Viola Wilkes lay in her bed with the red velvet curtains drawn, partly because she liked the solitude and the façade of privacy that they gave her, and part because she wanted to avoid the angry tired glances of her dorm mates. Her nightmares had followed her from her muggle home in the summer, right to her home here at school. Some how here they seemed darker, colder, and more haunting. They followed her around passage ways, crept up on her in class, and followed her to bed and lay down next her in the sheets caressing her mind, easing their way in. The past few months they had gradually gotten worse, and the past few months she had kept her dorm mates up. At first she just trashed around a lot in her sleep and woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for air with fear on her breath. But lately she had been talking in her sleep, yelling, crying, sometimes screaming. But for now she lay in her bed asleep tangled in her sheets that seemed far too warm, a light layer of sweat covering her as she was trapped in a dream.

Her dad, who was her real dad in her mind, was the one who she told about her dreams when they first started. He had said to her, “Viola, sometimes there are things in our past that we can never leave behind. But the point of it all is to make it so that they do not define you, that you don’t let them change who you are now in the present. These dreams, they could mean nothing, it could just be a phase. You never had night terrors as a child, you were always a very good kid… well despite the incidences with your magic. But even that wasn’t so bad. But anyways, maybe they’re just creeping up on you now. Or, they might have a reason behind them. Something from your past might be coming to catch up with you soon, and I know that you’ll face it with courage and grace Viola.”

Her dad was always full of such faith in her, such wisdom and love. Jake Hess was more of a father than her real father ever was. The deatheater Bennett Wilkes, the one who gave her the name that everyone here cursed her for. It was a shock to her, expecting to be called up as Viola Hess in sorting and instead was called up at Viola Wilkes. And that’s where Viola’s dreams had taken her tonight, the day of the sorting. In her dream the Great Hall was dark, and she was alone waiting to be sorted. She couldn’t see the other students, but she could feel the millions of eyes on her, her chest felt tight. Her name was called, Wilkes, Viola Rose and she walked forward, her shoes seemed to be made of cement. Viola sat down on the stool as the sorting hat was dropped over her head, it was big, too big, so big that it fell over her entire body. She couldn’t breathe, and she heard the sorting hat call out to the Great Hall “Deatheater”.

And suddenly she was on the second floor of Hogwarts, everything was as grey as ash, tapestries torn and blowing in the wind of the windows that were broken open, glass littered the floor and crunched under her feet. As she walked slowly down the hall she felt like a ghost, her dark hair flying around her, she seemed to float above the ground as she walked. All was silent, except for the wooshing of the wind, she heard her name echoing through the halls,

Viola.

She followed the sound, she needed to. It led her around corners, it seemed always out of her reach, but she knew that the person with the voice would have all the answers. As she turned the corner towards the Head Master’s office, she saw a figure at the end of the hallway, their back was to her, they were cloaked in black. Familiar dark hair cascaded down their back. It was knotted and looked wet.

Viola my love, the figure said. It’s voice was warm and tender.

Viola approached the owner of the voice, but as she grew close and the figure in black stayed as still as a statue, an inexplicable fear entered her heart. She touched the statue person’s long wet hair and as she brought her fingers back they were covered in the dark strands and red blood. Viola floated to the front, so she could know the person with the warm tender voice and the blood in her hair. A mask stared back at her, a Deatheater mask, with eyes that shown through, dark brown but somehow cold.

Viola the sound hissed through the mask. And Viola removed the barrier aching to understand whose voice had led her here. The mask fell to the floor and vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving black powder mixed in with the glass shards on the floor. Viola marveled for a minute on how much like the night sky the floor looked, with the black acting as the sky and glass stars. Before she turned to see the owner of the cold brown eyes, the blood drenched hair, and that loving voice.

A woman stared back at her, a woman so much like herself with dark hair, her lips, her jaw. Viola knew it was her mother. The mother that had fled and abandoned her when the Aurors captured and killed her father for being a Deatheater. Yes. Before her stood Elvira Wilkes who had been lost to the Wizarding World for fourteen years when the ministry had also suspected her as a Deatheater. Viola touched her mother’s face, unsure of weather to be surprised, afraid, disgusted, or (strangely enough) happy to see her. As Viola touched her mother’s face, her eyes suddenly came to life and her body moved. Elvira’s wand arm extended, pointed at the chest of her one and only daughter. The dark mark on her left arm faded, but clearly visible.

