They frolicked in a palace as wide as the world itself. Sunlight cut through the verdant ceiling of tree foliage to speckle their coats as they played in their endless jungle estate. Sagehunter slipped through the green, incapable of blending into the background of ivy and vines and ferns with her tawny gold coat and chestnut mane. She was a rare beauty amid it all. Knight pursued the invaluable treasure, the savannah jewel in a foreign land. His land, his jewel, his treasure.

Knight weaved between the trees, shrouded in their climbing vines as they quested for the sky, never losing sight of his lioness.

Ahead of him, Sagehunter paused, looked back over her shoulder at him, and trotted on. Knight merrily gave unrushed chase. How sweet the hunt, and the only thing sweeter being when he caught his quary.

He pushed through the jungle's mosaic of trees and brush and moss-covered logs on the trail of his prize.

In a stand of tall grass, stalks taller than a field's, not as tall as trees, bold blades with delusions of grandeur, Knight found Sagehunter lying primly, as patient and untroubled as the sky, watching him emerge from the jungle flora. She was waiting for him. In her eyes, steady and penetrating, wisdom… certainty without a flicker of doubt. She knew he'd come to her.

Knight went to her. They met, nose to nose, whisker to whisker. The whole of experiencing one another raced like lightning through their sensitive whiskers, making Knight's brain buzz with the bare touch of her. Knight rubbed his head against hers, journey's end, goal reached, beauty found.

"Harry…"

Knight jerked his head up and spun around, seeking the source of the voice that had cut into the pure wordlessness of nature. He looked but saw only the jungle. But there had been a voice, like a whisper on the wind, ephemeral and haunting. It had said a name, one Knight knew to belong to some other life.

Sagehunter moved behind him and Knight turned his head back to see her sitting and watching him placidly. She still awaited him. If there had been a voice, her ears had not detected it.

Knight started to move toward her again.

"Harry…"

Knight drew up short and whirled around, spitting at the forest for its nymphs that would call such a name. No sound met his challenge. In the time since the ghostly voice had called a forgotten boy's name, their palace had gone mute. The birds did not sing, the monkeys did not chatter, the insects did not chirrup.

Knight pinned his ears back and took a step backward, toward Sagehunter. Disquiet bloomed in his chest and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He scanned the deserted jungle for hints of the interloper who would dare to intrude on his kingdom. He would call out this presence that would interrupt Knight's time alone with his royal companion.

Knight opened his mouth and bared his teeth when, in an instant, the jungle wasn't empty anymore. Danger-shadows moved, not quite discernable as any concrete form, present nonetheless. The danger pressed closer, inching in a tightening ring around Knight and Sagehunter.

"Harry…"

Knight's ears suddenly pricked when a memory from another life sparked.

Sirius.

"Harry…"

The jungle faded away and he became aware of a hand on his shoulder. With an intake of breath, he opened his eyes to the soft light of late morning. The jungle was replaced by the hangings of his bed at Hogwarts… and the hand on his shoulder, the touch that had roused him from the burgeoning dangers of the forest, belonged to Hermione. She was lying next to him, propped up on her elbow and looking down at him in concern. To Harry's left, the disembodied sound of Ron snoring from his bed completed Harry's return to reality at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"Mione?" Harry croaked, blinking away the vestiges of his dream.

"You were tossing around," Hermione whispered to the unvoiced question that was breathed with the mere utterance of her name. "Was it a nightmare?"

Harry frowned, truly perplexed as he considered the question. Would he rank that strange dream as a 'nightmare'? Maybe if he'd lingered long enough for that shapeless danger lurking in the trees to take form, but as just after-thoughts of a mind that had seen too much in such a short life as his fifteen years? But then the question of what else to call it if not a nightmare. "I guess so," he mumbled, unconvinced even as he spoke.

Hermione's eyes flashed concern and she leaned in closer. "It wasn't one of your Voldemort dreams, was it?"

