Disclaimer: I am not making any money of this.
Chapter Two.
First Episode.
He observed the reflections of the few speckles of light there still was in the underground classroom on the wet pickled toad and rubbed his smooth scalp thoughtfully. Air currents switched, he could feel them now, someone must have had opened a door down the corridor, he shivered and pulled his collar closed to his neck.
Was he any different from this salty amphibian? He pondered miserably before tossing the corpse to Neville to be chopped up. He sighed and looked at Hermione a few seats away on his left. His last close friend, yet she had refused to help him regain his pride and argued that he should look for it himself - and it wasn't just her, everyone refused to help as if he deserved his shame, even Madam Pince sniffed at him contemptuously when he dared asking for indications. He had not a clue about how to look for anything in the library, and the few "common potions and brews" tomes he had browsed yielded none of his desired miracle cure. So he had given up.
"Nev, you down for pixie -" he started.
"Potter, be quiet. I do not wish to look at your disgusting, bald head anymore than I have to.", hissed - almost literally - professor Snape. "Five points from Gryffindor for being so revolting and noisy."
Harry bowed his head in resignation, hoping that some of the reflecting light would blind the spiteful teacher.
Neville finished the toad and started wrapping the slices in dawngrass with the hand-woven threads they had made out of red hemp in herbology a while ago. Harry wondered if that red hemp thread would have some unforeseen properties once dipped into the mixture, he knew Neville wouldn't have thought of that and adjusted his position further away from the cauldron - if he couldn't even speak then there was nothing else to do, but thankfully nothing happened.
Harry looked at his right, there was Malfoy and a row before him was Daphne Greengrass, stirring her cauldron carefully. The worst part of being hairless was that he couldn't bring himself to look at her anymore, for fear that she'd look back with eyes filled with disgust.
"If only this was a dream." he whispered, Neville looked at him and said "What?".
If it was, he could just focus on its recovery and have his hair back, all black and messy and warm and comfortable, he missed it so much. He would be able to just squint his eyes, push hard and get it, just like that.
"Wow!" yelled Neville suddenly, at his side, and everybody stared at them.
"Potter, what are you doing?" demanded Snape.
Harry reached for his scalp and his hand was suddenly full of healthy, feisty hair - dense and strongly attached.
People were awed and Snape suspicious. "It all popped out suddenly!", "That's not possible.", "He must have taken a growth potion.", "Maybe someone hit him with Capilatura Laxamento Celeritum...", "Accidental magic?", and so on until Snape snapped "Silence!" and background noise came back to crackling fire and boiling potions.
Snape dismissed the event and went back to read as students went back to mincing and mixing - but Harry didn't, he knew, at this moment, once again, that he was and had been, indeed, dreaming. It all came back to him, the plot, his henchman Elf D and the draught, the bedrest-delivery pumpkin juice tankard, and the long awaited answer to an important question just about to be given.
"What a boring dream, though.", he noted, looking around himself. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as he could tell. "Should have known you'd have zero imagination."
"Are you talking to me?" whispered Neville
Harry shook his head. He focused on the time and made it so class was over. "My goodness, look at the time! He exclaimed."
Snape looked at his pocket watch and called them to stop their brew and give him what they had, somehow, most of them had finished their brew even though they had barely started it a few moments ago, and they poured out of the dark classroom and into the naturally lit corridors one level above.
"Malfoy." Harry called, stopping the blond boy in his tracks.
"Potter, glad you got your hair back, at least now I don't feel like-"
"I need to talk to you in private, it's important." he cut him and showed him an empty classroom on their left.
Draco snorted and went inside, followed by Harry who closed the door behind them. "What do you want then?"
Harry held his hand up and looked around before wiggling his wand and saying "Solomo Datsun Benus.", and focusing on having a different body and voice.
Draco looked at the magic unravelling the disguise and gasped, "Father? Wha- what, who..." he regained his composure and squinted at Harry. "Potter, you pretending to be my father?".
Harry shook his gold-haired, aristocratic head. Even in a dream, Malfoy was so dull he actually kept his wits to him. "No, son, I am your father." he pretended. "You think that stupid Potter kid would know how to grow his hair wandlessly?"
