To Dwell on Dreams

Something tasted very bad. Hermione swallowed, then cursed herself for forgetting to brush her teeth the night before. She had apparently also forgotten to change out of her robes. The usual punishment for going to bed without getting ready first - disorientation - hit her full force, exacerbated by the persistent growling in her stomach. She finally sat up on her bed, feeling very lousy indeed. Luckily the room was empty. Through the tangles of her bushy hair, she spotted a generous pile of cauldron cakes and pumpkin pasties at the foot of her bed ... where had they come from? Oh, right! Harry had brought them up from the kitchens. He must have had Parvatiand Lavender carry her up, along with the food; or maybe she had stumbled into the dormitory herself, and just didn't remember ...

In any case, she needed that food right now. She ran to the bathroom to rinse her mouth, then proceeded to devour every single cake and pasty in under five minutes. Her watch told her that breakfast in the Great Hall was long over, and lunch wouldn't start for another hour. She might as well clean herself up properly in the meantime.

When lunchtime finally arrived, Hermione was among the first to sit down at the Gryffindor table. She was so busy wolfing down sandwiches that she didn't hear Harry and Ron bickering as they approached. Only when Harry sat down on her right side did she look up for an instant.

"Oh, hello," she greeted him before focusing once again on the food.

"Hi," replied Harry. "Do you want to visit Hagrid with me after lunch?"

Hermione stopped chewing and thought for a minute. She had actually hoped to spend a little more time in the library doing research on ghosts, or maybe search for Nearly Headless Nick...but after the fiasco of last night, did she really feel like nosing into the business of Jane's identity anymore? Besides, right now Harry and Hagrid were perhaps the only people at Hogwarts she could still stand. Last night Harry had offered to get her food from the kitchens before she'd even uttered a word of apology; and Hagrid was probably the only living person who ever bothered to listen to Hermione's troubles. She swallowed her food.

"That sounds great," she answered in a business-like tone; "I haven't seen Hagrid for a while. By the way, where's Ron?" It struck her that Harry had voluntarily chosen to sit with her. Or had Ron also stopped speaking to him?

"He's over there." Harry jerked his head to the right. Ron was sitting a few seats away on the other side of the table, poking at his salad in a decidedly disgruntled manner. "Maybe you'd better talk to him today," Harry muttered. "I don't think he's forgiven you for calling us 'stupid' yet."

Hermione was ready to tell Harry exactly what she thought of Ron's intelligence, but the word "us" echoed in her head. She stared guiltily at her plate for a minute. "Do you?" she finally asked without looking up. "Forgive me, I mean. I don't really think you're stupid - I was just in a foul mood that day."

Harry gave a short laugh. "Believe me, I know the feeling. Remember me last year? Don't worry about it, Hermione. And I haven't said sorry yet, for not talking to you about - things. It's just that - well, you're always doing work, so I've gotten used to talking to Ron most of the time. You know?"

She nodded, though that seemed like a pretty weak excuse. Did he really think she wouldn't have time to listen to her best friends? Hadn't she always listened to him, and Ron, whenever they needed to vent their feelings about anything? But nobody ever listened to her; no one except Hagrid, and maybe Jane, though last night Hermione had definitely blown it. "I think I need to be alone for a while," Jane had said before essentially kicking her out of the place. Oh, this was so pathetic, depending on a dead girl for friendship, a dead girl who, moreover, only existed in her dreams...

Before Hermione could stop them, her eyes welled up with tears and - to her burning humiliation - the tears started running down her cheeks. "Hermione..." she heard Harry say nervously, but she was already pushing out her chair and standing up.

"C-can we visit Hagrid a little bit later?" she asked between hiccoughs. "Or you can go ahead if you want...I'll be in the common room..."

She turned around and hurried out of the Great Hall. Through her tears she dimly registered passing by Malfoy- "Aw, poor Granger, did a teacher tell you off for something?" - and later, Professor McGonagall, who looked at Hermione with some concern but said nothing. Finally she reached the Gryffindor portrait hole.

"Fidelius," she said through sniffles.

