.

.

"It can't be a coincidence," Hermione said. "It just can't be."

It was the morning now. Katie had waited outside the portrait of the Fat Lady until Hermione emerged, looking startled when Katie jumped at her and started telling her every little detail of what had happened. They were now walking to breakfast together as Hermione tried to comprehend the situation.

"Hermione, I don't think you're seeing the bigger picture here—"

"No, that's exactly what I'm seeing," Hermione intervened sharply. "It can't be a coincidence that on the same night you see your brother being tortured, Harry sees Mr Weasley get attacked."

Katie was growing thoroughly agitated now. What did Hermione not understand? Katie didn't care about the link between the dreams, Katie didn't care if this was the universe's way telling her that she and Harry had to reconcile, Mr Weasley was in St Mungo's fighting for his life and Leo was alone with the Death Eaters, and had been for over a year. Katie thought that these last two facts were much more important than she and Harry having horrific dreams on the same night.

"Katie, you have to talk to him—"

"No."

"Katie—"

"I don't care, Hermione, all right!" Katie snapped, her sudden change in tone making Hermione flinch. "I don't care about Harry, I don't care about me and Harry, someone has to—"

"Kat!"

A sudden cry from the other end of the hall drowned out Katie's angry rant. Chris was sprinting towards her, panting heavily, and as soon as he was close enough, he threw himself onto her in a hug that almost knocked her flat.

"I overheard McGonagall and Snape talking. Merlin's Beard, are you OK?" Chris asked, panicked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Katie told him, writhing free of his bone-crushing hug. "But Chris, Leo—"

"I know," Chris said quickly. "Do you know where he is? Are they going to try and find him?"

With a pang of sadness in her stomach, Katie directed her gaze to the floor and shook her head miserably.

"Dumbledore says they can't."

"Why not?" Chris bellowed.

"Because it's the Death Eaters that have him."

Chris' face turned as white as a sheet of snow and his eyes widened so drastically that Katie was afraid they would pop out of their sockets.

"How do you—?"

"I don't know," Katie answered hastily. "I just... know."

Unlike Dumbledore, Katie's indistinct explanation did not resonate very well with Chris, who raised his eyebrows in heavy confusion.

"You don't know but you just know?" he repeated critically, and Katie realised just how ridiculous that statement must have sounded when it escaped her lips.

"I know it sounds mad—"

"It is mad."

"But I saw Leo, OK? And even after I woke up, I could still hear him screaming, and I just know that it's the Death Eaters. But Dumbledore said that they can't directly move against the Death Eaters, not yet, anyway."

Chris was still and silent for many passing moments. He stared hazily at his little sister as though he wasn't really seeing her, then, after at least thirty seconds, he shook his head snappily.

"So, what are you going to do?" Chris asked.

Katie shrugged. "Touch a crap ton of objects until one of them gives me another vision that tells me where Leo is."

Hermione sighed. "Yes, but, the visions induced by objects are memories, aren't they?" she said. "They're not like your dreams."

Feeling dismal now, her heart clenching slightly, Katie let out a deep sigh that was very similar to Hermione's and nodded depressingly.

"Yeah," she mumbled. "Yeah, that's true."

***

𝐿𝑜𝓃𝑔 𝒽𝒶𝓁𝓁...

𝒩𝑜 𝓁𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉...

𝒟𝑜𝑜𝓇...

𝒟𝑜𝑜𝓇...

𝒩𝑜 𝓁𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

𝐵𝒾𝑔 𝓇𝑜𝑜𝓂...

𝐵𝓁𝓊𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉...

𝐿𝑜𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒷𝓁𝓊𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉...

𝐿𝑒𝑜...

𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝐸𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

Katie scribbled these words over and over on a roll of parchment, recounting everything from her dream with hopes of finding some clue that would point her in the direction of Leo's whereabouts. She desperately scoped the deep caverns of her mind, tearing away at every memory she could fathom, and she found herself scribbling words that were linked to the previous dreams she had.

𝒞𝓁𝑜𝒶𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝓊𝓇𝑒...

𝐼𝒸𝓎 𝓋𝑜𝒾𝒸𝑒...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

𝐻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎...

𝒞𝓁𝑜𝒶𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝓊𝓇𝑒...

𝒮𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑒...

