Harry was fiercely proud of the work the DA had gotten through that day. In his group, two kids had been able to make fog-like wisps appear. With a bit more work, he was sure that these wisps would soon take animal form. The new members of the DA were showing a remarkable aptitude for difficult spells. He berated himself for not having held more sessions, but felt that there was little he could do to change that now. Currently, all the DA members were in the Great Hall. They had opted to work through lunch, much to his pleasure, but by dinner time he noticed a definite spike in their performance, so he had ended the meeting and sent them off to dinner.
Pushing aside thoughts of regret for time lost, he laid his glasses on the nightstand next to his four poster bed and dropped from exhaustion onto it. The silence of the room helped calm his frazzled nerves. He fought the thoughts of Giants attacking and Ministry officials on lockdown, preferring to stay away from any agitating matters. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t help it when Dean’s image floated into his head.
“You haven’t gotten much sleep this past week, have you?”
Why was Dean keeping an eye on his sleeping habits? It was quite odd that whenever he had awoken suddenly from a nightmare, Harry found Dean also awake. He pushed aside any fancies that Dean may be a vampire and opted, instead, for a logical explanation. Panic surged through his body as one hideous thought ran through his mind, during his nightmares in which he yelled out to Dean, could he have also yelled out in real life? Was that why Dean was so interested in what he was dreaming about? It would explain his sudden willingness to talk to him…but no! How could that be? Wouldn’t Ron, Seamus, and Neville also wake up if he was yelling out during a dream?
His panic subsided slowly as he nestled his head into his pillow and let one crazy scenario after another enter his mind, but he could figure out no reason for Dean’s behavior. What had Dean said earlier, something to do with having nightmares about a strange house? Perhaps they had inadvertently done some form of Volcency, just as Ginny had done to see into Ron and Hermione’s dreams. Harry settled on this conclusion, as it seemed to be the only logical one, and let his heavy eyelids slide firmly shut. Some length of time later, he heard the distant noises of Ron and Neville entering the room and groggily opened his eyes. The lull of his deep slumber proved too tempting to resist. Instead, he allowed his eyes to flutter shut once more, feeling as though this was the first time in weeks he had gotten any real sleep.
The aspiration for a restful sleep eluded him, however, when he found himself back in the company of Dean in the strange house the moment his eyes were firmly closed. He could not read the expression on Dean’s face, as the only light available was eerily being cast from a blackened window that glowed around the edges. Harry, Dean, the glow, all proved to be of little consequence once the house seemed to sense that there was some sort of disturbance. The walls began to shift, this time faster than ever before. The floor began to disintegrate from the center of the room on out.
Harry and Dean threw themselves at the window where there was a slight alcove on which they stood, hoping that it would not give way as the floor had done. Whether their hope would have been realized, they never had the chance to find out. The window they were leaning against suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced by a blazing fire of emerald green. Dean blanched at the unexpected transformation, but Harry was struck by a sudden burst of understanding. The house was not a home at all, but rather, a riddle or puzzle of some sort. Every time he and Dean made a movement, the house began to shift its walls in response. There had to be some sort of code, or series of rooms, that would eventually lead them to where they wanted to go.
Where that was and if they really wanted to go there at all was yet to be determined, but Harry concluded that the only way to end the infernal dream once and for all would be to solve the riddle and see where it would lead. The floor continued to disintegrate at an alarming rate and he and Dean soon had their back directly to the fire. In their moment of greatest distress, a wild notion flitted into Harry’s mind. With his back against the fire, he had expected to feel the intense heat associated with an inferno, but felt a cool prickling sensation instead. Purely on a whim, Harry opted to sacrifice Dean into the fire, being that it was a dream and all, to test and see if his notion was correct.
With a surprised yelp, Dean fell back towards the fire and wildly reached out to Harry, successfully grapping a hold of his robes and pulling him in as well. So much for sending a sacrificial lamb, Harry mused as he and Dean fell headlong into the fire. Aptly, they both hit their head against the brick wall before scampering to their feet. Dean rubbed his sore head, momentarily forgetting their precarious location. Likewise, Harry massaged his head, though he also happened to venture a glance out of the fireplace only to find that the room that they had been in had vanished. In its place was a dank, dark room, musty from poor air circulation.
Two men were in this room, one withering on the floor in a heap of pain and the other standing over him firmly gripping a wand in both hands. Neither of them faced the fire so he was unable to distinguish any of their features. Harry had little doubt that the man on the ground was being tortured by his counterpart. His breathing was sporadic and his groans all too familiar. Was this the man he had heard groaning as he and Dean made their way throughout the various rooms during the dream? If so, where was the woman with the ethereal voice, the one feeding them directions? Why did she not help this man herself and who was this third, unknown person?
As Harry mulled over his private thoughts, Dean spotted the two men and raced out of the fireplace with his wand at the ready. Harry cast a spell to disarm the strange wizard before he could attack Dean, but his aim was poor in the darkness and he missed his mark, not that it mattered. By some bizarre quirk, the man had not noticed Dean at all, though he abruptly glanced at the area where Harry stood. Instead of spotting him and attacking, the man looked suspiciously around with some anxiety and a menacing glare. Harry breathed easier when he realized that somehow, the man was unable to see him or Dean.
