A/N: So I've been updating AO3 but apparently totally forgot to upload chapters here!

oOo

"Flint," Hermione began on the third night of silence, her eighth night on the Dreamful Draught.

Marcus Flint sighed from his spot across the Clearing. "Oh gods, Granger, this has been going well, don't ruin it."

"I'm sorry." Why was she apologizing to a figment of her dreams? "But this is-this is just so boring."

"Boring is good, Granger, learn to accept boring."

With a huff the witch pushed herself up off the grass to a sitting position. The sun was out, the sun was always out in this picturesque dreamscape, and the gentlest of breezes was rustling through the trees that surrounded them. Hermione had spent the first night enjoying the silence, just letting her thoughts come and go but then, as is often the case, the thoughts that began as a slow easy trickle became a torrent. You see brilliant minds do not rest and they are rarely placated and when given space to just think, well, think they do.

And they don't stop. Thinking, that is.

Hermione leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. "What've you been up to the last few years? You graduated in what? 1995?"

"94." Flint corrected, not sitting up.

"Ah 1994, that's right, the end of third year." Hermione nodded, remembering. "Same year as Oliver."

"Wanker."

"Rude," Hermione huffed.

"Hold on," Marcus said now sitting up. "Why are you asking me this? You don't even think I'm real."

Hermione nodded. "I don't, no, but just because you're a figment of my imagination doesn't mean we can't have a pleasant chat."

Marcus scowled. "We've never had a pleasant chat."

"We just did!" Hermione pointed out. "Even if it was in my own mind!"

The wizard rolled his eyes and laid back down.

Hermione tried again. "Tell me what you've been up to then."

"You won't believe me anyway. You'll just claim 'A dream spectre can't have a job and life, Dream Flint.' " Marcus's Hermione impression was actually quite good.

Of course it's good, it's all me anyway.

"Humor me."

"You're really not going to shut up, are you?" Marcus asked, almost desperately.

Hermione smiled. "Nope. I'm quite persistent."

"Ugh! Fine." He sat up again. "Spent a few years with the Montrose Magpies, didn't get along well with the coach, ended up with the Prides and now I'm an assistant coach with the Appleby Arrows."

Hermione frowned for a moment. I wonder if Ron told me that at some point? Surely my subconscious can do better than storing useless Quidditch information.

"Why didn't you get along with the coach of the Magpies?" Hermione asked, curious to see where this could go and still very much convinced her subconscious was trying to communicate something to her.

"Oh well the old bat-wait, why the fuck do you care?" Marcus enunciated the last word in particular.

"Tsk calling an older woman an "old bat" is quite sexist of you, Flint."

"She was both old and a bat, Granger, you should've seen her ears, like massive hulking membranous wings." Marcus spread out his large arms and hunched his shoulder as if to make his point. "I swear I saw her take off on them once."

And Hermione, surprising herself and Marcus if the look of shock on his face was anything to go by, laughed.

"That's quite funny actually, Flint," she said between giggles. "You're quite adept at physical comedy."

"Come again?"

"Physical comedy," Hermione repeated. "Y'know, a form of comedy focused on the manipulation of the body for a humorous effect.'

Marcus stared.

"Using your body to make people laugh," the witch clarified.

"Oh well, aye," Marcus nodded. "I've been told that before. I was pretty funny back at Hogwarts too, but I don't suppose you would've noticed."

"No," Hermione's voice turned icy for a moment. "It's difficult to find the humor when you're at the receiving end of the joke."

Quite unexpectedly, Marcus glanced away from Hermione, a look crossing his features that was almost shame.

Almost.

Interesting.

"Yea, bit of a bully I guess." The admittance was more than Hermione would ever expect from Real Marcus Flint, but the witch didn't have the energy to be cross with a dream projection.

"All is forgiven," Hermione said, waving her hand dismissively.

Flint raised a large eyebrow, his muscles visibly tense. "Really?"

"Really really." Hermione nodded. "Y'know for a Slytherin, you're rather an open book. You wear your feelings right on your face."

