She was walking in a garden, and it was winter.

Verona knew very well that she was dreaming, which was a bit odd, because as far as she could ever remember, she didn't dream. The divination teacher insisted that everybody had dreams, and that remembering those dreams was a key to one's personal future, but after two weeks, the only thing that had turned up in Verona's dream diary was a vague note about a dream in which she was doing nothing more interesting than sitting in class. Her inability to have interesting dreams had earned her a failing mark in that unit and further derision from the peers she had long ago learned to ignore... and yet here she was, having what she definitely knew was a dream, and having it so clearly that she knew she would remember it the rest of her life.

When had she fallen asleep? She paused and put a finger in her mouth. Madame Pomphrey's stupid potion had taken forever to work. It felt as if she'd lain awake for hours and hours, listening to the professors talk to the other three girls and then walk away and discuss worrying things like prophecies and necromancy. She had to be asleep now, because she was dreaming, but...

She shook her head – she was missing the dream. If she were aware that she was dreaming, it must be important, and it would probably do to pay attention to it. She raised her head – she was walking in what appeared to be the Alhambra; she'd visited it once with her family... but she doubted they ever really got a heavy snowfall in southern Spain. Yet now the gardens and roofs were covered in six inches of snow, sparking in the cold winter sunlight. The yew bushes, carefully trimmed into the shapes of horses, were drooping under the weight of the snow, and the fountains were full of ice that must have been frozen in an instant as it leapt into the air. It reminded her of the passage in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe about the water frozen on Mr. Beaver's dam.

Verona herself was wearing a trailing gown of emerald green velvet, embroidered around the neckline and the upper part of the sleeves with vines and leaves in silver. A weight around her hips was a heavy silver belt set with green gems and black and white pearls, and she was walking down a pebble path – she could feel the cold little stones on her bare feet – towards the largest of the frozen fountains. There was a big, two-handled silver cup sitting on the edge of the basin, with something important inside. Verona picked it up and looked into it...

... and then woke up to see Lily Evans' smiling face looking down at her.

Yesterday came back in a rush – sort of. The memories were oddly fuzzy, as if covered in spider webs, but that didn't seem very important. "Lily!" Verona sat up and gave her friend a hug. "I was worried you'd died! I wouldn't take my potion last night until Madam Pomphrey let me take your pulse and make sure you were okay!"

"I'm just fine," Lily assured her, rubbing her back. "We're all just fine, actually – Jessie from Hufflepuff and Nadia in Ravenclaw got hurt, too, but Madame Pomphrey patched us all up and she says we're well enough to go to class today.

That made Verona's face fall – class. With the other Slytherins, who considered her an interloper.

Lily promptly displayed her usual ability to read Verona's mind. "Just three more years, Ver," she said. "Hang in there – we can do it."

"Yeah." Verona managed to smile back at her. Lily was usually the only person who could make Verona smile.

The girls' things had all been brought to the hospital wing for them. Jessie and Nadia, who'd been up first, were already dressed and in the bathroom, brushing their teeth. Lily and Verona each pulled the curtains shut around their own beds and put on their uniforms. By the time they were finished that, the other girls were out of the bathrooms, and Verona went and stood in front of a mirror to brush her long black hair. Verona and her hair had a mutually antagonistic relationship – it got all dry and tangled and the ends split with annoying regularity. She would have loved to just chop it all off, but she kept it long for her mother, who thought it was beautiful.

Today, it was surprisingly cooperative, which was nice of it, all things considering. In fact, she barely had to brush it at all – normally, she spent a good hour working it into braidable shape, but today it just seemed to fall right into place, smooth and shiny. She pulled it back and tied it in place with a green scrunchie, then helped Lily get her own hair into its usual two French braids.

"How are we looking?" asked Lily.

"Presentable," replied Verona. Presentable was about all either girl could ever hope for.

"Yep," sight Lily, looking in the mirror. "Looks like that's as good as it's gonna get. Time to go face the world! You ready?"

"Ready when you are," Verona said.

It was a bit funny, really – or would have been, had Verona been as mean-spirited as her housemates sometimes seemed – to hear Lily say things like 'time to face the world!', because Lily was the one who avoided facing the world as much as possible. The professors knew better than to call on her in class, because she was as likely as not to faint before she made it to the blackboard to answer the question. She'd once confessed to Verona that, having been brought up by people with not even the basic knowledge of the wizarding world that Verona's mother had, she always felt as if she knew nothing, and was terrified that somebody would speak up and tell her she was wrong. It was a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, especially when Lily was the one who was always helping Verona with her homework, but there it was.

