The following Monday, in Charms class, Atateken has his students position themselves so that they all have clear lines towards a dream catcher affixed to the room’s ceiling.

  “Today’s lesson is about the dream walking spell. It goes without saying that it works only when the person in whose dreams you want to walk is fast asleep, and with a clear line of sight on a dream catcher if you want to use it on someone you don’t have a clear LOS on!” Atateken explains some of the conditions that favor its use. “Anyone here got visited by a dream walker in dreams?”

  Most people who raise their hands are Native Americans, with only one non-native doing so.

  Nurcan raises her hand. “I got visited by a dream walker twice, so you can communicate with someone else using that spell. However, that person told me that dream walking could get intimate with the person in whose dreams you walk!”

  “Who visited you in your dreams?” Atateken asks her.

  “Geneviève; I have Divination with her!”

  “One point for Horned Serpent!”

  That seems consistent with how White wizards tended to see dream walking. While they could interpret dreams just fine, they seemed to be taken aback when they’re told about how to walk into dreams and its spiritual dimension. But maybe one of Gen’s parents, or grandparents, was a Native American, likely Atikamekw; she appeared much more open to walk in other people’s dreams, Atateken seems to be a little taken aback by how Nurcan experienced dream walking.

  “The main advantage of dream walking is that the user can communicate with the destination without facing language barriers. However, can anyone tell me what are the main problems with dream walking?”

  Jace raises his hand. “I guess, people could struggle to remember what could someone tell them in a dream walk, just like any other dream!”

  “One point for Thunderbird!”

  Maybe I could use dream walking to keep in touch with both people at home and others I met, here as at the Triwizard Tournament. However, it seems best suited for long-distance communication. Looks like night holds a special meaning to Native American wizards… Nurcan starts thinking about the implications of the window during which one can perform dream walking. Yet I might be questioning how the hell I was able to befriend Jace at Hogwarts, other than keeping quiet about my role as a Revolutionary? Was the wizarding youth’s relative indifference to Muggle geopolitics my social lifeline at Hogwarts, and, to a lesser extent, at Beauxbatons? Vaidi, on the other hand, was the nicest of the Durmstrang people at the TT towards Muggle-borns, if not always the most willing to learn about Muggle realities.

  Atateken then explains the incantation, the wand (or hand) movement and then let the user’s mind open to the target’s.

  Vaidilute raises her hand. “What happens when you try to use the spell on someone who’s awake?”

  “When you use it on someone awake, you’ll feel a little dizzy, as if your mind was intruded, since awakening activates a defense on using magic that requires the target to be asleep! Today’s drill: you will be paired up with someone, you’ll take turns casting sleeping charms and then enter their dreams in their sleep!”

  Nurcan adds another question of her own. “Would it be possible for the user to unwillingly implant, or copy from, the target’s memories, while walking in someone else’s dreams?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gen seemingly first learned about the Estates-General when walking in my dreams! And also about how Alejandra hexed me in the lead-up to the Estates-General in her second trip in my dreams!”

  Alejandra, while more willing to learn with actual understanding in mind than other Slytherins in my year, is a little hot-headed, and probably hexed Nurcan without any real malice. But I’m sure she isn’t evil. I’ll try walking in her dreams after dinner… Jace starts thinking about how Alejandra made his experience as a Slytherin a little less insufferable for one month.

  “Gen is one of the best White witches at dream walking, hamstrung by her relative lack of power. So it seems like her mind absorbs information from people in whose dreams she walks perhaps too easily. Then again, you’re talking about a very intelligent witch. However, it's not known what factors go into the side effects, but maybe intellect is a factor, assuming one doesn’t use occlumency. It’s not quite like Legilimens, though…” Atateken explains to her before she starts the drill.

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  After having cast a sleeping charm on her assigned partner, Nurcan suddenly seems consumed by her attempt at walking inside the dreams of her assigned partner for this drill.

  Because she’s a little underpowered, she doesn’t walk the partner’s dreams for very long. Despite having already experienced being walked on in dreams. Yet, Emmanuelle doesn’t seem to have much more success either.

  However, her partner seems to be struggling to put her asleep with a sleeping charm.

  Presumably because of her intense mental activity acting as a power-efficient line of defense against sleeping charms. Perhaps some attempt at casting a Shield charm, or occlumency, both nonverbally and without a wand. But what is clear to her is that she can feel her brain working harder.

