Chapter 2 : Nightmares

That night, he dreamed of Cedric again. The golden boy was surrounded by a ghastly bluish light, his face appearing as if through a glow. His body was gone altogether, swallowed by the mist. He stared at Harry without smiling, his expression sullen, his eyes knowing. When Harry woke up, he spent at least half an hour staring at the ceiling, wondering if the threads of the moving shapes embroidered in the walls of the dorm would twist and turn and create Cedric's face.

The entire day following the nightmare with Cedric turned into a nightmare itself. Images from dreams were mixing with reality and, more than once, Harry thought that he was going crazy. He confessed to Hermione, but even as he was talking, at times, he could almost see her shape melting away and leaving him on his own in a tiny room. It was exponentially harder to try to explain what was bothering him when he was desperately focusing on trying to maintain Hermione's image alive.

"Hermione, I'm going mad!" he blurted. "Are you even there? Hermione, are you real? Do you hear me?"

"Of course that I hear you, Harry!" he heard her say, but it took a certain time for her form to materialize before his eyes.

"Hermione... Is it really you?"

"Yes Harry, it is me. It is I, your friend, Hermione. Will you tell me what's bothering you?"

"Hallucinations... Unceasing hallucinations..."

"Hallucinations?"

"And echoes..."

"Echoes..."

"I see and I hear, but I never know if it's a dream or reality..."

"Harry, I'm here! Harry? Do you hear me?"

"Hermione?"

"Harry, are you all right? Tell me what's going on, darling, tell me!"

"Mother?"

"Harry?"

"Mother, don't let him kill you!"

"Harry, be strong..."

"Mother?"

"Be brave..."

"Mother, is it you?"

"No, it is me!"

"Who, me?"

"Your friend Harry, you've been telling me about your hallucinations. Remember?"

"Hermione?"

"Tell me what you see!"

"I see nothing... Is it you, Hermione?"

"No, it is me."

"Who, me?"

"Dolores Umbridge! And you better tell me everything you know!"

"It must be Snape's potions" said Hermione very confidently.

Ron looked at her in disbelief. Harry had told his best friends what happened earlier that day. He told them everything about the hallucinations and about the nightmares haunting him, hoping that they would be able to help, somehow.

"Snape is a terrible person... But do you think that he would do that to Harry?" asked Ron.

"Of course he would!" yelled Harry. "My suffering procures him personal enjoyment! Have you not heard the things he said about my father?!"

"Yeah, but still..."

"Maybe he doesn't know," muttered Hermione. "Maybe... Maybe he's... Testing?"

"Testing?!"

The voices disappeared in a warp once again and those that he heard were no longer Ron's and Hermione's.

"Testing..."

"Testing?"

"Yes, I am testing whether he will get any more responsive with this medicine." said Snape.

"You have no right to try out those things on students!" said a woman's voice.

Harry felt lost once again. His vision was blurred and he could only guess global shapes of those in front of him, barely visible through the thick fog clouding his gaze. The shapes no longer belonged to Ron and Hermione, but Harry was still unable to tell whose they were exactly. The only things that he perceived now were voices. He could distinguish two female voices... One high-pitched and unbearable, the other firm but more pleasing to the ear. He also heard Snape. Snape, who might have just admitted that he used Harry as a test-subject for his potions. Or did he say "medicine"? Probably not, since medicine was only used by muggles.

"...muggles..."

"...spoke about muggles..."

The voices still mingled in Harry's mind. Only parts of their utterances would reach Harry's ears and even then, they made little sense. As for his vision, it was still foggy.

"How do I get to him if I don't use this?! He won't respond!"

A male voice! That was a male voice! Was it Snape's? It was hard to tell... Even voices became deformed in this suffocating mist.

"Your methods are too risky!" said... Umbridge?

"And so are yours! But mine at least wake him up for a while! At least he speaks!"

Harry never heard Snape so angry. Snape was known to always maintain a low voice, which incidentally sounded much more menacing than any shouting. Yet now, he was almost screaming.

"The only thing he said was 'muggle'..." said another voice.

"He needs to know..." spoke yet another one and Harry felt his curiosity sparkle.

He needed to know what? He needed to know what?! The voices started to fade...

"He needs to..."

He needs to know what? Harry was desperate to learn... Yet the voices became so low that he barely heard them anymore.

"Harry? Harry! Are you with us?"

It was Hermione.

"Harry, what's up with you?"

He felt a light slap on the cheek. The next thing that materialized before his eyes was a bunch of orange hair. Very soon, a familiar freckled face became very clear in front of him. The rest of the whereabouts followed.

"Bloody hell, Harry, you frightened us!" said Ron with a concerned smile.

"It was Snape." said Harry calmly, with utter conviction.

"Harry, Hermione got carried away by her ideas, it's not because he doesn't like you that he..."

"I heard him. I heard him, Ron!"

Hermione came closer to Harry and put her hand on his own.

"What did you hear him say?" she asked.

"I heard him say that he's testing... Something... On me. I didn't hear what."

"When did you hear that?" asked Ron.

"Right now! That's what I've been trying to tell you! One moment I'm with you at Hogwarts and another one you disappear and I end up heaven knows where!"

"What else did you hear, Harry?" Hermione was still holding his hand.

