Nothing is mine.

Harry listens to Lavender...

Come to Me in the Silence of the Night

The Gryffindor Common Room simmered; a low heated murmur that hummed in the corners and hung about the small huddles and sofas and chairs. The tension bubbled just beneath the surface, bleeding even into the quiet crackle of the flames in the hearth and the soft smell of woodsmoke that filled the room.

Hermione crushed the Daily Prophet into a ball in her fist and hurled it over the heads of Katie Bell and Alicia Spinnet into the fire. 'I hate that woman,' she hissed. 'I hate her.'

'More or less than Rita Skeeter?' Harry asked.

She glowered at him, her brown eyes brimming with bright hot rage. 'Much more! Have you read this?!'

'No,' Harry confessed. 'Does it have any cartoon vampires?'

Hermione snatched Lavender's copy from her hands.

'Hey!' Lavender protested. 'I was reading that.'

'You were reading the pointless Divination column,' Hermione retorted. 'Three black geese ran across a path under a ladder and the clouds were white, so Lavender's going to be disappointed by someone she loves and it might be overcast for the first week of December.'

'Hermione…' Ron murmured.

She turned a little pink. 'Sorry, Lavender. I really hate that… that bitch.'

Lavender shrugged. 'I'd read my prediction already.'

'What does mine say?' Harry asked. 'Is it death?'

'Your birthday is July, isn't it?' Lavender screwed her face up. 'I think there was something about bird watching and a bit about being careful when you go through doorways?'

'No dying?' Harry cheered and waved a celebratory fist over his head. 'Can Hogwarts hire this person to replace Trelawney?'

'No,' Hermione muttered. 'Because Umbridge has removed the entire topic from the curriculum. I don't even like Divination—'

Ron sniggered.

'Fine, I think it's all made up nonsense. Spells make sense; you move your wand and say the words and what you want happens, but Divination is just soft vague woolly waffle.' She huffed. 'But that doesn't mean the Ministry should just take it all away. What if they decided to do that with History of Magic and tell us a load of propaganda?! Or with Defence?!'

Harry eased the paper out of her grip and admired the photo of himself snatching the golden egg from under the Hungarian Horntail's nose. 'Did they at least say something nice about me?'

'Half the article is about you, mate,' Ron said. 'Wouldn't read it, though, it's like Skeeter's hit piece on Hermione last year. None of it is nice.'

'Any good bits?' Harry skimmed through, laughing to himself. 'Oh, I like this bit. Famously known to have been afflicted by a dark curse as a baby, Harry Potter's teenage exploits are no less disturbing. Rumours persist that in his third year at Hogwarts, dark creatures were inexplicably drawn to his presence, leading to a student passing out from exposure to dementors' magic, and that perhaps the tragic death of rival Triwizard champion Cedric Diggory was not an accident.' He chuckled. 'I like how they didn't tell anyone that I was the student who passed out. I haven't heard that rumour about Cedric either, have you? And why would I murder him and then bring the body back? That's just silly. If I wanted to murder someone I wouldn't pick the body up and take it to the Minister of Magic, I'd kill them somewhere quiet and then turn their body into something really creepy but arguably artistic.'

Hermione stared at him and Lavender shifted in her seat, studying the smooth pink and teal nail polish on her thumb.

'What?' Harry asked. 'It's silly. Who murders someone and then comes back holding the body? You'd get caught immediately. And you'd certainly be a suspect.'

'Maybe that's what you wanted us all to think, mate,' Ron said, grinning. 'You've been bluffing the whole time. Even got yourself sorted in Gryffindor instead to conceal your true evil nature.'

'Sounds like you have competition, Hermione.' Harry shot her a cheerful smile. 'Hmmm, well, if I'm going to go evil, then I need some minions to do devious and nefarious things. Do you think I can borrow the DA from time to time?'

'Yeah,' Ron said. 'Take Neville, that way you can pretend it was all just a horrible accident if you get caught.'

