The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

XC: Harry's Nightmare

Harry shuddered at the thought.

But still, it was bothering him.

He'd had a couple nightmares over the past month that had made the scar burn, though most of them had been far duller than the way it burned over these two. He'd had one back on his birthday, which he'd chalked up to having eaten far too much birthday cake after receiving cakes from Sirius and Professor Lupin, Ron, Hermione (though hers was sugar free, since her parents were dentists), and Hagrid (whose cake had been home made and therefore better used as a door stop than a treat, but Harry had written a note of thank you anyway).

(He'd also thought about giving the cake to Dudley, since Diddy-kins was so desperate for sweets it would've been humorous to watch him try at eating the rock cakes Hagrid was famous for. Harry had only stopped himself doing it because then he'd have to explain where the cake had come from and possibly been busted for his floorboard pantry in the process.)

(Besides that, the cake didn't deserve such a terrible fate as to be digested by Dudley Dursley - what a horrid fate for a cake!)

But another two days later he'd had another one that had nothing to do with cake that Harry had nothing to blame for since he'd skipped breakfast (grapefruit), afternoon lunch (grapefruit again) and barely eaten dinner (boiled chicken with crunchy carrot sticks and a serving-spoonful of plain brown rice with a very little squeeze of lime on it, which had been alright until it started making the inside of Harry's lip tingle and he'd quickly abandoned it as a bad job, remembering Professor Lupin had recommended he stay away from all citrus, according to Sirius).

Those two dreams had mostly been thoughts of Wormtail, vague and far-off, like a phantom being remembered in a hazy memory. There were flashes of a great snake and the sound of wheezing breath so strained that Harry only recognized it as breath because it synched in time with his own lungs inflating and emptying. There was some sound like somebody crying, far away, and a lingering, gasping need to speak out the words kill her that grotesquely reminded him of second year, when he heard the basilisk whispering from the pipes all around Hogwarts.

Those were horrible enough dreams, the scar on his forehead zinging like a shock from a static charged blanket. Nothing to concern himself with much, really. He'd mostly forgotten those by the time he'd been scolded for neglecting his grapefruit, completely forgotten them by the time he was dodging Dudley, Piers, and the other boys around Privet Drive and Magnolia Court whose friendship had turned into more of a gang of bullies rallying. It was Piers who had given Dudley the box of Cadbury Fingers and later the powdered sugar doughnuts hidden in Dudley's room. Neither dream had haunted Harry long enough to think they were anything more than just normal nightmares, born out of the terrible experiences the month before in the Shrieking Shack, when Wormtail had materialized and changed Harry's perspective on the Grim that he had been fearful of all year long.

Surely that's all those dreams were - funny memories, twisted by the dreaming mind.

But then last night.

Last night - the 23rd of August - Harry had been dreaming he was slithering on his belly, winding his way across a wide lawn of perfectly manicured grass, up the front steps of an old, run down house on the outskirts of an old, run down village. The house had smelled of dust and a bit of mould, as though it had sat stagnant for years... He'd seen the patches of moonlight falling through windows onto a table set as though for a dinner years ago, cobwebs connecting candelabras to full ornate places with multiple glasses and a complete set of cutlery set right down to the tiny oyster forks.

He's slithered up a flight of stairs, covered by worn maroon carpet that had once been lush, but worn threadbare and full of thick dust particles that were disturbed as he wound his way by. There was a man, an old man in a night gown and sleeping cap, clutching some sort of gardening tool and looking terrified, cowering in the corner of the landing. But Harry slunk by him with scarcely a glance back...