"What's the matter, dearie?" asked the Fat Lady, kindly but very unhelpfully.

"Nothing - just - friend problems - could you open, please?"

"Well, I hope they turn out all right in the end," the Fat Lady sighed, and the portrait swung open not a second too soon. Hermione climbed in, walked briskly past a few younger Gryffindors in the common room, ran up the stairs two by two, reached out to grab a handful of tissues from the box on her night-table...

"Hermione, you got a letter!"

Damn. Parvati and Lavender - just the people she needed to see - why, oh, why did they have to be here right now? What kind of a letter was this, anyway? She viciously snatched it from the owl chittering on her pillow. It was from Viktor Krum. She calmed down a bit ...Viktor's letters always cheered her up.

"Are you OK?" Lavender asked, hopping off her bed to sit on Hermione's.

"Hmm? Me? Yes, of course," she answered absent-mindedly, dabbing her face with a very large bunch of tissues.

"You don't look OK..."

"Does it have to do with Harry and Ron?" said Parvati. When would they leave her alone!

"No," Hermione lied. She ran her finger down the lines written on Viktor's parchment, trying to concentrate well enough to read them. After a few seconds of silence, she finally succeeded. Dear Hermione, I hope you have been feeling well, and not letting the war worry you too much...life is getting harder here at Durmstrang now that the students have divided almost in half, over which side they are taking...

"Hermione."

She turned to Parvati with red-rimmed eyes. "Yes?"

"We - we thought you might want to know something."

"Yeah, we overheard Harry and Ron this morning," said Lavender, "and Ron was saying he would have apologized to you already except you never gave him a chance, and Harry said that was true but Ron should try to corner you anyway -"

"And Ron refused, saying you look like you wanted to be left alone, and you're always working in the library, and basically - we think you should let him know what you really feel," Parvati finished quickly.

"What on earth are you talking about?" said Hermione, her voice still trembling from crying.

Parvati and Lavender looked at each other.

"You talk in your sleep," Lavender explained. "I don't know if you remember, but you've been mumbling about Harry and Ron recently - about how you had a row, and all - isn't that right?" she asked suddenly, looking at Parvati for assurance. Parvati nodded.

Hermione initially wanted to protest - the realization that Parvatiand Lavender could hear her conversations with Jane was a nasty shock - but their faces looked so serious, and they were being much more thoughtful and considerate than she had ever given them credit for, that she didn't have the heart to argue...

In the end she just thanked them, dropped the letter on her bed, and went to the bathroom to wash her face.

Harry was sitting in an armchair, staring at the fire. When he saw Hermione coming down the stairs he greeted her heartily, but Hermione could have sworn that his previous expression had been gloomy.

"Ready to go to Hagrid's?" he asked, obviously trying to bring the pitch of his voice up.

Hermione smiled tightly, hoping to avoid another crying spell, and nodded.

They kept silent all the way out of the castle, which suited Hermione. She spent the time pondering, again, why she had met Jane...whether Jane was just created out of Hermione's loneliness, or by something altogether more sinister. If Jane had spoken the truth - if she really was the ghost of a girl who had died at the hands of Death Eaters - why had she chosen to meet Hermione? It seemed rather useless to entertain a sixteen-year-old Hogwarts student who couldn't really do anything, being an underage witch. Then there was Hermione's earlier suspicion, that Jane really wanted info on Harry or Ron - Harry probably. That could easily make Jane a vision sent by Voldemort to learn about his greatest foe, or - Hermione nearly laughed at the idea that Jane could be Harry's dead mum trying to check up on her son. Perhaps what was most confusing was that Jane seemed to be genuinely trying to befriend her. She shouldn't have started, thought Hermione despairingly, because I'll never find a friend like that in real life...

They were halfway across the field when Harry finally asked, "What's on your mind?"

Hermione hesitated. What could she tell him? Harry, I'm annoyed because I've met a real best friend in my dreams and neither you nor Ron will ever match up to her? Ridiculous. Plus, she felt much better keeping Jane a secret. Then again - hadn't this whole row been about Harry not sharing his thoughts with her, shutting her out? After the fuss she had made over that, she had no right to do the same.

