Smile Like You Mean It

Chapter 27 - What You See


It's a weird sensation, knowing that you're dreaming.

There was a memory of drinking a potion. It had been horrible. The Elixir had taken away all taste, sound, even sight. That black skim, rising in front of her eyes had been the most frightening of all.

There wasn't any fear now. Just a sort of emotionless void. She was surrounded by emptiness. She would have called it darkness, or blackness, but it wasn't even that. It was nothing. Nothing touched her, nothing moved. She could see nothing.

That began to change. Something approached. Or maybe she approached it. It moved closer, some sort of hole in the nothingness.

Without thought Aera stepped into it.



The scene was slightly murky, like everything was a shade darker than normal, the colours too dim. Aera looked around.

She was outside. Figures on brooms were racing across the sky, slightly blurred as if she wasn't really concentrating on them. There was noise, muted but audible. People were cheering. A voice, louder than the others, called out.

"Gryffindor lead by twenty points!"

Aera turned her head. Hermione was beside her, bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement. Her face looked a bit different. Not as focused as it should have been.

She looked back at the game. Two figures stood out amongst the moving players. One in silver and green, the other in gold and red. Draco was keeping tight to Harry's side, eyes searching the pitch. He turned to Aera and smiled, confident that he would find the Snitch.

"Slytherin scores! Ten points to Slytherin."

A muffled roar as the swarm of green on the opposite side of the pitch leapt to their feet.



The nothingness was back.

She hadn't felt herself leave the Quidditch match. No sense of moving at all, just suddenly in one place, then another.

It should have creeped her out. It didn't. She didn't care.

Another hole appeared, racing towards her this time. She didn't fight it as she stepped into the dream once more.



Kisses, filled with passion and release. Hands gripping long hair that cascaded in vivid, scarlet waves.

Ginny smiled up at her, pulling back to remove the pair of glasses that had been pushed crooked on Aera's nose. She felt surprise. This surely wasn't the future. She didn't see Ginny that way.

Her body disagreed. She could feel the desire that surged inside her. She felt the urge to press Ginny against the wall, to kiss her unreservedly. Aera leaned forward, pressing her lips to the hollow of Ginny's neck, nipping and sucking.

Ginny arched back, her hands twisting into Aera's hair as she moaned.

"Harry . . ."



Again the lack of sensation as she moved from one place to another. The emptiness surrounded her, leaving nothing to see.

The wait was longer this time and when the hole appeared it crept forward slowly, reluctantly.

Impatient, Aera willed herself closer.

The hole consumed her.



She was in a cage. Strange, twisted iron bars as thick as her arms surrounded her. She knew without trying that even her wandless magic would fail to free her.

But the cage door was open. She shuffled forward until she could peer out. An unfamiliar room met her eyes. The walls were shifting, changing from stone, to wood, to tapestry. Windows appeared and disappeared, never staying in one spot for more than a moment.

There were people in the room. Some were masked and, like the windows, would appear and disappear rapidly. Only four of the figures remained constant. She recognised Ron by his red hair and Hermione by her bushy mop, but they were indistinct. Voldemort stood facing Harry, the two solid and pronounced against the changing background.

Aera stepped out of the cage and both Harry and Voldemort turned to her. She saw a look of denial on Harry's face.

" I invoke . . ." Aera whispered, "The Order of Uller . . ."



She was barely back in the void before another hole swept over her.



She was in the cage again. This time the door was closed. She fought against it, beating with hands that tore and bled. The pain was distant. She only knew that she needed to be outside the cage. She needed to get out.

"Death is only the beginning, Harry." A voice, cold, dead.

A flash of green light burst between the bars of the cage and Aera pressed her face to the gap, desperate to see what had happened.

The sight pulled a grief-stricken scream from her lips.

Harry lay twisted on the floor of the changing room. Everything was as it had been, figures appearing and disappearing, walls shifting in colour, shape. Harry's eyes were open and Aera watched with helplessness as they glazed over with death.

Ron and Hermione were still there, at times lying broken and dying on the floor, or kneeling in front of wand-wielding masked men. Sometimes Hermione would be twisting on the tiles or stone, screaming in agony as curses tortured her body. Sometimes Ron was kneeling by his best friend's dead body, crying uncontrollably.

What didn't change was Harry, lying still and cold on the ground.

Aera pushed herself away from the bars of the cage, tears streaming down her face. It was too real, too possible.

For the first time she focused on the cage itself, or rather the strange, distorted bars.

In the iron were words. Names.

'Harry.'

'Draco.'




Aera sat up.

