Dream A Little Dream Of Me
There were times when he felt as if he was at the center of a Confundus charm: personally unaffected, but perpetually radiating the mind-twisting magic. It only affected girls, there was no known way of stopping, and Bill Weasley, under a curse he couldn't break, would have given much to have the spell taken off.
"So I'll meet you at the training grounds tonight, after dinner," the sixth-year student told the taller of the two Ravenclaws: a redhead bearing a shade somewhat deeper than his own, wearing the kind of extra-loose student robe which indicated that she wasn't entirely sure how to deal with whatever kind of figure had been developing beneath the formless drape and didn't want anyone else thinking about it either. This was followed by a quick glance around the upper-level castle corridor, once again verifying that there were no other students within listening range so early in the morning -- or worse, Peeves. But they were in the clear, and so Bill continued. "You'll need to practice that spell if you're going to have any hopes of getting into the next Vault. With any luck, we'll finish before curfew."
The fourth-year girl (who was sometimes referred to by small portions of Hogwarts' population as 'the Curse-Breaker', was much more often thought of as The Reason We're All Confined To Common Room Lockdown Again, and occasionally even managed to get addressed as 'Delilah') nodded.
"But that's just the two of us," Bill cautioned. "You're not coming along on this one, are you, Rowan?"
The smaller girl, pleasantly thin and bespectacled, with deep brown skin and a charmingly narrow nose, made a sound, and did so at the same moment her left foot moved backwards and traced an awkward stuttering half-circle along the stone floor. It looked like nothing so much as someone trying to draw a protective ward against embarrassment, it was something Bill saw almost every day and, just like every other desperate caster, she failed.
"Glck," the smaller girl said, or at least that was as close as Bill's mind could come to defining a sound which also included at least half of a self-horrified giggle and a hint of awkward cough.
His right hand automatically went up to his own hair, and fingers rearranged long strands in something close to a nervous twitch. It just made her 'glck' again, and her head went down to counterbalance the color rising in her cheeks.
The redhead hesitated, just for a second. She almost always hesitated before speaking, and --
"She isn't," the Ravenclaw said. "She's just been doing the research. She's more comfortable that way, aren't you, Rowan?"
The black-haired girl nodded, which briefly raised her gaze away from the floor.
"I'll see you then," Bill offered. "Just make sure not to get into trouble in class today. The last thing we need is you on dormitory orders, and you're riding the edge of detention already."
One more nod from the redhead, who turned in the general direction of that first session and started to walk away. Rowan, who occasionally seemed to be attached to her best friend by invisible strings, moved in concert, and Bill oriented on the path which would lead him to the prefect's bathroom. There was still some time to freshen up before Charms or, in his case, to try for the reverse. A few steps would bring him to the first secret staircase entrance --
"Bill?"
He turned.
The redhead hesitated before she spoke, and...
...Bill liked her. They had similar interests: both wanted to be Curse-Breakers, although Bill was saving the majority of that desire for after he graduated and her life had made the need somewhat more... immediate. They got along well enough that he'd had her at the Burrow over Christmas, although not without some strict warnings regarding things she couldn't talk about in front of his mother. (When compared to what they'd both been through with the Vaults, the fact that she had a strong dislike towards everything Celestina Warbeck had ever recorded and had an inexplicable desire to see Gilderoy Lockhart rendered into a velvet-textured smear on the castle walls was almost secondary. Almost.) She was attractive enough as to have had six different students competing for her attention just before the Ball. But there was no romantic interest: she was two years younger, was so redheaded that he had to make an effort not to think of her as another Weasley -- something which had spread to the rest of his family, as she hadn't managed to escape the Burrow without a jumper. And the fact that her Ball dances had been with Penny Haywood suggested three of those students hadn't had much of a chance anyway.
She was quick and clever, pretty, and had something progressively happening under that shapeless robe. But she'd first approached Bill to ask for his help with an earlier Vault, they'd spent a lot of time together, and... she hesitated before she spoke. It was as if everything she ever said was chosen from a carefully-reviewed list of options, and the only true goal was to find the words which would make others like her all the more.
The redhead had many friends. She was also continually walking the line between detention and expulsion, because nothing was as important to her as those Vaults. And when it came to finding help in the quest to learn about her long-missing brother's fate... she needed people to like her.
He did like the redhead, felt she was as close a friend as any he'd made at Hogwarts. He liked her... but there was always that hesitation. And it meant that, as with Fred and George, he could never entirely trust her.
"How are things with Tyler?" she asked, and waited with her first friend forever at her side.
Bill groaned.
"Bad." Because Emily Tyler was back in his life, and so 'bad' was the only possible description.
"Do you want me to --"
"-- no. Not this time." He managed a smile. "You and Emily in the same room is a recipe for lost points, and as much as I'd love to see Gryffindor get the chance to pull ahead after you blow through a few more, she's in my House. I'm not sure which of you is going to get the worst of it. Besides... no detentions. Not today. All right?"
One last nod, and she returned to her stride. Rowan, however, kept looking at him for a few extra seconds: long enough to produce another 'Glck.' It was a little like a giggle, and somewhat like a cough, but it mostly sounded like a very sincere wish to die on the spot.
Bill waited until they'd left, then got through the staircase entrance. It took being a sixth-year to learn about some of the staircases, and so it would be a moment of privacy --
-- of course, he wasn't the only sixth-year.
The three stair-using Slytherin girls followed him all the way to Charms, and so made themselves late for History Of Magic. It probably wouldn't mean much for their grades, but it did cost them the opportunity to start on an early-morning kip.
It was his third trip to a bathroom that day, and he was still working on his hair.
He'd been letting it grow long, and his mother had been (mostly) pretending to heart attacks accordingly. Long and unkempt, to the point where it looked more like a lion's mane than anything else, which Bill found appropriate for a Gryffindor. It was a complete and deliberate lack of style, and he'd recently picked up the bad habit of compulsively working it into something even more formless. He was still washing it regularly: there were limits and besides, adding 'odor' to the arsenal fighting his curse was a guaranteed loss of points. But he'd thought that just abandoning all attempts to make it hold a true shape would do something.
It hadn't.
There were several reasons to dread the summer hols, and chief among them was spending several weeks within scissors range of his mother, who would cluck something about how unruly hair just ruined his looks. Bill would return for his last year --
-- next year is my last year --
-- freshly shorn. There was no avoiding it. But his mother would be solving what she saw as the problem while he was away from the real one.
Bill was good-looking. Handsome. Through overheard gossip, he knew himself to have won at least two near-midnight girls' dormitory polls, and finding out the true number would have left him so mortified as to spontaneously transfigure his blood into the Draught Of Living Death. He was generally considered to be the best-looking boy in his year, some felt that status could be extended to the whole of Hogwarts, he had girls following him and staring at his face (it was mostly his face), they were always giggling and he could try to talk to them, but...
...they didn't listen.
