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harry_a_thon Fic Response!!
OMG, I am so sorry if you don't like this one. T_T I sort of... took your requirements and limits and ran with them. ^^;; It's not beta'd yet (so very sorry!), but I swear I'll put in all edits and such and send it to you again! Just... ^^;; missed the deadline, that's all.
*The pairing request was: Harry/Weasley (not Ginny), or Harry/Blaise
*other request: during Hogwarts, and a happy PG-13 fic
*Restrictions: no noncon, or mpreg
Title: Epiphany
Author:shamera
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4178 (without headers and notes)
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Written forcertifieddork!
Summary: Missing scene in Chamber of Secrets movie. Includes procreating!bunnies, rhyming!butterflies, and perv!unicorns. XD It's as fluffy as fluff can get. Um... well, actually there's more humor than fluff... it's kinda a PWP as well...
“That was the worst night ever!” Ron grumbled as he got into bed. He had to keep his voice down as the other boys in the dorm were all asleep, as was evidenced by Neville and Dean’s loud snoring. He pulled the thick maroon covers over himself, stuffing his cold feet underneath. “It’s going to give me nightmares, I swear… I’ll be dreaming about giant spiders and dysfunctional cars for weeks on end…”
“So I guess you’d rather be dreaming about following butterflies, eh?” Harry teased from the next bed over. There other boy looked very calm after a rough night like that, Ron mused. It almost wasn’t fair. Harry never really seemed to be phased at life-and-death situations anymore.
“Anything’s better than spiders.” Ron thought for a moment. “Butterflies would be nice. There’s nothing wrong with butterflies, unless they’re killer butterflies. I’d rather dream about nice, cute things than dark, scary things that attack you at night.”
“I would have taken you for the type to be more scared of cute fluffy things than dangerous things.”
Ron made a face. “After a real encounter with said ‘dangerous things’, I doubt cute fluffy things can be as scary.”
Harry only shrugged, in response, settling into his own bed. “But we managed to get some information from Aragog. We know that the creature in the Chamber of Secrets is something spiders fear, and that the reopening of the Chamber of Secrets wasn’t caused by Hagrid.”
“Not that we can ever use that as proof to help Hagrid,” Ron pointed out. “Who’d believe us? ‘Ah, sir, we were informed by a giant monster spider in the middle of the Forbidden Forest that this whole fiasco wasn’t Hagrid’s fault!’” The redhead’s voice was mockingly high and squeaky, nothing at all like either of their voices. “They’d never believe us, and we’d get a year’s worth of detentions and a million house points taken away from us for being in the Forest in the first place!”
“Shh!” Harry hissed at him when Ron’s voice got a bit loud. Both boys tensed up when Seamus rolled over and muttered something incoherent in his sleep, wrinkling his nose before he started his soft snoring again.
“What I’m trying to say is, Harry,” Ron said, his tone now much softer in accordance to the fact that they weren’t the only ones in the room. “Is that this entire trip has done nothing but get us in trouble! This isn’t information we can tell an adult, mate! We were almost killed, too!”
“You say that ‘we were almost killed’ behind not being able to tell adults.” Harry peered over his covers at Ron. “You’ve been hanging around Hermione too much. You’ve got your priorities completely mixed up as well!”
Ron resisted the urge to tell Harry that telling adults about the situation meant more than their near-death experience that night because he was sure that it was only going to be much more dangerous if they charged into future danger by themselves without the help of their professors.
“Aw, poor Ron,” Harry cooed in a sickly sweet voice. “You want me to come over there and sleep with you so you don’t get nightmares?”
Ron opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it and swallowed thickly. Bloody hell, but he really wanted Harry there. He just knew that he wasn’t going to sleep well, and he desperately felt like clinging onto Harry like he had in the Forest.
Damn Fred and George, anyway. If it weren’t for the fact that Ron was scared shitless that he would cling to Harry and wake up the next morning to find Harry transfigured into a giant spider (just like his poor teddy), he would have answered an affirmative.
Maybe.
“No, that’s okay.” Ron managed weakly. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”
Harry only rolled his eyes in amusement, before turning over in his bed, his back now facing Ron. “Goodnight, Ron.” He said with exasperation.
“Goodnight, Harry.”
“…sweet dreams.”
Ron let out a panicked sound. “Don’t jinx me!”
There was a muffled laughter coming from Harry’s direction, and the redheaded Weasley boy stubbornly set himself to ignore it. He closed his eyes and snuggled deep into his bed, thinking extremely hard about chocolates and sweet foods, warm sunshine and sparkling waters. Just… anything that wasn’t dark forests and creepy spiders. Anything but that.
Ron snapped awake in the middle of the night when his warm covers were suddenly yanked off his body, exposing him to the nighttime chills and winds of the high tower in the Gryffindor dorms. He jerked up instantly, his reaction almost as severe as if someone had poured a bucket of water over his head.
But damn, it was cold in the tower.
The second thing he registered beside the sudden drop in temperature was that it was extremely bright. And although Ron usually (like everyone else in the world) got the feeling that only seconds had elapsed from when he went to bed to actual morning, Ron was positive that barely minutes had passed since he fell asleep this time. Couldn’t have been more positive about anything else in his life, actually.
“You’re one very hard person to wake up, Ron,” came the dry voice of his best friend from the edge of his vision. Ron squinted at Harry’s general direction, his eyes watering from the painful bout of trying to adjust from sheer, blessed darkness to the bright lights that surrounded them.
