Make Me.

Book 4 - Chapter 2

Ellie lay flat on her back, breathing hard as though she had just finished being chased by a bear. She had awoken from a vivid dream with one hand clasped around her left elbow, the other pressed over her eyes. The old scar on her left arm was burning beneath her fingers as though someone had just dipped her arm, from fingertips to shoulder, into a vat of boiling oil. 

She sat up, one hand still on her arm, the other reaching out in the darkness for her watch, which was sat on her bedside table. She grabbed one of the leather straps, pulled the watch towards herself, and looked at the time. It was only ten p.m. She must've still been asleep from her evening nap. Ellie dropped the watch onto her sheets and waved her burning hand though the air. The candles around her room jumped into yellow life and she grabbed at the bedside table again, this time for her glasses.

Ellie rubbed her hand up and down her left arm, trying to sooth the pain. Her eyes traced up and down it. She lifted her hand to get a better look, there was nothing out of the usual. The scar was long and thin, just like her arm. The scar looked normal and gray, but it was still stinging. It twisted around her fingers and wrist and wound its way up over her shoulder, the top of it was re-opened and connected to the four large claw marks on her shoulder that went down her back.

Ellie slid off her silk sheets and onto the floor, standing in the middle of her bedroom. She looked at her door, there was only darkness and quiet underneath it; she was the only one awake in the house.

Ellie stood, trying to recall what she had just been dreaming about before she had awoken. It had seemed too real. . . There had been two people she knew and one she didn't. . . She concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember.

The dim picture of a darkened room came to her. . . 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. Ellie felt as though an ice cold inch worm had slipped down into her stomach at the very thought. . .

She closed her eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like but it was impossible. . . All Ellie knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and she had seen what was sitting in it, Ellie felt a spasm of horror, which had awoken her. . . or had that been the pain in her scar?

And who had the old man been? There had definitely been an old man; Ellie watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. Ellie put her hands into her eye-sockets, blocking out her bedroom, trying to hold onto the picture of the that dimply lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in her cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as she tried to hold onto them. . . Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Ellie could not remember the name. . . and they had been plotting to kill someone else. . . Harry Potter. . . no. . . her?

Ellie took her hands out of her face, opened her eyes, and stared around her bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. There was nothing but an extraordinary number of usual things there in her room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the end of her dark, wooden four-poster bed, dressed in black silky sheets. Stuffies were plastered around the top of the mattress and on the floor surrounding the bed. There was a desk on the right wall, sporting stacks of books and crumpled parchment, and tall and small lit candles, some normal, some shaped like spines, some dripping wax that looked like red-hot blood. On the other side of the room sat a large chest of drawers and a closet, doors flung open, contents exposed. The floor was littered with shoes and shirts and sweaters and everything in between, and stacks of books that had been stolen from Hogwarts Library, her father's office, and the large library in her house, books belonging to her deceased parents.

Her pet niffler, Marshall, was curled up in a goblet on Ellie's desk, sleeping peacefully.

Ellie walked over to him, and looked down at his white fur and protruding belly. Ellie looked out the window that sat over her desk, not even Marshall could distract her in that moment. She drew the curtains to survey the land below.