Interesting dream. For those of you wondering how I go about interpreting these things, there are basically two factors: intuition and reason (right and left brain zones).
Intuition comes from taking the full dream picture, and comes from the sense that wide-angle view creates. Intuition is what allows me to take each dream on its own merit, because all dreamers are different. This is something that comes from practice.
Reason gives intuition its focus. For that sense to make sense you have to be aware of the many and varied manifestations of the psyche and interdimensional dreamtime that dreams can represent, or at least have a varied set of working and interlocking categories.
For intuition to link with reason you have to be able to identify the sense you get from the whole dream with the corresponding basic category, or at least have a vague idea of that correspondence. Then you need to look not so much at the symbols and try to interpret them, but at the patterns of interaction between dream elements. Characters can be literal or symbolic, and so can their actions and relationships.
Both jOdas and Brent's latest posted dreams here have a strong archtypal character, which can be found in folklore. This is not always the case with dreams, but pretty much fits here. While jOda's skeleton dream was a general archtype, Brent's is culture-specific, linked to a popular modern story-line.
To look at the big picture of this dream, we need to examine the context of that story-line. Then we need to look into Brent's possible association with that story-line. The Harry Potter Universe seems to come from the mind of a certain English woman, but its wide appeal shows that it is more than that.
I read somewhere that the magician school has a lot in common with elitist secret societies. It seems these magicians represent a certain "class" of people that have a lot in common with royal bloodlines. The more powerful magicians act like higher royalty and the lesser ones like lesser royalty. Only these don't seem to rule commoners, but have their own self-contained society, and within that society there seem to be factions of "good" and "evil".
I would gather the vividness of the dream was tied to the strength of the Harry Potter meme itself, a collective focus strong enough to literally create a dream plane unto itself. Brent himself has expressed, furthermore, that he is inclined to "battle" dreams, which imply a playing out of the good/evil drama or a me vs. them drama at least.
Now, as to why Brent resonated with the Harry Potter Universe, I cannot say. Perhaps a stray observation or thought connecting with it, or even a series of subliminal associations leading to that direction. The point is the Universe or dream-plane itself resonated with something in Brent's psyche.
I think the link here is strongly related with his choice of identification role in the dream: The girl. Personally, I think Brent's bisexual orientation (if I am correct) indicates not so much gender confusion, but gender flexibility, or a looser identification of self with gender than those of us who are heterosexually identified, for example.
The only time I had a feminine identification, for example was in one past life regression, out of many. Never in a dream that I can remember. So if someone has a more androgynous orientation where psyche is not identified with gender, things are more flexible. This made the link easier, because I believe the Hermione figure, the one really involved in this issue was the only available dream avatar where an observer could link.
And the full identification and practical displacement of identity (where Brent was disoriented as to which reality was which after waking) is a likely indication that his dream perception resonated with a figure of the dream plane. Now, there IS no Hermione Granger, BUT there are many people (fans of Harry Potter) who in part identify with her and contribute to her construct making it practically a separate reality.
When these people read or watch Harry Potter stories, they put themselves in Hermione's shoes and in doing so give part of their essence to support the construct independently of the story. That is because as they watch the flick or read the corresponding book, they do not make choices. Hermione's character does and they just get swept along. This is important: when you identify with something or someone that makes choices or acts independently of you, you literally add part of yourself to their meme construct (or thoughtform egregor).
So Brent, through disposition and probable circumstance, linked with the egregor in the egregor's virtual plane, which is similar to a dream-matrix powered by many human minds linked through common or compatible identifications.
That Unverse, furthermore, was involved in a "story". The story itself was very archtypal and the energy running it was probably fueled by the combined issues of the collective supporting the Hermione form, since that was the protagonist, but also seemed to include a "contribution" from the "other side" (the sorceress and her serpentine students).
The story involves others, but most likely involves Brent in some way as well. It's issue, however, is a feminine perspective and probably an archtypally feminine issue in and of itself, and Brent has a unique perspective here as a male.
