Moon Phases and Dreams

Ryland's feet took him to the same place he'd found out about dragons first; Hagrid's hut. With him, he carried his notebook, his Astronomy notes, and a writing utensil. There was no sign of life in the hut, yet somehow Ryland felt at ease in the darkness of the night.

Stars seemed to shine brighter than every other day he'd looked out his window, and though it took him a while to find the moon, he smiled as he saw it. It was a a full moon; casting a soft light on him and everything else around him.

He took a seat by the steps, breathed in the fresh air as Professor Ramos had suggested, and began to write and observe the moon.

Ryland Marcotte Malfoy
Gryffindor
4th Year

Moon Phase Today: Full Moon

[i]I've never given much thought or appreciation to the moon. Every night I turn my lap off and drift into dreamless sleep, because that's the thing: I don't dream much. Most of my so-called dreaming consists of a black canvas. Simply empty and untouched. Though after your lesson, I've been dreaming.

It's a simple, constant dream involving a girl. Not a girl I like nor one I'm related to. It's simply just a girl I probably passed by the street and didn't pay much attention to, but my subconscious did. She stands on top of a tower, similar to the Clock Tower, looking down at all of us and wishing us luck. Luck for what? I'm still trying to figure that out.

The reason I mention her is because she reminds me of tonight's full moon. Her hair is dark, long and bright. Her dress is blue as the midnight sky and her eyes are simply mesmerizing. They're wise, pained, and worried.

That's what the moon looks like to me tonight. It's full, bright, and sad. It lights up everything around me, overlooking from the sky, keeping troubled sould in check and lighting path for lost travelers, yet it seems like it worries about the night when she won't be able to do so.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this essay.

He quickly looked up again and stared at the moon. Suddenly it all seemed to give him a feeling of uncertainty. Looking around, he was suddenly afraid of being alone.

Being back at Hogwarts was both a welcome feeling and an unwelcome one. Morgana couldn't quite place it. Over the summer she had changed from being the person who tried to correct her father's manners, to not bothering or caring whether or not people were insulted by it. With random people at least. And now, being back... Well, new people weren't really something she bothered with anymore. She didn't care about them. And not because she didn't want to, but she just didn't find it in herself to.

This had her lying awake in the middle of the night, and she grew so exasperated that, despite earlier experiences, she got out of bed, threw on her robes and left the Slytherin common room, sneaking around the castle in the shadows, her cat helping her on her way. She was lead to the front doors and got herself outside, unnoticed.

She walked far away from the castle, so that people wouldn't be able to randomly spot her outside, using the cover of the night to her advantage. It wasn't an easy job, considering the full moon, but she managed. She saw the Whomping Willow, but decided that it might be too risky. If the tree were to make a spectacle, she'd be found too easily. So she decided on the forest. But, on her way, she saw the shape of a person. She quickly hid, but soon recognized that it couldn't be a professor. She took a few steps towards the shape and recognized it.

She raised an eyebrow in wonder, and decided that being nice to Ryland wasn't a problem. She walked towards him and cleared her throat to make sure he knew she was there. She stopped a few feet away from him and gave a strained, but soft smile. "What brings you out of the castle so late?" she asked him curiously.

Ryland didn't look up after he heard someone clearing their throat since he simply assumed it was a student. Not many adults wandered off at night for no reason, and the sound was rather feminine and soft. "Homework." he answered, recognizing Morgana's voice and finally looking up. "I'm thinking too much into it."

He suddenly realized that Morgana was also out of the castle and very late at night. He smiled, "Why are you here? Talking to snakes again?" Clearly, he was trying to be friendly. He'd been wanting to meet with Morgana since he first met her, but he didn't know how to go about doing so.

Morgana wasn't surprised at Ryland's lack of movements at her presence; he was a rather calm person, she had noted. Maybe not on all occasions, but she didn't really know him well either, so she supposed it wasn't strange. She frowned. "I'm giving a guess at Astronomy then?" she asked, an absent movement of her hand, gesturing to the aura and sky above them. "What makes you think too much of it?" she asked, always curious to hear what other people thought and how other people's minds worked.

She didn't reply to his question of why she was here at once. She really wasn't sure. She wasn't offended by his remark about talking to snakes, as it wasn't unusual for her to wander about late to talk to her slithering friends. "I'm not quite sure. I think I just felt like it. I couldn't sleep, and the dorm seemed to close in on me, so I had to get out," she said with a shrug, "Meeting a snake would only be an extra plus."

