Brontide

Chapter Three

I caved and decided to post more so I'm more motivated to write :3

Enjoy! ~~

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I always had the weirdest dreams. No matter how unusual they were my unconscious mind always seemed to think they were real. One night I dreamt about doing the waltz with the Giant Squid in the Black Lake and woke up, frantically searching for any signs of giant tentacles in the girls' dormitories. Another time I dreamt that I was a dragon who was an accountant at Gringotts bank. I always was a bit odd, and this dream was no different.

I was on the back of an oversized ostrich, flying around the many towers of Hogwarts in circles. The sky was bright blue and cloudy, the wind against my face and I felt free. Black and white feathers blew behind me as the ostrich picked up speed, soaring higher and higher into the sky. I looked down and my vision was obscured by thick cumulus clouds, Hogwarts only visible from the spaces in between. I threw my hands into the air and laughed, screaming with joy and exhilaration. I couldn't believe what I was doing, how elated I felt. Everything felt perfect until I looked down again.

The ostrich was gone. I was no longer floating but falling, heading to the ground very quickly. My screams were silenced along with the rest of the world because somewhere distantly my name was being called. The oncoming ground vanished when something hit me in the back of my head and I woke with a start, blinking a few times.

"You were yelling again." I closed my eyes and sank back into my pillow, pulling the covers up to my nose. The girl's dormitory was chilly with September air; stone didn't do much for insulation, let me tell you.

I heard Rae sigh in annoyance. "I've been calling your name for the past five minutes. Everyone else is already down at breakfast," she mumbled, ending her sentence with a yawn. I pulled my blankets tighter around my body and smiled sleepily.

"Mm, that's nice. You think they'd notice if I skipped breakfast?"

"Probably," she replied. I heard her changing into fresh clothes to the right of my bed. "That's not the point. You need to get up and eat or I'll never hear the end of it later."

I groaned. "But Raaaeee I'm so tiiirrreedd." I turned my head to see my short best friend trying to adjust her tie for our school uniform. "Do you want me to be in a foul mood?"

She glared a glare that I've come to know far too well. "Get up or I'm dragging you to the Great Hall in your pajamas."

I mumbled a few unpleasant things and crawled out of bed before she could do just that. She'd done it to me once before. Talk about embarrassment.

I walked downstairs to the Gryffindor common room ten minutes later, finding Rae waiting impatiently by the portrait hole. Her long, light brown pixie cut was sticking up in places. She couldn't lecture me on oversleeping; she did it nearly twice as much as I did.

We entered the Great Hall with half-lidded eyes. Neither of us got much sleep the previous night because we'd been up doing homework until three in the morning. It was only our second week back and I already longed for it to be summer again. I fondly remembered my younger days, when homework consisted of simple math equations and reading a few pages from a book. Those days were long since replaced with feet of essays and hours of practicing incantations.

We sat with the boys who looked just as out of it as we probably did. Fred and George mumbled their greetings, sipping at their pumpkin juices and being generally word-free. Lee Jordan was resting his head on the table. General consensus: it was just too damn early for conversation.

I leaned my head on Rae's shoulder as she reached for some toast and jam. Truthfully I wasn't very hungry, seeing as the need for sleep overpowered the need for sustenance at that particular moment. I had heard that seventh year would be brutal work-wise, the NEWTs coming up and all, but I didn't think it'd be that bad that soon. I was wrong, very, very wrong.