Harry Potter & The Really Boring Apocalypse

DISCLAIMER: I wrote the following post two weeks ago and never published it. So don't go around thinking that I worked out last night. Because I did not. 

Also, an unusually high percentage of my dreams lately feature me as Harry Potter, but in a refreshing divergence from tradition, I was Hermione in the following dream.

I can't decide if the epic movie-dream I had last night that combined Harry Potter and the Apocalypse was awesome, terrifying, or just mind-numbingly dull. All during my morning Snoozehitting Period, I kept thinking sleepily: "This is the most amazing dream ever; I can't wait to find out what happens," but when I finally woke up, I was plagued by that dark, unsettled feeling you get from really disturbing movies and nightmares, and now that I'm attempting to untangle the plot, I've realized that there wasn't one.

Hermione, who was the hero, spent most of the dream skulking around in a dark, Hogwarts-esque school/church/community center that contained a lot of wood furniture that resembled church pews. There were groups of refugees sitting around in despair being guarded by stern soldier-types and mysterious  cloaked Evildoers. After Hermione had spied on all these people for awhile and felt she understood what had to be done and what was at stake, she returned to Ron and Harry where they sat in their church pew in the dark to relay what she had seen and finalize plans to save the world.

Here, my friends, was a moment ripe for action. Here was a moment ripe for Neville and his badass guerilla army to enter stage right. Here was the moment I'd been waiting for all night long. And here is the moment... in which the writers apparently chose to abandon the plot completely.

Writer #1: You know, I really don't know where we're going with all this.
Writer #2: Me neither. Anyone up for chicken and waffles?
Writer #3: Holy Jesus God YES.

And just like that, my incredible Harry Potter/Apocalypse dream jettisoned its awesomeness and deflated into a murky, depressing mess. This is it, fellas, Hermione told the boys. It's over. Life as we knew it is done-for. And they all proceeded to sit there in the dark in utter, hopeless despair while the soldier-types stood around menacingly and the refugees sobbed bitterly in the corners.

Oh my god. It was so sad.

At this point of utter despair, while Hermione was cuddling dejectedly with Ron, my normal brain could no longer ignore the alarm clock's insidious beeping, and anyway it seemed like a good time to get out of there.  We were clearly headed for snogging which, since I was playing Hermione, I wanted no part of.

I don't know what this dream was about. Maybe the upcoming election. Or maybe it was because I finished exercising only minutes before crawling into bed last night and all the excess adrenaline caused my neurons to fire randomly for hours in a desperate rejection of health.

In the morning, instead of having used my newly achieved muscle tissue to thwart Dark Magic or successfully free a couple captives, I merely woke up feeling exhausted and depressed.

That'll teach me to exercise and/or vote in the future.


10/22/12 update: Did you know Harry Potter has made it into the online dream dictionaries? Turns out if you see him in a dream (I did!), it means you have the capacity to do great things when faced with overwhelming adversity. I can't determine what "being Hermione" or "almost snogging Ron" says about me as a person, however. No one seems willing to get that specific.