Hermione shook her head. 'Ron, don't encourage him.'

'But it's fun,' Ron said. 'And Umbridge has gone and bloody banned Quidditch, and gobstones, and basically everything anyone could do so now we're all cooped up in here with about one pack of exploding snap cards for the whole house.'

'Now you've done it, Ronald.' Harry returned Lavender's paper to her. 'Look at the tyrannical fury you've provoked.'

Hermione dropped her head onto the desk. 'I don't have the energy for the two of you after reading that. Can we just plan the DA stuff?'

'What even needs planning?' he asked.

'What we're going to learn the practical parts for.'

'Oh, just let people go at their own pace and lend a hand,' Harry said. 'We're not teachers, we're just trying to stop everyone failing because Umbridge got attacked by a large mosquito as a little girl and is now profoundly terrified of vampires.'

'Doesn't make sense,' Ron said.

'It does,' Harry retorted. 'Mosquitos suck blood, Ronald. So do vampires. Probably. I don't know what the textbook says, but I do know that they wear cute little cartoon capes and tiptoe around.' He grabbed Hermione by the arm. 'It's proof! Snape wears long dark robes. Finally, the evidence we needed! Now we can have him expelled back to his native homeland, which I can only assume is Transylvania.'

She sighed and shook him off. 'Focus, Harry.'

'He's right, though,' Ron reckoned. 'The Room gives us all the stuff. Harry can demonstrate the Patronus when we get to that and you know the whole bloody course already, don't you?'

'I don't.'

'What, did you accidentally skip a chapter by mistake?' Harry asked.

'I haven't read the extension materials on the origins of the Patronus,' she replied, turning a little pink in the face. 'I couldn't find it in the library, I think someone still has it out. But I got interrupted by Umbridge and those two aurors combing through the Divination section.'

'Speaking of Divination, do you know anything about prophecies, Lavender?' Harry asked. 'Hermione obviously doesn't, because she hates all Divination. And Ron never knows anything useful.'

'Hey.' Ron snickered. 'At least I remembered to turn up to Quidditch practice so far this year.'

'Oh yes, Quidditch.' Harry shrugged. 'Well, Umbridge banned it anyway, so I guess it didn't matter.'

'Er…' Lavender shot a wary glance at Hermione and leant forward over the edge of the table; the hem of her pink bra and a fair amount of cleavage spilt out of the front of her blouse.

Harry tugged his gaze away and caught Ron's eye as Ron turned bright crimson from neck to the tips of his ears.

'Buttons,' Hermione hissed. 'Lavender!'

'Quick, Lavender,' Harry joked. 'Before she starts talking about your relationship with your father.' He paused. 'Wait, no. What am I saying? Don't give in to Hermione's tyranny, Lav, I like your pink bra, pink is a great colour.'

Lavender flushed, but the hand that had been rising toward her blouse buttons dropped back to the table.

'Unbelievable,' Hermione muttered under her breath. 'Two more compliments and she'll probably take it off and give it to you.'

Harry chuckled.

'I know a bit about them, Harry,' Lavender said, shooting a dirty look at Hermione. 'But proper spoken prophecies aren't a thing you see much of. It's all small signs and hints, because, well, I don't know, actually, I guess you just, like, have to be really really good to make a real prophecy and not just some kind of vague impression of the future, and most people can't.'

'They're not real,' Hermione muttered. 'That's why. You can't see the future, that's just not possible.'

Harry pondered that, thinking about Trelawney's rasping prophecy at the end of their third year and how, in the end, she'd been proven right. 'But they do exist. They have them in the Ministry; Voldemort is after one right now because he wants everyone to know what it says or something.'

'It's probably just a trap, Harry,' Hermione said. 'He's pretending there's something you absolutely have to stop him from getting to lure you out of the safety of Hogwarts where he can get to you.'

'But what if it is real.' He lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Trelawney did predict Voldemort's return, you know. She went into this weird trance and her voice went all raspy, and she said he'd rise again, greater and more terrible than ever before.'

