Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Chapter 8: Sleeping Subconscious

DISCLAIMER: nothing you recognise is mine. wish it was. then i'd have lots of money and would never have to take stupid law exams ever again. i'd live in a big house and have hunky manservants to wait on me hand and foot...sorry, i got carried away :)

A/N enjoy. please :)

Hermione sat on her bed with the hangings closed around her.

She stared down at the parchment in her shaking hands.

'Unveil Sleeping Subconscious'. Her own neat handwriting mocked her. The surprisingly simple potion could be brewed in less than a minute, especially with her Christmas present off Harry.

She wanted answers. She needed answers. To whatever the hell was going on in her head that messed her up so much she was scared to close her eyes.

But she couldn't help wondering whether there was a reason she didn't remember the dreams. What was so bad that she'd blocked it?

Sighing she made up her mind and dropped the parchment on to the quilt she sat on.

Climbing off her bed, she slowly crossed the room and picked up her cauldron from its place beside her desk.

She carried it back to her bed. Strangely it was the place where she felt the safest. With the hangings drawn round her nothing could get to her. It was her world in there. She conjured one of the mini blue fires she was infamous for on her bedspread.

Hermione dropped the required ingredients into the cauldron on top of the dancing flames.

Five minutes later she held a cup in her hands, filled to the brim with a liquid which smelled suspiciously like tea.

"Here goes nothing," she said aloud, before downing the mixture in one gulp.

Immediately she dropped the mug to the floor and collapsed back on to the bed.

She stood beside the bed in her dream. Looking down onto the dark green sheets she watched herself attempt to rouse Harry.

"He can't hear you, you know."

She turned with the Hermione on the bed, to look at the figure standing at the foot of the bed.

Watching the events unfold before her, she knew for certain that this time she would remember it all.

She gave an involuntary gasp as the Harry standing there uttered the words "little Dreamer." Her mind flew back to the night they'd had sex, Harry's words which had unsettled her, even as his arms had comforted her.
When the other Hermione screamed out the word "Draco," she tensed, knowing that she would awake.

But she didn't.

The bed faded, taking the Hermione and unconscious Harry with it. Now she stood, enveloped in darkness, though somehow she saw Draco as clearly as though there was a spotlight shining on him.

"Hey Mione." He spoke in a conversational tone.

Harry calls you Mione. A voice whispered to Hermione.

"Malfoy, what the HELL is going on?" All rationality that would have told her the Malfoy before her was a figment of her imagination had deserted her in the overwhelming fear that inexplicably closed over her.

"Like I said," he smiled down at her, "I'll explain eventually. For now though, don't worry about a thing. No harm is going to come to you until you've served your purpose. I'll make sure of that. I'm still here, watching you."

She couldn't speak as Draco went out of focus for a second before becoming clearer again. But he wasn't Draco anymore.

Harry turned and strolled away from her, into the suffocating darkness.

"Oh," he paused and half turned back to her, "you might want to check your ancestry for a seer. Because you're quite a powerful dreamer."

She jerked awake, breathing hard. At least she hadn't screamed this time.

And she remembered the dream.

Just because she remembered it, though, didn't mean she had any clue at all what it meant.

Hermione's logical brain, having returned now that the darkness was gone (wimp), attempted to make sense of what she'd just seen and heard.

Almost an hour passed and she had a hundred different theories, each more ludicrous than the last: Draco was going to kill Harry, Draco was spying on her and Harry; Draco was disguised as Harry for some bizarre reason; it was some kind of weird freaky mind link thing with someone, like Harry and Voldemort used to have; she was absolutely out of her mind crazy and should be locked up.

The last option seemed the most likely, but she'd been part of the wizarding world (and friends with Harry Potter) for long enough to know that that was rarely the correct explanation for any of the strange things that always seemed to happen to her.

Maybe talking about it would help. Everyone always said two heads were better than one.

With another huge sigh she climbed off the bed and wandered out of the room in search of Harry.

"I don't get it." Harry looked puzzled.

"Neither do I, you dimwit, that's my point." Hermione was growing increasingly exasperated with her boyfriend. "I don't understand what the dream's trying to tell me. You've heard my theories, do you have any of your own? That's what I want to know."

"Well, I think you can definitely rule out the one about, er…Draco being…erm…me," he'd felt an instant rush of panic as that theory had been mentioned. There were only two people in the whole school who were better at jinxes than Hermione; Perfect Potter and the Weaslette. He had no desire to see what she thought of his charade until he was strong enough to stop what she would do to him.

"Because I'm pretty sure I would know about it if that happened."

"Yeah," Hermione paused in her pacing of the common room, "but if you were Malfoy, you wouldn't tell me I was right would you? You'd just say you weren't him, or you, and you'd just say that you were you, or him."

"Mione, you're not making any sense."

"Oh, I'm sorry Harry," she sank down beside him on the couch. "Of course you're not Malfoy. Why the hell would Malfoy want to pose as you anyway? It doesn't make any sense."

