▬▬ nine; the first sign.
⋆.｡.:* ☆:**:.

THE FIRST THING she noticed was the faint music playing in the room. Her eyelids felt glued together when she tried to open them, but she soon understood that it was because of how tired she was. However, when she overcame her weakness and her eyelids opened she regretted it quickly and squeezed them together with a groan. The light was blinding.

"She's awake," said a light voice that Lauren knew belonged to her friend Hermione Granger.

"She's probably just dreaming. She still seems to be asleep," said Ronald Weasley.

"I'm. . . awake," Lauren said with a raspy and quiet morning voice. She wasn't even sure if they heard her until the nurse's pitchy voice came closer with her heels clicking against the stone floor.

"Everyone back off, she must still be having a headache." Something cold attached to her forehead and when she brought herself to open her eyes again she felt the nurse holding a package of ice against her head.

"I'm fine," groaned the girl and pushed the ice away from her.

Her brother then came forward and sat down beside her and took the ice and laid it back on her head, "don't be so stubborn."

"I'm already freezing, a package of ice will only make it worse," she protested and once again removed it from her head, and Cedric had a defeated look on his face as he sighed and stood up,

"I think I can go now, she seems to be herself." 

They chuckled around her—and that's when she realized Harry Potter's presence. He was sitting next to Ron in the hospital bed beside her own. Their eyes met and Hermione and Ron fell awkwardly silent. She looked at Harry with pleading eyes and did not notice how their friends got up to leave—as well did her brother. The nurse had also left to go find something from Snape's classroom.

The boy opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off, "Harry, I'm sorry. I should've told you, I should've told all of you, but you're smart—you do realize if I told you it would've made things worse."

"Of all people you chose to be secret friends with, you chose Draco Malfoy. . . Why?"

"Why he's not as everyone thinks. You don't have to like him, but I do. . . or I did."

Harry's expression changed as he watched the girl's eyes become sad, and her head sank into the pillow. She started to tap her fingers anxiously against the other—she always did that when she was nervous, he'd seen the habit hundred of times before.

"You both looked rather upset when I found you—did you fight before I came?" Harry asked.

She looked down, "kind of. I was only worried about him, he often sneaks away and sits for himself when nobody sees him. . . But he wasn't at all happy to see that I cared about him."

"Oh, Lauren. You're just like him, aren't you? When something is bothering you; you push people around you away with any kind of excuses."

"I do?" He sighed at her innocent expression. "But, Draco usually talks to me about it. That's what we do when we sneak off—we just talk about stuff we can't talk to anyone else about."

"Maybe this one thing he can tell anyone but you," said Harry making her frown. She was deep in thought at this point, but he didn't allow her to drown in her thinking and said, "so, you remember the nightmare I told you about?"

She opened her eyes and sat up in her bed and nodded, "the one I had as well."

"Yes," he looked down before meeting her eyes again, "I keep having dreams like them, or they are the same just different. . . like, outtakes from them. Do you get it?" She nodded and he continued, "and I had these dreams since summer—as I told you some time ago." She nodded once again. "And in one of those Voldemort mentioned your name."

Her heart started to beat faster as she listened to him. So many things about that man she hated so much was all around her, she knew he wasn't there but it felt as if he was all around her. "Exactly what did he say about me?"

Harry frowned as if he had hard remembering it, "well, it could've been anyone named Lauren actually. . . When I think about it."

"Stop avoiding it, tell me what he said."

"Well, he said something like he wanted to hurt you and then how he wanted to recruit you. I'm not sure, it's rather blurry."

"Odd," she mumbled. 

"It doesn't mean anything, I promise. We have nothing to be afraid of."

She shook her head and looked into Harry's emerald eyes once again, "Harry, I asked Dumbledore the other day about Voldemort returning and he said that he wasn't sure—but he looked worried. I think, you being in this tournament, and these dreams, I think they aren't just coincidence."

"You must've hit your head hard, Laure. You're getting mad!" As Harry had spoken a bit too loudly Hermione and Ronald rejoined them in the room looking worried.

"We heard you calling her mad," said Ron.

