Disclaimer: Unfortunately I still have no ownership over the characters that you recognize in this story or the places.

Chapter 2

"Holy shit!" A well manicured hand abruptly came up to her chest, a resounding slap issuing forth as it came in contact with skin. Breathing ragged, and a red mark already appearing on her chest from where she had slapped herself, Ashlynn Hall looked at her alarm clock and groaned. "Damn it."

She threw the blanket off of her body and dashed over to her wardrobe, throwing it open in record time and pulling out a change of clothes. She didn't have time to take a shower or even brush her hair for that matter, so she just slipped out of the clothes she had worn to bed and slipped on the outfit she had just picked out before ambling into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Five minutes later she was rushing out the door, school books in hand as she hurried into her car and took off to make it to class before the teacher started roll. She could only hope that traffic wasn't that bad that morning.

"Why were you so late this morning?"

"Why do you think?"

"You stayed up all night reading one of those stupid fan fictions about characters that are never, and I repeat never, going to end up together?"

Ashlynn looked at her best friend, trying to gauge her anger at the idea before nodding her affirmation. "Of course I was," the blonde said with a ghost of a smile. "You don't understand the draw that Snape has."

"You're right. I don't understand why someone would find a man attractive when he's meant to have shoulder length greasy black hair and a large hook nose. Not to mention he likes to insult people for fun and eat small children for breakfast. I'm afraid I don't see the attraction." The curly haired red head grinned at her best friend and then shrugged. "Not to mention, he's supposed to be like, your dad's age. That's so gross."

"Yeah? Then you would really hate to hear about how I only woke up this morning because I was having some crazy ass dream about him."

Ashlynn was not your average girl when it came to JK Rowling's character Severus Snape. She had learned every bit of information she could about him, drawing on it as is she was actually going to meet the man and he was going to interview her about his life. In her spare time when she wasn't doing homework or doing what normal young adults did at her age, she was reading fan fictions.

"Why don't you just try writing one of those stories and just get it out of your system?"

A valid point, most would say, unfortunately Ashlynn had already tried that, and her writing skills were just not at a place they needed to be in order to get her obsession out of her system. "I've tried."

Rather than use her writing skills for the pleasure of all other Snape fans out there in the world, the blonde preferred to keep her thoughts to herself when it came to plot points. Not that she ever had any of her own. Rather, Ashlynn would read a story, and when that story hadn't been updated, she would act out the next scene in her head. Or what she would have as the next scene if she were writing the story. The trouble with that was that sometimes her mind got the best of her and she couldn't remember what she'd read and what she'd thought of.

"Alright, tell me about this screwed up dream you had."

The two girls sat down at a table in the quad, trying to stay out of earshot of anyone that would think them crazy for even discussing Harry Potter at the age of twenty. Giant trees surrounded them, giving them a slight sense of security and privacy that wouldn't be there anywhere else on campus.

"Okay but you have to promise you won't think I'm crazy."

"Too late, babe. Tell me anyway."

"Fine. I was dreaming that Hermione Granger got captured by Lucius Malfoy and was being abused and tortured in his basement and that Snape went down there only to tell her that she couldn't be saved and was just going to have to stay there for a while longer."

Amanda looked at Ashlynn for a moment, her pale green eyes staring at her best friend as if she were nuts, before she began laughing harder than she had in a long while. "Seriously? That's what you dreamed about last night?"

"It was heartbreaking, Mandy. You don't know what it was like. I was watching. Hermione was crying and everything, even Snape felt bad."

"Snape doesn't have feelings, Ash. Get over it."

Before Ashlynn could say another word Amanda had grabbed her books and headed off in the other direction, towards the building where her boyfriend was soon going to be getting out of class. Well if Amanda was just going to laugh at her for her dreams then she would just go somewhere else. Maybe she could go back to the dorm and see if the story she'd been reading had been updated so that she could get that scene out of her head.

