Summary: Sleep leads to the subconscious. The subconscious dreams up what we really want. So when Lyndoras wakes up and finds the one she really wants napping on her bedside table, what thought actually crosses her mind?
Rating: T+ for minor adult content and shoujo-ai, plus some swearing here and there.
DISCLAIMER! - I do not own the plot of Harry Potter, the setting of Hogwarts, or any other values expressed in J.K. Rowling's work. I own my own characters and that's all.
The fall was horrid, and the outcome of the game was worse.
Ravenclaw's star chaser, Lyndoras Morgan, had been flying high, barrelling upside down over a rainy pitch. The Quaffle was perched on the slippery palm of her hand, and the girl needed to dig her fingers in to stop the dragonbladder from falling away into the hands of a Gryffindor. She hitched up her goggles, up-ended herself properly, and headed towards the goalpost.
Meanwhile, a much smaller girl was perched atop the Ravenclaw grandstand, hood pulled over her red-blond hair. She haid a pair of Omnioculars pressed to her eyes, watching the navy-robed chaser soar by towards the Gryffindor posts. Lynn was perhaps the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen on a broom, or perhaps off... Aine McDowell shook the thought from her head and turned up the resolution on the magical lenses. An angry blush wore itself on her cheeks.
Lyndoras noticed the keeper was being standoffish, so she evaded the oncoming defending chaser by swooping down. Her stomach fell to the ground and then yanked itself back up as she lobbed the slick leather Quaffle through the middle hoop. She grinned her show-offy grin at the keeper as she flipped up her goggles and tossed a thumbs-up to the crowd. Fuming, the captain of the Gryffindor squad, a lock-jawed beater, took his bat and swung an angry path towards the rock-like Bludger coming his way. It re-oriented itself and when spiraling off towards the chaser herself.
Aine's heart stopped as she, along with the rest of the crowd, gasped.
"Stop, Lynn, for the love of Merlin, LOOK BEHIND YOU!" She clutched her slender throat as she realized the command had flown out of her mouth. The petite Ravenclaw felt her heart leap between her hands. Lyndoras Morgan had looked across the pitch at her instead of at the Bludger. And now...
The great cannonball of a ball launched into the chaser's side, tossing her legs off the broom and towards the ground. There was everywhere to fall, Lyndoras realized as her mind went white and blank. A sound of rushing to her ears- from blood or air zooming by- turned to silence.
There was a scream that echoed from the Gryffindor stands across the park. "SERVES YOU RIGHT, YOU COCKY MINX!" A collection of shouts in the same went up from the cloud of red, gold, and black, to be returned with angry boos from the Ravenclaws. Madam Hooch stopped the game as she floated gracefully to the ground. Her percussive steps were backed by that of the Headmistress and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.
Aine McDowell had never before felt so incredibly frightened as she watched the downed hero of Ravenclaw's Quidditch team lifted onto a stretcher. The worst part was, she didn't even know why.
Four days passed from Sunday afternoon Quidditch to a lazy Thursday evening. The welcome sensation of weekend's arrival did not lift Aine's drooping spirits; emotions she could not lift even if she tried. Her heart lay next to the sterile bed Lyndoras Morgan slept in. She wanted to venture down to the bright hospital wing before dinner, right after all the other admirers and friends left. The sixth year did not know what to say to the fifth year; perhaps an apology for the distraction, or...
"What's got your skirt in a vise?" Asked bespectacled Jocelyn from across the dormitory. Jocelyn was perhaps her best and first friend at Hogwarts, and somehow the other girl always knew what was on Aine's mind.
Aine sat up from her slump in the vaulted window high above the floor. She'd climbed up the wall to find solitude and freedom from her worries. Hadn't worked. "I dunno... Guess I'm still worried about Lyndoras..." Jocelyn looked up at her from the ground, where she was sitting on the edge of her desk.
"I don't understand why you're worried," snorted the girl. "She has plenty of other fans to do it for her."
Up in her perch, Aine quivered with a sudden anger. "Merlin's arse, Joce, it's not like she's inhuman just because she's show-offy. She is that good, you understand..."
"I don't deny it, you asshat, you." She snorted and swung her legs back and forth out of boredom. "So, what are you going to do? Profess your undying love to her beside her deathbed?"
Anger turned to a fierce blush on Aine's face. "NO! I never- Lyndoras isn't going to die, and I doubt she even knows who I am anyway." The girl vaulted down onto the rectangular wardrobe top beneath the window, then down to the floor. She parked her backside on her bed, and busied herself with straightening the bedspread.
"I reckon I ought to get you the hell out of this dormitory and not let you the hell in until you talk to her." Jocelyn leapt over and dragged Aine by the shoulder towards the door, out into the ring of girls' dormitories, and gave her a push towards the stairs. "I'll hex you if you come back without saying something. Go."
The short girl floated through the common room in a slight daze, stopping her slight, stumbling steps only to retrieve her navy-lined robe from a peg by the door. Her throat was tight as she stepped out into the drafty space that was Hogwarts' Grand Staircase, and she purposefully rode the staircases down to the entrance hall and stared out the windows at the melting snow on the stone circle. Aine dawdled an hour away reading a copy of the Prophet someone dropped at the foot of the stairs, and then put it back down.
Her stomach dropped as the staircase groaned up to the fourth floor, grinding to a stop at the hospital wing landing. A crowd of girls, mostly Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, slipped out of the vaulted doors and onto the stairs opposite. Aine swallowed her nerves and waded through the dispersing group towards the sunset-brightened infirmary ward. Madam Pomfrey practically ran the petite Ravenclaw over as her steps echoed on the stone floors.