Harry paused. For a moment, he thought to answer with 'I don't know', but quickly dismissed that reply as ridiculous. He was not likely to have any doubts about whether or not he'd had a Voldemort dream had he actually, in fact, been in the throes of one. The best indicator of such an occurrence would be his own body. So he took stock. His scar didn't feel like it had been recently burned into his skin with an iron, he didn't feel an insidious sense of poison in his blood, and his bones didn't ache to make him think they'd gone to rot inside. Though there was no question that he felt… discomfited, rattled. But on the back-end of a Voldemort vision-dream…?

"No…" he answered at length, "I'm not really sure what that was."

Hermione shifted closer, her voice calmer to know it wasn't one of Harry's worst kinds of nightmares. "Tell me what happened in the dream."

Already the memory of the dream was hazy, so vivid in the moment but quick to retreat from his conscious mind, back to the place of dreams. "I was Knight, and you were there, as Sagehunter, and we were in the jungle together, and then…" Harry shook his head. "There was someone calling my name, someone calling 'Harry', but I couldn't see them."

"Did it sound like Voldemort's voice?"

"No… it wasn't… an evil sound. More like… I don't know. But it wasn't that kind of calling. More like… someone trying to get your attention in class without the professor noticing. But there was something wrong there… like, Dementors' shadows were in the jungle or something. Not quite there, but somehow…" Harry glowered up at the canopy of his bed and with a shake of his head gave up trying to put words to the disjointed subconscious experience of his dream.

Hermione was puzzling over the clues, trying to find any significance. Harry wondered if she realized how closely she was dancing to the line that would tip her over into the prevue of divination… and how she would scowl and ruffle at the insinuation if he mentioned it.

As he lay watching her ponder the pieces, Harry's eyes widened when a faint memory from the dream rushed to the forefront of his mind. "Sirius. Sirius was there. Well, not really, I didn't see him, but I know he was there."

Hermione looked doubly alert, pouncing on a detail with some substance. "Was he the one calling your name?"

"Dunno… maybe." Harry shifted on the bed to rise to one supporting elbow in mirror image of Hermione. Their faces were close enough that Harry could make her out clearly without his glasses. "Do you think he's in some kind of trouble?" he asked in mounting anxiety. Even as he asked, he wanted her to tell him no.

"I wouldn't know, Harry… you're sure it wasn't a Voldemort dream?"

Harry rubbed at his eye to dig out the sleep… and maybe to jar something a little more useful loose. "Couldn't be, could it? I mean, I don't feel like seven kinds of hell."

Hermione's fingers were suddenly brushing against his brow, at once making Harry feel enormously better about his morning so far. "You're not cold. Last time you were."

He did recall, on previous occasions when it had been a Voldemort vision-dream, being both covered in sweat and shivering because he was freezing at the same time. But at that moment, dream aside, he felt rather cozy. That would fly in the face of everything that might presume to call his dream a Voldemort vision-dream.

"Maybe it was just a dream," Harry murmured in distraction, "I do have normal dreams now and then. Well, as normal as someone like me could have, complete with Dementors and Death Eaters and all on a good night." When he said it, it made him mostly believe it. And why shouldn't it be just what he said, a dream like any other? Even Harry Potter could have dreams that were not laced with portent.

Hermione started to climb out of bed. "I suppose we could go talk to Dumbledore just the same."

Reflexively, Harry reached out and stopped her. "Don't go, come back to bed. I'm sure it was just a dream."

Hermione eyed him speculatively. "You sure?"

He wanted to be. "Must have been, right? I don't feel wretched, and I always feel like death warmed over when I wake up from a Voldemort dream… yeah, I think it must have been just a regular dream this time."

Hermione didn't budge for a moment, still halfway out of bed, then she gave a grave nod and snuggled back down into the blankets with him. Harry drew her close to him and tried to give up the dream to the feeling of holding her. It would have been much easier if there wasn't still something nagging at him, a bur in the back of his brain, but he dismissed that as the normal reaction after a normal, everyday bizarre dream. Having a snuggle with Hermione certainly helped a great deal toward easing his mind of any of its post-dream misgivings.