"You know the feeling you get," she began, trying to put it into words, "when - when you've been living your life without thinking that much about what it should be like? And then something comes along that shows you how much better things could be, and then you end up depressed because things aren't that way?"

"But that's exactly how I've been feeling!" said Harry almost indignantly. "That's exactly it - I've been living without my parents all of my life, so I never knew that it could be different - then I finally met my godfather - and then, well, now he's gone, and it's back to the way things were before I even knew I had a godfather. But Sirius made me see what it was like, to have a real parent who cared about me and whom I cared about. Now he's dead, and the war's started, and I know at the end of this I'll have to - well, I know Voldemort's after me, and I really missSirius!" His voice cracked. "I mean, you and Ron are great, but you're my best friends, not my parents!"

A ringing silence fell after that last remark. They had stopped walking.

"That's terrible," Hermione finally said, in a voice barely above a whisper. At least she still had her mum and dad! "Harry, I'm really sorry ... not that saying that helps any, but ..."

"It's okay," muttered Harry. "It's just nice that you listened." They started walking again in silence. Then he asked: "So what about you? What's missing for you? ... I notice you've started eating again, that was a smart idea."

She blushed. "I wasn't really starving myself on purpose ..."

"Right ..."

"Well, who could I talk to at meals? You and Ron not speaking to me, Ginny always with fifth-years or Dean Thomas ... and I was also spending a lot of time doing some private research in the library."

"Private research? I should have expected something like that ... what on?"

But just then, the door to Hagrid's hut swung open and Hagrid himself emerged a few yards ahead, heaving an unusually large sack in one hand. They stopped in their tracks.

"Well, if it ain't Hermione an' Harry!" he greeted them in the usual cheery manner. "How've yeh been?"

"Good," lied the pair automatically.

"What's in that?" asked Hermione, eyeing the sack.

"This? This here's ... just some potion ingredients I gotta get to Professor Snape," Hagrid muttered. "Sorta urgent, he said ... better get 'emto him soon as possible ... sorry I couldn' ask yeh to stay fer a visit, but yeh'll walk me to the castle, won't yeh?"

Seeing as they had already turned in that direction, there didn't seem to be any reason not to. Acting cheerful around Hagridturned out not to be too hard for either of them - and by the time they climbed through the Gryffindor portrait hole (the Fat Lady mercifully didn't ask after Hermione's "friend problems"), they were genuinely in much better spirits.

Ron sat in the corner, writing on a long roll of parchment. Hermione wasn't sure where to go, but Harry grabbed her wrist and steered her in Ron's direction. "Stop it, Harry," she hissed, but he ignored her. Parvati's and Lavender's advice was still on her mind. Instead of putting her at ease, it had taken from her the option of being completely horrible to Ron; but she wasn't sure she was ready to be anything else just yet.

"Hey Ron," said Harry loudly, "what's that you're writing?"

Ron glanced at Harry's hand around Hermione's wrist. He looked from Harry to Hermione with an indecipherable expression on his face. Finally he answered politely: "I'm doing my Transfiguration homework. Have either of you started?"

Both shook their heads.

"You might want to," Ron warned them; "this assignment's brutal, and I haven't even touched the other homework yet."

Hermione suddenly remembered Viktor's letter. "I'll be back," she said quickly before going to fetch it from her room, along with a blank roll of parchment. When she returned, Harry had started his Charms assignment. The three of them worked fairly quietly until Harry suggested dinner - Hermione seconded it - and the trio headed to the Great Hall.

Before the others had finished stuffing themselves properly, Ron excused himself.

"I need to practice on my broomstick," he explained. "Don't want to lose the first match for Gryffindor, do I? I'll be fine by myself," he said quickly, when Harry looked about to say something. "You two really should get your homework started,it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would."

Harry stared after him, looking puzzled.

"Well, that went fairly well, didn't it?" declared Hermione brightly. "Considering neither of us really apologized..."

"He's not happy about something," mused Harry. "But if he were mad at us, he would have said so straightaway. I wonder what's wrong?"

