Disclaimer: Truly, haven't you read the past 16 chapters? The disclaimers are there! I see no reason to continually remind you that I do not own Harry Potter. Although that would be a lot of fun if I did own the mentally abused teen. smirks

Chapter 17 - Warnings

Erica slowly woke the next morning, blinking her sleep-fogged eyes she focused on her surroundings and jumped. She was in a white, it wasn't exactly a room parse there weren't any real solid looking walls. They looked more like clouds, with a light gray swirling about inside the white, and the floor was made from the same stuff. There was no furniture or doors that she could see. "Where the hell am I now?!" She yelled in fright thinking it might have been another Voldemort induced dream.

"Be calm child, you are in no harm here. That amateur does not exist here."

Erica span to see where the voice came from and saw a tall being who, like the walls, didn't look stable. The empath couldn't tell if the being was old or young, or even if it was male or female. The voice didn't help, it was masculine and feminine at the same time.

"Who are you and where am I?!"

"We are what we are and we are all. You are here and there and in between," the being answered mysteriously. "It does not matter really. We have brought you here to give you help. Without us all would end. We hold the light and the dark, the good and evil. We created it all. They mold to our will. Something has changed though, child. With the rise of the evil one, all has changed. We cannot control it. It must be brought to an end."

"The evil one? You mean Voldemort? And what do you mean you control good and evil. You are bloody confusing me."

"Yes, the evil one is the one you speak. We have no use for the petty names you humans use. It is not in our nature. Forget all we have said if it confuses you so, child. We have a task for you," the tall being reached into the blinding white robe it was wearing and pulled out two small vials that glowed red. "You must give this to the loved one. He must take it soon, before the battle, or none shall win and evil shall triumph all. Only with this will the loved one win. You must take the other at the same time as the loved one," it spoke and placed the warm vials on her palm, closing her fingers about them.

"The loved one? Who...," she started to ask before she truly thought on it. "Harry? Why does he have to take this? What is it?"

The being and the room started to fade from her vision and the last thing she heard before it all faded into nothingness was, "Only with the love will the loved one win. You have three fading suns till then."

Erica woke a few seconds later and immediately checked her surroundings, sitting up. All she was able to see was walls of red and her groggy mind panicked before it was able to rationally work out that they were just the hangings of her bed. Her bed, she was back at Hogwarts. There was no real strange being. There were no strange cloudy walls or objects. It had all been a dream.

The girl sighed and tried to think of what strange events during the day before had brought up the dream. 'Dreams are just things that happened during the day that your subconscious is trying to work out. It must have been brought up by something I thought yesterday,' She rationalized. 'Maybe my urges to protect Harry but what the hell did the vial represent?' She thought as she lay back down on the bed, bringing her hand to her forehead not noticing that it had been in a fist since she woke up.

When it was halfway up she gazed at the contents of her hand in wonder. "No. It can't have been real. I wasn't really in a room made of clouds. It's mortally impossible!" A small voice in the back of her head told her, 'everything and anything is possible with magic.'

In Erica's hand were the objects of her dream. What the being had given to her. It disproved all the theories she had come up with moments ago. The warm valentine red vials were lying on her palm. It was times like these that she chose to pick up British slang, "BLOODY HELL!!" she yelled at the top of her lungs waking up her roommates.

Erica jumped as her hangings were torn open and Hermione came into view and Erica struggled to remember what the being in her dream had said. "Erica? Are you okay? Why did you scream? Erica?" She received no answer and shook the girl on the bed by the shoulder. Erica glanced up and her eyes widened in terror as she remembered the last thing said. "Crap! Three fading suns! No. We can't have only three days!!!"

"What the hell are you talking about Erica?"

"Three days! Three days till the war begins Hermione!! Three days till the wizarding world falls to its doom or three days to when Harry defeats Voldemort! Three days to the brink of insanity of all wizards and witches! Three days till..."

"Erica, stop it."

"Voldemort comes to power or three days to the day that Harr-," Erica was cut off by a loud crack against her cheek and was left with a red handprint on her cheek. "What the hell was that for Herm!"