𝒮𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑒...

𝒮𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑒...

𝒮𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝑒...

With a jolt of violent apprehension, Katie gasped, threw down her quill, and leapt out of her seat. She had not consciously written the words 'she will rise', she just found her quill moving smoothly across the parchment, as though she had been possessed or was in some kind of trance.

Next to her, Draco, who had been deeply indulged in his Arithmancy homework, looked up. His eyes trailed between Katie, who was shaking with alarm, and the parchment with the long list of words blotchily scribbled onto it.

"You OK?" he asked uneasily.

Katie nodded sharply and gulped thickly. Her hands were still trembling tremendously, which, of course, Draco noticed. He reached out for the piece of parchment. Panicking, Katie tried to snatch it from his grasp, but he hitched it away from her and began reading, his eyes widening fearfully as they scanned every word.

"Merlin's Beard, Blair, I—" he breathed. "What is this?"

Heart beating wildly now, Katie seized the piece of parchment and, with one last, frightful glance at Draco, raced from the common room.

She left the dungeons, ran through the huge oak doors in the Entrance Hall and tore across the frozen lawns. It was quite the task to run through two feet of heavy snow, and she could feel her robes soaking right through to her skin. She only stopped running when she reached the shore of the Lake, the black water of which had been encrusted in a layer of thick, ice that shimmered in the light of the winter sun. As it was not yet nightfall, some students were still out skating on the ice, their joyous laughter echoing through the otherwise deserted ground of Hogwarts.

Wanting to avoid conversation with everyone, Katie slipped into the trees. Of course she didn't plan to go deep into the forest (that was much too dangerous), she just wanted to be hidden from sight.

She settled by the edge of a small clearing. It looked as though animals grazed here because the grass that hadn't been covered in snow was uneven and there were bare patches of dirt dotted around the clearing. She slumped at the foot of a yew tree and stared absently down at the crumpled piece of parchment in her hand.

A rustling in the shrubs to her right made her shoot to her feet, whipping out her wand and pointing it dead ahead, ready to defend herself. The bushes gave one last rustle and a head of gleaming blonde hair emerged. Sighing in relief, Katie pocketed her wand and promptly turned away from Draco. Was he stupid? She had literally just ran away from him. Surely he could see that she didn't want to talk, especially not to him.

"I don't want to talk about it." she said hastily.

A loud crunch of snow told Katie that Draco wasn't retreating. She scrunched the parchment into a ball and shoved it inside her pocket with her wand, still refusing to look at her friend.

"I think you do." Draco said softly with another crunch of snow.

Truthfully, Katie did want to talk about it. The last sentence that had been spoken in her diary-induced vision from the night before was eating away at her, and part of her wished she had revealed everything to Dumbledore, but she felt that, were she to go back to his office now and admit that she had lied to his face, he might ridicule her.

Not only this, but Katie wasn't quite sure that Dumbledore truly understood her visions. As much as she hated to admit it, and she would never say it out loud, but Harry was the only one that knew exactly what she was going through, and though she denied it earlier, she did believe that their visions were somehow interlaced.

"It doesn't matter." she mumbled.

"Katie—"

"What's your Boggart?" Katie blurted out suddenly, though her voice remained quiet and timid. Finally, she turned around to face Draco, who was wearing a taken-aback sort of expression — the polar opposite of Katie's paranoid eyes and furrowed eyebrows.

"What?" Draco asked, clearly surprised by this seemingly random and pointless question.

"What's your Boggart?" Katie inquired again. Tears were bubbling up in her cool, grey eyes at an alarming rate.

Draco's face grew solemn and a crease appeared in his forehead as he frowned slightly.

"Dead people." he admitted hesitantly, tearing his eyes away from Katie's and directing them to his feet, which were awkwardly kicking at the snow.

"Like, dead bodies?" she asked.

Visibly stiffening, Draco shook his head. "The bodies of people... that I care about," he told her, still not looking up, and she nodded along as she aimlessly peeled some bark off the yew tree beside her. "Like Mum, Dad and..." he paused, "and you."

Abruptly stopping her process of skinning the tree, Katie's head snapped up. Draco chanced a glimpse at her, and when he saw her staring, visibly astonished by his confession, he smiled half-heartedly.