They stared at his face. They kept staring. He was considered to be a great prize, a living corsage riding on the arm of whatever witch managed to win him, a living status symbol -- but no one expected a corsage to be much of a conversationalist. The girls who pursued him tended to be most concerned about how good being with him would make them look, and so looks were all they thought about. You couldn't have a conversation with any of them, because the majority of what he got back was giggles, along with a few bemused looks at what they perceived as his attempts to speak English.
The fourth-year Ravenclaw saw him as an ally. Someone who could teach her spells two years in advance, and might even come along to another Vault. The reasons she wanted him near her were knowledge and skill. Associating with her might mean a guaranteed visit to the hospital wing (and so far, he'd been lucky enough to let such occasions turn into round trips), but he was spending time with someone who valued him for what he valued about himself. But with other girls...
Perhaps 'corsage' was the wrong term. To the girls of Hogwarts, he was more of a falcon. They wanted him riding on their wrist, but it was due to his plumage and when they considered their false perceptions of his intellect, their expectations usually stopped at having him fetch something. And then you had the ones like Rowan, who was sometimes considered to be the brightest girl in fourth-year. She openly expressed aspirations towards teaching. There were younger students desperately hoping she made it behind the desk before they graduated, because the displacement of Binns couldn't come fast enough. And when in Bill's presence, all of that intellect could just about manage a one-sound vocabulary, while smooth brown skin radiated a heat of embarrassment strong enough to boil off every drop of flop sweat.
He was good-looking. Handsome. Possibly the most attractive male in Hogwarts. And he hated it.
So he was in front of the bathroom mirror again, working on his hair. There had to be something he could do with it which would diminish him, at least to the point where female ears started working again. Just for starters, they had extreme difficulty in recognizing when he was saying 'No.'
Maybe if I had myself shaved bald...
That felt like an option. Going as far as he could the other way. Of course, he felt the barbers who trooped up to the school from Hogsmeade every eight weeks might have issues with such a request, and he wasn't sure how to do it himself without chancing a rather humiliating bleed-out. Still, it felt like an option. Something which might make it possible to have a real conversation about something which wasn't dances, meeting in tea shops or, with the Ravenclaw in his life, Cursed Vaults.
He wanted to be with a girl. He wanted to get married one day, raise children. Have a life. But his parents had taught him much, and some of that came in a lesson which they weren't aware he had learned.
A spouse was someone you could talk to. The person you always wanted to speak with more than anyone else, because you were in love and talking to the person you loved might not fix everything, but it would make you feel like making things better was always possible.
Bill wanted to be in love.
Love seemed to require conversation. Discussion. Appreciation of the other as an equal.
And it felt like most of the giggling side of the school saw him as nothing more than living jewelry.
He managed to dodge a few girls while passing between classes, and they made up for it by using those classes for passing him notes. (Bill felt there were few expressions so smugly self-satisfied as that which could be found on a girl who had successfully managed to pass a note.) The messages were always about the same topic and were aimed towards what they saw as his vocabulary, which made them both repetitive and boring.
Magic offered any number of means for passing notes. There was also a wealth of disposal options available, but teachers generally frowned on classroom fires.
Lunch saw him using the protection of a living shield: inviting the Curse-Breaker over from the Ravenclaw table tended to clear some space just in case she was thinking of something, but he was already going to see her later and at any rate, she was in the company of Barnaby Lee. The two were deep in conversation, and the little hesitations from one side told Bill that she was probably trying to talk her Slytherin friend around on something or, given Barnaby, to bring her vocabulary down enough to where he would understand what she wanted in the first place. Barnaby, perhaps in spite of his House, had a good heart. He also had the strength of a troll, the protectiveness of a troll, and it was rather easy to keep going from there.
But there were other options, and planting one of them on the other side of the table also tended to clear some space. Few people wanted to listen in on a conversation where the only potential topic was probably going to be dragons.
"...and then Hagrid said 'I know ye' want to see it, Charlie, but I promised Molly...'" Arms gestured outwards in a rising V of frustration. "Nine feet tall in boots and he's scared to death of Mom! Mom, all five-foot-three of her!"
"And a half," Bill merrily corrected, then went back to munching on the sandwich.
"And a half," Charlie Weasley allowed, adding another gesture. "But that's it. The rumors say there's a Welsh Green out there, he just about guaranteed it when he went into 'shouldn't have said that', and I'm not going to get anywhere near it because of Mom. She's hundreds of miles south and she's still making sure I can't do anything to get ready for life after school. It's horrible..."
He slouched back on his bench, and thickening arms folded in frustration. Charlie had yet to see his true growth spurt (and Bill teased him about potentially winding up short), but the younger sibling was rapidly gaining in physical power. Preparing to wrestle dragons had a way of doing that.
"It could be worse," Bill pointed out.
"A Welsh Green somewhere in a three-mile radius," Charlie groused, "and I can't see it. What's worse than that?"
"Hagrid won't tell Mom that you asked," the oldest brother reminded the younger. "This could have happened next year."
Charlie winced.
"Oh," he weakly said. "Yeah. This -- this really is the last quiet year, isn't it?"
Next year is my last.
'Quiet' was an odd term to use, especially since both of them had been caught up in the Ravenclaw's curse-breaking attempts (and, with extreme care, neither had bothered to inform their mother). But the next year would host Bill's N.E.W.Ts, Charlie's O.W.Ls -- and it would also see Hogwarts introduced to Percy Weasley. A boy whose natural instinct was not so much for Right and Wrong as Tattle and Report On Sight. Their parents had mutually become wearied of it, but Bill suspected that the first few months of Percy's life at Hogwarts would see him overwhelmed by the sheer number of teachers he could potentially tattle to. Having him see something Tattle-Worthy happen while he was equidistant between offices might just leave him vibrating in place (and two directions) for hours, and if he'd been in hearing range when Charlie asked to see a dragon...
"We'll have to be a lot more careful," Charlie noted. "About -- well, everything."
Bill nodded. "Done your homework?"
"Yes," emerged with a degree of received insult. More hastily, "Except for the Herbology essay: I'm going to run off the last couple of inches in Binns'." And, from a mixture of brotherly concern and a need to get one back, "How are things with Tyler?"
"Bad," Bill summarized through the wince.
"How bad?"
He looked up and down the long table, and finally spotted her sitting at the southern end. A brown-haired girl who tended towards ponytails, because it pulled everything away from a fine heart-shaped face. Bill had spent long hours meditating on the shape of that face and, after finally admitting his feelings to its owner, had learned that when it came to anything associated with having a heart, the face was all there was.
"The only thing worse than having Tyler reject me," Bill sighed, "is having her change her mind."
He'd seen she was smart. Everyone knew she was pretty, and...
...it had taken the confession's aftermath to recognize the important part...
...she hadn't been interested in him.
That had been part of the appeal.
Bill could get attention from most of the girls in the school, and the majority of the exceptions came from those who were looking towards other girls. Emily wanted boys -- but she hadn't wanted him. She'd passed by him in the corridors without visible notice, never sat anywhere near him in the common room. It had made her interesting, then it had rendered her appealing, and...