Hermione replied coolly, "You were losing it dear friend, you wouldn't stop. I had to stop you somehow and talking wasn't stopping you. Now, calmly, tell me what the hell is going on.

Erica told Hermione all about the dream and what the being said, even going so far as to show her the matching vials. Hermione took one and commented that it smelled faintly of roses and strawberries. "I need to go talk to Harry, Herm. Then we'll have to have to see Dumbledore. After that I'm pretty sure me and Harry will call a D.A. meeting."

Erica jumped out of bed and changed hurriedly into a pair of loose bellbottom jeans and an old Black T-shirt and pulled a black Roxy hoodie with a baby blue design on over that. She pulled a brush, quickly, through her hair before she ran down the stairs.

She was just about to run up the boy's dormitory when a voice called to her from in front of the common room fire on one of the couches. "Erica? What's wrong? Why are you up so early?"

"I was going to find you Harry. I need to tell you something. Have you had any dreams lately, of... of Voldemort... of what he's done or wants to do?"

Harry's mouth hung open for a second in surprise and thought. "Actually, no, it's a bit strange really. I haven't had any dreams since that one we had together. I usually get them every... unless there's something he doesn't want me to see..." The teen's eyes widened. "Have you had dreams, Erica? Is he after you?! My god, I'll kill hi-," Erica cut him off with a kiss hard on the mouth silencing him quickly.

"Shut up, Harry. I haven't been able to get a word in, love, since you started talking. No, I haven't had dreams of Voldemort. No, as far as I know, he isn't after me. As far as you killing him, you better or I'll be really upset. Now, for the reason I was seeking you..." She told the emerald-eyed boy all she had told their friend and then some. Leaving out only what could have put too much pressure on her fragile treasure. 'Yes,' she thought, 'Harry is my treasure and no one will take what is mine.'

Their meeting with Dumbledore went fairly well, he listened with that damned twinkle in his eye as he looked from Harry, who had pulled the girl close to his side so that she had to lean on his shoulder, and Erica while she blushed. Trying to stay professional is fairly hard when you have such a comforting arm around you.

"Well then. I suppose we should prepare for war," his twinkle had faded as they talked. He looked at Erica once more, "is there anything else you wish to tell me, dear?"

"No professor."

"Alright then, you may go. I shall contact the order, Harry. Do not do anything drastic. It is times like this when support is needed more than anything." He said in that mystic way of his.

"Yes, thank you Professor," the two replied.

Erica stopped halfway out the door, "Professor?"

"Yes, Ms. Kohle?"

"Do you have a plan? Will we be ready? Do you have backup other than the order?"

"Yes, Ms. Kohle. Why do you ask?"

"I just wanted... If you ever need help... you know of the army... you can call upon us... if you wish... we would help."

"Thank you dear," the headmaster nodded gravely, "hopefully we shall never be in need of such a drastic measure. I shall keep it in mind. You should go now, I'm sure you want to alert your friends so that they will be ready if it shall come to Hogwarts."

She nodded and swept down the stairs after Harry.

The fairly new couple was walking down the hallway to the D.A. meeting when Erica remembered what the being had said to with the vials. She stopped in her tracks and pulled them from the pocket in her hoodie. "It said that I was supposed to give one of these to you and the other was for me. We're supposed to take them. It didn't say exactly when, but it said soon, before the battle. We're supposed to take them at the same time."

Harry looked at the vials and then into Erica's eyes, "any idea what they do?"

Erica shook her head and laughed without humor, "they smell like roses and strawberries though."

A corner of his mouth tilted, "Maybe we should take them back in the dorm then..."

Erica agreed and they went off to warn their friends, and in Erica's case, new found family.

There had been explosions of disbelief throughout the room from the students of all houses. They had just learned that there was only three days. Draco had brought at least fifteen Slytherins who could be trusted. The other houses had much more people attending. The room had expanded to be almost the size of the great hall. 'Yea, they all show up now, when the meeting is most important and didn't take the time to learn anything useful to them.'

