Know Thy Enemy - Harry Potter, Next Generation

Prologue

The boy kicked the covers off of him. They felt like they were sticking to him. He was hot and then cold again. Within a few minutes he’d made a mess of his sheets, which lay at the foot of his bed in a jumble. There was no way that he could sleep when he felt like this.

He couldn’t quite describe how he felt. He was hot, cold, nauseous, and his head was pounding. Of all his symptoms, the head pounding was most prominent. He felt like he was going to die. He’d never felt so terrible in his life. This was the worst headache he’d ever experienced. 

He felt sick to his stomach, like he’d throw up any moment now. With the little amount of strength he had in him, he pulled himself out of bed. When he tried to stand, he collapsed onto the floor. He crawled toward his nightstand table, where he took his glass of water and drank from it. The glass was cool to the touch but it hardly made him feel any better. He drank deeply in the hopes that it would soothe him. If anything, it only made matters worse. 

He made his way to the bathroom that connected his room and his mother’s and found himself hovering over the toilet holding onto the seat. All the water that he drank, and some of what he’d had for dinner, ended up in the toilet. He felt somewhat better but he still felt like death. 

So he sat on the cold bathroom tile floor, leaning against the wall. He wanted badly to die. He’d rather die than to feel how he was feeling. And he couldn’t even put his finger on it. There was no reason for him to be feeling like this. He’d done nothing that he didn’t normally do. He’d gone to his friend’s house for dinner but her mother had made beef and potatoes—nothing that she didn’t normally make. Maybe it didn’t agree with his stomach this time around. He had no idea.

He began to wail and cry out in pain. It had suddenly gotten so much worse. Immediately, his mother rushed into the bathroom to see what all the fuss was about. She kneeled next to him on the bathroom floor, trying to get him to tell her what had happened. But how could he tell her anything when he didn’t know what was going on himself? All he could do was scream because the pain was too much. And all his mother could do was weep because her child was in so much pain and she didn’t know what to do in order to fix it.

How was he supposed to endure the Hogwarts Express tomorrow afternoon? Surely he’d spend the whole time in the bathroom, leaning over the toilet, heaving up everything he’d eaten the past week or so. Surely he’d die. If he didn’t die tonight, he was positive that he would die in the morning. He couldn’t sleep when it felt like someone was squeezing his head. It almost felt as if someone was squeezing through, trying to get inside of him . . .