Aren't I in a nice little writing mood! Second chapter of the day, go me :) I really have no idea what I'm going to write...well, now that I say that, I have somewhat of an idea...gah I'm blabbering, here goes...
By the end of the week, Genieveve found she had never wished more for the weekend. This was the worst week that she could ever remember having in her entire life except for that week a year ago...
She tried to clear her mind of these dark thoughts by shaking her head back and forth as hard as she could, but found this did nothing except make her hair frizz up from static electricity and stand on end. Certainly not attractive, she thought, glancing at her reflection in the mirror.
"I'll say so!" barked the mirror, reading Gen's thoughts.
This caused her to jump about three feet in the air, after which she started the head-shaking ritual again, stomping from the dormitory in search of someone to talk to at this hour of the morning. It was, in fact, a Saturday and she was up at an alarming hour.
Why, she thought groggily, and stopped shaking her head as she came to the top of the stairs for fear of falling down them, in the hell am I up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning?!
"Jeez, I dunno," she answered herself aloud, "just felt like going for a stroll, didn't we?"
"It appears so," answered a sleepy voice, tinted with amusement.
This woke Gen up considerably better than any coffee could, no matter how many shots of espresso. (She quite enjoyed coffee, too). Jumping as she had upstairs when the mirror spoke to her, her eyes searched the dim common room, but to no avail. The speaker seemed to have a very good hiding spot. Or Gen just needed glasses.
From over the back of a chair in front of the quickly-dying fire, a face with bright green eyes and glasses was watching her intently.The mouth of the face seemed to be trying to fight back the urge to laugh.
"Oh, uh...Harry, hi," Gen said, turning a lovely shade of magenta. "What're you doing here?"
"Hi there, Genni," he said, grinning. He was the only one who called her Genni, which, she thought, was...odd? Unique? Special? "I just had some bad dreams, that's all."
"Ah," she said, nodding. "Yeah...bad dreams suck." What? Bad dreams suck? Good one.
Harry looked as though he wanted to say this was obvious. But instead, he just smiled and said, "Well, don't just stand there...come sit, it's rather cold."
She tried to force herself not to blush, and it worked, for a second. But as soon as she sat down, the blush she had been holding back came in full force. It was rather like trying to hold back a sneeze. Just blushing in such a way made her blush even more. God, how terrible.
"So," he said, apparently trying to start a conversation, "you have bad dreams too?"
"Yeah..." Genieveve looked down at her hands. She didn't really want to talk about them, especially not with Harry Potter.
He nodded. He could read the look on her face, because he had worn it many times before when talking to his friends. She didn't want to talk about her dreams; that was okay.
Just then, Taylor interrupted the nervous pause by tumbling down the stairs and landing in a pink-pajamaed-blonde-haired heap at the bottom. Rolling over, she looked up at Harry and Genieveve, both wearing matching expressions of alarm and bewilderment.
"Gen! You need to come - I - uh - it's um...just - come on!" she unstuck a blonde tendril of hair from her eyelashes and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet.
"Erm...okay..." Gen slowly got to her feet, thoroughly wishing Taylor hadn't interrupted and walked toward the staircase. Taylor proceeded to grab the sleeve of her pajamas and drag her up the stairs.
"What is it?" she gasped as they arrived back in the dormitory. "Oh..."
They ran. And they ran. What they were running from, she didn't know. She just knew they were running, and if they stopped, something terrible, something horrible was going to happen. And she didn't think about it. Couldn't think about it. She just ran.
Images of the scenery flicked by quickly; tall trees, dirt, a clear, cloudless sky, a full moon. They seemed to be in a forest. Who "they" was, she didn't even know, but she perceived that it was not just her, but another. And they were running, and that was all that mattered.
Suddenly, a root seemed to spring up from the ground, and
her foot got wedged in it. A crack sounded through the silence
and stillness, thesound of breaking bone, along with her cry of
pain. She crawled on her hands and knees, knowing it was too late.
The other person was still
running, leaving her here, to her doom and, presumably, her death.
A loud, bloodcurdling scream echoed through the forest, and she
realized with a jolt that the sound was coming from her.
With nothing left to do, she lay down and waited for death to come, and come soon it would.
Gabbi almost screamed aloud as she bolted upright in bed. Clasping
her hands over her mouth, she looked quickly around to see if
anyone had noticed her arrival into a state of consciousness.
