Almost A Dream Come True
Chapter Twenty-One: The Dream
"Summer?"
Her head whipped around. "What?" she snapped. She hadn't slept well last night, nor the night before then, nor any night in the past several long weeks. Her nerves were shot.
"Where are you going?" Hermione was already awake and sitting up in bed, holding a forgotten textbook in her lap. It was a quarter to nine on Saturday morning. Only two weeks since Summer had told her cousin and her professor: neither had mentioned it since then. And no cursed objects had arrived in her mail yet, either, so she presumed Malfoy had kept quiet. But she knew better than to give him the benefit of the doubt: it had, after all, only been three days since they had exchanged secrets.
"Potions," she replied tersely, stuffing some notes into a bag and sweeping out of the dormitory. Summer didn't mean to be curt with her cousin, but sometimes Hermione's overwhelming urge to know everything at once was annoying. She didn't have time for idle chatter. Summer had a Plan and it was well past time to enact it.
On the way to the dungeons, she performed what had become a sort of Saturday-morning ritual. She usually left the dorm before any of the other girls woke up (today with Hermione being an exception). Descending through the castle, she would make a detour past the Moving Room and peek in, out of curiosity, concern, and self-preservation. Merlin only knew what Malfoy might be getting up to. In the Great Hall, she would hurriedly drain a cup of tea (by pouring its contents into other cups) and examine the tea leaves. Perhaps it was a bit superstitious, but Summer needed all the help she could get, and had begun checking leaves on a daily basis. So far, no definite results, but there were vague warnings and a sense of urgency. She would never eat in the Hall on Saturdays; instead Summer visited the kitchens and stole (or rather, was forced to take) hot, fresh baked goods from Hoppit, Tweezle, or Dobby. And then it was the home stretch: stuffing the food quickly in her mouth, straightening her robes, and trying to look somewhat awake so that when she knocked, it would be precisely 9 o'clock.
Professor Snape had been unusually kind lately: he had simply presented her with a list of trickier, more fickle potions that she should be capable of brewing, and had let her take her pick. Each week, she worked through another potion or two. She had already done one for Hagrid to prepare the pumpkin patch for the coming spring thaw, and a potion with a scourgify-effect for Filch.
Today, without precisely knowing why, she had chosen the blood-replenishing one, and brewed up a huge cauldron-full.
"There," Summer said, with great satisfaction several long hours later, at last finishing the complex blood-replenishing potion. She began bottling it, and set one small vial on the potion master's desk for his approval, then got to work on her own concoction in a much smaller cauldron. They worked in silence for another half hour.
"Incorrect," he sneered, after taking a moment away from marking essays to conduct an analysis. Underneath his nastiness, though, Summer detected a hint of surprise.
"Is it? What's wrong?" she asked, momentarily pausing in her work. She made a mental note to add more poppy root to her inky blue mix.
"You have substituted the lavender with feverfew," he said with an icy tone.
"Oh, that."
"If you continue to treat the delicate subject of Potions with such callousness, you will undoubtedly find yourself without eyebrows very soon. Clearly I had overestimated you, if you are so dense as to forget that feverfew yields explosive results when mixed with dragon's blood."
Summer cast an observant eye around her bench. It was suddenly, painfully, obvious that no explosion had taken place and everything was tidy, in its place. "That's why I added three extra flutterbies. They have a calming effect that counterbalances it."
She calmly returned to her own work, adding the poppy and a pinch of Arabian sand. Though Snape's face remained a stony mask, it was funny to see the mix of disappointment in being wrong and the slight twinge of pride in his student. Although, at this point, Summer wondered if she saw those emotions or felt them.
In the end, he grudgingly tested the potion on a mouse and had to admit that it worked as well as, if not better than, the original formula.
"What was your reasoning behind the substitution?"