Draco swallowed his comment back.
"I'm here under cover, obviously. Things are happening behind the scenes... Draco, I need you to tell me."
"Yes, father?", he said obediently.
"Why did you put Potter's name in the cup?" he asked, his hand on Draco's shoulder. "I'm not mad, but I need to know why."
Draco seemed shocked, he shook his head. "I didn't do it, father, I don't know who did."
Harry made a show of peering at him distrustingly and held his glare.
"No, I didn't, really! Why would I want him to get all the glory again? Father?"
Harry shook his head. "Draco, I know it's you, admit it now or suffer the consequences.", he whipped his wand out.
"Father, no! I did not!" Draco screamed suddenly, surprising Harry, "It's not me, I swear it, father, I swear it".
What the hell, thought Harry. It's like Malfoy really didn't do it, but he had to have done it. Who else in the world could and would have? "The hard way it is then.", he jabbed his wand at Draco and the boy screamed so hard, reality bent and rushed violently - and Harry suddenly was submerged in liquid, somewhere, his mind spinning a hundred times per second.
He kicked around himself and touched a surface, something familiar, small square tiles on a flat floor, he kicked it and swam upward until he could breathe again. "It always ends up this way." he remarked to no one, spitting warm, soapy water.
"I had the strangest dream." said Draco from behind him, startling him. The boy was sitting in the bath pool, raking his hair with his finger and kneading his temple.
"What are we doing naked together in the same pool?" asked Harry, unable to contain his doubt.
Draco rose out of the water, wearing his nakedness proudly, "You're free to leave anytime, Potter, I never invited you here. You were in my dream, too, not in a good way - you were trying to extort intel out of me, I think."
Harry adverted his eyes and made bubbles with his mouth, acting like he didn't care. "Was I? What intel?" he asked innocently.
"This ridiculous Triwizard business and the howabouts of your damned name turning up in it. As if I'd have a hand in this. Now, remind me why you're here for?"
Growing gradually more uncomfortable with the very private setting every second, Harry said farewell to the boy and swam all the way to the other side of the bathpool. He had to accept that Draco had nothing to do with involving him in the tournament, apparently. He wanted to think about it, but there was really nothing to think about; he had been convinced that it was him and now that this fell apart, he found himself with nothing else, he was devoid of purpose - there was no one else he had suspected.
Without even focusing on anything, he swam downwards and found a large tube that he knew would lead him to somewhere else, he entered the underwater passage. On the other side, he emerged out of the Gryffindor bathpool, he hung a towel around his waist and walked out, wondering if his wand was somewhere at all or if it was just non-existent and waiting to be summoned by his consciousness - knowing that it was the latter, and yet, the dream seemed so real and consistent, unlike Luna's or Hermione's or Daphne's.
As he stepped out, his foot landed on a bar of soap and sent him skiing out of the bathroom and into the common room at insane speed; he rocketed past a dozen people, barely holding his privacy together with his hand as the other executed counter-balancing manoeuvers, and he crashed into a three-seater, rolled over it and fell flat on his back in front of the fireplace.
Gryffindors all around were laughing their hearts out and clapping loudly, Harry got up and adjusted the towel again, embarrassed. Before he could leave the common room, someone else came rocketing out of the bathroom, on a soap bar, wrapped in a towel as well and crashed into an armchair after a strange swerving to the right, earning just as much guffawing from the crowd. Then, two other ones, Katie Bell and Lavender Brown holding their hands together, screaming, following Harry's race line and hitting the couch with their heads as they toppled forward due to a fold in the carpet, laughter and cheering were cut as he finally closed the door behind him.
"Ridiculous." he commented as the muffled crowd roared, probably yet another unfortunate soap athlete.
He reached his robes hanger and took a hung robe off its hook. It was weird that the dream still was going on, usually things finished after the climax, if you could call it that, after Harry had gotten where he wanted - or maybe it ended soon after he gained consciousness, or whenever something shocked him enough - at any rate, it should have ended in the Slytherin bath pool, he mused.
