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Chapter 6
The Meaning of Dreams
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, but I sure would like to own Seamus. ^_^
AN: Aeryn will be showing up much more frequently as the story goes further. I'm trying to keep her from being a Mary-Sue, but as I'm new to this genre, the definition went in one ear and out the other (I think). If she does, I'm sorry. I tried!
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Harry groaned as Marty jumped on his back, giggling madly. He wasn't sure how he'd been roped into this, but when he found out who had done it he would make sure to hex them. The little girl was still on a happy high from the excitement of Christmas, insisting that Harry play with all the toys she had gotten. She was very happy with the little toy Harry had picked up when he had gone to visit the village, and every once in a while would hug him before going back to play.
He wondered who had been watching her three nights ago. He hadn't noticed if any of the teachers were missing, especially from the group. Black brows furrowed in thought as Marty went racing madly after the small snitch Harry had gotten her around the room. She seemed to think it was great fun that it would shoot right out of her reach as she chased it.
Harry wanted to solve that mystery and also the one about Snape. The Potions teacher hadn't shown up for breakfast that first morning and neither had Aeryn. He had asked Professor Steele if anything was wrong with her sister, but she had told him that Aeryn had eaten earlier and had hidden herself in the library. Neither of them had shown up for any meals since then, although he had seen Aeryn once walking out on the grounds. Nothing had been seen of Snape, and even Harry could tell that Dumbledore was worried.
Hmph. Just when he had thought Snape was human enough to show he liked something he had to go and do this. Harry had stayed by Draco and Aeryn the rest of the night, feeling that they were both in a delicate balance of nerves. He wondered why and how he knew that, but he wanted to be there for them when countless others had been next to him in the years since he had first come to Hogwarts.
Last year he had found out that he had a fiercely protective side of what he cared about. When he had learned that Ron had taken off, Harry had been distraught by the news. Ron was his brother, friend, and confidante. He wouldn't be able to do anything if he couldn't find him. A shudder ran through him as he remembered the cold anger that had swept over him when he found the clues. That anger had mostly been directed at himself. He had immersed himself in a huge wallowing pit of self-disgust, ignoring his two friends to the point where he had barely seemed to recognize them.
The betrayal of the DADA teacher in their fifth year had been so overwhelming to Harry. Added on top of that was the guilt he felt at Cedric's death from the year before. True, the nightmares were starting to taper off two years after the fact, but he hadn't wanted to burden his friends. Maybe he should have.
He wasn't sure what had made him look in the forest. Harry was still not too sure that he had been thinking at all. All that had driven him to the spot where he had seen that unicorn his first year was a burning sense of insanity if Ron was hurt in any way. He certainly hadn't been thinking rationally, otherwise he wouldn't have found himself surrounded by Death Eaters.
Almost by instinct he had known that Lucius Malfoy was not one of them. These were lesser Death Eaters, sent to lure him away from the school to the presence of their Dark Lord and the inner circle of his followers. In the arms of two of them lay Ron, hair darkened and matted by dried blood and eyes closed with pale lids.
Rage had filled him, the self-righteous rage of wanting to madly defend his friend. He wanted to hurt these people like they had Ron, when all of a sudden something sparked inside him. Suddenly he knew that this wasn't the way he should fight. If he fought like he felt he would be just as dark as the Death Eaters were. In a split second he had been overwhelmed with remorse, his stomach threatening to turn itself over as a thousand emotions swirled inside of him. When the moment was over, however, Harry knew that he would fight like Dumbledore had taught him and all his teachers and friends had supported.
Harry turned his attention back to Marty, who lay on her stomach rolling one of her Muggle dolls through the air. Even now he didn't know what he had done. After that, though, Dumbledore had insisted that he be given extra training by some of the teachers to harness his own power.
"Harry?" He looked up and saw Professor Steele and Hermione in the door. His friend crossed the room and sat down next to him. "I'm here to watch him for a while."