Imperius

And Viola felt herself becoming a puppet. She felt herself walking under the control of her mother through the Halls of Hogwarts, she watched herself blast away the statue of the entrance to the Head master’s office. She watched herself walk up to him in the middle of the night caught off guard and unarmed, she watched herself yell with a voice that was not hers, a voice full of venom, Avada Kedavra.


She watched the head master fall. She watched Deatheaters evade the school she watched as she stood by their side, she watched as they lined up the mudbloods and blood traitors. She watched them murder them all. Finally she watched herself go to her home in Bristol, She watched her arm with the dark mark on it push open the door, she watched as one by one she killed her sister, mother, and father. Without a second glance, without shedding a tear. She looked back behind her, to see Elvira with a sick twisted grin on her face of approval.

With a shock Viola’s own cries of continuous “No!” brought her back to the realm of reality. She sat up in bed gasping in fear, her eyes wide and a thin layer of sweat covering her body. Her legs caught in her tangled sheets. She heard one of her dorm mates say, “Oh shut up would you!” and murmurs of approval. Viola quickly put on her robe in the dark and burst out of her room. She couldn’t sleep anymore. Briskly through the dark she fled down the spiral staircase and into the common room where the coals of the fire were just about to burn out. Rather than use magic Viola restarted the fire by hand, too afraid to use her powers right now for the fear of any of this to come true.

One the fire was big enough she sat in a squishy arm chair, hugging her knees into her chest and watched the fire.
“ Why me, ” Viola whispered to herself, “ maybe I would just be better off shunning magic and pretending to lead a normal muggle life. ”
She sighed sadly and tried not to cry as she remembered her dream, as she remembered seeing herself murder without guilt. She felt the tears well up in her eyes, hot and stinging but she wouldn’t let them fall. No, Viola was far too proud for that. But still like a child, she wanted her dad, she wanted her mom, she wanted some sense of human comfort. Rather than have everyone here hate her and be afraid of her. They all thought she should be in Slytherin, they all thought she was evil. They all thought she was working with Elvira on some evil plan.

The fact that scared her the most was that maybe they were right. Could Elvira be trying to contact her? Could this be a warning sign? Some sort of prophecy? Viola desperately hoped it that these questions’ answers were all no. But if they were true… “ I’ll stop at nothing to change it. ”

"Oh thank God it's just you," James' carefree tone cut through the dark as he pulled the Cloak off his head. He sauntered over and stopped short as he took in her bedraggled, yet still hot appearance.

"You're not wearing much clothing are you?" he said. "I could turn around if you want.........."he pretended to think. "Nah."

"What are you doing up so late?" James looked suddenly concerned, noticing how haunted her eyes looked. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Viola's heart stuttered as James' voice broke through the silence, she let out a surprised yelp.
"Jesus Christ James! You scared the shit out of me!"
She pressed her hand to her heart and rolled her eyes at his clothing comment, she was about to reply but then chose to ignore it. That was James Potter for you.
"I could ask you the same," she snapped.

"I don't get bad dreams," he lied hastily. "Besides, I haven't slept at all yet tonight."

James pulled a luridly orang frosted cupcake from behind his back and began to eat it. "Want some?" he said. "But only if you tell me about your dream."

"Only if you tell me about yours James Potter, you're a terrible liar." She eyed the cupcake hungrily. She was being a total bith but he was being so nice...

James frowned sternly. "I don't think that the one without the cupcake should be calling the shots personally," he joked, taking an insolent bite of the aforementioned cupcakes. "But sure, whatever, I'll tell you."

He took a deep breath, before adding a disclaimer to the front. "It's nothing really," he said, his eyes nervous. "And after I tell you, you gotta tell me yours."

"I was walking down this dark hall......and I don't really know......but I was looking for something..something important," he clutched his forehead, trying to remember. "I dunno.....I was really driven to finding it, I was scared that....that something bad was happening....I kept muttering to myself...'I need to save them'....'I need to save them'," he grinned weakly, with an attempt at his usual carefree attitude. "Stupid right?" he said, with a quaver in his voice that made it clear that he didn't find it stupid at all. "Anyways, then I fell...well, I didn't fall, I was knocked to the ground..by...something," he struggled to remember as the memories of his dream faded away. "A person. I don't know who....I think I knew them....I think I was scared.....or worried about them....or both...." he stopped for a moment and brought the cupcake to his mouth again with a shaky hand. "I couldn't move anymore....they stepped on my face....I could tell my nose was broken...it hurt as much as a dream can....then they said....." he tried to remember word for word. "They said...'That's for what your father did to my father Potter' in this strange, hoarse voice, like someone else was speaking through them and walked off......" James had felt a strange sense of deja vu, but he hadn't known why.

