The garden was, to put it simply, beautiful. The hedges dotting the perimeter were trimmed so perfectly that it had to have been done magically, but the garden didn't give off the magical 'hum' that she felt whenever she walked through Hogwarts, the Burrow, or anything else dominated by magic.
Besides the stone pathway, every square inch of the rectangular 'room' created by the hedges was covered in some kind of grass, flower, tree, or other lush, colorful shrubbery. The stone pathway turned and snaked in different directions leading to swings made of vines, benches, and Hermione could vaguely make out what looked like a gazebo in the far right corner.
It was night and not much could be seen through the darkness, but Hermione was sure that it would be even more beautiful and bright in the daylight.
This garden was particularly special because of the lack of the feeling of magic she felt around Hogwarts. Instead, she felt the natural feel of life as the crickets chirped, the wind blowing softly through the trees, and frogs croaking and splashing in what sounded like a creek or river.
For the first time in forever, Hermione felt at peace. There was no Lavender fawning over Ron, there was no Harry carrying a suspicious potion's book in the crook of his arm, and there certainly wasn't the threat of the impending doom she felt hanging over shoulders.
She was about to make her way to one of the swings when she heard the distinct thud of footsteps on stone. She froze and strained to hear the source of the noise. Quietly as she could, she followed. The footsteps were in a hurry,that much she could tell. She wondered how someone could ever be in any kind of hurry in this garden; there was something calming about it that made her want to sit by the creek and watch frogs splash for hours.
The path rounded around a tree and she could finally see a figure down the straight path. It was hard to tell, but the figure looked male with a tall physique and broad shoulders. He walk down the path straight towards the perimeter of the hedge, and it opened up into archway once he neared.
After he disappeared, Hermione swiftly ran to the hedge wall and again an archway formed for her. She was greeted by a system of more green hedges; a maze.
Though they were faint, there was still the sound of footsteps. Wasting no time, she walked towards the sound. As she grew nearer, the sound became louder and faster, almost annoyed. She was lost now in the depth of the maze but she didn't care, curiosity had gotten the best of her.
The steps were getting faster so Hermione quickened her pace. Just as she thought she had lost him, there was a voice behind her.
"Having fun stalking me, are you, Granger?" she heard Malfoy drawl behind her. She whipped around and, sure enough, there he was. He was dressed in the most casual attire she had ever seen him in: a white muggle t-shirt, jeans, and trainers. She had only ever seen him in Muggle clothes at Kings Cross, and even then he was always dressed formally.
"How did you get behind me?" she asked, her arms feeling around in her pocket for a wand that wasn't there.
"I think I would know my way around my own garden, now why the devil are you here?" he sneered, his arms crossed. He must have not had a wand on him either.
"Your garden?" she asked. Surely nothing as beautiful and well-kept could have been Malfoy's.
"Well, my mother's garden, but still on my property." he said, pointing to the manor looming over them in the distance. Hermione hadn't noticed it in her efforts to catch up with him. "Now, what are you doing here, Mudblood? You're lucky that I don't have my wand on me."
What was she doing there? She couldn't remember where she was before the garden or how she had gotten there. She crossed her arms defensively. "What are you doing here?"
Their bodies were tense and leaned forward. They weren't really sure what do with their bodies without wands.
"How dare you question me? As soon as I found out where my wand is…" he trailed off and stormed past Hermione. Already lost in the maze and with nowhere to go, she followed. He either didn't care or didn't notice her behind him as he zoomed through the maze expertly. Once she was out of the maze she would go in the complete opposite direction. Finally, they neared the black, iron gates that led to the back of Malfoy Manor.
The house was huge and seemed even bigger because of its close proximity. The grass of the lawn looked just as green as the grass in the garden and several white peacocks were roaming around.
Malfoy opened the tall gate and walked through, but disappeared after leaving the gates. Figuring it was some sort of charm, Hermione followed only to be in the exact same position where she had started at the garden. Malfoy stared straight ahead, confusion plastered on his face that Hermione was sure matched her own.
She walked back in the direction they had come, and she was back at the end of the maze. When she walked forward towards Malfoy Manor, she was back at the beginning of the garden. She repeated this a couple of times before coming to the conclusion that they were in a loop. Once she had returned, Malfoy was sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. She was about to turn away when something caught her eye; the Dark Mark was marked on his skin clear as day.