With that in mind she followed Amanda's example and grabbed her books off the table before heading east towards their dorm building. Thankfully Amanda was her roommate so she didn't have to worry about running into some random girl in her dorm as she went to try and figure out what happened next in the story. She didn't have the heart to tell anyone else why it was so important that she read the next chapter.

Ashlynn breathed out a sigh of relief when she read that they had figured out a way to help Hermione out of the prison Lucius Malfoy had put her in and that she was on the way to recovery in Madame Pomfrey's care. It was better than thinking about her having to stay there in that pathetic cell.

She looked at the clock and smiled, glad that whoever had played with her schedule had given her so much free time between classes. Despite being able to have that crazy dream, she hadn't gotten much sleep last night and she knew that she could benefit from taking a small nap.

So she made her way over to her bed, removing the comforter before lying down and falling asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Ashlynn almost let out a scream as she looked up into a pair of bright blue eyes. She hadn't expected anyone to be there when she woke up. She didn't even know anybody that would be in her dorm that had bright blue eyes. "Are you alright?"

She flinched away from him, not bothering to answer him as her eyes fell upon his bright red hair growing out at strange angles from his head. Not only did she not know anyone with blue eyes that would be in her dorm, she didn't know any male carrot-tops that would be in her dorm either. "Who are you? And what are you doing in my dorm?"

The boy laughed and she flinched away again, he didn't have the best breath in the world. In fact, it was rather disgusting, like pumpkin if she had to pick a scent. "Your dorm? You must have hit your head a lot harder than I thought. You're not in a dorm. You're outside. You just fell from the sky."

At his crass words, Ashlynn scooted even further away from him and looked up, hoping to see her light blue ceiling but was instead met with the light blue of a sky, clouds blowing in the wind and leaves falling off a nearby tree. "You're lucky I found you actually, otherwise the Whomping Willow might have gotten to you, and then you wouldn't be anywhere by St. Mungo's."

The Whomping Willow? Those are actual trees? She looked away from the boy and towards the tree that he had indicated and was surprised to see an overly large tree standing still, though still managing to look threatening. She got to her feet and out of the way of the tree as fast as she could, whether the tree was going to move or not.

"Who are you?" She demanded of the boy before her. He stood up and followed her with a goofy smile on his face.

Sticking out his hand for her and grinning like a fool he tried to push his hair down on his head in an effort to make it look half presentable. "Ronald Weasley, at your service. And you are?"

Ashlynn's eyes nearly bugged out of her head at his words and she turned around slowly until a looming castle came into view. She looked back at the boy claiming to be Ron Weasley and then took off towards the front doors of the castle. She wanted as far away from the crazy boy as she could get, and if that meant going inside a castle then so be it.

The moment she was inside the castle though, she knew exactly where she was. She had spent more than her fair share of time studying drawings and layouts of the castle. She reread passages in the books that would help her figure out where everything was, but none of that could have prepared her for the actual sight before her.

She took off at a frantic run down the hallway and up the stairs as fast as she could. She didn't even take into consideration the fact that the staircases were moving and she could very well lose her balance and fall to her death. Luckily though she had studied diagrams for far too long and she had made it up to the seventh floor before she got caught by any other crazy people claiming to be the people she had read about in books.

Getting inside the office was a completely different matter entirely and she just started naming random pieces of candy until she finally said one that caused the gargoyles to jump out of the way so she could get on the staircase.

She threw open the door and tried not to freak out when a man that looked exactly like Professor Dumbledore sat behind a desk. His eyes sparkled at her the same way that she had always read about and she took a deep breath. If they were going to pretend to be the characters, then she would just have to pretend with them. "Professor Dumbledore, I need your help."

She took another deep breath and let herself look around the office a bit before her eyes stopped on a large figure in black. She was eye level with what she could assume to be a chest so she looked down first, sighing at the sight of the boots she saw there. Then she slowly, hesitantly drew her eyes upwards until they came to rest on the man that had been plaguing her dreams since she was old enough to be plagued by him. "S---Sn---Snape."

As soon as the name was out of her mouth she passed out cold on the stone floor, hitting her head against a bookshelf with little grace.