Smart. Pretty. But it had taken confessing to learn that she was cruel.
"She didn't want you because we're poor," Charlie reminded him with the natural open lack of tact which came from someone whose future conversational partners would mostly have scales. "That's what she said in front of the school. She's a social climber, and at first, she wanted a wealthy wizard. But there's all sorts of ways to be rich, aren't there? Especially in a school. You're rich in popularity, Bill: that's been going up every year, and the Vaults didn't exactly hurt. You've got stockpiles of Reputation stored under dragon guard, and everyone knows you're tapped for Gringotts. Maybe you don't have money now, but curse-breakers can made loads of it. She's thinking about the future, Tyler is. Not where you are, but where you're going to go. And now she wants to try coming with you."
All he could do was nod, because the majority of his attention was focused on staring back at a slightly younger self and wondering how that boy could have been so stupid.
"Tell Bill I said thank you for sharing his feelings. If nothing else, it was good for a laugh."
There was a moment of pure awkward silence.
"Did she apologize, at least?" Charlie asked.
"No," Bill heavily admitted. "I don't think she feels like she needs to. Like just being interested now makes up for everything."
Which was joined by two more just like it.
There was a brief gathering of strength before the next sentence, and it wound up mostly collecting concern. "I saw her talking to Jae."
That got Bill's attention. There were many mysteries tied up in Hogwarts, and chief among those for the current generation was how Jae Kim had been sorted into Gryffindor. Admittedly, it took a certain amount of courage to try smuggling banned items into the school and some things were on the list just because Filch was allergic to fun, but Jae didn't limit himself to Fanged Frisbees. And he rarely seemed to care about what anything he brought in got used for.
No one really knew what Jae was doing in Gryffindor. (Bill, who still occasionally felt there was something personal going on in the Confundus department, had once tried to figure out exactly how close he'd been sitting to the Hat during Jae's Sorting.) And very few people spoke with Jae unless they wanted something.
"So she's buying," he immediately decided. "There's no other reason she'd speak to him." Jae was on the Weasley economic level, only with much more ambition to move up in a hurry.
"And with what's been going on," Charlie concluded, "it's probably got something to do with you. Just be careful, Bill. She's cruel, Tyler is, and with Jae involved... I want you watching your back. Because we can't have any classes together and I don't get much of a chance to watch yours. " Thoughtfully, "But she has to sneak past my floor in the dorm on the way up to yours. We should think of a way for me to signal you."
Emily Tyler and Jae Kim. It could be something which didn't involve Bill at all. But there were many kinds of curses, she was one he dearly wished to break -- but at the moment, she was also one he couldn't avoid.
"She's in the next class with me."
Immediately, "Want to skive off?"
"Can't. Not with N.E.W.Ts next year. He thinks I missed one on purpose and it'll hit my average."
Charlie paused.
"Which class have you got next?"
Mournfully, "Potions. Double."
"Oh, mate. I'm sorry..."
"We have a request today," Snape told them in a manner which managed to be simultaneously informative and snide. "As it so happens, that inquiry comes with a learning opportunity: the chance to make a potion which is seldom brewed in this age, largely due to the lack of qualified consumers. It is so rare as to be unlikely to appear on your N.E.W.Ts, especially as I have yet to be given the chance to rewrite them. But if that question should somehow manifest, you will be truly glad for this lesson. I would even hope that you took a moment to appreciate your fortune while thinking of your instructor -- if I didn't know most of you so well."
The long cloak shifted in a movement-created breeze as he stalked between the stations, watching to see if anyone among the sixth-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs had failed to pay attention and in this, he lost. He had spoken of a rare potion and so for the moment, he was the recipient of their full focus.
The words "I have been asked," gained extra sharpness as they passed across the hooked nose, "to provide a supply for the Elixir Of Delphi." And with a sentence which felt like a blade slashing across a neck, "Can anyone here tell me what that is?"
It was a horrible sort of silence. It was the kind of quiet in which you could hear House points die.
"Very well," Snape began to declare. "And just to have you know: there is a fourth-year who would have been able to answer that question." (All of the Hufflepuffs winced.) "But as it is, in the absence of Ms. Haywood, five --"
The bravest hand in the world went up.
It was possible to see the thought being put on hold. "Interesting. Very well. Your opinion, Ms. Trudence?"
"Please, sir..." the pale (and paling) thin brunette desperately tried, "...would it have something to do with the Oracle of Delphi? Is this potion meant for Seers?"
He looked at her for a few seconds. Just looked, and the hand trembled in the air.
"Not true knowledge," Snape finally said. "But deduction based on previously-acquired information, reaching for the new. The sort of thing which can occasionally have a place in this classroom, although I encourage you to keep it out of your cauldrons. Take two points for Hufflepuff, Ms. Trudence."
The exhausted hand slammed back onto the table, and Snape resumed his pacing.
"The Elixir," he instructed them all, "is designed to temporarily boost a Seer's abilities. Normally, it is rather difficult for a Seer to experience a vision at will. A properly-made Elixir will allow them to voluntarily enter a trance, one which makes it easier to bring about a true prediction. It has also been known to extend the duration of such visions, and to increase a Seer's temporal range. A true Elixir is thus highly sought -- but as true Seers are so rare, there is very little demand to make it." The tip of the hooked nose seemed to curl in on itself. "And as today's request comes from Professor Trelawney, we may simply find ourselves making a substitute for cooking sherry. A list of necessary ingredients and instructions --" he waved his wand towards the blackboard, and chalk lines began to wind their way across its surface "-- are available for your scrutiny. However, as this potion is both extremely advanced and seldom made, I do not expect full success. After the initial demonstration, I will be brewing a cauldron of my own during class, and any of you may approach to watch if you feel a personal review is required. Quietly."
From Snape, it was unusually welcoming behavior. Bill wasn't certain whether the professor was relishing the chance to demonstrate his skill on such a rare creation, or just felt especially good about the 'cooking sherry' line.
The black-haired man stopped pacing.
"Additionally," he said, "there is a single, one-time relaxing of conditions. Along with an order."
They listened.
"The Elixir is brewed at a higher temperature than any of you have ever dealt with," Snape informed them as two sentences on the blackboard underlined themselves. "A level of heat which is seldom seen in this place. As it becomes tiresome to carry fainted students to the hospital wing, you may keep glasses of water and clean towels at your stations. Any student who is fully dressed beneath their robes may remove the robes entirely, with no loss of House points: the rest of you may push back your sleeves. Should you still feel yourself becoming truly overheated, stand in the hallway for no more than six minutes: your potion cannot go without tending for longer than that. As for the order..."
The black eyes moved over them. Evaluating, and always coming up short of what they wanted to see.
