Green light splinters across Harry's vision, pain sinking hooked claws into her forehead, and a high, cold laugh echoes in her ears, as blackness overtakes everything.

She wakes up, gasping for breath, her scar on fire. For a moment she's afraid that it's bleeding, but when her fingers scrabble across it, it's dry, though hot to the touch. Hooking her glasses on, Harry slides out of bed, her pyjamas sticking unpleasantly with sweat.

"Are you all right, Harry?" a whisper reaches her, and she nearly leaps backward, tripping over her trainers and almost face planting on the ground. It's Luna, staring at her with far-too-large eyes, her hands wrapped tightly around her huddled knees.

"I'm fine," Harry whispers back, though even she can hear the lie. "Come on, let's get out of here."

The two pad quietly to the bathroom, where Luna takes up her now customary place in the shower stall, her blanket draped loosely around her shoulders.

"You had nightmares," Luna says. It's not a question. Harry shifts uncomfortably beneath her gaze, then nods.

"So did you," Harry replies, and Luna nods, a tiny gesture that she almost misses.

"I see my mum," Luna offers, but her eyes shift away, just a bit. "On the day it happened."

"I just see green light," Harry admits, awkwardly crouching on the cold tiles. "And I hear a laugh." It sounds so stupid, stated like that, but Harry doesn't know any other way to say it.

Luna just nods, solemn.

"I wonder if you hear You Know Who," Luna says, pulling her blanket tighter around her. Harry blinks at her, nonplussed.

"I...don't know," she says. For the moment, it has to be enough.

Harry isn't the only one who wakes early that morning. Across the castle, one Draco Malfoy wakes with a shout barely caught between tightly pressed lips. He has the bed closest to the door (mainly because no one wants to deal with him), and he makes good use of it now, hastening into his uniform and downstairs on still wobbly legs.

He dreamed of his father, following through on the thinly veiled threats of his last letter, and for once, Draco has no idea what to do. As far as he knows, you can't request a Re-Sorting, and not even his mother seems to have found anything on the subject. He asked McGonagall three times, but all she's told him is that the sooner he accepts his House, the sooner it will feel like home. She doesn't understand. He's a snake dressed up as a lion, and everyone knows it.

His hoped-for classmates, the Slytherins, point and laugh at him every opportunity they get, making no effort to be subtle. Would he in their place? He doubts it.

His own Housemates despise him. Call him a stuck-up prat, tell him that he doesn't belong. He knows he doesn't belong, that's the point! And moreover, he doesn't want to belong! But no one in so-called "authority" seems to agree with him. With a sneer, he settles down into the armchair closest to the fire, basking rather gleefully in its warmth. No one else is awake this early, not that he expected anything else. Gryffindor is full of laziness. He has no doubt Professor Snape runs his own House ten times stricter than Professor McGonagall, Head of teacher's pets and favoured ponces.

Ron Weasley, especially, hates him. Probably for all the not-so-subtle digs Draco made at his family, before the Sorting, when he was secure in his knowledge that he would be a Slytherin. He must be a Slytherin. And now look at him. He looks down at the red-and-gold-striped tie with a moue of disgust.

The only thing he can think of, at this point, is some sort of subtle campaign to show how immensely unsuited for the lions he is, and even better if he gets his erstwhile Housemates in trouble at the same time. But how can he manage that?

Tapping the tip of his finger against his bottom lip, Draco ponders, then slowly begins to grin. If he isn't mistaken, some of the older years have been laying a trap for Potter. If he holds his cards right, that could be his ticket to getting into his proper House. And hurting Potter at the same time.

In the flickering glow of the firelight, Draco's smile looks particularly sinister.