"...Harry..." Harry opened his eyes and sat up. He was in the common room, except it didn't look like the common room. He stood up and looked around the room. Who was calling him? "Harry..." Who was that? The sound was coming from up by the entrance to the dormatories. He walked toward the stairs. "No... Harry... the blue light..." Harry stopped.
"What blue light?" He asked, but the voice didn't answer. "Hello? What blue light?" The voice still didn't respond. Harry started walking up the stairs to the dormatories. They seemed longer than usual. It seemed to be taking him forever to get up them. Harry almost turned around and went back down, when the voice spoke again.
"Harry! Don't go up there." It came from down in the common room this time.
"Why not?" Harry asked.
"The lights... stay away from the lights."
"What lights?" Harry asked, but the voice was silent. "What is going on?" Harry started going back up the stairs. He could hear something up there, something that was breathing very hard. It was pounding on one of the dormitory doors. Harry finally reached the top of the stairs. The door to the boy's dormatories was open. He started walking down the hall when he heard someone scream. He couldn't tell who it was, but someone was defiantly in trouble. Harry walked faster until he came to another door that was open. It took him a minute to realize that it was the door of his dormitory. Now he knew who had been screaming. There was only one other Gryffindor boy in the castle. Harry was afraid to look, but he knew he had to - Ron needed help. He held his wand tightly and stepped into the room. There were five, no six, vengeance deamons around Ron's bed. All Harry could see of the actual bed was the sheets, which were torn to shreds. Three of the deamons turned around and looked at Harry. Harry stared at them and slowly backed up. They pushed him into a corner, and one crouched down, ready to pounce on him...

Harry woke up screaming and covered in sweat. He was on a couch in the common room. He jumped up and ran to his dormitory. He pulled open the sheets of Ron's bed. Ron was lying there, sound asleep. Harry took a deep breath and walked back to the common room. It was a dream, he told himself. Just a dream... a stupid dream. Harry sat back down on the couch and tried to make his heart stop beating so fast.
"Harry?" Ginny asked. He jumped. "Sorry. Are you alright?"
"Yeah."
"You screamed. Very loudly."
"It was a dream."
"Oh..."
"A very freaky dream."
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked
"I don't think I could."
"It must have been pretty bad to freak you out this much."
"It was." Harry said.
"Geeze... and on Christmas Eve too."
"It's Christmas Eve?"
"Yeah Harry it's been Christmas Eve all night. Actually now it would be Christmas Day. It's four AM." Harry sighed and lied back down. "Are you okay?"
"Yes I'm great."
"Was that sarcastic?"
"Maybe." Ginny sighed dramatically and went back upstairs. Harry closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

The next morning, Harry was sitting on the same couch, watching Ron open his presents. After a while, Ginny and Marc came down and started opening there's. "Where are yours, Harry?" Marc asked.
"I didn't get any."
"None at all?" Ginny said.
"Do you see any?" Harry snapped. Ginny stayed quiet and finished with her presents. The common room door opened, and Remus Lupin stepped in.
"Hello." he said. Everyone else said hi. Remus sat between Harry and Marc. "Wow... it's been a long time since I've been in here." He turned to Marc. "I don't think I've met you before."
"Marc Evans." Marc said
"I'm Remus Lupin." Remus watched them opening their presents. "Didn't you get any Harry?" he asked.
"No."
"Well you did get one. I gave it to you a while ago. Actually, Tonks gave it to you for me."
"The diary?"
"Yes. And it's not a diary. Apparently you haven't used it yet, or you'd know it's more than just a little black book. Why don't you go get it? I'll show you what it's for."
"Alright." Harry got up and went upstairs. He was digging through his trunk when Remus came in.
"Well this place hasn't changed much, has it? Then again it's only been about thirty years. So where's that book?" Harry found it in the very bottom of his trunk. He handed it to Remus, who handed it back. "Write in it."
Harry pulled out a quill and ink, but he didn't really know what to write. "What should I write?"
"Say hello." Remus said. Harry was confused, but he wrote 'hello' on the first page. It faded into the book.
'What's the password?' faded in. "It's an answering book." Harry said.
"Yes, it is. You didn't think I'd give you an ordinary book, did you? You'd better tell them the password before they get mad."
Harry was confused. "What password?" he asked.
"You know it already. You have to know it to use the map."
"The Marauder's Map?"
"Yes."
"So this is the Marauder's answering book?"
"In a way." Remus said. Harry wrote 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good.' It faded away.
'Thank you. Who are you?' faded back in.
'Harry.'
'Harry who?'
'Harry Potter'
'I see...'
"You're confusing them. I haven't updated it in a while. Well, actually, we did update it to take Peter out, but that was back when you were just a baby." Remus said. "Ask who it is. Usually there is only one of them at a time. And you almost never get me. Usually it's James or Sirius."
"Sirius..." Harry said. He could talk to Sirius? "This is weird..." He wrote 'Who are you?'
'Prongs.'
"This is really weird." Harry said.
"I know. It gets very interesting when I get myself. You're lucky we updated it. They used to get extremely impatient if you didn't respond right away." Remus said.
Harry shook his head. "Does he know..."
"That he's dead? No, and neither does Sirius. You'll have to update it."
"How?"
"Just get the right person and tell them what happened. Here, I'll do James for you." Remus took the book and started writing in it. "Oh my."
"What?"
"Sirius likes to jump into other people's conversations. He just did." Harry smiled. "Why don't we go back downstairs? You can talk to Prongs while I talk to your friend Marc." Harry followed Remus downstairs. Remus handed him the book on the way downstairs. Harry stopped and looked at the book for a minute. He shook his head and went back into the common room.
"Marc, what did you say your last name was?" Remus was saying.
"Evans."
"hmm... are you related to a Lily Evans?" Harry snapped his head up to look at Remus.
"I dunno. Maybe."
"Could you ask for me?"
"I guess. Who's Lily Evans?" Marc asked.
"My mother." Harry said. Remus nodded.
"Oh... I'll ask the next time I write home." Marc said.
"You do that." Remus said. "I should be going. See you all later. Have fun with that book, Harry." He stood up, took one last look around, and left.

