Unofficial Portkey Archive

A/N: I work like crazy so my updates may be rare from this point out. But I'm almost done with Chapter 3 just waiting for it to be edited. Should have it out by the end of the week *fingers crossed* Part 4 is partially written and should be the last installment. Big thanks to my beta reader Chuffi4Harmony! Any errors or typos that were missed are mine not hers. Thanks to all who read and reviewed for this story and for "Private Escape". You guys really do inspire me to continue writing.

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Chapter 2: In His Dreams

Hermione had stayed up the rest of the night after Harry had left her in the common room confused in his wake. She felt rejected, hurt and embarrassed of her actions. All she could do was toss and turn recounting the past few hours in her mind. She cried, hating her own weakness, and willed herself to stop. Loving Harry had always been an inner struggle, but knowing he loved her back and not wanting anything to happen from it left a gaping hole her chest. She never felt this kind of heartbreak before and she didn't know how to handle it.

To pass time she read, going over the text regarding the potion over and over again to see if she had done it wrong. Clearly she had. She heard his thoughts, and felt his emotions telling her one thing, but his actions spoke another. His rejection for her had been quick and without second thought.

But she came to the conclusion that everything went the way it was supposed to, and Harry confused her now more than ever. She found the potion to help understand Harry, but the end result made her think that maybe she shouldn't have drank the potion in the first place and pried into the innermost parts of Harry's heart and mind. All she wanted to do was help, to feel closer to him, to be the one to push him out of the state of mind that he was stuck in right now. If anything, it put even more distance between them, and enough for her to wonder if it would ever be the same way again. She felt guilty and scared that maybe it had ruined their friendship forever.

It would have been easier to be blissfully unaware of his feelings, trapped in her own anguish of unrequited love. She would rather battle with herself everyday just accepting the role of being his best friend than feel this hurt from his rejection when it didn't make sense to her at all.

According to the text there would be lingering effects of the potion. The effects would happen at random, the connection not as strong as the first hour of taking it, but enough to feel really strong emotions, hear whisperings of thoughts, and quick flashes of visions or memories. The connection would only be broken after two weeks after the residual remains of the potion had been completely cleared from her body. The evidence was of this was clear after Hermione had fallen asleep that night and dreamt Harry's dreams.

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Apparently Harry dreamed in color.

His dreams were startling real, true in imagery, and remarkably vivid. Like his current state of mind, the dreams his brain conjured up in his sleep were jumbled, jumping back and forth as if indecisive.

At first, the dreams started off as a rush of images, snippets of last year during the TriWizard Tournament, lingering briefly on the traumatic visions of Cedric dying, and the fear and loathing of Voldemort himself.

But despite her own fears running through her when she saw the images of Voldemort through Harry's mind for the first time, she quickly came to realize that the Dark Lord was not what haunted Harry in his sleep.

It was her.

She could feel the confliction of emotions that he ran through him in his sleep at the foreshadowing thought of her. The horrific vision of Voldemort ran through his brain again, and the flash of green light associated with Cedric Diggery's death played over. The moment when he finally teleported back through the portkey repeated itself in his mind, with him hunched over crying and clutching the body closely. The body was not that of Cedric's but of her, frozen and dead in his arms. Dark shadows of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named made itself shown, and Voldemort's terrifying triumphant laugh that sang through Harry's mind was not as loud as his own voice telling himself the be more cautious, to not fall too hard, and that he couldn't have her in order to protect her.

Despite his turmoil, his brain sorted out that this was only a dream, and let itself flow into happier thoughts of him and her as if it couldn't help itself. With a sudden jolt it flashed to the image of them laughing together in the common room. Then jumped to a memory of the younger version of her running toward him and hugging him with a huge smile on her face. To her sitting close to him while they studied with her leaning over his shoulder to see his paper work and correcting him along the way.

A tidal wave of memories and emotions swirled around in his brain; all in which focused on her and only her. Countless images flashed around her circling in a whirlwind of moments that she herself barely remembered. Yet clearly they were important enough to him since they were replaying in his dreams and leaking into his unconscious state of mind.

She saw herself at different stages of their time at Hogwarts. From the first year with her bushy out of control hair and her arrogant `know-it-all' persona introducing herself on the train; to every time he played a Quidditch match with her there to cheer him on regardless of the fact that she did not enjoy the game; to a flash of them riding on the back of Buckbeak during their third year with her arms tightly wrapped around him fearfully and her face buried into his neck; and lingered on the moment he stared at her in awe as she made an appearance at the Yule Ball and down the staircase into his view.