He looked at the little girl and then his Professor, then back at Hermione. Harry had been surprised when she had shown up yesterday. It had taken him a long time before he got her to tell him why she had come back early. Even then she would only say that she had come back because the Headmaster requested it.
Standing, he left Hermione with Marty, who giggled madly as she pulled a book off the small bookcase to the side. Leave it to his friend to reach for a book first. Shaking his head at the thought, Harry made his way to the library. He wanted to look at a couple more things before he showed that book to Professor Steele.
Making his way through the shelves, he noticed somebody at one of the tables. Curious, he peeked around the corner and found Draco sitting by himself with a book in his hands. The blond head was bent down, not noticing that he was being watched. Harry stood there for another minute when he saw Aeryn making her way to the other boy. Her face had a strained look to it, and it was obvious she hadn't slept very well in many days.
"This is the last of them that aren't in the Restricted Section, Draco," she said as she laid three books next to him. "Your best bet is to talk with Ray about it, though."
"Why?" Harry saw him tilt his head in question.
"His mother's brother is a shaman in her tribe."
Harry stopped at that and so did Draco.
"You don't share a mother with your brother?"
Aeryn shook her head. "Nope. Just my other brother, but he's one of the Unspeakables. Only he and I share the exact same parents."
Draco's face fell at this.
"Ray's half Lakota, half English. He learned how to combine the two worlds in the land of dreams, so that's why you should ask him. He's been there many times to get answers to questions himself."
"Why don't you remember what I saw?" Draco's face was oddly intriguing. There was a half-curious, half-afraid look on it that hit Harry hard. His former enemy was afraid, but of what?
"I can feel what you do, but not see it. It has to be a strong feeling, too."
They were both silent and Harry had almost turned back to looking for a book when Draco's next question stopped him in his tracks.
"Do you hate me for what my father did to your mother?"
Harry's saw a haunted look form in Aeryn's eyes, even as she shook her head. "No." Her voice was very low; just barely loud enough that Harry could hear it. "It was your father's fault, and partly my mother's as well. She wouldn't listen to anybody, and it got her killed." Aeryn's voice was very bitter at that moment. Harry had heard that emotion many times in his dreams, especially when his parents were in them and he wished things could have been different.
"You were there," Draco was saying in a pained voice, a slight, breathless swallow coming from him before he continued, "when it happened. I saw it in one of my dreams."
Harry's chest felt tight. What Draco was saying - it couldn't be true, could it?
Aeryn nodded and a tear threatened to fall. She tried to smile at Draco but Harry could see that she couldn't offer him comfort. He wished he could do something for the both of them, but wasn't sure what it was. Frustrated at this lack of decision, he stood where he was, going neither forward or back.
Aeryn sniffled and looked up, straight into Harry's eyes. A watery chuckle came from her as he felt drawn to the table. "Hey, Harry."
Standing behind a chair, he looked at both of them. "May I?"
Both Draco and Aeryn nodded.
Harry eyed them hesitantly. He hadn't meant to interrupt, but when he had seen the sorrow in her eyes he knew he had to come over and talk to them. He dropped a hand to the books. "What are these for?"
"They are dream books," Draco drawled, just a tiny trace of his usual arrogance of having a superior intelligence showing.
Harry laughed. "I can read what they are, but why look at them? Bad dreams?"
"Harry," Aeryn began, "have you been having any dreams since the last day of classes?"
He nodded. While very strange at first, he had gotten to the point where he almost couldn't wait to fall asleep at night.
"Hm."
"Why do you say that?" Draco's grey eyes were questioning as well.
"Well," Aeryn said. "Only three people that I have ever taken walking have had that same reaction. Two are my former roommates, and the other is El. Those three have developed enormous capabilities for seeing things normal people aren't perceptive to. Even knowing magic like they do."
"So does that mean that we'll be able to do something with our dreams?" Draco asked.
