The woman in the mirror (Harry Potter fanfic)

Chapter 2.10 (The living statue)

Artemis rolled around in her bed. The nightmare had awoken her in the middle of the night and she was afraid to go back to sleep. She sighed.

Just one week, one week of peaceful sleep. Is that too much to ask! She growled to her own head. Nox was sleeping soundlessly on the foot of her bed. She smiled a little and petted him gently over the head. He had such a soft fur, like little feathers.

She opened the deep red drapes of her four-poster bed and silently stepped out of it. It was pitch-black in the dorm, not even the moon casted light through the windows. The only sound came from Lavender and Giselle, who snored quite loudly.

Artemis took her dressing-gown and silently tiptoed out of the room. She suddenly had the strong urge to visit Harry. She wanted to see if he was okay and maybe he could comfort her like he usually did when she had a nightmare. She doubted that he even knew about her dreams but he always knew when she'd had them.

She walked out of the portrait hole and wandered in the shadows of the long dark corridors. The hospital wing was pitch black as she walked in. "Who's there?" Harry called weakly.

"It's me. Artemis." She whispered and moved towards his voice. "Where are you?"

"Over here." He whispered back and he grabbed her hand. He made her sit down on his bed and she laid her hand on his forehead. "Wow, you have a fever." She looked around, squinting through the dark until she eventually found a bowl of water and a towel on his bedside table.

"Dobby used it." Harry said as he noticed her confused look. "He left when he heard your footsteps. He told me he was the one closing the barrier and sending the Bludger after me. He tried to get me to go home for my own safety."

"Weird." Artemis whispered, frowning, as she softly dabbed the towel against Harry's forehead. "How's your arm?"

"It feels like it's full of large splinters."

"That's good, I guess..."

"Is there any particular reason that you're here?...not that I'm not happy you are." He added quickly.

"I couldn't sleep."

"That bad dream again?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Selena told me. When I carried you in she told me that she hadn't seen you sleep so peacefully in years."

Artemis sighed, moving her hand away from Harry's forehead. "Sometimes I wonder...I wonder if I really am, who I think I am." She breathed. "That dream...it has been haunting me for years. Making me doubt everything I know."

"Why?"

"Because it looks so real. Like it actually did happen at some point and I was there."

"Like a memory?"

"Yes."

"You remember what you told me when we first met?"

"Not really..."

"I told you about my dream...the one with the flying motorcycle. How it felt so realistic but I thought it could never be real because motorcycles don't fly. You just blankly looked at me and asked, 'Why can't it be real?' You said that you've seen a lot of weird things happen and that to you, a flying motorcycle, wasn't even the most unusual thing. I later found out that Hagrid, in fact, brought me to Privet Drive on a giant motorcycle so it really happened. It wasn't just a dream. Why can't yours be a memory as well?"

Artemis sighed again. "Have you ever heard of Avada Kedavra?"

"No. Is that some kind of spell?"