Chapter Ten

The Nightmare

Harry left Luna at the foot of the many stairs that led to the Gryffindor common room. She had kissed him, but he did not press his lips onto hers in return, he didn't even shut his eyes. She could have well been kissing one of the knights that stood still around the castle. But Luna did not appear to notice Harry's uninterested, even lost, gesture. Yes, lost, because after she had kissed him and waved goodbye, Harry did not say a word, but stood still, staring forward at nothing with both his hands in his pockets. Lost in a labyrinth of guilt that would punish you severely if you made one wrong turn; Harry had made a wrong turn, he faced a dead-end, and when he thought of ways to escape, he turned around and faced another dead-end. He was lost.

'Polyjuice,' Harry mumbled to the Fat Lady, she swung open to let him enter the Gryffindor common room.

It was almost ten (pm) and the common room was active, well, as active as it could be on a Christmas holiday. Fred and George stood with their backs to the fire, entertaining a range of Gryffindor students with one of their latest products. It appeared to be an ordinary book; it had a brown cover and looked, to Harry, just like a potions book. On the table Fred and George had moved beside them stood a couple dozen of the same books with the label "Thought-Turners".

Ron was sitting with Hermione at the small table beside the frost-whipped window; he was, to Harry's great astonishment, doing homework. And "doing homework" in Ron's case, meant waiting for Hermione to finish hers so he could get her to help him with his.

Harry went right past them both, overhearing Fred and George promoting their latest merchandise as he went past. He caught Hermione stare at him as he went past, but he could not look into her eyes right now, he knew he'd not be able to cope with any more pain (as strong, brave and warrior-like Harry is, nothing quite hurts like guilt…and love). The guilt was enough. Ron did not see him; he was busy pretending to understand his potions homework.

'Whatever your mind is on!' Fred's enthusiastic voice came as Harry's foot pressed on the first step on the spiral staircase.

'Will appear straight in this book!' George's voice joined in, with a group of "oohs".

Quite like the Mirror of Erised, Harry thought to himself as he was halfway up the stairs. Except of course, the mirror was based on your desires, not exactly what your mind was on.

'And teachers will just think you're revising! Turn the page and a new thought will appear!' Fred's voice came again.

Harry's hand was twisting the golden doorknob as he heard George say: 'so you can watch the Quidditch when-' but then Harry shut the door behind him. The book sounded brilliant, but right now Harry was drowning in guilt and he'd do anything to escape the day he was living in, it was why he fell straight onto his four poster bed and tried his best to fall asleep. It was difficult but Harry eventually managed to fall away from the land of guilt in where he was awake, into his dreams he would forget all his worries. But not this time, this time in his sleep he slid away into an unreal world where the guilt felt so very real; images of Hermione's tearstained letter that was only a foot below him as he slept (under his bed in his Hogwarts trunk), kept appearing in his mind. It would appear, and then all the edges would curl together as they burned, the letter would turn brown and black, crumple up and then turn into nothing but ashes. Was it his dream telling him that the relationship he desired with Hermione…that Hermione desired with him…was it his dream telling him that it would burn away just like Hermione's letter? Well, that was the first stab the guilt-demon Harry made himself attacked him with, and then suddenly Harry found himself walking in total darkness, a darkness that wavered as though he was at the bottom of the ocean, but on a gritty, stone path that he could only see around his feet as though he was holding a very dim lamp. Harry walked on this path feeling a rising guilt in his heart, his stomach…his head. He did not know how long he was walking this path for, there is no way of telling time in dreams, sometimes you just know, and sometimes you don't know. And if you don't know, then it normally doesn't matter. Nor did Harry know why his feet walked this path, where it led, and where the path even was. Then at the end of the wavering, bleak path, Harry saw a girl wearing the same pyjama's Hermione had worn today, she had brown bushy hair just like Hermione's…Harry was now about a metre or two away from the figure, then he stopped dead in his tracks…it was Hermione.

