A/N: Oh yes, another chapter! Whoohoo! **Does the dance of joy** Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter and I don't really have much more to say but...enjoy! Oh, hang on a sec. Small note to my reviewers: No Ashley, I will not quit this story, so don't worry about it. hpfan1750- you will find out everyone's problems as it goes along, I promise.
Disclaimer: If I owned the concept of Harry Potter, there would have been no film. It sucked, man!
Dedication: Rainbow Dreamer (Hurry up and update already!) and Silvermoon (You too! I'm not taking no Internet as an excuse!). Lol, also everyone else who r/r this. You guys make my writing worth the bother of skipping revision! ;-D
Harry Potter and the Crystal of Dreams.
As the days dragged on, Harry noticed how gradually depressed everyone had become. Hermione seemed to immerse herself further into her revision, Ron in various activities like Exploding Snap and ignoring his revision, and Shannon spent ages writing in her small purple book. She wouldn't let anyone read it, and if somebody spoke to her during her process of scribbling down whatever it was, she appeared very startled.
He was starting to wonder if he was the only sane person around.
But what with homework and Quidditch practice still piling on into steadily growing heaps of work to be done, he knew that this sanity probably wasn't going to stick around much longer. It seemed to be a case of enjoying it whilst he could.
Despite the best efforts of the prefects, the Gryffindor common room was still, as usual, a centre of chaos and noise. Maybe not to the degree it was in non-stressful-exam time, but it was still not exactly the best place to revise. In one of the centric tables sat Harry with Ron, Hermione and Shannon. Of course, Hermione seemed to be the only one truly frantic about the O.W.L.s, sorting through her stacks of revision notes, rifling past neatly organized piles of assignments, and generally looking stressed. Shannon was a little more laid-back about it all- she didn't panic when she couldn't remember all the details to something, and the only order her class notes were is was severe disorder. Harry seemed to slot in somewhere between the girls' states of minds, and Ron was seemingly the most indifferent of them all, taking his time to play yet another wizarding chess match against himself.
"OK." Shannon said, flipping through the pages of her Defence textbook. She stopped at random and opened it fully up, skimming the information before looking back up with a grin at Hermione opposite her. "Hermione Granger, for a million galleons, tell me all you know about Imperio Phial Necklaces."
Hermione took a deep breath and began to recite, "Imperio Phial Necklaces are a type of dark jewellery used to control the mind of the wearer for longer than a normal Imperius curse could probably be held for. They come in many different shapes and sizes, although they primarily consist of an imprisoned Imperius curse in a glass phial on a chain. These weapons for practitioners of the Dark Arts were banned in the year 1218, although it is believed that several Dark leaders, including Grindelwald, have used such artefacts to enlist supporters." There was a pause before Hermione added worriedly, "Was that right?"
Shannon raised her eyes from the book, her grin long gone. In its place was an expression of pure horror and distress. Hermione winced at first, then clapped a hand to her mouth.
"Oh no! I got it wrong, didn't I? Professor Delacour's going to fail me now!"
"No." Shannon frowned at her. "I just wanted to know if you swallowed that textbook whole or chopped it into little pieces first, because-" Here she dumped the book onto the table and folded her arms. "You just recited it word perfect!"
Hermione sighed in relief, and Harry and Ron laughed. Shannon pouted and turned to the boys.
"How are we going to stand a chance if she's this good?" she demanded.
"Here, I'll test you." Hermione offered, reaching for the textbook. However, Shannon merely shrugged.
"Nah, don't worry about it. I didn't actually revise this one yet."
"What?" Hermione almost yelled, but just managed to control her voice at the last moment. "Shannon, the test is in two weeks."
"Hermione, look. The four key elements to passing a test are: quill, ink, notes and arm." She demonstrated by baring her arm and pretending to write on it.
"Shannon! You can't cheat on your O.W.L.s!" Helplessly, she turned to Harry. "Harry, tell her."
Before Harry could say anything though, Shannon had snapped, "Come off it Hermione! I was only joking!"
