The Magician's Apprentice

Trapped

"What the hell did you do?"

Just moments after Strange asked me to cover his watch, Evie's eyes drooped shut and she slumped forward. She would have fallen onto the floor if I hadn't lunged forward to catch her.

As her warm and surprisingly light weight fell into my arms, I turned my head to look at Strange, who looked as startled and alarmed as I was.

"I honestly have no idea," he confessed. He crouched beside me and Evie and placed a hand on her forehead as if he was checking her temperature. After several moments he withdrew his hand and said, "She's alive, not to mention perfectly healthy other than her blindness. But..."

"What but?" I demanded, gently placing Evie back on the armchair.

"She's in a coma," Strange said, his brow furrowing.

"But why?" I exclaimed. "You're the head expert!"

"I don't know why," he snapped, his attention still on Evie. "I might find out of I examine her further."

"You better be careful," I grumbled, brushing an auburn strand of hair out of Evie's pale face.

Hang in there, Eves, I thought, frowning softly.

____________________________________

"Expelliarmus!"

A jet of red light shot out of my wand and blasted Draco Malfoy off of his feet, which was punctuated by a round of applause.

"Excellent, Evelyn!" Professor Flitwick chirped, clapping enthusiastically.

I looked down at him and smiled awkwardly. "Evie is fine, professor," I said.

"Right, right," he said, beaming. "I hear that that's the nickname your mother gave you."

"Yeah," I said, my smile faltering.

Oblivious to my falling expression, Professor Flitwick waddled to Malfoy and helped him up. He was looking mutinous, glaring daggers at me, but I merely smiled and waved at him.

The bell suddenly rang, its gonging reverberating throughout Hogwarts castle, and Professor Flitwick said, "All right, that concludes our session in the Dueling Club!"

As I shouldered my bag and headed out of the classroom with my fellow peers, something peculiar happened. I felt a soft touch on my face, as if someone was lightly brushing their fingers across my forehead. On top of that, a very faint voice murmured through the ringing of the bell. I strained to hear what the voice said, but I could only catch the first three words.

Hang in there...

I frowned and glanced around in search of anyone else looking as confused as I felt, but strangely no one seemed to have noticed the voice.

The pit of my stomach clenched anxiously, and for the oddest reason I almost felt like I wasn't supposed to be here. But that didn't make sense...I was a Ravenclaw prefect, not to mention a pureblood.

So why did I feel so out of place and uncomfortable?

"It's because you don't belong," an alarmingly familiar voice broke through the gonging and chattering.

I frantically looked around in search for the source of the voice, but I was roughly shoved aside by Malfoy. Annoyance driving my confusing thoughts away, I scowled and rushed to the Great Hall; I was starving...

____________________________________

"Well?" Skai demanded. "How is she?"

I ignored his anxious badgering for what felt like the hundredth time and mentally prodded Evie's mind with my own, and I was startled to feel her subconscious active and stirring. I struggled to sense her veiled thoughts, but I might as well be poking a brick wall with a toothpick. Her mind was too clouded, too deeply covered in what assumed to be Mordo's work.