7 7. HELLISH NIGHTMARES.

Harry sat in his cozy living room, surrounded by books on divination, occlumency, wards, and a few notes and observations he had jotted down.

Mrs. Thompson lay unconscious on the couch, having just relived her nightmare.

Harry had hastily set up protective wards against malevolent spirits, though he wasn't sure if they'd be effective. He pondered whether Mrs. Thompson was haunted by one or more vengeful spirits.

"Ugh, where am I?" Mrs. Thompson asked as she slowly came to.

Harry closed his dream interpretation book and faced his client.

"You're in my living room, Mrs. Thompson. You were a bit shocked when I made you relive your nightmare... I'm sorry."

Mrs. Thompson sat up on the couch and drank a glass of water that Harry had conjured for her.

"I can remember it much better now. What does it mean?" she asked, hugging her knees to her chest.

Harry thought for a moment. He wasn't trained for this situation, only having gleaned a bit about psychology from Hermione over the years.

Harry was puzzled about the cause of Mrs. Thompson's nightmares. Recalling how he faced his boggart and defeated it with laughter and "Ridikulus," he doubted this was a similar situation.

"I'm not sure..." Harry started to say.

"I'm looking into some things," he added, pointing to the piles of books around him.

Harry took a moment to think.

"Why was the centaur chasing you in your dream?" he asked.

"I don't understand what you mean," she replied uncertainly.

Harry decided to try a different approach.

"Well... why was your husband dreaming about fire? Why is he afraid of fire?"

"When he was a boy, around 7 years old, his house caught on fire and he was trapped on the second floor. His entire room was burning until a firefighter rescued him. He has burn scars on his legs."

Harry nodded silently.

"So, why are you having nightmares about centaurs?" Harry asked again.

"I... I don't know," she replied hesitantly.

Harry attempted to use his mental powers to learn more about Mrs. Thompson's nightmares. However, her mind was too confused, and he only got a headache from glimpses of her memories.

"I think we've made a good start," Harry said. "With your permission, I'd like to visit your husband and see if we can learn more. We can talk or meet up tomorrow afternoon to figure out our next steps."

"Yes. My husband is at..."

Harry interrupted her. He'd seen the name of her husband's hospital in her memories.

"New York-Presbyterian Hospital," Harry said.

"How... how did you know?" she asked nervously.

"It's my job to know," Harry replied, trying to sound wise and mysterious.

"So, there is something going on?" she asked worriedly. "Are we being haunted or...?"

"I think there's more to these nightmares than we know, but I'm not sure what yet. We need more information," Harry explained as he walked her through his apartment.

"If you go downstairs to my office, Domino will get your contact information. We'll do some research and get back to you in a day or two, or sooner if we find anything."

The woman thanked Harry and went back to his office. Harry returned to his trunk and retrieved his invisibility cloak, omnioculars, an extendable ear, an old half-empty bottle of dreamless sleep potion, and a small basic ward kit.

"I'm closing up for the day," Harry said to Domino, who was standing near his bedroom door. "I called her a cab and sent her home."

"What's the story?" Domino asked.

"A haunting or maybe a curse? Her memory of the dream was weird... I'm not the best at legilimency, but that memory felt strange. We're going to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital to see if the doctors have any information. I also have a few tricks I can try."

"You can read people's thoughts?" Domino asked with interest and a little fear.

"Not exactly," he replied. "I can see memories, but I'm not very good at it."

When they arrived at the hospital, Harry found a quiet corner and shrunk the Triumph down, hiding it in his pocket.

A quick Confundus charm at the reception desk helped them find Mr. Thompson's room.

The hospital was still quite busy for the late hour, but a weak Notice-Me-Not charm made sure that the hospital staff didn't bother them.

"Room 405," Domino said, pointing down the hall to a set of double doors. "It looks like there's someone in there. Can we just walk in?"

Harry peered through the window of the double door and shook his head.

The room was a large, windowless ward with twelve beds, eight of which were occupied. The beds were surrounded by complex medical equipment that Harry didn't understand.

The lights were dimmed, and two doctors were having a hushed but animated conversation. A young, clean-shaven doctor seemed frustrated with his female colleague.

"No, the Notice-Me-Not charm makes people less likely to pay attention to us as long as we don't stand out or they aren't specifically looking for us. My friend Hermione used to call it an SEP field."

"SEP?"

"Somebody Else's Problem. We're not invisible, just someone else's problem," Harry explained as he took out the extendable ear and pointed it at the occupants of the room.

"The toxicology reports came back negative. The MRIs show hyperactivity. Their brains are lighting up like Christmas trees, so something's going on, but there's no physical trauma, no toxicological indicators, no viruses, no parasites, no common environmental factors... Christine, I've got nothing to work with here."

The man sounded frustrated.

The woman sighed in resignation

"Are we still on for tomorrow night?" the man asked as he followed the woman back towards the doors.

