Bittersweet

Chapter Six:

Of Dragons and Dreams

The next morning Felicity awoke with a smile on her face, and for a moment couldn't remember any reason she had to feel so chipper. Usually she woke up with a groan and a, "Oh, God... is it morning already?" or "What... time... is it?"

Sunlight streamed in through her window and the gauzy drapes casting violet shadows on the floor and illuminating the specks of dust that swirled around through the sunbeam. She could hear muffled conversations from downstairs, through the pregnable floorboards and walls. A faucet streamed water that splashed into a sink. Pots and pans clinked softly. Footsteps stamped slowly down stairs. Felicity rolled over and stretched her arms and legs with a yawn, until her joints and bones cracked satisfyingly. Merlin blinked blearily at her from his cage across the room.

Then it clicked. She had survived her close encounters with the English kind and not only that, but had befriended them.

Score! Ten points!

She smiled happily to herself and sat up in bed, Indian style.

Hermione Granger... Harry Potter... Ron Weasley

"So Merlin," Felicity said, grinning at him, "what'd ya think?"

Merlin cocked his head a fraction of an inch to the left, as though considering.

"Did you like Hermione?" she asked.

Merlin bobbed his head enthusiastically and Felicity beamed. "Oh, me too! What about Ron?"

Merlin hesitated for a moment, then hooted softly and inclined his head slightly.

Felicity laughed and rolled her eyes. She got up and set to work making her bed. "And Harry?"

Merlin rotated his head a hundred and eighty degrees and then back, beating his wings up and down restlessly.

Felicity frowned. "You don't like Harry?" she asked skeptically.

Merlin hooted a low hoot and ruffled his feathers again, making them poke out at odd angles.

"Why? What's wrong with him?"

Merlin simply flapped his wings once and cooed.

"You know..." Felicity said, watching Merlin closely under the pretext of fluffing her pillow. "Harry has a snowy owl too... he told me last night..."

Merlin hooted and flapped his wings once as though he still didn't care.

"...Her name's Hedwig, he named her after Saint Hedwig, who lived in Germany and established a patronage of nuns to educate and look after orphans-"

"Who?" Merlin hooted keenly, suddenly appearing quite interested.

"Hedwig, the saint-"

"Who!"

"Lord, aren't you paying attention?" Felicity asked, wiggling into some jeans, having finished making her bed. "Harry's owl."

"Who!"

"Harry Potter!" Felicity said exasperatedly, pulling her hair from her shirt collar and examining herself in the mirror. She looked pale with bright splotches of color on her cheeks, like blood on snow. She shivered and lightly slapped her cheeks to even out the color. Now her whole face was red. Great... "Messy dark hair, glasses, my height-"

"Who?"

I can't believe I'm having a conversation with an owl, Felicity thought exasperatedly. I'm losing my mind.

"Look, Mer, I haven't got time to play Twenty Questions with you," Felicity said, slipping on her converses. One shoe "belonged" to Anne and had shimmering fairies and Anne's name written all over it and the other "belonged" to Tyler. He had opted for meaningful quotes that scrolled across the material in his slightly untidy boyish handwriting rather than fluttering fairies.

"Hold on. Hope hard.... Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.... Everyone sees you as you appear to be; few realize what you really are... The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.... I swear to you that there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell... Genius is childhood recaptured.... It is never too late to be what you might have been.... Have no fear of perfection-you will never reach it.... Never take a step backward, not even to gain momentum... Fear cripples the soul.... It doesn't take a lot a strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.... Temper is the one thing you can't get rid of by losing it.... There's nothing better than contagious laughter.... Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.... The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.... Your imperfections are what make you beautiful...."

Felicity sighed... she loved reading that shoe (as odd as it sounded). Tyler knew everything there was to know about her, knew that each quote he magicked onto that shoe would mean something important to her in some way, trigger some memory.... He knew her too well...

"Have you forgotten how to tie your shoes, deary?" her mirror asked gently with a hint of a titter in her voice.

"Uh-uh," Felicity said quietly, doing up the laces on her shoes and getting to her feet. "Just reminiscing."

"I enjoyed meeting your new friends last night, Felicity," the looking glass said and the silhouette smiled. "They all seemed very nice. I'm sure you'll have a lovely time with them at school."

"They are very nice, aren't they?" Felicity asked rhetorically, walking over to a cabinet. She poured Merlin a fresh bowl of Vole & Rabbit Bits and water and set to work making her own breakfast.

The food at dinner yesterday had been delicious at the time but hadn't set well with her so it was time for a good old-fashioned peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. It was American; she knew she could handle it. She'd have some toast and orange juice when she went downstairs. Felicity pulled out a jar of peanut butter and a slice of bed, spread the peanut butter on the bread, folded it over, and took a huge bite, causing peanut butter to shoot out of the bread and stick to the roof of her mouth.

Felicity scowled as she tried to flick the bread and peanut butter from her mouth with her tongue.

"I need thum milk," she said thickly after she'd finished the sandwich. "Thee 'all 'ater," she said to her mirror and Merlin and walked out the door, shutting it carefully behind her.

She hurried down the flights of stairs and as she did so her nose picked up the smells of an early morning kitchen, sharp sizzling bacon and sausage, the burnt smell of toast, still warm from the toaster, sugary scent of oatmeal.... She could hear the conversations more clearly as the she came closer to the kitchen combined with silverware clinking on china, and a hot frying pan hissing and spitting grease as food was added to it. She quickened her pace; the sticky peanut butter was almost suffocating.

Mrs. Weasley stood at the stove, her back turned to Felicity, humming softly as she simultaneously flipped pancakes, turned sausages and bacon, and made toast, looking for all the world like an orchestra conductor, her wand the baton. Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were sitting at the rustic wooden kitchen table, each spooning different foods onto their plates. Hermione was adding a spoonful of sugar to her bowl of porridge, with a small cup of milk for a beverage. Harry had fried eggs, bacon, toast, and a tall glass of orange juice in front of him. A large tower of steaming, butter-and-syrup covered pancakes were stacked on Ron's plate with a side of sausage and a glass of milk. And beside Ginny's goblet of pumpkin juice were scrambled eggs that she was scooping up with a wedge of toast.

They all looked up as and smiled Felicity entered. She smiled back. "Milk," she said. It felt like her tongue was permanently glued to the roof of her mouth.

"And a very good 'milk' to you too," Harry said sarcastically, nodding to the pitcher of milk in the center of the four. Felicity eagerly grabbed it, poured some into an empty glass sitting in from of her and took a long draught of the cold refreshing liquid. She sank into her seat. That was the last peanut butter sandwich she would be eating without a beverage for a while. "You know most people greet each other in the early hours of the day with a salutation, a greeting... not a beverage produced from livestock-"

"Alright, sorry," Felicity said cutting him off and lowering her glass. She grinned at him playfully, wiping her milk-mustache from above her lip with the back of her hand. "I was thirsty. I couldn't help it."

"So what's on the agenda for today, Mum?" Ron asked, as she leaned over his shoulder and sat an even larger stack of pancakes in between them, motioning for Felicity to help herself. "Scouring Chizpurfle goo from the cauldrons in the cellar? Zapping the Bundimuns from the floor-"

"You know perfectly well you can't zap anything while you're underage, Ron," Hermione said primly.

"-or something even more revolting, like scrubbing the toilets on the second floor?" Ron finished, ignoring Hermione's interruption.