“What the hell- Harry?” Ron asked groggily, reaching up to rub at his eyes. Was it just him… or was it really… colorful in the background?
“I’m still not too sure about the whole wizarding culture and how things happen… but what exactly did you wish for before you went to bed, Ron?”
Ron swallowed thickly. “Erm… Something about food and sunny days.”
Harry, for a moment, seemed to be twitching. “I think we’re trapped in your dream.”
That got Ron’s attention, and for the first time in since he had woken up, he took a look around.
Bright sunshine with fluffy white clouds that looked so much like cotton candy.
Songbirds singing to each other in the sky.
He was lying in a wide field of flowers of every different color, Harry kneeling beside him in his pajamas. There was the distant sound of running water, and the smell of different fragranced flowers was overwhelming. Soft grass covered all the land, as they seemed to be outdoors in a wilderness that just did not exist in the United Kingdom.
Ron spied several pink and yellow bunnies at the corner of his eyes, and he turned his head towards them slowly, frightened for a moment that they might attack him. But instead, they stared at him for a moment before twitching their noses and turning back to whatever business they were doing before Ron focused his attention on them.
And the trees. What happened to the beautiful images of forests where the trees were tall and green? Ron had to rub at his eyes when he first saw the “trees”, but the image stayed no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes or how many spots clouded his vision.
They weren’t trees. They were giant lollipops with multiples colors and flavors swirled into the center, and protruding from the ground about every three meters.
Eyes wide, Ron turned back to look at Harry, almost ready to beg the other boy to do something, anything, to wake him up. Anything that “sweet” and sunny was scary. There had to be something behind this illusion- and Ron had the horrible feeling that whatever it was, it had to be as dark and creepy as the façade was bright and cheerful.
But Harry only gave him and flat look, clearing stating that it was Ron’s fault they were there. “You haven’t seen the worst of it yet.” He told the redhead.
Somehow, Ron knew that he really didn’t want to see the worst of it.
But he followed Harry’s gaze anyway, somewhat with the same sick fascination that made a person look at a gory image even though they know it’s going to gross them out for weeks.
Flying low over a particular group of pungent flowers were small butterflies- their wings making them look like flying hearts in the air. They were all of soft pastel colors, pinks and blues and lavenders… hundreds of them in the sky.
“Butter… flies…?” Ron choked out, scooting back towards Harry. He stopped when he felt his best friend’s arm pushing him away so that Harry wouldn’t be crushed under Ron.
“Yes.” Harry responded, sounding lightly irritated. “That’s how I figured out that this was your dream.”
“But I can’t be dreaming right now.” Ron said, shaking his head. “This feels too real to be a dream… I mean, I can see, smell, and hear everything perfectly fine.”
Harry took advantage of Ron talking to reach out and pinch the other boy hard in the arm.
“OW! What in Merlin’s name was that for?”
The dark-haired boy looked disappointed. “Damn. I was hoping that you’d wake up if I did that.”
The redhead glared at his friend, rubbing the throbbing area in his arm where Harry had pinched. But then he realized what Harry had done, and was also slightly scared at the fact that he wasn’t waking up, and that it had hurt. Did that mean that this wasn’t a dream, after all?
“If this is my dream,” Ron said skeptically, “then why are you here, Harry?”
The younger boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m a figment of your imagination. Maybe I’m the one dreaming and you’re the figment of my imagination. Maybe it’s just magic and we’re both stuck together in this dream. Maybe you’re dreaming out a fantasy-”
“Okay, okay!” Ron tried to shush the other boy. “I get it already! But if you might be the one dreaming, why’d you pinch me?”
“Because I tried that on myself earlier and I didn’t wake up.”
“But that hurt!” Ron whined.
“If it hadn’t hurt, it would have been a sure sign that you’re dreaming.”
Ron was tempted to pinch Harry despite the logic in that. If this really was his dream, why couldn’t he do anything he wanted in it?
But then...
Taking another look at the now procreating bunnies under the lollipop trees, Ron shuddered. Damn it. Those were things he really didn’t want to see.
“C’mon,” Harry said as he stood up, dusting the dirt off his pajamas from when he had crouched with Ron. “We need to work in finding a way out of here. I went exploring for a bit while you were sleeping… and, well, this entire place is nothing but a bottle of happiness waiting for a diabetic to come along to kill them with the sugar rush.”
Ron followed the other boy’s lead and got up as well, wondering at Harry’s phrasing of the statement. This place could kill people?!
“I just want to figure out a way to wake up.” Ron said honestly.
Immediately following his statement, there was a sound of a million wings flapping rapidly in the air, and in moments both boys were surrounded by hundred of colorful butterflies, all with hear-shaped wings and pastel colors.
Harry gave out a distressed cried and moved his arms to shield his face, instinctively leaning towards Ron so that the two of them could occupy the smallest space possible until the butterflies decided to go away. Ron did the same thing, using his arms to protect his head and leaning close enough to Harry that he could feel the other boy’s breath on the bare skin of his forearm where he sleeve had slipped up.
The cacophony of flapping wings slowly died away as all the butterflies began to settle on either one of the two boys, foregoing the flowers they had been so leisure exploring just a few moments ago.
“If you seek help to escape from this land,
We’d be glad to lend a helping hand!”
