Disclaimer: Can you believe that I still don't own the characters or ideas portrayed in Harry potter, and that I'm still not getting paid for this? Well it's all true. I don't own Harry Potter, the characters, or the ideas, and I am still not making a dime off of this project. Please don't sue me, I'm poor.

The Crimson Dream

Hermione was in a room. She wasn't quite sure where exactly, but it appeared to be decorated in entirely black with the exception of whatever the light source was, which was red. There was a cloaked and hooded figure slowly moving towards her, and although she couldn't yet justify her feeling, she was sure that this was the dark lord Voldemort. He was going to kill her and there was nothing she could do. She looked down at her leg. She had sprained her ankle. Even if she had managed to get up, she wouldn't be able to run fast enough to get away.

"Well, if it isn't the young Potter's friend. Since I can't find him, I guess I'll just have to kill you instead. Don't worry though. He'll soon be joining you." The glowing red eyes watched her from under the hood as he raised his hand to point a wand at Hermione.

This was it. She was going to die. She had been curious to know what it would feel like to die. Perhaps she could take some mental note and tell someone later. That was of course completely illogical. She would be dead, who would she tell? Maybe she could come back as a ghost, but why? It wasn't like it would matter if she came back. It wasn't like anyone would miss her. Harry was always too busy swooning over that Cho girl, and Ron…well he was just Ron.

"Back away from her, monster!" A commanding voice came from what had to be a doorway.

Hermione was almost in tears of happiness when Voldemort looked over to the door and frowned angrily. Harry had come to save her. She was going to be saved by Harry, and everything would be fine. Maybe he didn't love Cho as much as she had thought he did. Oh joy, maybe he even had the same feelings for her as she did for him. This was such a great way to end the day.

Voldemort hissed at the boy who had come in the door, "And just who the hell are you?"

Hermione's heart stopped. It wasn't Harry? If Voldemort didn't know who it was then it couldn't be Harry…and it couldn't be Ron…Voldemort would have known that too. It had to be someone else but who? Maybe it was Ron. Maybe the lighting was just a little off and it was Harry, and Voldemort couldn't see him clearly. It had to be Harry. Harry was the only one who would come to save her. She started crying again. It just had to be.

The dark lord hissed again, "And what is it that you are going to do to me if I don't leave this girl alone? Why should she matter to you?"

Hermione stared at the shadow of the person who had come into the room, most likely to save her. This was something so completely different than normal. Usually she was the one with the great idea to save someone and then Harry and Ron were the ones that put it into action. This time it was like someone else had the amazing idea to save her and then they had put it into action. It could be Harry. He was the only one who she could think of that would be able to do that other than her. If it was she was about to hear what he thought of her.

"If you do anything to harm that girl, I will kill you where you stand. What she means to me is none of your business. Step away from the girl now, or the last thing you will hear will be an unforgivable curse." The demanding voice from the door spoke.

Voldemort laughed softly, "Fool, you think that your puny powers will be able to conjure up something that can hurt me? I am the great Voldemort!"

Hermione was crying again. There was nothing she could do to aid in her rescue. She didn't have her wand, and she couldn't get up to distract Voldemort. She was just stuck there being a pawn, a trap in some twisted game for power, or something. She was just the bait to lure out Harry and now it had worked. He was here and he was going to die in a final attempt to save her.

"If you are so great then why have you stooped so low as to take hostages?" The shadow at the door asked, "And why is it that you haven't just killed the girl yet? You are afraid of me and what I might be able to do. You are afraid of what I might be able to cast to cause you a great deal of pain and suffering before you die."

Voldemort lifted his wand and pointed it at the shadow, "I'm fear nothing! Avada Kedavra!"

There was a flash of green light. Hermione screamed out as tears burst forth from her eyes. Harry was dead and there was nothing that she could do about it. He was dead. The boy who had saved her, the boy who lived, was dead…and it was all her fault. The tears continued rolling from her eyes as everything went dark.

☼

Hermione bolted awake sitting up in her bed, warm tears rolling down her cheeks and a cold sweat all around her. She was sitting on her bed, in the Gryffindor, girl's dormitory. She wasn't in some dark room with the dark lord Voldemort attempting to kill her. She wasn't being saved by some mysterious person, who might have been the new defense against the dark arts teacher now that she thought of it. She was just sitting on her bed after waking up from some sort of nightmare.

Staying here and sitting on something like that nightmare wasn't such a great idea, and going back to sleep just invited her to have another one. This wasn't the sort of thing that was supposed to happen to her. This was the sort of odd dream that Harry was supposed to have and then talk vaguely about because he didn't want anyone to worry but wanted them to be prepared for it incase it was true.

