Harry Potter and the Unsettling Discovery

Harry Potter and the Unsettling Discovery

Ch. 5

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.--Elie Wiesel

"Oi, what's the matter, mate? You look like you just got over a month long bout of dragon fever!"

Ron and Hermione budged aside to make room for a very rough looking Harry between them at the breakfast table.

"It's nothing," the baggy eyed boy answered before stifling a yawn. "I've been having...weird dreams. I just haven't gotten much sleep."

Harry had been having weird dreams. Almost every night for the past few weeks he had been visited in his dreams by a faceless man with grey eyes. Those grey eyes would draw Harry in, and Harry would reach out to the man. Enclosed in the warm embrace of the man, Harry would feel content, but then a hissing sound would rattle the air whilst a cloud of mist would envelop the grey-eyed man, pulling him away from Harry. Harry would try to reach up to him, but upon looking down he would find that he had no arms. This is when he would wake up, covered in sweat.

The real problem was that Harry didn't want to go back to sleep on nights like this, because though he longed to feel the touch of the grey-eyed man again, he couldn't bear to see the man torn away from him over and over.

"Have something to eat Harry; you look dead on your feet." Hermione pulled a plate of sausages toward him. When he stared glassily at them without moving she decided to pile a bunch on his plate, along with some toast. "Why don't you go ask Madam Pomfrey for some dreamless sleep potion, loosing this much sleep can't be good for you."

"Yeh, good idea, Hermione. I'll go see her. I'm not very hungry anyway," Harry responded in a monotone as he stood up to go see the nurse. Leaving a concerned looking Ron and Hermione in his wake, he stumbled out of the great hall, only to run smack-dab into...

"AAhhh! Oh! Potter, it's you, as I knew it would be." Trelawney looked like she had nearly jumped out of her bangles when Harry crashed into her. She took a moment to re arrange herself before finally taking a good look at the boy.

"Sorry, professor, I'm just on my way to see Madam Pomfrey."

"Of course! I did sense that you were ill..."

"No, I just need a bit of dreamless sleep potion..." Harry regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

"Dreamless sleep? Have visions been plaguing you in the night, Mister Potter? Of course they have, I could sense it. If you need any help to interpret the sights and sound that the universe has seen fit to send your way..."

"Thank you, professor, but I really must get going."

"Of course, dear boy, and beware the..." She hollered the last words at his rapidly retreating back, before he ducked behind a tapestry hiding a short cut to the hospital wing. Slowing his pace, he went back to thinking about his dream. He couldn't understand why he kept having it, and since the dreams started he couldn't help but shake the feeling that he had seen those grey eyes before...

-- -- -- -- --

After collecting a few doses of dreamless sleep potion from Madam Pomfrey, Harry made his way to his first class, double potions with the Slytherins. Harry knew that most of the school would still be at breakfast, so he was looking forward to some quiet time in the halls to try to fend off what he could feel was a rapidly approaching headache. As he reached the hall outside the potions room, he heard voices from within. It was Draco and Snape.

"But sir, this must be brought to Dumbledore at once! He's planning something, here at Hogwarts! Dumbledore must..." Draco sounded urgent.

"Mr. Malfoy, have you forgot who you are speaking with? I assure you that I am privy to every..."

"No, this is something that he hasn't told anyone about, he..."

"Then how, I wonder, do YOU know about it?"

"He, that is, I...I've been having..."

"Hey Harry! You're here early." Seamus, his usual boisterous self, had come up behind Harry and clapped him on the back. His voice must have carried into the class, because there was no more noise coming from within.

Harry flapped his arms and tried to gesture for Seamus to be quiet, but it was too late, Snape was opening the door, his usual stern expression on his face.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Finnegan, decided to come in to potions early today? Are you turning over a new leaf and actually taking an interest in developing your skills, or have you just lost your way to the toilets?" Snape didn't wait for an answer; he merely stood aside and held the door open for his students. Harry entered and looked over to the other side of the room. Draco was sitting at his cauldron, stirring the potion they had been working on all month. As Harry entered Draco looked up and they locked eyes. Draco looked as bad as Harry felt. His typically pale skin was also marred by the dark circles under his eyes. Harry felt an inexplicable urge to go over to Draco, and was about to veer in his direction when Ron and Hermione entered the room and steered him over to the potion they had been working on.

