"Oh, don't tell me you have to report your every bizarre dream to Severus," Draco lightly scathed. "Anyway, if that one already came true there's not much left to be said."
"I just need to talk to him, is all," Harry insisted, pausing at the door. "Good night."
Draco stared at him for a moment, before murmuring, "Well, all right. Good night."
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"Harry?" Snape asked, drawing him into the room and over to his bed.
The boy swallowed. "Um, sorry to wake you. It's not an emergency or anything, but I did promise to come right away if I had any... er, brilliant ideas about my dreams."
Nodding slowly, Snape waited as the boy explained the dream he'd just had.
"And so?" he finally asked.
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" Harry rubbed his arms with his hands as he sat there, then gratefully took the throw his father draped about his shoulders.
"At least this time you've realized what socks are for," the Potions Master lightly gibed. "And Harry, I can certainly see the pattern for myself, but I'm interested to know your own conclusions before I state mine."
"Yeah." Harry could see the sense in that. "Well, I think the series has ended, that's all. The series of seer dreams," he clarified. "They were going in order at first, forwards in time. And then you woke me up in the middle of one and it somehow warped whatever magic had been sending me dreams, because these latest ones... uh, unadoption, the Owlery, this, I think they're in... er, backwards order."
"And your further conclusions?"
Harry bit his lip and drew the blanket a bit closer around himself as he sat facing his father. "Well, one, that the seer dreams have come to a close, I think. And two, and this is why I came in really, Dad..." Harry drew in a breath. "The last one dreamed has already come true. So if they're going in reverse, that means the Owlery is going to happen next."
Snape laid a hand on his knee as he sat there shivering. "The wards I prepared will let nothing so large as a human pass through the vast windows of the Owlery, Harry. Nor will Draco leave my rooms. You've seen him these past months. He chafes at every turn at the confinement, but has he even once broached my rules by leaving it?"
Since Harry couldn't in good conscience count the time Draco had merely stepped into the hallway in an effort to prove the wards trusted him, he shook his head.
"It will be all right, Harry," Snape assured the boy. "This last one was a true seer dream, past and future both without flaw. Can we say that about Lucius Malfoy wandering France yet speaking English, warning Muggleborns that Voldemort may soon attack?"
"That one's nothing but one big flaw from start to finish," Harry acknowledged.
"Perhaps the sequence of seer dreams is overtly closing because your magic has finally realized that your last few have been... hopelessly muddled."
"Yeah," Harry admitted, rubbing his head again. "That makes sense. I mean, maybe you waking me up that time muddled them, even. I mean... there hasn't been one since that made good sense, until tonight." Harry gave his father a wry look. "I know you aren't going to unadopt me, though I think it took a while for that to really sink in." He sighed. "Can I have a headache potion after all?"
Snape studied him rather intently in the dim light he'd spelled on after answering the door. "Certainly. In the bathroom, first shelf on the left. After what the elf did to you, I think the one in the thin blue bottle will best serve."
Harry paused on his way there. "Why not just label them?"
"I can't have either of you two miscreants knowing which one is my shampoo, can I now?"
Harry laughed, suddenly feeling much better.
About everything.
It was a feeling that wasn't destined to last.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:
Chapter Sixty-Six: Wizardspace
Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight
Chapter 66: Wizardspace
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=66
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Sixty-Six: Wizardspace
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"Honestly, Potter!" Draco exclaimed. "How many times are you going to pack and unpack that battered old trunk of yours?"
"Until I can get all my stuff crammed in," Harry complained, shoving harder at his folded jumpers so he'd have room for the rest of his clothes.
"One might almost think you'd been raised Muggle," Draco drawled.
Harry tried to give him a nasty look, but found himself laughing softly instead. Apparently, that was all the prompting Draco needed. "Oh, very well," the Slytherin boy sighed in that theatrical way of his. "Much as I've enjoyed seeing you make a fool of yourself, it's getting a bit tiresome, so watch and learn."
With that, he flicked his wand back and forth, causing Harry's trunk to eject everything piled inside. Books, gifts, clothes, and assorted paraphernalia flew out and landed in scattered heaps throughout the room.
"Hey!" Harry objected. "Some of that's breakable!"
"As if I didn't attach a happy-landings spell," Draco boasted, smirking. Then his know-it-all smile vanished. "Oh, shite. I broke your mirror--"
Harry snatched it up and hugged it to his chest, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. It suddenly struck him what Sirius might have to say about him regarding one Draco Malfoy as a brother... but then again, Sirius wouldn't have approved of Snape for Harry's guardian, let alone his dad, would he? In some ways, that was still a disturbing thought, though Harry knew it shouldn't be. "It was broken already," he admitted, a familiar sense of failure washing up to choke him.
Breathe, Harry...
Somehow, he did, and then managed to set the mirror down on his bed. He tried not to look at it after that.
Draco gave his behaviour an odd glance before shrugging the topic aside. "All right, now," he mused, leaning forward to examine the trunk carefully. "Let's see just what we have to work with... hmmm...."
"What are you up to?"
"Patience," Draco softly chided, intent on his task. Latin began to fill the air as his wandwork became ludicrously extravagant.
"Show off," Harry accused, consciously trying for a lighthearted tone.
Draco ignored him to finish the incantations. One final flourish, and he was tapping the open lid of the trunk and pronouncing, "There, all done. Now wasn't that easier than spending all weekend mashing your things together?"
"I don't even know what you did!"
A soft laugh mocked him. "It's a going away present, Harry. A wizardspace trunk. Don't think I haven't noticed you admiring mine. Yours should hold about three times as much as before, now."
"You spelled yours yourself, then?"
"Oh, please. Mine was professionally done. I actually intended to buy you a proper wizard's trunk, but when I mentioned it to Severus he said he thought you had a rather pathetic sentimental attachment to the one you'd used since first year--"
"He did not use the word pathetic about me!"
"No, he didn't," Draco allowed. "Very good. But he did say the rest, so I thought I'd just enhance the trunk you were already so pathetically attached to."