Alice was running aimlessly through a dense carpet of daisies and tall grass, the sun warming her face. She could feel the dew from the flowers on he ankles as she ran past. A pink bunny-shaped cloud floated by overhead. She inspected it for a moment, then leapt up and grabbed it by the leg. It kicked a little with its free leg and tried to hold on to the sky with its front paws. Alice tugged harder and the cloud-bunny was torn free. She fell back into the daisies, held it with both arms, and bit off one of its ears.

"Mmmm. Raspberry." she thought, delighted, her mental musings somehow echoing around the hills and bouncing between the moon and the sun and returning to her ears.

"Alice!" she thought she heard he name being called from very far away, but she wasn't sure. She released the raspberry rabbit and it hopped, badly shaken, whimpering and earless, back into the sky. Sitting as still as she could, she listened carefully, slightly annoyed by the rabbits laments. "Alice!" she heard it again, closer. Looking out across the vast, sun-drenched valley before her, she saw a large brontosaurus wading through the waves of green. The slight breeze rippled the grass across the meadow, and it looked directly at her from a mile or so away, calling her name again. This time it seemed to come from everywhere, all around her, at the same time. She shut her eyes tight and clamped her hands over her ears in an attempt to escape the omnipresent ringing, like a monstrous church bell in perpetual motion less than a foot away from one's ear.

And then there was silence. Silence, and darkness. She opened her eyes apprehensively and was startled to see Seamus sitting on the bed next to her, leaning over her and staring into her eyes. Even in the moon bathed darkness she could have recognized him even if only by his eyes - the perfect shade of blue, diluted in color but not definitely not in content, laden with things to be known and experiences to be taken part in.

"Alice," he said softly, barely audibly (So HE was the brontosaurus). It was a statement. A firm one, at that.

"Yeah," she answered, rubbing her eyes and clearing her throat.

"I've been under the bed for an hour. I almost thought you'd forgotten about me," he whispered, his words accompanied by that signature smile that made her want to eat him as she would a cookie or a cake or something yummy of the sort.

"Aww, I'm sorry." she sat up and gave him a hug. She would have taken any excuse to comfort him. He hugged her back and kissed her neck softly, petting the back of her head with his right hand. He tucked a strand of her straight, dark blond hair behind her ear and whispered even quieter than before, "I love you."

Peeling him off of her, Alice looked into his eyes and stated, almost mockingly, "Do you, really." with a slight, indecipherable smile. Seamus didn't respond, but looked at her with a sort of inquisitive understanding, as if he had suddenly realized something that he hadn't before. "Hey, I really better get back to my dorm. Things are suspicious enough already without me sneaking out at night," he grinned.

Alice smiled and got up to follow him. She was still in her school uniform, and she grabbed her cloak from off of the headboard of her sturdy dark wooden bed.

"Oh, are you coming too?" he asked, fastening his cloak around his neck.

"Of course I am! I got you into this whole mess, didn't I?" Alice asked, demurely.

"Well actually." said Seamus matter-of-factly. "I was the one who snuck into YOUR dorm.

"And I hid you under MY bed," Alice retorted.

"Okay, fine. It's all your fault," he said playfully, pulling her toward him and stroking her hair.

.

Moments later, they were standing in front of a portrait of a rather large woman, who presently asked for the password and eyed them suspiciously. They were both a little shy about doing anything in front of her, even if she WAS only paint on canvas, so they simply hugged and said their good-nights. Seamus disappeared into his common room and Alice tiptoed back to the dungeon. Coming to a large expanse of bare stone wall, she whispered the password "pure-blood" and it slid open, seeming to make more noise than usual. Feeling quite pleased with herself, she allowed a smile to spread across her face as she entered the Slytherin common room for her second time that night. The smile dissolved, however, when she was unpleasantly surprised to see a figure sitting in the very same armchair she had occupied earlier that evening. As he turned to look at her, she saw that it was one other than her brother Draco, quite possibly the last person she'd want finding out about her thing with some "mudblood" Gryffindor boy, save her father Lucius. His mouth curled into a devious, toothy grin (sometimes she wondered what Hypothia saw in him, anyway) "And what have YOU been up to, baby sister?" he asked insidiously, the firelight and darkness colliding on him and painting him in dramatic shadows as if he stood at the front-line of some cosmic war.