Harry watched as Aeryn shook her head. "That I don't know the answer to. I might be able to find the answer in one of these books, but it would take much longer than we have time for."
"Why haven't you come to any meals?" Harry asked in the silence that followed this.
She looked up, her nose wrinkling. "A couple of things," she shrugged. It was obvious to Harry that she didn't want to talk about it.
He opened his mouth to say something when he noticed a man standing behind Aeryn and Draco as they sat at the table with him. His head slightly tilted to one side, but he didn't say anything at all when the stranger put a finger to his lips. The man looked very familiar in the shadows, and when he passed by a window he saw that it was Sirius. He was happy that his godfather was here, but he wasn't supposed to be here until the next day. Still, he was curious to find out.
Harry looked at the two in front of him. Each looked to be in their own little world, and probably wouldn't even notice his departure. Quietly standing up, he made his way over to where Sirius was standing.
The two made their way to a different section of the library and sat down.
"Did you have a good Christmas?" Sirius asked.
Harry nodded and gave a happy smile. "Thanks for the present."
"Yours, too." Sirius shook his head. "I'm surprised that you haven't eaten it all by yourself by now."
He shook his head, too. "No." He carefully eyed his godfather. "I thought you and Professor Lupin weren't coming until tomorrow."
"Change of plans," Sirius said. "Dumbledore has found out some new information, and we should act on it as soon as we can."
Harry nodded. Now he had a better idea why Hermione had come back so early. The only thing wrong with that was that she hadn't said anything like this, and had, in fact, refused to state the reason in the first place. It kind of made him wonder what was going on that she wouldn't tell him.
"Are we still going to have the meeting tomorrow?" he asked.
Sirius gave him a steady look. "Yes. Dumbledore wants everybody to come back as soon as they can, but he wanted Remus and myself to get back early. There were a couple of things that we wanted to talk about with him without having to worry about the waiting until the meeting was over."
Harry wavered on asking any thing more until he saw the look on Sirius' face. The older man's face was closed, and he knew that it wasn't a good time to talk any more on the subject. Instead he pointed back to where he had first seen his godfather.
"What do you think of that?"
Sirius looked at the two blondes pouring over the books. One eyebrow arched back at Harry in question. "And what do you think of that? Are you willing to put everything you know about Malfoy to the side because you feel sorry for him?"
Harry shook his head. "It isn't so much a matter of feeling sorry for him. It's more like I *know* what's going on in his head. There's this.... I don't know what to call it, but I get the feeling that its so I can help him understand this whole thing from a different point of view. He's only seen it from his father's eyes, and now that there's a chance that his father will be, or actually is, gone, he's got to find another way to keep going.
"There's something about all of this that makes me think that Draco never wanted to take part in any of this. All he wanted was to make his father proud of him, enough so that he could feel like he accomplished something in his life. He also wants to protect his mother."
Harry went silent and kept his eyes on his hands as they lay in his lap. Part of him was afraid that what he said wasn't as true as he thought it was, but somehow he knew it was. Ever since that dream he'd had about the letter from Draco's mother, he had been worried about the other boy. Whatever trouble that they had had before that point was moot. It didn't matter now. There was no time for such things anymore.
He looked up at his godfather, who wore an astonished look on his face.
"Harry," he finally said in a slow voice. "Most perceptive of you." Sirius shook his head and gave a soft chuckle. "Very much like your mother in that respect."
A sheepish look crawled across Harry's face as a pink tint brushed his cheeks. "Sirius."
His godfather laughed. "Sorry, Harry. It's just that your mother had this uncanny ability to see with a much clearer eye than most people. Although it wasn't until after we had just left school that she really seemed to notice things out of the ordinary."
Harry thought this over. "The day before classes were finished for the holiday I fainted."
Sirius leaned forward in surprise, but didn't say anything.
"While I was out, Professor Dumbledore had Aeryn walk with me to bring me back."