"If it's going to be used in the Hospital Wing, and I'm assuming that it will, then it won't interact well with Madam Pomfrey's other potions. From what Ron and Harry tell me, she gives liberal doses of Dreamless Sleep. That has enough lavender on its own. Too much lavender loses its effectiveness. And, it has marigold oil in it. That would suffuse the subtler properties of excessive lavender, so I switched it for feverfew because they balance one another better. Having never tasted it myself, I'm also under the impression that the taste of the frogspawn is disgusting. The flutterbies draw out unpleasant odors and tastes."
He raised an eyebrow at the impromptu lecture.
She half-shrugged. "I am related to Hermione, after all," she said with a quirky grin. Summer began stirring her potion in a slow, reverse figure-eight pattern.
"Hmph," was the response.
There was a moment of silence as he watched Summer's potion turn into a fog-colored substance with a similar consistency. She bottled this, too, and waited for his comment. She was sure he would say something if he had been paying any attention at all to the ingredients. Several were borrowed from sleeping draughts, some were also in the Intuition Infusion, and a very few came from inhibition and control potions. And then there were your standard questionable potions ingredients: wormwood, fairy blood, and splinters off a broken wand, all of which tended to be associated with Dark potions. Surveying the concoction, she was certain that he dearly wanted to say something but was restraining himself.
"Perhaps there is something I should know," he said in a steely tone.
Summer felt guilt creeping up on her. She had promised him, after all, to speak up if anything had changed.
And it had changed. The Seer was dying. She was sure of it. Weaker every night, with less words coming although the prophecy seemed to be on the brink. Summer had researched her options, and, considering the need to act quickly, had decided on this. She wasn't one to go jumping into such hazardous messes without doing her homework on it first. So if Snape questioned her, she wasn't likely to take to it very well. As it was, her temper flared.
"I am a student, a witch, a psychic, and yet I'm nearly completely in the dark. You are on both sides of this, sir," she hissed, "and are much better informed than I. So excuse me if this is harsh, but if I'm going to be throwing myself in the line of fire, I'd damn well like to know why."
The air crackled with nervous energy, and Summer was very aware that she had definitely overstepped the professor-student line of respect.
"You have reason to believe that there will be a line of fire, Miss Granger?"
She grumbled. "Not yet." Her fingers tightened around the bottle with her potion.
"Very well," he replied. Professor Snape did not look pleased at all. "Do try not to get yourself killed," he added, flicking his gaze briefly at her potion. "I imagine it would be difficult to explain the mess to the Headmaster."
She supposed that was his way of expressing concern. Or maybe he really was that squeamish about the blood. She replied with a curt nod, pocketed her potion and left the dungeons. Once she had reached the first windows, she was shocked to see how dark it was outside: again, an entire day had been spent in a dank, gloomy dungeon with an anti-social professor, and for Summer the time had flown by. A small voice in the back of her mind whispered that maybe she really was suited to Slytherin. She ignored the thought, but only half-heartedly. Slytherin was starting to grow on her a little bit.
They ambushed her as she entered the Great Hall for dinner. Harry, flanked by an apologetic Hermione and a supportive Ron, marched up to her.
"We need to talk to you about--" he began.
"Not today," Summer cut in. "And not here." She glanced around at the students milling about before dinner and couldn't believe that Harry had chosen such a public place for what she assumed to be a conversation requiring some confidentiality.
"But it's--"
"Important. I know." Summer met Hermione's gaze for a moment. The slight widening of the other girl's eyes confirmed Summer's suspicion: Hermione had told the boys, and if she hadn't, then she was about to. Summer directed her next comment to her cousin. "I can't talk about it today," she said again, the small weight of the bottle in her pocket bumping as they began walking in to dinner. "Tomorrow... tomorrow I should know... well, tomorrow, in any case."
Once again, a silent exchange passed between the two Grangers and they nodded a mutual vague understanding.
"D'you ever get the feeling you don't know what's going on with girls?" Ron muttered to Harry.
Harry laughed and the tension immediately dissipated. "All the time, Ron."
