New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I am in a place I don't recognize… or wait a minute… it does look a bit familiar. It is a circular room that looks like the interior of a castle, with ornate arches across the domed ceiling and colorful tapestries hanging on the stone walls. There is a large wooden door on one side of the room, from beyond which I can hear a lot of talking, it sounds like a party going on in there. But I'm in a castle! I have to get photos! I look for my camera, I can't find it… ok… I look for my phone, for my iPod Touch. Both not there. I know they should be in my purse, but I don't see my purse around! Did I really leave my purse somewhere without taking at least one of those things out? I must have… in response to that discovery I drop a loud expletive, "Ah, SHIT!" The circular room has quite a few people in it, and quite a few of them stop talking and turn towards me as I drop that loud expletive. I also hadn't realized that someone had come into the room from beyond the wooden doors, I have been too busy looking for cameras and phones and iPods. A woman over by the door said loudly that whoever had said that would need to watch their language when in her house. I mutter, "What the fuck?" a bit louder than I intend to, and the woman says that one isn't acceptable, either.

Now I am wondering who the prude is, so I make my way through the people to where I can see. I hear another woman off to my left say, "She's got to be fucking kidding…" and apparently the woman heard that, too, as she responded and said she was absolutely not kidding. What the heads of the other houses allow is up to them, but she would not have such vulgarity in her house. In her house? Well, what difference would that make? It's not like I'm going to be moving in with her, or at least I don't think I will be… I notice the person who cursed after I did, and I recognize her right away, it's Tigress! I walk over to Tigress and say hello, she also says hello, and now the woman up front is continuing and talking about some other stuff, but I'm not listening. Tigress is bitching about the woman, about her view on cursing, she says McGonagall can't be serious… this is a school, not a church, and if she wants to fucking curse she will fucking curse and there's nothing they can fucking do about it. These expletives go unnoticed, as the woman is talking. I am about to say something when it registers to me that she just said McGonagall… I comment about Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series, and Tigress said of course it is her, she's always the one. I finally complete my search for a place where I can see the woman, and sure enough, it is Professor McGonagall… I do a double take at that. Tigress asks who I expected to see there…

Whatever McGonagall has been saying, she is done now, and opens the door so all of us can file through the door into a large room that has been decorated for a party. There are large tables with a lot of people sitting at them, everyone there looks like they recently graduated high school, so this place must be a college of some kind, though Professor McGonagall indicated we were at Hogwarts. Apparently the idea of being at Hogwarts is not a strange thing to me, as it doesn't trigger a reality check. I figure J.K. Rowling must have just fudged in her stories a bit to avoid things being too close of a match. (Ok, I know everyone rationalizes in dreams, but give me a break!) McGonagall lines us all up in front of the room to begin the sorting process, which is done with the sorting hat just like in the Harry Potter books… I see several people I know get sorted into their appropriate houses. Tigress gets sorted into Ravenclaw, and I find myself wondering if they are doing it on purpose to annoy McGonagall when one of the guys there stands up and adds a loud, "FUCK YEAH!" to the cheering. I am up next, and for the same reasons as the last Harry Potter dream, I get the hat to place me in Slytherin. That way I will be closest to those needing healing. I go over to the appropriate table and sit down in an open area, not paying much attention to the people welcoming me over. I can tell some of them are genuinely giving me a friendly welcome, but I feel a lot of negative energy as well. This is definitely where I need to be.

I am sitting there for a bit longer until someone sits beside me. I look to my right and see Crabb sit down, then Draco sits down between Crabb and me… Goyle is behind me, he tells me to move, I tell him to fuck off. Crabb is snickering, Goyle says I am in his seat… I tell him again to fuck off unless he wants to try to take my seat, which if he does want to do that, go ahead. It could prove to be entertaining. Goyle doesn't seem to know how to follow through to get his seat, he looks dumbly at Draco, who tells him to go find some other seat, the food is the same everywhere. Goyle stammers the word, "But…" for a bit before Draco tells him to go find a seat, adding that Goyle is making himself look even stupider than normal. Finally Goyle wanders off to some other place. There is food, there is a lot of it, but I really don't feel much like eating… at least not until dessert breaks me out of my brooding. There is chocolate involved! I have the idea I won't have any problem with getting fat or other things, so I rather make a pig of myself. There are a few people staring at me, but I really don't care. The chocolate is delicious, chocolate cakes, chocolate puddings, chocolate ice cream that didn't seem to be melting… a couple chocolate things I have never seen before…

After the meal is done and a few announcements have been made by Dumbledore, everyone is splitting off to go to their respective houses. I find Tigress as we are exiting the dining hall, and she says she'll see me around. I agree with her, we wave to each other, and head our own ways. We make our way down into the dungeon, which is where the dorm is. I am surprised that when we get to the dorm itself there are a bunch of adults waiting there, they are dropping off some things for students, kind of like the day at college when parents or other family members will help the students move into their new quarters. I notice Lucious Malfoy is talking to Draco, and I stand there watching them for a couple minutes. Then I hear talking from behind me, I look and see a man talking to Crabb, he is talking as if he is very angry about something, so I wonder what is up. I listen in on that for a while longer. The man, who I am thinking is Crabb's father, is telling Crabb to at least try to avoid being a total embarrassment this year. Crabb doesn't respond to that, and his father now says that he should know that is impossible, since everything Crabb does is an embarrassment… he turns to walk away from Crabb and walks right into me. I tell him the only embarrassing thing I see is him. He doesn't need any help embarrassing himself, he just has to come out in public. He says I should show some respect. I tell him if he can show me someone worthy of respect I will show some. He gives me a dirty look, Crabb says he really is an embarrassment, I tell him his dad is just compensating for his inadequacies in other areas. Crabb looks at me dumbly, his dad glares at me, and then storms out of the room. Crabb looks rather awkward, he says he doesn't need someone else to take care of his father. I ask who said I was doing it for him? Obviously his dad needed to be told off, so I did it. Nothing more to say.

Crabb disappears into the boys part of the dorms, and the parents are starting to leave, I notice Lucious looking at me strangely as he goes to leave the room. I wonder what is he looking at? I turn to go to the women's side of the dorms, but I can still feel him looking at me. I look back towards Lucious, and see he is still looking at me, but as soon as I turn he also turns and leaves the room through the hidden entrance to the dorms. I am still wondering what that means, or maybe it doesn't mean anything… most likely it doesn't mean anything. I am starting to feel a bit disoriented, and I think I must be tired, it has been a long day, so I go into the girls side of the dorms and find a bed that has my name on it, "Raven Knight," in a room with three other beds. I am getting really tired, so I lie down and fall asleep almost immediately… and when I fall asleep in the bed there, I wake up in my own bed.