Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or his world. I just play with them sometimes, but I always put them back where I found them.
A/N: I'm trying to update as quickly as possible, but my first round of summer finals is coming up, so I'm trying to stay afloat there, as well. Next week, I should be able to update a couple of times, as the new classes start, so hopefully there won't be much homework yet! Again, check out this fic I'm working on with beccalyse, Eyes Turned Skyward. She is the Alpha to my beta, and she always astounds me with every new chapter of awesome she sends me to read!
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Harry dreamt.
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He was back in the same vast room, with the same platform and its strange mass of snakes, with the same hooded figure kneeling worshipfully on the floor.
"My Lord," it whispered in a hushed male voice. "My Lord, please, I have brought you news of the Potter boy."
The mass of snakes began to lift upward, as though they would crash upon the tiny worshipper like waves upon the sand. They rose into the form of a huge throne, and from their darkness emerged the Dark Lord.
"Lucius," he hissed cruelly. "Why have you disturbed my rest?"
"My Lord, please forgive me," he cried feebly, "but we have information on Harry Potter."
"Potter," Lord Voldemort repeated, flicking out a forked tongue. "I have thought of the boy much, of late." He laughed to himself, enjoying a private joke. "What have you come to tell me Lucius? Hurry, if you cannot bring me something useful this time, my Nagini will have you for a snack, just to keep you from bothering me again."
"Please, please, my Lord," Malfoy sobbed, "my son, at Hogwarts—"
"Ah yes, young Draco," he interrupted, smiling viciously at the stricken look on the father's face. "How is your son these days? Has he brought any recent glory upon your name or mine? The glory you promised me on the day he was born?"
"Yes, yes, my Lord, he has," Lucius replied, desperate now to be heard. "At Hogwarts, he saw, he saw—"
"Get on with it! Crucio!" he shrieked in a cold, high voice. Malfoy lay on the floor of his own family manor, screaming and begging in unimaginable pain.
In his throes of pain, Malfoy could only say, "Mudblood…Potter," over and over again. When he was once more able to speak freely, he clarified, "My son, Draco, witnessed Potter with the Muggleborn Hermione Granger. He said that they were holding hands in the corridor." His nose shriveled in obvious distaste. "Draco witnessed them together. He suspects a romance growing between them, if it has not already begun. The other students are speculating that they are trying to keep their relationship hidden—not that I blame him, a filthy Mudblood witch. I'd be hiding as well. Of course," he added quickly, "that has never been a problem in my family tree." There was a heavy hint of pride at the last.
"A new love?" Voldemort mused. "This could create exciting possibilities for us to use against him. Yes…" He trailed off into silence, forgetting the presence of the other man.
"My—my Lord?" Lucius began timidly. "Have you any word for me to return to my son at school?"
"Hmm, yes, yes I do." Lucius cringed at the tone, frightened of what might happen to his only son. "Tell him to keep watching. I want all the information he can gather on the Mudblood. If the situation changes in any way, I want to be informed immediately. If we are to make this work in our favor, we must stay a step ahead. Yes…"
Malfoy was dismissed shortly thereafter, leaving the Dark Lord to ponder the situation to himself.
"When I manage to control it, yes," he muttered, slitted eyes shut tight, "yes, then it will be easy to fool them."
He opened his eyes, bright red and glowing in his growing excitement. The iris glowed scarlet, sinking into the black depths of the pupil.
Voldemort closed his eyes again, muttering, "When I control it."
He opened his eyes.
A flash of green.
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Harry awoke.
He was covered in sweat in his own bed in Hogwarts, with Ron, Seamus, Dean and Neville all gathered around his bed, looking terrified.
"Harry, mate, are you alright?" Ron asked worriedly. "You were screaming in your sleep. You—you said, 'Mudblood,' mate. I—I—I've never heard you say that before. You said—something about You Know Who, and Hermione, and then you started screaming about Mudbloods."
"What?" Harry could remember nothing from his nightmare except the final flash of green. It reminded him of the dreams he'd had as a child about the night his parents died, before he'd known anything about his past, or magic. He couldn't remember anything except for that bright, glowing green. "I—what?"
"Do you need to go see Madam Pomfrey?" Neville offered nervously.
"No," Harry replied, already tired enough to sleep again. "No, it's all right. I'm sorry, it was just a nightmare. Go back to bed, all of you. I'm sorry I woke you up."
"Blimey, Harry," Seamus said uncertainly. "Are ye sure ye want to go back to sleep? Ye were kicking and screaming like someone was torturin' ye."