'She just guessed right and faked it. She predicted your death about a hundred times that year and was wrong every time, Harry.'

'That's a fair point,' Harry admitted. 'I am still alive, last I checked—' he poked Hermione in the cheek with one finger '—yep, not a ghost.'

She swatted his hand away.

'Well, um, actually—' Lavender squirmed beneath Hermione's glare, looking more than a touch skittish '—she didn't, like, predict Harry dying. She just saw death in his future. And Cedric Diggory, well, like, you know…'

Hermione rolled her eyes. 'You're just moving the goalposts to make what she said fit what happened.'

'Moving what?' Ron asked.

'Never mind, Ronald,' she said. 'It's another idiom.'

'What does moving goalposts even have to do with Divination?'

'Maybe Trelawney was betting on the Quidditch results and winning big.' Harry chuckled. 'Just let it go, mate, you know you never get these; even when Hermione explains them for like half an hour.'

'It's not our fault they don't always make sense until things happen,' Lavender said. 'Predicting the future isn't easy. If it was, everyone would do it.'

'It's not possible,' Hermione said. 'How would it even work?'

'You've used a time-turner,' Ron said. 'And Harry, well, he saw my dad, didn't he?'

'That's different,' she replied. 'That's seeing things that are happening in the present or going back into the past. The present and the past are… are tangible things. The future isn't because it hasn't happened, nobody anywhere knows for certain what it will be. It'd have to be like some huge magical probability engine, and it obviously isn't that if it's divined from wrens hopping around in the snow.'

'Well, I don't know how it works,' Lavender said. 'But they happen and they come true; it's just, like, magic, isn't it. Some things are spells and some things are… higher.'

'High magic,' Harry murmured. 'Maybe I should ask Greengrass?'

Lavender giggled. 'Are you two, like, secretly dating?'

'No.' He shook his head. 'Although she hasn't called me a Blood-Traitor in a couple of weeks, so maybe she's gradually falling in love with me after all. Actually, you know what, maybe I will actually ask her, she knows loads of stuff about this sort of thing.'

'Loads of Pure-blood nonsense,' Hermione said. 'Harry, there's no such thing as a real prophecy, they're just vague guesswork that people twist to fit facts later. Just tell Professor Dumbledore and let him sort everything out.'

'I think he already knows, Hermione,' Harry said. 'That's why Ron's dad was down there. They're guarding it. But, you know, it didn't really go well. What if Voldemort actually sends someone with arms and legs? They could just steal it instead of slithering about completely ineffectively.' He frowned down at the table. 'And it's not like the Ministry will do anything; Greengrass said they don't like prophecies.'

'Oh well, if she said it,' Hermione muttered. 'If Professor Dumbledore knows, then I'm sure he's doing all he can.'

'Like the last four years?' He laughed. 'It's always me who does the stopping. Voldemort pops up and I stop whatever incredibly over complicated plan he has. Well, not last year, obviously last year it went pretty well for him because he's not a weird corpse-baby thing or a ghost.'

'Well, I don't know what we could even do, Harry.' Hermione's brown eyes brimmed with frustration and fury. 'That… cow has pretty much caged us all in the castle when it's not lessons.'

'We still have Hogsmeade weekends. I could slip off to London during one of those with a bit of help, Floo there from that weird pub we had the first DA thing at.' Harry nodded. 'And then I could just go and steal the prophecy before anyone else can steal it.'

'That's probably exactly what he wants you to do,' Hermione hissed. 'He can't go get it without alerting the Ministry he's back, so he wants to trick you into doing it for him.'

Harry considered that. 'You know, that is precisely the sort of overly complicated stupid plan he would make. Trick a fifteen year old into trying to steal something from the Ministry that he could probably steal himself with absurd ease.'

'Exactly.' She prodded Ron with the corner of her book. 'Ronald, stop staring down the front of Lavender's blouse and back me up.'