"...the Elixir," Snape softly said, "is meant for Seers, and Seers alone. A splash across bare skin is harmless. A single droplet which enters the mouth might produce tingling, along with a sense of nausea. But any greater consumption will lead the potion to try and enhance a power you likely do not possess. The typical result is full-body convulsions while mindlessly babbling nonsense syllables. For several hours. So if you know yourself to be a Seer, do not smuggle this from the classroom. And if you merely believe that you might possess the talent -- then this will allow you to find out. You will either have a new career, or you will know you are forever unsuited for it. And in either case, you will meditate upon the results while on the train to London."
Several students were staring. None were blinking.
"In other words, no one is to taste this potion without the direct permission of the Headmaster and a certificate of talent assessment." With a sudden drop in volume, "Do you understand?"
There were generally two options for answering Snape, and the one which wasn't agreement usually turned out to be detention.
"Gather near me," their professor said after the echoes of assent faded away, "and watch closely. Because for the vast majority of you, this is the only time you will ever see this being done."
There was the usual scrum near the ingredient cabinets. Bill, taller than the majority, could usually stretch and reach for the high shelves, but had to wait for a degree of clearance before he could get to anything lower. And no matter what, all of the students tended to go for the ingredients at the same time: even with a double session, they needed to begin their brewing quickly and a minute spent hanging back was a minute wasted.
It put the entire class into a single small area, just for a few minutes. And in Bill's case, it did something horrible.
"There's another Hogsmeade day coming up," soft lips whispered far too close to his ear, which involved the speaker standing on tiptoe. "It's best to book the tea shoppe in advance, you know: there's just so few seats available. So I should really put us down immediately."
He did everything he could to ignore her, and wished he hadn't tucked so much of his hair behind his ears. A solid wall might have blocked her out.
"Just the two of us," she mercilessly continued as the students around them began to disperse somewhat. "Together in the most romantic place in town. Just like you always wanted..."
The tip of her tongue flicked against his skin.
He almost jumped, and so came close to losing the jimson weed: as it was, his hands tightened, and the spikes of the carried pod nearly cut into his skin.
Days of it. Days of her everywhere, at every turn, with only his brother for a shield because the nearby mistress of gossip had once been rather vocal about stating her false belief that the younger Weasley stunk of fewmets. He was sick of it, sick of girls who only giggled and one who could do nothing more than plot, and so he spoke at last. Aloud, where others could hear.
"Wanted," he said. "Not want. I know who you are now, Emily. What you are. I don't want you any more."
It made everyone else draw back. It made her lean in, and he felt her body go tense.
"You'll change your mind," Emily Tyler angrily declared to that part of the world which didn't include Snape. "I guarantee it."
His cauldron was close to the cabinets and eye rinse sink: that was one of the best things about it. But the single best was that it was nowhere near hers.
He had to keep refreshing his water, and the dungeon's towel supply was getting dangerously low.
Blue lily. Henbane. African dream root. Crush this, stew that. Slice here and there, infuse and stir. All normal things for this room. But as Snape had warned them, it was being done with a level of heat which had never been in the dungeon, and so there were students who had already stepped into the hallway for their carefully-timed six minutes, hoping their heads would stop swimming before the last tick came off the clock. Everywhere he looked, sleeves had been pushed and pinned back close to the shoulders, and if the heat haze wasn't lying to Bill, Snape had gone so far as to fully expose his wrists.
The potion was interesting to watch. In a sense, it wasn't one of those which changed colors as it brewed: rather, it began as something of a murky mess: far too many hues, most of which quickly moved into each other and sent the whole thing into a muddy brown. But as he stirred, those shades began to pale. And as they did so...
He'd been to a movie once, a real Muggle-made film. (It had taken some work, mostly to teach his father how to avoid being caught when they all got back.) And this made him think of that wonderful day, because the potion flickered. The paler it became, the more it seemed to send little flashes of light up to his eyes. It would make him blink and when he did, the afterimage patterns on his retinas would carry a momentary sense of form. There was a second when he almost thought he saw a great number of chairs resting in an open space, while another gave him the briefest impression of claws...
"Professor Snape?" Emily's voice, because she was a girl who loved to hear herself. (She actually had a wonderful laugh: the problem came when you found out what she'd been laughing at.) "Some of my Syrian rue seeds were pre-cracked. May I please take some more from the cabinet?"
The teacher casually waved her along. There were footsteps coming closer, because Bill's station was close to the supplies and that meant Emily was getting close to him. He didn't want any more contact, was ready to spend the rest of his life forgetting what her tongue had felt like. It was a situation which required extra water, because the thought of her touching him again made him sweat more than the heat did. If he moved quickly, there was a chance to reach the sink before she passed him --
-- but the potion had exacting instructions. He had to stir three times in an expanding spiral, he had to do it now, and so he did that first because a curse-breaker needed a high average in Potions. He did exactly what he had to, and then he began to stand.
His hands braced themselves on the edge of the table, because it was hot in the room and it felt like he needed to push. That meant his elbows went out.
The right one hit something.
There was a sound, a sudden exclamation of pain and fury. Something clear and thin went past his eyes, because pushing yourself up meant looking down, he saw the open vial spilling out clear liquid which smelled like his mother's cooking and all of it went into the cauldron.
The liquid stopped flickering.
It flashed.
It flashed purple, it flashed into mist and steam and a heated jet of fumes and it went directly into his lungs.
It smelled like nothing.
It sounded like everything.
It looked like time.
It felt like the void.
There was wood under his right palm. Only the right, and it was cool to the touch. There were little rough bits against his skin, like paint which hadn't quite been properly smoothed out before it fully dried.
That was the first thing he was aware of, and the second was the coolness. A light breeze against his skin, and the temperature of the air made him grateful for his pants and shirt --
I'm not wearing robes.
-- so if he had wood under one hand, and the air was cool... was he outside? Being taken off the grounds, carried on a stretcher with a roughly-painted wooden rail, with his porters ready to use Side-Along Apparition for getting him to St. Mungo's at the instant they left the blocking spell's range.
But then he realized he was standing.
Bill opened his eyes.
His right hand was braced against a wall, close to the edge of a window, and that window was low. It was as if he was touching the side of a child's playhouse, only this was true construction: a full home rising up on the right, but one where the first floor started too soon after the ground one. Based on the position of the windows, putting him inside meant his head wouldn't be that far away from the initial ceiling, and...
...he was outside, in an alleyway between buildings made to the wrong scale. Structures which reminded him somewhat of a rustic French village, but too small and the colors were so sharp, even at night --
-- it was night. He was outside at night, and the realization sent his frantic stare towards a clear sky.
He was a sixth-year, one who didn't take much interest in Astronomy because a curse-breaker didn't need that and so he'd dropped it immediately after his O.W.Ls had come back. He wasn't much for the finest details of the stars. But he knew enough, and so he stared at a sky where everything was perfect, and everything was perfectly wrong.
No pollution haze. No clouds. Thousands of stars, tens of thousands of unfamiliar twinkles shining in a night which had only half the chromatic options of the sky he knew, and what remained had acquired force. Every color sharp and bright, even at night, even under the wrong moon, it was all so sharp...
