I was standing before a smoky, cracked mirror, wearing a heavy black wedding dress. Thorns snaked across my forehead and around my neck as if to choke me. My eyes looked dead inside; almost as black as the dress itself, all mention of my natural golden colors forgotten. My hair fell in unrecognizably white waves. I was holding a bouquet of rotting, white flowers with black stems.
I opened my mouth to inhale in shock but my reflection in the mirror simply twitched a creaky arm up to push a finger on her lips to imitate the silencing gesture. She had a sadistic grin on her pale face. Then I was turning around and walking down an endless obsidian hallway with no control over my body. Paintings on the walls of the Malfoy Manor were oddly quiet for once, simply watching in awe as I passed like a Queen of Hell, dark smoke rising off of my being, billowing around me like a noxious gas. The long veil of the morbid gown trailed behind me.
The terrifying woman from the woods appeared from out of nowhere to follow me down the hallway with a gleam of triumph in her eyes, looking as unkempt and unstable as always. Instead of feeling frightened of her as I usually did, I just kept walking slowly and gracefully towards the silver ballroom doors feeling a sinking feeling of trepidation. They opened for me when I reached them as though bewitched to do so, winding outwards with loud cracking noises.
The almost pitch black room was packed to the brim with Death Eaters in slate gray masks. I couldn't make out a single face without one this time. My feet dragged me forward as petals fell off of the sad bouquet in my fingers, slowly floating to the floor around me. The piano independently played heartbreaking melodies in the corner as if a ghost had decided to contribute to the atmosphere.
Ahead of me sat a twisted throne out of what appeared to be human arms and legs, one singular skull at the top of the perch. On it sat a gray and pallid looking man; only he wasn't a man. He was a mutated form of a man, with a face that resembled a snake more than anything. His red eyes scalded my skin as he evaluated me approaching. I struggled against myself to turn and flee but the version of myself which had control kept persisting forward.
Next to the demonic looking man stood a perfectly fit, handsome Death Eater, hands behind his back respectfully. His mask could not deny my ability to identify him. His hair and eyes shone through the dark smoke around his face, which looked blank and heartless. I screamed for him but nothing came out. He hardly blinked as I stepped up.
As I positioned myself across from him, the snake-like demon stood to begin speaking. I kicked against my body, urging it to respond as myself and not as the girl who was standing there willingly. The dying flowers finally shook the slightest of twitches in my fingers. I pushed again, feeling the rage and helplessness boiling now. My hands shook again causing several petals to fall simultaneously like leaves in Autumn, oddly matching the depiction of the ballroom doors.
The snake man stopped cooing whatever vile speech he had been giving. His laser red eyes watched as my hands gradually moved from hardly trembling to fully shaking. From the movement erupted black flames engulfing what was left of the pathetic bouquet. I saw Draco's eyes fixated on the brightness. I screamed, and this time it was actually happening. It was coming out in full volume from the version of myself that I had been trapped in. The windows smashed in as though I had created a vortex towards myself. Candles blew out eclipsing the room into a raven apocalypse.
The flames caught onto the robes of the snake man, the carpet, my own dress in so many areas. Draco's pants lit but he stood motionless, burning as though at a stake for witchcraft. I was becoming a flaming pillar at the front of the room, my hair gliding off of my shoulders to float around me in the calamity. I watched as the demonic man fell to his knees with the most malevolent and vicious expression I had ever seen pointed in my direction. He reached out his abnormally long and twisted fingers and snagged them around my long locks, pulling me down so that my face was against his, staring directly into glowing red evil. He began disintegrating into smoke. The remaining skull of smoke enshrouded me, swallowing me, digesting me...
A hand slapped my face so hard I momentarily thought I'd been burnt on my cheek from the wandless flames. I gasped, sitting up in my bed in Hogwarts, sweating profusely in my jeans and sweater. I'd fallen asleep after dinner while doing more reading. I hadn't intended to sleep so early in the day but clearly I'd needed to.
Pansy Parkinson stepped back from where she was bent over me with a disgusted look on her pretty face, "Get a grip! You're pissing everyone off downstairs." She swiftly rotated in her black dress without providing any further explanation and disappeared out the door, slamming it without grace.
