Author's notes: This story is based on the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and I don't own any of the characters or the implied plot lines. I am just a fan! Yay! Hm... Well, this is the first fanfic I've written by myself... My writing partner, Tiger, isn't presently writing this with me... so... Yes. Please review... It would make me freakishly happy. Have fun?!

Love, Barbie a.k.a Alabaster Bootykins

Darkness was closing in around Harry Potter, choking him, tearing at his chest and throat with long, razor-sharp claws. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. Pain tore through him, and he screamed, wishing it would stop, wishing it would go away. But the darkness, whatever it was, had no mercy for the young wizard. It continued to drag him along, without letting up even a little bit. His soul... His soul felt like it was leaving his body. Was this what death felt like? Was this darkness truly Death after all? No. Another gash erupted from his leg, seeming to come from inside him, and as the pain hit him, he knew he was still alive, just barely. Did he want to be any more? This world had forsaken him. It had no compassion left for the boy that had survived Voldemort's fatal curse. Now he was left alone with the darkness.

His eyes rolled back in his head. He couldn't see it happen, but he could feel it. The darkness' teeth (how could darkness have teeth? Harry wondered for a moment) sank into his neck, and technicolor flecks danced before his eyes. He'd seen a color now... Maybe for the last time...

"Harry? Harry!" a voice called to him.

The darkness pulled away from his neck as if alarmed. Harry just wished it would finish the job and get it over with. But no... It was backing away, retreating. It had been caught in the act. For some reason, Harry felt that he didn't want it to leave him, as if it were some part of him that he'd always denied that suddenly he'd reconnected with. Just... Now he didn't feel any pain. It had been a sweet pain, and he found himself aching for it again.

"Come back," he coughed, choking on the bitter taste of his own blood.

"Harry? Please?"

All of a sudden, pinpricks assaulted his face, like he'd been slapped. As the darkness faded into nothingness, Harry eyes shot open once again.

Only this time he saw colors. Ron's bright red locks over his pale pink face, hovering above him. Dean, Seamus, and Neville, gathered around close behind, their clothing a chorus of golds and purples and blacks. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and yet... It was garish and overbearing. He squinted his eyes at them fearfully.

"Harry?" Ron's loud, tenor voice asked near his face. "Are you okay? You were screaming..."

Harry tried to respond but found that his throat was so scratchy that he burst into a fit of coughs, once again unable to catch his breath. His mouth tasted tinny. His voice was still with the darkness, far away from Hogwarts or even the wizarding world. He wasn't even sure the darkness belonged on Earth. Only in his mind, at the perfect moment...

He cleared his throat hastily. "Yeah, I just... I had... It was a..." He shook his head weakly. "It was just a nightmare."

"Bloody hell," his best friend breathed, sitting down beside him. "I thought for sure you were seeing something. Something... you know... that You-Know-Who was seeing or doing..." He tensed again, seeming to realize they weren't totally out of the clear yet. "You didn't see anything, did you?"

"Nothing to do with Voldemort," Harry rasped. I think, he added silently.

The rest of the boys, aside from the slight looks of fear that crossed their faces at the name Voldemort, began to relax as well. Neville and Dean slumped into their respective beds, each immensely relieved. Seamus, however, leaned against his bedpost as he watched Harry critically. "What was it Harry?" he asked. "The thing in your dream? You seemed pretty scared about it..."

For some reason, panic seized Harry at the thought of sharing his dream with the others. If they knew... They would make something bigger out of it than what it was. If they heard about some strange, shapeless force that bit into him in his dreams, they would probably tell Dumbledore about it. And besides... There was something personal about the dream. He sensed it was only meant for him to know, and no one else. He didn't want to share what he had discovered, the bittersweet pain... the sense of completion he'd felt for the first time...

"Er... I dreamed Snape was chasing me through the Potions dungeon with a sledgehammer. Then he... uh... flew off on my broom. It was terrible," he lied shakily.