She was left in peace for the rest of the day, and instead they submitted to Hermione's nagging about upcoming exams. It was the beginning of March, which was, according to Hermione, a disastrously late time to begin preparing for exams. As they sat in front of the fire in the common room, surrounded by books, Hermione shot Summer several worried glances. And as the girls were getting into bed, again it looked as though her cousin was about to speak up. In the end, Hermione still hadn't said anything by the time Summer pulled the curtains closed around her bed and cast a silencing charm.
She tucked her wand under her pillow in easy reach and produced the small bottle of foggy potion. Gazing at the swirling mixture that was caught halfway between liquid and fog, Summer shivered again as her mind catalogued the ingredients. Wormwood for inducing prophetic visions. Splinters of a broken wand for submission of others to the drinker's will. Fairy's blood for control.
A wave of nausea and disgust swept over her at the thought of what she was about to do. At the same time, Summer also had a distressing feeling that if she didn't find out precisely what was going on with the Dark side, then they, all of them at Hogwarts, would be at a serious disadvantage.
She took a deep breath. "Bottoms up," she muttered, uncapped the bottle, and drained it in one go. Within seconds, she was asleep, the bottle rolling from her limp fingers.
The dream began as always. First, there was a sensation of dizziness and complete blindness. Slowly, she could discern the crooked lines of stone, the flicker of greasy candles, and eventually the moss on the dungeon walls. Everything was spinning, and the Seer was having trouble holding his head up. There was a rasping noise. The quill, was her first thought. But it was accompanied by a different sort of rasp. The Seer's breath was ragged, heavy, strained. Summer could feel the effects of the wormwood as she, too, back in Hogwarts, began having difficulty breathing. It was the thick smoke, and the heady incense. As the subtleties of the potion kicked in, Summer tried to focus her blurry mind on the writing.
There was a small whimper. The Seer was making a feeble attempt at resisting Summer's control. The eyes were slow and the mind was hesitant to distinguish the writing on the parchment. Bizarrely, it was written in rhyme.
Folly it may be, but persistence you will see.
Seek your allies and mark the day:
meet prophet's match, begin your stay.
Stand, Dark, when the Easter Sun rises.
Divided will fall: take poisoned prizes.
The moment that the quill dropped from his blood-stained fingers, the quill glowed a victorious blue. It must have been a signal to the Seer's caretakers. Indeed, there was a scuttling at the door as someone rushed off.
Desperation welled up inside of her. Or was it the Seer's emotion? Fear, too, and bone-deep weariness. Startled, Summer realized that those were all the Seer's emotions, the product of his incoherent thoughts. There was also a hint of... Pleading? She sought to identify the emotion.
Footsteps echoed and approached the heavy wooden door of the cell. Someone was coming. Summer raised her head, bending the Seer's body to her will. For his part, he seemed almost relieved that she was steering him.
The door creaked open. The Seer's breathing, already laboured, now stopped entirely. His heart pounded loudly in her ears, and his feeling of sheer terror encompassed everything.
Summer was staring into the blood-red, snake-like eyes of the Dark Lord.
He met her eyes only for a moment and then, full of purpose, snatched up the parchment greedily. His maniacal joy twisted that deformed face into a hideous expression.
In that terrifying moment when the Seer and the Dark Lord matched gazes, Summer was suddenly aware of two things. The first: her own terror was mounting exponentially. The second: the Seer's will gave out at that precise moment. A rush of emotion came at her, mingling with his already overwhelming fear. Thankful and desperate, he permeated her consciousness with a desire to flee, and then that presence receded into a dark corner to recover and pray for the best. The potion's ingredients, combined with the Seer's willing abandon, thrust Summer forcefully into his body. Her senses exploded as her mind departed fully from the realm of Hogwarts and the rational world.
The door was open. Voldemort had only just seized the paper. He must not have caught the subtle shift, that indescribable something in the eyes, which happened when the Seer's psyche collapsed. She had a split-second opportunity.
