unfamiliar but cozy room, watching Snape read the paper at a small table while Harry sprawled across the nearby sofa with a book, looking as relaxed as he ever did in Gryffindor's common room.
By the middle of the next week I had staved off sleep. In four days I had begged Madam Pomfrey for two Pepper-Up Potions, blaming PMS and a little test anxiety, as well as learned a handy charm to keep myself awake. I was hiding from my dreams. Pathetic, I know. Some dreams do not bear thinking in the wakefulness of day. Some affected me in ways, which I try not to remember. But they were all sickening because they reflected perfectly what I had always hoped I'd one day share with Harry.
Determined to find a reason for these strange dreams (and hopefully a way to stop them), I began researching. First I worked my way through various dream interpretation books. No luck, not a single one indicated what it meant when the love of your life appeared to be romantically involved with your Potion's professor in your dreams. Besides, I knew what it meant; I was loonier than Luna Lovegood.
Next came books on dream magic, dream potions, dream mages, dream weavers, and even a very enlightening book on how to make your own dream catcher. This took several weeks to accomplish with increasingly less sleep and a great deal more irritability.
Four weeks into these new bizarre nightmares, I was ready to cave. My body desperately needed the sleep and the charm and Pepper-Up Potions weren't working properly anymore. At three in the morning, I snuck out of the library where I'd been holed up for the past four hours.
Making my way towards Gryffindor Tower, I was shocked to hear the soft shuffle of footsteps coming from behind me. Hoping I'd not been spotted, I cast a Disillusionment charm and crept into an empty alcove. The sound from coming from the direction of the dungeon stairs and making its way straight towards me. The shuffle grew louder, then fainter as it hurried past my hiding place. Slipping my shoes off I followed as silently as possible, curiosity and something unnamed begging me to discover the identity of the mystery wanderer.
I ended up in front of the Fat Lady and pondered the possibility of my sleep-starved brain causing me to hallucinate. Then I heard it, that soft beloved voice whispering the password into the dark hallway. I had just enough presence of mind to slip in the door behind him.
So it had begun. Missing precious sleep and avoiding the dreams had not affected the reality. I don't know how I knew, it was just instinctual, like your eyes knowing to cry before your brain could relay the message that your heart was breaking.
Tonight might have been one of those simple times, where they'd face off across the classroom and hash out their differences, but I'd seen in my dreams, visions of their future. It was a future that I had no place in.
Slipping past Harry, I hurried up to bed and fell, exhausted, into a deep and restful slumber. The dreams still haunt me, with teasing glimpses of what I long coveted, but I have learned to adapt. I had to release my tentative hold on Harry and shift my focus elsewhere to allow room for other dreams to grow.
-Except from Ginny M. Weasley's new book, Dream Seer, Dream Seer, What Do You See? Set to be released March 28, 2006.