Chapter Text
Chapter 10
Dreams of Voldemort
"Someone dared to try and kill Potter? He's mine to kill! Who did this?" a man who looked as if a parent had been a reptilian crossbreed raged. The man looked to be about sixty years old, had slitted, snake-like eyes and very thin nostrils. His bald head gleamed in the candlelight, and long, thin bony fingers clenched the armrests of his leather throne-like chair. Several figures stood nearby, all wearing long black robes, hoods drawn up over their hair, hiding any identifying features with their faces hidden by white masks in the shape of a skull.
"Adams, report! What does the Auror Report say about the attack?" Voldemort, also known by the moniker You-Know-Who to most of magical Britain, demanded.
"The dementors in question were given an order to attack him by someone who had the authority, legally, to do so, but the orders were not sanctioned. Unfortunately, I don't have enough seniority inside the department to know the names of the people with that power."
"Very well. Malfoy, go question the oaf who calls himself minister. Find out the identities of everyone on that list!"
"Yes, my Lord," Lucius Malfoy's cold voice said, bowing to his master.
"Oh, and Adams? That wasn't good enough. You should have asked around. stealthily, of course, and gotten the information out of someone who believes you to be loyal to the ministry! I shouldn't have to tell you how to do your job! Crucio! " The curse struck the Death Eater known as Adams, who fell to the ground, shaking jerkily and screaming in pain.
Miles away in London, Harry woke suddenly with a scream, sitting up in bed in shock.
"Harry, what's wrong?" Ron asked sleepily, but worriedly, awoken by his best friend's scream.
"I had a weird dream again, like the one I had last year. Voldemort is mad that someone besides him tried to kill me, apparently."
"Should I be surprised? Because somehow, I'm really not," Ron snorted. "That sounds exactly like something he would do, a Dark Lord probably isn't a fan of sharing."
"Definitely not," Harry said. "I wonder what's up with these dreams. Dumbledore said that I have them because Voldemort accidentally shared his power with me or something when he tried to kill me as a baby, but I don't know, that sounds like something out of a story book."
Ron laughed sleepily. "Yeah, I've never heard of such a thing, either, but I'm not an expert in everything magic. I say you ask Sirius and Remus in the morning for their opinion."
"Yeah, that's a good idea, I'll do that," Harry said, glancing at his watch and groaning at the time. "It's only one, I'm going back to bed. Good night, again, Ron."
"Night," Ron mumbled. The redhead began snoring only a minute or so later, and Harry let the sound soothe him to sleep, long since used to it thanks to the four years of being in the bed next to him in the Gryffindor dorms.
After breakfast that morning, Harry and Sirius once again found themselves upstairs in the galaxy-inspired office.
"What did you want to talk to me about, Pup?" Sirius asked his godson once they were comfortable in the black leather chairs.
Harry sighed. "I had a weird dream about Voldemort, like I did last year about him planning for the tournament. This time he was meeting with a few Death Eaters, including an auror named Adams - we should tell Tonks about him - and Lucius Malfoy. He was really mad that someone sent dementors after me, apparently he wants to personally kill me. He ordered Malfoy to find out the names of everyone who can give dementors directives, and he cast the Cruciatus Curse on Adams for not having access to that information; apparently, he's not very high up in the chain of command at the DMLE. But the weirdest part was I felt the curse, as if he'd cast it on me and not Adams."
Sirius frowned in concern. "That... is very worrying, I'm not aware of any magic that can do that to someone. I'll add it to the list of things I need to research in the Black Family Library. Make sure you tell me if you have any more dreams, alright?"
"I promise."
"Good! We'd best be getting back downstairs or Molly will have our heads! Why don't you head on down, I'm going to go feed Buckbeak, I have him in one of the spare bedrooms."
"OK, see you in a bit, Sirius," Harry said, looking at his godfather oddly - he'd never heard of someone keeping a hippogriff as an indoor pet before!
As Harry passed by Fred and George's room on his way downstairs, he heard the twins laughing hysterically behind the closed door. Harry hesitated, not sure if he wanted to continue on and avoid whatever the twins were up to, or assuage his curiosity.