"Ew... those are disgusting," Ginny said, looking faintly green. "There are little miniature Dugbogs floating around in them."

"That's what you think they are," Ron said suggestively, raising his eyebrows at his sister.

"Gross!" Ginny shrieked. "You can't make me clean those, Mum! Make the twins do it! They-"

"Make us do what?"

Felicity turned to find a very bleary-eyed Fred and George looking like they'd just woken from winter hibernation instead of a good night's sleep.

"'Lo, all," Fred said groggily, sitting down in the seat beside Felicity and pulling the mountain of pancakes toward him. He forked a tall tower of them onto his plate, before turning the rest over to George, and commenced to slathering them in butter and syrup.

"Make us do what?" George repeated, now pouring liberal amounts of syrup over his own pancakes.

"Clean the toilets," Ginny said with a shudder. "There are mysterious-things-in them and I for one refuse to-"

"Relax, Ginny, Mum would never make you clean those toilets," Ron said blithely. "She'll probably make Harry and I do it."

Harry glanced up from his bacon, with a startled expression on his face.

"Only joking, mate," said Ron calmly.

"Actually," said Mrs. Weasley, placing a tray of sausages in front of them, "we're going back to the drawing-"

"-board?" Fred said helpfully.

"-the drawing room," Mrs. Weasley finished. "Like it or not the only things we took care of yesterday were the curtains and the cabinets-Felicity, dear, eat, you haven't touched a thing."

For the next three days Felicity, Hermione, Harry, Ron, and the others spent most of their time decontaminating the drawing room. When it was finally finished the only things left in it that needed to be taken care of were the writing desk that Felicity suspected had a boggart in it (Mrs. Weasley wanted to wait until Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody could check it out and make sure it was only a boggart) and the Black Family Tree tapestry. Sirius and Mrs. Weasley had tried every charm, hex, jinx, and spell they knew on it and it still refused to be moved. In a bold and some (Mrs. Weasley) might say foolish move, Sirius even let the twins have a crack at the tapestry but still to no avail. So Sirius simply threw a cloth over it, clapped his hands together once, and said, "Well that's that."

"You know, I don't think it looks half bad," Felicity said, her eyes sweeping the room. She, Hermione, and Ginny had washed the walls and Harry, Ron, Fred, and George had scrubbed the carpets, so everything even smelled fresh. The curtains had been washed and mended, the shelves and cabinets polished, sofas and lounges vacuumed, and all magical creatures banished. Mrs. Weasley had even conjured up some guppies to swim around in the large mended aquarium.

"I agree, it actually looks inhabitable," Harry said, taking down the cloth he'd tied around his face and tossing it into a bucket full of brown dirty water.

"Forget how it looks," Ron said, throwing himself down on the sofa and removing his own rag. "As long as we're done!"

"Oh please, Ronald, you're unbearable sometimes," Hermione said, rolling her eyes.

Ron threw his face towel at her as the doorbell rang.

And right on cue: "Scum! Slime! And Filth! Florid filth! Be gone from my home! Debasing the noble house of Black-"

"I'll get it!" Fred shouted, leaping up from his seat in the floor.

"Oh, no you will not!" said Mrs. Weasley firmly, pushing him back down into the floor. "You will sit right there until Sirius gets back from answering the door."

Sirius looked up from the locket they'd found the other day in the cabinet. It had become something of a habit of his, trying to get it open, and he was rarely without it.

The doorbell rang again and Sirius's mother's screams intensified.

Mrs. Weasley gave Sirius a look as if to say, "Well, it is your house."

"Right," said Sirius, promptly tucking the locket into an inside pocket of his robes and strolling out the door.

Felicity shared a curious glance with Hermione, Harry, and Ron. They sat in a sort of expectant silence, waiting for Sirius to come back or Mrs. Weasley to leave so they might glean some knowledge of who had called upon number twelve Grimmauld Place today. The doorbell ringing wasn't such an odd occurrence. On the contrary, it usually rang several times a day, prompting Mrs. Black to begin screeching profanities as though she was standing on one side of the Grand Canyon and the rest of the household were on the other. Everyone would abruptly pause what they were doing, stop what they were saying, wait for Mrs. Weasley and/or Sirius to rush from the room to greet the Order member, then rush to the nearest door or window in hopes of catching some pathetic glimpse of whoever had come to call.

Felicity hadn't met any new members of the Order since her welcoming dinner several nights ago, but through the Weasleys, Hermione, Sirius, and even Harry (though admittedly, he knew almost as few people as she did) she became acquainted with each new name and face.

There was Kingsley Shacklebolt, a tall black wizard. Felicity had actually seen him other than through a window or down a hallway and he had the deepest, darkest, most soulful eyes she'd ever seen. Sturgis Podmore, a rather burly wizard with a strong jaw and hair that reminded Felicity of the straw in the stables back home, coarse and a brownish-blond color. There was a tall regal looking witch that always seemed terribly out of place whenever she came call; Felicity thought she ought to belong to a different time era altogether. Her name was Emmeline Vance. Then there was this bubbly, jittery and altogether too energetic wizard called Dedalus Diggle, who tended to bop around a lot, always shifting from one foot to the other or pacing. Not in a nervous, shifty way... no, he just seemed to be a very energetic, hyperactive individual. There were others too, but these four stood out the most prominently in her memory, she could remember them the easiest and they came to call more often than the others.

Felicity dimly realized, Mrs. Black's shrieking had stopped...

Surprisingly, Snape hadn't came to call and she hadn't spoken to him since the day she'd decided to go against his orders and meet Harry Potter and the others. Half of her wanted to see him, just for the look on his face when he saw that she was becoming fast friends with the Weasleys, Hermione, and Harry and half of her was slightly frightened at what he might say or do and how embarrassing the confrontation might be...

"Felicity. Felicity? Hello, have you heard a word I've said?"

Felicity shook her head to clear it and looked up from the towel in her hands. Sirius was standing in front of her, tapping her gently on the shoulder.

"What?" she asked stupidly. "Sorry I was-"

"It's alright," he interrupted. He looked slightly pissed off; though Felicity couldn't for the life of her begin to figure out what she'd done to irritate him. "You have a visitor downstairs."

Ah... that's why he's pissed, she thought. Uncle Snape is here... well think of the devil...

"Lovely," Felicity said, mirroring Sirius's vexed demeanor with one of her own. She got to her feet and dropped her face towel in the nearest scrubbing bucket, discontentedly resigned for the worst.

"Wish me luck," she said to no one in particular, as she crossed the room behind Sirius.

As the door closed behind her, Felicity heard six voices chorus, "Good luck."

"What does he want, Sirius?" asked Felicity, following Sirius across the landing and down a flight of stairs. She sped up so that she was side by side with him. He had a very sour expression on his face. "Why can't he stay-wherever he stays-and leave me alone until school starts."

"An excellent question," Sirius said bitterly, "and one I dearly hope you'll ask old Snivellus."

He was waiting for her in the foyer, looking terribly chipper as though he would like nothing better than to skip merrily through a field of wildflowers hand in hand with Sirius...

Yeah... right...

Felicity allowed herself a small grin. Oh that would be scary to see, she thought.

No, Snape didn't look chipper at all; he looked extraordinarily cross, but hey, no surprises there. His arms were folded mutinously over his chest and he scowled slightly behind his curtain of dark greasy hair when he saw Felicity. She smiled at him pleasantly.