It was the same with the buildings. Curves existed as curves alone. Edges seemed more so. Windows glinted as if it was the only thing they had ever been meant to do.
I'm dreaming.
He... he remembered now. The liquid going into the potion, something it was never meant to work with. The mist. He had been knocked unconscious, and now he was dreaming.
Except that... there were little rough nodules under his palm. The feel of wood.
Had there ever been that level of sensation in his dreams? A sense of coolness, with a breeze against his skin? Had he ever touched?
He couldn't be sure. But he'd had a lungful of compromised potion, and that could have done anything. A dream which included more senses than usual was at the low end of the possibilities.
I'm dreaming...
The pinch was automatic, and so he discovered the dream also included pain. The frantic, automatic move of the left palm to his forehead allowed him to find the sweat of fear, and did so at the same moment he registered the pounding of his heart.
He tried to wake up, and nothing happened. All he could do was hope that Madam Pomfrey was at work, that Snape was brewing an antidote because Professor Snape (who had just earned the title) was especially good at that. He had to wait for help from the outside and until that came or the mismade potion wore off, he was dreaming. A dream where the realization of that state wasn't granting him any control of it.
There was nothing he could do to help himself, not while standing in an alleyway which didn't even exist. And so Bill Weasley forced himself to stand fully upright, squared his shoulders, and strode into the night.
It was very much like a village, something which had been built without the Muggle concepts of business zoning or maximum street width. It felt older than those ideas, and yet it also seemed new.
There were homes. Some places looked like shops, and he could just make out the indistinct shadows cast by what was probably merchandise when he peered in. Signs hung above the too-small doors, and it took some time to realize that there were only levers and staple grips for opening them: he never saw a knob. But for the most part, the signs bore pictures alone and where there seemed to be a language, it was one he could not read.
The streets were cobblestone, but they were also oddly supportive and with no jarring feel passed through his trainers on every step. Soles failed to echo as he walked, and none were alerted to his presence, because there was no one about at all. He was the only person on the street, a near-giant in a bright world under star-shot sky, where the trees (because there were trees, and lawns) were the right size and everything else was built underscale.
He tried knocking on a few doors, and even where the windows were lit (always in a way which made it impossible to peer inside), no one came to answer. Twice, he tried to press an ear against such a door, and the half-crouch let him pick up on an undercurrent of unintelligible, organized sounds. Residents, but -- none who would come out. Not in this dream.
It was a beautiful town, in its way: he spent a full minute admiring the bell tower, and rather more in front of the tree which had been grown into the shape of a home. It was a place which knew magic, and he recognized that because it was the dream of a wizard and so he had brought that which was most familiar. But he didn't know how to wake up, how long he would have to be here before he woke up and --
if I wake up
The thought froze him, and did so to the bone.
Some injuries can't be treated.
Some antidotes can't be brewed.
I could sleep until I --
-- next year was my last year.
I was going to graduate.
Work at Gringotts.
Meet someone.
I wanted to have kids.
I wanted to fall in love.
I wanted to find the right girl.
I wanted to meet someone who would listen --
And he might have broken then and there, had he not heard the sound of something else moving through the night.
Solid impacts. Slight echoes. Regular beats, four of them, something fairly dense impacting stone, getting closer, coming in from a cross-street on the left --
-- and the unicorn too was wrong.
She wasn't facing him. She was looking across the intersection to the next street, she was about forty feet away from him, still moving along as every hoof was planted with purpose, and she was too small. (It would take most of that night before he realized that she was actually on the tall side -- at least for what she was.) A true unicorn was somewhat larger than a normal horse, and the fetlocks grew wild over hooves which reflected light away from something very much like metal: foal manes and coats began as all sorts of colors, then faded into silvery-white as they aged. This unicorn was white in coat already, almost pure white -- which naturally meant there was a little hint of gray. But she was too small. A unicorn the size of a pony, one where the horn had the wrong kind of grooving and the eyes were far too large, the limbs were elegant, the snout was ridiculously short, her mane (and he never questioned how he knew it was a mare) was a soft, elegant pink with streaks of white...
"You're beautiful," he whispered, and did so because it would have been a sin not to say it.
Which led to several realizations, all in quick succession.
The white ears instantly rotated in his direction. This meant she had heard him.
Her head followed, and he saw those huge eyes widen. It also gave him a full impression of the skull, which told him something about the brain, and the instant he recognized that the mane and elaborate tail had been styled was also the one when he realized she had understood his words.
A unicorn like none he had never seen, who was facing something which the sudden flash of anger on her face told him she had never seen.
Light flowed up her horn, moving from the base of the skull towards the tip, he had his wand out because even in a dream, a wizard had his wand, he was ready to try and fight anything she could do and in a dream, that could be anything at all --
-- her left foreleg came up. The hoof stomped, just once, and something about the snort which followed suggested petulance.
"Right," the unicorn harshly said. "Even here, even now, even with a biped out of a nightmare. The first thing I hear is 'You're beautiful'." Another snort, as the light intensified around her horn. "For whatever it's worth, you're hideous. Put that stick away."
She was talking, because it was a dream. But she was the only thing he'd found which would speak to him.
She also looked like she was ready to fight. Her horn was long, her forehooves were now pawing at cobblestone in the surest sign of a pony who was ready to charge, and a dream where he could feel pain might be a dream where he could die.
"Turn the light off." It didn't quite come out with the authority he'd been hoping for.
"You put the stick away first," the unicorn ordered. "I know a channeling device when I see one. Even in a dream. I know when something's ready to attack."
He blinked. She didn't.
"...I'm dreaming," he eventually got out, fighting to keep the wandtip from wavering. "Not you."
Another snort. "No, I'm dreaming. It takes a really special dream to conjure up something like you. A bad one."
"Why do you think you're the one who's dreaming?" It seemed like a rather philosophical sort of question.
Her head tilted very slightly to the left, which did nothing to ruin the horn's prospective aim.
"Because I'm asleep," the mare stated. "Whether I want to be or not. I took a sleep aid potion tonight, because -- none of your business 'because'. But I got it in the Tangle --"
"-- the what?"
"-- so of course you can't always trust the mix. It's a dodgy potion. It got me to sleep, all right. But I was dreaming, I realized I was dreaming, that never happens with me, I tried to wake up and..."
The mane vibrated with irritation. The tail simply lashed.
"It'll wear off in a few hours," the unicorn said. "But until it does, I'm stuck here. With you. And I don't need to dream about monsters. I do that enough already, and they all look like ponies. I'm not sure you're an improvement." She shook her head, just a little, returned that position to center. "Moon's craters, are you ugly." With what felt like odd charity, "Not that you can help it, but --"
He didn't know why he suddenly felt so defensive, especially given his feelings on the matter. "-- I'm actually rather handsome."
The head tilt returned. Then it increased.