She slowly got up out of her four-poster bed and buttoned up the buttons on her night shirt that she hadn't bothered with while she was just going to be sleeping. Some of the first years were still awake and trying to hide it from her, but that was alright. They were obviously too jittery to sleep. They would be too tired tomorrow to be awake like that.

She walked down the stairs slowly into the common room. The fire in the corner was still going but was far less so than it had been when everyone was awake. It was always like this. Hermione felt the plush carpet under her feet as she walked over to the couch slowly. She'd relax down here and do some reading for a while before she had to go back up and get dressed to go to classes.

She pulled a book about interpreting dreams off of one of the shelves and curled up in one of the armchairs, her feet on the soft cushion of the chair and her knees pressed against her chest as she slowly opened the book. This was the life, a comfortable armchair and a seemingly endless supply of books. Hermione could live like this for quite a long time, and if she was lucky she might even find out what her dream was all about. She would have stayed like that a lot longer but she felt the nagging presence of someone else in the room.

Her head snapped up and she looked around the room for where this other person was, "Who's there?" She whispered softly hoping not to wake anyone who was sleeping.

A shadow in one of the armchairs nearer to the fireplace moved suddenly, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that anyone else was down here. I'll leave you to your studying."

Hermione narrowed her eyes slightly trying to figure out who it was, "Are you one of the first years?"

"I guess you could say that. I'm Blake, the guy that punched that stupid Slytherin boy." He was looking a lot clearer to Hermione, now that she knew who it was that she was looking at, "You're that girl from the train, aren't you? I guess I should apologize for the way I acted."

Hermione looked down at her book, not really caring much about what this Blake guy had to say. She was far more interested in this book about interpreting dreams and finding out what it was that her dream had meant, "Yeah, don't worry about it."

Blake nodded. He had already gotten up and continued to walk towards the door to the male dormitory. Hermione watched him out of the corner of her eye. He definitely wasn't your average student. There was something that was terribly off about him. She shook off the feeling and went back to scanning through her book. There had to be something in here about nightmares like the one she had.

She flipped through the pages slowly looking for anything that would offer her some insight into the world of her subconscious, or whatever it was that was causing this nightmare. She found a whole lot of theories, but not much about actually interpreting dreams. It was like some old man had decided to come up with a whole lot of theories about how something like that might work and then didn't know what it was so he decided it was how to interpret dreams. This book while interesting, wasn't what she was looking for. She sighed as she snapped it closed and put it down on the table beside her. She wasn't sure what it was that she had expected to find, but whatever it was, she hadn't found it.

Hermione sighed softly as she looked over to the fire. Her mind wandered from finding out what it was that her dream had meant to worrying about her friends, Harry and Ron. Ron had been acting distant for the entire train ride and only was now opening up to his old Ron self. Harry was…well Harry just hadn't been the same Harry since last year. He had tried to be the same Harry, but it just wasn't going to happen with Sirius gone and that weight of guilt on the back of his mind that he couldn't do anything about it. It was clear that it was tearing him up inside that he hadn't been able to do anything to save his godfather, but no one was going to talk to him about it for fear that it might just upset him.

Draco had been pretty careless about that whole thing. What was worse was that he probably knew how much it tore Harry up inside to hear that sort of talk from anyone. In a way they were probably lucky that it had been Blake who had punched Draco rather than Harry. They didn't need to start the year with Harry being in trouble, and he would have done a whole lot worse to Draco if he had gotten the chance.

"I guess we'll have to thank Blake later for saving Harry…and maybe I'll thank him for standing up for me against Draco. It only sounds right. He was after all standing up for me when he probably thought I couldn't stand up to Malfoy…" Hermione whispered to herself.

She looked at the fire again. It was probably about time that she head back up to the dormitory to at least look like she had slept through the night. Everyone would know instantly that she hadn't if they didn't already know, but at least she would look like she had been sleeping all this time. She sighed softly as she shifted off of the cushiony armchair and headed back up the spiral staircase to the girls dormitory.

She muttered to herself, "Who knows, I might even be able to get a few more hours of sleep before I have to wake up tomorrow."

((AN: Okay, I know using an original character isn't going to go over well with everyone, but Harry, Ron, and Hermione just went through a terrible ordeal in the last book and are all going to be emotionally destroyed as a result of everything that happened. The only way I could manage to keep this fanfiction from slipping into total darkness was to introduce a new face to keep the characters on their toes and to keep all of you readers from getting overwhelmed by the angst level. Sorry if it upsets you. Maybe you shouldn't read it.))