"I heard them mentioning muggles... And Umbridge and Snape were arguing about... About methods. Risky methods. Methods used to get me..." Harry marked a break, feeling unexplainably uneasy and frightened. "To get me responsive. I don't know what should I respond to, but they want to make me... Responsive to... Something... And they spoke about something else that I needed to know."

"What do you think it is?" Ron asked in a whisper, worried and fascinated at the same time.

"I don't know." answered Harry honestly. "I got back to my senses shortly after."

Ron and Hermione addressed each other an awkward glance.

"Harry... I think you need to see professor Dumbledore." said Hermione softly.

"And what would he tell me? We haven't even seen him in school for a while! He's doing nothing to help us against Umbridge! Soon enough, you'll see her start firing teachers! I wonder if Dumbledore would move then..."

"Harry..." whispered Ron, "Those hallucinations are not a harmless thing. You need to go to Dumbledore..."

"Why are you all taking to me so cautiously?!" asked Harry, irritated.

"What if..." Ron swallowed hardly "What if it was You-Know-Who who was trying to infiltrate your thoughts? He may want you to see things that never took place! He may want you to act... Upon those visions..."

"Or maybe he simply wants you to go crazy." added Hermione.

Harry couldn't explain the sudden anger that he felt rising in him. The rational part of his brain was trying to calm the storm down, but the anger was still burning hot. Worst of all, Harry didn't know to whom this anger was directed. His friends? Voldemort? Dumbledore? Snape? Umbridge? The only thing that he knew right then was that he was tremendously tired. He bid a goodnight to his friends and went to his dorm. The fact that they were in the middle of the day and that he had two more classes that afternoon mattered little.

By miracle, Dumbledore seemed to be there when Harry went to see him in his office.

However, getting to said office was a story for itself. It had taken Harry three days of trying and hiding through the corridors before he finally managed to approach Dumbledore. Filch was rooming the halls more than ever before, probably under Umbridge's orders, and coming anywhere close to Dumbledore's chambers had become a struggle. As for the old wizard, he wasn't helping either... Not only would he disappear from school for days on end; he would also change his place of residence in Hogwarts itself from time to time. It became increasingly hard for Harry to even find where Dumbledore's headquarters were, since it seemed that every few days, they would change floors.

So Harry devised a scheme in his head: he followed Dumbledore's movements for weeks and months. After a while, Harry could guess, based on his observations, when and where Dumbledore would be hiding. Even when Dumbledore disappeared, Harry would know exactly when he would get back. He had learned to calculate the headmaster's absences based on the occurring events, and it seemed by now that he knew Dumbledore by heart. Yet reaching him was still excruciatingly difficult. Harry could know his whereabouts all he wanted, it was still impossible to physically get to those places. It was as if the entire castle of Hogwarts was conspiring against Harry. The walls and the stairs would still move, just like they always did, but there would always be either Filch, or worse, Umbridge, waiting on the other end.

Yet this time, when he entered the swirling stairs leading to Dumbledore's office, Harry knew that he reached his destination. But when the stairs stopped moving and when the great stone wings opened the way to Harry, he did not see the office that he so well knew. And the man sitting at the headmaster's desk, scribbling something nervously on a piece of paper certainly wasn't Dumbledore.

When the man raised his head, his eyes widened.

"Harry..." he said, "How did you enter?"

The man stood up and walked towards Harry, worry in his eyes. Harry was unable walk away. He was too captivated by the scene, nervously looking around him, trying to find a remnant of the place that he once knew. What happened here? Where did all the magic go? The whimsy objects in vibrant colors that once gave Dumbledore's office that peaceful and reassuring aura were gone; the entire room being a monotonous mess, the type of mess that Harry didn't even know could exist. Even the books seemed devoid of their inviting and mysterious aspect, instead seeming dull and cold. In a cage near the window, an imprisoned bird was looking at him curiously. The bird had nothing of Fawkes.

Harry turned his gaze once again to the man who was walking towards him in slow motion. And it suddenly dawned at him. A muggle!

When the man, the muggle, the usurper touched his shoulder, Harry started screaming. After that, the blur swallowed everything once again.

"Calm down my boy, you're safe," he heard the man say, but how to trust him?

Harry heard his own voice screaming "Usurper! Muggle! What have you done to Dumbledore? Voldemort! Are you working for Voldemort? Muggle! Muggle! Muggle!" but he didn't recall making a sound.

He heard somebody shout "help", saw flashes before his eyes, could swear that the portrait of Dumbledore was floating in the mid-air and tried to speak to him, felt arms coming from everywhere and grabbing him, wrapping his body in a coffin of cloth, binding his mind and his soul all at the same time. Then, out of nowhere, he felt a wave of peacefulness spread through his body and he fell asleep.

Yet, before he fell into a forced dream, he perceived the last segments of voices around him.

"Why did you let him come to this office?" the muggle said.

"We were trying to stop him, we really did watch his every move, but he ran through our fingers..."

"Well you should obviously have tried a bit harder!"

"Do you think that he will..."

"...yes...he...after...must...learn..."

The voices abruptly started to fade. The slumber risked consuming Harry and the voices would forever be lost.

"...keep a better eye..."

"...the case is grave...danger..."

"He's just a boy!"

"He must learn!"

"...justification...death..."

"How many more children must die?"

"None!"

"What did he say when...here?"

"...muggle."

"Muggle?"

"That word...again!"

"What is a muggle?"

"What...to him..."

"One day, we might know."