Loves Nightmare: Hate's Dream

This challenge is a kind of Romantic/Horror/ Drama/Humour. The idea is as follows:
Hermione has a recurring nightmare for several months in a row. In it, she is in a room that only has a table in it. On the table are two hourglasses. She has no idea how she knows, but she knows that one belongs to Lucius Malfoy, and the other belongs to her. For some reason, the sands represent their lives and they are connected.

At first, she thinks it means that they are doomed to kill each other. Then, by a strange twist of fate, she ends up trapped with him. To survive, they must depend on each other.(Where they end up, is your choice) It can be:

1) in the shrieking shack
2) In another haunted house anywhere in the world
3) In Snape Manor (but Snape must be dead and haunting his home)

There must be a romantic triangle started between Hermione, Lucius and your choice for a third. Of course, Hermione ends up with Lucius in the end, though. Story can be any rating.

Somewhere in the story, the following lines must be used...

1) Trust you? I would rather eat raw squid!
2) What makes you think that our lives being tied together is a bad thing?
3) I don't know where that door leads, but it doesn't look the least bit scary... You go first!
4) If I had known that getting involved in this entire situation would lead to this.... I would have done it sooner!

These are the only things I ask. Otherwise I don't really care how you put the story together. I had a dream of sorts that gave me this idea. But right now, I have way too many stories I am already working on.... But I would love to see where someone else takes this! Please leave any questions, concerns or ideas in the review section!
If you go ahead and start writing, please put the story in the Lucius/Hermione section. I would forget to look under challenges!

Thanks!


Prologue

She stepped into a room. It seemed to be an underground cavern of some sort. She shivered as she was only wearing a very thin nightdress. It was summer; what was she supposed to wear on a hot stifling summer’s night? It was a circular room. It was fairly typical of the: ‘How do you confuse an Irish man;’ joke. She rubbed her arms and she felt the gooseflesh beginning to form on her arms; their little bumps on the skin looked so real. She was sure she was just dreaming.

She spun around the room and looked up; it seemed to go on forever. There was no way out. She tried to find a door in her desperation but couldn’t. She felt the walls for any significant knob that could be pushed to expose some form of passageway to walk out from. She scrambled against the cold, damp ancient stone for an opening of any sort but she couldn’t. She almost swore when in her rough efforts her nail on her left little finger broke off. She raised it to her mouth and sucked the blood. She was trying not to sob to loud from the excruciating pain of having had a nail ripped from her flesh!

Drops of blood fell on her nightgown. She looked down and tried to keep her head about her. She remembered fainting out of hunger. She could not recall the last time food passed her lips or when drink quenched her thirst.

Hermione threw her sheets back in frustration and walked down to the kitchen. This was ridiculous! She had told no one she was suffering these damnable nightmares. Besides what could the significance be of being trapped in a circular room with nothing in there? She opened the fridge door and dragged out a bottle of Pepsi Max and poured herself a large glass. She put the plastic bottle back into the fridge and sat down in her sitting room and switched her on her parent’s television.

She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock in the morning, and logically there’d be nothing on. She got up to survey her parent’s video selection. She picked out film after film, until she settled on one of her favourite movies of all time. Casablanca. She took it out of the box and put it in the machine. The video screen popped up immediately and she sat back to watch it.

She loved this film. The way that she had to choose between two men that she loved equally as much for equally different, but valid reasons.

Hermione also had a bit of a crush on Humphrey Bogart. He was a gorgeous guy. Sometimes she thought that she was born in the wrong era. She tended to go for men that were older than she was all the time. Her first boyfriend’s age gap was fairly tame compared to the one she had now.

Somehow in the past year Rabastan Lestrange had decided to change sides. No one knew why, and no one truly trusted him except Hermione. Rabastan had served almost twenty years in Azkaban but he was fairly young when he got sent there. Hermione shrugged her shoulders, she couldn’t tell him. He might think that they were his fault.