My throat was noticeably sore from screaming and now my cheek was aflame. I rubbed at it my face in contempt that Pansy had felt justified in hitting me. The Malfoy crest was scorching extremely hot into my neck and I realized Draco was probably downstairs wondering what was going on.
I felt ill, really ill from the nightmare. It had been the dark lord standing before me in the ballroom, that much I was certain of. Had it been a premonition or just a terrible nightmare idea of what the wedding would look like? A combination of the two? I turned to my side and vomited off the bed. Several of my plants leaned away from the crime scene in vain, and I reached a trembling hand out to grab my wand and scourgify the mess. Hilda opened the door as the last bit of the evidence disappeared into oblivion.
She shook her head as she approached, sitting precariously on the edge of my bed, "He's asking about you, you know. This time it really did sound like a murder." I took in her impressive outfit for the evening; her dark purple dress hugged her tightly and her tall brown pony tail looked sophisticated tied up with a shiny silver scrunchie. She looked worried and confused, her big eyes were flickering all over my body, "You're as white as the sheets, Frenchness."
"Nightmares...again..." was all I could mutter in the effort not to barf.
Hilda rubbed my hand aggressively, looking impatient, "Yeah, well, you better quit the afternoon naps. Go see Malfoy. Things were just getting interesting between Zabini and I, so don't hold me up getting you down there. He's got no sense of manners that boy - promised me he would ruin my chances with Zabini if I didn't go get you." She cursed under her breath and settled an intense gaze on me. I gave her a puzzled look - since when was she interested in Blaise?
She read my expression, "Oh, come off it. He's tall and mysterious, you just never asked." She slyly grinned at me and I patted her knee in approval, that being the most I wanted to move or say while stabilizing my nausea.
Eventually I rolled off the bed and planted my feet on the ground, wobbling slightly and gripping my bedframe, "Okay. Let's go." I rubbed my forehead with the back of my sleeve to get rid of some of the sweat as we left, no longer capable of caring what anyone thought about my appearance. I was so shaken up by the nightmare that it was incredible that I could even walk in that moment, let alone walk downstairs through a party zone.
At the bottom of the stairs the sheer volume of the music had me almost collapsing from the headache that ensued. My legs felt weak and I held onto the bricks of the wall, feeling my eyes sliding around and the crest dripping acid into the back of my brain.
"Shit," I heard Draco say as he ran up to my side, holding my elbow up to steady me, "We're going to the infirmary - now." His voice was demanding and stern, as he reached under my legs and lifted me up like a bride. How ironic, I mused in my agonized and weak state, not even bothering to wrap my arms around him traditionally. He pulled my head into his neck as he walked with me and my fingers clutched at his sweater pathetically.
My temperature seemed to rise and fall, hardly affected by the breeze of his rapid walking. Voices drifted in and out around me like warped record players. I heard laughing and whispering, Draco snarling insults at people as he pushed by them. None of it made any sense given the words sounded as though underwater. My vision was filled with impossible moving images as my eyes teared for no reason.
"Madeleine, talk to me. What happened? MADELEINE," I knew he was frantic, but his words hardly registered as they stretched and deformed, reverberating around in my skull and my head became heavy against his neck. I felt him putting me down on a staircase against the wall and I lifting my face. I forced myself to peer out of one eye at his horrified expression.
We were on the first floor, directly at the precipice of the hall of moving stair cases that tied together all of the levels of the castle. He was kneeling in front of me with his hand on his knee. I could make out the green of his sweater, the blue in his eyes. He moved the back of his other hand onto my slick forehead. Students were drifting by at a snail's pace taking in the scene and Draco shot them aggravated looks. They were probably of the assumption that he'd done something to harm me given some of the historic incidents we'd put on for all the world to see.
I laughed deliriously at some of the horrible memories, "You used to be so mean." The statement was wildly out of context and it was obvious from the range of emotions that shifted across his face.
"Don't worry, I still am," he smirked rather hesitantly. The air was silent as I put my own hand on my forehead and covered my eyes to avoid looking at his troubled face.
"What happened?" he demanded impatiently.
I pushed myself to sit up more and the world span around me. The stairs below me multiplied into thousands of steps, appearing above and below, to the sides... briefly it looked like I was in a gravity-free prism of staircases, having travelled to another dimension altogether. I could feel the vertigo as my eyes moved rapidly back and forth uncontrollably. "I'm going to hurl," I whined in a tiny voice, and a whimper came from my mouth as I pressed my palms into my eye sockets trying to rid the staircase universe.