"Well if I'm just a figment of your imagination then that's how you want me to be, isn't it?" Marcus pointed out.

"Oh too right!" Hermione chuckled at the idea that Marcus Flint, even if he wasn't real, just corrected her. Maybe there was more to explore here. "You're fairly convinced you're Marcus Flint, then?"

"Oh gods, this again?" he whined. "My sanity can't handle it, Granger."

"Oh don't get your knickers in a twist, Flint, I'm just curious about something."

"Of course you are."

Hermione smiled in that way one does when they encounter what will be a particularly challenging arithmancy problem. Or was that just Hermione? "Do you think I'm a dream projection?"

Marcus tilted his head to the side, considering the witch. "What?" he asked after a moment.

"Well if you're convinced you're real-" she held up a hand before you could insist he was real. "Then what do you think I am?"

Marcus didn't respond, he simply blinked.

Odd. Let's play along.

"I mean, there are, I suppose, three- perhaps four distinct possibilities."

"Oh Salazar, don't list them," Marcus groaned, shutting his eyes and rolling his head back.

Hermione ignored his pleas. "Possibility One and what I deem to be the most likely, you are a creation of my subconscious appearing in my dream."

Marcus was still groaning indistinctly, perhaps to drown her out.

"Possibility Two- which is least likely- I am a creation of your subconscious appearing in your dream."

"Why is that the least likely?"

"As Descartes wrote, Flint, cogito ergo sum."

"English, Granger."

"I think, therefore I am. If I can think then I must exist," she clarified with a smirk.

"Well, I think! I'm thinking right now that you're being a huge swot."

"Ha! True," Hermione agreed. She really was. "But I can only confirm without a doubt my own ability to think, not yours."

Marcus rolled his eyes.

"Possibility Three, we are both in fact real and somehow our dreams are interacting. Which is more likely than you being real and me being fake, but less likely than me being real and you being fake."

Marcus waited a moment before asking, "And?"

"Hmm?"

"You said there were three, maybe four possibilities."

"Oh yes! Possibility Four, we're both dream spectres, but according to Descartes, at least one of us has to be real lest we devolve into radical doubt."

"Wouldn't want that," Marcus muttered.

"I suppose though," Hermione continued. "That Descartes was really only entitled to say that "thinking is occurring" when you consider that his philosophy hinged on the premise that the "I" exists."

"Oh gods, what?"

Hermione heaved a long suffering sigh. "You should really read something, Flint."

"I do read, Granger," Marcus spit out. "But just because I don't read what you, an academic elitist, thinks is important doesn't make me less intelligent."

Hermione Granger blinked, twice, very slowly.

"Gods, Flint, you-you're right," Hermione admitted, her hand going to her mouth. "I was being a, as you put it, an elitist bitch-"

"I didn't say 'bitch'."

"No, but I just did, because I was and I-I'm sorry," Hermione almost whispered, unaccustomed as she was to being put in her place.

Stop apologizing to a dream spectre.

"Fucks sake, Granger, don't make a big deal of it," Marcus said, shifting a bit uncomfortably.

"I'm not making a big deal of it," Hermione insisted. "I just want to apologize, that's all."

Marcus eyed the witch for a moment, dark eyes narrowed. "Alright, apology accepted."

"Really?" Hermione's eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

"Really really." Marcus grinned, mimicking Hermione's earlier response.

Hermione almost reminded him he couldn't possibly be the real Marcus Flint because the real Marcus Flint would never have forgiven a muggleborn for anything, but she really wasn't in the mood.

"Well, uuh- thank you for, for accepting my apology."

"Ha, shut up, Granger."

oOo

May 4th, 2009

(6:28 am) Malfoy, are you awake?

(6:30 am) no

(6:31 am) I need to ask you something.

(6:36 am) fuck, granger, this can wait until we're in the office

(6:37 am) Am I an academic elitist?

(6:45 am) Malfoy?

(6:49 am) i'm going back to sleep

(6:52 am) I'm being serious!

(6:54 am) i know you are