BLOOD TRAITOR [HARRY POTTER - BOOK 1]

Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter world, all rights go to J.K Rowling. I do however own my original character Nova Malfoy and her background.

As Harry lay in the darkened boys dormitories, his stomach leapt as thoughts of the evening danced around his brain. He smiled stupidly as he tried to mull over Hermione's dissection of the kiss he had shared with Cho and his mind kept wandering to the youngest Malfoy. The pair had spent the latter of the day together and the Potter boy could honestly say that he had missed her in the few days that she had been avoiding him. As he lay in bed, he wondered what she was thinking about and a frown etched its way across his brow as he questioned why she had run off and had all but ignored him as he waited in the common room for her to return. As he rolled over onto his side and sleep engulfed him, he concluded that in place of Divination, he could really use a lesson into the workings of the female mind.

Nova ran a cold finger over the slight burn that she had accidentally given herself earlier that evening. Wincing, she recalled the way that the flames licked her palm as her emotion ignited the blank parchment whilst she wandered the corridors of the castle, trying to maintain control. Her hands shook as she forced herself to breathe and her power threatened to explode out of her. She groaned internally, throwing herself into her pillow as she thought of the confusion on Harry's face as she hid her hand and muttered another excuse before bolting into the girls' dormitories. She rolled her eyes, feeling like an idiot as the dull ebbing pain on her hand, lulled her to sleep.

Sweat beaded across Harry's forehead as he twisted and turned against his pillow trying to rid himself of the nightmare that had latched onto him.

Nova's forehead creased and her body cooled as if her blood had run cold. Her eyes flickered behind her eyelids, a constant metronome to an unknown beat and her cold clammy hands clutched at the soft cotton sheets that covered her as she was consumed by her dream world.

As Harry watched the reflection of a snake gliding through a darkened corridor, all tiled in black, his frown grew deeper. With every subtle slide across the waxy surface of the unknown hallway, he realised that the clear reflection was his own.

Confusion acquainted itself with the young girl as she watched her hand run over the dull metal of a snake-engraved tap. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, watching the fingertips glide over the faucet and realising that she couldn't feel a thing; the hand was not her own. Delicate sobs bubbled from an unknown throat in a cubicle to the left of her, yet she did not move.

A ball of white light illuminated an unknown room, dancing off of the crystal balls as they met in the symphony. The tips of short red hair radiated in the light of the spell as Harry struggled to keep up with the pace of the dream sequence.

A foreign language twirled off of Nova's tongue in a voice that did not belong to her. The words slithered through the air as the bathroom sinks began to turn and separate from one another and the sobbing girl continued to wail and moan.

Harry thrashed against the sheets of his bed as he watched through the eyes of a snake as it attacked Arthur Weasley. His jaws almost tired as he felt them bite down, puncturing the older man's face as he desperately reached for his wand, helpless against an unexpected foe.

The foreign commands continued to slither out of Nova's mouth as she watched a giant snake enter the bathrooms. It glided past her and towards the cubicle to her left, hanging onto every syllable she hissed and she felt the power and adrenaline rush through her; the incredible beast was under her control yet she would not look at it.

Red hair mixed with red blood on the black tiles of the unknown room. It reminded Harry of Ginny and the Chamber of Secrets, another of his surrogate family that he had endangered. Guilt rolled through him as Arthur's eyes rolled in his head as it smacked the cool marble tiles.

The bathroom was left in an eerie silence as the sobbing ceased. Nova's stomach lurched with a concoction of fear and excitement, some of which she knew did not belong to her and the toilet cubicle's door creaked open with a longing screech that pierced the silence like a knife.

The voice of his best friend pulled him out of his nightmare as he watched Arthur's life drain from his eyes. Calling out, Harry succumbed to the rattling of his shoulder at the hands of a concerned Ron. As his green eyes finally opened, he knew that it had been more than a dream.

As a final venomous order slid out of her mouth Nova gasped, frozen as her eyes briefly met a little bespectacled girl. In the real world her body thrashed at her blankets, calling out as the girl stared at the magnificent snake in front of her and a sick form of pleasure mingled with her fear as the girl fell lifelessly against the porcelain of the toilet. In the dream world, the body that she had possessed remained still, revelling in the sight with a twisted sense of pride and cunning.

Images of a black diary flooded her mind as Hermione woke her. Her lungs gasped for air and she bolted upright, looking at her concerned friend through glassy, tear stained eyes. A pain shot up her chest, as if a knife were slashing her very soul, prompting her to grip the bedsheets once more as her control over her powers lapsed and the goblet of water on her table exploded beside her. Hermione lowered her hand from shielding her eyes as she glanced around before smiling sympathetically at her friend.

As Nova took a few calming breaths, her warm grey eyes landed on a pile of dark grey ash that circled her bed as if she were performing a pagan ritual.

"Is that...?"

"Your textbooks and homework? Yes..." Hermione grimaced as if she had witnessed the crime of the century.

A groan sounded between the pair as Nova threw her head back onto her pillow, "Can you fix it?" She asked a little too optimistically as she looked up, her hair black as night as it lay around her head like a halo.

"I already tried, sorry." Her friend shrugged, "On the bright side, you can look at it as a second chance to do it properly?"

The young witch had never looked more like her twin brother as she did when she glared at the Granger girl; the tension was short-lived as the girls laughed, amused by Hermione's lack of sensitivity. The silence of the dorm appeared to prod at Nova, it grew into an unapproachable itch as it festered at the back of her subconscious. The rest of the girls slept on, oblivious to the destruction. The dormitory rooms either side seemed deathly quiet and as Nova's thoughts flashed to Ginny, next door, she knew something was wrong yet a darkness fell over her mind as if a memory had been removed. "I didn't...I didn't hurt anyone, did I?"

Concern controlled every muscle on her face as she looked at Hermione once more. A hint of contempt lingered through the hazel eyes as the witch shook her head and sat down on the bed beside the younger girl. Nova's brow creased ever-so-slightly as she studied the way Hermione anxiously picking at her neatly trimmed fingernails and bit her lip before asking: "What were you dreaming about?"

"I don't remember."

"Nova...I think you need to talk to Dumbledore." The older witch continued, trying to ignore the fact that her friend had effortlessly lied to her face. "You were whispering in your dream...It might be nothing, but...you were talking in Parseltongue."

The young Malfoy's face faltered slightly as a lump grew in her throat and her heart pounded in her ears, blocking out the remainder of Hermione's words. Truth be told, she could remember the dream, every sordid little detail and truth be told, Nova knew that something hadn't been the same with her since that night. Truth be told? Nova relished in the power that she felt as she relived the memories of the darkest wizard of all time and she wasn't about to stop. Nova Malfoy hadn't dreamt about anything that night, she had remembered.