  “Why are you still awake?” her partner asks her.

  But with the next cast of the sleeping charm, what little power Nurcan has left is being spent, and her mental defense being down allows her to fall asleep. Hopefully for long enough for her partner to get a practice attempt at dream walking that actually feels as such.

  When that attempt ends, and she awakens…

  “It seems like I entered a world about which I don’t understand anything!” her partner voices complaints.

  “What did you see then?” Nurcan asks her partner.

  “There were allusions to so many things I know nothing about: the September Massacres, No-Maj being in such a state of panic that they do a repeat of Salem but on a much grander scale. I don’t know what could push No-Maj to kill each other beyond territorial disputes!”

  “Except that, this time around, there are only a handful of wizards being killed; nearly all the dead of this… repeat of Salem are No-Maj! The Comité de Salut Public, while monsters, aren’t wizard hunters at all!” Nurcan explains the main differences between the Salem Witch Trials and the Reign of Terror.

  “The Comité de Salut Public, monsters?” Emmanuelle gasps, out of her own ignorance of the Revolutionary goings-on, while her own dream walk just ended.

  The course continues with discussions of what students got out of their practice dream walks.

  “It seems that we had a lot of interesting experiences in dream walking. However, the recipient awakens once the dream walk ends!” Atateken warns his students before going into the finer points of dream walking.

  And, of course, that it could be used to heal what Native American wizards called spiritual ailments, with regular usage, some of which might be what trauma-induced.

  But when the lecture on dream walking ends, Jace rushes out of campus and on to Adams, where he buys a dream catcher before getting his Charms homework done, with a few more students following suit.

  And, from there, attend a Thunderbird Gobstone team practice.

  So after he finishes dinner, he installs his dream catcher on his room’s ceiling, hoping to get another dream walk practice in before himself going to sleep. He then visualizes Alejandra while the latter, thousands of miles away in Beauxbatons, is fast asleep:

  Jace was walking within Alejandra’s dream, in the gardens of Varshasagar, while both were sitting on a bench under the hot Indian sun, near the end of her stay there.

  “When I first met you at Hogwarts, you needed some help writing in English. But for what little time we had together there, it became clear that, as you improved your English, you revealed yourself as someone who’s brilliant in your own right!” Jace tried to compliment her.

  “Really? I thought Nurcan was smarter than even I!” Alejandra exclaimed.

  “I mean it, Alejandra. Nurcan is a little too obsessed with Muggle affairs for her own good, and yet, both her and you showed me that Muggle-borns aren’t inferior wizards. Everyone else in Slytherin only seemed to care about knowledge to the extent it helps them achieve their goals…”

  “Oh, Jace: this makes me wonder why you, or I, were sorted into Slytherin to begin with! Everyone else in Slytherin creeped me out!”

  For sure, being sorted into Slytherin doesn’t mean one is evil. I could have been in Ravenclaw, and Alejandra, in Hufflepuff, Jace mused, perhaps feeling a little infatuated with her, but at the same time, calling upon his memories of sorting, and how he was considered by more than one house.

  “Speaking of houses, how does it feel to attend a school without houses?”

  “Which one, Beauxbatons or Varshasagar?”

  “Just talk about what’s common about both then…”

  “You meet a greater variety of people, but it can be harder to find people you can befriend. The house system seemed all too foreign to me, and, while I tried my best to hide how miserable it made me, I could also feel it in several of the other survivors of the Triwizard Tournament!”

  “Like who?”

  “Heinrich, Paulinho, and that’s only those whose feelings I remember with any clarity. However, the saving grace for most of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang kids there is that they took NEWT-level classes and hence interact with people from different houses more than they would have had otherwise!”

  “Oh I love you…” Jace prepared to kiss her oneiric self.

  That’s a little awkward for me, but Jace also made this one month at Hogwarts bearable for me… Alejandra mused.

  Alejandra’s dream of meeting Jace again at Varshasagar ends as soon as the kiss ends, and awakens right afterwards. Is my brain playing tricks on me? I never hoped to hear about Jace again, much less dream of him confessing his love for me! If that was the case, he’s probably somewhere other than Hogwarts right now because I never heard about dream walking being taught at Hogwarts during my time there!