A/N: Hello, again! Welcome to chapter two of Unchained Memory! Before we begin, I shall respond to my wonderful reviewers!
Darkwater567: Thank you so much! Non-Merope is probably my favorite character. She's so much fun. You are definitely going to see a whole lot more of her. Anyways, I'm glad you're enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it!
Girl Of Ireland 44: Wow, I'm glad you liked this! Ha, that Lucky Charms joke I was iffy on…I just couldn't figure out a way to end the scene! And as for Non-Merope having something to do with Voldemort…hmm, good guess! IRISH PRIDE!
Bluejay123: Ha, ha, no problem. I honestly don't care how sappy you sound because it's inflating my ego far bigger than is healthy, so there. Anyways, I'll give you another clue: Merope's namesake has a lot to do with Voldemort.
Chapter Two
Unchained REM-Sleep
Merope, who had hardly touched her food, barely noticed that it was time to leave. She was to preoccupied with a one-sided argument with non-Merope, who had decided to ignore her.
"Hey, little dudes," a boy called down the table, "like, I'm gonna show you where the dormitory is and stuff." Merope stood and walked over to him, giving him a once-over. He looked nothing like the other students. His hair was blonde and nearly as long as Merope's. His wand was stuck behind his ear, he was not wearing shoes, and pinned to his robes were ten or so various badges bearing legends such as Save the Grindylows and Sphinxes are our Friends. He looked about sixteen, even though he was a fifth year.
When Merope looked away, the other five Slytherin first years were standing around the hippie boy. Standing next to the hippie boy was Olivia Malenkiv, from the train. She smiled at Merope.
"Hey, I'm Olivia Malenkiv, and this is Calvin…er…what's your last name anyways?"
Calvin shrugged.
"Okay, then," Olivia Malenkiv said, a little confused. "Yeah. And we are the Slytherin prefects," Olivia introduced them.
"Yeah, little dudes," said Calvin. "We're gonna show you, like, where you sleep and stuff. C'mon, we'd better—"
"Why aren't you wearing shoes, freak?" demanded Shaela, cutting across him.
"Watch it, Malfoy," Olivia snapped at her. "You've already got yourself a detention." Calvin, on the other hand, didn't look insulted at all.
"Shoes are, like, the way society defines us as, you know, human," said Calvin in his pensive voice. "You know, man, like you never see centaurs wearing shoes. So I'm, like, bridging the gap." Nobody said a word. Collin Yu and Stanley Larson, two of the Slytherin boys, looked at each other, eyebrows raised.
"Aren't we defined as human by the fact that we are human?" smirked Mallory ray. "At least…most of us are."
"Alright, that's enough," Olivia said loudly. "Come on, you little midgets." She led them out of the Great Hall and into the entrance hall. They walked through a tapestry and down a few sets of stairs, into the dungeons.
"Like, the common room and stuff is all sad," said Calvin, sounding a little put out. "But the last time I tried to make it happy, people threw things at me." Shaela Malfoy and Mallory Ray looked as though they would like to throw something at Calvin too.
"Here we are," said Olivia, standing in front of a blank stretch of wall. "Grindylow," she said to the wall, and it slid open, revealing a dimly-lit stone room draped in green. It was decorated with swords and stones, and Merope immediately understood what Calvin meant by it being "sad."
"Girls dormitory is up those stairs, first door on the left," said Olivia. "Boys is up those stairs, third door on the right. Classes start tomorrow."
"Bye, little dudes," Calvin waved, trudging up the boys stairs.
"What a dork," Mallory laughed.
"I know. I can't believe he's a Slytherin. What a disgrace. How is he not a Hufflepuff?" Shaela laughed.
Merope muttered something derogatory to Shaela.
"Are you mocking me?" Shaela Malfoy whirled around and poked a finger in Merope's chest. It was then that it hit Merope how much taller Shaela was than her.
"N-no, I-I-I just th-thought it was f-funny," stammered Merope.
"You watch it," Shaela warned. "The Malenkiv girl won't be around to protect you forever." She pushed Merope with surprising strength and Merope fell over a table, landing in a heap on the floor. Shaela and Mallory stomped off up the stairs and into their dormitory.
Merope untangled herself from the table and stumbled up to the dormitory, her back aching. People were laughing. Merope looked at them; most were six or seventh years. She shook her head and continued up the stairs, pushed open the door, and flung herself onto the only empty bed.
"Come on, Merope!" said Terry, running down the spiral staircases. "Hurry up!"
"Wait, I'm coming!" Merope ran after him. He was going so fast it seemed like his feet never touched the ground. They tore down the grounds, passed the Quidditch pitch and Hagrid's hut—down, Merope realized, to the forbidden forest.
"We can't go in there," Merope said.
"Sure we can," Terry replied. "It doesn't look that dangerous."
"No," insisted Merope. "I don't want to get eaten by something bigger than me."
"But there's nothing bigger than you here," said Terry, pointing just inside the trees.
"Well…"
"Look, I'll go in first." Terry stepped just into the trees. "See? Everything's fine."
"Well, I guess it looks alright," Merope said, and she stepped into the trees next to Terry.