And still, it kept its consistence, right here he was in the dormitory and it looked just like normal, nothing too crazy was happening - and maybe the weirdest of all, he couldn't really change much about it, he realized. He kind of went with the flow and could alter details like the water tunnel between the pools but he couldn't ... he tried, scrunching his face ... no, he couldn't even make it a beach or something, the dormitory was staring him in the face as normal as ever.
He got back out in the common room and saw a group of his housemates around the exit. Hermione noticed him and reached for him.
"We can't get out, there's a crocodile in the exit and nobody knows what to do!" she told him.
He craned his head and sure enough, there was a croc in the entrance, lazily watching them. Harry shrugged and went back in the bathroom, removed his robes and jumped right back in the pool, looking for another tunnel. He was going to see Daphne. She would not be real this time around, only a figment of his subconscious, but that was better than nothing.
He made it into the Slytherin girl's pool and ignored their screams and insults when he walked out, this time he plainly stole a green and silver embroidered robes from the stack - it smelled good, he noticed, as its owner was stringing bad words together with uncommon dexterity in his back, confined to the pool lest she'd be seen wholly by him. He made it through the common room with no issue and made a beeline for Daphne who, of course, was here and simply reading a book by the window.
"Daphne, my dear." he introduced himself.
She looked up and gaped at him wearing a female Slytherin robe. "Potter, what- you- how dare you?" she started to get very angry, "Who do you think you are? In front of everyone and- my first- my first ever, you steal it like an ape! A tactless ape!" she swung her hand so fast at him that he didn't see it coming, the slap seemed to hurt even more than the first one.
"Ouch! Again? Really?" he complained.
"You appear in my dream and mess me up with your- your- you stupid ape! And if that wasn't enough you spy on me everyday, then you humiliate me in public and then, then, this? You come here?" she was raving, harrumphing and growling, "This must be a damned nightmare, I swear! I must be dreaming, there is no way! If you can force yourself into my life then I can do this and that too!" she ranted, waving her wand left and right, chairs around them turned into cats and dogs, curtains into thousands of rose petals gently raining down.
Daphne was so startled she recoiled and tripped over her chair, now a fat white cat meowing angrily. "What the!" she screamed, her eyes wide like saucers. Harry was surprised, that was new and weird.
She got up slowly, looking around them, baffled. "I really am dreaming. Oh my god, I'm awake in my own dream, that is so sweet."
"Let me get this straight for you, I am dreaming." he said, a bit miffed at her appropriation of his own thing despite being just a part of this thing, "You're a figment of my imagination, I'm the one creating you and all of this. And I'm probably trying to trick myself, too, because this is quite convincing."
"Mmh" she said, "Sounds like you're a fragment of my mind and I'm the one tricking myself, I'm afraid."
"The word is figment, not fragment, and I'm sure the real Daphne wouldn't make such mistakes."
"And I'm sure real Harry would understand that I used fragment on purpose to avoid repetition."
They stared at each other for a moment, unwilling to back down.
"Well, one of us is dreaming anyway, so the point is moot." said Daphne.
Harry nodded, it ultimately didn't matter, but it still was annoying. "Right, so we might as well snog for no particular reason.", he suggested.
She shrugged and smiled, "Absolutely."
Second Episode.
Harry stretched and yawned soundly, he scratched his head and sat upright in his bed, satisfied of a good night's sleep. On his left, Daphne was latching onto him and in deep slumber, her platinum hair messy and hiding her eyes, her shoulder rising and dropping as she breathed. He smiled with affection, and then jumped.
"Jesus!" he shouted, and she woke with a start as well.
"Wha-what's going on?" she mumbled and looked at her night gown, realizing the situation.
"Potter? What are you- what did you do to me?" she said weakly, almost fainting.
He shook his head so strongly it almost snapped, "Absolutely nothing, I'm positive we did not sleep together! I swear!"
She had her hand on her heart and began to have an anxiety attack of some sort until she stopped suddenly at the realization, "I must still be dreaming.", and then, Harry realized he was still dreaming.
He remembered clearly all the events that lead to this, he had gone to sleep hoping it would finish the dream, and Daphne definitely hadn't been here. "I probably dreamed of you or something." he said.
She nodded and agreed "Yes, I must have."