Ron and Harry stiffened at the high pitched, horrible imitation of a guy trying to talk like a little girl, and Ron peeked out from underneath his arm to make sure that there was no one else there with them.
There was no one. It was just them, the bunnies, the butterflies, flowers, and lollipop trees.
One of the butterflies fluttered its wings.
“This land itself is sweetness bound,
And there be no greater place here found!”
Ron freaked. He jumped suddenly, startling the butterflies from his body as he jumped onto Harry, clutching the other boy tightly to him like a teddy bear.
“OhmygodHarrythebutterfliesjusttalked!”
There was a choking sound. “Ron… air….”
“What? Oh!” Ron loosened his grip on the dark-haired boy a little, but decided that he would rather not lose physical contact with his friend yet while those weird butterflies were still around them. (Didn’t I talk about killer butterflies before I went to sleep? Are these killer butterflies?!)
Once Harry had his freedom of movement again (however slight that was), he started trying to bat away Ron’s hands, as they had started to grip tightly on his clothing. “Ron! This is just a stupid dream!”
“What if it isn’t a stupid dream? What if we really were transported to some other strange, distant land and we can’t really get back anymore?” Ron’s voice rose in a panic.
Harry only rolled his eyes. “Ron. You just said the butterflies talked to you. That sort of… I don’t know, never happens in reality?”
“Magic.” Ron snapped. “Anything can happen with magic. They may be the evil minions of You-Know-Who, for all you know!”
Harry gave him another flat look, and another struggle to try and get away from Ron, looking around at the bright and cheery landscape with lollipops and procreating bunnies and flowers and sunshine. “I highly doubt that. The idea that we might have fallen into a first year Hufflepuff’s dream, however…”
Ron froze, and then looked closely at the more-nonchalant-than-not Harry. “You think we fell into someone else’s dream?”
“Huh? You never made a fuss when I suggested you might have fallen into my dream!”
The redheaded Gryffindor shook his head viciously. “Yeah, but… that’s you, Harry. Everything always happens to you, and I usually just go along for the ride.”
Now the dark-haired boy had calmed down, and looked right at Ron again, noting the sincerity in the other boy’s voice. He seemed pensive, then sad, for a moment.
“That’s not true, Ron. You don’t just ‘go along for the ride’… you’re very important!”
But Ron could only shrug at that moment, not looking at Harry’s face when he said that, and not wanting to discuss it in a dream of all places. It was something that had been building since first year, and he wanted to repress the feeling of being left behind as much as possible for as long as he could. If anything, he’s rather talk it out with Hermione where she could yell at him in the appropriate times than have Harry listen with such sympathy in his bright eyes.
There was another fluttering of wings to remind the two boys that yes, the talking pastel butterflies with their wings shaped like a heart and talked in rhymes, were still there after all.
“Well…” Harry considered for a second. “They did say that want to help us, after all…”
“What?” Ron’s alarmed look came back as he hissed, “Don’t talk back to them! They’re evil! They look like hearts! They rhyme!” His voice grew more confident. “It’s always a bad guy that rhymes.”
Harry, who had been about to start up a conversation with the butterflies, blinked and looked back at Ron. “What? It’s not always the bad guy that rhymes.”
“In stories, the rhymes are always meant to trick the poor heroes into their death!”
“That’s ridiculous, Ron. This is a dream. I don’t think there’s even a thing called ‘death’ in a place like this.” Harry waved an arm about just to emphasize his point.
“But you just said-!” Ron protested weakly, trying to recall the statement about diabetics. “About this place waiting for kill some poor diabeeta or something!”
Harry blinked owlishly for a moment (as he didn’t sleep with his glasses), then laughed quietly. “That was just an example of how childish and sweet this place is, Ron.”
The redhead deemed not to respond to that one, instead grabbing on tightly to Harry’s arm. Ron almost heard a cricket chirp in the background if it weren’t for the fact that there were no crickets in the dream. At least… he thought not.
Still, he clung on tightly to Harry.
Seeing that Ron wasn’t going to argue that point anymore, Harry turned his attention back to the awaiting butterflies, who looked like they had been watching the entire scene before them closely.
“Um…” the poor boy struggled for what he could say to the butterflies. “Thanks for offering your help. How do we get out of this dream?”
It seemed he had said the correct thing, as all the butterflies began fluttering their wings excitedly, chatter falling back and forth between them at a rate that neither boy could figure out. Ron reckoned that he could make out the word ‘unicorn’ being used fairly often, though.
“The answer deep to which you seek,
May lie with the unicorn and her clique!”
The boys looked at each other, both silently agreeing that whoever’s dream it was, they weren’t very creative if the butterflies rhymed so horribly.
“My, my, my. Now what do you have here before us?”
Ron stared. He couldn’t help it. When the butterflies had said ‘unicorns’, he had imagined majestic beings that ruled this happy land, just like the unicorns he had studied about in books: huge and proud, their manes sparkling white and their horn glowing in its purity. Creatures of such mythical quality that he thought he would snap back into reality just from meeting them.
But...
The small pony-like horse nudged him in the shoulder playfully, careful not to dig her multi-colored horn into his side by accident. Her mane was filled with colors of the rainbow, and small enough for children to coo and want to climb all over her.
Not to mentioned, she sounded like a gossiping schoolgirl when she talked.
But then, he thought to himself, what could he have expected in a place where there are giant lollipops instead of trees?
