Harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It had seemed so real... There had been two people he knew and one he didn't... He concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember...
The dim picture of a darkened room came to him... There had been a snake on a hearth rug... a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail... and a cold, high voice... the voice of Lord Voldemort. Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought...
He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible... All Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror, which had awoken him... or had that been the pain in his scar?
And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. Harry put his face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them... Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Harry could not remember the name... and they had been plotting to kill someone else...him!
Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes, and stared around his bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened, there was an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black robes, and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; Harry had been reading it before he fell asleep last night. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks, throwing a red ball to one another.
Harry walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched one of the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty foot high hoop. Then he snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch - in Harry's opinion, the best sport in the world - couldn't distract him at the moment. He placed Flying with the Cannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window, and drew back the curtains to survey the street below.