((Author's note to her readers: Sorry about the wait for this new chapter! It has been a busy past few weeks for me and it will continue to be that way until mid-September. I'll try to get some more chapters done this week and next before I'm off traveling again. I thank you all for the wonderful reviews I've been getting as well. Please keep them coming! And, of course, enjoy the story.))
Rhyann gave a little exasperated sigh as she read the letter and handed it back to her boyfriend. There was only a week left of the semester and though everyone should have been studying for tests, all the talk was about the Yule Ball. The Hufflepuffs were trying to be very secretive over it while the Slytherins had boosted about their event and still did brag about it even weeks afterwards. She expected that she would not hear the end of it for the entire school year.
"Your mother is serious, isn't she?" The Dreamer glanced over at Draco who was scribbling a quick response for his family's eagle owl to take back.
"Of course she is." He signed his name with a firm line slashed underneath and folded it back up to stuff in the envelope. "If she says she wants to take us shopping to get robes that match for the ball, then she's going to do just that. She thinks it's only proper for a couple to be coordinated like that for special events. She does it all the time for herself and Father."
She tried not to screw up her face with distaste. There was nothing she could do about it, anyway. Rhyann knew it was easier to bend and do what Narcissa wanted than to fight with her. And what Narcissa wanted was usually less than what Lucius or Draco wanted from her. "Yes, I had noticed."
Handing the letter to the owl, Draco gave it a little scratch on its head and sent the bird on its way. He turned back to grin at the petite teen beside him. "My mother has impeccable taste. You know that. It's one of the few things she's good at and it does make her happy when she does get a chance to fuss over us. No one else will have matching dress robes. We are the most popular - and beautiful - couple in the school, after all." He gave her a wink. "It will draw even more attention to us."
Rhyann silently groaned. The last thing she wanted to do was draw any more attention to herself. She knew that he loved to be the center of attention and thrived on it, but she preferred to be hidden in the shadows, to be the silent watcher. She shrugged her small shoulders. "Whatever your mother wants then."
The Head Boy smiled smugly and leaned over to kiss her cheek. He continued talking on about how well he did on one of his major essays for his Wizarding Economics class. He was seemingly as proud of that as much as he was for getting her to agree to his mother's wishes. He took no note of her silence nor of her quick exchange of glances with Millicent, Drucinda and Blaise.
Rhyann use to wonder if they felt sorry for her for having to put up with the blond. Yet she visited their dreams regularly to assure herself of their loyalty and found out that they felt no sympathy for her whatsoever. They believed that it was her decision to place herself in that position, so it was also her choice to deal with Draco and all the stress that came with being his girlfriend. There were other students that were jealous of her and would like to be in her place. There were also boys who dreamed of being in Draco's place and have her to themselves. It was the ones that knew her better that did not have any compassion for her in that situaton though. She did not even know why she craved it and had to grudgingly admit that it did appear to everyone else that she wanted to be with him.
It wasn't a lie. In a way, Rhyann did want to be with Draco. She loved him but there was no trust between them. There were moments when she could pretend everything was alright, but it would not be that way again. When it came to what was important, she did not forget that he had betrayed her. He knew nothing of the secret meetings and her plans concerning them. The Dreamer had started to develop a plan on how to use them but it would take more time and she was not sure if she was going to have enough to do so.
She was shaken from her thoughts as Nearly Headless Nick flew into the room with a mortified wail. All heads turned his way as he barely stopped himself from sailing through Professor McGonagall. The Great Hall turned unusually quiet for a weekday morning. His words were indecipherable through his blubbering, but the Transfigurations teacher obviously caught something that no one else had and paled. Shaking, yet strangely calm, she stood up and motioned to Flitwick to take the ghost away and attend to him. She turned to Jones and Vector, whispered something to them, and they took off at a run.
It was then Rhyann noticed that neither the Headmaster nor Snape were at the staff table. It was not out of the ordinary since it was the end of the semester and they were busy, but at the moment, their absense struck her as horribly significant. She could see McGonagall take a deep breath before turning arond to face the students.
"I want the Prefects to take all students back to their Houses immediately. Do a head count and make sure everyone is there. No one is to leave their towers. No one." The emerald robed witch looked specifically towards the Gryffindor table before continuing. "Classes are cancelled today. The Head Boy will bring me the counts from his House and Ravenclaw. The Head Girl from her House and Hufflepuff." Her usually stern voice was drawn out tighter and seemed so fragile as if it could break at any second.
