Chapter 3 - The Book

During lunch at Three Tassels, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had discussed the most common topic; Quidditch. Not Hermione so much - who constantly tried to talk about lessons and homework - but she sat listening carefully until she did not hurry more and picked up a book at the dinner table. They had arrived too late at noon, so they would not go to school without getting caught on three tassels instead. And all Quidditch snacks made time faster and they did not go back to school until half past three o'clock.

"Well, we do not have any lessons anyway. Then we can start the training whenever we want." said Ron pleased as they went on the ladder to school.

"But you have to study too, Ron." Hermione reminded him. "N.E.W.T. exams ..."

"Is at the end of the year." he interrupted her.

"But that does not mean you can relax for it! If you start planning on time, it will be easier for you to remember!"

"As you remember, I already know a lot. I mean, everything we went through while looking for horror jokes."

"But that's not all ..."

Ron stretched out his tongue, shaped his hand like a beak and tried to imitate Hermione's cheat.
And there the mouthwash was started again.

Harry sighed and grabbed Ginny's hand. She looked up at him and smiled.

"Damn ..." she muttered.

"What?" asked Harry and tried to ignore the raised voices of Ron and Hermione.

"Well, I'm sorry. But I have to go back. I forgot my hat on Three Brooms."

Not because it was cold enough for a hat; she obviously had it for her eyesight. Girls.

"I'm coming with."

"No. Go ahead, you see you in the living room!" Ginny stood on his toe, kissed Harry and ran elsewhere.

"Where would she go?" asked Hermione and looked for Ginny where she jogged.

"She forgot ..."

"But everyone is not as smart and prepared as you are!" Ron stopped again.

Harry just sighed again and continued on.

As they approached the school, he thought the other two would have already spoken clearly, but they just said the same things over and over again. "Please ..." he exclaimed loudly. "Please, can not you just be quiet?"

"But she says ..."

"Ronald does not like that ..."

"AND?" shouted Harry, stopped and stamped with his foot.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other and it actually shook a bit in their mungos. It was a long time since Harry had raised the voice to them in that way.

"Sorry, buddy." Ron said, throwing his arm over Harry's shoulders.

Hermione clasped on his other side and hooked his arm in his right. "We are quite childish sometimes, right?"

"No wonder we've been together for almost eight years. How can you grow from it?" asked Harry.

The other two laughed and they continued to the castle much calmer and happier. They went up for the marble staircase in the entrance hall and continued on to the Gryffindor tower.

"The training starts seven tonight, Ron, right after the food." said Harry before they stepped in through the portraits. Hermione had already said the password to The Great Lady.

"Okay, I'll say to Dean and the others."

"Do we see before dinner?" wondered Hermione while Harry walked up the stairs to the boys' dorms.

"I really do not know. But I will come here when I'm done, otherwise we'll see you in the big room."

Hermione nodded and sat next to Ron in a couch. Harry continued into the dormitory and fetched his magic wand he had forgotten in another pair of jeans he had had on the day before. It was very rare that he had forgotten his magic wand, but Ginny had arrived in the morning and woke him up saying that they should go to Hogsmeade soon. Harry also slept so long without waking up himself in the morning. But then it would have been that dream that came back from the summer holidays.

That dream.

It was a bit different this time. He had walked through a dark corridor at school only lit by torches. But slowly shifted it from stone to earth, and he discovered that he walked through the hallway from the whining arrow tree to the ghostly cottage in Hogsmeade. In his dream, he knew where he was going, and what he would do when he arrived, but was still surprised when he opened the door to the bedroom where he met his godfather Sirius for the first time.

On the bed, where Ron had a broken leg and his rat Scabbers - who later turned out to be the death sinner and James Potter's old friend Peter Pettigrew - in his arms, someone else was waiting and waiting. Not Ron.

The bed was bedside in the black side and the room was lit by candles. Side pillows lay scattered on the floor, as if someone just threw them down for better seating. The room looked clean, with dark, glossy wood floors and freshly painted walls. But Harry's eyes looked for the bed and the stranger lying in it.

"Do you just stand there?" wondered Malfoy.

He lay in bed in an extremely challenging position and had something over the face that seemed welcome. His head was slightly bent down, but he looked up at Harry with sparkling silver eyes through his eyelashes and a cheeky smile. He carried nothing on the body except a pair of small black underwear that revealed more skin than Harry had desired.