"Hello, dear Uncle Snape," she said in an overly cordial voice. She raised her arms as if to embrace him and Snape backed away, out of reach, looking faintly disconcerted. She lowered her arms and sighed resolutely. "Well you can't always get what you want, can you? Tell me, what brings you to number twelve Grimmauld Place on this fine, fine day?"

Snape raised his eyebrows at her. Probably because it was pouring outside. It rained a lot in Britain.

"Was it the sight of teenagers doing a good hard day's work?" she asked in a very sincere voice, though Felicity wouldn't exactly call herself sincere. Cheeky, perhaps, but not sincere. "Mrs. Weasley's delectable cooking? The maggots infested in the floorboards? Or did you just miss me?"

Sirius coughed in a loud hacking manner from behind her, which made her suspect he was hard put to contain his laughter. Her smile broadened. If she was amusing Sirius she was certainly pissing Snape off.

"I wanted to speak to you," Snape said shortly, his face working furiously to remain bland, though she could tell his blood was boiling. He was so easy to bait.

Felicity shrugged, looking unconcerned. "Well, here I am, Uncle Snapey, and quite frankly, I'm the one doing all the speaking," she said, as though admonishing him.

"Alone," he said tersely, eyeing Sirius distastefully. "I wanted to speak to you alone."

Felicity nodded serenely. "Sirius, would you be a dear and trot along? Apparently, Uncle, has some profound knowledge he wishes to impart unto me," she said sagely, keeping her face deadly serious. "And it's not for innocent ears such as yours."

Sirius "coughed" again and cleared his throat. "I wouldn't want to intrude," he said amiably. Felicity heard him walk across the hall and back up the stairs. She watched Snape's icy black eyes as they followed Sirius with loathing smeared all over his pallid face.

They heard a door close quietly and Snape's eyes flicked back to her. She was almost as tall as him, only just barely had to look up to see into his eyes. She still hated it.

"I've had enough of your insolence-" he began angrily.

"Uncle Snape, I'm not diabetic," Felicity said, as though she hadn't a clue what he was talking about. She gave herself a mental pat on the back for her joke and how furious she was making him.

"Insolence not insulin!" Snape spat angrily, spraying her with flecks of spittle, his fists clenching, face red, eye livid. "You-"

He closed his eyes, as though praying for patience and Felicity thought she heard him counting to ten under his breath, or he might have been damning her to Hell. She wasn't quite sure.

"Felicity," he said calmly, as thought testing his restraint.

"Uncle Snape."

"I thought," he said deliberately, "I specifically expressed to you that I didn't approve of your acquaintance with the Weasleys, Granger, and especially Potter."

"Aw, well they seem like nice enough people, Uncle Snape," said Felicity, really serious this time. "I like them."

Snape closed his eyes again. "Well, they won't like you when you are sorted into Slytherin," he said. "They are all in Gryffindor and the rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor goes back at least five centuries. Do you think they will honestly want to stay friends with a Slytherin."

Felicity suddenly got goosebumps. She, herself, had been thinking along these lines. Late at night when she couldn't sleep, thoughts of what would happen to their newly formed friendship if she was sorted into a different Hogwarts House than Gryffindor, sorted into Slytherin, drifted into her mind. To hear Snape talk about them, to say these worries out loud only increased her trepidation.

"I think that while I'm here in this country that you dumped me into, I'll be friends with whoever I like," she said coldly, her gaze not wavering. Neither did his.

They glared at each other for a moment, or an hour, or perhaps a day, Felicity didn't know for sure of anything except she wasn't breaking their stare until he did. Finally just as Felicity's eyeballs had started to itch uncomfortably, he said, "As you wish, but don't say I didn't warn you."

Felicity raised her eyebrows at him but didn't break the stare down. "Are we through here?"

"I think we are," Snape said softly, turning on his heel and marching out the front door.

Felicity glared at the door for a moment, as if she could somehow burn through it with her eyes, then burn through the wizard who had just exited through it, then turned and went to sit at the bottom of the stairs. He had rattled her, that was for sure.

At least you didn't show it openly, she told herself. At least you can still work with the Occlumency and keep things hidden.

A small consolation, she thought. Like giving a beauty pageant contestant a small participation prize. "Don't worry, you're pretty, but not that pretty. Thanks for playing and enjoy your Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. We picked out all the good flavors and gave them to the winner."

Felicity took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was feeling very reluctant to return to the drawing room. She didn't think she could put on a happy face, and she didn't want to be asked why she looked so gloomy.

So she sat there at the foot of the staircase, staring down the dark hallway, she'd never been down before. When you walked into Grimmauld Place there was a large open foyer with a door on the left leading to the kitchen and on the right was the staircase leading the upper floors. Straight ahead was a long shadowy corridor, lined with picture frames of ancient Blacks and more mounted elf heads.

Goosebumps pricked their way up her arms and Felicity shivered, suddenly feeling very cold. Her stomach lurched and she leaned her forehead against the banister, holding it and herself for warmth.

I bet I'm getting sick from this foreign food I've been eating, Felicity thought grimly, as cold sweat beaded her forehead. Better get back to my room. Lie down...

Slowly, grasping the banister firmly, Felicity raised herself to her feet and the ground threatened to fly from her feet. Flashes of color blinked before her eyes blocking her vision momentarily and she clung to the stair railing for support, still shivering.

"Oh no..." she groaned aloud, knowing what was coming and knowing there was no way to stop it: a trance and unless she was much mistaken, a vivid one.

She swayed dizzily as she forced herself to continue up the stairs, taking deep breaths, praying that she would make it to her room before she spaced out.

Her temple began to throb and she quickened her pace. She was almost to the second floor landing now, just two more floors to go and she would be good. Her teeth chattered and her throat clenched making it hard for her to swallow. She reached the second floor and let go of the banister to reach for the next set of stairs when it hit. Her eyes snapped shut involuntarily and just as quickly opened, but she wasn't seeing the second floor landing and the pain had disappeared.

Thick dregs of white fog sifted sluggishly across the empty plain in front of her, like a shredded ball of cotton, and water that was only this black at the very deepest depths of the ocean was stretched out before her. She took a step forward and it frothed like the foam of a cappuccino. Red storm clouds rolled across a deep violet sky.

Felicity surveyed her surrounding as though they were the most natural in the world, her gaze lingering on a crimson cloud the shape of a dragon. It was really pretty in a menacing sort of way, its claws tearing lavender strips into the violet sky as it coasted away from her toward the horizon, where black met purple in a violent clash of color.

She observed that beautiful beast, enthralled, unable to take her eyes from it, filled with a sort of dangerous fascination. With a fluttering heart, she watched the cloud meet the horizon and fade into it, no longer a cloud and no longer an intense crimson, but a black hue and it seemed to be shining, radiating silver. The dragon was the size of a quarter horse in the distance, though she knew it would be much larger should it come any closer.

Then as if spurred by her thoughts the, she saw it take a step toward her. No, not really saw, as in watched it raise its talon-laced paws and set them back down closer to her, but felt it move closer. There was a tremble in the air and small waves of that fathomless ebony fluid lapped over her bare feet in frothy ripples.

