The Heart Is Not Black or White

Chapter 20

I felt someone shaking me as I laid on the stone floor of my dormitory. Opening my eyes I saw Fred. He was kneeling down next to me with a scared expression on his face. The sight of him worrying about something put me even more on edge. I began to shake more.

"Marissa," he said urgently. "What's wrong? Do you need anything before we go to the infirmary?"

"C-cold," I said, my teeth chattering.

Fred ripped the covers off my bed and wrapped them around me. I wasn't too cold anymore, but I was still shaking. Some sort of system in my body was overloading.

I was lifted off the floor by Fred and he started running. He carried me out of the dormitory, through the Slytherin common room, and into the corridors of the dungeons.

As he sprinted through the hallways, I asked him, "Are y-you ok-kay?" It worried me to see him even slightly scared.

"Now why in Merlin's name are you asking me that?" Fred exclaimed. "I'm clearly better off than you."

We finally made it out of the dungeons, although the rest of the hallways were dark too. My hands were shaking voraciously. I needed to let off some steam, and I think I knew how to do that.

"F-Fred, stop," I said in barely a whisper.

Fred stopped in his tracks. "What?"

I took my left arm out from under the sheets which I was swaddled in. Out of the hundreds of portraits on the wall, I picked one out of a cow standing in a field with bright blue sky behind it. Testing out my ability, I waved my hand, signaling the portrait to fall.

Instead of just the one portrait falling, about fifty of them started crashing to the floor. Fred started to sprint off toward the infirmary again, so as not to be hit by a falling portrait.

"Issa," he said breathlessly. "What the bloody hell was that?"

"Whatever is killing me," I replied.

"Weasley!"

Snape was walking toward us, which was all I knew because I started to fade out again.

Stay alive.

"Professor," Fred gasped. "She's not well at all. Something-"

"I know what it is," Snape snapped. "She needs to be brought to the infirmary."

Well, duh.

Fred began sprinting toward the infirmary once again, with Snape on his heels. We finally arrived and burst through the doors, Fred laying me down on the nearest cot. Madam Pomfrey rushed to my bed, with her hair askew and still in her night clothes.

"Is it happening?" she urgently asked Snape.

"Yes," Snape replied gravely. "It's making her body systems... overflow. She's near death."

At that my stomach lurched. Death. No, I was not ready to die.

"DEATH!" Fred shouted. "Will she- she... She needs to live!"

"The potion is here, Poppy," said Snape, handing her a glass vial with clear liquid inside. He handed it to Madam Pomfrey.

"Good, good," she muttered. "Mr. Weasley you may leave now, thank you."

"No!" he exclaimed defiantly. "Not until you're sure she's going to live."

"It's not very interesting, boy," she said. "She'll either go into a coma for twenty-four hours or... or die."

"Give it to me now," I said through clenched teeth, surprising everyone by the fact that I could think clearly. "Let Fred stay or I won't drink it."

At this Madam Pomfrey took the cork off the glass vial and held it by my lips. "Drink all of it," she said. I opened my mouth and she poured the contents in. The liquid tasted like the ear wax flavor from Bernie Bott's Every Flavored Beans.

Gently Madam Pomfrey said, "The potion will make you fall asleep for twenty-four hours. It's supposed to sedate- or calm down your body systems. Right now they are extremely overloaded."

"Okay. I-I'll see y-you Christmas morning F-Fred," I said, barely getting the words out before drifting off again into what I hoped was not Death.