A Dragon's Call

Chapter Two

"Hermione, would you listen to me? I mean really, I'm fine. Go to bed."

Harry smiled at the look she gave him, but she stood up and walked over to the staircase to the Prefect tower all the same. She had become Prefect, to no ones surprise, and got her own room for it. Sometimes Harry wished he had gotten to be one just for that. And for the swimming pool like baths that he had swam in last year.

As he waded through the thick water he tried not to inhale. The stench was horrible.

He sat there in the common room for awhile, staring at the fire. People would walk past and say goodnight to him once and awhile but he paid them no heed. He was lost in the flickering of the flames until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up and saw the girl from the flower field again. She was smiling at him and he frowned.

"What's your name?" he asked, his voice shaking. She knew his, why couldn't he know hers? She laughed and ruffled his hair, her pale hands contrasting with his sooty black mop hair.

"Riven," she whispered and motioned toward where the fire stood. When he looked, he felt his stomach drop out. He was in the field again, some how, and in the middle of the vast expanse of tiny flower buds was a tree.

The tree, at first glance, looked to be on fire, but after he looked for awhile, he saw that it was just covered by flame red leaves. He took a step forward and was at the tree's trunk. He looked back and saw the girl, Riven, standing on the top of the hill. Distance held no mark here.

Harry brushed his fingers over the tree trunk but quickly pulled them back and looked at them. The tips of the pads of each had a single thorn, very small but very painful, sticking out. He pulled them out and sighed. His dreams, if it was a dream, were getting more and more strange.

A leaf sat on the ground and he picked it up. A second later he was staring at the fire in the common room again. The leaf was gone but when he looked down at his hands his fingers each had a tiny drop of blood upon them. He rubbed them on his robes and got up to go to bed.

As he walked, he rubbed his fingers together slowly. Little blood droplets kept blooming whenever he would wipe them away. He was still puzzling over the meaning of his dream (that that's what it really was) when he got to the door of his dorm room.

When Harry stepped in, the sounds of Neville and Ron's snores welcomed a smile to his face. He had almost forgotten how loud they could be, even when they slept. He quickly got out of his clothing and climbed into the bunk under Ron.

His mind was fuzzy and his head hurt as he tossed and turned that night, sleep just an inch away from him. If he could only grab at it, to hold it long enough to lull him over...

"You are just an object in this world. Nothing more! You will fall to the mercy of his great lord or he will lull you to an eternal sleep!"

His eyes scanned the familiar room around him, trying to find something to focus on. When he focused on things and surrendered his thoughts to it, it sometimes would make him fall asleep. Nothing sharp popped into his mind that he could focus on. Nothing at all was vivid enough to picture, pushing all other thoughts out.

A cold wind whipped through the open window and he shivered. He had no idea why the others in the room had left the window open; for being a day in September it was very cold. He bundled his blankets around him, making a cloak, and walked to the window ledge. His eyes widened as he looked down.

There, in the full moonlight on the grounds, was a tiny creature that Harry had to strain his eyes to see clearly. It had flowing golden hair that trailed to its waist and it had a bow strapped to its back with the quiver under it.

An elf.

He had never seen a pure elf before, only house elves, but he had heard stories from Ron. If you saw one and talked to it, it was supposed to give you good luck and rid your dreams of impurity. But if he tried to yell down to it from his window he would wake the rest of the dorm and still the sound wouldn't carry to the elf.

Quickly and quietly he grabbed his school robes from the back of a chair, pulled the invisibility cloak from the trunk and slipped his slippers on. He wouldn't bother to get dressed more than that. When he looked out the window he saw that the elf was still there and he crept over to the door.

As he opened it and looked out he saw that the common room was completely empty and that the fire had been put out. Most likely by house elves. Hermione would have a fit if she found out that they put out fires as well as start them, so he decided not to tell her. Just to be safe, though, he slipped the invisibility cloak on and walked slowly to the portrait door.

He had to force himself not to chuckle out loud as the Fat Lady in the picture started to look all over in a vain attempt to find who had opened her. She likely hadn't forgotten what had happened with Sirius Black but it wasn't his problem now and he didn't want to show himself to her so he walked softly down the stairs.

