Pale Ghosts Ascend

All Things Were Full of Horror and Affright

The rest of the night went more or less as I had expected. Dumbledore introduced the tournament to the students, explaining the rather contrived reasoning as to why me and Andromeda were eligible despite nobody else under seventeen being allowed to enter, which elicited more than a few grumbles and jealous and/or slightly murderous glances directed towards us by the students. Frankly, I didn't much understand the appeal. Dumbledore was quite clear as to why the rule was put in place: the tournament had a nasty habit of killing its participants. I suppose that sort of thing seemed exciting to someone who didn't deal with mortal peril on a daily basis, but that someone was certainly not me, and I found the whole thing unnecessarily dangerous.

The dinner took my mind off of my concerns over child welfare, however. I hadn't expected it to compete with the meals back at camp, where we could have basically anything we wanted, but something about the wide variety of food being directly in front of me as opposed to just summoning it via magic with a single thought made it somehow taste better. Andromeda was equally excited, and we chatted with the others near us, building up our cover story and fake history at Ilvermony in the process. We met a chubby kid named Neville who seemed very pleasant, if perhaps a bit timid, and Ron's sister, Ginny, who blushed profusely when I mentioned that Harry had told us about her on the train. After the dinner wrapped up, we made our way to the Gryffindor common room, which was hidden behind a painting of a very plump noblewoman. Me and Andromeda shared a quick kiss goodnight, and parted for our rooms.

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I had strange dreams that night, for the first time in a couple weeks. The normal horrible prophetic dreams of the future that us demigods get sometimes. I saw flashes of battle, a street littered with rubble, and a vast army with what I can only describe as glowing black banners and beams of light shooting high into the sky. I saw other things too, terrible things. Visions of faceless bodies wearing clothes soaked in blood, of a line of funeral pyres sending glittering smoke high into the night sky. I woke with a start, an eerily familiar dark laughter echoing through my mind. I glanced over at the window, and saw only the darkness of the early morning, lit by the faintest hint of sunlight beyond the horizon.

I made my way out and into the common room, just to walk and clear my mind a bit. As I made my way down the stairs, I saw that I wasn't alone. Over by a window, staring out onto the faintly illuminated Hogwarts grounds, was Harry. I slowly approached him, glad to at least not be alone with my thoughts.

"Hey man, why are you up so early?"

Harry jolted upright, seemingly not having heard me come down the stairs.

"I... bloody hell, you scared me there Y/N."

I shrugged, rubbing my eyes a bit. "Sorry, I thought you heard me come down. Couldn't sleep, had some bad dreams."

Harry nodded. "Same. I... can I trust you with something?"

I frowned a bit, but nodded. "Of course man, won't tell anyone. What is it?"

He took a deep breath. "Thanks. It's just... you seem like you've been through some stuff, I thought maybe you'd understand more than most. I get these dreams sometimes. They feel more like visions. Its usually relating to Voldemort in some way, even if its not explicitly about him a lot of the time. But they aren't just nightmares, at least I don't think, they seem more like... I don't know. Something more."

I pursed my lips. "Almost like visions of the future."

He shook his head. "No, no, they seem more like stuff in the past or present. I'm not sure how I know that, I just do."

I let out an internal sigh of relief. These probably weren't demigod dreams, I didn't have to deal with that side of stuff with Harry at least.

"Huh. I think I get what you mean. I get stuff sorta like that sometimes too, but I haven't really heard of any other wizards getting it, so I don't think its really a normal thing. Unless its just one of those things that's so normal nobody talks about it. But yeah, I can see why that would bother you."

Harry smiled slightly in appreciation. "So what should I do about them then?"

"Honestly I'm not sure. Maybe start writing them down? I do that with some of the stuff I see sometimes. I, uh, have a friend back home who's really into all things sleep related, he's pretty good at interpreting dreams. His name is Clovis, I could send some of what you write down back to him and have him let me know what he thinks. He won't tell anyone either, promise."

Harry perked up a bit at hearing that. "Really? You'd do that for me?"

I nodded. "Of course man! We're friends, right? Just write a few down and I'll send him a little case file of sorts, have him try and figure out what might be going on there."

"I think I'd like that. Thanks mate, it means a lot. This stuff has been bothering me for a while now."

I smiled back at him and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "No worries man. Can't promise it'll all be solved right away, but it can't hurt to try, eh?"

After a couple minutes of idle conversation in front of the common room fireplace, Harry went back to his bed, but I didn't follow. I was hardly going to manage to get back to sleep after the dreams I had, not that I really wanted to. Those were by far the most terrifying I had ever had, and it was all I could do to keep from breaking down into tears now that I didn't have Harry to distract me. The bodies. The bodies. I couldn't see who they were, but I knew all the same. Fellow demigods. My friends, people close to me. A war was coming, and I would lose people in it. When, I didn't know. It could be a week away or a decade away. But the dreams were clear. Death was coming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.