"Not seeing it," the mare announced. "I'm sure not going to a party with you." And immediately reconsidered. "Not without an appropriate payment of bits, anyway. And I'm saying that as a mare who's been out with a biped."
That seemed to be worth another blink.
"...you've what?" He couldn't picture it. And then he didn't want to. "You've -- actually..."
"Yes," the unicorn defensively countered. "As part of business. I'm an escort."
"What's an escort?"
She stared at him as if he was the stupidest thing in the world, and that was bad. Then she explained, and that was worse.
"Anyway, I escorted a minotaur," she added at the very end of it. "To a party. So I've been out with a biped."
He'd also gotten strong marks in Care Of Magical Creatures, mostly in spite of Professor Kettleburn's inadvertent attempts to make sure every session had its own medical emergency. It helped him come to exactly the wrong conclusion.
"You took a mindless beast," he slowly said, "whose only reason for living is the chance to gore people -- to a party?"
It was her turn to blink.
"He got into one debate about tariffs which reached the point where he challenged the yak to wrestle," the unicorn replied. "And they declined. That was it. Also, the ambassador is a widower, so when he had to attend a party where a date was mandatory, he hired me. Because walking into that party with a pony told everyone there that he still loved his wife more than anything in the world."
There was a moment when she almost smiled, and it served as punctuation to the soft tones of respect.
"That was a good night," she quietly finished, while the corona around her horn failed to waver. "More of them should be like that." And with a sudden surge into purest challenge, "Why do you think you're the one who's dreaming?"
He realized how it was about to sound, and then he said it anyway.
"...dodgy potion."
Her next word was so dry as to negate all the humidity in the air.
"Really."
The explanation took a while. Then there was an explanation for the room in which the events had been hosted, and that brought them out to the whole of the castle, which threatened to reach the Ministry --
"-- okay, enough!" a rather annoyed mare declared. "It's nice to know I'm this imaginative, but you can stop now!" And with a faint-but-lovely grin, "Besides, that took long enough for your shoulder to get sore. I may not have arms, but I know you can't just keep holding one out like that. Your channeling device is shaking."
He'd been trying to hide it...
"And I can hold this position all night," the unicorn smugly stated, "So just to save time, let's say we could have the 'who's dreaming' argument forever, and so we should probably forget about it." Which came out with an expression that declared she'd won. "But you should really put that down. And I'll wink my corona out. At the same time. With the understanding that I can get my field back up before you can pull that again. Deal?"
Not until I get one kind of shot in.
Because it was a dream. But it was a dream created by magic, and magic was... strange. It could be codified into words and gestures. Locked within formulas. Recorded in books.
But it could never, ever be fully understood. That was why it was magic.
"Maybe we're both dreaming," he softly suggested. "At the same time, because of something that's almost like the same thing. And it's letting us share one dream."
Her eyes widened again and this time, it wasn't from shock. It took until the moment after she had banished it before he recognized the fear.
"I don't want that," she quietly said. "I don't want anyone in my head. And if I start to believe that, really believe you're real -- then I would have to attack. So don't ask me to believe that, biped. Not now. Are you going to lower that thing?"
"...yes."
He put the wand away and a second later, after she'd had her chance to attack, the light around her horn winked out.
"What's your name?" the unicorn asked.
"Bill," he offered. "Bill Weasley. What's yours?"
They were walking through the town together (currently in what felt like a shopping district), because each was the only other thing in the world for the other to speak with, staying about six feet apart. The crest of her head came to the midpoint of his bicep, and the horn remained ready to stab at all times.
"I tried breaking into a few places," the mare casually said. "Because it's a dream, and there's no consequences. But it's a dream with the best locks in the world."
"I was listening at doors," Bill admitted. "To see if anyone was home."
It triggered a soft snicker. "Now that's how I know it's my dream. Did you hear anything interesting?"
"No." And he didn't like gossip. "Why did you get so angry when I said you were beautiful?"
Her head tossed, and the mane expertly flowed with the movement.
"It's a new level of flattery," she decided. "Something nopony's seen before, a male from another species, takes a look at me -- and the first thing they recognize is that I'm beautiful. That's one for the record books. But it's also annoying. Because that's what ponies see when they look at me: that I'm beautiful. And most of them stop right there, because it's the only thing they'll ever let themselves think about."
The unicorn's chin dipped, just a little.
"No matter what I say," she quietly added. "No matter what I do. I'm beautiful, and -- that's it. I have to be stupid, because I'm beautiful. I can't possibly understand anything they're saying behind my tail. I can't do anything but be somepony else's living ornament." More sharply, "There's ways to use that. As a weapon --"
"-- I..."
It stopped her, words and trot. She simply looked at him, waiting for the rest which embarrassment had frozen within his lungs.
"You're not going to believe me," Bill decided.
"It's a dream," the unicorn countered. "I can believe a lot of things when they're not real. I can say just about anything when no one's truly listening. Try me."
He managed something of a half-smile.
"Can you believe," he tried, "that for a human male, I'm attractive?"
She slowly looked him over, head to feet and back again.
"That's the name of your species? Human?"
"Yes."
"It's a stupid name," she decided. "All right. Since I have nothing I can compare you against, let's say you're telling the truth. You're the best-looking human male ever to walk the halls of whatever-that-castle's-name-was. So?"
There was a fountain, and water was splashing behind them. Every so often, a stray drop would fly up and hit Bill's shirt. He felt the moisture every time it soaked in.
They were both sitting on the edge -- well, he was sitting. She was about two feet away, her legs folded under her body and resting on a rim which was wide enough to accommodate her form.
"It's strange, isn't it?" she asked. "How they only hear the things which support what they already believed." And that was followed by a little sigh. "Maybe that's why I dreamed of you tonight. Because some part of me is always going to be frustrated about this."
"Is it a better dream now? Because we're talking about it?" Which seemed to be a natural question.
"I usually have nightmares," she softly admitted, and her chin sank towards the marble. "At least for that, this is better." Her gaze shifted to his face. "And since you think you're dreaming -- same question, Bill."
"It's good to talk with someone who understands the problem," he admitted. "I just don't know if there's any answer." His hands clenched against the fountain's rim. "I swear sometimes, I'd give up my looks if it meant finding real love --"
"-- I wouldn't."
It had been immediate, and the darkness in the words created a gravity which pulled his attention in.
"They're not the same thing," the unicorn said. "Attraction and love. One can lead to the other, and... I suppose it's possible, having it go the other way around." Words which seemed to be doubting themselves. "That if you come to love someone for who they truly are, you could start to see them as beautiful. I'm used to ponies being attracted, and some of them lie to themselves, Bill. They say it's love, because that'll let them stay near me that much longer. It means..."
Her chin touched her forelegs, disrupted the elegant lie of the fur around the edge of contact. She automatically, compulsively licked the strands back into place.
"...that they won," the mare continued. "And I think you know what that's like. But you're a good person. It doesn't take long to hear that. And I can even guess there's something handsome about you." Her lips quirked. "Like your hair."
