Author's Notes: OMG!! I AM SO, SO, SO, SO, SO, SO sorry for not posting in more than a month… I have had a major dilemma… Involving… Writer's block and depression! ;-; Don't be mad… I mean, I am still continuing. Guess another factor that is in the way of my writing is the issue involving my two friends and I creating a small manga to submit to Tokyopop for a contest thing-a-majig. ^_^ Whoohoo! Only a month till my birthday!
Dislcaimer: I own nothing except the current story-line… though I do wish I owned Eriol-kun! ^_^ Back off Tomoyo-chan… He's MINE. =P And I wouldn't mind stealing Percy Weasley… and REMUS LUPIN!! 33 And, and, and, I wanna steal Haku from Spirited Away!! -.- Don't worry.. I'm still sane…
The Fourth Potter
By: Emerald May
Kinomoto Sakura was laying down on the white sheeted hospital beds, waiting for Madam Pomfrey to concoct a potion to heal the broken bones in her hand. She winced as she tried to move her hand, which was already 'damaged' enough from the burning of the dream to her fingers. Sakura sighed as she let her head fall back onto the soft pillow.
"Now, drink this, dear. It'll help restore you hand to its proper state," Madam Pomfrey said as she watched the young Clow Mistress drink the pale gray liquid. Sakura drank the potion, which strangely tasted like cherries. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and handed the nurse the goblet back. "Thank you, Madam Pomfrey."
"Ah, no problem, dear. But you truly should be careful, with the Quidditch Tournament being in two weeks."
Sakura smiled. "Yeah…" It would be two weeks before everything; before seeing her friends, before (and hopefully) winning the tournament, before the time of her life. But from the visions of her dreams, she wondered if anything horrid would happen… would the figure return? Would Voldemort resurface and raid the Quidditch Tournament? Sakura chose not to think of these problems – not yet.
Sakura slept soundly for the next two hours while her hand slowly healed, no pain involved. Yawning, she woke up and glanced around the deserted room – except for a certain Draco Malfoy. "…What are you doing here?" She asked him. She couldn't be sure if he was to be trusted from all the many stories that Harry and his friends had told her just recently, since the last time she had seen Draco.
The Slytherin smirked. "Is that anyway to greet a 'friend'"?
She stayed silent. "…" Then she spoke. "I don't know what you are to me. Harry and the rest of the Gryffindors have told stories about you, some of which I don't know to believe or not."
Draco simply shrugged. Where was this girl getting at? "Some may be true, but the majority is probably false. I'm not all 'bad'."
And then Madam Pomfrey came bustling into the patient room and shooed Draco out while she examined the pupil's injured hand. "Now, let's see… Your hand should be healed…." Then a gasp was heard as Madam Pomfrey was taken back by the form of Sakura's hand. It had not been healed. "How… how can this be? It's not possible…" She muttered as she began to wrap the swollen hand with a four-inch wide strip of cloth. Waving her wand once, muttering an incantation, the nurse spoke, "For some odd reason… your hand isn't healing the way it should be. But no bother. I just used a simple technique that Muggle doctors use when helping their patients. Now, you can run along. Just try not to write." She said to Sakura, smiling a bit, though on the inside, she was slightly suspicious. This Potter was not all what she seemed to be – and she wasn't, with all the whatnot about her being the Card Mistress.
Sakura walked out of the infirmary, Draco still waiting for her. "Well?"
She sighed. "You are so insistent, you know that? And my hand can't be healed the magical way. Madam Pomfrey had to resort to Muggle medicine."
"Ugh… Muggle…" Draco said before an 'oof' came from him as he clutched his lower abdomen, kneeling slightly on the ground. "What was that for?!" He asked estatically. Sakura smirked.
"Watch your language. In a way, I am, after all, a Muggle-born… Hehe." Sakura said as she helped Draco up and continued walking down the dimly light corridor. Stopping short, she sniffed the air around them.
"Do you smell smoke?"
Draco too stopped as he took in the scent of the aroma in the air. "Hey… you are right… I wonder… is there a fire?"
Sakura shrugged. "Probably not. Maybe someone's potion backfired?"
Their answer was soon to come as a flame burst right before them, both Sakura and Draco jumping back as the thickness of charcoal smoke began to fill the corridor.
Coughing, Sakura knelt down to the ground, pulling Draco down with her. "Come on! We have to get out of here!" She shouted over the crackling flames as they made their way towards the main staircase, a slow process as to not get burnt – being burnt once was enough. Sakura didn't want to experience the pain again.
