Sulwen sat at a desk tucked against a row of bookshelves in the Hogwarts library, trying to stay awake. It was a quiet, lazy Sunday, and listening to the whispers of the students and the turning of pages and echo of footsteps made her sleepy. She kept her back straight, but every few minutes her shoulders began to slump forward, and her head would nod, and she'd straighten again, shake her head, and peer at the parchment scattered around her. Not revision. Letters. A dutiful letter to her mother. Two dutiful letters to her grandmothers, one in her very best English and the other in her very best but still wobbly Japanese. Short, smug letters to her little sister (with the P.S. part in Japanese to torment her). A very formal letter started to her father, in Azkaban. One letter to Aunt Abby, asking if she'd received her last letter, sent in mid-November. One letter to Aunt Aileen, asking for her scholarly opinion on the nature of dreams.

The light on the table flickered. Did it flicker? No, she'd blinked.

"You look sleepy," Wesley appeared at the end of the table, sounding proud of her. He carried a book of all things, his hair was ruffled, and the corners of his mouth turned up in that constant, slight smile.

"Thank you, Wesley," she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

He asked her how she was doing, what she was doing, why she didn't have any books, and would she like to do his revision. He asked if she was writing to that Auror Raine again, or to her Aunt who worked with Aurors, or to any Auror at all.

She sighed, rubbing at her eyes.

"If you're tired, take a nap," Wesley gestured magnanimously. "Right here. Everyone does."

"No, thank you. Do you know something strange?" Sulwen raised her eyebrows. "You didn't say one word in my dream."

She was trying to say that he didn't need to talk so much. She was trying to imply it, to be polite. She stared him down. He smiled.

"You dreamed about me? What did you dream about?" He took a seat beside her. "Me ghost hunting? Me befriending ghosts? Me offending-"

"Ghosts?"

"Portraits?"

Sulwen rolled her eyes. If she told him, he might go away.

"You went home, you knocked on the door, a house elf answered. That's it."

"Huh. I don't have a house elf at home, Sulwen. Not everyone has house elves."

"I am aware," she tilted her chin up. She'd forgotten. "Besides, it was only a dream."

He lifted up the corners of her letters, peering at her spiky handwriting. He fiddled with her ink well. Sulwen took her wand out of her pocket and rested it on the table, her fingers on the handle. He didn't even notice.

"Wesley!"

"What?"

She levitated the ink well to the other side of the table by the window. He rested his chin in his hands, looking at her.

"What did the house elf do, Sulwen?"

"She stood in the doorway," Sulwen said slowly. The elf had looked dirty and bedraggled. Not like the elves at Hogwarts or in the homes she knew. "She said-"

"What did my house look like?" He picked at the edge of the table with his thumbnail. "Oh, were you saying something?"

She took a deep breath, and spoke fast, to get it out of her head. "The house was covered in snow. Old. A cottage surrounded by fields. Everything was covered in snow, but the shutters were faded yellow. Crows cawed, not nearby? Far away. There was a glass greenhouse, I think, close to the cottage, and it was the only thing not covered in snow. It looked like new, compared to the house. And the house elf- shush, Wesley, I'm trying to tell you - the elf said,"

Sulwen took a breath. Wesley's eyebrows had gone up into his hair, and he was grinning and nodding.

"The house elf said, Lucy's not home. Or something like, Lucy's not here yet. And I woke up."

For a second, he kept grinning, as if it were the best story he'd ever heard. Then his smile grew small. It grew small until only the corners of his mouth curved up the tiniest bit, which Sulwen had learned was his normal resting face. He went still for perhaps the first time since the day he'd been petrified twice in class.

"How do you know my mum's name?" His voice sounded especially quiet.

"Who?" Sulwen looked confused.

"My mum, Lucy."

She shook her head, a bad feeling growing in her stomach. Wasn't his mother missing? "I don't know. You must have mentioned it."

"I didn't. Not to you," he said without rancor. "I told the Headmaster. I maybe told Feliks. Maybe Feliks told you."

