CHAPTER 2: Dream Sliding or Not?

After Herbology, our last class of the day, we started heading towards the Great Hall. I was thinking of the savory chicken and delectable pies I was about to indulge myself in when I instantly thought of Basil.

"Hey Alice, will you go on to the Great Hall and meet Jeremy? Give me a few minutes—I'll be right down. I just need to feed Basil some food. Poor cat, I haven't fed him since we got here. Do you need anything?"

"Let's see…I suppose I could use some parchment. Would you bring me my box? I think I'll get started on a bit of homework; I'm not incredibly hungry today."

"Then I'll see you in a few."

I walked up to the stairs and got to the Fat Lady. It was just my luck that right then she was doing her solo opera. As you can imagine, she wasn't very good so I said, 'Peeling Banana Trees.' It wasn't one of her most ingenious passwords, but it did work.

I entered the common room, and there I saw Basil ready to pounce on an innocent mouse in the corner behind the hat rack.

"Basil!" He glanced up giving the unfortunate rodent enough time to flee. "What have I told you about mice?" I picked him up and continued, "It's okay to get the Death Eaters, but NOT the Mouse Eaters." He looked at me pathetically and meowed. "I know, I know. But I'm getting your food right now so it doesn't really matter now does it?" I said 'Accio,' and his chewed up green bowl scooted across the carpet to my feet. Without need to say, he indulged himself immediately.

As soon as I saw to it that he was taken care of, I walked over to the lush red couch right in front of the blazing fireplace. I half-threw, half-plopped myself down on it. I leaned my head back and began thinking aloud to myself (as I often do when no one else is in the room).

"Ah, and if only this could happen more often: a large comfy sofa all to myself, my cat satisfying his hunger, a large fire crackling and lulling me to sleep…"

"…This is the life." Wow, I'm getting good at this whole thinking and talking at the same time thing. I thought that, but I don't really remember saying it. Wait, did I say it? I blinked open my eyes in realization that it wasn't me that had that…that soft voice, that soothing tone that was so smooth and comforting and sexy and his--(I better stop now or else we'll get nowhere)…

I finally asked, "Hello?" My voice had a slight shake in it, undetectable except to me. "Who's there?" I leaned up, now fully aware. A shadowed figure stepped forward. It was a man or a boy--I couldn't tell. He had a slim figure, robe, books.

"Hey," came the calm voice.

"Oh" How relieved I was. "Jeremy! Hi, I didn't hear you come in. Why are you up here, anyway? I thought we were supposed to meet you downstairs."

"Yeah I looked in the Great Hall for you and you weren't there, so I decided I'd come see if you were up here. Well, you were. So now that I've found you I think I'll just sit here and rest for a minute. It's been a bit of a hectic day, if I do say so myself," he proclaimed as he stood there with a little smirk on the corner of his mouth.

"Oh, well, um…would you like to join me? I'm waiting for my cat, Basil," and I motioned toward him, "to finish eating. He has to be fed the dry, processed prey that I buy him or else he'll decimate the entire rodent population of Hogwarts."

"I like the name 'Basil;' there's this funny show called 'Fawlty Towers' and the main character's name is Basil. Funny coincidence."

"Actually, it's not. That's who he's named after. I'm surprised you knew about it, no one else has before you. Television isn't exactly the most popular pastime in the non-Muggle world."

"That's why I've heard of it; I am from the Muggle world."

"Well, that makes sense. Lily was too. Oh right, I'm from the Muggle world." He knowingly nodded and arched his eyebrows as if he was interested. Surprisingly, he was still standing where I first saw him.

"Won't you come sit down? You're making me nervous. It will take Basil a few minutes before he's finished."

"Okay then." He put a charm on his books so that they would carry themselves to his room.

"Erm, would you mind if I proposed a particular something to do while we sit here in boredom? Well, if you don't mind that is."

"Sure, I'm up for anything. What is it?" He looked amused at my inquiry.

"Don't laugh," he nodded. "Okay, so behind me are two staircases--am I correct?" He nodded. "One of these staircases leads to the boys' dormitories and the other leads to the girls' if I am not mistaken."

"Yes?" he asked, the amused look still on his face.

"So what in the world happens when a boy," and I pointed to him, "tries to go up the stairs that lead to a girl's room?" I pointed to the stairs behind me.

He looked at me, then at the stairs, then at me, and at the stairs again. A smile crept up into his face, overcoming his mouth and his cheeks and his eyes. He leaped up, jumped at me and grabbed my hand in his. We ran and leapt over the couch and landed right in front of the staircase. He looked at me and I looked at him; we jumped up to the fifth step and, just as predicted, it turned into a slide. We slid down and crashed into the backside of the couch, but this did not faze us. We erected ourselves again and ran up about seven steps, and yet again the rigid steps metamorphosed into a slippery slant. Again we fell, and we did this over and over, each time gaining a few more steps.

During this time, Basil attempted to sneak upstairs into his bed, but because it kept turning into a plane, he could not even attempt to get all the way up into safety. I hardly recognized him for we were having so much fun that our laughter was deafening his rather loud meows.

At last, we got to about the third step from the top, but just as we got there, the slope again appeared and we went crashing down the curving staircase, holding onto each other trying not to bruise ourselves too badly by bumping into the railings.

This last attempt had us gasping for breath and me wondering if I could even move. We were still holding onto each other for dear life (even though we were safely on the floor). He looked at me, his eyes shining and asked…

"Again?" Actually, it was more like a breath that he simply shaped his lips into that word, but I got the point.