She then jumped of the bed and went for the window a foot from it, opened it; "I'll go back this way, this is a dream after all.", and clumb out of it. Harry ran to the opening and peered out of it, he saw her trotting on the rooftiles along the edge of the spires, slaloming around gargoyles like a daft cat.
He closed the window, dressed up and left the dormitory. Hermione found him again and mentioned the bathroom being taken over by crocodiles.
"Again?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
He told her about the other crocodile but she seemed to have forgotten. He convinced her to forget about it and go take breakfast with him. They met several people on the way there, and it would be an understatement to say something was amiss.
Fred & George Weasley were in their underwear, trotting on all four, held by Katie Bell via a leash, pretending to be dogs, but still talking human language. Katie laughed and laughed at their antics as they pulled her down the corridor. Draco was showing off a broom, apparently so unique and powerful that it was forbidden on quidditch pitches, with a price tag of a million galleons, which was more than the net worth of everyone in the castle's whole family combined, and he had a large crowd of people prepared to kneel and lick his boot for a touch of one of its straws. And when they almost got to the main hall, they met a small first year named Alnie Crox that had just wet herself, because the bathroom door was stuck and nothing she did could nudge it.
Through this all, Hermione didn't react in a significant way, but eventually she started mentioning that the last day had been weird.
"I feel... fuzzy, a little bit unsure at every step." she said, "I can't really explain it, but it's like, something's not right, or is it? Like... I'm sure that something is true, and it is true, but then I start doubting it... and I can't tell anymore. It's like I'm dreaming.", she said.
Harry stopped walking. Now that was starting to be really weird, was it just the theme of the dream, or... he had to wonder - the dream had been going for so long too, it was already highly irregular in this regard. "Dreaming, huh?"
"Yeah, like a dream, but not so pleasant, a little bit alien. But if I was dreaming, I ... I mean..." she stopped too. She looked around, she looked at him, and her face was sober. "I'm dreaming." she said flatly, spreading her arms out and lowering her stance like the floor was going to dissolve any moment. "Amazing, I never- never before! I think."
Harry frowned. "Mmmh. You might not believe it but you're not the first that realized this is a dream."
"You did?"
"Well, of course, I'm the dreamer, I meant from the other people."
She put her arms on her waist, "Harry, I just realized I'm dreaming, why would I believe you're the one dreaming?"
He made a swiping motion with his hand, "Doesn't matter whether you do or don't, what matters is; this is concerning. A lot of this is concerning, but I think I know a way out."
"But I don't want out." she commented, he ignored her.
"Follow me.", and he turned back around from where they went, Hermione excitedly trotting in his wake.
They found Malfoy after a little bit of searching, he was whispering something to Theodore Nott inbetween two giggles. "Malfoy, we have to talk." Harry declared.
"Again?", he asked then made a face that seemed like 'why did I say this?'
Harry answered, "Yes, again, as you might or might not remember, we spent some time together, me as your dad and then in a bathpool."
Draco looked at him strangely, cogs turning behind his eyes.
"Those weird things were not real, nor is this -", he pointed to Filius Flitwick that just passed them on a muggle bike, ringing his bell happily, "- it was, and is, a dream. You're dreaming."
Draco went through the same phase of disorientation as Hermione and ended up staring at him in disbelief; "Indeed I am, interesting, this was all... all a fabrication..."
"Yes." lied Harry, not about to give away his culpability. He turned to Hermione and whispered, "Now we should wake up, he's the pillar of this dream.", and they waited.
Then, against all expectations, nothing happened.
Harry frowned at Draco. "Well, wake up you pillock. What are you waiting for? We can't both be conscious and still... or can we?"
Draco looked at him with a mocking smile, "What in Merlin's name are you on about, Potter?"
"Arghh" groaned Harry as he squatted down. "Think, think, how to wake up?"
"This is my dream, so I can make you kiss my boots, Potter, how about you do that now?", Draco snickered.
Harry got up, walked to him, and slapped him across the face - for once, he wasn't on the receiving end - and he insisted: "Wake up, wake up, wake up!", punctuated by slaps, until Draco pushed him back, face red and tears welling under his eyes and got his wand out.
