Waking Dreams

In the darkest of nights, no one will hear you scream.

Harry could hear footsteps behind him, each muffled thud of a shoe on the stone pavement sending an unpleasant jolt through him, his every nerve sizzling with a complete, disconcerting awareness of his surroundings. And the silent assassin they contained.

As the person....well, he hoped it was a person, behind him quickened their pace, so did Harry, his heart pounding out a rapid, violent staccato in his chest, seemingly trying to shatter his ribcage. As though his pursuer could sense the sudden fear that shot through him like lightning, Harry could have sworn on his life that he heard a muffled laugh...however, he couldn't be sure, as the sound of his own ragged breathing drowned out all thought.

Harry was already clipping along at a fair rate, but, without even realizing it, broke into a sudden run, his vision growing dark around the edges. Not that he could see much of anything, anyway. Where he was, he did not know; he only knew that the darkness around him was so complete, so heavy and smothering, that not a single sliver of light, not even one paper-thin and dim, penetrated it. In this nothingness, this black void, the scream that tore from his throat as suddenly as an explosion was swallowed easily, almost as though some creature, some unseen force of frightening magnitude, had swallowed his voice the instant it escaped him.

Without warning, a sound from in front of him brought a welcome stimuli to distract him from the disturbingly swift encroachment of his follower. But as he drew closer, he realized that the source of the sound was something he had hoped never to encounter ever again...as this thought twisted through his mind like lazy swirls of rainbow-shining oil floating on water, not quite sinking in, his foot caught the edge of something on the ground, and he found himself pitching helplessly forward. The fall was forever; he closed his eyes and tightly shut his mouth, anticipating the impact of the ground coming up to meet him...

* * *

Ron Weasley awoke to the sound of loud cries of protest, piercing the moonlit peace of the Gryffindor fifth-year boys' dormitory. He knew, feeling as though he'd just swallowed an extremely cold, heavy stone, exactly who was emitting the cries. He groaned to himself, willing whatever dream was plaguing his best friend to suddenly and unexpectedly feature the Peruvian Women's Quidditch team in a hot tub, or some other such thing that would work to the same end: shutting him up and removing the nightmare elements that repeatedly plagued Harry's resting hours.

And my resting hours, Ron thought sulkily, as he finally, with a feeling of great self-sacrifice, swung his legs over the side of his bed, and hoisted himself out of the warm, comforting depths of his crimson sheets, pushing apart the weighty dark curtains surrounding him. He gasped softly when his feet first met the stone floor, still bitterly icy, despite the warmth of the September evening.

He stumbled over to Harry's four-poster in the semi-darkness, his feet knocking into various objects strewn about the floor (and one that was unpleasantly slimy and he sincerely hoped was just Neville's toad Trevor).

When he reached Harry's bed, he slowly parted the velvety scarlet draperies, just enough to slide his torso through, almost afraid of what he would find. After his eyes had adjusted to the sudden darkness in Harry's enclosure, he could see that his best friend, who had not had a decent night's sleep since the summer, was flailing his limbs a bit; thankfully, his jerking movements were somewhat restricted by his tightly tucked-in sheets. Ron leaned over Harry, noticing that his mouth was twisted up into a horribly exaggerated grimace, and that his hands were clutching, white-knuckled, at the edge of the heavy red comforter.

Ron drew in a deep breath, placed a hand gently on Harry's lightly trembling shoulder, and shook Harry a little bit. It wasn't forceful enough; Harry's head flopped over to the side and one of his hands batted Ron feebly away as he slept on.

Come on, mate, it's for your own good, Ron pleaded silently with Harry, not really fancying the idea of shaking him senseless. Finally, in a fit of what he would no doubt later view as painful stupidity, he seized a glass half-full of water from the bedside table, and threw it in Harry's face.

The result was immediate; Harry flew forward like he'd been shot from a cannon, gasping and sputtering. He whirled around to face Ron, scowling. Without another word, he reached out, grabbing Ron's pajama shirt, and wiped his face dry with it. He let go, and sat back against his pillow, his face going blank.

Ron looked down at his damp shirt with dismay. "Thanks for that," he said sarcastically, but his voice hardly seemed to reach Harry's ears.