"Maybe it isn't about your mother. Maybe - perhaps there's another Lucy," Sulwen glanced down at the parchment, her gaze lingering on the letters to her aunts. The straight lines of ink wavered, the letters looking like a flock of crows gathering on a field. She blinked. The table lamp flickered again. The light. What would happen when it went out?

Her stomach twisted as the bad feeling grew, the one her relatives sometimes spoke of right after a...

"You just woke up?" He widened his woeful eyes, repeating himself a second time. "Why didn't you keep dreaming?"

"Because I can't control my dreams!"

The raw emotion in her voice surprised them both. They drew back from one another, falling silent. Fast footsteps sounded from another row of bookshelves. A Ravenclaw in braids stopped at the end of their row, put a finger to her mouth, and marched away.

Sulwen stared at the space the girl had left without really seeing it. Wesley stood from his chair, then looked back.

"Two greenhouses? Was the house on a farm?"

Sulwen looked at him. She let out a shiver in her sweater while he stood in slacks and a t-shirt.

"I don't know. You don't live anywhere ramshackle like that," Sulwen hoped he didn't. "You live in an inn."

"Yeah, I do now."

He left down the main aisle of the library, his pace slow, his hands in his pockets.

She stood, watching him go. The dream had felt wrong, ominous, dangerous. The snow had covered secrets. Why hadn't she told him that? She shouldn't have told him anything. It didn't mean anything. Sulwen gathered the letters in her hands, intending to finish them later. A draft blew in from the corners of the window, fogging the glass. 

The light on the table went out.

When Wesley dreamed that night, he dreamed of his mum, stepping out of the broken door frame of his former home. She had light brown hair like his little sister, and large brown eyes, like him. She kissed his forehead like she always had.

If I tell you not to look for me, will you listen? She sounded just a little bit different. Calm, always calm, with a hint of chill.

No, mum.

The air blew warm over the golden fields, echoing her sigh. His mother stepped away, letting him see inside the cottage. It looked dark. The air wafted out and was so cold, it stole his breath.

Then come home and find me. Don't wait till I remember you. Don't listen to your elders. Do explore the forest.

He made a face. She made it not so much fun.

Wesley woke to a light dusting of snow on the windowsill of his dormitory, the first snowfall of the year. He remembered home with the yellow shutters and hanging flower pots. Home in the summer. A home away from Hogwarts. Why had it been summer, in his dream? Summer was when she'd left. Summer was also when his father had died, when he'd been very young.

The snow melted before noon that day. He went to classes, he did his revision, he forgot his revision, he managed not to explore the forest. He smiled at the Headmaster in the halls, recalling how he'd kindly explained that missing parents knew better than to search for their children in their old homes. If she's out there, she'll know how to find you, Professor Greyfriar had said.

He thought about what it would be like to return to the farm, just to see it, but he listened, for once, when Sulwen turned in her seat and narrowed her eyes at him.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't do it."

Her hand rested on her wand on her desk.

"I won't."

He meant it. As winter unfolded at Hogwarts, he let Sulwen's strange dream drift to the back of his mind. It settled like so many snowflakes, waiting. It waited until he went home, to his newer home at the inn with his aunt and uncle, settling into his thoughts as his younger sister and brother curled up beside him on the couch, asking to roast marshmallows in the fire, just like they had in the winters on the farm. The idea grew when his uncle got a phone call from Wesley's old neighbor, suggesting that the farm was occupied, someone was living there now, and he had kept meaning to call, kept meaning to mention it, but his mind had played tricks on him. He'd put the phone in the fridge and the address book in the stove.

"There are lights on," the neighbor had said. "Flickering lights. It's dark again now."

In the kitchen, his uncle repeated those words to his aunt, explaining the phone call. The children listened.

"What's senile?" Wyatt wondered.

"Forgetful," Wesley said. "That's the neighbor who looked after us when mum left. He seemed okay."

Wesley looked over the couch at his uncle, practicing his woeful eyes. In tandem, sensing a game, Wren and Wyatt popped their heads over the couch, looking at their uncle. All three children blinked.

His uncle practiced his stern glare. "No."

Wesley shrugged, turned around and ate his marshmallow. He waited for a better time and a better day, to convince them to go back home one cold day in December, to the cold house buried in the snow.