Alexandra Dursley {Golden Trio}

Chapter 77 - The Nightmares

Enjoy folks!

 Al continued to attend the DA meetings and help other students where she could. She was becoming more and more well known among the students as 'the nice Slytherin' and one or two would even smile at her in the corridors. Something Umbridge now did too. Al's fifth year was going well.

 Al hadn't seen or spoken to George since the Quidditch match. Apparently, he'd been banned from playing indefinitely - a punishment Al thought was too harsh. But she wasn't going to say anything.

 The rain soon turned to sleet and then snow, and Al found herself doing her homework by the much sought after fire in the common room, late into the evening. "Um, Al?" a girl in the year above asked.

 "Yeah?" Al said, putting down her transfiguration essay. She'd got an E in the last one, and was determined to get an O by the end of the year.

 "Brooks got detention with Umbridge," the girl said, "What was-?"

 "Murtlap essence," Al told her with a warm smile.

 The girl grinned, "Thanks, Al," she said, "You're an angel," before hurrying off to her dorm.

 Al yawned, it was getting late. She packed her things up and headed to her own dorm, falling asleep almost as soon as she was wrapped up. "Join me, or they will die," Voldemort's cold voice filled her ears. She saw his red eyes glaring at her and shivered. They flicked to the right, and Al saw her parents laying on the cellar floor next to Harry and Cedric's lifeless bodies. "Everyone will die," he said from behind her, "Just like you killed them."

 There was a thumping noise and Al jolted awake, covered in a cold sweat with the sheets stuck to her. It had been a few weeks since Al had had a nightmare like that - she thought she'd got over them. "Al," Daphne's voice said, "Are you alright?"

 "Yeah," Al lied sleepily, "Yeah, I'm fine." The thumping continued and Al realised someone was knocking on the door.

 "Will someone answer that!" Pansy Parkinson wailed from the other end of the room, "You're the prefect, Al." Al got out of bed, her knees feeling weak and shaky as she padded across the room, and answered the door. A tired-looking fourth year girl stood there, looking panicked.

 Al yawned and pulled her dressing gown tighter around her. "What's up?" she asked the girl, realising she was fully dressed.

 "I was doing my potions homework and a portrait in the common room told me to tell you that Lee Jordan says that George has left Hogwarts. His Dad's in St Mungo's."

 Al stepped back, a little shocked. She didn't much like the Weasleys but she didn't want anything to happen to them. George would be so worried right now. "You said they'd already left?" Al asked.

 The girl nodded, "McGonagall took them to Dumbledore's office."

 "Thanks very much for telling me," Al said, "And go to bed. You need to sleep." The girl nodded and headed back into a dorm further along the corridor. Al hurried back inside to fetch her wand.

 "What was it?" Daphne asked sleepily.

 "George's Dad's in St Mungo's," Al whispered, before hurrying back into the common room and out the door. Al rushed along the darkened halls of Hogwarts, unable to believe her stupidity. How could she not have spoken to George? He needed her now more than ever and she'd just ditched him!

 Al reached the stone gargoyle that she knew to be Dumbledore's office and stared at it, trying to think what the password might be. "Can't you just let me in?" Al hissed. She thought for a moment that it had obliged, as it leaped aside, revealing a stone staircase. But then Al spotted the hem of a pink dressing gown and hurried to hide behind a nearby wall, and watched as Umbitch (as Ginny Weasley so fondly named her) huffed past her.