Ron flushed crimson. 'I was not!'

Lavender giggled. 'You totally were.'

Hermione sighed. 'You know what, forget about Ron, Harry. Just listen to me.' She dropped her voice to a whisper. 'The Order can do much more than we can, leave them to look after things.'

'How do we know, though?'

'It's Professor Dumbledore, Harry.' Her brown eyes shone with earnest faith, a full soft brightness like the Burrow's patio lanterns spilling golden light across the dusk-veiled orchards. 'He's the greatest wizard who's ever lived.'

'I'm going to ask Sirius,' Harry said. 'With the mirror.'

Hermione elbowed him in the ribs.

'Why?'

She motioned at Lavender with her head. 'Because this girl can't keep her mouth shut to save her life.'

'She can,' Ron said.

'Oh now he pipes up,' Hermione snapped.

'I what?' Ron blinked. 'I'm a pipe?'

'A gigantic pipe, yes.' Harry cackled. 'Right, it's getting late. Goodnight all. Have fun explaining the idiom to Ron.'

'Night, Harry,' Lavender chirped.

Hermione sighed and drew a pipe on a spare piece of parchment, pushing it across in front of Ron as Harry turned away and wound his way through the crowd and up the stairs to their dorm.

He dug the mirror out of the bottom of his trunk and retreated behind the cover of his bed hangings. 'Mirror, mirror, not on the wall, show me… Sirius.'

The surface shivered like water and Sirius grinned back at him. 'Hey, Harry. I was just in the middle of a long religious debate with a portrait, so whatever you need feel free to ask. And take your time.'

'What's the Order doing in the Ministry?'

Sirius's grin faded. 'I can't tell you that, kid. Sorry. Dumbledore's orders.'

'That's not fair,' Harry said. 'Now I'm going to have to ask Voldemort and he'll monologue for ages before actually giving me a straight answer.' He laughed to himself. 'I can't believe you've done this to me.'

'Don't worry about this, Harry,' Sirius said, a sombre gleam in his grey eyes. 'I missed the first thirteen years; the least I can do is make sure you don't have to worry about much other than school. We've got it handled.'

'What, you caught the snake?'

'No,' Sirius admitted. 'But we haven't put anyone down there in harm's way. Not since the Ministry arrested poor old Sturgis and clapped him in a cell for a week.'

'So Voldemort can just walk in and grab it?'

'I don't think so,' he said. 'But Dumbledore said not to tell you anything. Something about a connection with Voldemort.'

'Right. That.' Harry swallowed a stab of frustration and sighed. 'I guess that makes sense. Oh well, thanks, Sirius.'

'Sorry, kid.' Sirius offered him a rueful grin. 'I know you want to help and you've been mixed up in things a lot before, but you shouldn't be dealing with any of this. Go have fun. Don't mess up your OWLs. Let the adults do what they're meant to be doing.'

'I think I'm just going to go to bed,' Harry replied. 'Umbridge has basically banned any form of joy from the castle at this point other than Hogsmeade weekends.'

'She's a piece of work,' Sirius growled. 'One of those sycophantic little Ministry lickspittles that spend all their lives with their head in an ink bottle. Wants Britain to be some tedious bureaucracy where everyone works for the Ministry and follows their endless rules.'

'The ICW's rules, right?' Harry asked. 'They're the ones who actually make them.'

'It's more complicated than that,' Sirius said. 'Can't say I ever had much interest in it, but the ICW makes big decisions, the Ministry does all the day to day work. These days, half the people you'd meet don't even know who the ICW are because they're so uninvolved with everyday life.' He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. 'Unless you're like my hag of a mother and think they secretly do loads of horrible stuff, then there's no point worrying about the ICW. They don't interfere much with us. Good thing too, Pendragon's aurors have a serious reputation for a reason.'

'Why can't whoever that even is stop Voldemort, then?' Harry demanded.

