My Blood's True Color

Chapter Three ~ Change

* For a few seconds Voldemort was visible only as a dark, rippling, faceless figure, shimmering and indistinct upon the plinth, clearly struggling to throw off the suffocating mass-
Then he was gone, and the water fell with a crash back into its pool, slopping wildly over the sides, drenching the polished floor.
"MASTER!" screamed Bellatrix.
Sure it was over, sure Voldemort had decided to flee, Harry made to run out from behind his statue guard, but Dumbledore bellowed, "Stay where you are, Harry!"
For the first time, Dumbledore sounded frightened. Harry could not see why. The hall was quite empty but for themselves, the sobbing Bellatrix still trapped under her statue, and the tiny baby Fawkes croaking feebly on the floor-
And then Harry's scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance-
He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature's began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape-
"Kill me now Dumbledore.."
Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again..
"If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy."
Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us.. End it, Dumbledore.. Death is nothing compared to this.. *

Hermione woke up. She was out of breath and sweating, her chest was heaving and her hands were cold and numb. Sat up swiftly and her head pounded, the room spun around her, and she fell upwards to land back on her bed.
'I can't believe it' she thought as she waited to regain her senses. 'I felt all of that, I did want to die. It just hurt too much..' Hermione hoisted herself up slowly, and the spinning vertigo returned. Falling back on the bed, she felt contaminated, like she had somehow fouled her body. Like there was disease swimming through her veins. Whatever had bound Harry seemed to have bound her, and left behind something dirty. She got up again, and this time she was able to stay up. Pushing off the covers, Hermione once again crossed the floor to her bathroom.
She looked for the metal, and caught sight of her reflection. She jumped back, horrified, as her reflection stared back at her. The thing had empty, slit, black eyes sunken into hollows that surrounded it. The skin was almost completely white, and there were red and black streaks that looked like they were dripping down the sides of her face from the outer corners of her eyes. The lips were blood red and surrounded perfect, gleaming, white teeth, the canines long and pointed. The hollow of her neck had blood dripping down, staining a torn and tattered satin black dress, which Hermione had never seen before. The figure looked almost like an hourglass, and the white skin continued down the rest of the body. Fingers were long and tapered, nails perfectly manicured, yet sharp to touch. As for the hair, it was long, thick, shining, not at all bushy, and raven black. It reached the waist of its owner and was wavy, light reflecting off it and casting shadows along the back of the person. It took only a few moments for Hermione to come out of her shock. Studying the image closely, she didn't see any resemblance to herself, and came to the conclusion that she had unknowingly cast a spell on the mirror, but as she reached out to get her wand from the counter, she saw the same long, tapered fingers, with the same pale skin. Shaking, she reached up to get her hair, and as she brought it in front of her face, she saw black, not brown. Not believing this, she noticed the black dress on her arm, the torn ends brushing the floor and almost covering her feet. Hermione looked back to the mirror, and stared at what had become of her. She smiled, and thought of the look on her mothers face at this change. Hermione almost burst into laughter at the look on Ron and Harry's faces when THEY saw her. Returning her thoughts to herself, she realized that except for the hollows around her eyes, she looked much better. Though she had the blood dripping from her throat, Hermione noticed that it wasn't really dripping, it just looked like it was, it was really just a pattern of the veins underneath her skin, that shimmered as if there was really blood on her skin, and the blood flow was still existent, just going through veins, and not really staining her dress. As for the flow from her eyes, it looked like it was just dripping makeup, and it even looked good anyways. Deciding not to cut herself at the moment, Hermione went out to surprise her mother. Then she suddenly stopped in the middle of her room, and turned. She saw a face outside her window, looking in at her. Her dream came rushing back to her, and she fainted as she remembered what happened, which somehow had to do with the person staring in at her.