She did not look very alive; she looked as though she had drowned. Her face was a horrible pale colour, her eyes were closed and the veins that shown in her hands were a disgusting purple. It came to Harry now…that Hermione was dead. Harry went to move, to hold her, to shake her to life, but he could not. It was as though the black water he walked through effortlessly before had solidified into black ice. Then something happened that made Harry feel a cold chill as though the black-ice around him had melted, Hermione's dead, yellow eyes shot open, she stared at Harry for a moment as he stood there frozen, her bushy hair waved left and right in the water they stood in, and then she rose a purple, veiny hand at Harry and pointed at him.

'Argh!' Harry gasped as he woke from the nightmare; he sat up and pulled one curtain aside and looked around the dormitory. Every curtain was shut, and he assumed it was early morning from the sounds of Ron's snoring.

Harry fell back as his heart tried to break free through his ribs, sitting upright with his back pressed against the pillow. He was sweating how he had always done any time he had a dream that related to Voldemort. But this was nothing to do with Voldemort; this was to do with guilt at an immense level. He felt sick, pale, but only sick with himself for allowing Luna to do what she did to him…for losing control of his desires. Harry sat there in silence, rubbing his eyes and trying to steady himself. The image of Hermione's wavering, purple hand, her dead eyes that were in fact alive…it was a haunting image, one which Harry wished he had never seen, but he did, and he had only saw it because of what he allowed, what he done. He had to go for a walk, or something, he knew it was likely two in the morning, or even earlier than that, but going back to sleep now felt impossible.

Harry got out of bed (in his pyjamas), and left his dormitory. The common room was silent and empty, but the fire where Fred and George were advertising their "Thought-Turners" was still ablaze. So Harry went over to it to sit beside it, he noticed that the desk where Fred and George had a couple dozen stacks of Thought-Turners was still there, it had a couple of Thought-Turners still on it, so Harry took one (with intentions of putting it back where he had found it, of course). It felt just like an ordinary book and looked like one too, brown leather cover, a title on How to Wrestle a Werewolf, it had pages as you would expect, and inside of the book Harry noticed it was just a bunch of gibberish text.

Augi grrwp geiruf eddf kr, Harry read to himself from the random page he opened the Thought-Turner book up to, he wondered if it was some silly code Fred and George had made, or if it was a problem with their merchandise they had no knowledge of yet. But then Harry realised that all the ink letters were spreading apart as if a mute explosion had occurred in the centre of the page, it was why the letters were forming nonsense words. A few more seconds past, and then Harry was staring at a completely blank page with his mouth open in surprise. He was staring once more at Hermione, but this was no dream, no nightmare, this was real. Yet, the Hermione Harry was watching in the book was not exactly real, it was just what his mind was on and it had formed an image, a moving image that wavered as though she were deep in the ocean.

Harry felt an increase in guilt, honestly just seeing Hermione was enough to hurt Harry right now. He watched her in the book for several minutes feeling the heart in his chest ache a little, the warm flames licked at his hands all the while. Hermione beamed up at him wearing the stylish trench coat she wore that evening they spent in the Three Broomsticks, waving as she done so with a blue mitten on her small delicate hand. That day when they went to the Three Broomsticks was the day Harry had made her that promise which he had broken today.

When Harry shut the book and returned it to the table he took it from, he still felt as though sleeping was impossible, but he returned to his four poster bed and tried his best. As he lay in his comfortable bed once more with his eyes closed, the images of Hermione's tear drowned letter burning, Hermione's nightmarish, purple pointing hand, Luna's bare breasts bouncing and clapping together in the trophy room and Cho, flashed through his mind. Before Harry managed to sleep (somehow…he had no idea how he could manage sleep right now, but it happened), he fell into a dilemma.

Should I tell Hermione what happened?

It was a dilemma, and the easy way around it made the guilt so much harder to kill. So really, it was no dilemma at all; Harry knew what he had to do. Then, he fell asleep with one other thought drifting through his mind once more. It was Cho.