She relaxed a bit, seeing that everyone else in the dormitory
was currently in their own state of unconsciousness, and were
unable to notice her exit from it. Ripping off the venemous green
sheets she was entangled in, she righted her pajama bottoms and
set off downstairs to the common room.
Upon arrival, she positioned herself as comfortably as possible
in a chair in front of the fire. Her hands were shaking, and she
had broken out in a cold sweat. She hastily wiped the beads of
sweat off her forehead with the back of her trembling hand and
curled her knees up to her chest. Clasping her still-shaking hands
around her legs she rocked back and forth, breathing deeply. It
was hard to do when you were nearly hyperventilating.
A voice erupted inside her head and she winced, digging her fingernails deep into the skin of her palms.
"You are brave,"it hissed, "and immensely
powerful. You have more power than your father, or your mother.
More power than any of my best trained servants and followershave
or could ever even hope to have. And you are not even a teenager
yet. You will become my assistant,
my most trusted and loyal servant. I know you will be faithful.
It runs in your blood, faith.Your parents are some of the most
faithful servants I have. But you will exceed them greatly. We
will go far together, you and I."
"We will," she murmured, an evil grin spreading across her face. "Yes, we most certainly will."
Though the red velvet drapes were drawn around her bed, Genevieve
could still see the all-too-familiar lavender glow shining through.
"What's it doing here?" she groaned quietly, so as not to wake the others.
"I...I don't know," Taylor murmured, looking fearful. "It was just...here when I woke up. Apparently...it came after you left? I have no clue." She shrugged, and ripped open the drapes to reveal the crystal-ball-that-really-wasn't sitting on Genevieve's bed.
"Hey!" she hissed, leaping over her trunk and shutting the curtains. "It'll wake them up! The light's so bright," she added, seeing a puzzled look from Taylor that seemed to say, "It's not making any noise..."
"We need to figure out what that Latin on the base says," Taylor said, groaning. "I'm no Latin buff and neither are you...I have a feeling we're going to be spending a lot of time in the library trying to figure that out."
Gen, who was still mocking being hurt by the "Latin buff" comment, made a noise of disapproval. "Agh, Tay..."
"We need to figure out what it says, since it upset you so much," Taylor said seriously, crossing her arms. "Unless, of course, you want to tell me..."
A shadow flitted across Gen's face and she cried, "No!"
Taylor, afraid she might go into hysterics and wake everyone up, grabbed her arm and whispered, "Sssshhh! Come on, let's get dressed and go to the library."
Gen's shoulders slumped and she nodded her approval. She, in all honestly, didn't really want to know what it meant. What she had seen had been terrible...the inscription they were trying to decode couldn't be much better.
Before leaving, they threw some black robes over the crystal ball and hid it in Taylor's trunk, which was made of a magical metal so that only she could open it. Genevieve's, of course, was made of normal wood.
They tiptoed quietly down the corridors to the library, not sure if they were allowed to be up at this hour or not. Inside the library,Gen went toward the crystal ball section, Taylor to the section concerning spells and curses in a variety of languages. Each arrived, a few minutes later, carrying a stack of books that towered above their heads.
"Well?" Genevieve gasped, setting her books on the table with a large thunk.
"I found some interesting stuff on how to say lots of different stuff in, uh...French, Spanish, Portugese, German, Swedish, Chin-"
"Okay, okay," Gen said, holding up a tiny hand, "you can spare me the list of all the world's languages. Anything Latin? Because I thought that was the original purpose I was dragged down here in the wee hours of the morning."
"Well, only three," sighed Taylor, pulling up a huge dusty volume, "and the others are really just about charmed magical objects."
"Ah," said Gen simply, grabbing a book entitled Crystal Balls: A Divinator's Guide.
"Crystal balls are highly powerful, magical objects. Divinators use them as one of their many guides to predict the future and such. Only a true Seer, however, will be able to conjure images within the depths of a crystal ball. While it may seem easy, crystal gazing requires a great deal of magical prowess, concentration, and the ability to See beyond..."
Yawning, Genevieve turned the page, receiving a noseful of dust. She sneezed, causing more dust to fly into the air. Oh dear, she thought, this is going to be a long day.
About an hour later, Gen was tired of reading about the many different types of crystals balls and how the swirling mist inside each kind varied to the teensiest degree. She was starting to wonder why anyone would actually care, when -
"Oh my God," came a muffled voice from behind a stack of books. "Gen, you have got to look at this."
Were you aware that eating chocolate releases these little
happy endorphin thingies in your brain? Chocolate has proved to
be a good thing for me to eat when writing, apparently. Do you
think so?