"No, really," Harry said again, fighting off unconsciousness. "It's nothing. I'm just—I'm just tired," he finished, punctuating with a yawn.
The other boys went back to bed, sharing concerned looks among them that Harry was too tired to be upset over. As Harry let the sleep take him over again, he tried to ignore the dull ache in his forehead, too tired to recognize it as his burning scar.
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When Harry met Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, he was surprised to see that he was not the only one suffering from a sleepless night. Both Ron and Hermione looked tired, but Hermione looked truly awful, as though she'd only slept a few hours. Her face was reddened and a bit splotchy, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut, though he saw her working an anti-swelling charm on herself over her eggs. She was nursing a rare mug of hot coffee filled with milk and sugar, but smiled at him fondly as he approached. He wondered if that was the result of having cried her eyes out into the rough fabric of his school robes the night before, but he knew better than to bring it up in front of anyone else. Harry didn't feel at all upset as he decided he would have to catch her alone later and make sure she was feeling alright about the Krum situation. He was sure that she hadn't looked that haggard when she'd gone to bed, but he had to admit, he'd been looking at her through a certain enhancing light at the time.
Harry took his place between his friends, shaking his head in awe at his own audacity the previous night. What had he been thinking, to kiss Hermione like that? Without her permission—worse, without her even having been aware of it. He was disgusted with himself for invading her space the way he had. At the same time, though, he couldn't help enjoying the memory of how beautiful she had been, asleep on his shoulder, sheltered in his arms. He shook his head again, reminding himself how far in the wrong he'd been.
Ron caught Harry's eye, questioning him wordlessly about his strange behavior. Harry responded, "Headache, didn't sleep much."
"I told you you should have gone to bed," Ron replied righteously, reaching for a cinnamon bun the size of his face. But Harry had trouble concentrating on his breakfast with as much verve as Ron was able to.
Next to him, Hermione sat in a deeply morose state, taking his self-deprecating behavior to mean a deep regret of his actions the night before. She wasn't surprised, of course, but she had to admit disappointment to herself. After spending the entire night waffling back and forth between telling herself he would regret it later and trying to think of how to get him to do it again if he didn't regret it, Hermione had allowed herself to hope that the one kiss—two, really, she reminded herself—would mean as much to Harry as it had to her. Surely, she understood now, surely it had been a practice for him. As the Boy Who Lived, Harry would always have his pick of any woman in the wizarding world, but inside Hogwarts, none of the girls were brave enough to approach him, and fame or not, Harry was not an outgoing person. So, of course it made sense that he would want to try things out on someone who would be willing. Failing that, on someone whom he knew would forgive him if they ever found out he'd kissed them in their unwilling sleep.
As she began to think about the implications of this, she found herself getting mad at Harry for kissing her. Yes, he'd thought she was asleep, but surely he'd been banking on her forgiveness, even if she'd woken up. And yes, he didn't know the depth of her feelings for him, but that was precisely the reason that civilized people didn't kiss one another without permission, especially when the other was your best friend.
The more reasonable part of Hermione's brain knew that Harry would never do something like that, and that perhaps he was feeling guilty for kissing her without permission. That would be far more in character for him. However, the more reasonable part of Hermione's brain was not in charge at the moment, and she allowed herself a brief moment where her emotions flooded through her, completely uncontrolled, and crashed through her body. She felt a seizing pain in the pit of her stomach, which she tried to ignore by eating a hearty breakfast to go with her bittersweet coffee. She knew she could not function properly during the day without some level of self-control, and wrote off the slight shaking in her hands as a side-effect of the coffee. She turned toward Ron and Harry, and in a chipper voice that did not betray her cracked heart, asked when they wanted to go over their essays again.
The two boys groaned, Hermione laughed and chided them for their laziness, then fluttered off to Arithmancy, reminding them not to be late to Divination. They groaned again, louder this time, and Hermione's laughter floated back to them through the Great Hall.
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A/N: I need your opinion. Like I said, I'll be busy with exam studying this week, so would you prefer that I wait a while and make it a good long chapter with the makeup and fluff, or would you rather go for the instant gratification of a chapter, and put off the fluff for a bit? Tell me in a review, even just a word or two!
Thanks to all my reviewers, especially xAmyBlackx, whose simple review of "WHY did you stop?" lit a fire under me to get this out to you tonight.
Rock on, keep reading, and as always, review!
cj596