The D.A. members had known that it was an emergency because of something Hermione had done to the coins a few days ago that the had forgotten to tell Harry and Erica about even though everyone else in possession of the coins had known. They had been warned in an emergency to get as many trustworthy and capable students present at the meeting as possible. They had been successful. Most of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw and three quarters of Hufflepuff had come. Slytherin had done the best they could. Erica could only guess that the rumors were true, most of Slytherin did go bad.

Erica was wishing that the students would quiet down. Five minutes later she was finally fed up with it and blowed hard on the whistle dangling around her neck, calling for silence. "Alright, that's quite enough. Yes, we only have three days to the start of a war, which you all will hopefully never have to participate in. But you all need to be on guard if it comes to that... if Voldemort-," most in the room flinched at the name.

"Oh, come on! A name is a name. If you are afraid of a name, it only increases the fear of the thing itself!! If Voldemort or his lackeys break through the wards of the castle, you all need to be ready to fight for your lives, not to mention to fight for those of your family and friends!!! They will not think that attacking a bunch of school children is low."

She continued, "WE need to develop a plan. No one is alone. We have each other. We need to join the houses and forget the... the... bigoted, narrow-minded, biased views of the other houses that we have." At this most of the room turned to look at the Slytherins that were present. "We need to be READY, all of you stop glaring at my cousin and his friends!

"What have they ever done to – never mind – just forget all they have done? I know Draco is on our side. You all know I'm an empath. I can see that they are all loyal to us. They are the same as you and I. They want the fall of V – The Dark Lord. Now let's get to planning this war. What do you say?"

For a moment all was quiet as they looked between their leaders and the Slytherins.

People started slowly to clap and stand and cheer. Before long, the room was in total chaos... and Harry and Erica loved it! When all was calm, Harry spoke.

"Do any of you think you could help with a war plan? Anyone who knows anything at all about war? Someone who has parents or grandparents or great- grand – you get the idea – family, who is an auror or a muggle in the army or something, if you could just come up here. We need to get this done tonight, incase anything happens sooner than we expect. You all need to be able to do this without our help, just in case, everyone needs to be able to initiate the plans."

All of the Slytherins stood with about thirty Ravenclaws, seven Hufflepuffs, and thirteen Gryffindors and walked to the front of the room where the empath and parseltongue stood. They planned for hours on end, constantly conferring with everyone in the room. The hour that they were all supposed to be back in their dorms came, and passed. Finally Erica smiled up at Harry, "I think we've got it, love."

Harry pulled Erica down to sit on his lap when they finally returned to the common room. "Two more fading suns..." the empath counted.

"That reminds me of the vials. Do we take them tonight?"

"I don't see how it could hurt." She pulled them from her hoodie again and placed one in his hand. "I don't think it matters who takes which." She watched as Harry took a careful whiff of the contents.

"You're right, it does smell like roses and strawberries."

"Yea, but I bet it doesn't taste that way," she said with a soul weary smirk.

"Shall we?"

"Let's," Erica raised her vial to clink Harry's in a mock toast. "To an uncertain, probably bleak, future two days."

"To an uncertain future," he replied.

The couple both raised the vials to their lips and watched as the other drank the surprisingly sweet liquid, 'It's so light it seems to be made out of... no that's impossible-,' her thought pattern was cut off as a pain wrenched through her heart and she fell against Harry, who was holding her a bit too tightly as the same pain wrenched through his. "Arggggg!!!" the both yelled at exactly the same time alerting the whole of Gryffindor to their predicament.

Harry's last thought before both of their worlds turned black was that he could feel the pain coursing through Erica and it only doubled his.

Agh! Cliff hanger! I'm evil. Sorry, I just had some sudden inspiration for this chap! I have a feeling this story will be ending soon and that not many people care. Aye, next time I'm going to have to start a story between Sev and some other existing character. Maybe then someone will read my stories :p other than friends, not that you guys don't count :D

Esgal