"What about you?" he questioned.

Katie's heart missed a beat.

"A snake." she lied.

Draco nodded casually. "Bit ironic, isn't it? I mean, considering you're a Slytherin."

With a heavy sigh, Katie scrunched up her face, showing her grudgingness.

"That's a lie," she admitted heavily. "My Boggart isn't a snake."

Nervously twiddling with a loose string on the end of her jumper, Katie kept flicking her eyes between Draco and the pure snow beneath her, too scared of his judgement to keep her gaze locked on his face.

"What is it, then?" Draco asked, apparently sensing Katie's nervousness because his own voice quavered anxiously.

At last, Katie finally dared to meet Draco's eyes and spoke in a rattling whisper that hung in the air and seemed to drown out all other surrounding sounds.

"Me."

For a few fleeting seconds, a glimmer of fear flashed through Draco's eyes, but it was quickly diminished, and his features molded into a sort of sympathetic countenance.

"You?"

Katie nodded slowly. Her heart beat was speeding up once more, and although the last thing she wanted to do was scare Draco away with stories that sounded insane, she found the words spilling from her mouth unconsciously anyway.

"I see things," she whispered shrilly. "In my sleep, when I touch certain things. I see Leo, I see my mum, I see my dad, I see this cloaked figure. And I hear things, too."

Katie could've sworn that, for a split second, Draco looked as though he was going to whirl around and run away, but instead he began to walk forwards — slowly, as if Katie was a deer that would run away if he made one wrong move.

"That parchment," he pointed to Katie's pocket, "the stuff you wrote on it, are those the things that you hear?"

Warm tears were cascading down Katie's ashen face. She nodded as she choked back sobs that were threatening to burst free. "And the things that I see."

A chilling shiver ran down Katie's spine, and she was sure it wasn't from the bitter cold that was enveloping her in the clearing as a frigid wind whipped through the immense trees.

"There is something seriously dark inside me, and it's getting out, and I'm terrified. Terrified that I'm going to hurt someone... terrified... of myself."

"Katerina, listen to me," Draco began, still gradually moving closer to the trembling girl, "you're not a bad person."

"You don't know that." Katie intervened. Her voice was exceedingly croaky.

But a warm smile was growing on Draco's face. "Yes I do," he told her reassuringly. Now, he was close enough to timidly reach out for her hand, and she didn't object when he took it in his own. "You're the last person that would even think about causing harm to someone else."

Katie herself was very doubtful of this statement. She would like nothing more than to march into Professor Umbridge's office and hit her square in the chest with the Killing Curse, and there had been countless occasions when she wanted to hurl something right at Draco's head, too.

"You don't know that," Katie repeated, shaking her head darkly. "I don't know that."

"I know you—"

"No!" she shouted, a bubble of anger within her burst, and she hadn't even been aware that it was growing. She ripped her hand out of Draco's grasp. "No, Draco, you don't know me. You know my middle name, my favourite colour, my birthday, you know the stupid things, but you don't know me."

"Then help me to understand." Draco said. Somehow, despite Katie's aggressive outburst, he was managing to retain his composure.

"I can't. Even I don't understand. I don't know who I am," Katie ran her hands through her hair that was riddled with melting snowflakes and tugged it harshly. Her breathing was growing raspy and her chest was heaving up and down. "I'm losing my mind, I'm losing my mind, I'm losing my mind..."

"Hey, hey, hey!" Draco said quickly, pulling both of her hands away from her hair before placing his own hands on either side of her face, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were blown wide and shining with a layer of glossy tears. "You're not losing your mind, you're not crazy—"

"Shut up!" Katie cried, gasping through her tears that were falling steadily once more. "I'm so sick of people telling me that I'm fine, I want someone to tell me why I'm not fine."

"Yelling isn't going to make you feel any better."

"Neither is sitting around waiting for a non-existent explanation to my damned visions to appear, but that's exactly what Dumbledore wants me to do. No one is listening to me! I'm losing it, I'm dangerous, but no one seems to understand that!"

"You're not dangerous—"

"Stop telling me what I am and what I'm not!"