Harry started, nearly a full minute after Ron spoke. "What?" he said in confusion, swiveling his head from side to side, seeming to be looking for something. Ron leaned in closer to Harry, peering at him with a mixture of concern and confusion.

"Harry?" he called tentatively, his voice soft. Harry turned back to look at him, training his eyes on him. Ron felt a ripple of cold go through him. Harry's eyes were wide, the pupils enormous, and slightly wild-looking, their green color sparkling a little too brightly to pass for normal.

"Harry, what's wrong?" Ron could feel a wave of panic crest within him at the sight of his friend looking so odd. Harry didn't answer; he simply squinted slightly, as though trying to see better some object in the distance. Unfortunately, there was really no plausible explanation for this, as the farthest thing from his sight was a sheet of fabric, and that was only six feet from his face, at the most.

Finally, Ron grabbed Harry by the collar of his nightshirt, and attempted to haul him out of bed. Owing to the fact that Harry had become well-built over the past school year from extra-grueling Quidditch practices, this attempt was unsuccessful. Ron tried valiantly for a few minutes more, but finally let go, and slumped against one of the bedposts, panting.

"Harry, get up," Ron instructed tersely, having reached the end of his tether. Besides, Harry was starting to freak him out in a major way.

But Harry, to Ron's horror, did not move. He did not appear to have heard Ron.

He was sleeping again. Ron threw up his hands in exasperation. With a last disgruntled glance at his unresponsive longtime best friend, he stomped back over to his own bed, where the sheets had already grown cold.

* * *

The next morning, Harry felt as though he'd been run over by the Hogwarts Express. Repeatedly. This feeling became even more pronounced when Ron gave him a look of intense scrutiny upon his emergence from his (partly-open?) bed-hangings.

Oh, shove it, what now? he wondered, groaning to himself. He stood, stretched slightly, and frowned, noticing that his muscles felt oddly tense. As he did a few shoulder rolls to loosen up the tightly-clenched muscles across his back, he met Ron's gaze, which was fixed unwaveringly on him, brown eyes alight with uncertainty.

"What?" he finally exclaimed, feeling a bit put-off by Ron's ambiguous behavior. Ron walked across the room from where he had been perched, seeming a bit nervous, on the edge of his bed, and halted a few feet from Harry.

After another few seconds, Harry felt a hot wave of irritation rise in him, as Ron remained silent, still inspecting him with slightly narrowed eyes.

"RON!" he shouted angrily after a moment more of being watched as though under a microscope. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

Ron gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Wrong with me?" he muttered, almost to himself. He fixed Harry with a probing glare. "You wouldn't happen to remember anything about last night, would you, Harry?" he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

Harry was in the process of shaking his head, when the memory of the terrifying dream from the night before lanced sharply through him.

"Ohh..." he moaned involuntarily, running his hands through his messy black hair, which was currently standing on end.

Ron nodded vehemently. "'Ohh' is right! I spent half the night trying to figure out what the bloody hell was wrong with you..."

Harry froze, removing his hands from his hair and feeling his stomach plummet to his feet like a lead weight. What'd I do? he wondered in horror. He opened his mouth to speak, although unsure if his voice would even carry audible volume, but was interrupted by the arrival of a petite girl with a large head of frizzy light brown hair, hurrying through the threshold of the dormitory.

"There you two are! We're going to be late to breakfast!" came the voice of Hermione Granger, Harry's other best friend, who darted forward till she stood between them.

It took a moment for her to register that Harry's mouth was open, gaping wide, an expression that Ron was surveying with a look of apparent surprise.

"Harry? Ron?" she began cautiously, looking from one boy to the other. "What's going on?"

Harry snapped his mouth firmly shut, deciding he'd talk with Ron later. He turned to Hermione and smiled with false cheer. "Not much...let's go, I'm starved!"

Ron caught Harry's eye as the trio exited the dormitory, suspicion in his glance. Harry mouthed, "We'll talk later," as they began descending the stairs to the common room.

***

Ron found it exceedingly difficult to focus on Hermione's bright chatter that morning at breakfast, quite possibly due to the fact that Harry's memory of the past night seemed to be utterly blank.