He exhaled sharply in agitation. I was bleakly aware that this was wasting his night, and his time. I was giving no clues as to what had happened or what to do to make it better.
"Voldemort..." I gasped quietly and I felt his hand shove against my mouth hard to silence me, driving my skull into the bricks behind me. White sparks appeared behind my closed eyelids.
He was leaning into me now, "Don't... don't ever say that name here." His whisper was harsh and cruel, like I'd just threatened to murder his pet owl.
When he'd finally released my mouth I drew in deep breaths of air to steady the spinning, "Nightmares...of him...our wedding. Why am I so sick from dem?" I listened to the deep guttural rumbling of the stone staircases twisting back and forth behind him and the echoes of light-hearted conversations from students bustling around for the weekend. I heard our names here and there as people passed judgements.
Draco cleared his throat, "You have them... a lot?"
I shook my head to say no and a sharp pain sliced across my temple, "Only...twice now. The man wit' red eyes dat looks like a snake. De woman wit de tangled hair. Masks..."
He was quiet. I finally opened my eyes again and fought against the brightness of the towering room and constant back and forth movements. He had his hand on his knee again and his chin rested on that, his eyes staring down at the tiled floor with a faraway look. His other hand was on my thigh barely touching me. I noticed that his hair was spiked over his eyes from running his fingers through it again.
I used my sleeve to push my own matted dirty-blond waves away from my face and breathed deeply, coming back to reality finally.
"I assume you no longer need Pomfrey?" He queried, taking in my new composure without moving his head. His eyes studied me sideways, "I was afraid the stairs would make you hurl on the way."
"I'm fine," I muttered, regaining my strength slowly.
"You look dreadful," a tiny voice wafted towards us almost argumentatively, and we both turned to see Luna Lovegood standing there having just exited a moving stair. She was clutching a large magnifying glass that was directed towards me, her left eye appearing dimorphic and large through the lens projection. She was wearing multiple layers of bright blues and maroons looking like a lost fairy.
Draco growled in obvious objection, "Get lost, Lovegood."
She smiled and half of her teeth enlarged next to her eye in the glass, "Oh hi cousin, you look positively unhappy. I see that your fiancée isn't very well." She stepped closer, holding the magnifying glass at my face with scrutiny, "She's a visionary of sorts, a Seer, you know. Her aura glows with it. It's making her sick as her body accepts her ancestral abilities. This won't be the only change." She said the words as though reciting a baking recipe and Draco's face twisted into a deeper scowl than before.
He didn't respond, just put his head down sharply on his knee looking away from both of us. I could tell he had a burning desire for Luna to leave us. He'd only ever had terrible things to say about her the few times I'd heard him drop her name - judging her to be a schizoid, helpless case. It didn't seem to be an appropriate way to treat one's cousin, no matter how distant. I blinked at Luna, "A Seer? 'ow does dat work?"
She slowly rotated away from me while rudely pointing the magnifying glass over other students passing by, who gave her disturbed glances, "Well, I'm no expert. But I've heard from other beasts that it's never what it seems. It's not accurate, more of a...concept. An abstraction of the energies in your future."
I frowned at the odd explanation and Draco's head shot up with impatience, "Oh thank you for that detailed explanation, I feel so much better now." The sarcasm came out with great intensity and disgust. I grimaced, uncomfortable with the rudeness.
His face was glowering at her with disapproval and Luna took that as a cue to drift off, but not before saying gently, "You should speak to Professor Trelawney, she might know how to help." Then she was bouncing away and hopping like a chocolate frog as she eyed people down with her magnifying glass.
I sat back against the bricks and twisted my hair. Months ago, I'd been told by Trelawney that I might fail Divination. At the time it seemed like a language barrier was the issue and I'd come quite a ways since then, garnishing average marks. I hadn't stood out from the rest of the class in any way that seemed notable, though. Perhaps things had changed? I decided I had to go visit her on Monday when she would surely be in her tower classroom.
Draco was watching my face with a forbidding expression and I determined he didn't need to know if I went to Trelawney for answers. It was clear that the Voldemort topic was something that he wanted to leave me in the dark on. But that wasn't fair, given what was inevitably coming in my future.