“Um…” even Harry seemed shocked at the playful appearance of the unicorn, which must have been so different from the unicorn that he had seen in his first year. “We… were told by the butterflies to seek you out, Lady, because you knew the way out of this dream.”
She seemed to sniff at him for a moment before deeming him worthy, as she nudged against him, almost cat-like, and trotted around both of them.
“Why leave?” she asked. “Isn’t this place fantastic? Isn’t it all you wanted as a child? Didn’t you ever want everything to be bright and happy forever, the sun never setting to let out the night and all the nightmares and horrors?” Her dark eyes bore into theirs, seeking confirmation. “This place… this dream, is the sanctuary your mind offers to you. It might seem overdone, but it’s a dream that you’ve actually been having for a very long time. You’ve never felt out of place here before, so why now?”
“I think you’ve mistaken us for little girls.” Harry stated just as Ron startled.
“We’ve had this dream before?”
“Many times.” The unicorn (Lady) confirmed. “It’s a childhood protection… a dream you can enjoy, but would never remember the next morning.” She bowed her head. “But it seems you are growing up. That will mean that the rest of us will have to fade away.”
Harry seemed very uncomfortable with the subject. “Why would you fade away?”
Lady looked at him for a moment, nuzzling his shoulder. “Because adults have no use for childish dreams to protect them when they already have their cynicalism as a defense. Adults want nothing to do with fantasies and become embarrassed and sometimes scared by the protection in their dreams. That’s when the dreams change from being a protection to being just another source of stress.”
“So to get out of the dreams, we have to be cynical?” Harry asked dubiously.
“No. You have to-” she paused for effect. “Be involved in a hot, sweaty, smut scene!” she seemed to beam at the both of them. “That’s how we know you’re all grown up.”
Ron instantly dropped his hold on Harry’s arm, staring in horror at the unicorn.
“We have to WHAT?!”
“Chop, chop.” She said, backing away a bit and ignoring Ron’s outburst. “I haven’t all the time in the world, you know. I have dreams to organize through and other people to bug…” she sat down, settling herself in for a long session.
"I... he..." Ron choked.
But Harry just shrugged, and reached for his best friend. Ron nearly shrieked when Harry wrapped his arms around Ron’s shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Ron hissed. “You can’t be crazy enough to go along with what that… thing says!”
“I can hear you, you know.” Came the lazy response from the unicorn.
Harry rolled his eyes, and Ron was suddenly enthralled with Harry’s green eyes. So bright… so… beautiful… No! He shook his head mentally, trying to dispel the thoughts. It was the stupid dream! He wasn’t interested in Harry!
“Look.” Harry pointed out. “I want to go back. Wake up. Whatever. I don’t know about you, but this place scares me more than going to get the Philosopher’s Stone last year. Maybe I am getting cynical. But I’m getting really freaked out by the rabbits, the butterflies, and the unicorns. And if this is the way out of the dream,” he shrugged, “so be it.”
“But…” Ron protested weakly, his own arms coming to wrap around Harry’s waist. He seemed to get more incoherent the closer Harry was, and lost his protest completely when the other boy leaned up to say into his ear, warm breath tickling the soft hairs,
“And besides… if we stay here any longer, the rabbit population’s just going to skyrocket until a mutant killer bunny comes to try and eat us.”
There was absolutely no logic in that, but Ron only nodded his head in agreement.
And so, Ron didn’t resist when Harry pulled him down into a kiss. The redhead kept telling himself it was only because Harry wanted to get out, not anything else. Because Harry said it was alright.
Because, damn it, he couldn’t stay there any longer anyway.
[[ INSERT HOT, SMUTTY, VOYERISTIC SCENE HERE!!11! ]]
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
Ron sat straight up in bed, still screaming, eyes so wide he was sure they could fall out of his face at any moment. He was huffing heavily (because of the dream? No! Don’t think of that!) and covered in sweat. That dream! That land with all the fluffy, happy things!!
His eyes darted around to find familiar red curtains and maroon covers that were the symbol of the Gryffindor dorms. There was sunshine starting to shine in from the window in the tower, signifying the beginning of the morning.
Finally sure that he was back and not in another dream, Ron heaved a sigh of relief after a few moments.
Then something beside him squirmed.
Ron looked down at his side with trepidation.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
Harry winced, any buried his face further into his pillow, trying to drown out the sounds of Ron’s screaming. “Ron, shut up!” he muttered into the pillows.
“I.. I…!! You..! How..??!!!” Ron suddenly found his voice again. “What are you doing in my bed?”
“To clarify the point,” Harry said sleepily. “You’re the one who sleepwalked and crawled into my bed.” He peeked up at Ron with sleep-addled green eyes. “You were dreaming, Ron.”
Ron’s heartbeat was finally starting to calm down. “Just… a dream?” He didn’t know why he was so disappointed. “And… you didn’t dream it? About the bunnies and the butterflies and unicorns?”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you were dreaming about?” he shook his head. “Nope, sorry, Ron. No scary butterflies for me.”
“Then… then…”
Then it was all just a dream of his?
“Go back to sleep, Ron.” Harry muttered. “There’s still another hour before we have to get up. Then we have to talk to Hermione about what we found out last night… remember?”
Ron lay back tentatively, finally falling back to reality again. Yeah. It was just a dream, and the real world was filled with giant spiders and dysfunctional cars. That thought somehow made him feel better.