'What the hell, I'm curious ,' Harry thought to himself as he knocked on the door. The laughing cut off immediately, and Harry heard the sounds of the twins hurriedly moving things around. If he had to guess, Harry would say they must be hiding things in case it was their mother who knocked - the Weasley matriarch had never been very happy with the things the twins got up to in their spare time.
After a very long two minutes of banging and hurried footsteps, the door swung open, revealing one of the twins, his red hair in terrible disarray. "Harry, good to see you, old chap! We were afraid you were Mum! Come in, come in, as our secret benefactor you really must see what we've been up to!"
Harry entered the room, and the twin - Harry thought it was Fred but he wasn't one hundred percent sure - closed the door behind him quickly. The other twin was pulling out a large trunk from underneath the twin bed on the right side of the room. He opened it to reveal a large array of boxes, pieces of stray bubble gum, fake wands, and, strangely, what looked to be human ears attached to peach-colored strings. "Are these all inventions for your joke shop?" he asked.
"That it is!" the first twin replied. "George, why don't you show him the wands first?"
"Right away, good sir!" George chirped. "Harry, these are our fake wands! They turn into rubber chickens when you grab them!" He demonstrated, picking up one of the wands from the inside of the trunk, which transformed with a loud 'poof'. "Just switch this with a wand someone leaves laying around, making sure to use a cloth or something to hold it, and freak them out the next time they need to cast a spell!"
"That's ingenious, must have taken some very good spellcrafting," Harry commented. "Arithmancy or runes?"
George grinned. "Wow, Harry, you really are learning fast! Runes, charms, transfiguration, and potions. We use a combination, it depends on what we're working on."
"If you guys can create these things, you must have a really good understanding of the magic behind them; why do you do so poorly in class?"
Fred sighed. "Well, we do understand the magic, really well, in fact, but the magic we learn in class is so boring! It's too easy, so we don't see much point in spending our time on it, especially homework, when we could be working on what we want to. It's a lot more fun, and a lot more challenging," he explained.
Harry tilted his head to the left, thinking. "Why don't you apply for a performance-based NEWT exam? That way, you can present projects to demonstrate your understanding, instead of the traditional tests."
"Mum won't let us," George muttered. "She says that it would only encourage us to focus on pranks instead of "Real Magic"," he said.
"That's stupid. Well, after Hogwarts, you can always retake the NEWTS, and you can request the project-based learning assessment instead. You will be adults then, so your mother won’t be able to stop you. I would definitely do it if I was you. Sure, you don't really need them to own your own shop, but maybe, if you got much higher scores the second time than the first, it would prove to your mum that you two are a lot more intelligent than she thinks you are." That was one thing about the twins that had always driven him crazy - the way most people, even their own mother, underestimated them, only looking at their grades and not paying attention to how complex their pranks could be. Some people were just unable to demonstrate their understanding by conventional grading means, and Fred and George were firmly in that camp.
"Yes, it is stupid." Fred reached into the box, grabbing one of the ears on a string. "These are Extendable Ears," he said, changing the subject abruptly. "The Order, full name Order of the Phoenix, by the way, always has their meetings behind closed doors. They won't tell u s anything or let us join, so we created these to spy on them. Just stick the string to your ear and drop the ear near where you want to hear."
"Unfortunately, they figured it out and started to cast Impervius charms on the door. No sound, or anything else, for that matter, gets out, so we can't eavesdrop much anymore. We're working on a way past them, but we haven't made any real progress, everything we've tried has failed miserably," George added.
"Those would definitely be nice to have!" Harry said, thinking of quite a few times over the years, just off the top of his head, where he and his friends could have used them to make things much easier than they had been.
"Right?" Fred said rhetorically as he put down the Extendables and grabbed a box, George grabbing another two that looked similar. "These are made for students, specifically. Puking Pestles, Nosebleed Nougats, and Fainting Fancies. They are two sided pills, you take one and you instantly get sick, nosebleed, vomiting, it depends on which one you use. You get sent out of class to go to the nurse, but instead you take the second half of the pill. You are back to normal instantly, and you get out of class!"