"None of this makes any sense to me honey." Harry wrapped his strong arms around her tense body. "Maybe you should just try not to think about it. The answer will come to you eventually." Hopefully when I'm standing in front of you with more power than the Dark Lord and that Muggle-loving fool, Dumbledore put together.

She moaned slightly as his hands rubbed her back, smoothing the tension out of her.

When he moved forward for a kiss she didn't fight it, and met his lips as her fingers trailed through his raven hair.

She broke away before she became lost in his caress.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?" His voice was thick and his eyes were unfocused.

"Do you think we could use the bed? I've still got the rug burns from last time."

She lay awake listening to his deep, even breathing.

She knew it was wrong, but she had some suspicions about Harry. Especially considering what Toni had said about him. But how could she tell him? It would hurt him so much if she accused him of something and turned out to be wrong. And then, not only would she be losing her boyfriend, she'd also be losing her best friend.

Slipping quietly off the bed, she pulled Harry's robe around her body and padded softly across the room to where his trunk sat.

With a quick glance behind her to ensure he was still sleeping soundly she knelt and lifted the lid.

There was the usual boy stuff thrown in there, dirty clothes, his school books, old copies of the daily prophet, more "Which, Broomstick" magazines than anyone would ever need, and a whole lot of other things she didn't even want to hazard a guess at what they were.

The Marauders Map lay to one side. For some reason he hadn't wiped it and the spidery lines and moving dots were visible.

As Hermione reached for it to wipe it clean, a small piece of parchment fluttered against her hand.

Casting another look behind her, she tried to squash the guilt she felt at going through Harry's private things.

She carefully pulled out the parchment that her fingers had brushed, not knowing what she expected to see on it.

It was a note containing only three words.

"Two weeks left."

Two weeks left to do what? The handwriting wasn't Harry's or Ron's. She didn't recognise it at all.

Her removing the note had left three bottles that were tucked away in the corner of the trunk clear to her view. They were filled with a liquid that seemed vaguely familiar to Hermione but she just couldn't think why.

Just as she was about to reach out and pick one of them up for a closer look she heard Harry stir behind her.

Hurriedly she stuffed everything back into the trunk and stood, turning to face the bed.

"What are you doing?" Harry was sitting up in the bed, watching her with those penetrating green eyes of his.

"Nothing!" She answered, a little too quickly. "Why? What did it look like I was doing?" She was fervently hoping that all he'd seen was her standing up, and missed the bit where she'd been rummaging around in his trunk.

"It looked like you were going through my things."

Busted.

"Oh…that…yeah, I was…erm…just…looking for a…erm…for a copy of "Which, Broomstick. I've been thinking about buying one, what do you suggest?"

"Don't lie to me Mione." His voice was calm, while all the time that little voice (where the hell had it come from? Was he going schizophrenic or something?) was screaming, how much did she see?

"Ok," Hermione looked ashamed, "look, I'm so sorry Harry but I just had to know that…" she trailed off.

"That I'm not Draco Malfoy in disguise?" He'd relaxed a little bit. If she'd known for sure that he was Draco she wouldn't have called him Harry. Plus the fact that he would probably be in extreme pain right now if she had anything on him.

"Yeah."

"Satisfied? Finished looking through my stuff? Can you trust me now or do you want to do a DNA test or something." He allowed some of the anger and annoyance he'd felt towards her since the end of term seep into his voice.

But Hermione could only feel guilty for so long before she got angry. "Well, what the hell am I supposed to think Harry? You called me Granger, you shouted at me when I insulted Malfoy, you slept with Toni, you looked extremely surprised to see the map, you lied to me about being in the room of requirement, and you call me Mione, something which you've never done before, and which was in my dream, and then there's the whole "Little Dreamer" comment." She was almost screaming at him by this time. "So tell me Harry, what am I supposed to think?"

"I don't know," his voice was quieter than hers, but not by much, "how about trusting me? You've known me for seven years, how hard is it to do? All that stuff is just your paranoid little mind trying to mess us up, because you feel insecure when there isn't something to fight so you have to make things up. And as for calling you Mione, did you ever think that you might have added that into your dream because I called you it and it made you feel safe or something? I called you "Dreamer" because what the hell else was I supposed to say? You dreamed, therefore you are a dreamer, is that so hard to work out?"

Hermione was trembling now, all the fight seemed to be draining out of her as she listened to his words. Draco watched this with growing satisfaction. He had her.

"Harry, I'm so sorry, but you have to understand how I'm feeling! There's all these things going on in my head and I can't stop them. I know you're not Malfoy, there's no way he would come near me for any reason, and I know that you wouldn't hurt me, I'm just so confused at the moment!"

She broke down in tears.

Again? It's like a leaky bloody tap! Doesn't she ever stop crying?

He walked over her and enveloped her in a hug. "Hermione, don't worry, I'm here. I'm sorry for yelling at you, but you've got to understand that you hurt me when I saw you going through my trunk and realised that you didn't trust me." He had to fight the urge to yawn.

"I do trust you, I do." She leaned in to his body and clung to him. "I love you, Harry."

The smile on his face was real for once. At last.

A/N Lemme know wat u think :)