“Besides,” Harry murmured with his eyes closed, on the brink of sleep again. “Those butterflies weren't too scary… they just rhymed, that’s all.”
Ron choked.
*The pairing request was: Harry/Weasley (not Ginny), or Harry/Blaise
*other request: during Hogwarts, and a happy PG-13 fic
*Restrictions: no noncon, or mpreg
Title: Epiphany
Author:
shameraRating: PG-13
Word count: 4178 (without headers and notes)
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Written for
certifieddork!Summary: Missing scene in Chamber of Secrets movie. Includes procreating!bunnies, rhyming!butterflies, and perv!unicorns. XD It's as fluffy as fluff can get. Um... well, actually there's more humor than fluff... it's kinda a PWP as well...
“That was the worst night ever!” Ron grumbled as he got into bed. He had to keep his voice down as the other boys in the dorm were all asleep, as was evidenced by Neville and Dean’s loud snoring. He pulled the thick maroon covers over himself, stuffing his cold feet underneath. “It’s going to give me nightmares, I swear… I’ll be dreaming about giant spiders and dysfunctional cars for weeks on end…”
“So I guess you’d rather be dreaming about following butterflies, eh?” Harry teased from the next bed over. There other boy looked very calm after a rough night like that, Ron mused. It almost wasn’t fair. Harry never really seemed to be phased at life-and-death situations anymore.
“Anything’s better than spiders.” Ron thought for a moment. “Butterflies would be nice. There’s nothing wrong with butterflies, unless they’re killer butterflies. I’d rather dream about nice, cute things than dark, scary things that attack you at night.”
“I would have taken you for the type to be more scared of cute fluffy things than dangerous things.”
Ron made a face. “After a real encounter with said ‘dangerous things’, I doubt cute fluffy things can be as scary.”
Harry only shrugged, in response, settling into his own bed. “But we managed to get some information from Aragog. We know that the creature in the Chamber of Secrets is something spiders fear, and that the reopening of the Chamber of Secrets wasn’t caused by Hagrid.”
“Not that we can ever use that as proof to help Hagrid,” Ron pointed out. “Who’d believe us? ‘Ah, sir, we were informed by a giant monster spider in the middle of the Forbidden Forest that this whole fiasco wasn’t Hagrid’s fault!’” The redhead’s voice was mockingly high and squeaky, nothing at all like either of their voices. “They’d never believe us, and we’d get a year’s worth of detentions and a million house points taken away from us for being in the Forest in the first place!”
“Shh!” Harry hissed at him when Ron’s voice got a bit loud. Both boys tensed up when Seamus rolled over and muttered something incoherent in his sleep, wrinkling his nose before he started his soft snoring again.
“What I’m trying to say is, Harry,” Ron said, his tone now much softer in accordance to the fact that they weren’t the only ones in the room. “Is that this entire trip has done nothing but get us in trouble! This isn’t information we can tell an adult, mate! We were almost killed, too!”
“You say that ‘we were almost killed’ behind not being able to tell adults.” Harry peered over his covers at Ron. “You’ve been hanging around Hermione too much. You’ve got your priorities completely mixed up as well!”
Ron resisted the urge to tell Harry that telling adults about the situation meant more than their near-death experience that night because he was sure that it was only going to be much more dangerous if they charged into future danger by themselves without the help of their professors.
“Aw, poor Ron,” Harry cooed in a sickly sweet voice. “You want me to come over there and sleep with you so you don’t get nightmares?”
Ron opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it and swallowed thickly. Bloody hell, but he really wanted Harry there. He just knew that he wasn’t going to sleep well, and he desperately felt like clinging onto Harry like he had in the Forest.
Damn Fred and George, anyway. If it weren’t for the fact that Ron was scared shitless that he would cling to Harry and wake up the next morning to find Harry transfigured into a giant spider (just like his poor teddy), he would have answered an affirmative.
Maybe.
“No, that’s okay.” Ron managed weakly. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”
Harry only rolled his eyes in amusement, before turning over in his bed, his back now facing Ron. “Goodnight, Ron.” He said with exasperation.
“Goodnight, Harry.”
“…sweet dreams.”
Ron let out a panicked sound. “Don’t jinx me!”
There was a muffled laughter coming from Harry’s direction, and the redheaded Weasley boy stubbornly set himself to ignore it. He closed his eyes and snuggled deep into his bed, thinking extremely hard about chocolates and sweet foods, warm sunshine and sparkling waters. Just… anything that wasn’t dark forests and creepy spiders. Anything but that.
Ron snapped awake in the middle of the night when his warm covers were suddenly yanked off his body, exposing him to the nighttime chills and winds of the high tower in the Gryffindor dorms. He jerked up instantly, his reaction almost as severe as if someone had poured a bucket of water over his head.
But damn, it was cold in the tower.
The second thing he registered beside the sudden drop in temperature was that it was extremely bright. And although Ron usually (like everyone else in the world) got the feeling that only seconds had elapsed from when he went to bed to actual morning, Ron was positive that barely minutes had passed since he fell asleep this time. Couldn’t have been more positive about anything else in his life, actually.
“You’re one very hard person to wake up, Ron,” came the dry voice of his best friend from the edge of his vision. Ron squinted at Harry’s general direction, his eyes watering from the painful bout of trying to adjust from sheer, blessed darkness to the bright lights that surrounded them.
“What the hell- Harry?” Ron asked groggily, reaching up to rub at his eyes. Was it just him… or was it really… colorful in the background?