Hermione slipped her arm around Harry's body and nestled snuggly against him. The dream was beat back that much further, and Harry was content to see it go. "You know," she mumbled comfortably into his chest, "I'm actually not looking forward to term starting again."

Harry gasped teasingly, "Hermione Granger, not looking forward to classes? What manner of polyjuice-guzzling imposter are you and what have you done with my Mione?"

Hermione giggled. "All right, I am looking forward to classes, but not term, if that makes sense."

"Not particularly."

"Well, it will mean me going back to sleeping in the girls' dorm again. I don't imagine your other roommates would be quite so accommodating of me creeping in here and bunking up with you."

Harry gave a moment to mentally consider Ron snoring loudly a short distance behind his back. It would have been very easy for Ron to make a fuss about Hermione sneaking into their dorm room at nights to sleep in Harry's bed… but he hadn't. He'd put on a show of being rather nauseated, but he'd not presumed to ask Hermione to leave. Last night, he had even turned to Hermione as they were heading up to their separate bedrooms and said, 'well, come on up to our room, then; we both know you'll end there anyway, and I'd rather not get woken up by you sneaking in after midnight'. Not once had Hermione ever woken Ron with her late-night sojourns into the boys' dorm room, and Ron well knew that (it took a small natural disaster to get Ron out of bed), but it was also beside the point.

"Probably not…" Harry conceded, admitting that while Ron might be amenable to the co-ed accommodations, Dean, Seamus, and Neville would more than likely not be nearly as agreeable to sharing their room with yet another roommate, and a girl one at that. Then he smirked wryly when his fellow Gryffindor boys became the lesser of his concerns. "Not to mention with all of them knowing you slept here, sooner or later someone would let it slip out, whether they meant to or not. Could you imagine if McGonagall found out?"

Hermione's body shook as she laughed silently. Harry held her just slightly tighter, smiling to himself to feel her body shaking with mirth. "Poor Professor McGonagall," Hermione finally said in an amused voice, "We've given her a fair bit of grief this past year, I'm afraid."

"Not that much more than we do every year." Harry thought longer on that a moment then chuckled. "We're exhausting students to have, I think."

"Probably true. But still, I think she likes us despite all the trouble we cause. She very nearly has to. I mean, she's not about to have it out for her own house's seeker."

"And I'm sure she likes to boast in the professors' lounge that the brightest witch of her age is a Gryffindor."

Hermione snorted softly then sighed into Harry's chest. "Still, I expect that no matter the good graces we have with McGonagall, they would fall short of convincing her to look the other way at having a girl moving into the boys' dorm."

"Yeah, you're right… and to be honest, you really don't want to share a room with all of them. They're pigs."

"Oh, and you're not?" she countered playfully.

"No. Compared to them, I'm very clean. 'Course, I would be. I mean, I did spend most of my childhood cleaning."

Hermione's hold around him tightened briefly at the glimpse of his tragic childhood, but she didn't linger on it or drawn undue attention to it, and for that he was grateful. That Hermione would know him well enough to let it go so readily, that she would know when it would be best left alone, reminded him anew just why he loved her. And knowing how carefully and correctly she would handle it, he could say it as casually as he had.

He smirked to himself, comforted by the very act of being with Hermione, and without thinking about it he perched his chin atop her head.

Hermione hummed contently in the back of her throat. "I love it when you do that," she purred.

"What?"

"That thing with your chin."

"Really?" he asked, perplexed that a gesture as benign as that would touch her so. It was hardly something he'd even consciously realized he did until she pointed it out.

Hermione nodded carefully, loathe to dislodge his chin from its apparently beloved position. "I'm not sure why, but I do."

That in itself was reason enough, in Harry's mind, and he'd have to remember to do it more often.

"So, did you want to have a lie in?" Harry asked softly.

Before Hermione could answer, Ron let out a rather grating, loud snore as he shifted positions.

It caused Hermione to chuckle. "With the lumberjack over there? Kind of ruins the peaceful moment."

Harry could agree whole-heartedly with that. "We could cast a silencio on him."