"Name? And who are you visiting, dear?"
Aine choked back a few lies that came to mind. "Aine McDowell. I'm here to visit Lyndoras Morgan, fifth year."
The white-capped nurse raised an eyebrow and crossed her linened arms. "You missed the crowd, but I think I can make an exception," she said with a hint of amusement. "Just try not to be loud, and if she wakes up, don't rush her."
She nodded at Madam Pomfrey as she went to the solitary bed at the end of the ward. Lyndoras was laid peacefully across the narrow, sterile bed, her face relaxed. Eyes were heavy-lidded and unmoving, a sign of deep sleep. Aine blushed as she sat down, gazing a little too intently at her classmate's restful face. She blushed even harder as her mind entertained thoughts of stroking the sleeping chaser's dark brown hair, how soft it might be...
The Ravenclaw bit her lip and rearranged a vase of dying flowers on the bedside table. She took her wand out of the folds of her robe and waved it at the plant, returning its vital life and brightness. The sunlight coming through the vaulted lattices of the windows made the table look like a minute patch of spring right there in the stone walls of Hogwarts. Aine found her head drooping onto the surface next to the vase, weighted down with overpowering, unfamiliar fantasies. She was sick of resisting, she realized, and let her eyelids fall shut beside the person she'd come to care for.
The last thing she recalled was a daydream of laying in a meadow beside Lyndoras Morgan, then later flying on the back of her broom. Exhausted from nerves and passionate emotions she'd never felt, Aine was too weary to shake away the impenetrable, seemingly impossible fantasies.
Lyndoras Morgan was dead, she thought, doomed to replay the last moments of her life; her team's loss, her failure to move. That small, adorable face in the distance shifted between malice and that of a savior. The hood made her look like some sort of hooded danger, or (so she hoped), hooded beauty. Lynn wished she'd been able to know the petite girl's name before she'd passed away.
She'd seen the flitting nymph in passing several times in the halls, grabbed a higher-up book for her in the library. Always she had smiled, sharing a body language, but never asked for a name. There was something she'd not felt, a wanting for an unfamiliar face, a magnetism. It was mysterious and all-consuming, and the few meetings left the fifth year craving for more.
Never had the chaser, the Outstanding student, questioned what she might be. Interests were interests, and now she would be living with them for an eternity. An eternity of nothing, perhaps, or -
A light broke through the darkness, and there was a sound as though from far in the distance. A sound of steps further away, and right beside, a rhythmic pattern of breaths. Light, almost-silent they were, and Lyndoras jumped when she realized they were not her own. She flared her own nostrils with explorative breaths, and slowly opened the eyes she'd once had. The light coming in from right across the way was overpowering, and for the umpteenth time in centuries she questioned if she was actually in Heaven.
Movement returned slowly, accompanied by a dull, annoying ache located in her right side. The athlete wiggled her toes and fingers, rotated slowly, like a child taking first steps for the second time. Carefully not to hyperextend any of the smarting tissue, she turned her head to find the source of bated breath on her other side. Lyndoras Morgan choked as she found herself face-to-face with the girl from her dreams, the heartthrob of her last few months...
Her mind began to race. What to do, how to react? Surely if she acted blandly it would be the wrong thing; if she acted nigh flirtatious it would be a large mistake, she suspected. If she were to interrupt that beautiful, enigmatic angel from her rest with a - kiss - what exactly would happen? Would the Heaven-sent one react in kind, or -? Why was the petite thing at her side, anyway?
As Lyndoras began to gibber aloud, speaking coherently, Aine stirred from her brief slumber, left empty and unsatisfied by mere daydreams to find a pair of silver eyes staring back. Lynn's eyes. So her eyes were icy, like the color of summer's thunderous rainclouds -
"Hey," a voice interrupted, mid-choke.
Aine stared. "Hey. I'm Aine... Aine McDowell..."
The pixie-haired chaser smiled that winning smile, that I-scored-a-goal smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you," she murmured, tone broken by her neck's angle. "You've no idea, I think we've met before, and I've always been curious to know who you were."
"You were curious?" Aine found herself foolishly musing. "I mean-"
A musical laugh, partially a harsh bark, partially rhythmic scales, broke the thick silence of the end of the ward. "I'm glad. You know, I have a lot of-" she snorted, "fans, but none of them ever introduced themselves. Just squealed and left presents. It's embarrassing, and not what I'm looking for, I assure you."
"And what exactly are you looking for?" Aine inquired, bracing her elbow on her knee to hold her head up at slightly above bed height. Her eyebrow was raised in a forward gesture she'd didn't quite comprehend.
The chaser blushed a bit behind the ears, struggling to keep her mellow voice from cracking. "Someone like -" She coughed on nothing in particular- "You."
Aine McDowell's heart stopped momentarily, causing a hot sweat to form on her palms. She raised a shaking hand to pinch herself, only to find it grabbed by the girl opposite. Her chest heaved every so often with an attempt at a deep breath. Their faces were close, close enough to share the same air, close enough to crackle with sacred energies. Noses brushed, and before either one knew it, their lips slipped past each others', leaving a tingling sensation that neither one soon forgot.
Lyndoras darted in for another kiss, leaving Aine soaring in the stratosphere. Her dreams of flying with the one she'd cared for secretly for so long were fulfilled.
FIN.
This story was written for Sam. 3 Hope you enjoyed.