There were protests and mutterings. Someone shouted out, asking what was going on. "When we are certain, we will have the Heads of the Houses bring the news. Right now, you are all to go to your towers without any further fuss." There was no room left for arguing in her expression.
The Prefects herded the students back to their towers. Draco followed along behind, counting students as they entered the Slytherin common room and frowning because he did not know what was going on. When he disappeared to head to Ravenclaw, Rhyann motioned Millicent and Drucinda to sit off to one side with her. As if nonchalant about it, Blaise made his way over as well.
"What do you think is going on?" Drucinda ran a hand through her short locks worriedly.
"I don't know. What I did notice, though, was that neither Dumbledore nor Snape were at breakfast this morning." Rhyann replied quietly. She glared at the Mulciber twins as they pretended to wander near the little group. Imene turned up her nose at the hostile gaze and tugged on her brother's hand to lead him away.
Blaise smoothly leaned in and added, "I also noticed that Potter wasn't at his table either."
Rhyann's brows furrowed. Harry had been increasingly secretive the past few weeks. She was wise enough not to bring up the horcrux again with him, but she prodded his sleeping mind. It was something that was of importance to him and actively thought about. Yet the secret of it still remained impervious to her. She threw all her power into trying to find out why an enchanted item was important to him, but the more she chased after it in his mind, the faster it seemed to run away from her. It was incredibly frustrating. A barrier would not have stopped her, but this new trick was something the Dreamer had not come across before. It seemed to her something wily like the old wizard would come up with.
"Something big is going on for McGonagall to cancel classes like that especially when we have a test in her class later this morning." Millicent stated. Her own stony face was locked in a mask of deep thought.
"Yes, but what could it be?" Rhyann wondered out loud. "Nearly Headless Nick was carrying on as if half the school had vanished."
"Maybe something happened to Potter." Drucinda hesitantly suggested.
Millicent turned her beady eyes upon the fae teen. "Go see, Rhyann."
Rhyann's shot a quieting glare at the other Slytherin but Blaise and Drucinda were already waiting hear exactly what that meant. She pursed her lips, suppressing the anger that made her want to shout. "Why don't you go see, Millicent?"
"You know what I mean. We'll go upstairs, out of here. That way we can all watch over you." Millicent continued on doggedly. She folded her arms with a look that said she was very serious about this.
"What does she mean, Rhyann?" Blaise's sharp eyes drilled into her.
"I mean she can do something to go see what's going on if she really wanted to."
"I do want to, but..." Rhyann's jaw tightened. Her whole body was more rigid with Millicent revealing of her secret.
"Then do it." Millicent did not look intimidated at all. She held the smaller witch's dark gaze.
"What can you do?" Drucinda questioned more urgently.
The Dreamer looked from each one of them and then motioned they go up stairs into the boys' dorm. Blaise could not go into the girls' and she knew he would not be left out after what he had just heard. She walked swiftly to the seventh years' floor and made sure there was no one else in the room so that they could talk without being over-heard. She gave Millicent another cool reprimanding look, but it could not be helped now. She, too, wanted to know what was going on. She would make sure that there would be a few nights with the most terrible nightmares Millicent had ever known when this day was over.
"You must keep this to yourselves. No one but Millicent and... Potter knows." That would not sound right, especially when her own boyfriend did not know. Rhyann carried on though. "I can astral project. Send part of my energy out to where I want it to go. I can find out what's happening this way, but you all have to stand guard and make sure no one else comes in here."
Drucinda looked stunned and Blaise intensely curious. Millicent nodded once. There was no hint of satisfaction or remorse for sharing the secret in her expression. "We'll watch over you."
The short haired witch nodded her agreement and Blaise did as well. "I'll keep my questions for you until afterwards." He added, moving sinuously over to lean against the wall near the entrance to the floor. His eyes were focused on the Dreamer though.
Rhyann did not want to have to deal with anyone's questions. No one was suppose to know what she had been learning from Salome's book. She would have to make sure the secrets were firmly tucked and hidden away in their minds later. At the moment, she seated herself on Draco's bed, crossing her legs and resting her hands upon her knees. She wasn't sure where she needed to go but guessed that outside the Headmaster's office would be the best place to start.
She said nothing more to the others as she put herself into a meditative trance and sent her dream self to the hall just before the entrance to Dumbledore's office. There wasn't a sound. Rhyann crept around the corner but there was no one around. The doorway was open and the stairs were visible. Someone had been up to the office or someone still was. Standing near the bottom, she could hear nothing though. She did not know whether to dare climb up to check or not.