Hermione chortled and buried her face in his chest to muffle her laughter. It made Harry's body fairly hum and the discomfiture that had been planted in his thoughts by his dream was momentarily forgotten. "Tempting," Hermione countered to Harry's suggested course of action, "but it seems a bit of a violation to put a spell on someone without their knowledge." Hermione was quiet a moment as she turned the other options available to them over in her head. After a time, she picked one. "We could go outside."

"For a run?" Harry drew back enough to look down at Hermione's face.

She turned her eyes up to him. "Why not? We've missed a few days of exercise, me more than you since you got in a bit of flying yesterday. And if the weather's pleasant enough, maybe we could go for a walk afterward, just spend some time being together."

"Without a chainsaw Weasley playing backup?" Harry said with a quirk of one eyebrow and a lop-sided smirk.

Hermione gave a tight-lipped smile that said she was really trying not to laugh. "Exactly."

"Sounds like a good plan to me. You want to meet in a few minutes down in the common room?"

Hermione nodded, moved in to give him a quick kiss on the lips, then slipped out of his bed and out of the dorm room without eliciting so much as a twitch of disruption in Ron's slumber. Harry watched her go, his eyes traveling from the gold 'POTTER' on her back to the creamy legs beneath the edge of maroon. She was there and gone without a sound.

Through it all, Ron snored on.

Harry shook his head and got out of bed himself to set about dressing for a winter outdoor excursion.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

Their late morning run was at once refreshing and invigorating, even if Harry and Hermione were constrained, upon their promise to Kimmy, from slipping away into the Forbidden Forest and fully enjoying their run as Knight and Sagehunter as they would have done before the Christmas holidays. Still, that vow to a trusted house elf did not stop them from having fun as regular, human Harry and Hermione. There was nary a breeze, so while the white and icy winter landscape would suggest frigid cold, it did not actually feel nearly as chilly as it had looked from the window. Even still, it was cold enough that their cheeks and noses were red after their run around the perimeter of the grounds.

It was closer to noon than the morning hours by the time Harry and Hermione called it quits on the running and turned to strolling through the snow together. Once they'd cooled down from their work-out, the cold of the winter day began to prick at their skin and Harry and Hermione ducked back into the castle long enough to retrieve their coats. Ron had been awake when Harry fetched his, just getting a start on the day from the way he was bumbling around the room in his pajamas. Ron, seeing Harry grab his coat, remarked on the fact it wouldn't be long before lunch was served, but Harry had merely given a nod and wave and rejoined Hermione in the common room. With so few students at Hogwarts, it wouldn't be too terrible an inconvenience to meander their way to the kitchen later when they were hungry… by unspoken consensus, Harry and Hermione chose to resume their walk outdoors rather than share the Great Hall with their classmates.

They were walking along the shores of the Black Lake together, both consumed by the comfortable silence that had settled between them, and they appeared to be the only students outside at the moment. Harry had his hands stuffed in his pockets to keep them warm; he'd not had the foresight to grab his gloves when he went in for his jacket. Hermione, however, naturally thought of everything and held on to Harry's elbow lightly with gloved hands. The lake was frozen over near the shoreline, pearly white ice that met the pure white banks of the snow-covered shore, white on white. As they neared the beech tree, naked of leaves and branches sheathed in ice, it creaked and cracked under the weight of its own coated twigs as ice gave but never quit broke free its hold of the tree's extremities.

They had no particular destination in mind, they just walked aimlessly. It permitted Harry's mind to wander, and though he tried not to allow it, his thoughts seemed to turn again and again to the dream.

"It's bugging you, isn't it?" Hermione asked into the quiet of their time together.

"Hmmm?" Harry asked, distracted, as he glanced over at her face.

"Your dream," Hermione said and smiled understandingly at him, "it's bugging you. Or at least something is, I can tell." Hermione frowned in sudden thought. "What else could it be, if not your dream this morning?"

Harry shook his head. "No, you're right, it's that dream. Shouldn't bug me, I know, but..." he offered an ineffectual shrug.

"If it's really troubling you, maybe you should speak to Dumbledore about it," Hermione suggested.