The day’s lectures were awful.
As Lana sat in class, listening as her professors droned on about criminals and fighting strategies, ways to hide yourself without an invisibility cloak, and everything magical, she kept bringing herself back to the night before, the dream, the other her.
Voldemort is not back, she insisted, but the thought refused to slip her mind. Every time a student looked her way, her heart nearly stopped, and she would think “it’s him!” and then remind herself that he wasn’t back, that it was just a dream.
“It had to be a dream…” she whispered in the middle of her final lecture of the day.
“What was that?” the professor asked, and Lana looked up, surprised. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud.
Everybody was staring at her—the professor, the students, even the portraits that lined the walls. As Lana looked at them all, studied their faces, the thought came back, only she saw herself in the dream again, with the other Lana.
“Maybe he’s just so evil that he’s going to let you believe that he’s coming after you so you’ll just be too freaked out to do anything useful with your life,” the other Lana had said.
Maybe he’s just so evil that he’s going to let you believe he’s coming after you.
He’s going to let you believe he’s coming after you.
“Miss Herondale?” the professor said, snapping her away from the flashback.
“I don’t feel well,” Lana said, gathering her books quickly and shoving them into her bag. A cold sweat had broken over her. Maybe I actually am sick, she thought.
“Make sure to get the rest of the notes from somebody,” the professor said, turning away from Lana and getting back to his lecture.
She threw her bag over her shoulder and stood, wincing as her chair skidded back and shrieked loudly, gaining the glances of the other students once more. Before the professor could shout at her for disrupting the lecture again, she hurried out of the room and down the hall.
Somehow she managed to get to a bathroom. Dropping her bag, she stepped over to a sink and let the water run, splashing water in her face.
Calm down, she thought. You’re making a much bigger deal out of this than it is. You just had a freaky dream. That’s it. Just a freaky dream. She looked up at her reflection…
…and it was smiling back at her.
Lana swore loudly and stared as her reflection leaned closer to the glass and breathed on it, making it foggy. Then she brought up a finger and started to write.
The writing was jagged and sloppy—the other Lana was writing backwards after all—and the s’s weren’t facing the right way, but the message still hit Lana like a slap in the face.
This is real.
Lana squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, hoping it’d all be gone, but it was still there—the smiling reflection, the message. Her heart was racing.
“If all of this is real,” she whispered, “Then Voldemort really is back. He really is going to come after me.”
The other Lana nodded.
Without another word, Lana snatched up her bag and sprinted out of the bathroom.
YOU ARE READING
The Madness Within: A Harry Potter FanFiction
FanfictionSEQUEL TO THE OTHER SIDE!! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE ALREADY READ IT!!! It's been a year since the battle Lana Herondale started, and life had grown worse and worse. While she'd pried herself from her old life of partying and drinking to a new life...