Shannon's annoyed scowl faded slightly as she realised that all the people at their table were looking at her. With a small sigh, she put her hand to her forehead, then said, more quietly, "Sorry. I...I'm just really stressed is all."
"Maybe we should do something other than revision." Harry suggested to break the silence. "We're all strung out. We could go play Quidditch or something."
Hermione looked slightly disapproving, but said nothing and nodded. Ron glanced outside.
"Too dark." He announced. "Shame we don't have those muggle things Dean was on about the other day...floodlights or whatever he called them...hey, why don't we play chess or something."
Shannon stood up. "I appreciate it guys, but I should really get some sleep." She yawned. "Night."
They all replied in a similar fashion, and Shannon wove her way through the crowds to the girls' dormitory staircase, which she then began to climb. As soon as she was out of sight, conversation resumed- with her as the topic.
"I think she's worrying about something at home." Hermione said. Chewing her lip and contemplating briefly, she leaned in and lowered her voice to say, "Did you know her mum was dead?"
The boys blinked in simultaneous surprise, then shook their heads. Hermione sighed and added, "Don't tell her I told you, because I wasn't supposed to. Just don't mention it, OK?"
They agreed, just before Ron asked, "Why weren't you supposed to say anything?"
Hermione sighed, running a hand through her bushy mane. "She just told me that she doesn't want unnecessary sympathy for something she can't even remember." She shrugged. "She seemed OK with talking about it, just a little hesitant. I don't think that's what's bothering her, though."
"She's getting really withdrawn just lately." Harry said. "If she won't tell us what's wrong, what else can we do?"
"Maybe." Hermione sighed. "Look, maybe she'll be OK soon. Sure, it's weird, but if she's the same after the O.W.L.s, we'll check it out, yeah?"
Ron agreed and so, rather reluctantly, did Harry. But not even thirty seconds had fully gone by when Harry was suddenly struck with an idea.
*****
Deep within the broken, rundown old house that had become the hideout for evil, Lord Voldemort paced before the few assembled Death Eaters, an evil smirk twisting his chalky features.
"Soon, my loyal Death Eaters, soon we shall have our chance." Voldemort told them in his low hissing voice. "Within the following month, I shall kill Harry Potter and resume my conquest! For," Here he laughed, a hideous, rasping sound. "Did I not take from him that flimsy protection his mudblood mother provided him with when we first met last year at my rebirth?"
"Yes, master." the assembled chorused in an eager unison.
"But," Voldemort continued. "For the fish to be caught, is bait not needed? We shall get the bait we need in the form of one close to him; anyone he cares greatly for. Potter, the noble Gryffindor filth, is surely not going to allow one of his friends to suffer a horrible fate at our wicked hands, is he?"
The Dark Lord's servants laughed along with him. Voldemort himself turned to the table on which his weapon sat, cushioned on a dark velvet cloth.
"And then," he hissed, eyes glowing ruby in vindictive delight . "We shall crush first the two sixteen-year-old brats then the rest of the mudbloods and muggle lovers up in that castle. And it's all thanks to this new toy."
He lifted it closer to his face, about level with his eyes to study it closer. Only he, Nagini, Wormtail and a few of his oldest and most trusted Death Eaters knew of it. For there were spies in the ranks, spies he knew existed yet was not absolutely sure of whom just yet. Soon he would though. Those who were suspected were not of his innermost circle and so could not betray his plans. But still they would pay the ultimate price for daring to even think that they could rebel against he, Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord himself.
A gruesome and painful death was in store for them.
Gathering up all of the power his brilliant mind held, he concentrated on his weapon hard. He began to chant in a language so slippery and hissing he may have been speaking Parseltongue.
A few wisps of a hellish black smoke, tinged with red, began to rise within the prismatic surfaces of his weapon...
*****
It was a good thing that the Invisibility Cloak over his head prevented anyone from seeing him to question why he was headed for the girl's dormitory staircase.
Harry didn't even really know why himself anymore.