"Then stop bringing yourself down!" Draco snapped. "For the love of Merlin, you are not a bad person, you are not dangerous, and you are not losing your mind. You're the kindest — well, you're kind of a git, actually — but you're the most wonderful git that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting." Draco held her face a little tighter. "I don't care about some stupid visions, I'm sure there's an explanation for them, you're amazing, Katerina Blair, and if you ever try and... why are you looking at me like that?"

Despite the sinking feeling in her heart and the waterfall of tears that was streaming down her cheeks, Katie somehow managed to paint a smirk onto her flushed face. "If you want to kiss me, just do it." she laughed teasingly, though it sounded more like a suppressed sob.

For a brief moment, Draco looked completely stunned, but he quickly understood that she was joking and, dramatically rolling his eyes, he laughed.

"Oh, shut up." he jokingly scoffed, lightly shoving her away. She giggled as she wiped away her tears with her sleeve.

"Are you all right now?" Draco asked, tightening his cloak around himself as the cold nipped at him.

"No," Katie said honestly, finding that there was no real point in lying. She had, after all, just spilled practically all of her secrets and bottled up emotions to Draco, so being dishonest with him now felt very futile. "But I will be."

Words couldn't describe how relieved she was that, upon finding out about her visions, Draco hadn't laughed and told her she was crazy, or ran away as she always feared he would. He listened, he believed her, and most importantly, he cared, and although Katie's day had been throughly dismal, that one thought brought her a spark of happiness.

***

"Pans, I can't believe you dragged me here." Katie grumbled as Pansy, their arms locked, dragged her along the snow-covered streets of Hogsmeade. It was the weekend before the final five days of term, and the last Hogsmeade trip before the Christmas holidays. Katie was in no mood or emotional state to wander through the merry village as excited kids that hadn't a care in the world purchased Jonko's products, and as carol singers that were brainwashed by the Ministry into believing that Voldemort had not returned sang their merry Christmas songs.

"It's good for you!" Pansy smiled. "You never leave the castle apart from when there's Quidditch training."

"I miss my bed." Katie grumbled miserably.

"Oh, don't be silly," Pansy scolded right before letting out a squeal of delight and pointing excitedly at the window of a hat shop. "Oooh, that's on sale!"

Finally unlinking her arm from Katie's, Pansy seemed to forget all about her classmate as she rushed into the hat shop, the walls of which were painted a bright pink colour that contrasted horribly with the rest of the surrounding buildings.

"Enjoying yourself?" Draco tittered teasingly. Katie shot him a dark glare.

"Keep talking and I'll make you buy me a drink from the Three Broomsticks." she warned.

Draco snorted. "You can't make me—"

"I'll snog you if you buy me one."

There was a short silence, and then—

"What would you like? Butterbeer? Pumpkin juice?"

Katie snorted in mild amusement and shoved him with her elbow. "Shut up," she chuckled. "Come on, let's get in out of the cold."

As soon as they stepped into the Three Broomsticks, a welcoming warmth swept Katie from head to toe. The last time she had been at Hogsmeade, she had spent the visit in the horrible Hog's Head bar, so seeing the polished and cosy Three Broomsticks once more made her feel very content indeed. As usual, the pub was packed and filled with boisterous chatter and laughing.

"So, is that deal still on, or—?" Draco began, but he was rudely cut off when Katie slapped her hand over his mouth. He gave her a scrutinising look, but she pointed sharply to the far corner of the bar and Draco could now see why she had made him stop talking.

Chris and Hermione were sat together at a small, rounded table. Chris had clearly just said something highly amusing because Hermione was practically crying with laughter. Each of them were sipping steaming tankards of Butterbeer and seemed to be highly enjoying the company of the other.

Draco raised his eyebrows. "Wow, Blair, I didn't know your brother had a thing for Mudbloods — OUCH!"

Katie had elbowed him sharply in the ribs. He pouted and started massaging his side.

"Watch your mouth, she's still my best friend." Katie told him seriously as they slipped into seats that were hidden from the view of Chris and Hermione.

"I thought I was your best friend." Draco said, faking a hurt expression.

"I've told you before, we're—"

"Acquainted enemies." Draco finished with a grin.

Thirty minutes and two Butterbeers later (Katie had payed for her own) there was a screeching of wood against stone as Hermione slid her chair out from the table, got to her feet and, beaming and waving goodbye to Chris, she made for the door.