"So, we have Care of Magical Creatures today, don't we?" Hermione queried through a mouthful of biscuit, rummaging through the large brown bag perched on her lap. "I can't believe I still haven't memorized our schedule....ah, here it is!" She plucked the sheaf of parchment from the depths of her purse, and scanned its contents quickly, her mouth moving silently as she read it over.

Ron rolled his eyes and stabbed a sausage with his fork. Personally, he felt far removed from actually caring about the bloody schedule. He had eaten halfway through the sausage before Hermione found the desired information.

"Oh, we do have it today, along with...ugh, Potions, two doses of the Slytherins in one day, I don't know if I can stand it..."She sighed, replaced the paper, and set her bag under the table, next to her feet.

Harry, after taking a sip of his orange juice, set his goblet back down on the table with an unusually loud clang, causing both Hermione and Ron to jump.

Once she'd recovered herself, Hermione leaned slightly forward in her seat, peering across the table at Harry through her wispy brown bangs. "Harry..." she began tentatively, and Ron could see her eyes darting quickly across his face. "Are you sure you're all right?" Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You're acting very...odd."

Harry put on a smile that Ron noted to be rather forced, and replied in an overly-cheery voice, "I'm fine! Just a little tired, that's all..."

Ron suppressed a snort. Tired, that's all...right, he thought sardonically, recalling Harry's strange, somewhat disturbing behavior the previous night.

This answer seemed to satisfy Hermione for the moment, although she still looked a trifle suspicious as Harry quickly busied himself with spreading marmalade over his toast.

Once she'd finished her scrambled eggs, Hermione sat back, her eyes focusing on something over Ron's shoulder, and her hand gently worrying her golden, well-polished Prefect badge, which was affixed to her shirtfront.

Harry, meanwhile, was chomping away absentmindedly on his toast, his eyes looking sort of glazed and distant. Ron sighed heavily. Life was a party with these two. He resigned himself to going over his answers to his Potions homework from the night before, knowing, with a feeling of dreadful certainty, that the day was not likely to improve as it went on.

***

Harry, walking down the sloping, emerald lawns to Hagrid's hut with Ron and Hermione, let out a small "Oof" as the shoulder of a person dashing by connected solidly with him.

The person turned out to be a girl with very long, very inky black hair that fell in a shining wave down to her waist. She whirled around, and Harry was caught off-guard by a pair of flashing green eyes.

"Sorry!" she apologized quickly, a tentative smile on her reddish lips. Then she seemed to realize who Harry was. The friendliness in her voice dropped a notch. "Potter," she acknowledged, with a slight inclination of her head.

She turned back away, then hurried off, joining a group of Slytherin girls farther on down the slope.

Harry looked over at Ron, then did a double-take. Ron, in a manner reminiscent of that which he assumed around veela, was goggling after the black-haired girl, who was, undoubtedly, a Slytherin.

"Who is she...she can't be a veela..." Ron exclaimed hoarsely, giving himself a visible shake.

Hermione rolled her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was heavy with exasperation. "Well, of course she's not a veela, she's got that black hair..."Hermione paused, lost in thought for a moment. "You know, I'm betting she's got some banshee blood in her," she continued thoughtfully.

Ron gave Hermione a look of scorn. "Her? Be part-banshee? One of those awful things Seamus' afraid of?" He snorted. "Sure."

Hermione gave her head a haughty toss. "Fine, Ron, be a ninny. I just bet she is, though."

Harry, who had remained silent throughout this entire exchange, suddenly found it awfully hard not to laugh out loud. If Ron had been acting like that girl was a veela, then Hermione was certainly behaving accordingly as well. Her attitude seemed to mirror the one she possessed whenever Ron came in contact with the French part-veela Fleur Delacour the year before.

But thoughts of Hermione's blatant jealousy were ousted by a new idea that wriggled into Harry's brain. That girl was oddly familiar...he remembered her from something...

And then it hit him, stunning in its obviousness. Of course, he admonished himself. The girl hadn't attended Hogwarts before this year...he vaguely remembered Dumbledore saying something about it at the beginning-of-the-year feast...after the first-years had all been Sorted, then she, too, had donned the Sorting Hat, and been placed in Slytherin...she was a fifth-year, too...

What was her name? he struggled to remember, but to no avail. After a moment of thought, he let it go. I'll probably think of it in the middle of the night.