“I’m still not too sure about the whole wizarding culture and how things happen… but what exactly did you wish for before you went to bed, Ron?”
Ron swallowed thickly. “Erm… Something about food and sunny days.”
Harry, for a moment, seemed to be twitching. “I think we’re trapped in your dream.”
That got Ron’s attention, and for the first time in since he had woken up, he took a look around.
Bright sunshine with fluffy white clouds that looked so much like cotton candy.
Songbirds singing to each other in the sky.
He was lying in a wide field of flowers of every different color, Harry kneeling beside him in his pajamas. There was the distant sound of running water, and the smell of different fragranced flowers was overwhelming. Soft grass covered all the land, as they seemed to be outdoors in a wilderness that just did not exist in the United Kingdom.
Ron spied several pink and yellow bunnies at the corner of his eyes, and he turned his head towards them slowly, frightened for a moment that they might attack him. But instead, they stared at him for a moment before twitching their noses and turning back to whatever business they were doing before Ron focused his attention on them.
And the trees. What happened to the beautiful images of forests where the trees were tall and green? Ron had to rub at his eyes when he first saw the “trees”, but the image stayed no matter how hard he rubbed his eyes or how many spots clouded his vision.
They weren’t trees. They were giant lollipops with multiples colors and flavors swirled into the center, and protruding from the ground about every three meters.
Eyes wide, Ron turned back to look at Harry, almost ready to beg the other boy to do something, anything, to wake him up. Anything that “sweet” and sunny was scary. There had to be something behind this illusion- and Ron had the horrible feeling that whatever it was, it had to be as dark and creepy as the façade was bright and cheerful.
But Harry only gave him and flat look, clearing stating that it was Ron’s fault they were there. “You haven’t seen the worst of it yet.” He told the redhead.
Somehow, Ron knew that he really didn’t want to see the worst of it.
But he followed Harry’s gaze anyway, somewhat with the same sick fascination that made a person look at a gory image even though they know it’s going to gross them out for weeks.
Flying low over a particular group of pungent flowers were small butterflies- their wings making them look like flying hearts in the air. They were all of soft pastel colors, pinks and blues and lavenders… hundreds of them in the sky.
“Butter… flies…?” Ron choked out, scooting back towards Harry. He stopped when he felt his best friend’s arm pushing him away so that Harry wouldn’t be crushed under Ron.
“Yes.” Harry responded, sounding lightly irritated. “That’s how I figured out that this was your dream.”
“But I can’t be dreaming right now.” Ron said, shaking his head. “This feels too real to be a dream… I mean, I can see, smell, and hear everything perfectly fine.”
Harry took advantage of Ron talking to reach out and pinch the other boy hard in the arm.
“OW! What in Merlin’s name was that for?”
The dark-haired boy looked disappointed. “Damn. I was hoping that you’d wake up if I did that.”
The redhead glared at his friend, rubbing the throbbing area in his arm where Harry had pinched. But then he realized what Harry had done, and was also slightly scared at the fact that he wasn’t waking up, and that it had hurt. Did that mean that this wasn’t a dream, after all?
“If this is my dream,” Ron said skeptically, “then why are you here, Harry?”
The younger boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m a figment of your imagination. Maybe I’m the one dreaming and you’re the figment of my imagination. Maybe it’s just magic and we’re both stuck together in this dream. Maybe you’re dreaming out a fantasy-”
“Okay, okay!” Ron tried to shush the other boy. “I get it already! But if you might be the one dreaming, why’d you pinch me?”
“Because I tried that on myself earlier and I didn’t wake up.”
“But that hurt!” Ron whined.
“If it hadn’t hurt, it would have been a sure sign that you’re dreaming.”
Ron was tempted to pinch Harry despite the logic in that. If this really was his dream, why couldn’t he do anything he wanted in it?
But then...
Taking another look at the now procreating bunnies under the lollipop trees, Ron shuddered. Damn it. Those were things he really didn’t want to see.
“C’mon,” Harry said as he stood up, dusting the dirt off his pajamas from when he had crouched with Ron. “We need to work in finding a way out of here. I went exploring for a bit while you were sleeping… and, well, this entire place is nothing but a bottle of happiness waiting for a diabetic to come along to kill them with the sugar rush.”
Ron followed the other boy’s lead and got up as well, wondering at Harry’s phrasing of the statement. This place could kill people?!
“I just want to figure out a way to wake up.” Ron said honestly.
Immediately following his statement, there was a sound of a million wings flapping rapidly in the air, and in moments both boys were surrounded by hundred of colorful butterflies, all with hear-shaped wings and pastel colors.
Harry gave out a distressed cried and moved his arms to shield his face, instinctively leaning towards Ron so that the two of them could occupy the smallest space possible until the butterflies decided to go away. Ron did the same thing, using his arms to protect his head and leaning close enough to Harry that he could feel the other boy’s breath on the bare skin of his forearm where he sleeve had slipped up.
The cacophony of flapping wings slowly died away as all the butterflies began to settle on either one of the two boys, foregoing the flowers they had been so leisure exploring just a few moments ago.
“If you seek help to escape from this land,
We’d be glad to lend a helping hand!”
Ron and Harry stiffened at the high pitched, horrible imitation of a guy trying to talk like a little girl, and Ron peeked out from underneath his arm to make sure that there was no one else there with them.