Cautiously, he walked out of the hearth and into the room. When he got as close as he dared, Harry attempted to decipher the identity of the man though there was little firelight left to help him. Initially, he thought the man to be of dark complexion with dark hair and a short stature. Closer inspection proved differently. The man actually had dirty blond hair that was so covered in soot that it gave the appearance of being black. His skin was equally covered, though a glance at his hands showed that the man was pale colored. His eyes, Harry made no mistake about. They were blue, bright blue, perhaps the brightest shade of sapphire blue that Harry had ever seen.
Harry knew that he had never met the man in his life, yet there was something hauntingly familiar about him. Despite the scene that he had happened upon, Harry had a strange yearning to trust this man. Perhaps the groaning man on the ground was evil or had committed some atrocious crime. He looked to groaning man, and found Dean leaning over him, eyes wide open as though drinking in every last detail of the man’s features. He followed Dean’s gaze and began to study the groaner, as he had come to refer to him in his head. This time he had no doubt, this man did have a very dark complexion.
A quick look at his features, even in the dying embers of the fire, confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man was of African lineage. In spite of his earlier thoughts that the groaner might be a criminal of some sort, Harry reluctantly admitted that the man was out of place. His clothes, though tattered, were clearly regal. As a matter of fact, everything about this man seemed regal, from his prominent features to his oversized body. Little could be done to help the man, though, as the standing wizard seemed to come to the conclusion that he was indeed alone and raised his wand softly whispering “crucio”.
The word, uttered so quietly, seemed to affect not only the groaner, but also Dean who let out a blood curling scream the moment it was spoken and threw himself over the groaner so as to shield him. As though a plug was being pulled from a drain, the images in front of him swirled into oblivion and Harry woke up with a start. He reached to his nightstand for his glasses and glanced around the room. He heard heavy breathing coming from behind Dean’s curtains and jumped out of his bed to investigate the noise. Just as he suspected, he found Dean huddled up with sweat dripping down his forehead.
“Had a bad dream,” Harry inquired as nonchalantly as possible, given the circumstances.
“They’ve got him,” Dean whispered looking frantic.
“Who?” Harry asked, though he knew perfectly well.
“My father,” Dean replied, “they’ve got my father.”
“That man?” Harry asked. “The man on the ground, groaning; is that your father?”
Dean jerked his head into a nodding motion, though it was clear he was still traumatized.
“That dream…” Harry began.
“It’s no dream,” Dean cut in.
“How do you know that?” Harry questioned.
“It’s Ginny,” Dean answered.
Harry felt his breath catch in his throat. At no point had he considered that Ginny could somehow be playing a role in the nightmares he had been having.
“What’s Ginny got to do with this?” Harry demanded no longer concerned with keeping his voice lowered.
“Ginny has been putting her reality into our heads,” Dean said, cowering slightly at Harry’s anger.
An intense feeling of disbelief overtook Harry as he realized that Dean knew more about Ginny and her recent activity than he did. At no point had it occurred to him that Dean knew Ginny’s true identity as a Volcen, though clearly he did. To compound his agitation, Harry was now forced to contend with the fact that Ginny and Dean had secretly been using her powers for a task that the Order had no knowledge of.
“So we were never really in the house?” Harry asked with some trepidation.
“No,” Dean replied looking haunted, “only Ginny’s been there.”
“How?” Harry asked simply, testing to learn the full extent of Dean’s understanding of Ginny’s powers.
“Lupin taught her to channel,” Dean answered.
Though he was loathing showing his ignorance in front of Dean, Harry swallowed his pride and asked what channeling entailed.
“She said it’s like getting into another dimension,” Dean explained, “a dimension of spirits, in which she can go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.”
Just great, Harry thought to himself. Now he was going to have to ensure that both her soul and her spirit were both in her body at all times.
“So you asked her to use her power to help you find your father,” Harry surmised accurately. Dean simply nodded.
“When was he kidnapped?” Harry asked, realizing that he knew very little about Dean’s personal life.
“Seventeen years ago,” Dean readily supplied.
Quickly doing the math Harry recognized that this meant Dean’s father had been kidnapped before witnessing his son’s birth. He faulted himself for never having asked Dean about his real father. He often heard Dean speaking of his stepfather and siblings, though never of his biological father.
“Who kidnapped him and why?” Harry asked after a lengthy pause.
“Obviously he kidnapped him,” Dean said, clearly referring to none other than Lord Voldemort.
“Why?” Harry reiterated the second half of his question when it looked as though Dean was not going to say anymore.
“Because of his stature,” Dean responded, this time with more heat in his voice and resentment welling up in his eyes.
“What stature?” Harry insisted. “What’s so important about your father?” he asked, pushing Dean to what seemed to be his breaking point.
“His bloody kingdom,” Dean cried out, turning to send an icy glare in Harry’s direction, “his precious…bloody…kingdom!”
In Adversity We Know Our Friends by Wise Owl
Chapter Notes: Now people! I said I was going to go right home and update the story (quite a few days ago!) When I did not do that, why did you not remind me?!?! Here I am, thinking that I've updated, when in reality I did not! As I see it, this is no fault of my own...You are entirely to blame! Hey guys...wait a minute...why are you picking up those torches? Really now, there's no need to form into an angry crowd!!! AHHHHH!!!!! *Wise Owl takes flight for her life!* Geessshhhh....guess you can't take a joke!