Harry walked slowly, but definitely, he was not nervous anymore, as in the dreams before. He laid his knees on the floor in front of Malfoy so that their faces ended up at the same height. He looked long into the gray eyes looking for answers without words.

But then Harry asked: "Why?"

"How do you mean?" asked Malfoy with seductive voice.

"Why do you return in my dreams like this? And why ... do I like it?"

"What dreams?" wondered his fantasies. "How do you think it's a dream?"

Harry waited a while to answer it, trying to remember the reason why he knew he was dreaming. "We do not like each other. And I do not think we should ever start to like each other in this way."

"Why should you always ruin everything, Potter?"

Green smoke swirled around Draco. Now he got up in bed. The roof cracked, the rear wall wiped out as if it were hurricane, and now Lord Voldemort stood in front of Harry. With pale skin, red eyes and magic wand in front of him.

And that was where Ginny had woken him that morning.

Harry went down to the living room again, encountered Ginny who just stepped in through the portrait hole and gave her a kiss. "See you tonight!" he called for her as he jogged through the corridor to the stairs that swung and changed place.

He came to a stone statue and said, "Smiling lingon lilies", which was the password.

A spiral staircase rose from the floor and Harry jumped up. Dumbledore's password just got worse and stranger, even when he was not principal.

Just as Harry raised his hand to knock the door of the office of the headmaster, one voice said, "Come in, Harry."

He opened the door and stepped in.

Professor McGonagall stood at a high window and looked out over the school's fields. "I see that the patch did not show him in time. I had forgotten how punctual you could be, sometimes." she muttered and opened one of the boxes to let in a big and majestic tower owl.

But instead of sitting and stretching out the leg of McGonagall, the owl flew through the room and sat on a table with thin legs and stretched his leg to Harry. "To me?" he wondered and looked puzzled, but clutched the knot and took the letter from the owl.

Harry
I need a book from the library. I could have picked it myself if I did not know you'd go by there on the way here.

Then there was a name, and Harry understood that it was the name of the book.

I hope this message arrives on time, so we do not have to wait both times unnecessarily.
Sincerely
Minerva McGonagall.

"Should I…?"

"Yes, if you want it, Harry. I'm sorry."

"I hurry."

He ran down the spiral staircase and jogged back in the corridor he came from. Then he turned to the left on a crossing and on to a staircase that led downwards. As he jumped straight ahead in the next corridor, he came back to the stairs that swung and jumped on someone who just turned down to the way he should.

He came to the library closing, and took his waist where he got hold and tried to get the breath.

"Are you running in the corridors, boy?" It was Madam Pince who was just heading out of the library.

"Sorry, madam Pince ..." Harry stabbed. "Case to the principal. I have to enter the forbidden section."

"You're welcome to sit and wait. I have not been on the girls all day." She trampled away with Harry grimaceing behind her. In any case, she could not have told him what to do.

He slowly went in and sat down at the nearest table. He breathed out, stretched out his legs, leaned back and closed. He heard someone sneak around at the bookshelves to the right of him, but it was probably only a student who was looking for books for his student. He continued to shut up, heard the steps come closer and then books like down the floor.
Harry turned his face and saw Malfoy standing staring at him with big eyes. Books lay down at his feet, and the face of Harry must have got him to drop them.

With a flashy move, Malfoy drew up the magic wand and stood now and glanced deeply at Harry, almost the horror.

Harry got up slowly but did not make his own magic wand. The first dream was about to come true and he was going to do everything to stop it. "I'm not here to fight. What do you think is about? Smiles around behind the shelves and then try to overcome me?"

Malfoy still said nothing and made a effort to stop the stake again. But the hand just fell down to the waist. Harry stared at him as if he was afraid to have a curse thrown over him ... or something else would happen.

"What are you doing here, Potter?" then asked Malfoy Pulp. He tried to sound hot, but the voice broke a bit.

"Does it matter to you?"

Malfoy got red on his face, but Harry did not see if it was because he was embarrassed or angry. He felt the pocket where his stake lay, he would still be prepared.

"Now you have fun, Potter? Really funny, or how to see me have a punishment. Come here and laugh at me. I heard you were breathless - you certainly walked all the way here because you wanted to see me do my punishment - and then laugh at me!"

"I had no idea ..."