"You guessed it right." He smiled. For a second, he wondered whether or not he should tell her about his recurring dreams, and considering she was the one who'd asked about why he thought too much about his Astronomy homework, he decided to do so. "'I keep having this dream." he began, searching for her gaze so she'd know he was serious. "It was right after the moon phase lesson. You see, I normally don't dream at all, but recently I've had this dream in which I see a girl. And it's not Lucy, or Aylee or anyone I know. She has dark, almost raven-black hair. And she wears a blue dress but she has a pained look in her eyes." He had said all of this without taking a breath, and just now he realized how bad an idea that was. Then, a quick question occurred to him. "How come you can talk to snakes? Is that like a natural-born superpower? Or a spell? Or what?"

Morgana was slightly surprised at how easily he opened up to her. She frowned. A dream? Wouldn't most people see it as really personal? She definitely would. She wouldn't share a dream with anyone. But Ryland's searching eyes told Morgana to take this seriously. And she sighed, collecting the dose of softness that she had in her body, trying to collect a sensible answer.

"Well, I'm not much of an astronomer or a seer, so I can't really say anything that will make sense... I've had recurring dreams before, actually, but to me, they've proven to mean nothing. And I'm not really a person who goes into the art of reading dreams, I'm not good at stuff that I can't be sure of the answer to. But I know that a lot of people who have recurring dreams... I know some of the dreams have come true before," Morgana said, not sure what more to say.

Then she shrugged. "But dark hair? I mean, you're an orphan right? It might have something to do with your family or something?" she asked, once again showing that she didn't know what might be too close to heart and just spitting out what she imagined it could be.

Morgana tilted her head a bit to the side. "I'm a Gaunt. In other words, I'm a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. We pride ourselves ... or... rather, we took pride in being parselmouths as all the descendants of Salazar were. But now it's just a gift I rather enjoy having," she said softly, feeling good about the comfort she could find in snakes. However disturbing that might be to people.

He could tell she didn't believe him, at least not immediately. "I don't dream often." He explained. "That's why whenever I dream, I take the dream seriously."

He didn't really knkw what a seer was, but he didn't want to ask her, so he pushed the word to the back of his mind for him to look up later. Ryland flinched as Morgan a brought up his lack of biological family. "I know what my mother used to look like. Her eyes were green." He remembered his image in the bathroom mirrors, where he sometimes just looked at himself, his eyes most especifically, as his father used to tell him he had his mother's eyes. They were the only thing he had of her. "I am 100% sure it isn't my mother." He concluded.

"Salazar Slytherin? The founder of Hogwarts?" Ryland's eyes widened. "That's amazing." He wondered if it only applied to snakes, or if Morgan a could talk to other creatures.

Morgana nodded. "I suppose that makes sense," she said calmly and looked up into the dark night. She looked at the stars, suddenly being hit with a feeling of how extremely small she was in this huge, massive universe.

She looked back down again as she noticed, quite clearly, the uncomfortable aura that radiated from Ryland. He obviously didn't like thinking about his family. Morgana didn't say anything as he concluded that it wasn't his mother, but she believed him. She thought a bit about it. Who would he be dreaming of then? She found herself drawn into the mystery, and sighed again. When she was curious, nothing would stop her from figuring it out.

"Who could it be then? Who do you know with dark hair? And what is the color of her eyes?" she asked, trying to be helpful, trying to get him to remember the woman as clearly as he could.

Morgana shrugged. "It's not completely amazing. People judge you wherever you go, thinking you're just like Voldemort. Pity, really, how narrow-minded people can be sometimes," she said, feeling a bit more annoyed than really necessary. "But being a parseltongue sure comes in handy. Especially when you feel so close to the reptiles already," she said, her tone lighter. She didn't mind talking about her family lineage, she actually rather enjoyed it; there were so many mysteries and riddles. But she wasn't sure she'd call her ancestry 'amazing'.

Ryland thought of all the people he knew with hair as dark as the woman in his dream. "You and most of the professors." He admitted, "but I'm sure it's neither of you. This woman had dark brown eyes, I believe." He let out a sigh and let the subject drop. He'd figure out who she was eventually. Or he'd simply forget.

"Ah, not me." Ryland replied. "I've never been judged by my family name. I'm adopted, remember? I knew nothing of the Malfoys or Voldemort." It was true; to him, Malfoy was just another surname. A way to tell other Lucys and Wades apart.

Morgana frowned. "Yes most of the professors are dark haired. But when you dream of this woman, do you feel as though you recognize her in some way? Or could she be a woman you've never met or known? Maybe your mind is that of Seer clarity?" she suggested, though she fairly doubted it. Especially if he was muggle born. She didn't really know, and judging by how he tensed when she mentioned his mother, she found it hard to ask him. She didn't really get why it felt hard, but she didn't question his bloodline.

