The Dream Trilogy Book Two: Tread On My Dreams (A Harry Potter FanFiction)

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Sarah Potter froze mid-step on the stairway that led down from her bedroom. Her eyes bore into the wall separating her from Harry's room, her wand poised in her hand. She'd heard a noise, a thud, that travelled even through the wood and plaster of the house. She made no sound as she breathed shallowly, ignoring the light-headed feeling that it gave her. 

It was just a noise, she told herself. This was her own house, there was nothing dangerous here and she was safe. Logically she knew it was true, but it still took a few minutes to really convince herself Harry was just throwing things at Draco's room again, and carry on down the landing.  

She'd pulled a pair of stripy socks up to her knees, but her pyjamas were only a pair of shorts and a faded Holyhead Harpies t-shirt; the days may have been hot of late, but the nights were starting to make up for it in their coldness, and she shivered as she padded into the kitchen.  

She never slept when she was supposed to anymore, and never for very long. It was not unusual to find herself wide awake in the small hours of the morning, rummaging through cupboards to satisfy her grumbling stomach that complained of missed meals and insufficient amounts of vegetables.  

Sarah found herself staring at a jar of Honeyduke's finest chocolate covered jelly-babies, undecided as to whether or not she really wanted any. She ran her tongue stud over the back of her teeth, making a clacking noise that vibrated along her jaw. Greta said that her new eating and sleeping habits were unremarkable considering what she'd been through last year. She also said that expressing herself creatively was healthy no matter how alarming it might be at times. Hence the tongue stud. 

Sarah smiled. Her mum had taken her to get all her new piercings, just how she always took her to see Greta, which is probably why she understood a lot more. Her dad was less approving, but her mum always shrugged it off saying she could take them out whenever she wanted. They'd both drawn the line however at a tattoo that said 'I survived Death Eater Mountain', and in retrospect Sarah begrudgingly agreed. Though she wouldn't admit it out loud. 

Sarah knew Greta was expensive, and that several people were chipping in to cover the cost of her hourly rates, but she knew deep down it was worth it. The past few months had been awful, plain and simple. Even finding the words to talk about the night of the kidnap had seemed like an insurmountable first hurdle, but when Kingsley Shacklebolt had recommended Greta to go to, the words had eventually come. They were accompanied by weeks of destroying her room, screaming at anyone who approached her (including several members of the press and Ministry) and the inability to stomach any food whatsoever, but after a while the fury had died. Sarah learned that she could ransack her room all she liked, but when she was the one who had to put it back together the carnage became less cathartic. She realised that eating was actually one of the only things that comforted her when confusion and doubt made the world spin, and by talking to people like the Ministry she was in fact helping Harry out. 

Harry. Sirius had warned her as kindly as he could not to divulge too much to Greta about his being from another dimension, but it didn't matter anyway. When Sarah talked about how she felt her brother had been a different person in Germany, and couldn't possibly understand because he hadn't really been there, Greta took it purely in psychological terms. She would nod earnestly and ask Sarah how that made her feel.  

That was her favourite question, and to begin with it had driven Sarah mad. There was never much to throw in Greta's sparse office, but Sarah had managed to tip over her chair a few times before admitting that it never really made her feel better in the end. So she would sit, and she would talk about whatever was in her head. It wasn't always Germany, or Harry, or how she had seen Seamus Finnigan die. She saw the world in a completely different light and it angered her. Her old cares and woes seemed trivial to the point of embarrassment now, and when she would explain her troubled relationships to Greta, her fears about the world and her place in it, she would always find the path to make her feel better, more in control.