Fueled by the terror of two diviner's, and amplified by their connection, Summer sprinted into the dim hall and was dodging around corners before the Dark Lord's first curse hit the wall over her ear. (Her ear? Or the Seer's? There was no time for such distinctions.) Adrenaline surged through her blood. She could still feel the shadow of the boy's soul and his plea to escape this hell-hole.
A Death-Eater appeared at the next turn. Voldemort must have called his reinforcements.
Summer dove to the ground and the immobilizing spell narrowly missed her. From a side door, a man with a pale, pinched face and buggy eyes jumped out. Wormtail, supplied the boy's mind. For one awful moment, Wormtail grabbed at her and caught the boy's ankle. But the other Death Eater shot a stream of fire at her from his wand, and Wormtail lost his grip. She scuttled away and rushed forward again.
The poor Seer's limbs were shaking. Summer could barely breathe and wondered if the spell that had just hit her somehow turned her lungs into fire as well. But still determined to live, she careened forward, taking as many turns as possible in an attempt to get more than a few inches ahead of her captors. The boy didn't have a wand, of course. The only chance to escape was now, before more of Voldemort's servants had a chance to respond to the summons.
It took her a moment before she realized that there were tears streaming down the boy's face. Again, she couldn't tell if it was her emotion or his that was causing it. She wagered it was both. Her sense of smell, at least, was unimpaired. Through their joint effort, she took the turns for halls with fresher air. The withdrawn presence of the Seer seemed to be pointing silently. That way. Up. Out. That way.
She turned left, into a passage that seemed to incline and lead out of the ground. In another few seconds, she would be out of the dungeons, and could find a way out of this stronghold.
But the passage was straight, without any alcoves or doors until the very end, and Summer made for a very good target. She couldn't tell who was casting which spells, because both Death Eaters (or maybe now there were more than just two? The barrage of spells made it seem so) were now using non-verbal magic. She felt a prickling pain and her left arm fell limp at her side. Another spell hit her knees, causing her to stumble and have the breath knocked out of her. She kept running, and turned right at the end of the corridor.
In this more populated area, the Death Eaters behind her could shout warnings to those ahead. Doors were opening on either side, surely about to reveal more Dark wizards with wands held ready.
Desperation and despair filled her and the Seer, and she sprinted, fairly flying down the hall. This was the last burst of energy, she knew. Summer directed herself to the first set of upward stairs (illogical, perhaps, but once again, it seemed to be the direction of the Seer's subconscious) and took the stairs three at a time.
There was a commotion behind her, and again another hand tried to grab her but it slid off without any true contact. More Death Eaters were chasing her, she thought she could hear them pounding up the stairs, but it might only have been her heart.
The flight of steps had a landing halfway up, before they turned to wind up to the second floor. A burst of hope filled her. Seven more stairs. There was a window of thick glass. Four stairs. But her momentum might be enough to shatter it. She ignored the drop that would certainly follow. Almost at the landing now, a badly aimed hex shattered the glass, sparing her some difficulty.
Summer stumbled onto the landing, muscles protesting the work after so much inaction. Two more steps and she could hurl herself out of the window. Her mind registered the sound of waves crashing on cliffs. Perhaps, she thought grimly, she would be hurling herself and the Seer out to their deaths. Still, it was better than being the puppet of the Dark Lord.
"Sectumsempra!"
A Death Eater's final attempt to stop the Seer from escaping. The voice was cruel, cold, unfeeling, but with a timbre that seemed almost familiar.
This curse did not fly harmlessly over her head. It did not shatter another pane of glass, nor blast a section of wall into pieces. The Death Eater had aimed well.
Summer gasped at the sharp stinging pain that sprung viciously upon her back. It was a long, deep, burning slash stretching from her right shoulder downwards. Her knees buckled and she fell through the window, the sharp edges of the glass tearing at her skin.