Her gaze left the dragon for a moment to look down at her feet; she couldn't remember how they had lost their shoes and socks, nor could she remember changing into wispy glinting silver robes and abandoning her jeans and concert T-shirt. A strong wind whipped around her soundlessly, twisting her long pale hair into elf knots as she studied the hem of her new silvery sleeves. She glanced back to watch the dragon and was surprised to find it back in the air, not as a cloud, but floating toward her just the same, buffeting the sky with it's ebony wings. So that's where the wind had come from....

The dragon landed silently not ten feet from her, gazing at her as curiously as she gazed at it. It had the coloration of a Hungarian Horntail with the body of a Hebridean Black, appearing to be about thirty feet long. Slowly, it snaked its long neck toward her until its eyes were level with her own. They were slanted and as silver as her robes and strangely human, glittering at her mischievously, framed by thick black lashes. Did dragons have eyelashes?

This one did.

Normally, Felicity would have been terrified, being face to face with an enormous dragon, but this one didn't seem to mean her any harm. It snorted suddenly, as though laughing, and blew a wisp of violet smoke in her face that smelled faintly like rainwater...

What an oxymoron... smoke that smelled like rainwater.

Tentatively, she reached out a hand and touched a smooth metallic scale and the beast jerked its head away out of her reach, slicing her hand open across the palm with its sudden movement. She pulled the hand back slowly and held it up to her face; the sharp edge of the scale had sliced directly along her lifeline, and was now spurting her silvery red blood.

A foreign hand reached out and grasped her wrist pulling it down away from her face. Felicity looked up and saw the dragon had gone and there was now a pale, young man wearing raven colored robes that bled into the water beneath them standing in front of her, holding her draining hand in his, studying it intently. For some reason he startled her far more than the dragon had and she pulled her hand away, though the only startling things about him were the startlingly blond color of his hair that fell gracefully across his face and the intense silver color of his eyes, haloed by a fringe of jet-black lashes. His pale face was angular, with prominent cheekbones and the bones of his slender hands that had been holding hers were clearly defined. He let them drop to his side.

He smiled... an easy smile, as though she was no concern of his... just an amusement. She didn't know if he was smiling at her wound or just smiling to be pleasant. Then quite abruptly he turned to face the north and instinctively Felicity did the same, shocked at what she saw.

The purple sky had turned a sickly green shade and the scarlet clouds inky. The sable ocean beneath them rose up in high foamy tidal waves in the distance. She glanced back at the boy, who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen. She had to look up to see that his eyes were wide with fear as he looked down and they met her own. He grabbed her wrists frantically and pulled her closer, her bare feet sliding through the filmy dark water.

He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. He didn't seemed bothered by this (perhaps he could hear himself and she alone was deaf to this world) and kept repeating the same sentence over and over... the same words...

"Don't" - something. "Don't... give..."

Felicity shook her head, he was moving his lips too fast to distinguish the words anymore. It looked like he was saying "itoem" but that wasn't a word at all. She glanced away from him toward the north and saw that the tidal wave had grown if that was possible and was a mere fifty feet from them.

"I can't understand you," she tried to say, but the words wouldn't sound and anyway he wasn't paying attention.

He was watching the tidal wave and still repeating, "Don't give itoem. Don't give itoem."

The breaker was still silently moving toward them. Felicity tried vainly to pull away from the boy and run, but it wouldn't work, his hands were laced with hers so tightly she couldn't tell which fingers belonged to whom, her blood seeping all over them both and dripping down onto the white lather that was now covering Felicity's feet and anchoring her to that spot.

She glanced frantically back up to the boy for help and found he was still mouthing that sentence, "Don't give itoem," a panicked look still plastered on his classically good-looking features.

The foam was bubbling its way up her body, soaking her to the skin through the filmy robes. It was almost to her chin now and she shared a last panicked look with the boy before the foam suffocated her and the wave of darkness crashed over them both.

* * *

Felicity shuddered violently and her eyes snapped shut and just as quickly were open again. The trance was over, but she was still soaking wet and her hand was still bleeding. She was back at number twelve Grimmauld Place, clinging to the railing of the second floor landing for dear life, hot pain searing through her temple like a firecracker had been let off behind her eyes. Her whole body shook with aching pain spasms and cold that only she could feel. Darkness formed blearily in the corner of her vision, slowly creeping forward to block out the rest of the world.

Why, I think I might faint, she thought grimly.

And she did, falling to the floor without a sound.

* * *

Felicity opened her eyes and through the sheets of pain that were still pelting her like a fierce summer rain saw that there was a large crack in the ceiling of the second floor landing.

I'll have to tell Sirius to fix that, she though dimly.

Another wave of pain washed over her as that tidal wave in her trance had. She felt her clothes sticking to her, which meant she hadn't been out very long if they were still wet. Her hand throbbed. She held it up to her face and was shocked to find it bleeding. She brushed aside the blood with her opposite thumb, but couldn't find a wound. Incorporeal bleeding...

She let her hand drop back to her side as the black fuzzies began to crowd out her surrounding and she welcomed them as a break from the pain remnant of the trance.

* * *

"Felicity? Felicity!"

Blearily, Felicity opened her eyes to find the whole of the Grimmauld household grouped around her, their faces blurry as though seen through a pair of glasses you didn't need. They floated around, bodiless, heads and necks suspended in midair, sometimes meshing with each other. At one point Ron and Hermione's faces combined. Felicity tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgle.

"Felicity? Felicity-hey! Snap out of it, look at me," someone that sounded like Sirius said, but she couldn't distinguish his face from Harry's. They were weaving together as Ron and Hermione's had, thought it didn't look quite as funny.

Someone touched her face, holding her by the chin. Their hands were warm, forcing her face in their direction.

"Hello," she said quietly, as the faces swam together a mix of pallor, fiery red, bushy brown, and jet black. "Who is that?"

"Oh no, she doesn't know us!" she heard Mrs. Weasley say despairingly. Felicity felt someone clutch her hand bringing a sick swell of soreness. It was the hand that she had cut on the dragon's scale, the one that had bled incorporeal blood. "She's hit her head and doesn't know us anymore!"

Felicity giggled, highly disoriented from the dull pain of the trance. "Oh, I know you, Mrs. Weasley, or I would, only if you would quit spinning around," she said, in almost a drunken demeanor. "All of you stop that this instant."

She thought she heard a black-headed blur laugh softly, whether it was Harry or Sirius she did not know. But it was Sirius who said, "Felicity, look we're going to sit you up."

"Should we move her when she's like this?" Hermione asked quietly, her face wafting into focus. She looked frightened.

"I'm fine," Felicity insisted and to prove her point, she placed both palms on the floor and pushed herself up to her feet, crab-like, because her knees wouldn't straighten out to support her.

"Woah," Felicity heard Sirius say and she a strong arm slide under her knees and another wrap around her shoulders before she was picked up from the ground in a whirl of color and sound.

"Sirius. There you are," Felicity said, everyone else disappearing from view as she was raised above them and Sirius began to walk up the set of stairs that led to the third floor. She could hear more footsteps which meant the others where following him to her room. "I kept hearing your voice but I could never see you."

Sirius smiled down at her. "Well I'm here now and we're going to put you to bed," he said kindly, smiling down at her with an amused expression on his face. "What happened?"