It seemed stupid, he realised as he crept up the staircase, to think that Shannon's distant behaviour required investigation. Especially at quarter to three in the morning, when the fifth year girls were currently all in there asleep. He had, at first, thought to come up during a class or something, whilst nobody was around.
But something had driven him here now, to pace along the landing corridor until he reached the carved oaken door with a sign proclaiming "Fifth Year Girls" in elegant gold letters. He paused, ear close to it, listening. Nothing from inside.
Gingerly, he twisted the knob and began to edge the door open. There was no scream; no bolt of lightning; to sudden apparition to drive him back.
Courage strengthening, he pushed the door open wider, slipped into the room ahead, and shut the door behind him with a very slight click.
The only illumination in the room came from a sliver of moonlight falling across the floor through a large chink in the thick draperies hanging at one of the open windows and a dim glow from under the door of the en-suite bathroom. The room looked almost like a mirror image of his own dormitory, except for the changes in posters and pictures, and the fact that there were only four beds here instead of five. He began to move closer to the beds. The hangings on all of them were drawn completely shut.
He used what was around the beds to judge who slept where. Lavender's hesitant sleep talking also eliminated the first bed on the left. The stacked-up copies of Teen Witch and excessive cosmetics and jewellery took out the next bed as Parvati's, whereas the bed right on the other end seemed to be Hermione's due to the extensive schoolwork. Which left the bed in between these to be Shannon's. He approached it.
There wasn't a lot on top of her bedside cabinet. A half-full bottle of black ink. A few used and broken quills. A hairbrush with a few hairbands tied around the handle. Then two photographs. One was of Shannon and Hannah outside a strange, foreign-looking house, smiling happily. He realised that the Shannon here was the skinny twelve-year-old with braces, whilst Hannah in the picture was little more than a toddler. Obviously it was a couple of years old- probably taken in Italy.
He thought the second picture was of Shannon too, at first. It looked more like the one he knew anyway. The girl was laughing at something the picture didn't show, her dark brown hair falling in a long river behind her, her blue eyes twinkling.
Blue eyes?
It wasn't Shannon then- her eyes were a teal mix. Now that he thought of it, the girl seemed a bit too old to be Shannon. Closer to twenty than sixteen. He remembered what Hermione had told him and Ron earlier, and realised it could be her mother. He took his eyes away from the girl and slowly pulled open the drawer of the cabinet.
This was more full- a hastily thrown in pile of notebooks and half-finished assignments, letters in both English and Italian and discarded stationary. And lying on top of it...
Bingo.
Shannon's small battered purple book of writing lay on top of the pile.
Pausing briefly, he listened for noise and then, hearing none, lowered the cloak so it rested over his shoulders and took the book gently into his hands. He realised then what the golden lettering on the cover read.
Dream Book.
Opening it near the beginning, he started to read an entry dated from the tenth of September.
'It seems just as though I haven't been away.' the entry began. 'Everything seems just the same, apart from the workload. That, of course, is steadily increasing.
'I found myself talking to Joe again today. Strange that we never really knew each other that well until we came here, despite both living in Kilmare. Eileen, I told myself, it's one of those things.'
Harry broke off then. Eileen, the girl had called herself, and referred to a boy called Joe. Then he saw the handwriting was smooth and flowing, quite unlike Shannon's untidy scrawl. His eyes slid involuntarily to the laughing girl in the picture. Eileen must be Shannon's mother.
Feeling immensely guilty at his prying, he somehow didn't put the book down as he so desired. Instead, he flipped through chunks of the pages until he reached a familiar looking place, thankfully filled with Shannon's unmistakable writing. He began to read again, halfway down the entry for the third of May. Not that long ago.
'I think I'm going mad. These dreams, they're getting almost too much. Sometimes I just wish I was back at Venzone with Dario and Francessca, when it was all really quite simple. Or even back in Kilmare, when everything was even simpler. I miss all the girls back in Ireland. Can't wait to see them next time we visit.