Once he got there, however, he came face-to-face with an angry looking Hermione Granger. Her hair had been pulled back in a messy bun since he had last seen her but he didn't notice that. What he did notice was her tear stained cheeks.

"Why can't he notice me?" she sighed, making him jump and look around. Who was she talking about? And more importantly, who was she talking to? No one else was in the hallway so she must know he was there. "He's never noticed me."

That was when he realized that she wasn't talking to him. She was talking to herself. She thought she was alone. His thoughts first drifted to why she was walking the halls at night but it soon hit him. Prefects were supposed to patrol the halls.

But that couldn't have been the only reason she was out here crying. Something had happened, though he wasn't prepared to find out right now. Maybe in the morning. She, even being his friend, would give him detention for being out of his dorm at this hour. And anyway, there was an elf to talk to. He hurried away with one final look back at her.

It seemed that the walk down the twisting pathways of the castle took ages upon ages, though it really it was only minutes. His bare legs froze when ever his robes parted even a little and he fully regretted not putting decent clothing on before leaving. Two minutes to gather up some pants and a shirt wouldn't have hurt...

He was quiet startled when he found himself in front of the doors outside. His legs had been taking him along all on their own. Pushing open the door slowly so it made no noise, he bit his lip. It would be considerably colder outside than it was inside, but he took a step out anyway.

It had been awhile since he had been out onto the grounds in the dead of night. The shadows that masked the ground made horrible images come to mind but he tried to ignore them.

Figures were popping out from the shadows to his left and right. No where to turn. No where to hide.

The moon, however, made a nicely lit circle on the ground and he saw the elf sitting in it. Now that he was on the ground he was sure it was female, though he didn't know how he knew. She was looking up at the sky and her mouth was moving, though no sounds touched Harry's ears. The only sound around him was the melody of crickets in the night.

He watched her silent chanting for a minute, entranced at how the moonlight danced on her skin in just the right way, until she turned and looked straight at where he was standing. She smiled and he wondered if he had been breathing too loud.

"Hello there. I can see you, you know. Your magic doesn't work on my eyes," she said, her voice sounding like thousands of bells, each sickly sweet. He strained to hear her speak, just as he had strained to hear Riven.

He took off the cloak and opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He had no idea what to say to her and didn't intend to make a fool of himself in front of her. After a moment he managed to strangle out a faint, "Hello."

She laughed and took a step toward him and out of the moonlight. In the shadows and darkness of the night, she seemed to vanish and he found himself looking around for her until he felt her brush up against him.

"Have you come for the good luck, Harry Potter?" she asked. His eyes popped and he said the first thing that came to mind.

"How do all of you know my name?"

Everyone knows your name, boy. You are the boy who lived. But now you shall be the boy who was broken.

She laughed her enchanting laugh again and disappeared into the darkness again. He waited for her to show herself again but she never did. He shivered and looked to the ground where she had first been standing, his eye having caught the glint of something silver.

Upon further inspection of the place she had been standing he found two things. One was a box, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and the other was a silver arrow. It wasn't the full thing, only about half of it, but he picked it up anyway and put them both in the pocket of his robes. Pulling his invisibility cloak back up, he stepped out of the light again.

Trudging back to the castle, he let the items clink against his leg with a soft noise each time he took a step. It reminded him of where he was and who had left them there and he would gladly take a bruise for that.

When he got to the door, he pushed it open slightly and poked his head in to find Draco Malfoy standing not five feet in front of the door, his wand pointed straight at him. Harry swore inwardly and froze, hoping for a strong wind to push the door open the rest of the way, making it look as if there wasn't a person standing there.

As if on command, a blast of wind hit the door and Harry, pushing one open and the other almost over. Draco lowered his wand, thinking that there was no one there and walked away. Harry noticed that he didn't put his wand away.

He stood frozen for a good minute and a half until he was sure that Malfoy was gone off patrolling (he was a Prefect too, though only because his father bought his way on) and only then did he start to speed walk up to the stairs leading him to the Gryffindor Common Room.

*~*