His thoughts wouldn't have been able to linger on the girl for much longer, in any case; he, Ron and Hermione all stopped walking simultaneously as they came face-to-face with the horrendous batch of animals surrounding a cheerily waving Hagrid.

"No...bloody...way," Ron croaked, his eyes trained on the beasts filling the paddock. "There's no way I'm going near one of those...those...things."

Harry felt himself nod in vehement agreement. The hideous creatures were covered in silky black feathers that gleamed greasily in the bright sunlight. Their heads were bird-like, with long, cruel, grayish beaks, but with snake's tails of shimmering green protruding out of their backsides.

The closer the three got to Hagrid's hut, the further away Harry sincerely wished they were. They could now see the creatures' eyes: brilliant, acid-yellow, sliced blackly through with eerie pupils of vertical slits. Harry shivered as they came within a few yards of Hagrid...and the pen full of ugly animals.

"Hagrid," Hermione began carefully as they walked up to him. "What exactly are these....things?" She shuddered, but Hagrid didn't seem to notice. He beamed at the trio.

"These? These're full-blooded cockatrices...just came in yesterday!" His grin was so wide that it was plainly visible even through his masses of tangled black beard.

Hermione goggled at him. "Hagrid...I heard about a cockatrice going wild and rampaging at one of the old Triwizard Tournaments," she exclaimed, eyeing the bird-like creatures distrustfully.

But Hagrid seemed deaf to her protests. "Gather round, gather round," he bellowed, so that the stragglers just trundling down the hill could hear him, gesturing to the class to come closer.

Harry noted with dismay that Malfoy, flanked as always on either side by his two thuggish sidekicks, Crabbe and Goyle, was still in their class, and by his nasty smile, obviously intent on being as much of a pain this year as ever.

"These," Hagrid began, almost painfully excite, "are cockatrices! They..."

"Are only savage beasts," Malfoy broke in loudly, his voice cold with disdain.

Hagrid faltered. "Er...they're part bird, part snake...on'y dangerous if yeh make any sudden movements to 'em..."

"Oh, good, that should be easy to avoid, with all twenty of us moving at once," Malfoy commented sarcastically.

"Oh, hush up, Malfoy," Hermione hissed, turning around to shoot a glare over his way.

Malfoy smirked. "I'd like to see you try and make me, Mudblood," he returned softly, so Hagrid couldn't hear.

Harry grabbed Ron's arm to restrain him as he attempted to lunge at Malfoy, muttering, "Just let it go, Ron." Hermione, however, appraised Malfoy coolly for a long moment before turning silently back around and watching Hagrid, who was demonstrating how to feed the cockatrices their food.

Once Hagrid had finished with the instructional portion of the lesson, he began letting four people into the paddock at a time to feed a cockatrice a bucket of...well, Harry didn't know what was in the buckets, nor had any desire to know. He, Ron, Hermione, and Neville were all sent in to feed the same cockatrice.

"I think I'd rather be in Potions," Ron said with a grimace, pinching his nose in order to block the horrible stench of what could only be some sort of dead animal that he was tipping out of the bucket onto the ground in front of the cockatrice. With a squawk of glee, the bird-like animal dove at the food and began to eat it very messily, and with such relish that Harry felt instantly nauseous.

"Is that all we had to do?" piped up Neville hopefully.

Harry nodded. "Suppose so..."

So after a few more minutes of pretending to interact with the cockatrice, whose vicious beak was now dripping with blood, not making any more endearing to the four students, Hagrid let them out of the paddock, and ordered Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy to enter it.

"Eww, Draco, help me!" she squealed, as Hagrid handed her another evil-smelling bucket. Malfoy swaggered over, and took the bucket from her.

Soon, though, Harry, Ron, and Hermione became bored with watching the four Slytherins attempt unsuccessfully to feed their cockatrice. Harry sat on the ground, while Ron and Hermione argued about something having to do with prefects (Ron was the other Gryffindor prefect), and was looking around somewhat without interest, when he locked eyes with the strange, banshee-like girl.

Her green eyes were so unnaturally bright, even more so than Harry's, that their color was unmistakable, even from across the yard. And it was during that brief converging of gazes that her name came to him, as easily as though someone had whispered it in his ear.

Serafina.