Wow, sorry this chapter took so long to materialise, but I've been having mocks, then going through mocks, then revision...stupid GCSEs!

Chapter 4. Waking Dreams

Lily sighed and turned over. It had all been a dream, obviously, but it had been a good one and she didn't want to wake up from it. There had been a train, then a lake and a group of girls she had been chatting to, then a huge castle, and…and she realised she could remember everything. That was strange.

It started to filter into her bleary, semi-conscious state that the bed she was lying in was much softer than the one she was used to sleeping in, and that the birds she could hear outside sounded different from those near her house in Kent, and there were a lot more of them. She could also hear the sounds of other people sleeping, to the left and to the right. She opened her eyes, blinking in the early September sunlight filtering through a gap in the deep burgundy bed curtains…wait a minute? Hangings round the bed? Huh?

Lily suddenly snapped her eyes fully open. It was real! She had come up a spiral stone staircase with moving pictures on the walls, and found a common room with a roaring, magically sustained fire in a massive fireplace, and found this room, and unpacked her things from her suitcase, which had been waiting for her. And she was at a magical school…and this was her first day. She checked her watch, lying on the bedside table next to her hurriedly, then realised after a brief panic that it had stopped at half past eight the night before, about the time at which she had entered the castle grounds. She frowned, not understanding this, but figured it was probably just some sort of magical side-effect. However, as a few things filtered back into her mind, she realised it was Saturday anyway, and that all the other beds in the dormitory were still occupied, so she was alright to enjoy her luxurious surroundings a bit longer.

Sirius pulled back the curtains of the first year Gryffindor boy's dormitory, pushed open the rusty latch on the window and stuck his head out into the fresh air, breathing it in deeply, the air refreshing after the slightly stuffy air of the dormitory. He was subject to no delusions of dreams like Lily – he had grown up knowing that when he was eleven he would come here (despite all his mother's threats and his cousins Narcissa and Bellatrix's taunts), and he had a magically powered watch, still on his wrist and reading twenty past seven – and he was looking forward to a new environment to wreak havoc on. Leaning out a bit further, Sirius could see the massive grounds, green and lush, and a branch of the lake they had crossed in boats the night before – it still looked huge, even from this height. There was a hut in the grounds, and he vaguely recalled his father mentioning to him in one of his brief and uncommon talks to Sirius that the groundskeeper, the huge man they had met the night before, lived there. Over to his right, Sirius could also see a massive tree, its branches waving threateningly, even in this slight breeze. The soil was disturbed around its base – it looked as though it had only just been planted, and Sirius wondered why. But it wasn't important.

On the edge of the grounds was a dark forest, the tall pine trees growing close together, swaying slightly in the fresh breeze. As he watched, a cloud of pigeons erupted upwards from one spot, disturbed from their nests by something shaking the tree far below. Dumbledore had mentioned the forest in his speech – they were "not to go near the Forbidden Forest under any circumstances" as they "may not come out again. Their full extent has never been charted, and who knows what lurks in the undergrowth?" This had been enough to put most of the students off, but not Sirius – and he was sure that, given a little work, he could persuade James, and possibly Remus and Peter, although he wasn't too sure, to come and explore them too. Well…possibly not Peter. He had looked terrified during Dumbledore's speech about the Forest. However, Remus also had gone incredibly pale when they overheard one of the older students saying there were werewolves in the forest. Sirius had laughed – he wasn't honestly scared of werewolves, was he? They'd never get into the school grounds, anyway!

Remus was awake, but lying quietly so he would not be disturbed while he wrestled with his thoughts. He knew Sirius was awake, had heard him do something but only realised what it was when the draught from the open window came through the hangings, and he could tell the other two were asleep – he could smell it.

He was getting jittery. It was only two days until the full moon, and he would have to think of an excuse to give his new friends. He hoped they were his friends – his father, totally unsympathetic as normal, had always told him before he came to Hogwarts that he couldn't have friends because of his condition; he couldn't get close to anyone incase he hurt them. His mother had been much more understanding – it was she who had spoken to Dumbledore for him – his father had not wanted him coming to Hogwarts, he would be "a danger to the other children, and if anything happens I'll get blamed for it, won't I?" He never imagined that he could be able to come to Hogwarts, the place he had heard so much about – in a fit of anger once his father had told him that they didn't send dangerous animals to schools, they put them down…he had hated his father more than ever that day, because he knew that, in a way, he was right.

But Dumbledore had changed that. He had accepted Remus into the school, and had reassured him that measures had been taken to organise something for each full moon. Remus knew that he was the first ever student with his…condition…at the school, and so was slightly apprehensive about what the school had organised – what could they possibly do that would keep everybody, including him, safe that one time a month? Did they know how much destruction he could do in that form? At his home, there was a small shed down at the bottom of the garden, windowless and magically reinforced to ten times the strength of steel…he had grown to hate that shed, and the way he was imprisoned in it every month, his mother crying but knowing she had to lock him in there, and his father, remaining in the house, glaring at him from afar, for ruining the whole family's lives…

There was another thing too. The girl he had met yesterday, Hazel. He wanted to be friends with her…possibly…well…more than friends. He blushed. His mother had reassured him that there was no problem in him having girlfriends, but if he was really serious that he would have to tell the girl about his lycanthropy, and he couldn't honestly imagine anyone staying around him more than the time it took to scream and run. It was the same with his new friends. Sooner or later they would work it out, and would they really stick by him then? He had never told anyone before; the lectures his father had given him had made Remus into the nervous, shy, quiet boy he was now.

Remus snuggled down under the thick deep red duvet. He may as well get some sleep while he could – he would need it.