"Is this the same Aeryn we met at the last meeting?"
Harry nodded. "Yeah. She was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts that day. It's a good thing too."
Sirius scowled. "They let a twelve year old teach?"
"More like a twenty-three year old," a woman's voice came over his shoulder.
Harry looked up and saw Aeryn smiling down at him and gave a grin back at her. Behind her stood Draco, who was eyeing Sirius with a curious look. She turned around and gave the Slytherin boy a smile. "Draco, could you go bring that last book over? There were a couple of things I wanted to talk to Harry about in that one."
As soon as he was gone she turned back to them and gave Sirius a look. "You should get going before he gets back."
Sirius nodded. "I'm off to Dumbledore's office," he whispered to Harry before leaving the library.
Harry watched as he disappeared around the corner as Draco came back. Aeryn gave a soft smile at him as the blond boy handed her the book.
"Harry, please read the section I've marked," Aeryn said in a soft voice. "We've already read it. When you're done, please let us know, since you should be there when we ask my sister a couple of things."
He nodded and looked down at the book before watching them leave the library. Wondering if the slim volume in his hands had any answers to his own questions, he took it up to the tower that was just a little less lonely.
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Snape looked disinterestedly at the group as they gathered in Dumbledore's office. What Lupin and Black had to be there for was beyond him that they had to come a day early. He drew his eyes from the Headmaster, who seemed to be admonishing him for the way he had treated that.... He couldn't come up with any good insults for her. Still, he wondered how she had gotten a hold of some of the locations for those libraries. Some of them had been thought to be long gone by now, not having been seen for the last two hundred years.
Mentally berating himself for letting his thoughts dwell on that, he turned his attention to Dumbledore and whom he was supposed to be having a meeting. Instead it was more like 'meet the family' time. He knew that he would have to say something about this later, but he had to leave. One more minute in the same room as Black and he was not going to be held accountable for his actions.
Standing abruptly, he ignored Albus' attempts to stop him and headed to the door. Opening the door, he heard the grinding of the gargoyle on the other side and gave the large flat surface a push. A satisfied feeling swept over him as he heard the door slam behind him.
"I would say something about that being childish, but I know that I would get that thrown right back at me."
Snape snapped around, his robes billowing slightly in the sharp movement. Black eyes narrowed at the sight of the person he was trying to ignore for the last few days. Trying.... It would have been better if she hadn't kept popping up at odd moments asking for various ingredients.
"What is it you want this time," he demanded.
Aeryn gave a smile. "Just wanted to wish you a 'top o' the mornin' to ya!" She gave a little half bow, straightening up to reveal a cheeky expression on her face. "Besides, it was about time for your daily dose of annoyance from me."
Snape's eyes narrowed. If this was how Dumbledore acted when he was younger, and he truly suspected this was the case, he was surprised that the old man had lived this long. "I suggest you keep your 'daily doses' away from me."
A silvery laugh floated to him through the corridor. "But I just might have something for you," she said.
He almost didn't catch the way she said that. The words were softly spoken, in that voice Dumbledore got when he was trying to keep everything going smoothly and jolly when it was headed in a completely different direction. His interest slightly, not more than that, not by any means, piqued by this, he raised one eyebrow at her.
Sighing, she motioned for him to follow.
"I'm sorry that you didn't like the present I got you," she said after a minute of silence.
He looked at her, startled by this admission.
"Name something else, and I'll see what I can do." She gave him a sideways glance, but he couldn't read what her eyes were saying. Snape didn't say anything until they stopped at a door somewhere along the second floor corridor.
"Why are we here?"
"This is where I've been working," Aeryn said. "Surely you haven't thought that I would be loafing around." She arched one dark blond eyebrow at him that forcibly reminded him of Professor Steele. When she did it, though, it wasn't as sharp or violent as when the DADA did it.
