Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Note: this chapter may seem a bit creepy, so
be warned. Also, for a part later in this chapter, I thought I'd make one of the characters
known in the story. No one falls in love with anyone in this chapter, so DON'T FLAME
ME!
Chapter Nine: Of Mists and Black Oceans
The next several months went surprisingly fast for Harry. Everything seemed
surprisingly normal, except for the dementors lurking around every corner. All the
traumatic things that happened previously in the year seemed like distant memories
nowadays. But Harry had been at Hogwarts too long to know that things would stay in
this calm state.
And right he was. Things started to get a bit weird in the month of April, for
Harry at least. It occurred one day, or rather one night. The day was perfectly normal. It
was the night that was eerie...
Harry had gotten into bed and fell asleep immediately. Harry had always had
weird dreams (if you count the ones where his scar ended up searing with pain) when he
was at Hogwarts. But the one he had this night had to be the strangest, if not the
creepiest.
He dreamed that he was on his bed, drifting on some kind of ocean. He couldn't
see any land; most of his surroundings were covered in a white mist. Looking down at
the water, Harry could see that its color was pitch black. Harry had never quite seen a
black ocean before; he supposed it was just that color because of the weather.
That wasn't the only thing strange about this ocean. There was something about it
that drew Harry to it, somehow. It was almost as though a voice inside his head was
telling him to go in it. Harry knew for a fact that you should never go swimming in bad
weather, but feeling he had to go in there was irresistible. He dove in.
Though the surface of the water was completely dark, the inside looked as though
someone lit a flashlight in the water, Harry was able to see. This was a very strange
ocean. Harry had the gut instinct that something he needed to find was in there... But
what could it be?
Harry didn't have to wait long to find out. A moment later, he saw something
nearby floating in the water. From where Harry was, it looked like a body. Alive or
dead, Harry didn't know. Curious, he swam towards it. As soon as he got a close look at
it, Harry let out a cry of amazement that ended up as bubbles.
It was the body of Tom Marvolo Riddle; Voldemort when he was sixteen years
old. Harry had an encounter with a memory of Riddle in his second year, and he never
forgot what he looked like.
Riddle's eyes were open, blank, and completely expressionless. It looked as
though he was dead because his body was completely limp. For a moment that seemed
like a hundred years, Harry stared into the face of the boy who grew up to be such a
monster. Then he quickly swam to the surface, gasping for air.
Treading water, Harry looked around for the bed he was on, but it was no where to
be found. "Hullo?" he called out. "Is anyone here?"
There was no response.
Getting tired quick, shivering from the cold air, he yelled again, "Is someone
there?"
Suddenly, the water began to rumble. Harry whirled around and saw shadowy
figures with red gleaming eyes emerging from the black water. The things stared at Harry
for a moment or two, and then they slowly walked towards him.
Harry's first thought was to swim to the nearest shore- but he couldn't see
anything in this fog. Instead, he cried out, "What are you?"
The shadowy creatures made no response, they simply kept on walking towards
him. They surrounded him, closing off every exit so that Harry couldn't swim away from
them. Without warning, to Harry's horror, they seized him and started to pull them under
the water.
Terrified, Harry tried to fight them off. He yelled for help, kicked them, and tried
to slip out of their tight grasps. The creatures pulled him under the water. Unable to
breath, Harry barely managed to wrench himself free, and surfaced, gulping in air. But
the creatures weren't defeated yet; still underwater, they caught him by the ankle and
tried to pull him back under.
Harry tried to yell for help again, but he was so exhausted from yelling and
struggling against those things that he could barely make a sound.
"Please," he said faintly. "Somebody... help me..." He knew he was fighting a
losing battle. If nobody else came to help him, the creatures would drown him for sure.
As though someone had heard this thought, there came a million bright lights from
within the mists. Whatever they were, they shone bright as stars. The one that was
closest to Harry spoke to him in an echoing, silvery voice.
"Fight it."
"Fight... what...?" Harry said in between gasps. He paddled like mad to keep his
head out of the water. "What... is... this... place?"
"Unless you can fight it, the darkness will completely consume you."
"Please...." panted Harry, losing his strength. "I... need... help."
"Only you can pull yourself out. We are but guides. Only you can control your
fate."
"I can't do it alone! Please help me! I... can't... fight... it... anymore..."
Harry couldn't move his limbs anymore. With a gigantic tug, the shadow
creatures underwater pulled him under the pitch black ocean... Harry let out a scream as
he sunk into the water...
Harry woke up gasping for air. He looked around him. He was in his dormitory,
dry and warm. It was a dream... but it seemed so real....