"There isn't much else....just me lying there. They walked away laughing, I think. Or was it crying? Laughing would make more sense," he completed to himself. "And I was just terrified....terrified that they were going to find what I was looking for....they were going to ruin everything. There was lots of evil laughter too."

James ran his fingers through his hair, trying to return to reality. "I feel like I missed some stuff..." he wondered why he cared.

"Anyways, I guess all my silent screams translated into real screams because my buddy woke me up and told me I was having a nightmare and to chill out," he scratched behind his ear. "They're cool, they get that I have weird dreams all the time. Must run in my family," he grinned, trying not to think about how many times his dad's dreams had meant something more.

"I wonder if they run in mine," Viola said dreamily. She wound a piece of her hair around her fingers, "Remember how when we first met you said you didn't care who my parents were and stuff like that? Well I really hope you remember that... I dunno it's probably not even real I don't know."

Viola took a deep breath and her eyes glazed over as she recalled her dream.

"Well there are several dreams that reoccur, but the most common one is where I'm walking down the second floor corridor and someone is calling my name, and I've just got to find them because the way they're saying my name is just so sweet and warm...I dunno. So I'm walking, and then there's this figure at the end of the hallway with their back to me in a dark cloak and I know it's them who is saying my name. So I go over to them and walk in front of them.... and...and it's my mom. My real mom. In a Death Eater mask that's saying my name. It's Elvira, and she looks like me except my eyes....then she uses the Imperius curse on....on me," Viola paused to take a deep breath,

"and.....and.....she made me....kill the headmaster kill all the 'mudbloods' and 'bloodtraitors' and I was yelling no and so this woke up my dorm mates and they got mad at me because this happens a lot and I wake them up and they don't really like me anyway."

Viola looked over at James waiting for his reaction, waiting for him to freak out and call her a Death Eater.

(OOC: I think their dreams could be connected. Like, he did recognize that it was her in his dream, but he's forgotten now. And he was worried because he sorta loves her and knew she was being controlled. At least, that's what I started to plan when I was writing the last entry.)

James reached over and handed her a cupcake half. "Here," he said. "Your rightful share of my recent raid to the kitchens...not that it's hard."

"It's alright," he said, sitting on the ottoman in front of her chair. "It's alright," he sounded like he was trying to console himself as well. "Just dreams. Showing us our fears. Nothing else."

Even then, he knew otherwise.

Viola licked some of the orange frosting of the cupcake, "I haven't made it down to the kitchens in a while, this is a nice treat."

"Yeah but....they don't feel like just dreams do they."

(OCC: cool that's what I was thinking. I'm hoping to make an account for Elvira soon so I can throw her into the mix occasionally too. To make things interesting. )

"No," James acknowledged, bowing his head to take another bite. "No they don't. They feel like.....the inevitable."

Realizing what he had said he looked up quickly. "Not yours though," he said hurriedly and unconvincingly. "I mean.." he checked himself. "The Deatheaters have been debunked for nearly twenty years. No one knows where your mom is. She could be dead for all we know."

"And for the record?" he said shyly, looking up at her from through his hair. "I think if anyone tried to put the Imperius curse on you, you would fight it. So hard that you would beat them."

"I know she isn't," Viola said referring to her mom, "as scary as that seems I can feel her being alive."

She nibbled on her cupcake, "To the public they have been at least but there's been rumors that the Death Eaters are still underground, planning something big."

"I know I would fight the curse James, I would fight it with every ounce of strength in me, but no one has ever broken out of it before."

James thought of his father that summer, poring over reports, speaking in hushed tones to his mother. Yes, everyone knew. The Deatheaters were back in town, though no one knew exactly how big the new movement was. Thus far it just appeared to be a couple fringe groups, running around and breaking into shops.

"Dyou, dyou think your mother tries to reach you?" his eyes widened, mostly concealed by his wild hair. "Using Legilimency?"

"I don't know," Viola sighed, "I feel like she wouldn't need to yanno? Because if that plan were to happen, I would try to find her anyway and end her. Besides what would the point be of giving me a heads up? If it's real I know what's going to happen, I'll be ready."

"Don't go looking for trouble Viola," James said, and checked himself again. "Oh never mind that. People say that to me all the time. I don't go looking for trouble, trouble usually finds me."

"Are you saying you wouldn't do the same? That if it was your parent out there that you knew was going to kill massive amounts of innocent people....your classmates, you wouldn't try to find them and end them?"

Viola looked at James with a fire in her eyes, she already knew his answer.