Note to readers: Thanks to the two people who pointed out the format problem for this chapter. i've reloaded it and we'll try again.
Chapter Five
Dreams, Past and Present
When Harry got back to his apartment it was already well past eight p.m. Normally he would have put on a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and house slippers, looked at the Daily Prophet or read something calming. Lately he had been developing a taste for travel books, making mental notes about interesting destinations for future vacations.
Tonight, however, he boiled some water for tea and sat down at his dining table with his copy of Marital Agreement, , in the Matter of Harry James Potter and Daphne Alexandra Greengrass.
Harry thought Daphne Alexandra Greengrass had a nice sound to it. He didn't know why, but he said it out loud. Then he said it out loud a second time. It sounded just as nice, maybe nicer. Coming out of his fugue, Harry gave his head a shake.
"Get a grip," he told himself.
Harry took a moment to appreciate the calligraphy used in the heading. It reminded him of another parchment he'd seen. "Merlin! The Magna Carta," he thought. "Did the goblins do that, too?"
Slowly he worked his way through the Agreement, which would have been quite easy to understand were it not for the arcane legal terms, the Latin seemingly inserted at random, and the gothic calligraphy. Wax seals, grommets and ribbons appeared here and there throughout the text. He read the agreement through twice, and gradually came to grasp the essential points.
He was not formally promised to Daphne Greengrass, nor was she to him. The signers, James Potter and Fabio Greengrass, encouraged, wished, and, truth be told, wheedled their children to become acquainted, engage in mutual support, get to know the other's family, and then, it was implied, Nature would see reason. While they weren't engaged, each head of family had, essentially, a right of first refusal on the other, with a hefty bond for each that would be forfeited to the wronged party if either married before the agreement was abrogated. Gringott's would take a commission from the payment for its trouble. The Agreement could expire, in which case both bonds would be forfeit, or extended for a mutually agreed-upon period, upon deposit of some additional funds.
"That seems fair enough," Harry thought. "We'll sit down and talk over coffee, agree on abrogation, do the needful, pay the fine, air kiss when we part and look for each other once a year at the Ministry New Year's Ball."
With that, he put the stack of papers together in their binder, rinsed his tea cup, and went to bed. As he lay there, waiting to go to sleep, Harry's mind drifted back to his meeting with Ragnak and Whetstone. Then he thought about the stunning Daphne Alexandra Greengrass. Then his mind reverted to the Potter holdings. Mines? Then he thought about Sirius, and the Black properties he had left Harry, which brought him to thoughts of #12 Grimmauld Place. Then he had another thought-Daphne Alexandra Greengrass in #12 Grimmauld Place. That was a nice thought.
Harry had always had problems sleeping, which was not surprising, considering his history. Attacked by the most powerful and dangerous dark wizard in living memory at a little more than one year old, placed with a hostile aunt and uncle who lied to him about nearly every detail of his life, thrust into a boarding school at eleven with no knowledge of his own history (while everyone at school knew all about him, or at least thought they did), dogged by his nemesis Voldemort and his followers for seven years, growing into powers he unknowingly possessed and, finally, publicly, dealing death to his enemy in single combat, Harry had an embarrassingly large stack of memories worthy of propagating sleeplessness.
When he did sleep, Harry dreamed. As long as he could remember, he had dreamt of a forest, and a stag. When he first dreamt of the stag, Harry couldn't say, but it was at the Dursleys' when he still slept in the cupboard under the stairs. For a long time, the stag just wandered around the forest, stopping to drink from a sluggish stream, or sniffing the air, or munching some moss on the forest floor. Harry couldn't place the forest scene. He was sure he hadn't been there before. He thought he might have seen something like it in a book or magazine.
The dreams continued after he started at Hogwarts, with some changes. The stag wandered out of the deep forest, which was always colored in blues and greens, the atmosphere almost twilight, into an area with thinner tree cover, and sunshine that reached the ground. The scents changed, and occasionally the stag saw other animals, although usually as they ran away through the underbrush. Harry didn't recognize one of the animals, beyond thinking it was awfully big for a cat. The big cat didn't run away as soon as it saw the stag.
Harry didn't mind the dreams because often, when he woke in the wee hours, going from sound sleep to fully awake, seemingly in the blink of an eye, he thought he had been dreaming of the forest. By the time he first arrived at Hogwarts, he liked the look and feel of the forest, which he had always preferred to real life with his aunt and uncle. It was someplace familiar as he tried to cope with life at Hogwarts. Besides, the dreams came in handy when he took Divination, and Professor Trelawney assigned everyone the task of keeping a dream diary. Several students, and even Harry from time to time, fabricated dreams to have something to write in their dream diaries. One or two students in each house found they could make a little extra money writing up dreams for others.
In his third year, Harry became aware of changes in his forest dream. Sometimes he was watching the stag go about his business, but at other times, he seemed to be looking through the stag's eyes. When that happened, he acquired the stag's other senses as well. Sounds had more, and sometimes different meanings. He could smell the forest and all its scents, the primeval system of messaging telling of birth, death, decay, growth, wet and dry, heat and cold. The first two or three times the sensations were overwhelming, and Harry woke with a start, questioning for the thousand-and-somethingth time his own sanity. Needless to say, he kept those details to himself. He couldn't think of a single person who could explain how or why a character in a dream could breathe in and identify every single life process that was underway for every plant, animal and bacterium in a forest, but he feared talking about it could get him a free trip to St. Mungo's.
In his fourth year, Harry wrote up an actual dream for Divination, in which, as the stag, he stood on the edge of a ravine, cut through rock by a small stream. The stag wanted to cross to the other side, but the ravine was deep, the sides filled with tumbled blocks of stone, and it was too wide to jump. Then the big cat appeared opposite. It lay down and looked over its paws at the stag, lazily flicking its tail. The stag and the cat looked at one another for a very long time. At last, the cat stood up, turned around and headed into the forest, giving the stag a last look and one flick of its tail, before loping off into the undergrowth.
Unluckily for Harry, he had been called upon to read his most recent dream from his dream diary to a combined Divination class of Slytherins and Gryffindors.
"Class, who can comment on the dream Mr. Potter just read to us?" asked Professor Trelawney.
No one wanted to comment, so Professor Trelawney chose a student.
"Mr. Zabini?"
Blaise Zabini felt duty-bound to uphold the honor of Slytherin House by using the opportunity to make Gryffindor look foolish, or better, weak.
"The stag is crying about The One That Got Away," he stated.
This brought forth additional, appreciative side comments from the Slytherin boys. No one noticed the Slytherin girl sitting at the back of Trelawney's classroom, who laid her arm on the table, bent over, and buried her face in the sleeve of her robe.