It's No Great Mystery (Drarry)

Chapter Two

His hands met air. He rummaged around again, more frantically this time, as Seamus whistled in a low tone and said, "Drinking alone, Harry? Jesus, you'll wanna work on that before it gets ya."

Harry couldn't find the bottle. He kneeled down and checked under the bed, but it wasn't there either.

"What Ball?" Ron said slowly, as the warning siren transfigured itself into a tsunami alert. "The Ball's tonight." Laughter crept into his voice. "Harry... were you dreaming?"

Harry, who could not produce any proof of last night, but who had also accidentally proven himself innocent in the most terrifying of ways, forced himself to laugh.

"You know, I reckon I might've been," he said, in a voice that came out far higher than even puberty had allowed.

Seamus and Dean burst into laughter, and then began to sing again, right from where the chorus had left off. Ron sat up, his relieved smile growing as he looked Harry up and down.

"Must've been some dream," he said cheerily. "You look like shit."

"Feel it, too," Harry said breathlessly. "Listen—I'll meet you downstairs, okay?"

The only answer came in the form of song.

"Please don't be there, please don't be there," Harry whispered to himself. The songs he could make sense of—his mind had probably heard the first one while he was still asleep and incorporated it, while the second was just... coincidence. You were allowed a few coincidences in life. It was normal.

He couldn't, however, have dreamed up an entire Luna.

As he clattered down into the common room, his heart sank as his eyes landed on the serene young woman sitting by the fire, her blonde hair glinting in the cosy glow.

"Are you protesting today, Harry?" Luna asked, gently collecting the threads of Harry's sanity and setting them merrily on fire. "Oh. You look like you've had a rough night."

"Something like that," he said faintly, coming to sit in the chair opposite. "How did you get in here, Luna?"

"Melinda let me in."

Right. The elusive Melinda. Was there even a Gryffindor named Melinda? He'd never met her.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at Luna, struggling to think of the proper way to voice his concerns.

"Oh dear," she said pleasantly into the silence. "You look like you could really do with a friend."

Harry choked on something that sounded awfully like a sob. "Probably could, yeah."

Luna reached forward and patted his knee. "Would you like biscuits or pastries? I have both."

"Er," he began, and then realised that his stomach was too unsettled to eat. "Actually, maybe I need to take a walk to clear my head or something. Not that I don't appreciate the company, Luna, I'm just... really messed up this morning."

Luna nodded in understanding. "The chill in the air always helps me refocus. Before you go, here—Happy Christmas, Harry."

Harry's heart skipped a beat as he stared at the familiar package. He reached out gingerly, offering Luna the warmest smile he could muster, and slowly unwrapped the present.

"It's a Consilium," he said in carefully neutral tones.

"You know of them!" Luna said brightly, so clearly pleased that Harry couldn't bring himself to say what he'd been about to—that this had all happened before, and he'd somehow gone back in time.