I believe this perspective (the gender contrast) allowed him to recall the dream in an objective way. Females would probably be linked to Hermione's identity through gender, and so could not hold the part of them in Hermione from their waking self.
For them, they WHERE Hermione, and when they woke the WHERE themselves. Paradoxically, the very linkage of gender precluded observer consciousness in the dream, and without observer consciousness (which is automatic when YOU are the dream protagonist) there is no memory.
Now to the dream story. Interestingly enough the "magic" seemed to be gender-oriented. The sorceress (clear archetype of the dark crone) channeled the male and female energies (see Tarot Card: The Devil for symbolism of this set-up) of her underlings (slithering like serpents) to control the movements of the two males Harry and Ron, who are also egregor constructs connected to many people with distinct personality outlines many people have in common.
Hermione was not included in the curse, which points to its gender-specific nature. The next event is the other polarization of "good". Here we have the good crone of wisdom (notice the STS/STO polarization of the crone archtype). Now in this interaction we need to notice a fundamental detail: It occured in Brent's childhood bedroom, which he occupied probably when he was Harry's, Ron's and Hermione's age.
This is an important detail because it reveals a coherence between Brent's frequency and that of the Harry Potter dream plane. You might consider it a representation of the doorway of access, a common space between Brent and the Harry Potter reality. It indicates the link occured in that portion of Brent's psyche closely related to Hermione's age (all the memories and sensations experienced at that age and the psychological make-up still present in the current psychic make-up of Brent the adult).
Within the "room" in Brent's psyche we had not only Hermione and the good crone, but the evil one and her minions as well. To the dark magic also has presence in Brent's psyche as well, and possibly influences his male side (most likely not in strict heterosexual terms, and maybe regarding desires toward certain young males).
The issue presented besides the manipulation of Hermione's male friends by this "gender magic" and the dark crone, was the inability of the bright crone to deal with it. Harry, Ron and Hermione are at the onset of puberty as far as the movies go at least. The dark crone is manipulating the boys through that, and the girl is seeking the bright crone to counter it. The bright crone cannot.
I believe she cannot because to counter gender magic, you need gender magic a balanced male-female presence, which did not exist here. Brent could not provide it because the part that was apart from influence was one with Hermione.
Even though he COULD have manifested independantly in his own dream room (in principle), the male part was under the spell, and the female part could not counter it alone. Gender dissociation made him a good observer, but also poor candidate to play a redeeming masculine role here. Especially since it is probably his "male" side needing "redemption" here from its obsessions, generated by these negative crone stimulated energies.
The good crone was not at fault. She knew without the male element she could not help, and without that balance she was at the mercy of the evil one. I believe that she would have told Hermione this, and that this "telling" shifted to Brent's consciousness to his brother calling. Was this a coincidence, or a synchronistic symbol transcending the dream experience.
His brother WAS the male element, and at first I thought his brother calling was PART of the dream. This shows that often the boundaries between dream and "reality", just as the boundaries between individual and collective psyches are not so rigidly defined. It's all energy anyway.
The fact that the transition was abrupt and there was disorientation indicates that most of Brent's psyche had identified with Hermione, and the male aspect of Brent's identity was what was at stake here. To awaken he had to leave Potter's plane and remerge with the male aspect, and in doing so he could transfer the observer memories because of the combination of strong identification with the female and the contrast with his male genetics.
So here is an issue played out in the Harry Potter plane regarding manipulated male behaviour that well-meaning females involved cannot help correct, but which a loosely gender-identified person could observe. The manipulation has its roots IMO in the original hormone flows of puberty, which mark our subsequent sexual identities, and can provide insight in some prevalent issues between males and females, and how males succumb to "dark forces" that make them act out of character.
What was lacking here was a gender-grounded male psyche immune to manipulation, probably the manipulation that makes some women wrap some men around their little fingers, or makes men act in an obsessive sexual manner.
Brent can, however, transfer the insight given by the female oriented side to the male one, and can replay the dream to be himself in his room and talk to Hermione and the good crone to see what they have to say.
Among other things, the dream indicates the complexity of the dreamtime, where many elements come together. Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the matter.