Catching some motion out of the corner of her eye, she saw Professor Sprout racing down the hall towards the dungeons. Rhyann hurried after her. She knew that the Herbology professor never went down to the dungeons except to deliver ingredients to the potions room. And she surely wouldn't be running like that just to drop off some components for Professor Jones. Invulnerable as she felt in her dream form, she knew that she had to be careful to stay out of sight. Other people could see and hear her.
Winding her way down to the dungeons, Rhyann knew something terrible had happened even before she had gotten there. Usually this area of Hogwarts had the largest population of ghosts, but she did not see one transparent figure at all. There was quiet weeping coming from some of the portraits. Deep, mournful weeping that seemed to be the echoes of Nearly Headless Nick's wailing from the Great Hall earlier. Perhaps The-Boy-That-Lived no longer lived as Drucinda had suggested. Her stomach clenched up tightly. Finally, nearing the Potions classroom, she heard voices.
"Stay still, Harry. This will help with the burns." Sprout's voice was wobbly and wet with tears.
Rhyann did not relax any hearing that Potter was still alive. She inched closer to the door, constantly checking down both ways of the hall so she would not be seen.
"We have to get him straight to the hospital wing. We must have this area cleared so... so we can investigate what happened." Even the Deputy Headmistress could not cover the shock and sadness in her voice.
"I have told you what happened, Minerva." Snape was as cool and calm as ever. "We cannot let anyone else find out. Potter must go someplace more secure than the hospital wing and he must be watched twenty-four hours a day. We cannot have him telling anyone."
"It's okay, Harry." Hestia Jones' tone was soothing and soft. "We'll watch over you. Can you tell us exactly what happened? There's no need to be afraid..."
"And what should he be afraid of, Jones?" Snape snapped. "It was just an explosion. A miscalculation of how powerful the magic was in the horcrux."
"The Headmaster does not... did not make miscalculations." The Arithimancy teacher's sharp voice shot back.
Did not make? Rhyann leaned in towards the door ever so slowly, holding her breath. Snape had said something about a horcrux. The light was dim in the hall. If she just had one peek, surely they would not see her.
"Clearly he did." Snape stated coldly.
The new Potions professor seemed to ignore the old one and continued gently cooing to Potter. "You'll be alright, Harry. We just need to know exactly what happened here..."
"Question him later, Hestia." McGonagall interrupted. "We need to get him out of here. We'll have to send all the students home immediately... cancel the end of semester tests and the Yule Ball too. It will not do to have it this year... And we must... we must take care of Albus... Perhaps we should cancel all of next semester as well."
"The Headmaster would not have wanted that." Vector said in a quieter voice and produced a sob from Sprout. "We'll send the students home now, but we'll continue on in January."
"Yes, of course. You're right, Mobius." McGonagall sighed heavily, heart full of sorrow.
Rhyann's head crested the door frame and the classroom began to come into view. The walls were black and charred. Without a doubt, there had been a huge explosion. She wondered why no one else in Hogwarts had heard it. Surely something with that amount of force could have even been heard over the morning noise of the Great Hall.
There were bits of broken desks and cauldrons, still smoldering from the heat of the blast. Professors Vector and McGonagall had their backs to the door while Snape stood to their left side with his arms folded. Leaning in further, Rhyann spied Sprout and Jones crouched down on the floor beside Potter who was doing his best not to squirm as some paste was tenderly applied to his arms and face by the two teachers. He had his eyes closed as if trying to contain his pain. The burns covered his arms and part of his face. His robes were mostly in tact but burned themselves.
Her dark eyes searched out Dumbledore but found only an unrecognizable body where the wall was most severely charred. She could even hear something still sizzling. The only way she could tell it was the old wizard were the fragments of his robe still that had not been consumed and his battered old hat that had been blown off to the side. No one was tending to him. He was not moving.
The Dreamer's mouth fell open and at the same moment saw Snape's head turn her way. He looked her right in the eyes. His gaze more intense than ever before, but she could not read the reason for that intensity. The hooked nose wizard did not say anything even when she darted back around the corner and drew herself back to her body.
Rhyann drew in a sharp breath as she returned to her body. Her face was pale as were the three others staring at her. Slowly she uncrossed her legs and placed her feet on the floor, but she did not stand up. When she spoke, her voice was flat and emotionless. "Dumbledore is dead."