His right hand went up, and fingers ran through the deliberately-formless lack of style. "My hair?"
"It's got a good spread," she decided. "Like a lion's mane."
The sixth-year smiled.
"'The lion and the unicorn'," he mused. "'All around the town'...'"
She was staring at him.
"It's from a historical poem in my country," he explained. "I think it's supposed to be about politics. I'm also pretty sure I got part of it wrong."
It was a half-nod of concession to something which could never be proven, and the finely-styled tail slowly swept across the rim.
"Being a good person," the mare quietly continued, "means you have more to offer than just your looks. Beauty can bring somepony in -- but it doesn't always make them stay. Not when they figure out who's inside your skin. If you ever became ugly, Bill, if something happened... you'd be okay. Because you're so easy to speak with that even in a dream, even when I know you're not real -- or because you're not real -- I can..."
The huge eyes closed.
"You're a good person," she repeated. "There's something in you that's worth love. But beauty... it's almost never for a lifetime. I've only got so many years to be pretty, and when that's over -- I have to be ready for what comes next. So much of what I've done was about being ready. Because once my looks are gone, when there's nothing in the way to keep ponies from seeing what's underneath -- I have to be ready. To... to be alo --"
He knew it was a mistake even as he felt it happening, and he let it happen anyway.
Eyes scrunched tightly shut in a perpetual refusal to allow tears shot open, and her head jerked forward -- but the horntip stopped short of his chest.
Bill gently stroked the soft fur of her forehead.
"You don't think you're a good person." Because in a dream, the words which were easiest to hear were the ones that had gone unsaid.
"I did what I had to." The tone was defensive, her eyes flashed malice -- but she did not pull away from his touch. "Ponies don't understand that. They don't recognize what the world is really like. That it's predator and prey, and if you're not one, you're the other. Predators live. Prey --"
"-- you're a pony," he smiled, because it wasn't going to make her feel better, he didn't know if anything could, but a joke would at least show he wanted to try. "Aren't you prey already?"
The horntip was now indenting his shirt.
"Don't push your luck."
He shut up, at least until she'd pulled back a little.
"You've been spending a dream with someone you don't know," Bill told her. "Someone who's ugly. There's a lot of girls who wouldn't do that. You offered me a whole night. Hours of time. You always have something to offer. The time of your life, spent with someone you want to be with. What's more precious than that?"
She was oddly silent for a while.
"You said you wanted to work at a bank?"
He nodded.
Wryly, "I wouldn't go saying that out loud."
They were moving across one of the bridges, and the sky was starting to lighten.
"So what do you think I should do?" asked the sixth-year.
"Push off her in public," answered the unicorn. "Over and over. The bigger the crowd, the better. Someone who thrives on making others look bad is going to hate having it turned on her. There's no good way to do it: not in the sense where she won't be looking for revenge. But you already know what she's like. At least that means you'll be on guard for it."
He nodded -- but it sounded like something which was much easier said than done, along with being a subject where she had a lot more personal experience. "And about the rest of it?"
She paused over the keystone, and looked out across the stream.
"Stop worrying," the mare told him. "Don't stop looking. Don't give up. Put up with whatever you can, and find someone you can complain to about the rest. But you're going to be okay. Your girl is out there, Bill. Just give her a little extra time to find you. No matter what happens... you'll be all right."
"What about you?"
She looked directly at him. Huge eyes locked onto smaller ones, with no caring about the features which surrounded them. Looking at him.
"It's funny," she finally said. "I can dream about castles and a different kind of school for magic, 'humans' and 'witches' and 'wizards'. And with you, for your life... I can't imagine anything except a happy ending. But I know how the world works. My world, the real world." And with the starkest tones he'd ever heard from anything living, "So don't ask me to dream for myself."
He was frozen, paralyzed by the pain which had just been granted to be as his own. Struggling to find words he could say as they stood at the apex of the bridge, anything which would save her before she drowned --
-- and then that bridge began to shake.
The archway came apart. The sky, now saturated with red and pink, cracked. He was pulled to the right, she went left --
"Enjoy your life!" the receding unicorn called out. "Whatever there is of it after I wake up!"
He dropped to his knees, clung to the stone as it turned to mist within his fingers, and used the last chance he had.
"What if it's real? What if every bit of it is real, if we're both real? What if I never see you again --"
"-- you still think you're the real one?" It was the only time she truly laughed. "Then it's easy, isn't it?" And her final words just barely reached him, even as the world itself dissolved and she did not. "Dream of me!"
He'd been in the hospital wing enough times to not only have a full sense of it, but to have picked out a favorite bed. And so when he opened his eyes, the second thing he registered was the presence of Madam Pomfrey, immediately after he'd realized he wasn't in it.
"Welcome back, Mr. Weasley," the Healer smiled in relief. "Seven hours, if you're wondering. You've already had a few visitors --" with open frustration "-- including your brother and that Ravenclaw girl who keeps bringing you in over and over. And now that you're awake --"
"-- let me think!"
It wasn't exactly an order. The words had been closer to desperation.
Purest shock. "...what?"
"I had a dream --"
"-- you've been dreaming for --"
"-- and I'm going to forget it, if I don't concentrate right now, I'm going to forget. Please, Madam Pomfrey, I need to think or I'm going to lose it!" Both hands were roaming through his hair, pushing against his temples. "I need to think...!"
It took a few seconds before she stopped staring at him.
"Then do that," the Healer ordered. "I will be using the time to bring in your next guests."
When the three of them came in, he was still silently repeating the name to himself, three beats at a time, followed by starting over. He couldn't let himself lose her name. But then he heard the footsteps, looked up --
"In your own time, Mr. Weasley," Professor Dumbledore quietly said, interlocking his hands in front of the lower portion of that long white beard. "We shall wait."
It took another ten minutes before he felt as if it was safe to talk, it was also ten minutes before he became fully aware of the way Professor Trelawney was staring at him, and then he couldn't stop being aware of it. Her lenses had magnified her eyes, and it almost brought them to the same size as --
"My dear boy!" she finally exclaimed after he'd sat up. "What did you See? You must tell us all of the details! For someone to have come through the accident without so much as a tremor, to have dreamed for hours on end -- surely you must have Seen! We stand ready to record it all --"
"-- Sybil," Professor Dumbledore cautioned, "let him breathe. Especially as we are all so fortunate as to watch him indulge in exactly that, and such is the single most important thing about all of this. Mr. Weasley, do you want a scroll? Something to record your dream upon?"
He nodded, and an elder wand flicked through the air. They gave him another fifteen minutes to write on the parchment, although Snape began to tap his feet after five.
"Consider yourself to have added to the wealth of extant knowledge for the subtle science of potion-making," the black-haired teacher declared at the moment the scroll was rolled up. "If only inadvertently. We now have some idea of what happens when an ill-made love potion makes contact with Elixir. I was able to extract a confession from Ms. Tyler, who admitted that her plan was to place it within your water glass -- something she otherwise would have saved until dinner. She has yet to admit how the potion got into the castle, but she may change her mind about that during her detentions." The cloak's arms folded. "Plural. But after determining the nature of that interaction and how it was affecting your body, it was decided that the safest thing to do was allow you to rest."
