Disclaimer: Note…FANfiction

Chapter 2: Cassandra

There I was peacefully minding my business as my boyfriend and I danced. We were waltzing around the Great Hall while students watched us, just so happy being together. I heard them whispering.

"It's about time she got a moment to herself."

"I don't think I've seen Cassy and Roy spend this much time together in a long time."

They began to join us on the floor. I was blissful and content going in for the perfect kiss, then there was a loud bang. In through the double doors my twinish sister Kathrin walked through. Her stomach was coated in blood.

Everyone ran to her. I was torn. She was my sister but this was my life. Then I saw my Dad sweep down from the long tables. "Quickly Cass! Give me your heart! It's the only thing that will save her now!"

Father was there. He was cradling Kat as Dom removed a quart of his blood to give her. They were all waiting for me to give up my heart willingly. I didn't want too. We didn't want too. "Cassandra! You can't let her die!" Father and Dad were yelling at me. Then with out warning my Dad reached up and grabbed my heart and I fell into blackness.

With a start I threw the covers of my head and woke too find myself nestled into the white down comforter on my bed. I was still in my dark purple room, in my bed with the pillows spread around me like a nest.

I sigh and wipe the sweat off my forehead. Flopping back down on the bed I looked at the luminous hands of my alarm clock. Four-thirty. I growl into my pillows. It's the fifth time I woke up to that stupid dream. And it always ended the same way. My Dad and/or my Father taking my heart and leading me into gloomy depths, I interpret as death.

Slowly I got out of the bed and crossed the room to the hall and too the bathroom Kat and I share. It was a plain white bathroom with a shower/tub. The sink was white with a mirror that opened to a medicine cabinet. The shelves were stacked high with bottles and cases of pills that Kat had to take each day.

I quickly got changed into a pair of jeans and a purple T-shirt and a zip-up sweat shirt, not bothering to look at my reflection. I new it all too well. The messy blond, almost white, hair that swept all over the place, the dead green eyes sitting atop cheeks flaked with freckles and that refugee-skinny look with no chest to speak of. It was the same thing that I saw when I looked at Kat, except Kat had a beautiful chest and had missed out on the freckles.

Most people mistook us as twin. Seeing as I was as tall as Kat and we both swam in the same end of the gene-pool, I could hardly blame them. We were both anorexicly skinny from the operations and in Kat's case the chemo and we have always stood side by side. The thing is Kat is four years older than me.

I snuck around the house passing Kat's pink room and then by my parent's green and silver room. Dom sleeps in the room over the garage so I don't have to worry about him. I walked up to the attic and found the door to the roof.

I know for a fact that none of the family knows about this other than me. It has long been a heaven for me. I crawled through and found myself looking at the rising sun as it bleeds into the sky, with reds and pinks.

They always say that when a red sun rises there has been blood spilt in the night.

"Cassandra! Get down her now!"

I guess they're right. My father only uses that tone when something's wrong with Kat. I scurry down to the kitchen and find my parents ready to go.

And from there it's a run to St. Mungo's. Kate was in the white Clean Room, and we all had to get magically sanitized before going near her. Father and Dad drop to her side as Dom and I are shoved to the side to make way for the nurses. They say its Kat's kidneys. It needs to be replaced and I know who will be losing half her life.

I watch as they swarm my unconscious sister, like flies on a festering carcass. Soon the little room is too crowded and Dom and I are pushed out. I can see Dad's famous messy black hair and Father's pale face through the window, Father hugging Dad to his side. Don watches sadly, ruffling his messy black hair. Our green eyes and his black hair were inherited from father just like Kat's and my white-blonde hair and Kat's silver eyes are inherited from Father.

He and I sit on the benches outside the room watching and waiting. As soon as they get her stable, the room begins to clear. I see Kat's faint blonde head poking above the sheets, looking more skeletal then ever before. Dom and I take the first turn in the Tea Room. Father and Dad want time to see her alone.

I pull the physiology book from my backpack and lounge against my chair with Green Tea in my hand. The stuff they serve here is too strong so I bring my own. Dom stares out the window, lost in a world were he could share the burden, no the honor, with me. He wants to save Kat so much; he was devastated when they said he wasn't a match.

When we switch with Dad and Father, I sat by Kat's bed doing my best to not look at her. Dom can't stop staring. The plastic tubes and odd wires that protrude from her chest crisscross with each other making her curvy chest look like a lab-rat's maze. I can hardly think that this is just routine. I can still see all those times I was hooked up to all those machines as well.

I look back at my book. The chapter was on questions people can't really answer truthfully. This one was Would You Die For Me? I laugh at the irony. Here I was, sitting in a hospital room, my brother lost in some perfect world were we all live happily ever after like some fairytale from one of Kat's old children's books. And next to me, my sister lies comatose just waiting for me to give up my life willingly so she can squander it. I can't help but think that our lives would be simpler if we didn't spend ¾ of it in a hospital. Kat is a sick, dying, child and I know she can't help it but she's killing the rest of us right along with her.