Crookshanks was back in the Gryffindor tower. He had taken to wandering around the Forestfor days on end before returning to Hogwarts, his yellow eyes gleaming with the light of exploration. After Hermione had finished cooing over him for a good ten minutes, she carried him out of her room and went downstairs to the fifth-years'. Ginny was sitting on one of the four-posters, her back to Hermione.

"Guess who's back?" Hermione called out, beaming.

"CROOKSHANKS!" Ginny squealed before dropping down and crawling towards the cat. Hermione took a seat on the floor, cross-legged.

"I've barely seen you for the past week," said Ginny reproachfully. Hermione looked up from Crookshanksand realized Ginny was addressing her.

"Me? Oh, I've been here," Hermione said vaguely; "but I suppose you were too caught up in staring deep into Dean's eyes..." Ginny swatted her, and they giggled. It was just like their nighttime conversations in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place: a little girly, but still great fun. Hermione found that she hardly cared about Jane Smith anymore; why worry about a ghostly dream vision when there were real people she got on with?

This sense of blithe abandon came to a height after Ginny had tired of relating woeful tales about Dean. The red-headed fifth-year leaned in and muttered, ""By the way ... has my git of a brother started speaking to you yet?"

Hermione stared at her. Then she laughed outright, and it seemed as though a great burden had just been lifted from her chest. "Yes, he has," she said gleefully. "He's talking to me again, and Crookshanks is back, and I've got you all as friends, and - and - oh, everything's so perfect and wonderful! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, ..." she sang, dancing out of the room and down the stairs, feeling perfectly loony, and barely hearing Ginny's yell of, "I knew you liked him!"

Harry stared at her with interest as she waltzed through the crowded common room towards him. "There's nothing wrong with me," she assured him in her normal voice; "I'm just very happy right now!"

"That's ... good," said Harry, grinning nervously - or rather, grinning weakly. He must have been thinking about Sirius before she entered the room. Her giddiness receded a bit.

"Harry, please, don't think about it. Right now we're at boarding school, it's not like Sirius could be here -"

"Actually," cut in Harry, "I wasn't thinking of Sirius at all."

"What? Really? What were you thinking of, then? You look a bit down."

"I was wondering," said Harry slowly, "what it is that, well, you said you were missing. You know, what could be better. In your life."

She looked at him very carefully. Was he being bitter? Did he think she had no reason to complain? She opened her mouth, about to ask why he wanted to know - and then she saw it.

His eyes.

His eyes were green. Almond-shaped, sparkling green ...

They were exactly the same as Jane's ...

She got to her feet and kicked back her chair.

"I saw my mum and dad ... and my mum had the same eyes as me ..."

But that was ridiculous. Harry's mum couldn't have been sixteen when she died!

She never said she was sixteen...

She was killed by Voldemort...

How could it be, that Jane Smith, a girl from her dreams, had suddenly become Lily Potter? The reality of the situation hit her.

She asked after Harry ...

Lily Potter ...

Lily Potter ...

"Hermione!" Harry stood up. "Hermione, what's the matter?"

Lily Potter ...

The pieces clicked into place, everything made sense ...

"Hermione!"

Jane Smith ...

The portrait opened. A crop of red hair appeared in the crawlway. Ron was back, just in time for the 9 o'clock curfew. He automatically looked around the room for Harry or Hermione, but he didn't have to look very hard; every Gryffindor present had turned towards them. Harry was standing in the middle of the room, frantically shaking a limp Hermione in his arms.

"What happened to her?" Ron demanded, jogging over to them and glaring suspiciously at Harry.

Harry stared at him with fearful eyes. "I - I don't know! She just went out like that!"

Ron examined Hermione's face.

"And why is she smiling?"

Harry froze. "What?" he yelped. But Ron was right; Hermione's mouth had definitely curved upwards into a smile. He looked back up at Ron, completely bewildered. Ron was still gazing at Hermione.

"She looks like she's asleep ..."

"She just fainted!" Harry screamed at him, while other people in the common room murmured in agreement.