Masquerade of Monsters

Masquerade of Monsters

Hermione woke up in the middle of the night, needing a drink of water.

Outside, snow fell softly to the ground, dusting the willow trees with a layer of white gauze. The sky was a bluish black, the stars twinkling like tiny fireflies, and unless she was quite mistaken, a beautiful aurora borealis was weaving itself across the darkness.

She pressed her nose against the cold windowpane, looking at the Northern Lights. Part of her wanted to wake Parvati Patil and Ginny Weasley up to share with them the view, but she could not take her eyes off the sky. It was ethereally beautiful; so unreal that she felt it might disappear if she averted her glance.

A logical part of her was saying, but the Northern Lights have never appeared at Hogwarts before.

Maybe Professor Dumbledore conjured them, she answered herself, too captivated by the sight to pay attention to details.

I have to go to the Great Hall, she thought suddenly. The huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end, near the professor's table, would be able to give her a better view. She grabbed her jumper and fastened it tightly, before walking over to Lavender's bed. She held out a hand to shake her shoulder...and found nobody there.

Where did she go? Hermione wondered in astonishment. She looked more carefully around the still dormitory - and realised that she was the only one in it.

Maybe they saw the Northern Lights too, she thought to herself, but that answer did not satisfy her. Why didn't Parvati or Lavender wake her up too? Was it because she had been sleeping soundly? But Hermione Granger had never been a heavy sleeper. The quietest of sounds woke her up.

Feeling slightly unnerved, she treaded slowly out of the girls' dormitory and into the common room. It was very quiet there, even taking into account that it was past midnight. Knowing full well that Gryffindor housed some of the loudest snorers in the school, Hermione felt certain that there were no one in the boys' dormitory either.

Where is everyone?

And then it came to her. Maybe she was in a dream, and that was why everyone disappeared.

If this is a dream, it is a very good one.

But her dreams had never felt as real as this. No, not even when she was dreaming of Dementors and horrible giant snakes. In those dreams she never had a choice - she was the audience, watching herself on the screen, unable to control her choices.

But in this dream she was lucid; and her decisions were solely her own. And that made it even scarier.

Hogwarts was an ancient structure, borne from old and primal magic, and that meant that even on the darkest of nights, Hogwarts would seem alive. Ghosts that lingered in corridors, stairs that moved, and statues that walked. House elves picking up dirty laundry from the dormitories, and professors who couldn't sleep.

This Hogwarts was too quiet, too still. It seemed like she was the only person alive in the world.

They was different too, the corridors and stairways. Mist enveloped the walkways, twirling around her feet. Hogwarts seemed neglected, ruined. The stone walls had greenish water stains, and ivy spread like a plague across every free surface. Roses thick with thorns crept along archways and rusty fences. Peering outside, Hermione could see nothing but grey whiteness, stretching as far as the eyes could see. Not a patch of brown or green, just the white snow set against a dark sky.

It was very cold. The temperature sapped at her skin, even in spite of the jumper she wore.

She pushed open the heavy oaken doors of the Great Hall, and gasped.

Statues of students, frozen halfway in action, filled the entire hall. Some of them laughing, their mouths curved upwards. Some with their shoulder drooped, unhappy, their posture telling the truth that no one bothered to see. Couples holding hands and smiling at one another. Two person in the midst of a fist fight, their faces bared in expressions of hatred and dislike. Hermione could not tell who anyone was, because their faces were frighteningly bare of eyes, and their facial features undefined at most. Like half-completed dolls. As Hermione reached out to touch the two fighters, they crumbled into dust right before her eyes. Horrified, she moved away. The dust scattered on the ground, and then nothing more were left of them.

Ashes to ashes.

"What happened?" she asked out loud, her voice shaking. "What is happening?"

She did not expect an answer, but there was one. "If you dance with me, I will tell you."

She turned around. There, standing not three feet away from her, was a stranger. He was holding out his hand to her, and a white Venice mask hid his face. Hidden in the shadows, so she could not see him clearly.

She did not want to accept, but her curiosity got the better of her. She took his hand, and he took a step towards her. She felt his hand supporting her back, and then he led her across the hall, careful to avoid the lifeless statues.

There were no music, no melody, but Hermione never missed a step. The two of them danced in the middle of the night, in the midst of the dead. She kept her gaze on the stranger, but no matter how hard she stared, she could not get a true glimpse of his eyes or his hair.

It was strange, because she could never see the faces of people in her dreams, and yet, she knew consciously who they were. But this time, it was different. She could not see his identity and she did not know who he was. A familiarity nagged at the back of her mind but she could not catch it.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

"You promised me you would tell me what is happening," she said.

"Yes. Yes, I did promise. And if it were anyone's dream but yours, I would not have kept it."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"This is your dream, and I am a figment of your imagination. You make the rules; you make the laws of physics. What you see here is how you visualize your utopia."

She was appalled. "No! I would never create such a place!"

"You tried to make a perfect world, and this is the result," he continued. They were no longer dancing, but had stopped right in the middle of the hall, staring at each other.

"You dislike imperfections, and so you tried to banish all that is imperfect. So there go the students of Hogwarts - turned into stone statues - because none of them are flawless. You fear the unknown, fear ignorance - that is why you studied so much and so extensively for - and so here is your deepest fear reflected: a place where you do not understand, a place where you have no control over."

"This is only a dream," she said anxiously.

"Exactly," he nodded seriously. "Which makes it all the more dangerous; because anything can happen."

She could not find an answer to that. Finally she asked in a tiny whisper, "How can I get out?"

"Soon," he replied.

"Stop giving me abstract answers, would you?" she replied in desperation.

"Don't you want to know who I am?" he asked.

She went very quiet, and nodded. The stranger slowly took off his mask, and Hermione took a step back.

Draco Malfoy.

"I'm not the real Malfoy," he said. "I dance with you, I talk to you nicely, because you wish I would do that in real life. But we both know that Draco will never talk to you that way, don't we?

"Draco - "

But he was fading fast, and within a few seconds Hermione was back in reality.

***

Later in the morning, Hermione skipped breakfast to go to the library. And there she found out what she wanted.

It is believed that when a witch sees an aurora borealis at the time of a full moon, her reality and her sub-conscious will be reversed for a time. She will wander in her dreamscape, and in that place, she will learn of her darkest desires, her deepest fears. Such a phenomenon had not been proven of course, but witches over the centuries have reported -

Her darkest desires, her deepest fears.

"I understand," she said quietly.

^end^