"No idea! It's clear that you know! Do not you think I've noticed how different you've become? What's your game? What's it that you want me? Answer me!"

Harry just opened his eyes to the raised Slytherin life, who once again raised his stake. He sounded both pissed and desperate, something Harry definitely did not count on.

"You ... your problems you can solve yourself. I'm not going to stand here and listen."

"And you have not even formulated the stick yet. You who really love a challenge let it remain in your pocket. You have them too, right?" he asked and looked almost crazy. "The dreams."

An ice cold wave rinsed over Harry. Not a wave without bouncing. An electric shock. Did Malfoy have the same dreams as Harry, or did he only have other dreams that made him so upset? Harry dared not say anything, did not want to get rid of it. "What dreams?" he asked shut up, with his breath in his throat as if he had been breathed again. "What are you talking about?"

"I do not know how you care, but somehow you have planted them in my brain - I know that!"

"Tell me exactly what you ..."

"Stop playing cough! I've already said that I've seen how you're doing around me! I've had them all summer ..." He almost looked close to the cry.

Without looking at Malfoy again, Harry began to run.

He did not know where he was going, just he wanted to go as far away from the library as possible. As he jumped past the staircase to the Ravenclaw Tower, he realized that McGonagall was still waiting for him inside his office.

"Harry, what a surprise." mumbled the professor without looking at him when Harry lifted the hand for the second time to knock the door - but this time did not happen because the principal himself opened it. "I thought you'd forgotten me." She peered Harry over the edge of the glasses, a little more serious.

"The professor, I ... sorry, but I did not get the book ..."

"Would not Madam Pince help you find it?"

"Well ... but I ..."

"It does not matter, Harry. Come in." She moved out of the way so Harry could go into the office, closing the door after them both. "I'm lucky I have an extra copy here." McGonagall went and sat down behind the desk without looking up, but luckily, because Harry could not have looked particularly happy. "It is indeed a very old copy ... One of the first to write and is therefore hard read and ... yes, see for yourself."

Harry went to the desk and looked down at the book McGonagall presented. He read the cover.

"But it's not the book you told me to retrieve ... or?" Harry began to stumble around in his pocket in search of the patch the owl gave him.

"This is the original, Harry. The ones in the library are rewritten, and the title was changed as well."

Harry began to think ... How could you get Wizards together to Muggles Politics?

McGonagall saw the question in Harry's eyes or wrinkled his eyebrows and replied, "Yes ... on the new books you can see what it's really about. The author of the first book was enough ... Yes, not so kind to muggers. He tells stories of how The Ministry of magic works together with the prime ministers of the muggers and ... is not so happy about it. The new book, on the other hand, is rewritten and friendlier. More facts, so to say. But because we do not have this now ... "

Harry felt how the chief accused him of blaming him. But that was not his fault! If Malfoy had not started throwing things like dreams and ... and been completely hysterical ... then Harry could have brought the second book!

"You seem out of focus. Maybe we'll take this meeting another time?"

"No! I mean, no, professor. I can handle. What should I do?"

"What you're gonna do, Harry, is reading this book. That's why I thought the new one would be a bit better ... But I think Granger can help you if it gets difficult. It was Albus Dumbledore who wanted you to have it. "

"But why should I get it and come here again?"

"Yes, Harry ... It's very important that you read it. And I want your word personally to read it ... As soon as possible, anyway ... This ..." McGonagall drew a deep breath and stared at the book , as if she meant that just that book would take a long time to read - and understand. "Do I have your word, Harry?"

"I promise." but he grimaceed.

"Good ... Good day, then."

"Good day, the professor."

Harry walked out of the office and jogged back to the living room. It was only half an hour since he had said goodbye to Ron and Hermione, so they could not have gone for dinner yet. He said the password to The Thick Lady and watched the wall clock standing against the wall opposite the portrait hole. The time was only half past two.

"Already ready?" Hermione welcomed him.

"We thought you were on the worst assignment." Ron said, sitting next to the armchair, and therefore had to turn almost a full turn on the chair to look at Harry.

"What's the book?" Harry sat beside Hermione on the couch, who immediately dropped away her own book she read.

"It's about the interaction between the magic ministry and the muggers prime minister. I'll read it."

"It looks old."

"And hard-read." Ron said leaning forward to get a better look at it.

Harry sighed and leaned backwards.