Felicity thought for a moment for she spoke, closing her eyes and deciding what to tell him. She didn't mind telling Sirius the truth about her little episode, but didn't especially want the others to know. Not because she didn't trust them with one of her many secrets, because she did trust them, but because it had been an oddity to the people of her old school. Yes, most of them could predicted the future as well, but it was through tea leaves, palmistry, libranomancy, or even a simple a crystal ball, but none of them had painful, uncontrollable trances like she did. They could induce their own trances and see what they wanted to see.

She remembered when she foresaw her mother and father's deaths, just a week before her birthday before they'd been murdered. It was one of the earliest and scariest she could remember. She'd been eight.

They had laid there on that patch of fog in her trance, looking so peaceful and content and happy without her. Sleeping soundly, it seemed. Not like she slept, with constant nightmares about things she didn't yet understand, hooded figures, giant snakes, and everything stained green. They didn't miss her at all, it seemed, and would soon forget about her while she was away at school. She hated them and missed them at the same time. They shouldn't be allowed to be happy without her.

That's all the trance had been: them lying there. She had walked up to them and touched her mother's face, her skin deathly cold, and then noticed her soft blue eyes were glassy. But Felicity had never seen death before so as it was with many of her dreams she didn't understand why her mother looked this way.

She glanced at her father, his arm intertwined with her mother's. His gray eyes were glazed as well but still held vestiges of great urgency and turmoil. Felicity brushed away a strand of her mother's hair that was clinging to her father's light beard, feeling his face in the process. It was just as cold as her mother's and just as bloodless and pale.

Neither of them looked at her, but stared straight up.

At the time, Felicity didn't know what she was seeing, but she remember how it had scared her, how she had come out of the trance, hurting and screaming and clinging to Tyler. The whole cafeteria full of students silent around her, filled only with the sounds of her screams for her mother and father and how badly everything hurt.

Professor Annabelle Warren had rushed from her seat at the staff table, picked her up, and hurried Felicity, now sobbing for Tyler, to the infirmary, where she had stayed for the next three nights, Tyler, Anne, and Professor Warren her only visitors until her parents came.

"Where is my baby?" She had heard her mother long before she'd seen her and had sat up in bed, her drooping eyes now wide with excitement. Felicity had been fighting sleep, because she knew what awaited her when her eyes closed and her consciousness wandered, but now her mother was here to make it all better and her father was here to protect her.

"Mamma?" Felicity called out softly to the dark empty hospital room. Her mother would have heard her if she had been on the fourth floor and not just outside the door. They were connected by blood and by race and connected as only mothers and daughters are.

"Fee, sweetheart!" Mamma shouted, as the doors to the sickroom were thrown open and the room was bathed with yellow light from the hallway. Felicity could make out three silhouettes from her bed

"Liz, dear, don't shout, think of the other sleeping students," Dad said hushing her.

"The other sleeping students aren't my baby, Adam," she retorted, moving up through the aisle. "Don't you dare hush me."

Felicity turned on the lamp that sat on her bedside table. "Mamma," she said again. "Daddy?"

"There's my darling," she heard her mother say a moment before she swooped down on her and planted a trillion kisses all over Felicity's face.

"Hello my little Faye," she heard her father say.

Felicity wrapped her arms around her mother and breathed in the scent of wildflowers and lavender that always lingered in her mother's hair. She felt her father's strong arms circle her as well. Home. Her mother and father were here and now she was home with them. Everything would be just fine.

Later that night when her father was dozing in his chair and Felicity was half asleep herself, Elizabeth reached across the blankets and clasped Felicity's hand.

Felicity turned toward her mother, she had her head laid down on the bed and was now holding Felicity's hand in both of hers. "Mamma?" Felicity asked.

"I am so sorry, sweat pea," Elizabeth said, looking up. Her face was tear stained.

"Mamma, don't be sad," said Felicity quietly.

"I'm sorry sweetie, I'm just so sorry that you're having to go through this," she said, wiping her eyes and attempting a smile. "I had so hoped you wouldn't possess the Sight."

"'The Sight,' Mamma?"

"Did you see the fog, love, and the black water?" Elizabeth asked softly.

Felicity thought for a moment, remembering her trance. "Yes, Mom, I saw it."

"And did it hurt, did you feel sick?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have the Sight, my love," Elizabeth said sadly, fresh tears trickled down her face. "It is both a blessing and a curse."

"I don't understand, Mamma-"

"-But I will help you get through it," Elizabeth continued as though she hadn't heard her daughter and maybe she hadn't. "My mother was never there to help me through the pain of it all, but I will be there for you, Lissie, I will always be there for you." Elizabeth kissed her on the forehead. "You know that, don't you, sweetheart?"

"Yes, Mamma," agreed Felicity, wrapping her arms around Mamma. For her mother would always be there with her, forever. It was the way of things. Mamma would never leave her. She would make the pain go away.

"Can I come home with you?" Felicity asked after their hug, for sure she would be allowed. "Everyone saw-"

"No, love, I'm sorry," Mamma said, pulling away from her. "You belong here, where you can learn to control your gifts."

"I want to go home with you, Mamma," Felicity said, beginning to cry upset tears. "You can teach me-"

"No." Elizabeth's voice was firm and her blue eyes blazed.

Felicity began to really cry now. Soft, silent, hurt tears. Elizabeth climbed into Felicity bed gracefully, and gathered her up in her arms.

"I will visit you often and Professor Warren has promised to take good care of you," she said consolingly, rubbing Felicity's back. "Everything will be just fine, my little Faye."

"Fine go back home, I know you don't miss me." Felicity was not easily consoled.

"I miss you more every day," Elizabeth choked out and Felicity could tell that she was close to crying. "I hate that I am missing so much of your life, missing you grow up, but this school, refining your gifts is so important, more important than either of us can imagine. You belong here."

"I belong with you and Daddy!"

"Hush, now," Mamma urged her, now rocking her gently. "You go to sleep, Mamma will watch over you and keep the nightmares from coming."

"I didn't tell you I had nightmares," Felicity said, looking up into her mother's beautiful tearstained face.

"You didn't have to, my love. You didn't have to."

* * *

Silent tears streamed down Felicity's face and she was glad that no one could see them. "I fell," she whispered to Sirius. "I just fell."

They were in front of her door now, someone hurried forward to open it and Felicity pretended to be asleep in Sirius's arms. She heard Merlin hoot and the bedclothes being turned back from her bed. Sirius laid her down in the bed and she slid underneath the covers, breathing in the sent of lavender that reminded her so strongly of her mother. Safe at last.

"Did she pass out again?" Ron asked.

"No, " Sirius said quietly. "I think she's only sleeping."

Felicity sent Sirius a little mental "thank you" as she felt hands tuck in the blankets around her as only a mother could.

Must be Mrs. Weasley, Felicity thought, as she began to seriously nod off from the exhaustion of it all.

"Do you think she'll be alright?" she heard Ginny ask quietly and after that the voices began to cloud together so she couldn't distinguish who was saying what.

"Look, she's bleeding from her forehead."

"Must have been a nasty fall..."

"She'll be fine..."

"She just needs rest..."

"Let's go downstairs..."

"Someone stay and sit with her..."

"I'll do it..." was the last Felicity heard before she lapsed into dreams.

She was standing in a dim room, with flagstone walls and floor and flicking wall brackets in each corner that didn't seem to light hardly anything at all. There was no ceiling and luminescent hummingbirds the size of sheep flitted across the midnight blue sky, like giant lightning bugs. A large wooden door stood against the far wall, bolted shut.

