Chapter 1: Of Heartbreak and Nightmares.
********Number four, privet drive, little whinging********
July 31st 2004
12:01 am
In a tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs in an incredibly average middle class house in Little Whinging, a young man with messy black hair tossed fitfully in his bed. Horrific images flashed before his minds eye at a quick pace. Images, of a giant snake towering over him, a red-headed girl laying lifeless on the ground in front of it. Of a boy, obviously her brother, trying to pull what look to be brains off his body, then a flash to a much younger version of the same boy laying lifeless on a giant chess board. Of a...a thing rising from a caldron surrounded by figures in black, of a man with longish black hair falling through an dark archway and not returning. And finally and most horribly of a young brown-haired girl laying frozen in an old hospital bed, a shocked expression on her face and then the same girl, older, laying seemingly dead to his shocked eyes. He snapped awake with the last. This was always the image that he awoke to. Even more than Sirius's apparent death, this image was one that shook him to the core. It's just because I've known her so long isn't it. I mean, I've probably been friends with Ron longer, but...Harry trailed off in his conscious thoughts, still not sure exactly what the order of the images meant if anything at all. All he knew was that while the nightmares changed around they always ended the same. I guess it's because I just couldn't take it if I lost Ron or ...Mione. The last thought gave him a feeling of a lead weight dropping to the pit of his stomach. Harry sat up and ran his hands though his messy hair, it had grown longer over the summer, the act revealed a lighting-bolt shaped scar that had been hidden by his bangs. He groped for a second on a bedside table and finding a pair of black round-framed glasses, he slipped them on. The glasses framed a pair of shocking green eyes, which were filled with pain.
As he looked up he saw familiar shapes framed in the moonlight on his windowsill. He crossed to the window and opened it carefully so as not to awake the Dursleys, in whose house he currently resided in under protest, both his and theirs. "Hey girl," he whispered to a large snow-white owl, who hooted back at him in a seemingly carefully muted manner, almost as if she knew that she should be quiet. Hedwig was bearing a package for him with a letter on top. Harry smiled at the address written on the letter, the pain easing from his eyes, at least in part:
Harry Potter, the smallest bedroom, #4 privet Dr.
The Letter was in Hermione's neat handwriting. For some reason over the years, Hedwig had always known to go to Hermione for a letter or package to Harry, That is weird now that I think about it, maybe Hedwig knows that Hermione doesn't have an owl of her own? Hedwig having delivered her package gave him a light affectionate nip and hopped up to perch on his dresser. To Harry's horror, the next entrant was far from quiet or sedate, a small fuzzy tennis ball with wings shot in the window and caromed around the room almost knocking off lamps and books. OHHH, shit that damn owl of Ron's is going to wake up Vernon. But Harry's fears were quickly waylaid, as Pig flew too close to Hedwig, she slapped him with one of her great wings, knocking him out of the air into a pile of clothes. "Thanks, Hedwig" Harry said to her in a whisper, and got a muted HOOT in reply. Harry walked over to Pig and grabbed him, pulled a letter from the tiny owl and tossed him back out the window to Ron, I have to talk to Ron about that damn owl, Errol would have been better, he would have just ran into the wall or something.
As Harry got ready to open his package and read his letters, one final messenger arrived. In a bright silent flash, a beautifully red and gold plumed bird appeared. He was holding a note in his golden beak, which he dropped into Harry's waiting hands, and then vanished as he came. Well a note from Dumbledore, this may be...interesting. Harry set the package and letters on his desk. However when he looked down at the desk he saw another pile of letters on the desk, and with a snarl he swept those to the floor. As they fell one could see Harry's name and address written on them in a feminine hand, however that handwriting was not Hermione's.