The rest of the Christmas vacation was the same as the first few days had been. Harry didn't let the answering book get to far away from him, even though he never wrote in it. It was too weird to be talking to someone that was dead, but he still kept it near him, incase he changed his mind. Hermione came back two days before classes began. Harry was sitting in the common room with the answering book, and thinking about actually writing in it, when she came in. "Hi Harry."
"Hey."
"What's that?" she said, pointing to the answering book.
"A Christmas present."
"Oh... I'm sorry I didn't send you one. The owl I was going to use was injured."
"It's alright. No one else bothered either... except Remus." Harry said.
"I'll buy you something at the next Hogsmeade trip."
"You don't have to."
"Yeah I do. I haven't been a very good friend to you."
"You're not the only one." Harry mumbled.
"I know. Did Ron do anything over the break?"
"Not that I noticed."
"That's what I thought. I should take my stuff upstairs." she got up and floated her trunk upstairs. Suddenly, Ginny came running into the common room and ran upstairs. A few minutes later Hermione came back down. "Did you see what was wrong with Ginny?" she asked.
"No."
"She went running into the boy's dormatories, and it looked like she was crying."
"The boy's dormatories?"
"Yeah. We should probably check on her."
"Alright." Harry held the answering book close to him and followed her upstairs. It wasn't hard to find Ginny, but when they did she told them to leave her alone and ran away. Harry chased after her. She got all the way to the great hall before he caught her.
"Stop it! Go away!" she streaked. Ginny pulled away from him and ran outside. Harry was too out of breath to follow her, but she wasn't hard to find. There were at least two feet of snow on the ground. Her footprints led to the quidditch pitch and into the stands. Harry found her under the bleachers in a shadowed corner. "Why are you chasing me?" she asked.
"I just want to know what's wrong."
"Nothing. I'm fine."
"Hermione said you were crying."
"So?"
"What's wrong?" he asked again. She stood up and came out of the shadow. She looked like she'd been beaten up by someone much larger than her. "Who hurt you?"
"You know, that friend of yours. The tall one with the red hair."
"Ron?"
"Yeah that's it."
"But...why?"
"Like I would know." she said. Harry reached out and pulled her into the light so that he could see her better.
"You should go to the hospital wing." he said.
"Umm how about no. I'm not going back in there as long as he's in there."
"You can't stay out here. You'll freeze."
"I'd rather freeze."
"Ginny... I won't let him hurt you. Now let's go." He tried to pull her back to the castle, but she pulled herself free. "Fine then." Harry started walking back inside, leaving her behind. In about ten seconds, she ran up beside him and stayed very close. They walked up to the hospital wing, and Harry waited until the nurse was done bandaging Ginny. Then they walked back to the common room. Ginny acted like she didn't want to go into the common room, but she also didn't want to be alone, so she followed Harry through the portrait hole. Hermione's jaw dropped when she saw Ginny.
"Oh my... what happened?" she asked.
"Ron beat her up." Harry said.
Her jaw dropped again. "Oh... that..." she sighed loudly. "I swear I'm going to kill him."
"You'd be thrown in Azkaban."
"Yeah well as long as he can't hurt anyone else. I didn't think he was capable of hurting anyone, but now that he's hurt at least two people..."
"Wait." Harry said. "Two people?"
"Who else has he hurt?" Ginny asked.
"Well..."
"Hermione?" Harry said
"Alright. It was me." Now Harry's jaw dropped.
"He... why didn't you ever tell me?"
"He said if I told anyone then he'd hurt me worse. And after a while I started believing him. That's why I didn't talk to you all summer."
"This is getting out of control." Harry said. Ginny moved closer to Harry. Ron had just come into the common room. "Come on." Harry said. They followed him up into his dormitory. When they got in there, Semus was sitting on his bed. He noticed the bandages on Ginny and jumped up.
"What happened?" he asked
"Ron beat her up." Harry explained.
"Where is he? I'll kill him."
"No you won't." Harry said "You'll stay up here and watch these two while I go kill him." Semus looked disappointed,
"Harry, don't do anything stupid." Hermione said
"Define stupid." Harry said on his way out.
"Don't hurt him too bad." Semus said "Leave something for me to kill." Harry walked back down into the common room and looked around for Ron. He saw him, but then lost him again in a group of first years. Harry saw the portrait swing open and Ron running out, but by the time Harry got through the first years, he was gone.