And there he was. Standing there looking as handsome as he had in her trance, only now he was wearing emerald green robes embroidered with silver. Silver, that almost matched his eyes.

"Hello," he said complaisantly, he had a drawling sort of voice that Felicity had a feeling he could make sound very annoying if the need ever arose. But it wasn't annoying now. Now, it was charming and pleasant. It made Felicity's skin prickled when he spoke, but she was still relieved that she could finally hear him.

"Hi," she answered uncertainly; he was now walking around her in circles, scrutinizing every detail of her appearance. Instinctively, she glanced down at herself. She was wearing the soaking wet garb from her trance and her hand was still bleeding. A glistening red bead dropped from her hand and splattered against the flagstone floor, a splash of cerise on sable. "Who are you?" she asked as he stopped orbiting her and stood directly ahead once more.

He smiled. "No," he replied easily, "you'll have to find that one out on your own."

"What were you saying to me in my trance?" Felicity demanded, stepping closer to him. He didn't move or even look the least bit intimidated.

"Why, whatever do you mean?" he asked in a voice that clearly told Felicity he was playing with her.

She reached out to slap him and he caught her wrist in his hand with lightning fast reflexes. He clenched his fist and her palm opened. Blood dribbled onto his pale skin.

They simply stared at each other for a long moment; Felicity glancing from her wrist in his hand to his gray eyes studying her open palm. A gust of wind rustled through his white-blond hair and whipped a strand of her own across her face. Then Felicity jerked her hand away and he yielded as though it was no concern of his what she was doing. His whole demeanor was of haughty disregard mixed with amused interest; one constantly shifting to the next.

"I'm leaving," Felicity hissed. "I'm leaving right now."

"Where are you going to go?" he asked in a bored voice. "This is a dream."

Felicity was already walking away, around him, toward the bolted, wooden door. "Somewhere!" she called loudly, reaching the door, she threw back the bolt and yanked it open.

On the other side stood the boy.

"Hello," he said with a smile.

Felicity slammed the door in his face and bolted it. Slowly, she turned around. He was still standing there in the center of the room, right where she'd left him, except he'd turned to face her.

"What do you want from me?" she asked desperately.

"A great number of things really," he answered suavely, "but that isn't The Point."

"And what is The Point, exactly," Felicity demanded.

"The Point is what do you want from me," he explained, examining his nail beds, looking bored again, but handsomely so.

"I want to know who you are!" Felicity shrieked. She was getting near hysterics.

"Ah... wrong point," the boy answered, not glancing up from his nails. He breathed on them and brushed them against his velveteen robes. "Come now, you're a clever girl, you'll figure that out later. What do you really want from me, think."

Felicity thought. She really wanted to know how he came to be in her trance. She really wanted to know his significance. But more than that she really wanted to be rid of the attractive nuisance, the charming pest.

So she twirled on her heel, unbolted the door, and opened it. He wasn't standing there, waiting as he had been previously. Felicity glanced over her shoulder at the room behind her. He was absent from there as well.

So she strode forward through the door, leaving the cobblestone room behind her and entering a grassy field full of swaying wheat tangled with purple and yellow wildflowers.

She trudged through it, her silken robes drying almost instantaneously in the soft breeze. Her hand, however, continued to drip blood and she held it above the greenery, watching it stain a beige grain of wheat maroon.

She glanced all around her and could see nothing but an open night sky, and miles and miles of prairie-like scenery.

"Figured it out yet?" a voice said casually in Felicity's ear.

She whipped around; there he was and Felicity was starting to get slightly panicked. Where did he keep coming from?

"Why won't you just tell me what I'm supposed to want from you?" she asked him, grasping him by the front of the robes. They were still the velvety emerald embroidered with silver and looked horribly out of place amidst this domestic setting. He belonged better in the castle-like room, even if it had no ceiling. But then again she probably did too.

"That would be taking the easy way out, wouldn't it?" he asked her rhetorically, glancing down at her hands on his robes, but not looking displeased.

"And what's wrong with the easy way?" asked Felicity impatiently.

"It's not quite as fun-"

"Fun!" Felicity interrupted with a shriek.

"-and you wouldn't learn anything," he finished loudly, over her furious exclamations about "fun." "What would you get out of it if I told you what you needed to know an-"

"I get what I needed to know out of it!" Felicity said heatedly, she shook him, holding on to the front of his robes still. "And that would be that. Just tell me what I'm supposed to ask you, won't you?"

"You asked me it before, in the anti-chamber," he said offhandedly. His voice was nonchalant, but his eyes were boring into hers as though willing her to see what he was seeing, know what he knew. "After you inquired about my identity you asked something else."

Felicity thought for a moment before it hit her.

"Oh-what were you trying to tell me?" Felicity said rather excitedly. "What were you trying to tell me in my trance? I asked you that before and you pretended like you didn't know what I was talking about!"

"You weren't persistent enough," he said, his voice and eyes were bored again.

Felicity bit back the retort that she was longing to throw at him and took a deep breath. "Well... aren't you going to tell me?" asked Felicity impatiently.

"Tell you what?" he asked dully.

Felicity shook him again and that only served to bring a grin to his face, a brilliant lazy grin, that barely lit up his eyes, made them glimmer slightly. "Tell me what you were trying to tell me in my trance!" she said furiously. "Hello? Where have you been the last half of our conversation?"

His grin broadened and she could tell he loved frustrating her. "Well what do you think I was saying," the boy asked. "What did it look like I was saying?"

"Well it looked like you were saying, 'Don't give itoem'," Felicity said feeling stupid, but trying to stay calm.

"'Itoem'?" he echoed. "What is 'itoem' supposed to mean?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Felicity said, her temper getting the better of her again. "You're the one that said it-"

"Calm down, cool it," he interrupted, putting a hand over her mouth, surprising her so much she let go of his robes. "I wasn't trying to irritate-"

Felicity raised her eyebrows.

"Okay maybe I was a little bit," he admitted without shame, "but I was also trying to get you to figure out what 'itoem ' might mean."

Felicity said nothing. What could she say? His hand was covering her mouth quite forcefully and anything she might possibly say would be muffled and incomprehensible. She might even possibly get spit on him. He looked down at her as though he expected her to say something. "What?" he asked.

She simply pointed to the slender hand obscuring her mouth.

"Oh, right," he said, as though he had meant to do this all along. "Now, what might 'itoem' mean? What does it sound like?"

Felicity closed her eyes and repeated the "word" to herself. Three syllables, "i-to-em" ... "it-o-em" ... "it-to-em"...

"It to 'em!" she shouted excitedly, exalted that she had figured it out. "It to them! Don't give it to them!"

She opened her eyes to find that the boy and the field around them were dissolving. He held her hand in his and kissed it. "It's been a pleasure," he said.

"Wait," she said, grasping his fast-fading hand. "What does that mean? Don't give what to who? What does that mean? Who are you?"

But he had already disappeared with a Cheshire Cat smile and silver dragon eyes.

"Don't give what to them!" she shouted at the empty field of swaying wheat and the dazzling night sky.

"Felicity!" someone shouted back. "Felicity wake up! Wake up!"

"Don't give it to them," Felicity repeated to herself, glancing around the field.

Someone was shaking her, still shouting her name. "Felicity! Felicity Parish! Wake up! Wake up!"

