Emma Potter

84: Lord Voldermort

I lay flat on my back,  breathing hard as though I hadbeen running. I had awoken from a vivid dream withhis hands pressed over his face. The old scar on my forehead, whichwas shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath my fingersas though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.

Harry was panting a bed beside me.

 He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other reaching out inthe darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. Heput them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint,misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from thestreet lamp outside the window. 

Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful for me too. Heturned on the lamp beside him,I scrambled out of bed, crossed theroom, opened my wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny girl of fourteen looked back at me, my hazel eyes  puzzled under my Black-Scarlet head .

 I examined the lightning-bolt scar of my reflection more closely. It lookednormal, but it was still stinging. I tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before hehad awoken. It had seemed so real. . . . There had been two peoplehe knew and one I didn't. . . .I concentrated hard, frowning,trying to remember. . . . 

The dim picture of a darkened room came to me. . . . Therehad been a snake on a hearth rug . . . a small man called Peter,nicknamed Wormtail . . . and a cold, high voice . . . the voice ofLord Voldemort. I felt as though an ice cube had slippeddown into his stomach at the very thought. . . . I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible. . . .

 All I knewwas that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swungaround, and we, Harry and me, had seen what was sitting in it, I had felta spasm of horror, which had awoken me and Harry too . . . or had that been thepain in our scar? 

And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been anold man; I had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. I put my face into his hands, blocking outhis bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly litroom, but it was like trying to keep water in my cupped hands; thedetails were now trickling away as fast as U tried to hold on tothem. . . . 

Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though I could not remember thename . . . and they had been plotting to kill someone else . . . us! I took my face out of my hands, opened my eyes, and staredaround my bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. 

As it happened, there were an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. 2 large wooden trunks stood open at thefoot of our  respective beds, revealing cauldrons, broomstick, black robes, andassorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of harry's desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which our snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. My desk was neat enough. 

 On the floor beside his bed abook lay open; Harry must have been reading it before he fell asleep lastnight. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks,throwing a red ball to one another.Harry walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched oneof the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball througha fifty-foot-high hoop. He placed Flying with theCannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window, and drewback the curtains to survey the street below. I joined him

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban streetwould be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning.All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry and I could see through thedarkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.And yet . . . and yet . . . 

I went restlessly back to the bedand sat down on it, running a finger over my scar again. It wasn'tthe pain that bothered me; I was no stranger to pain and injury. neither was Harry; He had lost all the bones from his right arm once and hadthem painfully regrown in a night. my arm had been piercedby a venomous foot-long fang not long afterward. Only last yearHarry and I had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick and a stand respectively. We were used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had aknack for attracting a lot of trouble.