"Enough!" he started throwing hexes at him. Harry managed to dodge them and ran away, followed by Hermione who was laughing at this point.
Third Episode.
The library had never been in this state. It was quiet, very quiet indeed, a few feet from its entrance, now closed shut and covered in nailed boards taken from the shelves, a few feet from it, behind her desk, was Madam Pince, eyes vacant and body stiff, laying on the wooden floor with a thin layer of dust on her. A little bit further, was a pile of books, taken off their shelves, and next to this one, another, several dozen piles of books, around a isle of four big tables put together on which dozens of open books, old parchments and everything inbetween were laying interwoven and one onto the others.
On one side of this makeshift raft of a workbench, Hermione Granger was writing notes down on a parchment, her finger tracing over a diagram in a tome, a frown on her face that showed concern more than reflection. And in front of her, flipping pages from a tome as wide as his shoulders, with an annoyed look, was Harry.
Hermione hadn't laughed for long, when she realized that they were trapped, Harry had to admit some of the truth, how he had used his counter-insomnia potion to draw other people in his dream, and she knew, she knew that she was real, so there was more to it than he would say. Regardless, they had no other recourse than studying, than finding what the soul rest potion is and how it works, in order to find a solution. Outside, the sun was settling down, it had been for so long she couldn't even tell.
"Found one possible after-effect of using pepper up during full moon phases, it makes one breathe hard sometimes during the night and can cause coughing that wake you up... reported by one person and not peer reviewed... whatever.", he said dully.
"Write it down, anything that has to do with any sort of sleeping disorder. Write it down." she ordered.
Harry groaned slightly but picked up his quill. A tremor shook the castle, a few books fell down from their piles, the chandelier sing-songed and liquid wax dripped from candles; then it was gone as fast as it came. "Everybody's going nuts out there." commented Harry, They were looking at the ceiling with concern and went back to researching sleeping potions and anything even remotely related to them without another word.
"Ah well, I was wrong I suppose." Hermione mused aloud after several hours must have passed, "I thought the Lem prime followed by an Aid prime in the same session were supposed to be an inverted session and could carry meaning of sleeping, consciousness fading, tiredness, and so on if used with another Lem-based session - but that doesn't seem to be the case in stupefy for one - I don't quite see it here... but then again, stupefy really is overengineered."
"What?" answered Harry
"You know, with the theorem of trickery, that is, Calloper's session or the theorem of double negatives - you might be more familiar with that."
"Hermione, I don't know the first thing about sessions, ok? I just wiggle my wand one way or another and magic comes out."
Hermione sighed. Something rustled behind the front desk, they snapped their head to it. "Madam Pince is waking up."
Harry stood up, stretched his legs and nonchalantly walked around the desk - Madam Pince was weakly moving her fingers and moaning. "Stupefy.", the spell exploded of bright red and slammed the almost-conscious book-keeper down into petrification. "We probably have to feed her eventually.", he suggested. Hermione didn't answer.
Harry walked around, prodding things and whistling tunes, trying to find a way to not get bored to death and avoiding the Great Tome of Unsuspected Aftereffects like the plague - until Hermione snapped and ordered him to sit down and do some research. Two huge pages later, she had enough of his sighs.
"Harry, we need to know what's the soul rest draught made of - so, either you look for it in books or you go find professor Snape and bring him here, how about that?"
"Uhh... I'm not sure what's worse..." he hesitated.
"Out! You're driving me nuts, I can't think with you around. Go out and find Snape, we should have done this right away in the first place, he might even have a simple cure on hand."
Ousted like so, Harry found himself on the other side of the library doors, hearing the loud thumps of Hermione's wandwork nailing back the boards on. He walked for a long time in the strangely deserted corridors, observing all kinds of detritus and abandoned belongings; down by the shortcut to the Sixth Spire of Salacious Serenades - in which the runic courses were given - there were many dozen over-sized chocolate frogs discarded along the edges, the size of a dog, some of them even almost as big as HP, and all of them lifeless, half-eaten or cut into pieces and melting slowly, the tiles were covered in an inch of chocolate and large streaks showed that the bodies had been dragged to the sides.
