Harry was truly glad to be back at Hogwarts; despite the events of the year before the huge castle was almost like a second home to him, even if it meant he had to see Snape on an almost daily basis, and it did seem that despite the fact that the man had saved his life the year before, he was no fonder of Harry than he had been the first time around.
The other unpleasant part of coming back to school was DADA lessons, which, in Harry's opinion should be a lot more fun than they were. His father was fairly passionate about the subject, so Harry had, over the years, picked up on a lot of his enthusiasm, and yet Lockhart was actually shaping up to be an even worse teacher than Quirrell, which really should be impossible since Quirrell had actively tried to kill him. The first lesson hadn't even started well, with a test to see if they'd read their books, and even that would have been reasonable if it had at least included the bits of the books that were relevant to the subject, though as Harry had pointed out while flicking through a book that detailed Lockharts supposed defeat of a werewolf, it was all a load of rubbish.

Even Hermione had to acknowledge that, since Remus was very upfront with his werewolf issue with Harry now that he was old enough to understand.

But the test had been on Lockhart himself, ridiculous questions that had no impact on the subject at all. And to top things off the idiot had released Cornish Pixies into the class without telling them how to handle them and chaos had reigned rampant. Even the spell that he'd tried to use to try and regain some control had been made up. It was Hermione who ended up doing most of the work getting them locked back into their cages after he rushed out as soon as the bell rung announcing the end of the disastrous lesson.

By the time the weekend came Harry had had enough of Snape and Lockhart that he wanted to scream, of course he couldn't just have a day to relax because before it was even dawn on the Saturday morning Oliver Wood woke him up and practically dragged him out and down to the field for Quidditch practice, and he spent the rest of the day finishing up the homework they'd been given in their first week, with help from Hermione, with them both helping Draco with theirs, and just relaxing in the common room, dozing slightly once he was finished with his homework, since he knew that the others would wake him when Ron and Draco were finished with theirs too.

He woke with a start when he heard a voice that made him shiver and his blood almost turn to ice, "Come... come to me... Let me rip you... Let me tear you... Let me kill you..." he let out a loud noise, falling off of the chair in his panic looking around with a shocked look on his face, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Draco frowned, "Harry are you okay? Did you have a nightmare or something?"

"I..." Harry hesitated, "I heard something... I thought..." he shook his head slowly, "I... didn't you guys hear it?"

"What voice?" Ron leaned forward slightly, "Are you okay? What did you think you heard?"

"It... it was this voice... it... it was saying... come to me.. talking about... ripping and tearing-" he swallowed hard, his voice cracking slightly, "It said, 'Let me rip you, let me tear you, let me kill you.'."

Hermione laid a hand on his arm, "Harry I didn't hear anything like that." Ron and Draco both nodded with Hermione as they helped Harry to his feet and into the chair again, "It might have just been a nightmare that woke you up... after what happened last year..."

"I.. maybe." Harry stated slowly, doubtfully, "I just... I guess it could have just been a part of a nightmare it just... I could have swore I heard it."

"I'm sure if it was real we'd have heard it too." Draco shook his head, "Hermione's right after what happened last year you can't be blamed for having some weird nightmares Harry."

"And if it is something more then it'll happen again." Ron pointed out, "So we don't need to panic until you've heard the voice at least once more right?"

"Right." Harry looked away, "I hope I was just dreaming because if not... that voice just... it terrified me."

"It'll be okay." Hermione wrapped an arm around his shoulder, "Trust us Harry... and... if it wasn't just a dream then you have us right? And you know if anyone can figure out it'll be us."

"After all we figured out about the stone last year." Ron paused, "Though considering how that ended that might not have been the best example huh?"

"But you get the point." Draco cut in, rolling his eyes at the way that Ron flushed, "If something is wrong then who better to deal with it than us? And if worst comes to worst we just tell a teacher."

"Yeah." Harry snorted, "Because that worked so well last time. McGonagall didn't listen to a word we said!"

"Then we do it alone." Ron recuperated fast, "We did it before, if there is something serious going on and no one is willing to listen to us we deal with it ourselves. But this time you won't end up alone at the end of it because we won't let you."

"But it won't come to that." Hermione stated firmly, "Because the chances are that it was just a dream, so don't get all panicked yet okay Harry?" he gave a small smile and a nod.

"Right.. I'm getting myself too worked up about all this when we don't even know that anything is wrong."

"Exactly." Hermione glanced at the clock, "And it's getting late anyways... we should all probably head to bed... honestly it's no wonder you were dozing off."

"Yeah... yeah a proper night sleep does sound good" Harry stood slowly, and, followed by Ron and Draco, made his way slowly up to bed.