Felicity's eyes blinked open and she was staring into the face of Hermione Granger, whose brown eyes were etched with worry.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked, grasping both of Felicity's hands and pulling her up into a sitting position.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Felicity said groggily, rubbing her eyes.

"Really?" she asked looking skeptical.

"Yeah, why?" asked Felicity glancing at her hand on the pretext of brushing her hair out of her face. It had crusted blood on it. She hastily brushed it against her jeans.

"You were screaming, 'Don't give it to them, don't give it to them'," said Hermione, she tentatively reached a hand forward and felt Felicity's forehead.

Felicity laughed weakly. "I just had a very strange dream, that's all," she said, feeling as thought that was the understatement of the decade. "I'm okay now, really."

Hermione apparently thought so too, for she gave Felicity a look that quite plainly asked, "Do I look that stupid?" but she really said, "Oh, okay then." She got to her feet. "I'd better go get Sirius and tell him you're awake and feeling better."

Felicity watched Hermione walk slowly to the door, studying-not her appearance-but what she had gathered about Hermione's personality from the time few days she'd spent with her. Felicity already knew Hermione had a lot of the qualities she admired most in a friend: honesty, dependability, loyalty. And Felicity had a feeling that whatever she told Hermione wouldn't be repeated if she asked her not to tell, even to Harry and Ron.

"Wait, Hermione," she said resolutely. Hermione turned around and came and sat back on her bed, looking maternally curious. "I'm not okay. It wasn't just a dream. I didn't just fall."

"But you told Sirius-?" Hermione began.

"I lied because you all were there and I didn't want you to know what really happened," Felicity said, looking down at her hands in her lap, hopping Hermione would understand.

A hand slightly smaller than her own eased over and grasped Felicity's. Felicity looked up. "It's okay," Hermione said with a small smile. "What happened?"

"I had a-a trance--a sort of-"

"I know what a trance is," said Hermione, looking unbelieving.

"And I know you don't strike me as the type to believe in that sort of thing, Hermione," Felicity continued hurriedly, "but believe me I'm telling the truth. I got to feeling sick like I always do before and then I got dizzy and I went into the trance and afterwards it hurt so much that I passed out."

"Felicity-"

"Please, Hermione, I'm telling you the truth. I-"

"I believe you," Hermione cut her off. "I believe you."

She turned Felicity's palm over in her palm. It was the hand that had been cut across the dragon's scale. A fresh trickle of scarlet blood was oozing across her hand, mingling with the brownish crumbly dry blood crusted on her hand. Hermione slid her finger across Felicity's palm, as if to find the wound. She was unsuccessful because there still was no wound to speak of. The blood had just appeared.

"Incorporeal bleeding," Hermione said softly, looking at the glistening red stain on her index finger. "I believe you."

Felicity heaved a sigh of relief. "You do?"

"Of course, now I do," she said. "This and the look on your face, was proof enough. But how did it happen? What was in your trance."

"I cut in on a dragon's scale," Felicity said quietly and proceeded to explain to Hermione the details of her trance and her dream, saving the description of the boy for last.

"...He was tall, with whitish-blond hair, and grayish eyes," Felicity said, remembering those penetrating eyes. How they had some how managed to look piercing and jaded at the same time, "the most amazing gray eyes. An angular face, and he was wearing emerald green velvet robes. Really quite attractive actually."

"What did you say his name was?" Hermione asked, looking extremely startled for some reason.

"He wouldn't tell me," said Felicity guardedly. "I asked him and he said something like, I would have to figure that out on my own. Why? What's the matter?"

"You say he rode a dragon?" said Hermione, looking off in another world now and ignoring Felicity's inquisitions. Felicity suspected she was trying to remember something.

"No-he was a dragon," Felicity corrected. "The dragon changed into the guy."

"Even more fitting, because Draco is Latin for dragon," Hermione muttered. She glanced back up at Felicity, who going for a politely incredulous look. "In your dream, did he have a sort of... drawling voice?"

Felicity's jaw seemed to come unhinged for a moment. "Why, yes, how did you-"

"Draco Malfoy-I'll bet you anything," said Hermione triumphantly, sliding off the bed and beginning to pace. Felicity watched her from her seat on the bed. "I'm sure it was him. But why was he in your trance? And then again in your dream?"

"Hermione-"

"He said, 'Don't give it to them,' did he?" Hermione was still muttering to herself and ignoring Felicity's questions, which somewhat irked her. It had been her trance after all and if Hermione knew something about it Felicity had a right to know too. "I wonder what he could have been talking about.... Don't give what to whom exactly?"

"Hermione, hello-"

"But he wasn't hurting you or insulting you? It sounded to me like he was hitting on you, but I could be wrong. Do you always have a follow up dream to your trance-"

"HERMIONE!" Felicity hissed loudly.

The curly-haired brunette glanced up abruptly. "What?"

"How do you know this... Draco Malfoy?" asked Felicity slowly. "I mean what is he like."

"He is a disease that I have been plagued by for the past four years," replied Hermione simply, coming back to Felicity's bed and sitting on the baseboard.

Felicity stared. "He seemed so charming..."

"No, Felicity, he is anything but charming," said Hermione firmly. "He is the most self-righteous, pompous, stuck up, foul excuse for a human being I have ever had the misfortune to meet."

Felicity physically winced at Hermione's blatant display of hatred. So far Felicity had assumed Hermione was a soft-spoken non-confrontational girl, who only got heated and riled up when arguing with Ron about elf rights. Apparently Felicity had been wrong and she made a mental note never to underestimate Hermione's zeal for anything she was passionate about.

"Explain," Felicity said simply, wishing to know more about this human Hermione seemed to hate so much.

Hermione took a deep breath and shook her head as though recalling something unpleasant. "It's a great number of things really," she said avidly. "Like, for instance, he never misses an opportunity to make fun of Ron and his family because they, you know, don't have a lot of money and his family does. They are loaded, let me tell you. He is the most arrogant... ugh! He tortures Ron and Ginny about how most of their clothes and school things are hand-me-downs. And I can tell it hurts Ron's pride so much, just torments him that he can't beat Malfoy's face in, just to protect his family name...." Hermione trailed off, looking thoughtful and Felicity realized now might be one of the closest times Hermione could come to realizing how she cared for Ron.

"Ron seems like a very good guy, Hermione," she said, thinking it best to reinforce that in Hermione's mind, hoping she would realize she care for him as more than a friend. "He seems really loyal that way... to things he loves, you know..."

"Yes... yes, he is, isn't he?" said Hermione, more to herself than to Felicity. "But also terribly stubborn and lazy and an all around git sometimes, but what can I say, he's my-our git." She smiled and blushed, suddenly glowing and Felicity hoped more than ever that someday Hermione would smile and blush this prettily for Ron.

"Yes, he is," Felicity agreed, suddenly eager to return to the topic of Draco Malfoy. "But what of the Malfoy boy-"

"Oh-right," Hermione said, her eyes no longer soft, but angry once more. "Aside from provoking Ron-he'll pick on Harry-"

"Harry?" Felicity echoed disbelievingly. Wasn't Harry the boy who saved the wizarding world? How could anyone pick on him without receiving a severe pummeling? "What's he got to make fun of about Harry?"

"-about his parents," finished Hermione softly, suddenly looking very sorrowful for her best friend's misfortune. "He says the worst things to Harry about his dead parents. Just terrible things."