Bill slowly exhaled, and the next intake of breath pulled in all of the horror.
"A love potion?"
"Yes," Dumbledore smiled. "Ms. Tyler has something of a sense of -- let us agree to call it entitlement. She feels she is entitled to possess you. And I happen to feel she is entitled to be on the receiving end of Professor Snape's creativity --"
"-- neither of you," the birdlike woman half-screeched, "is asking about the important part!" She leaned in, close enough so that the majority of what he saw was pupils. "Bill, my dear boy -- is there any Seer blood in your family?"
"Some," he reluctantly admitted, because his family was pureblood and so most of the talents showed up eventually. "But it hasn't turned up for generations."
"And you have never experienced visions before?" Reproachfully, "Really, if you'd just allowed yourself to continue in my class --"
"-- never." Because there was pain, there was torture, and then there was staring into a crystal ball until your eyes teared up.
"But there were no convulsions!" Professor Trelawney exclaimed. "No vocalization! You simply slept and dreamed, dreamed for hours!" With open, almost desperate hope, "There is a thread of talent within you, and if I am simply granted another chance to bring it out --"
"-- ponies," Bill said, because that felt like the best way to stop her.
They were staring at him again.
"I dreamed of a unicorn," he admitted. "One the size of a pony. We talked. For hours. And that's it."
Slowly, horribly, Snape cleared his throat.
"That sounds like the truth to me, Sybil," the potion master decided. "You would never hear a teenage boy admit to something so embarrassing as a lie." (The birdlike woman folded somewhat around the talons.) "I'm sorry to say that you will not be receiving Mr. Weasley into your care, which means he must continue to struggle through mine." Black eyes looked down at Bill. "Do you feel that you've recovered sufficiently to attend your next class?"
Agreement was the only possible answer. (And in the event that Bill was medically wrong about that, it was just easier to let Madam Pomfrey tell him.)
"Good." The cloak swirled about his body as Snape turned away, began to stride from the room --
-- stopped. Glanced back.
"After deconstructing the results of the accident," the teacher stated, "I determined that your work up to that point had been adequate. You have been granted a passing grade, at the level of your current average. Professor Dumbledore, I await a copy of your notes when you finish with him." And either completely unaware or completely uncaring of the near-total memory wipe which that sheer level of stun had almost inflicted, he left.
"The same for you, Sybil, I think," Professor Dumbledore said after the door closed.
"But -- but the boy -- even as symbology, a unicorn can mean purity! And death! And --" she seemed to be struggling somewhat, mostly because she'd just landed on her favorite word and was reluctant to let it go. "-- death...!"
"I will send you," the headmaster calmly decreed, "the portion of my notes which I feel are relevant. That is a promise. To your quarters, please."
She turned in a fury, stalked out of the room. And once the door slam's vibrations had faded, Professor Dumbledore turned to face Bill.
"Well," the old wizard genially began, his wand drawing up an armchair as he sketched out the shape of something plush, "you can tell me, if you wish. As much you like, or as little. I do feel it was about an unicorn, because Professor Snape has always had a knack for hearing truth. But somehow, Mr. Weasley, I feel there might still be something in the details. So..."
Behind the half-moon lenses, blue eyes twinkled.
"...it is your choice. Now and always."
Snape was a terror. Trelawney often came across as a lunatic. Dumbledore was, as everyone in the school knew, completely mad. But he was completely mad in all of the best ways and in the end, that was why Bill talked.
Not about everything, because some of it was too personal, and the scroll spent years being read by his eyes alone. But it was enough.
The headmaster was silent for a while, hands folded upon his lap. The armchair creaked.
"I can only offer you theories," he declared. "If you are willing to listen."
"Please, Professor." It was what you said to Dumbledore, if you were lucky enough to say anything at all.
"The first," the old wizard began, "and also the one I will be suggesting to Sybil, as I seem to recall your having not so much dropped Divination as punted it away with open glee -- is that you simply had a very long, unusually coherent dream. The mismade potion did no more than put you to sleep, and kept you there until its effects had left your body. And it could be that such is exactly what happened. However..."
He hesitated.
"...from your own words," Dumbledore continued, "you were experiencing -- something before the accident. Tiny fragments of sight, no longer than a Muggle film's single frame. There is, as you said, Seer blood in your family -- and perhaps, stirred by the scent of the brew, you experienced as much as you would normally be capable of, with the Elixir at work. But when the love potion joined the mix... we turn to your words again, Bill. Because there is so much wizards and witches still do not know, and the wisest are those who are willing to admit how ignorant they truly are. I have never heard of anything like the setting you described, not with the stars which provide the truest guide. But to have a mind displaced in both time and space? Two dreamers -- in two places -- meeting within a single dream?" The aged head slowly shook. "I will not be so foolish as to call it impossible."
"You think..." It had initially only made sense within the context of the dream itself, and now Dumbledore was saying... "You think that was real?"
"I believe the dream was real," the headmaster calmly replied. "Whether the other dreamer was a unicorn, trotting beneath an unknown sky... you may simply have met a witch who was dreaming she was a unicorn. Or there may have been a unicorn there." With a half-smile, "I confess a preference for the latter."
He was trying to reconcile that, trying to make himself understand impossible implications --
"-- but there is something else," Dumbledore added. "Because as Sybil would tell you, prophecy couches itself in strange imagery. Symbols, and words which can be so easily misinterpreted. What I can tell you is that a potion meant to enhance the opportunity for Seeing met one poorly-named, for it has never brought true love. The effects of their combination are only known to you. But perhaps... they helped each other. There are many possibilities, and among them is that you had a vision of the love which you have yet to find. One which arrived as a dream filled with symbols, and among those... was a unicorn the size of a pony."
He pushed himself out of the chair.
"I will also," the headmaster said, "allow a chance for two out of those three. Remember that dream, Mr. Weasley. Carry it with you. But do not fret too much about its meaning, because there is the chance that it was only a dream. Let it become a fond memory. Because even if it was any level of prophecy -- the future should never be too fixed."
The old wizard smiled.
"I do envy you, though," he said at the last, as the wand waved again and extra pillows appeared behind Bill's head, even as a suddenly-weary head dropped back to let a lion's mane of hair spread across soft fabric. "It sounded like a lovely dream..."
He had worked hard to remember it, and so there were ways in which it remained with him for all his life. There were times when small details threatened to slip, but the feel of the place he had envisioned was forever retained. The words which had been spoken, the mare who had trotted at his side... none of it ever truly left him.
And nothing ever made him forget what turned out to be the most important part. The single thing which led him to take a chance on a girl whom he'd believed would never want him or, after the attack, want to stay. That which, when the war truly ended, brought him a happy ending.
Her name.
Fleur... Fleur... Fleur...