What did it mean? What were those things he saw; the dark shadows and the
bright lights? The whole dream made no sense at all...
Feeling wide awake and confused, Harry got out of bed and went to the common
room. He was sure it was half-past midnight, judging from how dark it was outside. He
sank into one of the armchairs, thinking about the whole dream and what it could mean.
No sooner had he just started to calm down, there was the sound of someone else entering
the common room.
"Harry?" the voice of Ginny Weasley called out quietly. Harry turned around and
saw Ginny standing nearby in her nightdress, wrapped in an embroidered blanket. She
stared at him wide-eyed.
"Couldn't sleep either?" she asked him.
Harry nodded. "Sort of."
"Do you mind if I stay here for awhile?"
"No, I don't mind."
Ginny sat down in an armchair opposite him. She looked a little distraught.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked her.
"I just couldn't sleep, that's all," replied Ginny. "It's because of those dementors.
Just knowing their here keeps you wide awake. Now, why are you up so late?"
Harry looked at her. He didn't know Ginny as well as Ron and Hermione... but he
had to tell someone...
"It was this really weird dream I had," Harry began.
Ginny nodded and said, "Go on."
"Well, in it, I was at this dark kind of ocean covered in mist. I was kind of drawn
to it, so I went in..." He trailed off, not knowing if he should tell Ginny the next part, but
he went on. "In the water, I saw a dead body... It was Tom Riddle..."
The moment Harry said the name, "Tom Riddle", Ginny flinched. Harry couldn't
blame her. In her first year at Hogwarts, Ginny had a traumatic experience involving
Tom Riddle's enchanted diary. "What happened then?" Ginny asked a little shakily.
"I went to the surface, and these.... these shadow creatures appeared and started to
pull me under. And then these bright lights started to appear. One of them told me to
fight it, or else it would consume me. It said only I could get myself out. Then those
shadow things started to pull me under..."
Ginny stared at him. "Sounds like a strange dream."
"I'm used to them," said Harry. Something else entered his mind... the dream that
he had earlier this year... should he tell her?
"You know, I also kind of had another dream this year... only I don't think that it
was really a dream," he said cautiously.
"I'm listening," said Ginny.
"Well, Vol- I'm sorry, You-Know-Who was telling his Death Eaters to go to the
Ministry. He told them that Fudge's denial of You-Know-Who returning to power would
work to his advantage and ruin the alliance that Dumbledore is planning." He decided to
not mention Voldemort plotting to kill him because Ginny looked horrified beyond belief.
"Do you think that's why Fudge and the dementors are at the school, to make sure
he doesn't set up his alliance because the spies for Voldemort told him?" she asked him.
"I don't know," said Harry. "That's what it seems."
"You know, if Fudge doesn't accept the truth and believe Dumbledore soon, You-Know-Who might do something awful, like he did when he was rising to power," said
Ginny in a quiet tone. "My parents told me about it; most of the things he did were
Muggle killings and the murders of people in the Ministry. But only the ones from the
Ministry received attention. My dad was one of the few that was actually concerned
about the Muggles."
There was silence for a brief period of time between them. Then Ginny spoke up,
"Harry, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure," replied Harry.
"Why did You-Know-Who want to kill you in the first place?"
This was a question that Harry asked almost every day. He had learned at the end
of his first year, from Dumbledore, that Voldemort had come to his home fifteen years
ago with the intentions of killing Harry and his father. The only reason why Voldemort
killed his mother was that she refused to let Voldemort kill Harry. But the reason why
Voldemort wanted him dead, Dumbledore wouldn't say.
"I don't know," said Harry softly. "No one told me yet."
Ginny nodded. "I guess I should go back to bed, now." She stood up and started
towards her dormitory when Harry called after her.
"Ginny?"
She turned around to face him. "Yeah?"
"Thanks for listening," said Harry.
Ginny went slightly scarlet, but she smiled back at Harry. "That's what friends are
for. And we are friends, aren't we?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, goodnight then..." She left for her dormitory, but Harry stayed awake for a
very long time.
To be continued...
Okay, I hope you all liked this chapter. The reason why I had Harry confide in
Ginny in this chapter was because Ginny should be a bigger part of the series, so I hope
you liked that. Up next: On a Hogsmeade trip, Harry and the gang meet some new
characters that will play a big role in the upcoming chapters... Stay tuned!
P.S. Do you think I should use the surname "Baudelaire" for those characters, like
the names of the orphans in "A Series of Unfortunate Events"? Please tell me in your
reviews.