He made her look beautiful, feel beautiful, with all the overwhelming emotions and images of her flashing through his mind. But his dreams took a sudden detour, and focused on snippets that clearly weren't from reality as she wished they would be. Before her eyes she saw an image of him running his hand through her wavy long hair to finally settle at the curve of her neck. To him kissing a freckle on her neck. To him snogging her senselessly.

There was another jolt and the images ran backward quickly as if in rewind like his brain wanted to replay the moments leading up to this. The dream started to take on more of plot as a scene played out before her. It was as if his previously indecisive unconscious state of mind had decided what it wanted to focus on, and knew which direction it wanted to go. The imagery blurred and refocused, and Hermione recognized the moment that lay before her.

It was their second day back after the summer break and they we're sitting in her favorite spot in the library working on the assignment Professor Binn's had given them that day. It was all the way in the back, tucked in the corner, where most students never went, nor did they even know about. Madam Prince seldom went to this corner of the library knowing the books were hardly touched, never checked out, and when she did pop in every once and a while she merely nodded in their direction and left them to study. It was quiet and Hermione liked to think of it as her secret place where she went when she wanted to be alone. Only her, Ron, and Harry really knew about it, but Ron never really went back there with them, not finding any desire to go deeper into the library than he needed to.

It was an unusually hot day. With magical advantages, Hogwarts was usually a comfortable room temperature year round yet this section in the library was so desolate, and far from any windows that the air around them was stagnant and humid.

Despite the stifling heat Harry found refuge with being alone with her even if it was just to study. It had been a long tiring day. The whispering seemed to be out of control today, and resentment that a lot of his fellow classmates had toward him had progressed to confrontations that he was not prepared to face and it was all just too overwhelming.

He found solace in her company. She the one person he could rely on to not judge him, and he was eternally grateful for it. Sure Ron had trusted him and believed him about what had happened last year during the TriWizard tournament, but Hermione had never let her jealousy cloud her judgment, nor let the misconceptions about his fame taint her loyalty towards him. Her faith in him never wavered, and although Ron continued to assure him that things will get better and that he will stick by his side no matter what, being with Hermione comforted him more than anything else at the moment.

They sat in comfortable silence, and for the life of him he couldn't concentrate on the assignment that he knew had to be done. He had only completed one sentence before he looked up at her, and he felt trapped. He was overcome with a startling realization to how beautiful she looked, how much he desired for her, and how much he wanted her. It was such a powerful emotion that he couldn't breathe and he knew that it wasn't due to the humidity around him that felt thick enough to cut with a knife. Admittedly, it hadn't been the first time he felt this way about her, but this was the first time he allowed himself to dwell on the thought of her this way.

She was in her element. Her quill flew across the parchment in rapid flowing movements and she only paused to glance at the textbook that lay across from her. Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, and she was biting her lip in the way he found adorable when she concentrated. The evidence of the late August heat was visible by the flush of her cheeks and the sweat that was forming at the bridge of freckled nose. Like him, her robe was hanging over the chair next to her, along with her tie, and she had her sleeves rolled up trying to find relief from the heaviness of their uniform. She had a few buttons of her blouse undone, and he leaned closer as if he couldn't help himself wanting badly to glace down her shirt.

He blamed it on his adolescent hormones. This was Hermione after all, his best friend, whom if had known his intentions would hex him into oblivion. Most of the time he could control his teenage urges because he prided himself as being chivalrous and respectful of the opposite sex, but Hermione was so unguarded at the moment, oblivious to the world and not her in her normal attentive and conservative state that it was too tempting not to take a quick glance.

She could sense his stare and glanced up at him and he averted his gaze quickly. "This is not the kind of assignment you can copy off of me you know," she said teasingly and smiled.

The teasing smile on her face only made him want her even more and Hermione was reminded that this was only a dream as images of him kissing her without abandon and pushing their study tools off of the table in a mad rush to let his teenage hormones take control flashed quickly. It was only but a second that his mind let it wander down that path but enough to know that the memory of that day must have taken a lot of self restrain on his part.

The imagery of his adolescent impulses vanished as if being erased for a clean slate and the voice of his own thoughts rang loud and clear in the dream.

This is Hermione.

My best friend.

The most loyal person that I've ever known.

The one person that without I probably wouldn't be alive today.

She deserves better than to rush into anything.

She deserves to be taken care of.

And I want to give that to her.

I've never felt this way about anyone before.