Seamus shrugged and began to tug off his shirt, preparing for bed. His back turned to Harry. "That sounds pretty scary," he mumbled, sarcasm biting in his voice.

Harry's face flushed. He hated lying, and he wasn't especially good at it. "I guess you had to be there."

"I guess so," Ron jumped in. "But you know, Snape is pretty scary. I've had plenty of dreams where he was chasing me down the hallways... 'I vant to suck your blood! I vant to suck your blooood!' It just wigs you out, you know?" he continued, seeming to try to cover up Harry's embarrassment. "Although I don't usually scream about it..."

"Yeah, well, I'm just... a bit stressed still from that whole summer trip with my aunt and uncle," Harry explained quickly. It was actually true. For the first time in his life, Aunt Petunia had insisted that they go on a driving trip over the summer break, and Uncle Vernon had actually agreed to let Harry come along. It was too bad they hadn't planned on owls bombarding them with letters wherever they went. To say the least, it had worsened their already hateful interractions with their nephew. "It still bothers me, I guess."

"'Know whatcha mean," Neville piped up. "Gran took me on a trip one summer... I still have nightmares..."

Dean laughed. "And this one time last summer..."

But Harry was already zoning them out. He felt the place on his neck where he had been bitten tentatively, checking to see if it really had all been in his mind. The skin there was warm and unaltered, just as it had been before his dream. Still... It did feel a bit tender... But it was probably all his mind. There was no way that a strange dream could just come true like that. Even if Voldemort was a part of his life... Something told Harry that it wasn't Voldemort who was behind this. It was something different, something less obvious...

"G'night Harry," Ron said quietly from beside him.

Harry glanced over at him and forced a smile. "G'night."

() () () () ()

"Please take one examination and pass the rest to the person seated behind you," Professor McGonagall instructed calmly from her perch in front of the class. Yellowed rolls of parchment had magically appeared in front of every student in the front row, and they followed her instructions reluctantly.

"I can't believe she's giving us a test the first week of school," Ron complained quietly. "We've only just arrived."

McGonagall's sharp, bespectacled eyes met his quickly. "I heard that, Weasley. And this isn't a test. It is an assessment of your skill retainment from last year. It is crucial for sixth years to pick up as much as they can from the years before in order to prepare for their future careers in the wizarding world," she snapped.

His eyes immediately glued themselves to the table space in front of him. "Oh," he muttered, this time below her hearing level. "Still sounds like a test to me."

Harry smiled at his friend. Ron could always be trusted to come up with some funny comment that served to lighten Harry's mood and take his mind away from... certain other things. Like the dream. And how he longed to have it again, despite himself... Part of him was fighting the strange ties that bonded him to the creature of darkness, but another part of him was completely embracing it. It was on his mind at every moment; every slightest suggestion made him think back to it....

A piece of parchment landed in front of him, and, being the last person in his row, he immediately turned his attention to the test. His eyes briefly scanned the paper and he got out a pen to write down answers with.

1. The three Unforgivable Curses are:

a. the Cruciatus curse, the Imperius curse, and Avada Kedavra

b. the Imperius curse, the Remedial curse, and the Winding curse

c. Avada Kedavra, the Tyranus curse, and the Remedial curse

d. the Tyranus curse, the Winding curse, and the Cruciatus curse

Harry almost laughed out loud. After all his experience with these curses, how could he possibly get this question wrong? This was ridiculous and somewhat insulting. Any person who went to Hogwarts during fourth year would be more than well acquainted with all three. He marked letter a quickly and moved on. But as soon as he read it his breath caught in his throat. Not only was this question not as easy... It also seemed horribly familiar.

2. Nightmares with sinking fangs are most likely associated with the following creature:

a. snake

b. werewolf

c. vampire

d. a backstabbing friend

"Oh God," he whispered to himself. Suddenly a lesson from last year came to his memory. It had been in Flitwick's class... He'd said, "I once knew a student in my Hogwarts days who was afflicted by a vampire. He would wake up constantly in the night, screaming. But he would wake and nothing would be wrong with him. Until one day, when the vampire in his dream came to him not only in his dream, but in his waking conscious as well, and if Dumbledore hadn't been there to save him, he certainly would have been bitten in life."

