The Dream Trilogy Book One: To Dwell On Dreams (A Harry Potter FanFiction)

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five

The wind seemed to get worse as they picked their way along the cobble stone streets in silence, and it was only when they had worked their way up the snaking path to the base of the mountain that Hermione spoke to Harry. 

"What did Draco do?" she whispered. They were far enough back from Malfoy and the wind was howling enough Harry trusted he couldn't hear them, but he still eyed him for a moment before replying.  

"An Unforgivable Curse," he said. "There are three. One kills, one hurts, and this one...this one places you completely at the mercy of the caster's wishes." 

Hermione considered this. "Like, hypnotism?" she suggested. 

Harry guessed that was close enough. "That man will literally go home, lock his door, phone his sister, then go to sleep knowing everything is just fine." There was a hardness to his tone, he could hear it. He knew Malfoy hadn't hurt the man, but Harry had been subjected to the Imperius Curse before, and there was no way really to describe the helplessness of it all. 

"That doesn't sound so bad?" said Hermione tentatively.  

"He would have gone and laid on the railway track or set himself on fire if Malfoy had told him to," said Harry. "Just as happily." 

"Oh," said Hermione, and wrapped her coat collar tighter around her neck.  

It wasn't long before they reached the tree line, and Malfoy stopped and stood by the shadowy foliage, staring at the ground and pulling at his bag until the others arrived to stand beside him. His hair was almost completely blond again, only a few flecks of black were still visible in the moonlight.  

Harry stared into the forest that reached all the way up to the snowy peak of the mountain, but he could only make out a few trees deep before it all just became pitch black. He got out his wand, ready to light it, and tried to quash the uneasiness rising in his guts. He'd been in a forest like this before, he'd even faced Voldemort inside it - although he didn't know it at the time - and he'd still come out alive.  

But he glanced at Hermione's pale face and became nervous all over again for her and the rest of them alike. 

"Don't light that," said Malfoy stiffly, glancing at Harry's wand. 

Parvati screwed up her hands and inhaled loudly. "So you're telling us we have to go in there in the dark?" 

"No," said Malfoy, still not meeting anyone's eyes. "But a regular Lumos spell can be seen by anyone." He checked that no one from the village had followed them, then cast his own magic. "Apricum," he said, and the tip of his wand lit up just like the spell Harry was going to do. 

But then it began siphoning off like flowing molten gold, blossoming up and forming a small sphere of strong yellowy light, almost as if he had created a miniature sun, about the size of a Quaffle.  

"Oh, yeah," said Seamus dubiously. "That's way less noticeable than a small beam off a wand." 

He was right. The light it was giving off probably lit up around twenty feet around them, it was mesmerizing to look at, and as it rose higher into the air the radius it lit up increased even further. 

Malfoy huffed, his face thunderous. "You are so ungrateful," he spat, then pushed into the branches, heading for what looked like a narrow but trodden path a little up ahead. 

"Wait," said Harry, looking nervously back at the village then up into the dark forest. "Seamus is right, someone will definitely see that, it's like a bloody lighthouse-"