Daydreamer - The Girl Who Lived

Chapter 11

My cloak had stayed at the bottom of my trunk for the rest of the Christmas holidays, I was afraid that if I had it any closer to me then I wouldn't be able to keep my promise to Dumbledore and I would go looking for the Mirror of Erised again. I just couldn't forget what I had seen, my parents all alive and healthy, all of them together and happy, all looking at me with love in their eyes, that wasn't something I could just forget or let go. Instead of being able to look into their faces now, I got nightmares of a high cackling laugh and a bright green light.

"You see, Dumbledore was right, that mirror could drive you mad," Ron had said to me when I told him about these dreams.

Her,I one had other opinions when we had filled her in on everything that had happened when she had been gone. One part of her was absolutely horrified that I had spent so much time out of bed at night and wandering around the castle, she kept on repeating that Filch could have caught me. On the other hand, she expressed her great disappointment that we hadn't managed to find a single thing out able Flamel.

During her rant, I did try and put my headphones in and listen to a Kanas song that I loved, but found that Hermione obviously knew exactly what my Walkman was so I couldn't shut her out by listening to music unfortunately.

Now term had restarted, our hopes of finding anything out about Flamel had dimmed, we didn't have time to look in the library with lessons being back on. Plus I now had the added Quidditch practices Wood was putting on, since he had become slightly mad and frantic about it.

He was working us harder then ever, most of our sessions being out in the pouring rain, which I definitely wasn't enjoying. No matter how much the twins complained, however, I couldn't help but agree with Wood. We needed to win our next match against Hufflepuff in order to overtake Slytherin in the house championship. Plus, whenever we had a long and tiring practice, I didn't have any nightmares.

During one wet and muddy session, after Wood had yelled at Fred and George for five bombing each other and pretending to fall off their brooms, he had given us the worst news he could have ever given.

"Will you stop messing around!" he yelled. "That's exactly the sort of thing that'll lose us the match! Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!"

George actually did fall off his broom this time.

"Snape's refereeing?" he spluttered with a mouthful of mud. "When's he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He's not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin."

"It's not my fault," said Wood. "We've just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn't got an excuse to pick on us."

I had a completely different reason for feeling sick at the thought of Snape being near me when I played.

As the rest of the team hung back to talk after practice, I immediately headed back to the common room in order to fill Ron and Hermione in, finding them playing chess together in the corner. Chess was the one thing we had found that Hermione lost at, honestly I could beat her, which we found was good for her.

"Don't talk to me for a moment," Ron instructed me as soon as I sat down, "I need to concen-" He turned slightly and saw the terrified look on my face. "What's the matter with you? You look terrible."

I had to keep my voice as hushed as possible, but I quickly explained Snape's spontaneous career change to them.

"Don't play," said Hermione at once.

"Say you're ill," said Ron.

"Pretend to break your leg."

"Really break your leg."