AN: I've decided I wanted to upload some of my stories from AO3 (I'm octopus_fool there) on here as well. This is the first of the lot, the others will mostly be Hobbit fanfiction.

James groaned softly as he drifted back into consciousness. There was something hard and lumpy under the left side of his back and he realised that it must have been this uncomfortable position that had woken him. There was also something heavy draped over his right leg. He tried to shift and the pain of blood beginning to trickle back into his leg caused him to yelp and open his eyes in order to look around.

In the dim reddish light, he could make out that the lumpy thing he was lying on were the wings of his Hungarian Horntail costume and that it was Peter's leg that was cutting off parts of his circulation. Despite James' outcry, Peter was still lying eaglespread next to a couple of bottles of butterbeer, the crumbs of pumpkin pie on his fuzzy costume rising and falling with his soft snores.

On the other side of the blanket fort, Sirius was stirring amidst sweet wrappers, his hat and stringy black wig still on his head if slightly askew. He blinked owlishly at James before wrapping himself even more tightly in his tattered Slytherin cloak. He had decided on dressing as Snape, insisting there was nothing more horrible on earth he could go as. He had chosen to use the muggle method of dressing up, lest something went wrong with a spell and he'd stay stuck as Snape.

Remus was nowhere to be seen.

Deciding his sleep-addled brain wasn't quite up to facing the choice between the severe pain of letting the blood back into his leg completely or slowly losing his leg from lack of blood, James let his head fall back onto the floor and let his mind drift.

They had left the Halloween ball early the evening before to have their own little party with the sweets James' parents had sent him. They had built the blanket fort and told scary stories far into the night. And then there had been the potion Sirius had brought back from Hogsmeade instead of the firewhiskey he had been sent to get.

"Guys, you should probably wake up," Remus said tersely, pushing aside the blanket across the entrance of the fort and letting in the dim November light.

"We have," James replied. "Except for Peter here." He gave Peter a kick with his left leg and immediately regretted it, as Peter jolted awake and James's other leg prickled with pain.

"Huh? Whassup?" Peter asked groggily.

"That potion Sirius bought, I warned you it wasn't safe."

James took a closer look at Remus. The colour of his face faintly resembled the paper seaweed dangling between the horns of his grindylow costume and a sour smell hung around him. "You sure look like hell, but the potion can't have been off. I'm fine."

He looked questioningly at Peter and Sirius.

"Me too," Peter replied. Sirius nodded and quickly looked back at Remus.

"Perhaps it wasn't off per se," Remus said, "but I've never had that vivid a nightmare. There were walls crumbling all around a screaming baby. And then there were so many dead people and explosions and dust. I think it was Hogwarts, but the corridors were collapsing and blood and screams were everywhere. And… and there was this woman… I don't know who she was, but I knew her really well in the dream… everything seemed so real, I could have sworn it wasn't a dream, the horrible laughter and the smell of the blood, all that blood…" Remus closed his eyes and took a shaky breath.

James looked at Sirius, hoping he would know how to lighten the mood, but Sirius was just staring at his feet.

"My dream was strange, but a good one," Peter broke the silence. "It was plenty interesting, just like Sirius said the witch who sold it to him promised. I really was a Puffskein, not just dressed as one, I really was one. Oh, and I could fly! That was a bit freaky, but not that bad in the end. The whole world was made of sweets and cheese. The clouds were candy floss and the lake full of blue lemonade. The streets were paved with chocolate and the houses made of cheese and gingerbread and it was all stuck together with pumpkin paste. It actually tasted really good. I also loved the grass, it tasted like peppermint. I wish you hadn't woken me up, I was just about to try a bit of a tree!"

Sirius snorted. "Sounds like you just read too many muggle childrens' books."

Remus laughed as he crawled back into the fort, pulled a strand of the fake seaweed from his head and began twisting it in his hands. "I'm sure you've never had one in your hands since coming to Hogwarts and all your knowledge of muggle children's books comes from your pureblood childhood."

Sirius scowled.

"And I don't read childrens' books either!" Peter protested. "Anyway, what did you dream?" He looked at James and Sirius.

Sirius just shrugged his shoulders and stared at the floor.

"I only remember bits and pieces," James replied. "I was at some kind of party at a seaside cave and there was a pretty amazing party. I think Betty and the Bowtruckles were playing and everybody was dancing. The strange thing is that I was really wondering where I could get some garlic bread from, but then this girl pulled me onto the dancefloor. She was a redhead and really hot and dancing with her was amazing. Oh… wait… we were just dancing to 'I'd light my wand for you' and I was leaning in to kiss her when she started falling apart… and I mean falling apart. Her ears came off first, then her hair went all tufty and her skin started pealing off. When I shoved her away, one eye came loose. It was utterly revolting! I must have been dancing with an inferi the entire time! And all over the dance floor people were turning into banshees and hags and other horrible things… I can't really remember what happened next."

James looked up to see Sirius staring at him wide-eyed and pale.

"We scrambled up the bank at the back of the cave," Sirius said quitely. James gaped at him.

"Wait, what?!" Peter gasped. "You had the same dream?! That's amazing!"

Remus just stared at them.

"Yeah, well," Sirius continued, "we scrambled up this bank at the back, like I said, just to get away from the worst chaos. The problem was, the undead were climbing up after us and we had to get rid of them. We started blasting them away with our wands, but they were all starting to realise where we were…"

"So we got the idea that we had to flood the cave," James chimed in. "The cave was actually a bit below sea level, at least at high tide, but there was this ridge at the cave entrance that kept the water out. We blasted the ridge away and water came rushing in."

"All the inferi, hags and banshees were struggling in the water and shrieking," Sirius continued. "Occasionally, we had to blast some of them away from the rocks they were trying to cling to. And the water swirled and swirled until it slowly pulled all of them out to sea…"

Sirius' and James' eyes met and the remaining dream came rushing back to James' mind. The triumphant grins. The slight trepidation in Sirius' face as he moved toward James. James' back colliding with the slippery green wall behind him. Sirius bracing himself against the wall with his left hand as his right hand cautiously touched James' face. Noses bumping. Sirius' lips. Their tongues. The breathless happiness.

"What happened next? Was that it?" Peter asked.

James jerked his gaze away from Sirius. He could hear the buzz of Gryffindor students in other dormitories waking up and could feel a sweet wrapper sticking to his elbow. The blanket fort suddenly felt suffocating. Peter was looking at him and Sirius expectantly. Remus had stopped twisting the paper seaweed between his hands and was watching curiously.

Sirius gave a short laugh and looked up from the floor. "Oh, we realized there were two real girls also being swept away, so we rescued them. Got a bit of action as well. Mine was a beautiful one. Blond. And great tits, too."

"Yeah, that was quite something," James quickly agreed.

"Wow, that sounds awesome! Give us some details! Did…"

"Look, I… umm… I'm going to the kitchens… I'm still craving that garlic bread," James said, quickly crawling towards the exit of the blanket fort.

"James…" Remus exclaimed, "there's something green on your back, it looks like it might be algae."

Instinctively, James glanced towards Sirius' left hand. Sirius instantly shoved it into a fold of his cloak, but James had no doubt about what he had seen: there was a distinct smudge of dark green on the palm of Sirius' hand.