I am truly, madly, in love with her . . .

And with a startling realization Hermione deducted that this was the exact moment that Harry Potter fell in love with her. It was such a mundane moment. The moment ordinary in comparison to other memories and adventures that she shared with him. Yet the fact that it was such a simple moment made her heart swell because all it took was a single instant with them alone, with them being themselves in comfortable companionship that made him realize that he loved her. It made her recognize that he loved her solely for being who she was, and more importantly who she was to him. It was in that simple second with them tucked away in their own world in the back of the library that their friendship had been pushed past the normal boundaries all in it's own accord. After all, their relationship had always been teetering on the edge of the cliff between platonic and not so platonic boundaries and there really wasn't a need for something colossal to push both of them past what would be considered normal for friends.

She remembered the moment clearly, yet Harry reminded her through his dream what happened next. He leaned over and touched her hand softly making her look up again, breaking her concentration as she felt the jolt of electricity from his touch. She remembered it felt different than any other touch he had given her, and she extended her hand and opened her palm to him to take his hand.

He said nothing, and accepted taking her hand entwining their fingers together with a nervous smile on his face and she watched as he flushed and looked down at his parchment. She recalled how young he looked, despite the fact that he had grown into a man before her eyes. His hair was awry and his green eyes shown bright like the day they arrived at Hogwarts. She knew the look, because she wore it herself that day, and probably in that exact moment along with him that day in the library. She knew that this was the last time she was able to read the look in his eyes and she saw it clearly as they were filled with a sense of awe that something monumental would happen in the near future, that something magical was happening, and it would change their lives forever.

Nothing else happened after that, it was just a private, special moment that happened between them, and they silently continued to study, not willing to let the moment pass, nor let go of one another's hand.

She watched as the images swirled around her and fade as she felt the familiar pull of her being swept away from the connection and everything faded to black.

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Hermione woke with a startled gasp due to the magical pulse that ran strongly through her. She was left with a stronger ache in her chest than what she felt before she had fallen asleep and she felt a mad impulse to go to Harry.

The notion was quickly dropped as she heard the familiar unlady-like snores from Lavender Brown's bed, and glanced out the window. It was still dark, and she knew she and Harry were probably the only ones awake at this hour.

So did all she could do, and stared up at the silk red canopy of her bedpost, and dwelled on that moment in that dream. She wondered what happened and restlessly ran it over in her mind. She could envision Harry doing them same, and a wave of anger ran through her.

Why was he acting like such a prat? She couldn't understand it for the life of her. That was Ron's job after all. The memory of them in the library was such a special moment, and things could have been so different after that. They could have been together by now, she would be there to comfort him though everything, and yet Hermione knew that after that moment was when he started to push her away.

Nothing confused her more than Harry James Potter right now.

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Harry woke to an odd tingle of magic course through him. It was the same as he felt before this afternoon walking toward the common room. Something was going on, and he needed to get to the bottom of it all.

He sat up quickly to investigate, but stopped when he looked out the window. From the placement of the moon and the shade of nightfall he guessed that it was probably only three in the morning and no one was awake at this hour but him. He woke from nightmares countless times enough to figure out what time it was without a watch by now, and he knew better than to roam the halls at this hour.

So he did all he could do and stared up at the deep red canopy of his bedpost and contemplated his dream. His dreams of Hermione tormented almost as much as dreams of Voldemort did these days; the emotional pain hurting as violently as the physical pain of his scar when the Dark Lord made his way into his dreams at night.

It was that night after their moment in library that Voldemort opened a connection that was stronger than anything he ever felt before in his dreams. He could feel as Voldemort poked and prodded through his brain, and found the source of his weakness and saw Hermione and the emotional output that had consumed his thoughts at night and during the day. Voldemort spent the rest of the night in his dreams tormenting the dream Hermione, showing what he will do to her if he ever got a hold of her.

It was heart wrenching. It was that day forward that he made the decision to break away from her along with everyone else. He was strong enough to deal with being alone. He spent most of his life doing so, taking care of himself and just spent every day focusing on survival.

His mind and heart betrayed him though. This afternoon with Hermione in the common room was a close call. Something pulled him to her, and he was terrified at the prospect. Was it Voldemort? Or was it Hermione? The look in her eyes after she woke up made him think that she wanted him as much as he did her. But how? She never showed any inkling of fancying him, never showed a hint of wanting things to develop further than their friendship. He sighed quietly.

Nothing confused him more than Hermione Jean Granger did right now.

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