Could this be the answer to the big mystery? A vampire had come to him in his dream? If so, maybe his problems were solved. He could find a solution or remedy... At least now he knew was it was that was attacking him. But... He wasn't altogether sure he wanted it to leave him for good. He wanted it back almost more than he wanted to continue living...

No. Tomorrow he would talk to Dumbledore and straighten this whole thing out. That was the end of the issue.

() () () () ()

But the next day passed, and then the next, and Harry still hadn't talked to Dumbledore about his troubled sleep. The vampire hadn't come into his dreams again since that first night. He felt it was safe to stop worrying about it at this point. He just went on with life as he always had, taking his classes and sleeping whenever he could manage to squeeze a few hours in.

Then one night everything changed for the worst.

He had finally managed to drift into an uneasy sleep after many minutes of tossing and turning. The moment his eyelids closed, he found himself once again in the grips of the dark creature, the vampire. Its claws ripped into his skin, and its teeth immediately sank into his neck, and Harry felt that tug, that link to the creature that pulled him away from his real life and closer to this fantasy, this one perfectly bittersweet fantasy. He was drifting away... Its fangs only sank further into his neck, and Harry welcomed the pain, not resisting any longer.

The pain enveloped him, becoming his whole world. The blood was leaving his body... He could feel it in his head, and he began to feel dizzy. Wait... This pain was different, piercing... Suddenly Harry didn't want to leave his world anymore. He couldn't endure any more of this pain, he just couldn't. He screamed and tried to push the creature off him, but it wouldn't budge. It was much larger and stronger than him. Pressing down on him somberly, the creature dug deeper, fighting Harry's resistance with a claw that forced down his shoulder and sliced through his skin. Harry shrieked again. He was dying... How could he keep from leaving his world? He dug his fingernails into the creature, hoping to pain it and force it to let up, but still it refused to budge. As a last desperate attempt, he sunk his teeth into the arm of the vampire.

It let out a shrill shriek and recoiled. Harry bit a little harder before allowing it to get away. But the creature's blood was on his teeth, and as he ran his tongue over them curiously, he found he rather enjoyed the metallic taste it left in his mouth. But no. What was he saying? Did he actually like the taste of blood?

Slowly Harry came back to his conscious, mortal world. What a scary dream. He really needed to go talk to Dumbledore about this now. This had gone way, way, way too far for comfort. The real vampire was sure to be coming to him soon now...

It was then that he recognized the throbbing in his neck as pain. His hand tentatively came to that place that had been bitten in his dream and touched it gingerly. To his alarm, it was wet, and his fingers came back to him sticky and bright red with blood. He gasped in fear. His dreams had become reality... Had the vampire already come for him? Was it already too late?

"Harry?" Ron whispered into the night.

"Y-y-yes?" Harry stammered.

"Hmmm," he mumbled, rubbing his sleep filled eyes. "Were you having another nightmare? I'm pretty sure you were whimpering."

So he'd been talking in his sleep again. He could just lie about it right? "Uh... yeah. This time Snape was riding a dragon. Dunno what it means exactly," Harry said quickly. This whole lying habit was becoming easier all the time.

"Mmmm," Ron murmured, drifting back into sleep with a loud snore.

Harry was left again with his thoughts. There was no more doubt in his mind that he needed to talk to someone about this, someone who could help him. If this continued... who knew where he would wind up. Dead or worse... He ran his tongue over his teeth again to taste the real life taste of blood. His mouth wasn't hurt. It must have really been the vampire's blood after all. The dream must have somehow crossed over into reality...

And the bite on his neck... Something had begun, something dark and dangerous. And Harry had a sinking feeling he was becoming one of them.