Hermione woke gasping for air and sweat making her pajamas stick to her skin. She looked down at her hands, her four-poster, the light streaming from the window. It was a dream. She had never had a dream so vivid, so lifelike. She remembered everything about Malfoy and the garden in detail. The vague fuzziness that dreams usually came with wasn't present,it was more like a memory of something that happened rather than a fabrication of her mind.
She felt anything but well rested: he bones were achy, she felt like she weighed a million pounds, and she was overwhelmed with grogginess that made it difficult to get out of bed. The dream was so real it had prevented her from actually getting a good night's sleep.
After taking a shower, brushing her teeth, and unsuccessfully trying to tame her hair, she trudged downstairs to the Great Hall.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked when she met him and Ron downstairs.
"Yeah…why?"
"Well…you look like you got hit by a bus," said Harry. "Rough night of sleep?" he asked after she shot him a death glare. Ron, of course, was currently preoccupied with his scrambled eggs and sausage.
As the students piled in one by one, Hermione couldn't help but constantly flick her eyes towards the Slytherin table. The spot where Draco normally sat by Pansy was unoccupied. She saw Blaise point to the empty spot and Pansy shrug. Hermione thought of this as a good thing; she didn't know how she would feel seeing the man that had appeared so clearly in her dreams.
"You could say that," she said to Harry.
In her first class, Transfiguration, they spent the hour writing a paper on how to transfigure a toad into a chair. Hermione found herself done half an hour early and fighting to stay awake. She dozed off with a couple of minutes to go and didn't know she had to change classes until Harry gently shook her awake.
The next class, Potions, the Gryffindors had with the Slytherins. Malfoy was there, the exact image of how he was in her dream, except he looked even paler than usual and had dark circles under his eyes. Her eyes wandered towards the inside of his left arm and she shuddered; thank goodness it was just a dream.
The rest of the day went by slowly. Hermione considered herself a good student, but she found herself rushing out of Herbology, her last hour, the moment they were released.
She rushed straight to the common room where she finished her homework that needed to be done and marched straight up to bed, not bothering to say hello to Harry, Ron, Ginny, or anyone else; the only thing she cared to say hello to was her bed. Hermione brushed her teeth, washed her face, and changed into pajamas and was in bed by six o'clock, dinner completely forgotten
She was finally greeted with sleep, and greeted with Malfoy's garden.
Everything was the same with its vivid realism. She could see her hands, her feet, and her clothes that were the same as they were last time. She could feel the breeze and the chills down her spine. She even pricked her finger on a thorn, and she felt the pain and saw the blood. It was hard to convince herself that it was all a dream when she could feel everything. Everything was the same as it was before except-
"Being here wasn't enough to dirty this garden, so you had to muddy it up with your blood as well?" asked Draco from behind. Ah, there was Malfoy.
Hermione turned and wiped the blood from her finger. "I didn't ask to dream this, you know."
"Oh, well now it's your dream is it? This is my dream, thank you very much. I've been dreaming of this garden for months, and it's been delightfully peaceful until you showed up," said Draco with a look of utter contempt.
He was wearing the same clothes and still had the Dark Mark, she noticed, and he seemed to have caught her staring.
"What, is it the Mark you're looking at? Yes, Granger, I'm a Death Eater, but you knew that because you're me, a figment of my imagination. And why my brain decided to invite my imagination of you in my dream, I have no idea."
"You've got this wrong, Malfoy, this is my dream you're in and you're the figment of my imagination."
The wind whipped harder around them, seemingly imitating their current mood. Hermione felt her cheeks burn despite the cold. The arrogance of Malfoy, even Dream Malfoy, was unbelievable. Even in her dream he thought that he called the shots, that it was his dream rather than hers.
"I don't understand why I waste my precious breath arguing with the likes of you, or rather myself I suppose," said Malfoy. He turned to the fork in the left, and Hermione, not wanting anything to with Malfoy at that present moment, turned right.
She walked down the pathway to the edge of the right side of the forest, and, sure enough, an archway formed from the trees allowing her to leave. She stepped out onto a large hilly area that spanned as far left and right as she could visibly see. She assumed this was the end of the Malfoy property and they seemed to live in the middle of nowhere; the only thing visible was the straight wall of hedges that she had just exited from and some mountains off in the distance.