'But I'm going off track, even though the fact that I miss them is probably what's causing it. Last night I dreamed that I was back in primary school in Kilmare. At first, it was OK. I was hunting around the playground for my friends when Elsie came up, looking unhappy. When I asked what was up, she asked angrily why I hadn't told her. When I asked what she meant, her only response was, "You know what, Shannon. What you did."
'That scared me because I knew what she meant. I tried to run, but I was faced by Sarah, Tess and Roxy, all just as grim as Elsie. Turning around, I could see Frankie, Dario, all the cousins and relatives from both sides of my family, and even Hannah. Then they all asked, in one horrible voice, "Why you k-"'
"What the heck are you doing in here?" a low voice asked from his right. He started, dropping the book and whirling around to face...
Shannon.
She stood half in the moonlight, an expression of tired confusion on her face. Her dark hair was wildly toloused around her head, and she was already in her nightclothes. Harry realised she must have been in the bathroom the whole time. And as she came towards him, he couldn't move.
"Harry, what are you-" Her voice trailed off as she looked down at the book on the floor and recognised it. She halted and raised horrified eyes to his. Horrified and angry.
"What the hell were you doing? Tell me you weren't...you were, weren't you?" Her voice was slowly rising and it was all she could do just to not try to awaken anyone else. Still, she almost shrieked her next words.
"How dare you? You have no right to go through my stuff, and especially no right to read that!" Swooping down, she snatched up the book and clutched it tight in her left hand until her knuckles went white. "What did you think you were playing at Harry?"
Two beds away, Lavender mumbled something in her sleep and shifted over. Both of them looked fearfully towards the bed of the gossip queen, relieved when nothing more happened, and then returned to the confrontation.
"Shannon, I didn't mean...I'm sorry, I just wanted to..." He couldn't explain the worry he had felt about her, or how he just wanted to halp. He realised that Shannon's right hand was clenching and unclenching as she struggled not to hit him.
Her voice low and poisonous, she hissed, "Get out of my sight, Harry Potter. I hate you!"
He had no choice but to obey.
As he arrived back in his own dark, quiet dormitory, the only thing he felt was the numbness of regret.
*****
Not exactly a cliffhanger, but oh well. Review please and I'll update ASAP! Thank you!
Disclaimer: If I owned the concept of Harry Potter, there would have been no film. It sucked, man!
Dedication: Rainbow Dreamer (Hurry up and update already!) and Silvermoon (You too! I'm not taking no Internet as an excuse!). Lol, also everyone else who r/r this. You guys make my writing worth the bother of skipping revision! ;-D
Harry Potter and the Crystal of Dreams.
As the days dragged on, Harry noticed how gradually depressed everyone had become. Hermione seemed to immerse herself further into her revision, Ron in various activities like Exploding Snap and ignoring his revision, and Shannon spent ages writing in her small purple book. She wouldn't let anyone read it, and if somebody spoke to her during her process of scribbling down whatever it was, she appeared very startled.
He was starting to wonder if he was the only sane person around.
But what with homework and Quidditch practice still piling on into steadily growing heaps of work to be done, he knew that this sanity probably wasn't going to stick around much longer. It seemed to be a case of enjoying it whilst he could.
Despite the best efforts of the prefects, the Gryffindor common room was still, as usual, a centre of chaos and noise. Maybe not to the degree it was in non-stressful-exam time, but it was still not exactly the best place to revise. In one of the centric tables sat Harry with Ron, Hermione and Shannon. Of course, Hermione seemed to be the only one truly frantic about the O.W.L.s, sorting through her stacks of revision notes, rifling past neatly organized piles of assignments, and generally looking stressed. Shannon was a little more laid-back about it all- she didn't panic when she couldn't remember all the details to something, and the only order her class notes were is was severe disorder. Harry seemed to slot in somewhere between the girls' states of minds, and Ron was seemingly the most indifferent of them all, taking his time to play yet another wizarding chess match against himself.
"OK." Shannon said, flipping through the pages of her Defence textbook. She stopped at random and opened it fully up, skimming the information before looking back up with a grin at Hermione opposite her. "Hermione Granger, for a million galleons, tell me all you know about Imperio Phial Necklaces."