Felicity's eyes stung with angry and righteous tears. Having lost her own parents, Felicity could only imagine what it must feel like to have someone remind you of that-taunt you about being an orphan. She wiped the tears away forcefully and looked back up at Hermione, realizing she had just let Hermione see her cry and that it hadn't been bad, the world hadn't come to an end.

"And Harry?" Felicity asked, knowing how she would react to teasing of that nature (a fiery burst to the face, most likely) and wanting to know how he would handle it.

"Most of the time he doesn't let it get to him," said Hermione with a tiny touch of pride in her voice, like a mother proud to say she had raised her boys well. "Blows it off and helps me hold Ron back, but occasionally it gets to be too much for him, which is appropriate and not unjust."

"And you, Hermione, what does he say you?" inquired Felicity, watching Hermione's reaction closely.

Her face which had softened slightly as she had talked of Harry and Ron, hardened and her chin rose ever so slightly, defiant and unafraid.

"He calls me Mudblood," she said simply.

"I didn't know you were a Muggleborn," Felicity said with no small amount of disbelief. Hermione was possibly one of the smartest young witches she had ever met her in her life, almost as intelligent as Tyler had been and his blood was the thickest and richest of purity. His family made sure of that.

"Does it matter," Hermione asked defensively.

"No!" Felicity answered hurriedly. "No, no! My best friend, Anne, is a Muggleborn. It just surprised me, that was all. I just figured your parents were very busy members of the Order."

Hermione actually laughed. "My mum and dad, members of the Order," she said with a sigh. "Now there's a good one.... No they are dentists and blissfully unaware of anything that has been going on in my life for the past couple of years. It's safer for them that way and gives me more freedom. Although I do hate keeping such an important and life-altering secret from them."

"Must be tough," said Felicity, she didn't quite know what to say as she'd never had anyone to keep such a significant secret from.

"I manage okay, though," said Hermione as though she didn't want anyone feeling sorry for her. "Draco Malfoy just... urgh... I dunno..."

"Gets under your skin?" said Felicity helpfully.

"Yes!" said Hermione nodding. "Gets under your skin."

"I understand," she said, remembering how he had frustrated her so easily. "Why does he do it though?"

"Simple, we're Gryffindors, he's a Slytherin," said Hermione as though it were there most obvious thing in the world. "We are with the Order, his parents are with the Death Eaters. We support Dumbledore and Harry, they support You-Know-Who."

"Who-you mean-Voldemort?" Felicity asked before she could catch herself.

Hermione winced. "Yes."

"Oh..."

They were both silent for a moment, Hermione staring at her hands in her lap and Felicity looking around the room.

Hermione broke the silence first. "Can I ask you something, Felicity?"

"They died as a test for a new recruit of an American tribe of Death Eaters," Felicity said quietly.

Hermione's eyes widened. "How did you-"

"I'm the most intuitive person you'll ever meet, Hermione," she explained. "I could feel that you were going to ask me that before you even opened your mouth."

"I'm sorry," said Hermione. "If you don't want-"

"No, it's okay," Felicity said with a small smile. "It's natural to be curious. What do you want to know?"

Hermione was silent for a moment. "If you were nine then You-Know-Who was already gone when your parents died, so why..."

"One or two of your British Death Eaters fled to America when Voldemort disappeared and your Ministry was rounding them up," Felicity clarified. "They came to America to escape and once things had died down, started an underground Death Eaters society a few years later. They called them selves something else though, the Arcane Anarchy. They were possibly the most elusive clan of Dark witches and wizards in the United States. Everyone knew about them because they kept picking off prominent members of an Anti-Dark Forces team that my father was part of, but no one could catch any of them. And if by sheer luck you did corner them, they'd kill themselves before you got a chance to interrogate them. They were Hell bent on gaining power and then resurrecting their Lord."

"And they came after your father," said Hermione softly.

Felicity nodded. "And my mother. They were both terribly powerful. My father was a Dark Artifacts Raider and my mother owned apothecary, she was the most brilliant potions maker."

"How did you find out that they..."

"On my ninth birthday-"

"Oh my God, Felicity, on your birthday?" asked Hermione.

Felicity laughed bitterly. "Halloween, my birthday, what a present, huh? What a trick, what a treat? Anyway, they told me that night after the big Halloween banquet that our school always had and I ran away. I flew home before they could stop me. They couldn't have stopped me anyway. I can make terrible things happen when I'm upset or angry, because I'm part veela. That's what Kreacher was talking about I imagine."

"How much veela are you?" asked Hermione.

"A fourth, but that's enough," said Felicity. "So anyway, I flew home and there they were."

"Oh Felicity I'm sorry," Hermione said softly, grasping her hand tightly.

Felicity fought back the tears, clenching her eyes shut, and squeezed Hermione's hand tighter. She took a deep breath and wiped away the trickles of tears that had managed to ooze out.

"It's okay, really, Hermione," Felicity reassured her, choking out a small chuckle. "Anything else?"

"How-how did you find out how they died?" she asked quietly.

"Oh here's a fun story," Felicity said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

"We don't have to talk about it-" Hermione began immediately.

"No, no, you should know because it's hard to be good friends when you keep secrets from each other," explained Felicity, earning a bright smile from Hermione and a small squeeze to the hand.

"So anyway I drove myself mad not knowing what had happened to them," Felicity continued. "Not knowing all the details, until finally, after their funeral, after I'd locked myself in their room and had a good cry, I decided to have myself a trance and find out.

"I set myself down and did like I'd seen all the other students do when they consciously entered a trance. I calmly tried to probe the essences of the house, for that little fraction of time that had been when my parents died. I found it and I got sucked into it. I saw what happened to them and I couldn't get back out. I was stuck there with their dead bodies for what seemed like forever. I woke up in a hospital bed. The Healers said I had nearly killed myself and they were surprised I hadn't gone insane."

Felicity smiled ruefully at the horrified look on Hermione's face. "Is that why you keep your abilities a secret?" she whispered.

"Among other reasons," Felicity replied quietly, wondering how much to tell Hermione, how much she could handle without thinking Felicity a crazy person. "Mainly... I'm just scared. I'm scared of not being able to control this, of going off the edge one of these days, of what everyone will think. It's a little like that Muggle disease... um... epilepsy... I just leave this world and there's nothing I can do about it. It's scary."

"I can imagine," Hermione whispered looking just as frightened as Felicity felt sometimes.

"Just don't tell Harry and Ron about this, yet, Hermione," asked Felicity urgently. "Let me tell them when I'm ready-"

"Of course," said Hermione and she pulled Felicity into a tight hug. It felt so comforting and relieving to have found someone she could tell all this too. Like, Hermione had pulled her from beneath Niagara Falls, a pounding pressure had been lifted.

"I see someone's awake," came a familiar voice from the doorway.

Felicity and Hermione pulled apart and Felicity saw Sirius's shaggy-haired head poked into her room through the cracked door. He was smiling.

"She just woke up," Hermione said happily.

"Well come down and have some dinner then, won't you?" Sirius said waving a hand toward himself, motioning them to come. He then turned and began to walk away. "Molly's been having kittens about your fall, insisting that you get something to eat. I told her... " she could hear his voice fading as he grew farther away.

Felicity shared a slightly embarrassed yet giggly glance with Hermione before they scrambled off her bed and followed him.