Beautiful Dreamer
Chapter One:
If you had asked it, the portrait of Caracatus Birch would have told you that today was a boring day, like any other, that nothing interesting whatsoever had happened. Caracatus Birch would have been wrong.
For in the early hours of the morning, when he was asleep, something did happen. Something that would affect the lives of two of Hogwarts most important students, something that could change their lives forever.
Had Caracatus been awake for just a minute at the exact time of 3:32 am, he would have seen a most peculiar sight. A short, slim girl with a wild bush of brown hair running down the corridor from the left. He would have seen that she was being chased by several different teachers brandishing books and red pens at her as though they were pitchforks.
From the right he would have seen an incredibly thin boy with platinum blond hair and slate grey eyes running from a group of at least 23 screaming girls. They were all short, blond and busty. They were screaming and reaching for the boy, for whom, despite his obviously toned physique, could just barely keep ahead of them.
The two met in the middle and instantly went down. In the time it took time to disentangle themselves from one another, their respective mobs were almost upon them. In unison they screamed at each other to, "MOVE!" They locked eyes.
The instant they did a small door appeared in the wall opposite of Caracatus's portrait.
They quickly ran through it and disappeared. Had Caracatus been watching he would have seen the mobs banging on the door until it rapidly began to shrink. The moment it had disappeared so did the mobs, they all disappeared.
It all happened in less than a minute, and had Caracatus seen, he could have done something, but he did not. He simply snored and turned over in his frame.
Hermione ran for the door as fast as she could. Apparently not fast enough because Malfoy shoved her and she tumbled spectacularly before landing on the stone floor in a heap. Malfoy tripped over her sprawled legs and landed on top of her. Well that didn't hurt nearly as much as I would have expected, some weird unconnected part of Hermiones mind thought.
Malfoy quickly pushed himself off of her. He didn't even offer a hand to help her up. Some manners you have, again interjected that weird part of her Hermione, the part that wasn't paying any attention or didn't care what was happening around her. She picked herself up and tried to collect her thoughts, but there was so many things happening she didn't quite succeed. She then noticed the banging on the door they had come through and quickly brought her full attention to that. Yet even as she looked at it, it began to shrink, leaving an innocent looking bit of wall. You'd never had known it was there at all, she mused, strangely unworried.
The sounds of screaming girls and banging books had disappeared with the door, leaving only blissful silence in its wake. Well, conceded Hermione, almost silent. She was still wheezing from her flight from the teachers.
"Why were those girls chasing you?" asked Hermione, her voice raspy.
He seemed to be thinking of something and only shrugged as means of response.
"I don't know why those teachers were after me," she volunteered, breathlessly. He shrugged.
"How are you not out of breath?" she asked, finally get her own back. Again he shrugged, "Quidditch," was all he offered as way of response. Hermione didn't think that counted as an answer.
Hermione was going to try one last time. "Well, where do you think we are?"
This got his attention, at least. "I don't know," he said honestly. "I don't know, I've never been to this part of the castle before."
Hermione paled slightly. Uh oh. "Um, I don't think were in the castle anymore."
"Why the bloody hell not?" demanded Malfoy, finally looking at her.
She pointed word wordlessly behind him.
He could clearly see, in a window that most definitely not been there before, a huge looming grey castle in the distance. A castle that could only have been Hogwarts.
"Were not in Kansas anymore." At least, that's what he thought he heard the the mudblood say. As to what it could have meant he had no idea.
Before she had shown him the window, he had been contemplating how extraordinarily similar this experience had been as to being in someone's mind. But differences too, some that he could not pinpoint exactly.
He heard the mudblood talking again and tuned back in. she was asking him another question. That's all she did, was ask questions. She never seemed to want an answer either. So why ask them, he wondered.
"So, what do you think we should do?" she was asking. We? Draco couldn't help but think snidely. What he said out loud was, "I guess the only thing that can be done. We follow the corridor."
With that they both turned around and looked at it.