Hermione took a deep breath and began to recite, "Imperio Phial Necklaces are a type of dark jewellery used to control the mind of the wearer for longer than a normal Imperius curse could probably be held for. They come in many different shapes and sizes, although they primarily consist of an imprisoned Imperius curse in a glass phial on a chain. These weapons for practitioners of the Dark Arts were banned in the year 1218, although it is believed that several Dark leaders, including Grindelwald, have used such artefacts to enlist supporters." There was a pause before Hermione added worriedly, "Was that right?"
Shannon raised her eyes from the book, her grin long gone. In its place was an expression of pure horror and distress. Hermione winced at first, then clapped a hand to her mouth.
"Oh no! I got it wrong, didn't I? Professor Delacour's going to fail me now!"
"No." Shannon frowned at her. "I just wanted to know if you swallowed that textbook whole or chopped it into little pieces first, because-" Here she dumped the book onto the table and folded her arms. "You just recited it word perfect!"
Hermione sighed in relief, and Harry and Ron laughed. Shannon pouted and turned to the boys.
"How are we going to stand a chance if she's this good?" she demanded.
"Here, I'll test you." Hermione offered, reaching for the textbook. However, Shannon merely shrugged.
"Nah, don't worry about it. I didn't actually revise this one yet."
"What?" Hermione almost yelled, but just managed to control her voice at the last moment. "Shannon, the test is in two weeks."
"Hermione, look. The four key elements to passing a test are: quill, ink, notes and arm." She demonstrated by baring her arm and pretending to write on it.
"Shannon! You can't cheat on your O.W.L.s!" Helplessly, she turned to Harry. "Harry, tell her."
Before Harry could say anything though, Shannon had snapped, "Come off it Hermione! I was only joking!"
Shannon's annoyed scowl faded slightly as she realised that all the people at their table were looking at her. With a small sigh, she put her hand to her forehead, then said, more quietly, "Sorry. I...I'm just really stressed is all."
"Maybe we should do something other than revision." Harry suggested to break the silence. "We're all strung out. We could go play Quidditch or something."
Hermione looked slightly disapproving, but said nothing and nodded. Ron glanced outside.
"Too dark." He announced. "Shame we don't have those muggle things Dean was on about the other day...floodlights or whatever he called them...hey, why don't we play chess or something."
Shannon stood up. "I appreciate it guys, but I should really get some sleep." She yawned. "Night."
They all replied in a similar fashion, and Shannon wove her way through the crowds to the girls' dormitory staircase, which she then began to climb. As soon as she was out of sight, conversation resumed- with her as the topic.
"I think she's worrying about something at home." Hermione said. Chewing her lip and contemplating briefly, she leaned in and lowered her voice to say, "Did you know her mum was dead?"
The boys blinked in simultaneous surprise, then shook their heads. Hermione sighed and added, "Don't tell her I told you, because I wasn't supposed to. Just don't mention it, OK?"
They agreed, just before Ron asked, "Why weren't you supposed to say anything?"
Hermione sighed, running a hand through her bushy mane. "She just told me that she doesn't want unnecessary sympathy for something she can't even remember." She shrugged. "She seemed OK with talking about it, just a little hesitant. I don't think that's what's bothering her, though."
"She's getting really withdrawn just lately." Harry said. "If she won't tell us what's wrong, what else can we do?"
"Maybe." Hermione sighed. "Look, maybe she'll be OK soon. Sure, it's weird, but if she's the same after the O.W.L.s, we'll check it out, yeah?"
Ron agreed and so, rather reluctantly, did Harry. But not even thirty seconds had fully gone by when Harry was suddenly struck with an idea.
*****
Deep within the broken, rundown old house that had become the hideout for evil, Lord Voldemort paced before the few assembled Death Eaters, an evil smirk twisting his chalky features.