Cool, blissful relief, even as the last spells of the Death Eaters shot after her into the darkness of night. The wind off the sea caressed her skin. The Seer's body fell through the air, rushing to meet the sharp cliffs and deadly ocean. With some last reserve of strength, drawn from the depths of despair, the Seer turned his body in midair, as though to look back at his prison. Summer felt a tight compression in her chest (his chest?) and darkness closing in on the edges of her vision. Before she could feel the body slam against cold stone or brutal wave, the Seer lost consciousness and she was forced from the body. She hoped, with her last coherent thought, that one of them would survive.
Someone would need to warn Dumbledore.
-
Severus Snape stopped at the door of his chambers, fingers still on the clasp of his traveling cloak. The stinging pain on his left arm abruptly faded. The summons of the Dark Lord had woken him in the middle of the night, forcing him to get up. As suddenly and inexplicably as it had come, the pain in his Dark Mark receded, which usually didn't happen until the Death Eater had appeared before the Dark Lord; or until the summons was recalled, with no necessity for a meeting. That appeared to be the case now.
There was no point in returning to sleep. It was already past four. Snape left his rooms to walk the halls of the castle. This early in the morning, without the screaming idiocy of children, it was almost pleasant. He had made it as far as the open courtyard just above the dungeons when the albatross-shaped Patronus landed in front of him.
"Severus, I'm sorry to wake you. There has been an incident. The Hospital Wing, if you please," said the voice of Albus Dumbledore.
Obediently, the professor headed for the Hospital Wing, absent-mindedly rubbing his left arm as he did so. He was filled with a strange, discomforting feeling. Surely, this was no coincidence.
-
Hermione woke suddenly, sitting up in her bed and listening again for the noise that had roused her from sleep.
There it was. A sort of whimpering, and shuddery breathing. She pulled the curtains away from her bed. The noise was coming from the bed to her left, that of her cousin.
More fully awake now, Hermione clambered out of her bed and tugged aside the curtains of Summer's bed. The girl was twisted in her sheets, limbs making odd jerky movements, face contorted with concentration. Her skin was clammy and pale. The edge of her wand was poking out from underneath a pillow, and a bottle lay forgotten beside it.
Swallowing nervously, Hermione remembered Summer saying that she would know something more the next day. What had the foolish girl done? It looked as though she had taken a potion… but for what? And where had the potion come from? Summer did spend a lot of time in the dungeons, but was it her own brewing (and how reliable was her potion-making?)? Or did it come from Professor Snape, in which case, was there a reason to worry? Harry's constant doubts about the Potions Master came to mind.
Hermione did not have the luxury of examining these thoughts. Her cousin was issuing more frantic sounds now, and her breath was coming in short, shallow spurts.
"Summer?" Hermione said tentatively. She reached out a hand to touch the other girl's arm. Merlin, she's freezing. She shook Summer's arm a little. "Summer, wake up." No reaction. Hermione glanced around to see if her other roommates had been woken, but both Lavender and Parvati were soundly sleeping. She looked back down at her cousin and her fingers tightened automatically around Summer's hand. Whatever was happening to her, it certainly did not look like sweet dreams. Hermione could only hope that the nightmare would finish soon.
The other Granger let out a strangled cry, her back tersely arching, and then her body gave a final, violent jolt, nearly causing her to fall out onto the floor. Luckily, Hermione managed to grab the girl's shoulders and keep her semi-reclined.
"Summer?" she asked again, more urgently this time. Her hands felt something wet and, in the near darkness of the dorm, she saw that they came away dark and shiny from the shoulders of Summer's nightshirt. She grabbed her wand.
"Ennervate."
Summer's eyes fluttered unseeingly for a moment. Then her entire weight collapsed against Hermione. Cradling her, Hermione felt panic rising up in her when she realized that Summer's breathing was barely distinguishable. She strongly suspected the slick substance to be blood.
A lifetime of logic and years of harrowing experience with Harry and Ron had molded Hermione's ability to clamp down on panic until things were safe again. This instinct kicked in now and she levitated the body of her cousin, also grabbing the bottle discarded on the pillow. She moved silently through Gryffindor Tower, out into the halls, and to the Hospital Wing, all the while thinking of possible explanations.