Verona liked to think that her own worst fear was somewhat more rational than that – Verona was afraid of disappointing her mother. Maria Ash had all her hopes pinned on her eldest daughter – the only one out of four children who had any magical talent. Verona represented Maria's validation, her proof to her family that her status as a squib did not make her utterly worthless, and the Micarellis treated her as such. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and miscellaneous relatives of all descriptions fawned over Verona while ignoring her siblings, who resented her for it and took as much pride as possible in being as Muggle-ish as they could: Amelia was determined to be a violinist when she grew up, Dante a policeman like their father, and Gabriella, the youngest, insisted she would be an astronaut... none wanted anything to do with magic.

As far as their relationship with the Micarellis went, everything Verona's family had was riding on her. She often found it a terrible burden.

Verona and Lily finished getting ready at just about the time Jessie and Nadia did, so the four of them went down to the great hall together... so they all got to hear the sudden utter silence when they walked in. It was as if somebody had cast a silencing charm over the entire room – conversation simply stopped cold, and over three hundred pairs of eyes, belonging to students and teachers both, turned on them.

"Did we do something wrong?" Verona whispered.

"I don't think so..." said Lily. "But Madame Pomphrey was talking last night, about necromancy..."

"You heard that, too?" asked Verona.

But all those eyes were still on them, waiting for them to take their seats, and whatever they had or had not done, they couldn't lurk in the doorway forever. Jessie and Nadia went off to their own seats, while Verona and Lily, heads down, went over to the Gryffindor table. Verona much preferred the company of Gryffindors to that of her own house. They weren't terribly friendly to her, but at least they didn't go out of their way to actively antagonize her, either.

The Slytherins, however, more than made up for the lack. The girls had to pass the Slytherin table to get to the Gryffindors, and as they did, Bella Black said, very loudly, "pity they couldn't have stayed dead."

That was absolutely the most awful thing Verona had ever heard one human being say about another... and maybe that was why it awoke in her the very uncharacteristic urge to turn around and hex Bella into the middle of next week. Or perhaps just punch her in the face. How anybody could say a thing like that...

"It's okay, Ver," said Lily softly. "Don't let it bother you. She's not worth your time."

The two sat down across from Alice Templeton, who, while neither Lily nor Verona would have considered her a close friend, was generally nice to them. Alice looked up as they seated themselves and opened her mouth, but then closed it again without greeting them. Plates of waffles with syrup and whipped cream materialized on the table in front of them, and Lily and Verona dug in without saying anything.

Both, however, were quite painfully aware of the fact that everybody was still staring at them. The overall murmur of conversation that had been audible from the great hall before they entered it had not resumed – instead there was the hushed rustling of a lot of whispers, and every time Verona glanced up, she found dozens of eyes on her. She was usually good at ignoring such things, but today she quickly started to find it unbearable. Finally, too frustrated to eat, she let her fork drop to her plate with a clunk and looked at Alice.

"What happened?" she asked quietly. "Why is everybody looking at us?"

Alice stared at her. "Nobody told you?"

"If anybody told me, would I be asking?" hissed Verona.

"Verona!" breathed Lily.

"Sorry." Verona took a deep breath and calmed down. This wasn't like her... but then, she'd never been in a situation like this before. "But what did happen?"

"Everybody thought you were dead," said Alice. "The train station got attacked by followers of... of You-Know-Who. One of them shot a curse right at Lily and you jumped into the way, and we thought you were dead. You weren't breathing or anything. Even the professors thought you were dead. Then suddenly, this morning, Professor Dumbledore announced that you weren't dead after all. I'm glad you're still alive," she added, "but the whole thing is weird."

Verona shuddered.

"They're saying the trees brought you back," Alice added.

"Trees?" Lily looked up. "I had a dream about trees..."

"The trees out back," Alice clarified. "They're gone. There's something floating around about a prophecy. But mostly everybody's just glad you're not dead."

"Bella Black isn't," grumbled Verona.

"Shhhh," said Lily, but it was perhaps the least emphatic 'shhhh' Verona had ever heard from her.