She had been expecting the emptiness again. Instead she was staring straight into the sorrowful eyes of her Potion's Master. The sight of him sitting there brought the memory of what she had seen crashing back and she let out a choked, pain-filled sob.

He was up out of his chair in an instant, sitting down beside her as she collapsed in his arms. She knew this was far beyond the normal teacher-student comforting, yet it didn't seem to matter. She had done as he asked, the least she deserved was a shoulder to cry on after.

Once the body-wrenching sobs quietened somewhat, Aera sat back, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Sorry." she muttered, noticing the trail of salty wetness her crying had left on Snape's expensive robes.

He shook his head at her apology. "It's I who should be sorry, Aera. I should not have asked this of you."

"I . . . I'm glad I did it." She realised it was the truth, surprising though that was. "I saw . . . horrible things. But also some stuff that might help."

She relayed the dreams to Snape, leaving out the one where she kissed Ginny. She had a fairly certain idea of what that meant and it was nothing to do with her. She also edited Draco's involvement. Despite the new relationship that had developed between herself and the professor, she still didn't want him to know about that.

When she described the bars in the cage, using just Harry's name, Snape frowned with confusion.

"Imagery is unusual in a prophetic dream. I suppose that would be a simple way of summing up a particular situation or emotion. The bars were inscribed with his name?"

Aera shook her head, trying to recall the feeling in the dream. "No, it was more like it was Harry. Like the bars were him, anyway."

Snape pondered this in silence for a while whilst Aera sipped from a glass of water. The potion had left a weird dry coating to the inside of her mouth. It was somewhat unpleasant.

"I suppose there is a chance that, if he were to know you are his sister, he would feel the need to protect you. Perhaps the cage signified his wish to keep you out of any fight, a cage for your own protection." Snape mused, twirling a piece of paper between his fingers.

Aera thought about it. "That makes sense. But then, it was pretty clear in the dream that Harry would lose if I wasn't there."

Snape jerked violently, making Aera jump and upset her water. It sprayed across her knees and onto the floor, but Snape ignored it. He turned harshly to Aera.

"It is a dream, Miss Vale. Circumstances change. I want a promise from you that you will not be racing off to endanger yourself due to this!"

Aera nodded, too shocked to do anything else. Snape drew in a deep breath, turning away again to clear up the spilt water with a swipe of his wand.

"It is late. Past midnight. You should return to your rooms."

The news that three hours had passed since she had first taken the potion made Aera blink. It had felt like minutes, not hours within the dream. Then again, it had also been hard to judge anything whilst in that numbing nothingness.

"Here is your note." Snape suddenly sounded weary beyond belief. "If you have any more questions to do with the dreams, be sure to come ask me."

Aera took the note from his outstretched hand. He didn't look at her as she got to her feet and moved to leave. It was only at the door that she paused and turned to look at him one last time.

"Thank you, Sir. For giving me this opportunity." she said quietly.

He paused, then nodded once and she slipped out of the room silently.

Once out in the corridor, Aera realised she had forgotten to mention the part where she invoked the Order of Uller. It probably wasn't important that he know straight away, however.

"He probably has no more idea of what it is than me."


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The look on Aera's face when she woke had chilled Severus to the bone. He had only once ever felt this guilty and shamed. It was as if he was betraying Lily's memory, using her daughter this way.

Of course, he deserved Lily's hatred. That and more.

There had been no thought behind the act of moving to her side and comforting her. As she cried into his robe he imagined the horrifying images she might have seen and felt the crippling guilt sweep through him. He had been wrong to make her do this. His only redeeming hope was that she had gained something powerful from the dreams.

As she had explained them, Snape worked to determine which elements were of import. The changing setting was obviously a factor. That meant that a surprise attack at least had a chance of success. It seemed that a plan of action had not been decided on so far. That was good news.

Also the fact that Harry would at some point face Voldemort. Snape had never been convinced that the young boy would ever chose to fight. Of course, the boy's bravado nature screamed it, but you could never be sure he would volunteer.

What had frightened Snape was Aera's deduction of the cage and the second battle's outcome. She had interpreted that Harry would die unless she was present in the attack.

Of all the things Severus wanted to avoid, that was at the top. Right beside Voldemort ever finding out that he was a spy.

He hoped Aera would stand by her promise. He did not want her injury . . . or death, on his hands. The thought made him shudder with revulsion.

He would never gain redemption.

------------------------------------------------------------


Brrr!! What do you think??

Took me a while to figure out what I wanted from this chapter, but I think I caught it fairly well.

So. . . what's Aera going to make of it all?

Don't forget to review!!

xxx
Aera