Confused by these thoughts, he allowed himself to be ushered into the room they were standing in front of. Snape blinked as he stepped into a bright, airy room unequaled by most of the rooms in the entire castle. He had never been here before, and he was surprised that Flitwick hadn't claimed it. The Charms Professor was always complaining how gloomy his own classroom was, and how he wished he could find something better.
"Where are we?" he wanted to know.
Aeryn gave him a look. "Hogwarts."
One black eyebrow raised slightly beneath lanky, black hair.
She lifted one hand. "You know, more of your students would respect you if you used more of your own potions on yourself."
Snape gave his dirtiest glare. Which didn't work. This girl must have some kind of immunity like the Marauders did when they were in school. "I do use my potions," he said in a starchy, yet dangerous tone.
Aeryn steadily looked at him. "You ever try a personality potion?"
Deadlock. For that matter he just wanted to be out of this room. There was something about this - this girl that got underneath his skin in a way that nobody else could. And she didn't seem fazed by one glare right after another. This would take some thinking later on. If he acted interested in whatever fifth-rate potion she had to show him, then he might be able to escape soon.
"Yo, Earth to Severus Snape."
He gave another dirty look in her direction, but she wasn't even looking this time. Aeryn had moved over to a large work table with various vials and a cauldron on it.
"I'm sorry I had to borrow a couple of things, but the Apothecary down in Hogsmeade didn't have some of the things I wanted. Well, they had them, but I wouldn't buy them unless it was time to go to the last resort." She picked up a small vial with a thick goo in it. The pale blue color was transparent, marking it as a detector of some sort. Snape's eye twitched as she picked up a different vial.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing one long finger at the vial.
She gave a small smile. "The last of the age potion. Between Granddad, Dad and I, we thought that you should store it with the rest of your private stock."
"Granddad?" One eyebrow was raised again.
"Great-great-grandfather was too big of a mouthful for me when I was younger. The name stuck." Aeryn shrugged and Snape watched the elegant movement.
A scowl crossed his face as he reviewed that mental comment.
"Anyways," she went on, cutting his thoughts off at a very good point. "It would be best for you to keep this rather then to have me keep it here. This room is too easy to get into when it is not guarded."
Snape looked at the bottle when she handed it to him. The clear, amber liquid inside had a slight wave to it, as if it were alive in some way. He went to open the bottle when she laid a hand on top of his.
"Don't smell it. Even the fumes can alter your body by a couple of months, and it is painful to go through." She took her hand away and his felt chilly afterwards.
Snape looked up and saw that she was studying him carefully.
"Have you heard of a potion called the Silmaron Potion?" she asked.
Snape thought carefully. The name was very familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had heard about it. 'When did this day get away from me?' He looked at Aeryn but didn't answer her question.
"Well, one of the potions in that book you gave me, which I really do like, thanks, gave me the idea that we might be able to use it."
And he thought that Potter rambled. "The Silmaron is to give the ability to actually walk through shadows without a shadowwalker."
She nodded. "Yeah. So I was thinking that if I could see what it entailed, we would be able to get close to Voldemort without having to Apperate, because Granddad thinks that he can now sense when somebody does so near him."
Snape's head shot up. "When was this?"
Aeryn cocked her head to the left and shrugged her shoulders. "I personally don't know. All I know was that he asked me about my dreams on Boxing Day and the idea about this potion came to me."
"Let me talk to Albus and see what else he suggests. Even that will be dangerous." Snape looked at her again. Even though she had an appalling personality, she was smart. It took a skilled potions master to produce even part of the age potion he believed she had made. Making a quick decision, he went to leave.
"Forgetting something?"
He turned back and saw the vial with the age potion in it. Ignoring the smirk on her face, he grabbed it and stalked down to the dungeons.
AN: I actually like Snape, in a weird twisted sort of way. It would take a strong man to be a spy to someone who takes pleasure in killing anything that opposed him. Now, if he would only stop being such a git once in a while...