Dreams

~x~x~x~

Hi, diary. I'm Hermione Granger. Is that how one's supposed to begin?

I became interested in lucid dreaming some time this summer after a discussion with my dad and one of his business friends, and want to give it a try. We'll see. Perhaps this notebook will just end up as a diary? I've already found some charms I can use when I'm back at Hogwarts again to be able to dictate what I want to write without even opening the book. Stupid under-age-magic clause. So far there's nothing to report, at least, I rarely remember my dreams. I'm starting sixth year this autumn. NEWT level classes, finally. I hope lucid dreaming can help me study more efficiently.

~x~x~x~

I seem to have forgotten about this journal during the start of term but now it's November already and I need to write things down to make sure I'm not going insane. Well, insane-er. The dictation charm seems to work, anyway, I worked out an improvement to it so that I don't have to speak out loud to record what I want to write down.

It had begun some time after I turned seventeen. At first it was subtle, a vague feeling, a memory, a tingling to my lips when I woke up in the dorms, a lingering taste on my tongue. It didn't happen very often either but when I finally got around to touching myself, usually in the Prefect's bathroom, it seemed as if my fantasies were shaped by these impressions, or perhaps they feed off each other, my libido and my dreams.

I still don't know who it might be. I guess it's just my subconscious that has latched on to some images, maybe from Muggle pop culture? Some movie star or other?

Lavender is flaunting her conquest of Ron in my face. She makes me so angry but I'm still not quite sure why I care. She's stupid. He's stupid too. And Cormac Bloody McLaggen is even stupider. Stupidest. Gah.

~x~x~x~

I've started to see, or imagine, more of the man in question. Dark hair, dark eyes, strong hands. Could be anyone, though; I don't see his face. He kisses like a dream, though. Sometimes my knickers are wet when I wake up. At least it's obviously not Ron.

The year moves onward and I can sense the train wreck coming just around the next bend but there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it. Harry's belligerently obnoxious over Malfoy, Ron's a git and my dreams have forced me to cast a permanent silencing charm around my bed so that I don't wake the others up when I come in my sleep due to my dream lover.

~x~x~x~

I was right. Train wreck, indeed. The Headmaster dead, killed by Professor Snape? It doesn't make sense, none of it, why did he do it, why didn't he do anything worse to Luna, Flitwick and me when we ran into him, why didn't he tie up Harry into a neat present for Mouldy Voldy when he had the chance?

~x~x~x~

He comes to me at home after I Obliviate my parents and destroy my own childhood. They left for Heathrow early this morning and I spent the rest of the day crying, cleaning, crying some more. I put all the wards I could think of on the place so that there may be something left for someone to return to later. All bills are on direct debit from an account with more than enough funds for a few years so I'm all set there at least, and if not, the Muggle authorities will probably forget this address ever existed anyway. I cry myself to sleep on the couch in the living room and soon he's there, holding me close, whispering calming things in my ear. I cry even harder when I realise he's not real, it's all just a dream, but he silences me with a kiss and I need him. He kisses his way down my body, my clothes suddenly gone, his mouth on my breast, then the other, then further down, trailing kisses down my stomach. I wonder who he is and what it would be like to be kissed like this for real and then he settles between my legs and touches me there and then his oh so clever mouth is there while he pushes a finger inside and — I wake up gasping from an orgasm. Where did my clothes go?

~x~x~x~

Harry is brooding but somehow against all odds we manage to raid the Ministry and steal Umbridge's Horcrux but now we can't return to Grimmauld and both of them think I have the answer to all the questions in the Universe in this bag. I don't know why I'm still lugging around this journal. Unfortunately it doesn't have any answers to how one goes about destroying soul fragments.

~x~x~x~

He nudges my knees apart and settles between them, his weight pinning me down. My name on his lips, a deep chuckle as he kisses his way down my throat, long fingers tweaking my nipple.

I want — want —

But when my eyes snap open his hair is wrong and his scent is wrong and everything is wrong. We're in a blasted tent, for one, that fact is all kinds of wrong all to itself.

"Ron! No! Get off!"

He looks up in confusion. "But you liked it! Come on, Hermione!"

Harry comes in, luckily. "Ron, what are you doing?"

Ron sulks off somewhere, I don't care. We're back to the bleak reality of the awful tent and hunting for clues with nothing to go on apart from a children's fairy tale book, taking turns carrying the horrible soul fragment that feeds on our worst fears.

~x~x~x~

I hate camping. I swear, on the old gods and the new, if I survive this blasted war I'll never ever ever set my foot in a tent ever again.

~x~x~x~

Bellatrix — she — she — no please no I let my dreams take over instead, I retreat somewhere deep inside myself where he comes to me, holds me, whispers that I'm strong and that I will survive and that I should let my body relax as if I'm floating in the ocean when the waves of the Cruciatus hit me. Just as I pass out I hear a commotion, is that Dobby? How?

Only the memory of the man in my dreams keeps me together. He holds me when I dream, when my nightmares wake me up in the middle of the night. He whispers in my ear and I think in my dreams I know who he is. I know him. But who?

~x~x~x~

Oh no it can't be him how on Earth am I fixated on him? But I know that voice, those hands, that face, I've seen them in my mind for a year and a half, and much longer before that in the flesh, in the classroom. He's dying, the snake, this is beyond horrible —

I don't think it helped. I poured the rest of my Dittany over his throat, managed to Summon several potions from his robe pockets, I even managed to wrap his throat up with my scarf but it soaked through in about a minute so I think won't work. Jesus and Circe and all their little piglets, he's dying and Ron just whines about leaving the git alone and I can't — I can't!