Harry swiftly retracted the Extendable Ear and pulled Domino into a patient's room. Thankfully, the three men in the room appeared to be asleep.

"I thought you said they would ignore us."

"I'm pretty sure standing around in a restricted area dressed like this would get their attention," Harry explained, poking his head out of the partially open door.

Seeing the doctors leaving, Harry ushered Domino into the ward and gently closed the doors.

"What are you doing now?"

Harry took a small notepad from his pocket and, after consulting his notes, began drawing runes in chalk on the doors.

"Just adding a quick and dirty Muggle-Repelling Ward. It's strong enough that people who come here without a good reason will feel like they need to turn around and do something else, like take a break or check on another patient. Unless it's really important for them to be here, like if an alarm goes off or a patient is critical."

Harry finished drawing the runes on the doors and activated the ward with his wand. A small blue flash confirmed that the ward was active.

"This is the first ward that anyone learns when they study warding," Harry explained. "It's one of the simplest and most common wards where I come from. Unless they're magical, really strong-willed, or have an overwhelming purpose, they'll be affected by the ward."

Harry walked over to Mr. Thompson's bed and looked at his medical chart.

"I can't understand any of this," Harry mumbled.

Domino took the chart from him and started taking pictures of the pages with her phone.

"I might be able to do some research later," she said in response to Harry's puzzled expression.

Harry walked around the room looking at the machines monitoring the patients' health. He didn't understand any of them. There were other patients, and Harry assumed they were in the same situation as the Thompsons.

"Done! What's next?" Domino asked as she put her phone away.

"I'm going to try something really risky," Harry explained. "I'm going to try to see Mr. Thompson's dream. Dreams are just memories, so I hope this will work. If it doesn't, I'll try to give him a small dose of dreamless sleep potion to stop the nightmare, but I don't know what drugs they're on and how they might interact with the potion, so I hope I don't have to do that."

Harry pulled up a chair next to Mr. Thompson's bed and gently turned the man's head towards him.

"If I'm in there for more than five minutes, break eye contact with me, and that should pull me out. Also, try to keep an eye on the hallway in case someone breaks through the ward."

Domino nodded and positioned herself by the doors.

Harry took a deep breath and cast a spell to open Mr. Thompson's eyes.

"This isn't going to be fun," Harry muttered to himself before saying the spell and entering the man's mind.

After a brief but blinding kaleidoscope of colors, Harry found himself in the kitchen of an apartment instead of the usual memory starfield.

"Okay, this is new!" Harry whispered to himself.

The apartment was dimly lit, with only the hum of the refrigerator breaking the silence. The furniture was old and cheap, made of lacquered wood and chrome tubes. There were children's drawings on the refrigerator.

The entire room also seemed to be sized for someone of Hagrid's proportions.

Harry looked around and noticed a few strange details. First, all the doors were closed. Second, there were no windows.

Harry walked towards one of the doors and stopped abruptly.

"How am I in control?" Harry muttered to himself. Legilimency was always supposed to be from the target's point of view. "Oh no, this is not good!"

Before he could think about it any further, one of the three doors in the room swung open. Howard Thompson, wearing singed children's Disney pajamas, rushed in, slammed the door, and ran towards the next door without stopping.

"Mr. Thompson?"

The man skidded to a halt, his momentum carrying him off balance and causing him to crash into the refrigerator door.

"What? Who?" the man asked, confused.

"My name is Harry Potter, Mr. Thompson. Your wife sent me to help you," Harry explained, raising his hands in a gesture of peace.

"No! This is another trick! You're part of it, aren't you?" the man accused, reaching into a kitchen drawer and pulling out a large knife. The oversized knife looked more like a machete in the man's hands.

Harry quickly pulled out his wand and disarmed the man with a silent spell. The knife flew across the room and embedded itself in the wall.

"This is not a trick, Mr. Thompson. Can you tell me what's going on?"

The man relaxed a bit, and a spark of hope appeared in his eyes. But that hope was quickly replaced by fear as he looked back at the door they had just come through. Smoke was pouring in from the cracks.

"We have to go!" he yelled. "The fire is getting closer!"

The man rushed past Harry and through another door. They entered a living room with four doors. Like the kitchen, the living room had old-fashioned furniture with floral patterns and strange shapes.

"Where are we going, Mr. Thompson?" Harry asked, watching the man as he seemed to be assessing the room.

"It's like a maze... we're trapped in an endless maze of different versions of my parents' apartment," the man explained as he moved towards a door and cautiously touched the handle before moving on to another.

"If the fire catches me, I burn to death, and then it all starts over again!"

The man stopped halfway to the next door and

 turned to Harry, his eyes pleading for an answer. "Am I... am I in hell?"

Harry noticed smoke coming from the door they had just come through and grabbed Mr. Thompson's arm as he headed for the next door.

"No, you're asleep or in a coma. You're actually at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in an intensive care unit," Harry explained.

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(edited chapter.)

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