Rabastan was actually quite sweet once you knocked aside the spider webs and dusted the darkness off him. She had been drawn to him like a moth to a flame. In less than two months they had developed from being uneasy friends to lovers. Hermione smiled at the thought that she was the lover of a once dangerous Death Eater.

Harry hadn’t liked it of course, and Ron hadn’t spoken to her since, but Hermione decided not to let that bother her before. Rabastan was all she needed anyway. She was content in the arms of the younger Lestrange brother. She drifted off to sleep with the film still playing.

She had woken up from her faint. Her blood had dripped and stained her nightdress so badly that it wouldn’t be fit to use as rags. Blood formed mini rivers in the cracks between the stones on the floor. She was dizzy and felt weak from want of food and drink, her mouth was now drier than sandpaper. She heard a drip, drip, dripping sound somewhere in the big round perpendicular room.

She heard the sound bouncing off the walls and sought to find its source. She scrambled up and stood on her bare feet. She strained to catch the sound that promised her thirsting mouth a drink. She managed to find the direction and walked towards it. She was almost there when she bumped into something. She almost swore again. She wasn’t going to though, even in her dreams she controlled her language.

She reached out and felt the object she had bumped into and it was a table. She felt four legs that were ornately carved and curled at the feet into little balls of gold. The top of the table was rather flat and ordinary compared to the legs; she shrugged her shoulders.

She was sorely reminded of Alice In Wonderland. She felt around the table to get to the source of pleasure. She found it. She twisted her neck and stuck her tongue out so that the drops could fall on her mouth. She spied the source. Far up, set in the wall was a small window, the moonlight shone into the room with the rays going towards the direction of the table.

Her very concerned mother shook Hermione awake. This was the tenth time in two weeks she had caught her daughter lying asleep on the sofa with a video box clutched to her breast. She looked pale and was murmuring something unintelligible. She woke up to find her mother frowning at her and smiled a little weakly.

“Are you all right?” her mother asked her.

“Yes,” Hermione said, “I am fine. You and dad best get to work, eh?”

Her mother slowly nodded. Andrea was a very astute woman when she wanted to be, but even a dunderhead could see that her daughter was troubled. She walked in her kitchen to see her husband picking up a briefcase and looking at his watch.

“Have you told her yet?” Luke asked.

“Told her what?” Andrea asked.

“You know what! Have you told her that we’re moving to Australia?”

Andrea lowered her head in shame. “No, she’s troubled enough as it is. I’ve just caught her asleep on the sofa again.”

“Hmm,” Luke said. “I didn’t want her going to that school in the first place. Now Arthur Weasley has just informed me that she is dating a man that was in prison for killing and murdering. It’s no bloody wonder she’s having nightmares.”

Andrea bit her lip. “She’s dating a what?”
“One of them Dead Eaters or whatever they call them,” Luke said. “You know followers of that Lord Whatd’yacallim?”

“Voldemort,” Andrea whispered. She listened to Arthur and Molly unlike her husband. She was interested in her daughter.

“That’s the one,” Luke said. “Come on, let’s go to work, she can look after herself.”

That’s just it, Andrea thought, she can’t look after herself anymore. Not if she’s dating a Death Eater. What has happened to my baby girl?

Hermione was glad her parents had gone. Her dreams were taking a very weird turn. Whatever could her subconscious be thinking? There had to be a significance to it all. She didn’t hold with dreams having meanings but the fact that she had the same one night after night meant something, surely.

She hated to admit it, but for once Hermione Jane Granger didn’t have the answer. She was slightly troubled at who might have the answer though. She’d rather die than speak to Sybil Trelawney. It seemed she had no other alternative. She crawled off the sofa and walked into the kitchen to start having breakfast when the telephone rang.

There was always something eerie about the sound of the telephone in a rather still and quiet house. Hermione’s heart was thumping almost out of her chest as she walked tentatively to the phone. She picked up the white plastic receiver and brought it to her ear.

“H-hello,” she stammered.