The harsh wind settled down to a breeze and she started to walk away. She didn't know where she was going, of course, but anywhere from Malfoy was a good thing.
She cursed Malfoy and the stupid dream under her breath. All she wanted was a nice night of sleep, not a harassment from her subconscious. There wasn't a doubt that she would wake up the next morning just as unsatisfied as she had the night prior.
Hermione hadn't gotten far over the hill before noticing a group of small, elf-looking creatures at the base of the hill. At first suspecting they were house-elves, Hermione started to walk down the hill. It wasn't until she was closer until she saw what they really were.
The creatures were the same height and color of house elves with long, pointed faces and eyes the brightness of the sun. Hermione noticed these creatures from when she took Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures. They had never seen them in class, of course, but she had read about them in the book they were required to get (which she had read cover to cover): Erklings. They were known for being able to speak English and for their diet of humans, especially children to whom they would sing songs to lure them away from their mothers.
At this realization, she slowly started to back away from the hill; being eaten, dream or not, was not one of the things on her list for the day. Their absurdly long ears, however, were good for hearing, and they all turned their heads to her in unison.
She stood still, breathing heavily.
"Get her," one of them cackled and pointed a wrinkled finger in her direction. They all cackled in unison.
Hermione ran. She had no idea where she was running and as far as she could see, there were only hills. The beasts were cackling behind her, thrilled at an opportunity for food. While running, she searched her pockets for her wand, but she knew her search was futile.
With a pounding heart, she continued to run but felt herself losing speed with each step. The Erklings seemed to have no trouble continuing to run and continued behind her, cackling as if they were mocking her.
She was almost about to give up when she heard a voice shout above her. "Granger! Go back to the garden!"
She looked up to the top of the hill to see Malfoy. The Erklings noticed too and ran to Malfoy who bolted down the hill. Even though she knew she couldn't trust him, she realized she really was out of options. She followed him, sprinting as hard as she could. Some of the Erklings had lingered and were following her now, too. Even though it seemed impossible, she ran faster.
She ran head first into the trees knowing that an archway would form. It did, and she felt the slight tug of an Erkling on her pant leg before getting fully in the garden and falling into a bed of Pansys. She hoisted herself up, her heart still beating like mad and sweat beading down on her forehead. She could hear the cackling of the Erklings from beyond the forest, but they couldn't go further.
Malfoy was a few feet away, lying in the same fashion on the floor as Hermione and breathing heavily. She got up and extended a hand towards Malfoy to help him up.
He glared up at her. "Don't look down on me, Mudblood," he spat and rose to his feet. There was the Malfoy she knew.
"Why did you save me?"
"Because," he said as he got up, without looking at her, "I think I have enough morbid events currently happening in my life, and having another dead body, even if it's fake, is not something I want to see."
Hermione's mind floated to what Harry had said about Draco bragging to his friends about being a Death Eater, but didn't want to press the subject further. "Well why are there so many creatures?" she asked.
He rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Because, this is a very magical area-you might have trouble understanding-, but the property is heavily protected by charms and spells to keep them off. Still, they wander around outside of it and occasionally claim someone as stupid as yourself," he sneered and turned to leave.
Hermione, still gasping for breath and adrenaline too high to be insulted or annoyed at Malfoy's comments, walked over towards a nearby bench to catch a breath.
It's just a dream, it's just a dream, she told herself. But it was hard to think that with fear so real.
"I promise, he said it himself to his friends on the train; he is a Death Eater and is serving some sort of 'mission'," said Harry the next day in the library. Malfoy was at the other end of the room and out of earshot.
Hermione remembered her dreams and involuntarily shuddered. "What, is it the Mark you're looking at? Yes, Granger, I'm a Death Eater."
Just a dream.
"Malfoy is full of it, you know. He'll say any kind of rubbish to impress his friends. I can't be sure, but I even think he's in a romantic relationship with Parkinson," she said once she regained her composure.
"Hermione!" Harry wailed desperately. "You've got to listen to me, there's a plan, and something is going on here at Hogwarts that doesn't involve learning."
She gave him a sideways glance. "It wouldn't be the first time."
She looked at Malfoy intently. His eyes met her gaze and promptly looked back at his homework.
"I think I have enough morbid events currently happening in my life, and having another dead body, even if it's fake, is not something I want to see."
A/N: I'm currently looking for a beta for this story. If you have beta experience and are interested please PM me. Thank you for reading!