I shook my head and mimed, "Rest." If only we could rest for a minute or two, we could get back up and have fun on the slide again. Then we both started breathing sounds that resembled laughing. We just leaned back and rested for several minutes. It could have been two, it could have been twenty.

Finally, I gained my breath back and could talk with ease. I could see he had too. "You want one more run?" He had a slightly mischievous look but I didn't dare say no.

"Sure, why not?" My eyes met his, and I couldn't seem to move them; it was a similar feeling to staring at discolored carpet or sunshine on a dashboard. I couldn't help but stare.

He got out his wand, said the simple charm 'Accio,' and his broom came out of the door and down the boys' stairs. It arrived at his side and floated until he stuck his hand out.

Keeping his gentle gaze on me (I felt so beautiful, no one had ever looked at me like that before), he put his one hand on the broom and reached the other out to me. I looked at him and his pleading eyes. My arm lifted and landed in his warm, soft hand. He stood—maintaining the eye bond—and I stood. Together we sat on the flying contraption. I would be scared ordinarily, but his skilled control of the Nimbus 1000 eased my fears. He pointed it toward the top of the stairs; we floated and I swear I could have seen clouds—everything was just fading out of view. The only thing I saw was his deep eyes.

We lit at the top of the stairs, his broom silently taking off and flying back to his room. I stared and gazed into his eyes. They were the color of the ocean's waves before a thunderstorm: dark grey with shadows of harrowed blue and a soft emerald green wake behind those blue waves. His dark brown—nearly black—hair fell out of place and into his eyes,the straight points making his eyes even more severe. His other hand took my other hand,our faces slowly coming toward each other as the minutes passed.

My heart was beating so fast and yet everything around me was moving so slow. His eyes blinked like butterfly wings in the summer wind. Somewhere distant I heard a clock ticking: dong…dong…dong…dong, the soundfading into my memory. Another blink: a door shutting and then opening revealing all of the splendors in the world; he put his hands on my waist and a shiver went up and down my spine. I no longer felt in control, he was the one in control over me. I couldn't hear myself breathing and I couldn't hear him breathing. The sound of blood pumping through my veins made my ears throb with pain. At long last, he shut his eyes and lowered his head that final inch. His lips brushed mine…

I blinked my eyes, and with each blink my surroundings became less blurry. I saw a big red…thing. Ah, it was the couch. What just happened? Feeding Basil, running up the stairs…the kiss. The kiss, the kiss, whatever happened to the kiss? I looked around me, and there was a crowd of obscure people surrounding me, all shouting my name.

"Danielle! Danielle!" Could these people just shut up? I'm not deaf! But alas, they continued, "Danielle! Danielle!"

Finally, I heard a familiar voice say softly, "Danielle, are you okay?" The one time I didn't want to see Alice, she was there. "Danielle? Do you want some water?"

Then my voice came to me, but I simply nodded. I tried to sit up and look around for any sight of Jeremy, but she pushed me back down into a lying position.

"Excuse me, excuse me!" At last, Jeremy! I looked around at him, and he was pushing through the crowd, carrying a glass of water and a pack of ice. He was definitely anxious to get to me, but seemed a little leery. He knelt down on the other side of Alice and handed me the water. He gave Alice the ice pack, and she put it under my head.

"What happened to me?" I asked, hoping he would confirm what just happened between us.

"Um, you fell down the stairs." He wasn't looking directly at me or anything else. His glances were dodging around on the ground. As the story goes, I was coming down the stairs on my way to the Great Hall. Jeremy was up here to get a few things to show to me and Alice, and he saw me lying behind the couch.

Alice continued for him, "It's taken us about twenty minutes to wake you up." Jeremy was the one I was looking at, yet he wasn't looking at me. The whole time they were telling me this new story, I knew what happened, I was sure of it! Or was I?

I didn't want to ask him about it then and there because all of these people were watching. Besides, I could see thathe didn't want to talk about it either.

Even though the rest of it was a lie, one part of his little story was true; I had fainted. I recognized the cool feeling all over my body and the slight thirst for ice water. After I drank it, the rush of cold like that of a waterfall, Jeremy walked up into the dormitories.

"So are you feeling better, Danielle?" Alice asked this as the rest of the crowd went their separate ways.

"Uh," again my distant thoughts overruling, "Yeah…what time is it? Do we still have time to uh…plan? I'd really like to get it underway." Who caredabout the plan now? I wanted to see Jeremy.

"Well, we can't today. You have to go up and see Madam Pomfrey before it gets to be too late. After you do that and she okays you, we're going to have to go to bed. You missed out on supper, so I don't know what we're going to about that now. Perhaps I could get you the…" and she wandered off talking to herself trying to get me to eat something, even though I wasn't hungry (for the first time in my life).

A/N: Yo! So it is now Chapter 2, and I know, I left you with a great cliffhanger there! (Only Zagros gets that, but ok.) Well, what will happen next? Yeah, um, I'm in for as much a surprise as you are, so let's see how that goes! Props to SlytherinGurl!

Ra…ok so you chose the name "See if you can guess." Well yes, I believe that now you do know if that was a significant look. And the base keeps runnin runnin and runnin runnin…Man good times. I miss them. Anyway, off track. I feel like JK when I'm writing this because I'm plotting all these side stories and the such. And then the sixth book will come out and everything will be out of whack, but that's okay! Well, I think I'm talking too much now, so…

Chow Mein