"Soon, my loyal Death Eaters, soon we shall have our chance." Voldemort told them in his low hissing voice. "Within the following month, I shall kill Harry Potter and resume my conquest! For," Here he laughed, a hideous, rasping sound. "Did I not take from him that flimsy protection his mudblood mother provided him with when we first met last year at my rebirth?"
"Yes, master." the assembled chorused in an eager unison.
"But," Voldemort continued. "For the fish to be caught, is bait not needed? We shall get the bait we need in the form of one close to him; anyone he cares greatly for. Potter, the noble Gryffindor filth, is surely not going to allow one of his friends to suffer a horrible fate at our wicked hands, is he?"
The Dark Lord's servants laughed along with him. Voldemort himself turned to the table on which his weapon sat, cushioned on a dark velvet cloth.
"And then," he hissed, eyes glowing ruby in vindictive delight . "We shall crush first the two sixteen-year-old brats then the rest of the mudbloods and muggle lovers up in that castle. And it's all thanks to this new toy."
He lifted it closer to his face, about level with his eyes to study it closer. Only he, Nagini, Wormtail and a few of his oldest and most trusted Death Eaters knew of it. For there were spies in the ranks, spies he knew existed yet was not absolutely sure of whom just yet. Soon he would though. Those who were suspected were not of his innermost circle and so could not betray his plans. But still they would pay the ultimate price for daring to even think that they could rebel against he, Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord himself.
A gruesome and painful death was in store for them.
Gathering up all of the power his brilliant mind held, he concentrated on his weapon hard. He began to chant in a language so slippery and hissing he may have been speaking Parseltongue.
A few wisps of a hellish black smoke, tinged with red, began to rise within the prismatic surfaces of his weapon...
*****
It was a good thing that the Invisibility Cloak over his head prevented anyone from seeing him to question why he was headed for the girl's dormitory staircase.
Harry didn't even really know why himself anymore.
It seemed stupid, he realised as he crept up the staircase, to think that Shannon's distant behaviour required investigation. Especially at quarter to three in the morning, when the fifth year girls were currently all in there asleep. He had, at first, thought to come up during a class or something, whilst nobody was around.
But something had driven him here now, to pace along the landing corridor until he reached the carved oaken door with a sign proclaiming "Fifth Year Girls" in elegant gold letters. He paused, ear close to it, listening. Nothing from inside.
Gingerly, he twisted the knob and began to edge the door open. There was no scream; no bolt of lightning; to sudden apparition to drive him back.
Courage strengthening, he pushed the door open wider, slipped into the room ahead, and shut the door behind him with a very slight click.
The only illumination in the room came from a sliver of moonlight falling across the floor through a large chink in the thick draperies hanging at one of the open windows and a dim glow from under the door of the en-suite bathroom. The room looked almost like a mirror image of his own dormitory, except for the changes in posters and pictures, and the fact that there were only four beds here instead of five. He began to move closer to the beds. The hangings on all of them were drawn completely shut.
He used what was around the beds to judge who slept where. Lavender's hesitant sleep talking also eliminated the first bed on the left. The stacked-up copies of Teen Witch and excessive cosmetics and jewellery took out the next bed as Parvati's, whereas the bed right on the other end seemed to be Hermione's due to the extensive schoolwork. Which left the bed in between these to be Shannon's. He approached it.
There wasn't a lot on top of her bedside cabinet. A half-full bottle of black ink. A few used and broken quills. A hairbrush with a few hairbands tied around the handle. Then two photographs. One was of Shannon and Hannah outside a strange, foreign-looking house, smiling happily. He realised that the Shannon here was the skinny twelve-year-old with braces, whilst Hannah in the picture was little more than a toddler. Obviously it was a couple of years old- probably taken in Italy.
He thought the second picture was of Shannon too, at first. It looked more like the one he knew anyway. The girl was laughing at something the picture didn't show, her dark brown hair falling in a long river behind her, her blue eyes twinkling.
Blue eyes?