"That's going to the extreme!" Harry said, laughing. "And they all work?"
"Well, not quite. There's a few kinks with the Puking Pestle we need to work out. At the moment, the vomiting is so bad that the tester can't take the second half of the pill. The others work perfectly, though," George replied.
"I imagine those will earn quite a bit of money at Hogwarts, what are your business plans?"
"Well, this year we are going to sell to students, and save the profits to help us afford a storefront when we graduate. The goal is to have a physical shop open for business by the time Hogwarts letters go out so that we can sell to the back to school shopping crowd," Fred said.
"Sounds like a good plan, with an effective marketing strategy during the school year, you could already have a loyal customer base built up by then, too, which would definitely help," Harry replied. "I'm impressed! I can't wait to see what else you guys come up with."
The twins packed up, chatting with Harry about plans they had but they either hadn't made it to production yet because they were still working on the magical components that needed to be completed first, or ideas they'd thought up but hadn't even started to work on, as they'd figured out they worked best if they focused on just a few products at a time.
That night, Harry had yet another odd dream, only this time it wasn't a Death Eater meeting held by Voldemort. No, this dream was a long, dark corridor; the walls, floor, and ceiling were all covered with dark marble tiles, a few old, black sconces along the wall, spaced much further apart than they should be in order to provide proper lighting. At the very end of the hallway was a dark wooden door with a black wrought iron door knob. That night's dream didn't wake Harry at ungodly hours of the night, but when he did wake up in the morning, he felt unsettled, as though he'd seen a ghost, to use a muggle expression.
During breakfast, Harry debated internally about whether or not he should tell Sirius about the dream. He wasn't sure if this dream was the same type of dream as the ones that were about Voldemort, but it was definitely odd, and he was more unsettled than a harmless dream of a long corridor should make him. Finally, he spoke up, his decision made. "Sirius," he said.
"Yes, Pup?" the man asked between bites of sausage.
"I had a really strange dream last night. I didn't see Voldemort or anything, and the dream didn't cause any pain or anything, but it was so weird. I was standing in this creepy corridor where everything was black. I've never seen anything like it, so I don't know why I had a dream about it." Sirius, Remus, and Mrs. Weasley looked at each other in alarm, instantly causing Harry's stress levels to go off the charts. "What? What's so special about a long, dark corridor?"
"Don't worry about it, Harry, dear, just finish your breakfast. We will tell Dumbledore about this dream of yours, if there is anything to know about it, I'm sure he'll let us know," Mrs. Weasley said quickly. It was obvious to Harry, at least, she wanted to speak before Sirius could tell Harry what they all suspected his dream was about.
Harry rolled his eyes. He was very glad to be away from the Dursley's home and instead spend the rest of the summer with his friends and godfather, but Mrs. Weasley, as much as he loved her, was driving him just a wee bit crazy. She didn't want anything to tell him anything. When would the adults figure out that keeping secrets from him had found him near to death several times, trying to help with whatever was going on at that time- and it seemed there was always something going on that would involve him and his friends. What were they supposed to do, ignore it and let Voldemort's plans succeed? The three of them would never be able to live with themselves! Secrets always caused him more harm than good, Harry thought as he reached for a banana to eat with his breakfast. Harry wasn't exactly pleased that the adults were going to run off and tell Dumbledore about his strange dream, but what could Harry do about it? Absolutely nothing. Maybe he'd get lucky and Dumbledore would at least, be honest for once, but somehow, Harry doubted it.
"Does a strange dream on a weird corridor really merit telling Dumbledore? It was just a dream, and not even one about Voldemort," Harry said, deciding to protest anyways; maybe he'd be able to get some more information about the order than he'd already either been told or figured out for himself. "I'm sure the headmaster has more important things to do with his time than hear about my dreams."
"That's alright, my boy, I'm sure these odd dreams of yours will be quite interesting to Dumbledore. Definitely more interesting to an old man than The Daily Prophet," a voice said from the doorway that led to the stairs to the townhouse’s ground floor.