“Hi, it’s Rabbie,” Rabastan’s dark voice was beautiful.

“Rabbie,” Hermione breathed. “Thank Merlin its you!”

“Why who else were you expecting?” Rabastan asked.

“No one,” Hermione breathed.

“What are you doing today?” Rabastan asked.

“I was thinking of doing some studying,” Hermione said.

“Oh, I was thinking of coming over and keeping you company,” he said in a playful tone that made Hermione’s knee’s buckle.

“Oh, all right then, it is rather lonely here.”

Hermione sighed. “So, how are you?”

~*~*~

All in all today hadn’t gone so bad; Hermione thought. It was brilliant actually. Rabastan was a thoughtful lover. He even gave her some chocolates. They had made love after she had a bath. Then she insisted on studying. She was curled up in his arms as she was reading her book.

She said goodbye to him at around four in the afternoon. She didn’t want him to meet her parents yet. She didn’t want them to meet him either. They were bound to disapprove but he did make her happy. Rabastan understood and she cleared up after his departure to make sure no evidence of him could be found.

After she had tidied up she felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue and decided to take her flimsy dress off and sleep on her bed for half an hour or so.

She was back in the round room again. Her gaze followed the silvery trail of the moonbeam and it led to the table again. She looked down at what she was wearing. She snorted; she had to dream she was wearing nothing but her underwear. She spotted two objects on the table and walked up to the weirdly designed table. She pondered on that for a minute. She sighed as she stretched out to examine the objects.

Crookshanks jumped on her bed and sat on her face waking her up. His green eyes narrowed maliciously as he hadn’t been fed all day, and wanted food thank you very much. Hermione grumbled and picked him up and walked down the stairs. She set him on the kitchen floor and opened a tin of cat food to give to her pet. She placed half the tin on the plate and set it in front of his nose. He sniffed and delicately picked up a morsel between his teeth before munching on it.

She sighed and turned the tap on to put some water in a glass. She gulped it down and thought about the dream again. She couldn’t understand the table at all. She couldn’t think of how the table managed to get into a room without an entrance. She had never seen it before either, and she had been living in that room for almost two months now.

She still felt tired. She slumped on the nearest chair and stretched her arms out yawning. She laced her fingers together to form a rest for her head and laid her head on the joined hands. She felt her eyes droop.

There were two objects on the table. She breathed and steam came out of her mouth. She picked up one of the objects and saw what it was exactly.

It was an hourglass. She watched the numerous grains of sands passing through the narrow neck of the top into the round bowl at the bottom. There was a snake symbol in the centre, and Hermione was now cold with fear and dread.

She gingerly placed it back on the table and picked up another hourglass. There was a lion symbol carved in this one. The lion was embossed with gold whilst the snake was silver plaited. She placed that one down carefully.

Only when she did so did she see something on the wall. It was a riddle of some sort; one that she couldn’t quite make out, she turned her attention to the hourglasses again and picked up the one that held the snake symbol. The moon shone and it revealed a face.

It was a very familiar face. The eyes were a stormy grey, and the pale features and blond hair could mean either one of two people. She gasped when the face became clearer and there were signs of age on the handsome face. She gasped.

She placed the hourglass down on the table. She looked at the other one. She picked it up and she saw her face appear ghostly on the top of the second hourglass. She was looking at the other one with a glint in her eyes. It was evil and full of spite and hatred.

“No,” she said out loud, “no!”

She saw her ghostly form raise a knife towards the other one.

“That can’t be what it means,” she gasped. “It surely can’t be. I might hate him, but that doesn’t mean I want him...”

“WAKE UP HERMIONE!” someone shouted.

She woke up bleary eyed into the very concerned face of her mother for the second time that day.

“Mum,” she breathed. “I dreamt...”

“I heard you scream,” her mother said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“Mother, I’m scared I’m about to make one!”

A/N - This is the first time I have attempted a response to a challenge. I hope that you like the start of it. I also hope this is what you're looking for Shiloh.