Abandoned clothes, a lot of them, robes and undergarments, some of them damp and laying in puddles of water, some of them torn apart; make-up items, for girls, smeared on the girl's bathroom and trashed on the floor in front of it, two whole boxes. Fruits and vegetables, carrots, oranges, some of them smashed and bleeding on the floor; pitchforks, spades, minepicks; broken chairs, books and newspaper by the hundred in the Hall of Trophies, where all the trophies had either been stolen or - he noticed the broken glass from the cases being angled in a way that implied they had broken out on their own.
Sometimes, when he got near the staircases, he would hear distant voices, shouting and laughing, reverberating from nowhere. Paintings were empty, only their background remained, relatively unchanged, he guessed - he hadn't really ever paid attention to them before.
As he was reaching the downward staircase that led to the dungeons, Myrtle, the ghost teenager popped out of the wall, startling HP a good deal.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Harry, didn't see you there. Are you normal?" she seemed out of it.
"I'm about normal, thank you, and you?"
"It's the worst, my bathroom's been taken over, I yell and I cry but they don't care - it's a real mad-house in there!"
"Who?"
"Damned if I know, a bunch of bimbos and bad kids, they are, they're turning everything upside down, I've never seen this many goats and sheep and whatever else they brought in. Did you come down to see me, my champion? That's very sweet of you." she switched gears and waved her eyelashes at him.
"I... no, I'm sorry, I really need to see Snape, that's why I'm down there."
She harrumphed. "I can help you find him, I suppose, if you give me something in return?"
Harry knew what she wanted, "Like what?"
For an answer she laughed horrifyingly and turned around him a few times, pretending to be too shy to ask for it, "A kiss, of course, from my champion."
"How about I give you your bathroom back in exchange?"
She pouted but agreed.
At his insistence, they separated to do both jobs at the same time; Myrtle could fly through walls and find Snape, hopefully, and Harry would go to the her bathroom and kick out the squatters. He reached it shortly, inside were a dozen older students, sixth and seventh years probably, having an all-out a party.
Harry was hailed as a champion when he entered, as it seemed most of them were more than a little bit inebriated - he made his best to slip through the numerous farm animals and shirtless wannabe quidditch players and butterbeer sippers, he blushed at the sight of one or two things that he had expected to see the second he set foot inside, and finally made it to the central sink, to which he parsel-commanded "Shahhshhhinnsashh".
His hiss didn't go unnoticed, but what really sobered up everyone was the sink morphing into a massive snake, its tongue made of plumbing, eyes a couple of sink holes, and a slow, creeping, crescendo hiss rising from its throat with undertones of creaking pipes and syphoned water echoing and gargling.
Within a few seconds, there was only hay, a few chickens, a couple of passed out students, and a sheep left to graze upon hundreds of empty bottles or sleep on the destroyed couches that had been somehow dragged in there. Harry thanked Salazar's sink-snake and sank his bottom in a couch as the beast coiled around itself and fell to rest. "Pretty sweet, huh, it just need to makes a little bit of sense, I guess." he said to the closest chicken, it batted a wing a few times in response.
When he opened his eyes, two lifeless black holes were staring back, through glasses - with an uncommon intensity, and closeness - a bare inch from his face was another, although he could kind of see through it. He jumped and got out of the couch.
"Myrtle, how long you been here?"
"You were so cute, I didn't want to wake you."
"T-thanks," he swallowed. "I got your bathroom back, did you find Snape?"
She hovered back up, "I have. But someone else found him first, the Weasley twins.", she said with visible disgust, "They captured him and are tormenting him in the Westward Yard of Winces"
"Tormenting? Doesn't sound good."
"It isn't. They cast so much magic to trap him into a labyrinth they became trapped themselves, if I wasn't dead already I might have died in there - they messed around with chronomancy from what I could tell."
"Chronomancy? Like, time magic? Time turners?"
"I suppose so, I wouldn't recommend getting close to the west aisle at all, I've seen a dozen students trapped in it and looping around the same shortcuts forever."
Harry thought about this. It didn't make any sense to him, but he'd head her warning. Thinking about time turners, though, reminded him of Sirius and the last year's adventure, of Albus Dumbledore. "I suppose Dumbledore is as good an option, if not better."