She gave a shrug. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, because it doesn't prove if you'd be different if your name had meant something, or if you knew more. Maybe you'd just be like everyone else, maybe you'd defy their norms and stand on your own. We won't ever get to know that. But then again, family is what makes a person," she concluded. She then cocked her head to the side. "Have you gotten any reactions from people when you introduce yourself as a Malfoy, then?" she asked curiously.

He thought about Morgana's question, not how to answer it, but how to word his answer. "I don't know her. Though I feel like I should know her." He finally said. The more he thought about her, it was as if she knew he was thinking of her and was offended that he didn't recognize her. Then there was that word again. Seer.

"Okay, what does seer clarity mean?" He finally build up the courage to ask. He'd heard the word thrown around in conversation, but he never really wondered to look it up and study it. "Is that like..." he trailed off to listen to her talk about family names.

"I rarely introduce myself as Ryland Malfoy. It's usually just 'Hi. I'm Ryland'" he smiled. "I don't see a need to know last names and the likes. They're just names, and most likely will be irrelevant to me after some time." He gave a light shrug. "But, I guess I can try and do so, to see what kind of reaction I get."

Morgana let him fall into silence as he considered what she told him. She then listened calmly to what he said, though it confused her slightly, and she really didn't like to be confused. That was why she stayed out of the way of things that weren't based on facts. Like Divination and the like. Morgana wasn't surprised that he wouldn't know what Seer clarity meant. But it did conclude to the fact that he most likely was muggle born.

"To be a Seer is to be clairvoyant. Seer clarity... Well, I think that's just my own words. It basically means that you see what lies ahead, you get fragments of the future and stuff like that. I don't believe much in it myself, but there are known cases of prophecies coming true, like that of Voldemort and Harry Potter. If you know of that case?" she asked. "Anyways, it's really rare to be a Seer, and it's even rarer to be a good one. I don't doubt the clairvoyant ones, I just stay away from them. They're more trouble than good."

She looked at him as he said last names didn't matter. That they would be irrelevant. Morgana was a cold person herself, but she respected the lives of people around her. She respected their right to a name. So she thought it superficial to say what Ryland had said. But she didn't comment. She gave a curt nod. "You do that. Some people won't react and some will. Some won't react, because the name doesn't automatically say who you are. Some won't react because they don't know. And some won't react because family names doesn't matter," she said, the last part a bit to relieve her annoyed state at Ryland's indifference. "But the ones who do react either try to hide it, because they try to be better people, and some reacts in the way of ignoring you, hating you, dreading you," she said, remembering way too many times when people had looked at her father in a hateful way.

"Oh." Ryland replied as Morgana clarified what a seer and seer clarity meant. The mention of Voldemort and Harry Potter made him look up fully at her. He did know the story, or legend whatever it was, but he found it incredibly interesting that one could break one's soul into smaller pieces. In other words, he found what Voldemort did to be both, insane and incredibly great. Ryland had mixed feelings about that story, but he really wanted to know what Morgana thought. Maybe I'll ask her some other time... However, he smiled as she finished her last comments.

"I guess I can try?" he shrugged again, wondering by her coldness if he had somehow offended her. He did, however, notice that she was usually distant and cold so he didn't let it bother him for long. "Though I'd prefer it if people hated me based on my personality and not my name. That's what I meant about names being irrelevant. They don't say who you are, exactly." he clarified, just in case.

Morgana let him chew on what she had just told him, as she thought of what she had said herself. She didn't believe that Ryland was a Seer, but he could be. It wasn't impossible. She knew nothing of his biological parents, and even muggle-borns were known to have had clairvoyant skills. She looked over at him and studied his face. It could be possible. But would he simply be another Calchas or would he be of seer quality like Mopsus? That was the real question.

She nodded at him and listened to him explain what he had meant with the last names and stuff. She sighed. "I thought you meant that their names would mean nothing to you, because you would simply forget the people," she said calmly, her coldness vanishing into monotone again. "And I absolutely agree. But I suppose the reason for why I always say my name, is because I can see upon their reaction then and there if they are worth to get to know, or if they will simply shy away from me due to my name," she said, trying to explain why she felt it was so important.

She looked up at the sky and the moon. She frowned. "I should be getting back. I'd rather not get caught wandering outside. If you want to, then I don't mind trying to help you with your dream, Ryland. I find it fascinating. Especially if it were the case that you just happened to be a Seer. I do seriously doubt it, but once you rule out the probable, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth," she said softly, and rose, looking back down at him, wondering if he'd like her help before she went back to the castle.