A/N: hello all!!! Tami here.... Sorry that this took so long, I'm kinda on a parentally imposed computer ban... This has been typed secretly... hahaha... anyway, hope this is long and interesting enough...
"Tammara Andrews..." a low, ghostly voice rasped, "I know where you are, Tammara..."
Tammara whimpered and turned over uneasily in her sleep. The voice in her head was cold, fluid, serpentine. It made her feel highly uncomfortable, and, though she knew, subconsciously, that it was only a dream, it scared her.
"I'm coming for you, Tammara..." the voice said. "I know you, and your parents, and your friends... I'm coming to torture you, Tammara, I'm going to make you wish you'd die... You're going to see your mudblood parents, soon, Tammara, you will see them very soon... Only a few moments after you see me..."
Then a high, spine-chilling, cruel laugh was heard, and Tammara woke up with a scream, crying and shivering.
Mark Blair rushed into his daughter's room. He hated it when she'd have nightmares, because, as she grew older and the dreams became more complex, it became harder and harder to keep the truth from her. Harder not to tell her that she was not an ordinary girl. Harder to convince her that the dreams weren't real. Harder to stop himself from dropping even the smallest hint about the wizarding world.
Tammara sat on her bed, hysterical and unintelligible, her breath coming out in ragged gasps, her hands clutching at the white sheets on her bed.
Mark took her in his arms and hugged her to him, just as he had when she was a child.
"Tammara, love, don't cry, tell me what's wrong..." he coaxed, but she continued babbling incoherently.
The only words he gathered in between terrified sobs were "Called me... called me Tammara Andrews... said that... that... he'd kill me... hurt me... that I'd see him soon..."
She stopped, a fresh wave of fear and confusion washing out onto Mark's shoulder.
Mark's blood froze upon hearing her emphasis on the word him, and he only managed to choke out "See... see who, Tammara?"
"I... I don't KNOW!!!" and she broke down into his shoulder, and not another word could be understood from her trembling lips.
Later that night, when Tammara was safely and peacefully sound asleep in her bed, Mark paced around the master's bedroom, Jeanne watching him desperately from the edge of the bed. They didn't bother using Celiniency, because Tammara was asleep in her bed in the next room, but fought in whispers and hissing voices just the same.
"We have to tell her NOW, Jeanne!" he insisted, knowing that what they were discussing was not a matter to be trifled with.
"But Dumbledore--"
"I don't give a hoot about what Dumbledore said, we have to tell her!"
"She's not to know!"
"It's too late now!"
"We're to wait for Dumbledore's letter!"
"Do you think she's take it anymore kindly if we tell her then and not now?!"
"That's beside the point!"
"Look, Jeanne, the mind-probing is getting worse!"
"She takes them as nightmares only, no more!"
"But how long is it going to be before he takes her over, Jeanne, tell me that! How much longer are we going to sit here and tell the 'World's Light' that she's having nothing more than childish nightmares?!"
"Don't call her that! You're not to say it or even think it, Dumbledore said--"
"Don't bring him into this! We're raising her, and that old S.O.B is not!"
Jeanne gasped and stood up, her watering eyes slits of cold brown fury.
"Don't you talk about my uncle that way, Mark Jonathan Blair, don't you DARE talk about him that way!"
"I can talk about him any way I want!"
Jeanne had had enough, and walked into the walk-in closet in the master's bedroom with a sigh.
"That's it, Mark! This better end before I end up saying something we'd both regret..."
Jeanne shoved a thick blanket and a fluffy pillow into her husband's arms, pushing him to the door, where he turned.
"Whatever you say is not going to obscure the truth, Jeanne! And whatever the oh-so-mighty Dumbledore says--"
Jeanne's face took on such a look of fury and pain, Mark thought he had died and gone to Hell.
Jeanne silenced him with a resounding SLAP and pushed him out the door, barely a second before slamming it in his face.
She collapsed on the bed in tears, unable to understand how Mark could be so... unquestionably right...
In the next room, Tammara sat up in bed, flinching as she heard her parents argue. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could hear their hisses and whispers through their open door. The deeper voice was her fathers, she knew, and the higher, coaxing voice must be that of her mother.
Tammara was frightened, because this was the first time that she had ever heard her parents fight.
She sat on her bed, listening to her parents' angry whispers and hisses, and then she gasped at the loud slap that pierced the late-night tranquility, and the resulting tears that, she rightly guessed, came from her mother.
She sighed and tried to get some rest, but sleep evaded her that night.
Downstairs on the couch, Mark sighed, his anger long gone. Too late, he realized his mistake. Jeanne had always been one of those family-until-death types.
'That's what drew you to her when you first met her, remember? Her loyalty...'
He smiled in spite of himself, and rolled over on the couch, sleep soon overtaking him.
A/N: hello again! Did you like it? Please review!!! Love ya guys!!! What I'd do without you... giggles
(O) TaMi (O) (these are koalas)