Sirius shrugged. 'No idea, kid. Just not how it works, I guess. Maybe because it's an internal thing, so it's a Ministry problem? I heard that Pendragon was about to interfere fifteen years ago before Voldemort ran into you, though. Maybe if the Ministry hadn't pretended Voldemort wasn't back, Pendragon would now. Never met the man. Never even seen him.'

'So it's probably Fudge's fault for covering it up.'

'Yep.' Sirius swept his long hair off his forehead. 'Quill-sucking little git, that one.'

'Bye then, I guess.' Harry watched Sirius's face fade, stripped off his robes, and dropped them into his trunk, tucking the mirror underneath out of sight. 'It's all so stupid,' he muttered, crawling under his covers and flopping his head back into his pillow. 'Nobody is doing anything to actually stop Voldemort for good.'

In the quiet cool of the dorm, sleep came on swift wings, a feather-light weight that brushed his eyes closed and tugged him down into a deep soft silent dark.

But he opened his eyes to youthful green — a greater green than any he had ever seen — such vivid verdance his head spun. Seized in the grip of that strange lightness, caught in it like a leaf in a swirl of wind, Harry stared, snared in wide-eyed wonder; and everything but that faint distant understanding that he must be dreaming to see such a thing at all disappeared like a snowflake melting at the centre of his palm.

From the soft, warm moss beneath his bare feet sprawled a thick, green carpet of wild garlic and bluebells, the air awash with the sweet fragrance of their flowers. Swathes of their trembling delicate stems of white and blue blooms stretched as far as he could see beneath the ivy-draped slim trunks of silver birches, interspersed by clusters of yellow-crowned daffodils, red and white tulips, and small patches of pink primroses. The thicker trunks of oak and beech rose up past the slight birches, their broad, mistletoe-bedecked branches arching out overhead; their leaves covered all but the smallest glimpses of a soaring blue spring sky and the pair of mountain peaks rising into it on either side of the valley's summit, a mosaic of countless hues of dappled green, of living, rustling leaves that shone bright as emeralds where they caught the sun — bright as the stained glass windows of a cathedral — and where that spring sunshine burst through the fresco of fluttering green, it fell in bars of glowing gold, bathing the ferns and wild, tangled thickets of brambles in shafts of brilliant light.

Beneath all that green splendour and the sea of sweet-scented flowers, a small stream wound its way through the twisted, gnarled roots; a restless cold darkness, all bubbling black water and full of stirring shadows as soft as smoke spiralling into the chill of night. A fine frost-white vapour curled off the inky surface, rising like steam through the hanging fronds of the ferns and the banks of flowers to fade where swarms of flickering fireflies danced above the surface.

The dream hummed with magic, brimmed with it; its shimmer spilt from the fresh green leaves and arching branches like the mist of gentle rain, its soft shade hung beneath the brambles, roots and drooping ferns, a clinging veil of gossamer fine shadow. Glimmering shrouds of countless tiny golden motes as bright as amber trickled down through the cracks in the bark of every tree and floated with the flickering dancing lights of the fireflies, swelling and fading as if to the beat of a thousand small hearts; they thrummed with every breath of wind that whispered through the trees, tingling on Harry's skin. The fleeting silhouettes of slim fey figures, clad in rustling robes of intense green and crowned with the all young finery of spring flowers, danced and laughed at the furthest limit of his sight; their childish joy drifted back to his ears like the cheerful chorus of the dawn songbirds, and about them, the whole forest stirred as if it were only moments from springing to life. A wren fluttered out of the brambles to perch upon a slim root arching over the small ink-black stream, preening its wings beneath the swirling, flickering light of the fireflies and dipping its beak into the dark.

And Harry awoke in the gloom of the night, caged by the dull, scratched wooden posts of the bed and their hangings, so far from the beauty of that fading dream that his heart ached and stung with longing, yearning to gaze upon all that breathtaking green again.

But when he closed his eyes to dream once more, there was only snow.

AN: You know this bit. More via the linktree. Lots more.

linktr . ee / mjbradley