An American at Hogwarts

Dark Dreams

Harry and Ron were nowhere to be found. Hermione was a bit freaked out, scared they'd gotten caught or something, but I promised her that the two of them were going to be fine. Even if they did get caught, Dumbledore wasn't exactly going to expel Harry or anything. At least I hoped. Ginny, to our delight, got sorted into Gryffindor as we had all hoped and expected. If anyone was more nervous about Harry's whereabouts than Hermione, it was Ginny. She was all but shaking in fear of what had happened. She had gotten it into her head that they might have crashed the car against the mountains because of the fog, which I had to assure her was unlikely. Frankly, the idea bothered me a bit as well, but I didn't see the point in worrying over a purely hypothetical theory that was unlikely at best. Sure enough, that night, as I was about to head up to sleep, Harry and Ron slowly stumbled into the common room, quickly getting crowded by students who had heard the rumors. Apparently, they had somehow managed to crash the car into the Whomping Willow, and barely escaped with their lives. The two of them really had a talent for getting into and out of extremely life threatening situations. Hermione was furious at them, and not without good reason. Apparently, they had been seen by several muggles, and the Ministry was having a hell of a time obliviating as many people as they could who had seen the flying Ford Anglia. I honestly didn't see the point of going through all that trouble. It would probably be brushed off as a weird UFO incident or something, maybe get a tv special in ten years, but it wasn't like the general public was going to believe a couple reports of a flying car or anything. Frankly, the cover up seemed more likely to cause trouble, but that was just my amateur opinion. Regardless, I was able to drag the two of them out of the crowd of students, and after saying a quick goodnight to Marie, rushed them up to our room.

"What the actual hell were you two thinking?"

Ron groaned. "Not you too now!"

"Ron. I'm not going to get on your case about it like Hermione, but that was rather stupid. You have to admit."

"What else were we supposed to do?"

"YOU HAD HEDWIG, GENIUS. SEND A LETTER!"

He blushed. "McGonagall suggested something like that..."

I groaned. "Whatever. I'm just glad the two of you are alright. You gave us a bit of a scare."

Harry smiled apologetically. "Sorry mate."

"It's alright. Let's get to sleep now. I'm exhausted."

I had... strange dreams that night. A sort I'd never had before. They were somehow, at the same time, both cloudy and vivid, as if the dream itself was more clear than an average dream, but I had a weird cloudy mist in front of my eyes, obscuring my vision. The only thing I could clearly make out was a rather terrifying massive yellow orb that seemed to somehow gaze into my very soul. I woke a bit earlier than normal, sweating intensely. I showered quickly and rushed down to sit in front of the fire, trying to gather my thoughts. I honestly wasn't entirely sure what any of it was. Dreams surely didn't mean anything, right? They were just tricks of the mind. But something about that dream stuck with me. For one, I remembered it clearly. The dream itself wasn't exactly clear, but I could remember it just as vividly as I could the sorting from the night before. That was far from normal. And something about it just seemed... off. Different. My trailing thoughts were interrupted when Marie stumbled down the stairs groggily.

"Morning dear..." she said, yawning.

"Hey."

She shook herself awake. "You ok, Y/N?"

I sighed. "Honestly? Not really. I had a weird dream."

She smiled lightly and sat down next to me. "Well? Tell me about it!"

I explained to her as best I could. It wasn't exactly easy to explain something I barely understood myself, but I did my best, which probably wasn't that good.

"Y/N, it was just a dream. It's ok."

I smiled weakly. "Yeah, but like I said. It felt different."

She frowned slightly. "Did it... did it feel like a... premonition?"

I raised an eyebrow, a bit confused. "A premonition? I don't really know what that would feel like. Maybe? All I can really say is it felt different. Why that specifically?"

Marie took a deep breath. "My aunt. She... she has these visions sometimes. Other people do too, but it's very rare. I think the Divination professor here at Hogwarts gets them sometimes, although everyone says she's a loon. Point is, the way you described the dream seemed sort of similar to how my aunt describes her visions. She never gets them via dreams, though, at least I don't think."

I shuddered slightly at the idea. "I'm not sure Marie. Maybe I should talk to that Divination professor about it. I'm certainly going to tell Dumbledore. Honestly, the whole thing just creeped me out. I'll get over it, I promise."

She pulled me into a hug. "Don't try to get over it alone. I'm here for you. Always. Ask your mom about it too. Maybe someone else in your family has been through something similar. If its a magic thing, I doubt you're the first in your family to experience it."

"I will. You mind walking to the owlery with me? I don't really feel like going alone after that. I'm still a bit on edge."

We went to the owlery, Marie holding my hand tightly the entire way, and penned a quick letter to my mom, sending Cinnabar off with it. The whole time, I couldn't get the idea Marie had mentioned out of my head. If that dream was a premonition, what was it a premonition of? What could that weird yellow orb be? Was it just symbolic of something? The questions were doing my head in. All I knew for sure was that I desperately, desperately hoped that it was meaningless. I didn't need a repeat of last year's "excitement".