He said goodbye to the ghost and began a trek to the upper levels of the castle, making sure of steering away from the western regions. He crossed the path of a couple disoriented people and saw different kinds of aftermaths laying here and there in the wake of unbridled students; and as he reached the east corridor of the Three by Three Pyracorridors - it was just a series of nine corridors and staircases, really - of which the headmaster's office was the center-piece, the rumble of a torrent started to tickle his eardrums; just a very faint rumbling, growing bigger at every step, then, falling appart in multiple facets of sounds, each bouncing differently from the walls and suits of armor - and when he was in the staircase, he understood that he was hearing the voice of a hundred voices, and more.
A common roar of hundreds of people, crying out in different intonations, at different levels and intensities. It was a crowd comparable to that of a quidditch finale, at least as many teenagers as there were students in Hogwarts, but none of them were known to Harry, their robes were standard and carried the house emblems but they were definitely not students here. They were enraged, jeering and wailing at Dumbledore's door and walls, banging their fists against it and chanting madly.
Harry couldn't even get past the first dozen, they responded to none of his input and shoved him back, making him fall on his arse. From there, through hundreds of legs, he saw the very center of this crowd, the eye of the hurricane, he saw Dennis Criveey, the little boy, in a foetus position, his head folded in his knees and is hands on his ears, he was silently rocking sideways and ignoring - trying to ignore, the mayhem.
Harry turned around, already feeling pangs of panic due to the sheer noise, it was a lost cause.
In the Crescent Corridor, going back toward the library, he caught a whiff of familiar scent and looked up above him. Luna was on the rafters, merely a feet above him, and scribbling things in a notepad. "Luna, fancy seeing you here.", he announced himself.
She sat toward him and let her legs dangle, "Oho! Harry, what do I owe the pleasure to?"
"Well, nothing really, I'm just walking here. What are you up to, up there?"
"I'm doing a sudoku."
"What's that?"
"It's a game of deduction." she answered plainly.
"Mh." said Harry.
"You look fairly okay, you interested in taking refuge with Hermione and me in the library?"
She raised her eyebrows, "Refuge? What from?"
Harry shrugged, "Everyone else, I guess. Haven't you noticed?"
"Oh, them. The rafters are quite safe but... why not hang out with you, sure."
They strolled together toward the library until they came to a total stop in front of what could only be described as a cheap horror movie being shot in the Staircases Hall, Harry paled and Luna uttered her apologies as well as goodbies and left by the rafters in a way that Harry could not hope to, as if she had grown wings.
His rear-end fell into the rich wine-red armchair, his back slumped miserably as he crumbled and let out a moan and a whisper at the same time. His arms dangling from each side, the tip of his fingers made contact with the floorboards - warmed up by the roaring fireplace.
"So?", Hermione inquired, waving her wand. The boards and nails assembled once again against the door. Thumps did not echo much inside the room, now littered with piles of books.
He told her about Snape and Dumbledore - his inability to even come in contact with either, and some other details. "- how exactly did Lavender know the stench of several rotting bodies? I mean, not only blood, there was like the yellow fat and green, grey stuff, gooey and - "
"Stop, Harry, for the love of Merlin I've heard enough!" she complained loudly, looking green herself. "This is nothing short of disgusting, I don't want to hear it."
"Well I had to crawl through it so that's not very fair."
Hermione went for the window and took a break in the cold wind. "I found interesting things while you were... out." she said and beckoned him to the worktable, where she had compiled impressive amounts of parchments. "What you told me... I think it fits." she explained.
"How do you mean?" said Harry.
"When you told me about Snape and Dumbledore just now, you said - in passing - it's just as if the dream tries to stop me. I think it is the case, in a technical sense, look here.", she handed him a large sheet covered with her own handwriting and narrated it as he read:
"What I found numerous references to and finally uncovered in Zalam's Thirty True Tales - and additionally in -"
"Hermione, cut the details out." he pleaded, his eyes running across the sheet.
