New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I am in a place I don't recognize, it looks like the interior of a castle, which I think is pretty damn awesome. I am wishing I had my camera with me so I could take some photos of the place, but since I don't, I just focus on taking in as many details of the place as I can. The arches over the ceiling of the room are very high and ornate, the ground is stone, there are many tapestries hanging on the stone walls. Each of the tapestries shows a scene with some epic quest underway, but they mean nothing to me since I have never seen any of the people in them before. There is a large wooden door on one side of the room, which is closed. I can hear a lot of talking from the other side, it sounds like there might be some kind of party going on over there. I wonder if we are invited to that party, or if we are going elsewhere in this castle. Part of me wants to go in to see the party, but another part of me wants to sneak away from the group and explore the castle some more. I really wanted to see as much of the place as I could. In addition to the large door, there were several smaller doors around the outside wall of the room, which was round. I wonder where those doors might lead, but I have not yet had a chance to make my way over to one… there are also quite a few people in the room with me… before a woman enters the room and silences everyone with a firm voice. I look over to where the voice is coming from, and the woman is standing beside the large door. She is dressed in black robes with a symbol on them, it is a symbol that looks like a red griffin… then I recognize where I think I have seen her before… Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series?! Nah… it must just be a resemblance.

Well, now everyone is listening to Professor McGonagall, which is what I am calling her in my mind since I don't know what her name really is… She welcomes us to the castle… awesome! It really is a castle, now I just need to get away so I can explore… I really don't want to miss my chance to explore this place… I am looking for a way to get to a door that isn't being watches when the woman actually introduces herself as Professor McGonagall. At this point I stop looking for ways to leave the room and I look back over at the woman, she continues talking to us. For the first time it registers that everyone in the room with me is rather young, looking like they're barely out of high school, and everyone there is paying very close attention to McGonagall. Wow… I must be the oldest one in there short of McGonagall herself… Great, now I feel out of place. I move over to the side of the room to stay as invisible as possible. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror hanging on one of the doors… and wow… I look like I am barely out of high school! Wow, I don't look nearly as old as I thought I did… there were clearly no unsightly bags under my eyes there! I wander back into the group, trying to hear McGonagall speaking.

"There you are!" comes a voice from off to my right. I look over to see Tigress coming over to meet me, she says she had started to wonder if I was going to make it tonight. I say of course I made it, how could I ever miss being in a place like this? She gives me a puzzled look, but before she can say anything else, McGonagall says it is time to enter the great hall and be sorted into our houses. We all file into the large room beyond the large wooden doors and down an aisle through some large tables with people sitting at them. Some of the people there look older than those of entering, some look about the same age, I see a few faces that look rather familiar. We all reach the front of the room and line up, Tigress is beside me, and I see more people I recognize, all of them from the Harry Potter series. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Crabb, Goyle, Neville, and several others I recognized. This all seems strange… Tigress is whispering to me from my right side, but I can't really hear what she's saying. I try to tell her that, but she can't seem to hear what I am saying, either. Soon McGonagall is getting everyone's attention again, and it is soon silent in the room.

I recognize what is happening in the room, we are all being sorted into different houses of Hogwarts. Somehow this doesn't trigger a reality check… um… sometimes I can be really thick headed in dreams… Everything is going as I remember it going in the books, everyone is getting assigned where they are in the books. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, are all in Gryffindor… Draco, Crabb, and Goyle are in Slytherin… Tigress is right in front of me, she gets assigned to Gryffindor, then it is my turn. So where would I be assigned? I sit in the seat, with a rather old and slightly smelly pointed hat on my head, wondering where I could get something done. Well, since I am a healer before other things, I need to be where I can get the most healing done the most easily. Most of the people at Hogwarts that need to have their harts healed are in Slytherin… yuck… I don't really like the idea of being in there, but then if someone wants to be a doctor, they have to go to where the sick people are… such as in a hospital. So if I want to heal someone's heart, I need to be in Slytherin. I'm not sure if the hat hears what I am thinking or maybe it sees the dark energy I have in me, but it complies and assigns me to Slytherin.

So while I would rather go over to sit with Tigress, I am directed to go sit at a different table with a bunch of people I don't know, with a bunch of Slytherins. This is not where I want to be going, so I go over to the table and look for an empty seat. I sit down without looking at anyone around me. There are people around me welcoming me there, just like happens at the other tables when someone is welcomed, but something seems off, and I realize it's the energy I feel coming off of some of them. It's more unstable than elsewhere in the room, it's more negative. There are still some more people being sorted, but I'm not paying any attention to that now, I look over across the room at Tigress, I would rather be over there… did I make a big mistake? I am wondering that when I hear a voice next to me. I look over and I see Draco is sitting right next to me… was he there when I sat down? I don't remember even looking to see who I was sitting beside, I don't really care who I'm sitting beside. So now I am thinking I might have made a dumb choice, by the time I finished being in Slytherin for a while, the place would be a blood bath… I would go on a psychotic killing spree.

Draco is making some kind of comment, he says something about not needing that loser since I am where I belong now… I ask what loser he is talking about, he indicates Tigress, which pisses me off. I am not in a good mood right now, and it definitely shows, it doesn't take much to set me off then. I grab Draco's collar and pull his face down right next to mine, practically hissing the threats I am making… I tell him if I ever hear him saying nasty things about Tigress again that I'll kick him in the nuts so hard they get lodged in his fucking nostrils, and don't make the mistake of thinking I can't do it, because I can. Draco is looking at me strangely, I think he can see that I am completely serious about that, Crabb and Goyle don't seem to know what to do, thus they look stupider than ever. Draco finally says he didn't mean anything by it, he was just trying to make me feel better about being apart from my old friends, I'd make new ones. I am not in the mood for making friends right now, though, so I just let go of Draco and return my attention to watching Tigress on the other side of the room… but now I don't see her there. Where did she go? How did she disappear? It flashes through my mind that Tigress probably woke up, but that makes no sense since I am not dreaming… am I? I never get a chance to check that out, however, I wake up.