There was no one. It was just them, the bunnies, the butterflies, flowers, and lollipop trees.
One of the butterflies fluttered its wings.
“This land itself is sweetness bound,
And there be no greater place here found!”
Ron freaked. He jumped suddenly, startling the butterflies from his body as he jumped onto Harry, clutching the other boy tightly to him like a teddy bear.
“OhmygodHarrythebutterfliesjusttalked!”
There was a choking sound. “Ron… air….”
“What? Oh!” Ron loosened his grip on the dark-haired boy a little, but decided that he would rather not lose physical contact with his friend yet while those weird butterflies were still around them. (Didn’t I talk about killer butterflies before I went to sleep? Are these killer butterflies?!)
Once Harry had his freedom of movement again (however slight that was), he started trying to bat away Ron’s hands, as they had started to grip tightly on his clothing. “Ron! This is just a stupid dream!”
“What if it isn’t a stupid dream? What if we really were transported to some other strange, distant land and we can’t really get back anymore?” Ron’s voice rose in a panic.
Harry only rolled his eyes. “Ron. You just said the butterflies talked to you. That sort of… I don’t know, never happens in reality?”
“Magic.” Ron snapped. “Anything can happen with magic. They may be the evil minions of You-Know-Who, for all you know!”
Harry gave him another flat look, and another struggle to try and get away from Ron, looking around at the bright and cheery landscape with lollipops and procreating bunnies and flowers and sunshine. “I highly doubt that. The idea that we might have fallen into a first year Hufflepuff’s dream, however…”
Ron froze, and then looked closely at the more-nonchalant-than-not Harry. “You think we fell into someone else’s dream?”
“Huh? You never made a fuss when I suggested you might have fallen into my dream!”
The redheaded Gryffindor shook his head viciously. “Yeah, but… that’s you, Harry. Everything always happens to you, and I usually just go along for the ride.”
Now the dark-haired boy had calmed down, and looked right at Ron again, noting the sincerity in the other boy’s voice. He seemed pensive, then sad, for a moment.
“That’s not true, Ron. You don’t just ‘go along for the ride’… you’re very important!”
But Ron could only shrug at that moment, not looking at Harry’s face when he said that, and not wanting to discuss it in a dream of all places. It was something that had been building since first year, and he wanted to repress the feeling of being left behind as much as possible for as long as he could. If anything, he’s rather talk it out with Hermione where she could yell at him in the appropriate times than have Harry listen with such sympathy in his bright eyes.
There was another fluttering of wings to remind the two boys that yes, the talking pastel butterflies with their wings shaped like a heart and talked in rhymes, were still there after all.
“Well…” Harry considered for a second. “They did say that want to help us, after all…”
“What?” Ron’s alarmed look came back as he hissed, “Don’t talk back to them! They’re evil! They look like hearts! They rhyme!” His voice grew more confident. “It’s always a bad guy that rhymes.”
Harry, who had been about to start up a conversation with the butterflies, blinked and looked back at Ron. “What? It’s not always the bad guy that rhymes.”
“In stories, the rhymes are always meant to trick the poor heroes into their death!”
“That’s ridiculous, Ron. This is a dream. I don’t think there’s even a thing called ‘death’ in a place like this.” Harry waved an arm about just to emphasize his point.
“But you just said-!” Ron protested weakly, trying to recall the statement about diabetics. “About this place waiting for kill some poor diabeeta or something!”
Harry blinked owlishly for a moment (as he didn’t sleep with his glasses), then laughed quietly. “That was just an example of how childish and sweet this place is, Ron.”
The redhead deemed not to respond to that one, instead grabbing on tightly to Harry’s arm. Ron almost heard a cricket chirp in the background if it weren’t for the fact that there were no crickets in the dream. At least… he thought not.
Still, he clung on tightly to Harry.
Seeing that Ron wasn’t going to argue that point anymore, Harry turned his attention back to the awaiting butterflies, who looked like they had been watching the entire scene before them closely.
“Um…” the poor boy struggled for what he could say to the butterflies. “Thanks for offering your help. How do we get out of this dream?”
It seemed he had said the correct thing, as all the butterflies began fluttering their wings excitedly, chatter falling back and forth between them at a rate that neither boy could figure out. Ron reckoned that he could make out the word ‘unicorn’ being used fairly often, though.
“The answer deep to which you seek,
May lie with the unicorn and her clique!”
The boys looked at each other, both silently agreeing that whoever’s dream it was, they weren’t very creative if the butterflies rhymed so horribly.
“My, my, my. Now what do you have here before us?”
Ron stared. He couldn’t help it. When the butterflies had said ‘unicorns’, he had imagined majestic beings that ruled this happy land, just like the unicorns he had studied about in books: huge and proud, their manes sparkling white and their horn glowing in its purity. Creatures of such mythical quality that he thought he would snap back into reality just from meeting them.
But...
The small pony-like horse nudged him in the shoulder playfully, careful not to dig her multi-colored horn into his side by accident. Her mane was filled with colors of the rainbow, and small enough for children to coo and want to climb all over her.
Not to mentioned, she sounded like a gossiping schoolgirl when she talked.
But then, he thought to himself, what could he have expected in a place where there are giant lollipops instead of trees?
“Um…” even Harry seemed shocked at the playful appearance of the unicorn, which must have been so different from the unicorn that he had seen in his first year. “We… were told by the butterflies to seek you out, Lady, because you knew the way out of this dream.”