Before long, and with no obstacles, amazingly, both Third Years had made it outside where their other fellow schoolmates were at, each departing to their own house. Sakura ran up to Harry. "What happened?" She asked as she watched the school being destroyed by the uncontrollable fire that was spreading quickly. He shook his head. "I have no idea… We were in class and all of a sudden, Professor Snape told us to evacuate the building because he saw the smoke seeping in from the hallway…"
Sakura's brow furrowed as she turned back and looked at the school. And then it struck her. It was no ordinary fire, no. She could feel the magic of a card… but that was impossible. She had already captured the Fiery, and no other cards remained. She had already transformed each and every Clow Card into what were now the Sakura Cards. It was all to strange… but nevertheless, Sakura closed her eyes as she concentrated and focused her magic on the fire. Ron stared at her, cocking her head. "What are you doing, Sakura?" He asked as he tapped her gently on the shoulder. Draco, out of the corner of his eye, was watching this entire scene.
Sakura opened her emerald oculars as she faced her fellow Gryffindor friends. "This is no ordinary fire." She said as she glanced towards the clumped groups of Slytherins, searching for the only one that knew about the Secret of the Cards. And she spotted him, moving away from her classmates. Harry watched onward as his sister walked to his futile enemy –Draco Malfoy.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched in shock as Sakura whispered something in his ear, Draco's slate-blue eyes widening as he nodded. Without warning, they both ran and disappeared behind the school. "Wonder what they are up to…" Ron muttered.
Hermione shook her head. "I don't know… should we follow them?"
Harry nodded, his eyes mirroring suspicion and worry. "Yes. Come on." He said and without another moment's ado, the Gryffindor Trio ran after the Slytherin Serpent and Gryffindor Prodigy.
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"Are you sure it is a, uhm, Sakura Card?" Draco asked, panting for they had ran non-stop halfway around the enormous castle of a school.
Sakura nodded as she let her arms circle before her, the cards emerging from her sleeves like magic. They circled Sakura, and Sakura alone, as Draco watched his 'friend'. "But I pray I am wrong… And if I am not wrong… then we have trouble. Big trouble."
Each card seemed to call out to its mistress, as if trying to tell her something that no one knew about – except them. And Sakura began to chant softly:
O' faithful cards of thee,
Please hear my plea.
Decipher yourselves from the rest,
As Windy, Watery, Fiery, and Earthy.
Elemental Cards… Prove yourselves as the best!
And the cards swirled around their mistress, knowing that the 'best' part was not taken to heart, but just merely there for the incantation, but they indeed were the strongest allies Sakura had. But only three of them emerged from the mass of floating cards: Windy, Watery, and Earthy. Fiery was not amongst them.
"Just as I feared…" Sakura let the three cards float into her hand as the rest disappeared in a shimmering stature. She turned to her Slytherin 'buddy', showing him the three cards. "Fiery is missing."
He looked at the cards, reading the names, seeing that Sakura was right. "But then that must mean…"
"That the Fiery was the culprit behind the flames," Sakura said, finishing his statement. And then, without any warning or suspicion…
"SAKURA POTTER!" Was the voice of slight anger of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.
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Author's Notes: FINALLY! The chapter is here! Sorry for taking so long. School and teachers are giving me a load of crap to do. =/ And on top of all that, I've had a really rough 5 weeks. T_T People dying, friend's depression running on to me… -sigh- Not a happy last 5 weeks I have led. But guess what?!?!?!? All is well. ^_^ For now… at least. But I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter – even though it didn't seem to be up to my normal writing techniques. ; And yes, I have decided to keep xcaiibur@aol.com as my e-mail address. Come to think of it, I am too lazy to have to go through EVERYTHING and change my e-mail address and notify friends. Blurty.com, Xanga.com, Fanfiction.net, Fictionpress.net, story/line guilds… It's just too much work for poor, helpless, little me… Hahahaha! Okay… I'll stop with all this A/N's crap… and start working on the next chapter… It is, after all, SPRING BREAK! And as always, Read and Review! And if you want to be notified when a new chapter comes out… just go right on ahead and include your e-mail address WITHIN your actual review… going on to your penname and having to get it that way takes too much of my time… if you do that… I just might not get your e-mail address on "The Fourth Potter Mailing List" xD