AN: I'm terribly sorry that this has taken quite some time to update, but I've had quite a lot of homework, so I haven't really had much time to neither write nor read anything… I'm also sorry that it's a rather short chapter, but I am also currently suffering from writer's block, and it's been hard to come up with any good ideas for this chapter. But I hope I'll get it all going soon. From now on I will try to update in the weekends, since I probably won't have much time during the week, though I might be lucky some days…
Oh yeah. Once again thanks to all my lovely reviewers!
Wanderingwind: well, you'll find out now.
Acdecnerd: Well, here's the update, hope you like that as well.
This brilliant dream: I already decided who her dream man is going to be. But I won't tell you. You just have to keep reading (and reviewing…Please…!) to find out.
Maranjade: Here's the update. And by the way, what do you mean by author review only?
Chapter 3.
Hermione hurried through the halls towards Gryffindor tower and up the stairs to her dormitory, going straight to bed. She was exhausted. She fell asleep almost instantly, but once again she dreamt of that dark, mysterious man with the cold hands and soft lips. She sighed in her troubled sleep as her 'dream man' held her, touched her and kissed her tenderly and passionately.
She woke up with a sigh at the exact same time in the dream as she always had, as he lowered her naked form down on the bed. She sat up in her bed, annoyed. It was not because she did not know what was going to happen, it did not take much imagination to figure that out. No Hermione was annoyed because she could not for the life of her figure out what the dream was trying to tell her. She did not know which one of her professors it was, mostly because, if she was completely honest with herself, it could really be both Snape and Sirius. She loved them both and she hated them both, but she could not possibly be in love with both of them, could she? It really did not seem rationally possible, and she had always been a rationally thinking person. But of course, her having the dream in the first place was not very rational either, it was actually very irrational, especially considering her thinking about acting upon it. She had started to try and figure out who the man was, but she had not once thought about what would happen if she did find out. What would she do? Tell him? Now she did not find that the most rational thing to do, so she probably would not, but then the dreams would continue, would they not? And then there was, of course, the whole Snape using legillemency (sp?) problem. What would she do about that if he confronted her? She could not hide anything from that man, he would know if she lied, and he obviously knew more than one way to get the truth out of her.
Hermione sighed again and climbed out of her bed and walked to the bathroom, silently without waking any of the other girls, to take a long warm shower. She felt all her muscles relax and leant against the cold tile wall sighing contently, closing her eyes. She should not have done. The moment her eyes fluttered closed Hermione could feel two cold hands caressing her breasts, her stomach, her hips, her arse, travelling over her whole body. She opened her eyes again, but there was nothing and no one to be seen, other than the white tiles of the shower cabinet walls, and the bottles of soap and shampoo on the floor. It had just been her imagination. Hermione looked around rather confused and stood up straight again, stepping out of the cabinet and wrapping a towel around her body. She dried off her body quickly and dressed in a pair of loose jeans and an oversized sweatshirt from Oxford University and finished off by performing a quick drying spell on her hair tying it up in a ponytail. When she finished it was 7 o'clock. She tip-toed down in the common room where she found Ginny curled up in a sofa with a romance novel.
"How come you're up already?" Hermione asked the red haired girl. Ginny looked up.
"Couldn't sleep," she shrugged, "What about you?"
"Oh, the same," Hermione said indifferently. Ginny looked her in the eyes.
"Mione, you're lying," she stated, "There's something wrong with you and I wanna know what it is." Her voice was demanding, but Hermione did not give up that easily.
"No, there's nothing wrong with me, Ginny. What should be wrong?" she said innocently.
"Sit!" Ginny pointed towards an armchair across from her. Hermione did as she was told, not daring to do anything else when the younger girl's temper was rising.
"You are an extraordinarily bad liar, Hermione. Now tell me what is wrong? I know there's something, 'cause the boys told me you had detention with both Snape and Sirius yesterday, and Sirius' detention was because you fell asleep IN class! Now that is not like you, Mione, and I want to know what's wrong!"
"Okay, okay, relax, " Hermione said silently, "But please don't tell anyone, especially not Harry and Ron."
"Of course not! You can trust me, Mione, you know that!" Ginny said, "Now tell me!"
"Well I've had this dream lately, about a pro… a guy," Hermione corrected her mistake quickly before Ginny noticed, "The problem is, it could be two guys, and I sort of both hate and like both of them and I don't know what the dream is trying to tell me, what it wants me to do…" Hermione trailed off. Ginny just looked at her for a second or two, then blinked.
"What?" she said, "You're this freaked out over a boy?" It was more like a man, but Hermione did not say that.
"Well it is kinda disturbing," she just said in a reasoning tone, "Especially because it could be two guys, as I said to you… and I can't possibly be in love with two guys."
"Hermione, what exactly happens in the dream?" Ginny asked, somewhat curiously, somewhat worried.
"Well, there's this guy, who's face I can't see, and he is touching me and stuff, and whispers that he loves me, and that's basically it," Hermione said, blushing madly at the memory of the dream that she knew by heart by now. She got lost in her own thoughts for a moment before she was pulled roughly back to the land of the living when she heard Ginny laughing loudly.
"What's so funny?" she asked indignantly.
"Don't you see? You're not in love, or you could be, since you started having the dreams and stuff, but it's not certain, I suppose you would also know yourself if that was case…"
"Ginny get to the point!" Hermione interrupted sternly, watching the younger girl with a look that could kill.
"Well, what the dream is trying to say probably is that the both of those guys are in love with you!" Ginny said as if it was the most natural thing in the world, "Don't you see? The guy touched you, he told you he loved you, and you really didn't do anything… It's the guy, or those guys, if he could be two persons who're going crazy over you!"
"But then why am I the one who gets those stupid dreams? Why am I the one who can't sleep at night? Why am I the one whose life is falling apart because of it?" Hermione whined frustrated.
"I wouldn't know, would I?" Ginny said, "Perhaps because you need to figure out what you really feel about them, or one of them at least…" she guessed. Hermione just sat there for a while, staring into space. Ginny simply could not be right, it could not be because Snape and Sirius loved her and she had to figure out who she loved, that was not possible! But the more she thought about it the more sense did it make. Hermione sighed.
"Do you wanna come and have some breakfast?" she asked Ginny. The young redhead nodded and the two girls made their way out if the common room towards the Great Hall.
AN: Well, that's it for now. Sorry it's short. Anyway, please review, otherwise I won't know if you read it, and if nobody reads it, or I think nobody reads it, there'll be no point in my continuing to write it…! So please tell me what you think!