"- anyways, I found out that when someone is dreaming, their subconscious is what sets up the dream, and when they become aware of it, they get to control it with their conscious but not fully, it's only a partial control, a lot of it is still subconscious business. In two works, I found clear warnings, although why those warnings were given is a bit hard to catch... Warnings, Harry, that it is considered very dangerous to dream with more than one other dreamer."
Harry listened quietly, trying to make sense of the writings at the same time.
"The catch here, is sleep cycles; Thankfully, I found a complete enough description of that concept in Crystalline Wonders, on the passage of dream crystals.", she pointed to an eagle-spread tome on his right. "Sleep cycles, I understand, are almost totally unknown to almost everyone. It's really obscure stuff, I only found it in this one book." she said giddily, clearly enjoying it.
"Good job." Harry answered nonplussed
"So, the bit on dream crystals didn't really explain it, you see, it described it and I read between the lines. Basically, that's a fact, sleep cycle is the heartbeat frequency of a dreamer times their magical echo, that is how it is measured to tune dream crystals. It's a measure that's almost never mentioned but weirdly enough, it uses the Libello unit, li, and I found this unit used in some other instances... The resonance charm and some tempered crystals are used in accordance to libello units. Anyway, the thing with sleep cycle is; when several dreamers share a dream, their sleep cycles mess up the continuity of the dream."
"Oh", he answered. She was starting to lose him.
"With two dreamers, it's a non-issue, because two sleep cycles are almost necessarily divisible by - I quote - a reasonably high greatest common denominator. And in the off-chance that they would not be divisible, the subconsciouses actually synch up to find one anyway, it's not a closed, definitive frame."
Harry nodded, he didn't really get it.
"That much is pretty straightforward in the book. However, when there's more people, it becomes really tough to have a GCD, and the subconsciouses become unable to find something to latch onto and synch up, not to mention the leeway it's working which may not allow for a GCD anyways, you see that's my three diagrams here - I think this might translate in a general sense of the dream fighting against individuals." she pointed on the sheet.
"I see."
"That's when the dream crystals come in play, mostly. You'd get everyone to hold one, have them sleep, and synch them up with some imitation charm, and the crystals would resonate with one another way further than the sleep cycles would naturally do. It's supposed to be done before dreaming, but there's no reason it can't be done within the dream other than the very nature of dreams that complicates it."
"Mh."
She finally breathed in and sat next to him. "So, the dream is not ending because we have too many people, and their sleep cycle cannot synchronize with the mainline frequency, as I dubbed it. It's not a real thing though, it's more like... the spectrum in which we could all synch."
Harry rubbed his chin. "Wouldn't we be able to divide anything by one? Hence we'd have a common denominator.", she shook her head.
"I haven't really understood what's the role of that denominator or how the arithmancy plays out, so I don't know. The book is clear, though, two times, it says; suitably high greatest common denominator. Suitably high could mean anything except one. And if that worked, we wouldn't be stuck here." she concluded.
"So, we need those sleep crystals?"
Hermione nodded, "There might be some in Hogwarts, if not, we'll have to get some anyhow. But before that, we must find out who's a dreamer and who's not."
He raised his eyebrows at that. He'd forgotten. "Hermione, the truth is, there's only two dreamers here, one is me, and the other is Malfoy. I have my reasons for that, I'll tell you later, but I really only laced his drink with the potion."
"But -" she started before thinking deeper.
A moment passed and she raised her eyes to him.
"How did you do it, exactly?"
Harry winced and shrugged, "I kind of... I kind of asked Dobby to put it in his bedrest pitcher."
"Harry! How could you! That's not... that's not acceptable! That poor little thing! He probably punished himself so much!"
"No, no, don't worry, he's just fine! He likes it!"
"Shut it, Harry, shut it!" she angrily swatted at his head until he ducked and made no more sounds. She was at the edge of tears, sniffing heavily, but quickly recovered. "Then, it is possible that Draco shared some of that to other people, or even, Dobby might have misunderstood and sent the drink to the Slytherin common room - although that doesn't explain me drinking it..."
"We could go ask him." he suggested.
Hermione sent him a death glare but nodded. They left the library.
Sorry, it took me way too long to finish this. I hope someone's still reading.
Feet fact: in all 206 bones there is in the average human, 54 are in the feet.
