[1]
In it, he was a knight.
He was clad in heavy armor. He was a grownup and it didn't weigh him down. Looking down, he saw that his armor didn't have the red and gold trim of his father's house, but the green and silver of his mother's.
He had a round shield in his left hand and a shining blade in his right. He was within a deep forest. It was midnight but the full moon above ensured it was not really dark.
There were monsters in the woods in front of him. They slowly came out from the trees, shrouded in dark robes. Their faces were silver and demonic. They raised arms that did not end in hands, but in jagged spikes.
They roared their incantations in deep, guttural voices. Sick, green light flickered this way and that.
He raised his magic shield. The dark magic bounced off it with a deep, echoing sound. The bolts moved back towards their sources, striking a tree which immediately caught fire, and striking a monster whom fell down and did not move.
He raised his sword. "Stupefy!" he cried out in a booming voice. The monsters shrank from it, but did not retreat.
The sword began to pulse with incredible red light. He swept it in a savage arc that left an afterimage in the eye. The red light in the sword became a red tidal wave across the ground, moving from the clearing to the line of trees in a split-second.
The monsters were thrown back, as though from a monstrous gale, screaming their awful, guttural sounds. They flew between the trees, they crashed into the trees.
Then there was silence and stillness.
He moved through the trees, unafraid. He soon entered another clearing. Four stone tables were in the center of it.
And there they were! His family!
"Daddy!" he cried, and now his voice didn't sound like that of a grownup. He sounded like his normal self.
He made his way to them. His feet made a tremendously loud sound on the ground, which was shaking with the violent force of them.
He reached the stone tables. His father was lying on the left, his big sis on the right. The one closest to him had his jackass of a brother.
The fourth one was empty. Someone was supposed to be there, but for the life of him he couldn't remember who.
They were not asleep. Their eyes were open. They stared at him. Their limbs were frozen, their jaws clenching soundlessly. A Body-Bind Curse. Probably from the monsters. But he'd taken care of them.
"Don't worry, Daddy." he said. "I'll get us out of here."
But looking around, he wasn't sure how he would do that. He realized he knew neither the counter-curse for Body Bind or the Levitating Charm.
And actually...the open field wasn't empty anymore. Instead of bare grass, there were other paralyzed people on the ground. People he knew, people he didn't, all of them just as frozen as his family.
"I'll get out you all out of here." he cried out. "I will."
Something occurred to him then. When he was walking through the field, there had been a enormous, echoing footstep sound. Except he wasn't walking anymore and he could still hear it. Which meant it wasn't coming from him.
He looked at the trees, which were now so impossibly tall that the sky was nearly covered. Only the moon was visible.
There was the rustle and thick snap of trees exploding. Before his eyes, a gigantic foot completely flattened a tree in distance.
Wide-eyed, he looked up.
In the thick foliage of the tree canopy, a massive eye blinked down at him. Under it, an equally massive hand emerged from between two trees; then a second one. The hands pushed against the trees they came between, knocking them over.
The giant stepped into the clearing. It was sixty feet tall and had a sizeable belly, arms drooping down to the knees. It eyes were green and yellow. It had a full, white beard. He looked like a Santa Claus deprived of the joy of Christmas.
To his left, another giant appeared, even taller than the first and skeletal. Another to his right, shorter and stubbier.
They moved towards into the clearing. He watched as each of the giants picked up a paralyzed person off the ground and stretched their jaws open.
"No!" he roared, and raised his weapon. It was no longer a sword but a thin, flimsy-looking wand; and the stunning spell it fired was tiny and dim.
It struck the short giant and did absolutely nothing. The giant raised the paralyzed body to its mouth—
"Stop!" he roared.
—and ate the victim whole.
Screaming, crying, he fired a spell at the pot-bellied giant. The sizeable gut rippled as the spell bounced harmlessly away. The giant then ate a young blonde woman.
"Damn it!" he spun and fired a spell at the tall one. The taller giant had already eaten its first victim and was walking steadily towards the stone table in the center. Its brown hair fell down past its shoulders.
"No!" he cried out, and move between the giant and the tables.
Across the ground, some people were losing some of their paralysis. Not enough to move, but enough to scream. And then the screams were abruptly cut off as they were eaten.