Madam Pomfrey, though wearing a house coat and fuzzy slippers, appeared when Hermione burst in to the infirmary, calling for the nurse. Immediately, the mediwitch's wand was flicking. Lights came on, salves and bandages came flying out of drawers, coalescing on a table in neat order. Seeing the blood, she grew pale and, swish, started a fire in the fireplace.
"Headmaster, come quickly, please," Pomfrey said, after tossing a pinch of Floo powder into the flames. Only then did she turn to speak to Hermione. "What happened?"
"She—she was dreaming," Hermione explained lamely.
"Then how on earth did she come by that gash on her back?" the matron demanded. Now the two of them had maneuvered Summer's unconscious form onto a bed, lying her on her stomach so as to reach the wound. The blood was coming thick and fast, seeming to not have slowed at all since Hermione had first discovered it.
"I don't know." Hermione felt very strange, for once being unable to answer a question. The unreality of the entire situation made her think for a moment that maybe she was still asleep.
Madam Pomfrey made a long, complex wand motion over Summer's back, which removed the fabric around the wound and siphoned off some of the blood. With another couple of twirls in quick succession, the skin tried to pull itself together and a golden thread appeared, stitching. But the blood kept gushing out and dissolved the stitches almost as quickly as they had appeared.
"Oh dear," murmured Pomfrey, and with another swish of her wand, several mounds of gauze flew obligingly toward the patient. Two of the gauze pads, she handed to Hermione. "For now, all we can do is apply pressure."
"The muggle way?" Hermione asked, bewildered. As a muggle-born, it was rare for her to encounter bits of what she liked to think of as her "mother-culture" in the wizarding world.
"Not all their ideas are bad." The two women bent over the prone sleeper, palms flat and pressing the gauze on the wound. Blood still squished through the fabric, and Hermione spent a few excruciatingly long moments waiting for the bleeding to stop. It didn't happen, though, and soon she somehow had her cousin's blood all over her. Surely there couldn't be much left in her? Summer's already pale skin seemed to be white as the sheets she lay on. The panic that Hermione had been shoving down threatened to surface again.
"I do hope Albus thought of bringing Severus," Madam Pomfrey said absently, glancing furtively towards the doors of the Hospital Wing.
Hermione followed the nurse's sightline in shock. Professor Snape? Whatever for?
That moment, thankfully, the Headmaster himself swept in, looking not at all frazzled to be up at this hour. He was followed by a rather less put-together Professor McGonagall, who immediately entered into a dialogue of questions with Madam Pomfrey.
"What's happened?"
"Miss Granger has been injured, but I can't figure out how."
"Miss Granger?" McGonagall looked at Hermione, before settling on Summer, as though forgetting, like most people had, that there were two Miss Grangers. "Oh… yes. When? How did it happen? Was anyone there?"
"Where, in the dormitory?"
"Of course. Poppy, can't you do something about all that blood?"
"But how? Where's Severus?"
"Do you think he'll know what to do?" Minerva McGonagall fixed her steely gaze on the nurse.
"Who could better deal with Dark magic than he?"
"Dark magic?"
"I suspect."
"But how?"
As if she held all the answers to their questions, Hermione suddenly found herself pinned by the frantic attention of the two older women, and felt very childlike, in her blood-speckled nightgown, messy hair, and bare feet.
"Now now," Albus Dumbledore cut in, with his characteristic soothing tone. "Let us wait for Professor Snape to arrive so that we might have some answers, and spare Miss Granger multiple retellings of what promises to be a very difficult story."
"But…" began Hermione, a bit reluctant to speak up. "Can she wait?"
Everyone turned to look at Summer.
"No need to worry," said Albus, for once forcing his good cheer, and clapping his hands together. "I'm sure he'll be in any mo…. Ah, Severus! How good of you to join us!" At that moment, Snape entered, looking like he would rather be anywhere else at 5 in the morning, preferably a bed, instead of assembling in the Hospital Wing for some godforsaken idiotic student. "Now," continued the headmaster, "we may begin."