"I gathered the pondweed at midnight on the full moon, and I know I helped Ron find the toadstool, did you get the Streeler venom, Harry?" Hermione was already starting the day's work, even though some students were still spilling into the class room.

"Huh, what?" Harry tore his gaze away from Draco's for the first time since entering the room at Hermione's question. "Yeah, I got it, don't you remember last week when my right hand turned blue for two days?"

"I told you to wear your dragon hide gloves..."

Harry wasn't listening to Hermione, he looked back up at Draco, but Draco was now engaged in conversation with the rest of his potions group.

Professor Snape cleared his throat, and a hush fell almost immediately. Draco glanced up at Harry for a second before they both turned to look at their professor.

"As you recall, this is one of the most complicated potions you will make in your educational career at Hogwarts, and we are coming up on the trickiest week yet, the final week. If your ingredients are collected improperly, or added in the wrong order, they will likely turn this Revealing Potion into a very fast acting poison.

"Add your Streeler venom now, increase the heat and stir vigorously for the next hour to let the poisonous vapours burn off. When your arm tires, hand off to the next group member. Those not currently stirring a potion will cut the pondweed into thin strips, or come to this board and use a silver knife to pierce their toadstool at the centre and squeeze the poison out of the sac.

"At the end of the hour, reduce the heat on the potion and add the pondweed, wait a minute, then each of you will take a bite of the toadstool, and spit it into the cauldron, each stirring the cauldron once, clockwise for females, and contra clockwise for males. Cover the potion immediately. Since the potion must be stirred for five minutes at precisely midnight every night for the next three days, each group member will take turns fulfilling this task. I have spelled the door of this room to allow the passage of only my students during the night. Begin."

Harry added the venom he had collected from a Streeler trail and began to stir the potion, periodically glancing up at Draco. They caught eyes once in a while, but looked away almost immediately. Something was up with Draco, but Harry felt that mentioning it to Ron or Hermione would be a bad idea. The urgency in Draco's voice, and Snape's cool retorts reminded Harry of his own interactions with the potions master in the past. Though he didn't know what the conversation was about, he found himself sympathising with his Slytherin classmate.

After twenty minutes the crick in Harry's elbow gave a particularly painful throb, and he asked Ron to take over the stirring. Hermione was nearly done cutting the pondweed, so Harry picked up to toadstool and brought it over to the collection board. He picked up the nearest silver dagger and held the toadstool open with his left hand. He was about to stab down into the centre when someone came up to work beside him. Turning he noticed that it was Draco.

"Potter," Draco said in greeting with a nod of his head. Though their animosity had died down since their last confrontation in the hall, this amicable treatment from Draco still surprised Harry.

After recovering from his surprise, Harry nodded back, "Malfoy."

They worked side by side, piercing and squeezing their toadstools. When Harry's toadstool was dry he turned to go back to his group mates, but before he could take a step Draco caught hold of Harry's arm.

"Look, Potter, I..."

"Everything okay, Harry?" Ron had obviously noticed Draco's proximity to Harry. He was still stirring the potion across the room, but looked ready to drop the spoon and charge at Draco if it were required.

Harry nodded and turned back to Draco, but Ron's yelling across the room had drawn a few other's stairs from around the room, and Draco looked as if he had lost his nerve. "I'll see you around."

"Uh, yeh, you too," Harry stammered, trying to not sound too surprised. Harry smiled at Draco to show he was sincere, but the strange circumstances between Harry and Draco of late, on top of the conversation Harry had just overheard, must have confused the signal. Harry's smile came out lopsided, and must have looked quite goofy, because Draco let out a small chuckle before returning his own smile and turning away, leaving a confused Harry standing there holding a de-poisoned toadstool, and a warm feeling is his stomach that didn't come from the cold dungeon.

End Chapter Five