She seemed to sniff at him for a moment before deeming him worthy, as she nudged against him, almost cat-like, and trotted around both of them.
“Why leave?” she asked. “Isn’t this place fantastic? Isn’t it all you wanted as a child? Didn’t you ever want everything to be bright and happy forever, the sun never setting to let out the night and all the nightmares and horrors?” Her dark eyes bore into theirs, seeking confirmation. “This place… this dream, is the sanctuary your mind offers to you. It might seem overdone, but it’s a dream that you’ve actually been having for a very long time. You’ve never felt out of place here before, so why now?”
“I think you’ve mistaken us for little girls.” Harry stated just as Ron startled.
“We’ve had this dream before?”
“Many times.” The unicorn (Lady) confirmed. “It’s a childhood protection… a dream you can enjoy, but would never remember the next morning.” She bowed her head. “But it seems you are growing up. That will mean that the rest of us will have to fade away.”
Harry seemed very uncomfortable with the subject. “Why would you fade away?”
Lady looked at him for a moment, nuzzling his shoulder. “Because adults have no use for childish dreams to protect them when they already have their cynicalism as a defense. Adults want nothing to do with fantasies and become embarrassed and sometimes scared by the protection in their dreams. That’s when the dreams change from being a protection to being just another source of stress.”
“So to get out of the dreams, we have to be cynical?” Harry asked dubiously.
“No. You have to-” she paused for effect. “Be involved in a hot, sweaty, smut scene!” she seemed to beam at the both of them. “That’s how we know you’re all grown up.”
Ron instantly dropped his hold on Harry’s arm, staring in horror at the unicorn.
“We have to WHAT?!”
“Chop, chop.” She said, backing away a bit and ignoring Ron’s outburst. “I haven’t all the time in the world, you know. I have dreams to organize through and other people to bug…” she sat down, settling herself in for a long session.
"I... he..." Ron choked.
But Harry just shrugged, and reached for his best friend. Ron nearly shrieked when Harry wrapped his arms around Ron’s shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Ron hissed. “You can’t be crazy enough to go along with what that… thing says!”
“I can hear you, you know.” Came the lazy response from the unicorn.
Harry rolled his eyes, and Ron was suddenly enthralled with Harry’s green eyes. So bright… so… beautiful… No! He shook his head mentally, trying to dispel the thoughts. It was the stupid dream! He wasn’t interested in Harry!
“Look.” Harry pointed out. “I want to go back. Wake up. Whatever. I don’t know about you, but this place scares me more than going to get the Philosopher’s Stone last year. Maybe I am getting cynical. But I’m getting really freaked out by the rabbits, the butterflies, and the unicorns. And if this is the way out of the dream,” he shrugged, “so be it.”
“But…” Ron protested weakly, his own arms coming to wrap around Harry’s waist. He seemed to get more incoherent the closer Harry was, and lost his protest completely when the other boy leaned up to say into his ear, warm breath tickling the soft hairs,
“And besides… if we stay here any longer, the rabbit population’s just going to skyrocket until a mutant killer bunny comes to try and eat us.”
There was absolutely no logic in that, but Ron only nodded his head in agreement.
And so, Ron didn’t resist when Harry pulled him down into a kiss. The redhead kept telling himself it was only because Harry wanted to get out, not anything else. Because Harry said it was alright.
Because, damn it, he couldn’t stay there any longer anyway.
[[ INSERT HOT, SMUTTY, VOYERISTIC SCENE HERE!!11! ]]
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
Ron sat straight up in bed, still screaming, eyes so wide he was sure they could fall out of his face at any moment. He was huffing heavily (because of the dream? No! Don’t think of that!) and covered in sweat. That dream! That land with all the fluffy, happy things!!
His eyes darted around to find familiar red curtains and maroon covers that were the symbol of the Gryffindor dorms. There was sunshine starting to shine in from the window in the tower, signifying the beginning of the morning.
Finally sure that he was back and not in another dream, Ron heaved a sigh of relief after a few moments.
Then something beside him squirmed.
Ron looked down at his side with trepidation.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
Harry winced, any buried his face further into his pillow, trying to drown out the sounds of Ron’s screaming. “Ron, shut up!” he muttered into the pillows.
“I.. I…!! You..! How..??!!!” Ron suddenly found his voice again. “What are you doing in my bed?”
“To clarify the point,” Harry said sleepily. “You’re the one who sleepwalked and crawled into my bed.” He peeked up at Ron with sleep-addled green eyes. “You were dreaming, Ron.”
Ron’s heartbeat was finally starting to calm down. “Just… a dream?” He didn’t know why he was so disappointed. “And… you didn’t dream it? About the bunnies and the butterflies and unicorns?”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you were dreaming about?” he shook his head. “Nope, sorry, Ron. No scary butterflies for me.”
“Then… then…”
Then it was all just a dream of his?
“Go back to sleep, Ron.” Harry muttered. “There’s still another hour before we have to get up. Then we have to talk to Hermione about what we found out last night… remember?”
Ron lay back tentatively, finally falling back to reality again. Yeah. It was just a dream, and the real world was filled with giant spiders and dysfunctional cars. That thought somehow made him feel better.
“Besides,” Harry murmured with his eyes closed, on the brink of sleep again. “Those butterflies weren't too scary… they just rhymed, that’s all.”
Ron choked.