Alexita was dreaming again, one of those dreams that seemed to be a little more than just the matrix of everything that had passed through her brain that day. She often got those dreams, but she never told her Divination's teacher about it. She didn't want to hear that they were prophetic. She found fortune-telling quite useless, since you couldn't change anything anyway. And she hated that things would be already decided, that you never had a choice, but followed a path that was set for you. That scared her, because it made her feel like she wasn't in control.

And so, she chose not to believe in it. It was easier that way.

Of course, if she had just looked deeper into the subject, she maybe would've looked with a milder eye upon things.

There are two kinds of prophecies. There are the big, unchangeable ones, that tells of some great event in the future that WILL happen, no matter what you do about it. It was such prophecies that were stored down in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic. The ones that spoke of events that were written in the hard rock of history even before they had happened.

Then there is the other kind, the kind that some of Alexita's dreams showed, that most people's dreams show at some time, the kind that most fortune-tellers looked at. It was the kind of forecasts that showed events that MIGHT happen. Just might. Things that at the moment were an option of a future, but it wasn't decided if it would ever happen.

That was up to yourself and the people around you.

In the dream, she watched a little girl – perhaps six years old or so – play in the grass. She was red-headed and pale, with slightly protuberant, blue eyes that reminded Alex of her classmate, Eugene Lovegood. The girl seemed to be of the solitary sort, keeping a bit away from the rest of the girls, who were playing at dolls. She had found some different kinds of flowers, and was now picking them apart with great attentiveness.

Another little girl approached. She walked scornfully past the girls with the dolls, and they looked at her with their little pink foreheads wrinkled, and smacked their tongues; children wanting to act like grownups.

The new girl was pretty, uncommonly so, with dark curly hair and big blue-grey eyes. Somebody had forced her to wear a dress, something she didn't seem to enjoy that much. And the blue silk ribbon that was supposed to keep her hair away from her face was already slightly askew.

She sat down beside the redhead, smiling confidentially. "Hi Janna."

The other girl looked at her very seriously, the same way she had watched the flowers. Searching, investigating. "Hi Lillian" she said in a voice surprisingly melodious for such a small child. "Why are you not playing with them?" she added after a while, nodding at the other girls, who had gone back to their games. Lillian threw them a baleful glare, huffing and crossing her arms in a way that as much as possible wrinkled the cute dress.

"They're silly little girls" she stated. "And I don't want to be their type, because they are being mean."

"They didn't let you be with them? They said you were the wrong type too?" the girl Janna asked, and Lillian deflated a little.

"Yes" she said reluctantly. "How could you know?"

"Because they said the same thing to me" Janna answered, shrugging. "And probably you were sad, and a grownup comforted you, because that's a grownup thing to say, them being silly and that if they were mean then they're not worth to play with."

Lillian looked impressed. "You're smart" she decided. "Do you want to play?"

"Lillian, you little monster, I've got a bone to pick with you!" a voice suddenly shouted, a voice that Alex recognised as her own, but… older. She turned around, and saw a middle-aged woman that looked a lot like herself, but oddly enough dressed in a white dress with flowers on it.

"Uh-oh" said the girl, and then she laughed. She took Janna's hand, and the both girls started running. The older version of Alex was hot in pursuit, laughing even though she tried to keep a stern face.

And then there was that spinning, falling sensation that there always was sooner or later in those dreams, the strong feeling of being pulled BACKWARDS, but not through space, but through the dimension that we call time.

Pictures flashed through her head:

A white ceiling, the smell of hospital and blood, and a feeling of relief; a dark mark; a scared face, vaguely familiar but so grotesquely disfigured by fear and age that she couldn't place it; a face that looked like James', but wasn't (hadn't she seen it sometime before?); and then the overwhelming feeling of a loneliness big enough to drown in, to get lost in and never find a way out of, so dark and cold that it seemed like no sun, no love, in the world could be big enough to shatter it, release her from it…

She thrashed, trying to get away, trying to drive the icy feeling from her heart, and…

"Alex? Alex, wake up, you are having a nightmare…"

She opened her eyes, and saw Severus looking down at her, caressing her cheek in an effort to calm her and brushing some hair out of her eyes. "You fell asleep" he mumbled. "I didn't have the heart to wake you. I know you haven't slept very well lately."

She sighed bitterly. "How can I? With Sirius being so angry with me that I can bloody FEEL it right through the walls from where he lies awake every night. Remus has told me. And I can't sleep because I can hear him accusing me even though he is not even there." She made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat. Severus looked at her with passive eyes, but he crossed his arms over his chest like he was cold. And she had learnt to read his body-language like words by now.

"I am not blaming you, for the umpteenth time, Severus" she said, creeping close to him. Dusk was drawing near, and the sky was darkening. Stars were beginning to look down at them from their supreme positions. Alex looked up at Canis Major, Sirius, and sighed, her hands tightening to fists around the grass under them. "And I do not regret a thing. They bloody had the right to know, anyway. Remus was right. And I do love you. It wasn't just something I said. I hope you know that."

His hand on her shoulder told her that he did. "What were you dreaming?"

"What? Oh, that… Nothing, really. Just… I felt so lonely. Like I had abandoned life, left everything behind me…"

She felt his lips against her neck, and shivered happily. "You are not alone, Alex."

"I know."

"Everything will be… fine."

"I hope so, Severus. I hope so."