It wasn't Shannon then- her eyes were a teal mix. Now that he thought of it, the girl seemed a bit too old to be Shannon. Closer to twenty than sixteen. He remembered what Hermione had told him and Ron earlier, and realised it could be her mother. He took his eyes away from the girl and slowly pulled open the drawer of the cabinet.
This was more full- a hastily thrown in pile of notebooks and half-finished assignments, letters in both English and Italian and discarded stationary. And lying on top of it...
Bingo.
Shannon's small battered purple book of writing lay on top of the pile.
Pausing briefly, he listened for noise and then, hearing none, lowered the cloak so it rested over his shoulders and took the book gently into his hands. He realised then what the golden lettering on the cover read.
Dream Book.
Opening it near the beginning, he started to read an entry dated from the tenth of September.
'It seems just as though I haven't been away.' the entry began. 'Everything seems just the same, apart from the workload. That, of course, is steadily increasing.
'I found myself talking to Joe again today. Strange that we never really knew each other that well until we came here, despite both living in Kilmare. Eileen, I told myself, it's one of those things.'
Harry broke off then. Eileen, the girl had called herself, and referred to a boy called Joe. Then he saw the handwriting was smooth and flowing, quite unlike Shannon's untidy scrawl. His eyes slid involuntarily to the laughing girl in the picture. Eileen must be Shannon's mother.
Feeling immensely guilty at his prying, he somehow didn't put the book down as he so desired. Instead, he flipped through chunks of the pages until he reached a familiar looking place, thankfully filled with Shannon's unmistakable writing. He began to read again, halfway down the entry for the third of May. Not that long ago.
'I think I'm going mad. These dreams, they're getting almost too much. Sometimes I just wish I was back at Venzone with Dario and Francessca, when it was all really quite simple. Or even back in Kilmare, when everything was even simpler. I miss all the girls back in Ireland. Can't wait to see them next time we visit.
'But I'm going off track, even though the fact that I miss them is probably what's causing it. Last night I dreamed that I was back in primary school in Kilmare. At first, it was OK. I was hunting around the playground for my friends when Elsie came up, looking unhappy. When I asked what was up, she asked angrily why I hadn't told her. When I asked what she meant, her only response was, "You know what, Shannon. What you did."
'That scared me because I knew what she meant. I tried to run, but I was faced by Sarah, Tess and Roxy, all just as grim as Elsie. Turning around, I could see Frankie, Dario, all the cousins and relatives from both sides of my family, and even Hannah. Then they all asked, in one horrible voice, "Why you k-"'
"What the heck are you doing in here?" a low voice asked from his right. He started, dropping the book and whirling around to face...
Shannon.
She stood half in the moonlight, an expression of tired confusion on her face. Her dark hair was wildly toloused around her head, and she was already in her nightclothes. Harry realised she must have been in the bathroom the whole time. And as she came towards him, he couldn't move.
"Harry, what are you-" Her voice trailed off as she looked down at the book on the floor and recognised it. She halted and raised horrified eyes to his. Horrified and angry.
"What the hell were you doing? Tell me you weren't...you were, weren't you?" Her voice was slowly rising and it was all she could do just to not try to awaken anyone else. Still, she almost shrieked her next words.
"How dare you? You have no right to go through my stuff, and especially no right to read that!" Swooping down, she snatched up the book and clutched it tight in her left hand until her knuckles went white. "What did you think you were playing at Harry?"
Two beds away, Lavender mumbled something in her sleep and shifted over. Both of them looked fearfully towards the bed of the gossip queen, relieved when nothing more happened, and then returned to the confrontation.
"Shannon, I didn't mean...I'm sorry, I just wanted to..." He couldn't explain the worry he had felt about her, or how he just wanted to halp. He realised that Shannon's right hand was clenching and unclenching as she struggled not to hit him.
Her voice low and poisonous, she hissed, "Get out of my sight, Harry Potter. I hate you!"
He had no choice but to obey.
As he arrived back in his own dark, quiet dormitory, the only thing he felt was the numbness of regret.
*****
Not exactly a cliffhanger, but oh well. Review please and I'll update ASAP! Thank you!