He stayed close to the table, firing stunning spells at the other two giants even though he knew it wasn't really helping. They ate five more people.
And more giants were coming into the clearing. Before he knew it he was surrounded on all sides by a dozen of them.
"Damn!" he said, and turned to the tall one bearing down on him. The stunning spell struck it in its shadowed head. It didn't even flinch. One massive hand swept down, he ducked, but the shadow of it didn't fall over him.
He looked left in time to see the immense hand pluck his father from the stone table.
"No!" he shrieked. "Let go of him!"
All around him, people were screaming. People were dying.
He raised his wand. He had no choice. He would have to use dark magic, the UNFORGIVABLE CURSES.
"Avada—"
That was as far as he got. Because the moon had changed or the world had become brighter or maybe just enough of the dark-brown hair had moved out of its face. Because the face of the tallest giant was no longer blocked.
Its face was slender, with grey-green eyes and a nose that was long without being blade-like.
And it was oh so familiar.
And then his father was consumed right in front of him.
[2]
Albus Potter woke up screaming.
He tumbled out of his bed and hit the floor with his shoulder.
There was swearing in the dark and ruffling. The sound of muffled footsteps approaching.
"Lumos." came a slightly older voice, and then the room was filled with a meager but warm white light.
Albus saw he was staring at the bed leg. Then he rolled over.
His brother James was sitting up in his bed with his wand held up in front of his face.
"I really need my own bedroom." James said. He was groggy and more than a little annoyed.
The door opened and the figure was in shadow, tall and lanky.
Albus' eyes widened.
It's the giant!
But it wasn't. It came into the room and it was just his mother. Astoria Potter had brown hair that was nearly black, she wore her green night robe—House colors—and held her wand.
"What's going on?" she asked, but there was no surprise or fear in her voice. This kind of thing with Al wasn't extremely common but common enough. A few times every few months. The wand was just living by the rule of "better safe than sorry."
"It's Al again." James said.
"Go back to bed James." she said.
"I'll try." he whined. "Let's see how long it lasts."
He laid down and rolled over.
"Little Al needs a nightlight." he said. "Don't you think so Mom?"
"I think you should shut yourself up James." she said, "Before I do it for you."
She said it with a tone of voice that made James Potter II do exactly that. When she got like that, even muttering wasn't safe (and usually was even worse than yelling).
When James turned off his wand, their mother lit her own. She knelt beside her son on the bed.
"What was it this time, Al?"
Albus told her as much as he could. She almost seemed entertained by the heroic beginning. When he got closer to the end, and talked about the giants, his mother didn't seem particularly worried.
When it was done, she said nothing at first. She looked at him and he looked at her. Her eyes were grey-green eyes and her nose was big without being blade-like. He blinked and in the brief darkness he saw the tall giant with its familiar face.
"You okay, sweetie?" she asked. "Do you think you can go to bed now?"
He nodded, having no idea if he really could or not.
She kissed him on the forehead, always made him feel embarrassed even when nobody was around. Then she stood up to go.
"Mommy?"
She stopped, turned. "Yes, sweetie?"
"You...you would never hurt Daddy, would you?"
He thought she would be totally confused. Maybe even a little bit angry. Maybe even a lot angry. Albus would have preferred it that way. It was a stupid thought and he wanted to be told that.
But when his mother looked at him, her face was wooden. It was like he asked her about the weather outside.
"Hurt...Daddy? No, of course not. Don't be silly."
And he was waiting for her to start asking questions. A lot of questions. Why do you say that? What are you talking about? Did you hear us arguing? Did you watch Kill Bill after I specifically told you that you couldn't?
But there were no questions at all.
"Good night sweetie. Good dreams, okay?"
"Okay. Good night Mommy."
Now she smiled. But the smile was too wide. It showed her sharp teeth. He pictured them biting into something that was screaming and trying to wrestle away. He was frightened again, but didn't let it show on his face.
She left. The door was closed. He was in darkness again. He didn't like the dark. The way it seemed to move and shift. Like it was alive.
But sometimes the dark was good too. Sometimes the light revealed something standing next to you; something you would prefer to never see.
After a while, James' voice:
"You're a fruitcake, Al."
"Eat shit, James."
[3]
Eventually, he did fall asleep again. And he dreamed again.
And this one was better, because Scorpius Malfoy was in it.