"Can't you ever figure whatever this out—" started Hermione but was quickly cut off by Harry himself,

"Hermione, we are good. She told me an idea of an awful prank, that's all." Lauren smiled as he made it official that they were friends again, and giggled of his excuse that their friends could tell was fake. But they didn't seem to find any need to dig the truth out and instead they all just talked and tried to figure out the secret behind the Golden Egg Harry had stolen from the dragon.

Lauren wasn't paying much attention anymore—she was just being tortured by her mind. She had so much to think of, and she felt as if she was carrying the weight of the world but she wasn't. She wasn't under pressure or outworn but she still felt so extremely tired.

—

It was her last night she had to spend in the hospital wing, she didn't even understand why she had to stay because she felt a lot better. "Dumbledore said it's for the best," had the Nurse responded when she'd asked about it earlier that day.

She was all alone in there, all the other beds were empty but still, it was warm in here, and it felt safe—or it did, until now. Something changed within a second. All the candles went out at once and it got cold, extremely cold. Lauren sat up and looked around for this sudden action but saw nothing but darkness and very faint reflections of the moon outside the windows. She would've shouted for the Nurse but the big doors were closed and she knew nobody would hear her.

Out from a corner came a tall shadow. The shadow was a blurry vision of a man, but as it came closer and closer she understood that it wasn't a human—it was a shadow. She shivered as her feet touched the cold stone floor as she stood up. 

"Don't be afraid," said a raspy male voice—it made her flinch, but as she understood the shadows was the voice she calmed down, she wasn't scared. The shadow stopped, "my mistake. . . You are not afraid."

"Who are you?" She asked with a determined voice. 

A horrible chuckle echoed in the room, it was something about this shadow, the voice, whoever was standing on the other side of the room, that made her feel so vulnerable. "You know who I am more than anyone else, but you have not figured it out quite yet." He spoke in a way that made her uncomfortable, his words were slow and he made sure to pronounce every single letter.

"Haven't you ever wondered why you are a Gryffindor when nobody in your entire family are. . . ?"

"My personality and talents don't have to be based on my parents," she said as she looked into the shadow, but she didn't know where his eyes were because she could just see a black cloud of fog shaped like a standing log.

Once again, this invisible person (or if it even was a person) let out a dry and scornfully laughter. "Perform wand-less magic is something a young girl could never accomplish without draining herself out and collapse—so how come you can control things without even have to think much about it. . . ?"

"How do you know about that?" She shook her head after she'd spoken, "I didn't make those books fly, someone else did."

"You can't admit it, because you are too scared of the power you would hold if you did," the shadow came closer but still had a far distance from Lauren. "And who taught you to change the color of your eyes?"

She remembered her friends talking about her eyes before she passed out, they said they had turned green. . . Maybe it was just the light that had tricked their heads, her eyes couldn't possibly change colour because she got upset, right?

"Who are you and how do you know so much about me?"

"Isn't it my duty?" She didn't understand what was happening, she tried to tell herself it was just another nightmare but as the minutes passed that thought faded.

"Are you not human?"

The shadow stayed silent for a moment before he responded, "I was. But I wanted to be something more, something so much powerful—so I gave everything to up."

"Is being a shadow really more powerful than being human?" Lauren had now suddenly found the courage to stand straighter, because what could a shadow do to harm her?

"I am this now, but for me awaits a forever long life. . . I just have to wait a little longer, and than do one more thing, and than I'll be rewarded with the price that made the Gods."

She stumbled backward and fell over another bed and quickly went up to her feet again, and then she ran for the door as the shadow remained still. But as she reached for the doorknob something clicked, he'd locked it. She turned around to look into the fog and then spoke with almost a whisper, "you're Tom Riddle."

He chuckled once again and headed for the windows, "I was. I am not anymore. Now I am Voldemort, Lord Voldemort."

"You aren't real. You're dead. You can't hurt me," she said, but she said it more to calm herself down because she was locked inside the same room as Lord Voldemort. 

"All that is true. But I can make you hurt yourself. But I will not," he stood just beside the window. "Isn't it my duty to keep you safe?"

And then he was gone. The shadow flew right out the window and the door unlocked at the same moment. But she didn't walk out, she didn't run and she didn't scream. She was still watching the place he had stood. 

▬▬ author's note ▬▬

I love to write this book. By each chapter I write I become more and more excited about the end, but that is faaaaaar away my dear friends don't worry.

[ last updated: 23/11/20 ]
Stay tuned, thank you! <3