Chapter 7: Dark Nights
Falling again… Mara looked down to see the dark emptiness below her, so very vast. Then a bright light flashed, letting her see what was really beneath her rapidly falling body. Glass objects and sharply pointed dark cone shapes glinted in the ghastly green light that faded slowly. Just as her body touched the points, feeling the dainty glass figures shatter under her, she woke up in her bed in the Slytherin dormitory, paralyzed where she sat, by fear. And she realized her wrist was burning, right where her strangely shaped scar was.
In the Gryffindor dorm, someone else was sitting up in bed, awakened by the same dream. But this one was used to it by now. Used to the ghastly green light he knew was no regular light. Used to the fear that coursed through his body each time he awoke. This dream was different, yet just the same as every one of Harry Potter's. The glass and sharp, thorn-like cones were different; so was the fall. But the light was almost always there, as well as the burn of pain on his forehead. Voldemort's favorite spells cast that light. The light that meant instant death. The light that had given him that damned burning scar.
The next morning, on the way to breakfast, Harry was telling his friends about the dream.
"It has never been like a regular nightmare, always like something real. But I was falling before I saw the green light, and the sharp and dangerous stuff below."
"Maybe it really was a nightmare, Harry," Hermione said.
"My scar was burning after. It wasn't just a nightmare. It had to do with him."
He was quiet at breakfast, thinking about the dream and about what he'd been thinking of when he fell asleep… the maybes. He had been thinking about them for a solid week now. Gryffindor had won the Quidditch match against Slytherin last week. He had caught the Snitch after about 15 minutes, but he'd also caught glimpses of how Mara could really play. And she was good. Really good. Much better than he had guessed from the little game they'd played at the Burrow… As he thought about that short time, when all of them had been together, something in him ached… for that time before she had met Malfoy… when he'd had a chance. That was why he found the Snitch so early on, so it could be over with.
At the Slytherin table, Mara pushed her breakfast around her plate, thinking about the nightmare she'd had. Draco nudged her. "You okay?" He asked her with kindness softening his steely green-gray eyes.
"Nothing," she said, after a long pause of wondering whether she should tell him. "Just a dream I had last night. Shook me up."
"Oh, well, you just have to remember that dreams are just that. Just dreams."
She smiled. "Haven't you heard? Some dreams come true." She said this with a hint of sadness and bitterness in her voice.
In class, she seemed distracted. Harry noticed. "Hermione," he whispered, nudging his friend, "look over at Mara."
She did. "So what? She's probably daydreaming about making out with Malfoy," she told him quietly, rolling her eyes.
"I don't think so. Look closer. She looks sad. Somehow I doubt her fantasies make her so… haunted."
"Fine. And since when do you study Slytherins so closely?" She looked again, more carefully. "And maybe she had a bad dream, okay? Everyone has nightmares, Harry. Not just you, remember?"
And that's when he wondered if her nightmare… was his.