"Now let me show you something really cool," said Terry, but his voice was distorted and it made the hairs on Merope's neck stand on end. She gasped; the skin on Terry's face was falling off—in fact, all his skin was falling off—
"NO!"
Merope's eyes opened. She stumbled, surprised to find herself standing up. She doubled over, breathing hard. Then, she came to her senses. This wasn't her dormitory.
She was standing in front of the forbidden forest.
"OI!" shouted someone inside the forest, and without thinking, Merope ran up the grounds, her heart beating wildly out of control. The memories of her dream were still vivid; she could see Terry with his skin falling off whenever she shut her eyes. Suddenly, something grabbed the back of Merope's robes. Merope screamed.
"Gotcha."
The hand dropped her. Merope fell to the ground, and when she looked up she saw that it was Hagrid.
"Wot're you doin' down here?" he asked.
"I-I dunno," said Merope, her voice shaking as much as the rest of her.
"Really." Hagrid did not look convinced.
"I-I'm serious, I don't know!" Merope protested.
"How can yer walk down to a forest an' not know exactly wot yer doin'?" demanded Hagrid.
"I dunno, I was sleepwalking, I guess!" said Merope. "Why would I go to the forest? Professor Lupin said it was—"
"Forbidden, I know," Hagrid
interrupted. "Wot house are you in?"
"S-Slytherin."
"Tha's wot I though'. Twenty points from Slytherin, and
detention Saturday night," said Hagrid. "You get back up ter the
castle. If I see you again tonight, you'll be in detention until
your fifth year."
"Y-yes, Mr. Hagrid," Merope stammered, and she scrambled back up the grounds and into the castle. She was in the entrance hall when she realized that she didn't know where to go.
.:Through the tapestry and down the stairs, retard:.
Ignoring the insult, Merope followed non-Merope's instructions and found herself in the dungeons again. She followed the dimly-lit corridor until she found the blank stretch of wall.
"Grindylow," she said to it, and the wall slid aside. She scrambled into the common room; it was finally empty. Merope sat down on one of the chairs and put her head in her hands. How had she gotten down to the forest? Had she really sleep-walked all the way down there? Merope closed her eyes and tried to remember the dream, but all she could see in her minds' eye was Terry, his skin separating from his body as though peeled by a potato skinner.
Merope checked her watch. It was three in the morning. She drug herself up the stairs and into her dormitory. She shut the door quietly and crept over to her bed, but—
"What are you doing?"
Merope whirled around, tripping over her trunk.
"E-excuse me?" she asked, grabbing her bed for support. She straightened up as Shaela Malfoy slid out of bed and walked over to her.
"Where did you go?" she demanded.
"Nowhere." Merope turned away from Shaela and made to get into bed, but Shaela grabbed her shoulder and turned her back around. Merope lost her footing and fell back into her trunk again.
"Where did you go?"
"Lay off, you're gonna wake up Mallory," Merope mumbled. She picked herself back up and was careful to place herself out of arms length of Shaela.
"What were you doing?" Shaela asked again.
"Nothing."
"Fallon, it's three in the morning," Shaela hissed. "You don't just walk out of a dormitory at three a.m. to do nothing."
"Why do you care so much?"
"I don't," said Shaela quickly.
"Sounds like." Merope got into bed and pulled the hangings around her.
"What are you doing?" Shaela wrenched the hangings open.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Merope closed the hangings again.
"You can't." Shaela opened the hangings.
"Yes, I can, it's three a.m." Merope closed the hangings.
"Tell me where you were or I'll tell that you were out."
"No use, I've already got detention."
Shaela was quiet for a while, as though thinking that Merope had a fair point.
"I'll find out where you went," Shaela said, "even if you don't tell me."
"You do that." Merope turned over onto her side, but she didn't sleep. She was afraid of waking up, not just in front of the forest, but inside of it.
Hours later, Merope was sitting in her spot at the Slytherin table, hardly touching her toast and struggling to keep her eyes open.
"Course schedules, man," said Calvin, the hippie boy, passing a schedule to Merope.
"Thanks," yawned Merope, looking down at her schedule. On it were a few subjects that Merope knew and a few that she had never heard of. What was "Transfiguration?"
Merope checked her watch. It was seventeen minutes until her first class (double Transfiguration with the Gryffindors). Not knowing how long it would take to find it, Merope slung her bag over her shoulder and left the entrance hall.
"Er…can you tell me—?" she asked pair of sixth-year girls.
"And then I was, like, no way, and then he was like, yeah way, and I was like, no way, and he was like, yeah way, and I was like, oh no you didn't, and he—" the first girl was saying loudly, oblivious to Merope.
"Excuse me," said Merope to a third year boy. "Can you tell me where Transfiguration is?"
"I can but I won't, Slytherin scum," he snarled at her, and then walked off laughing with a group of boys. Bewildered and annoyed, Merope saw Olivia Malenkiv walking out of breakfast.
"Olivia, hey, where's Transfiguration?" she asked.
"Oh, it's up on the fifth floor, fourth door on the right," said Olivia before speeding off to her next class. Merope followed her directions and squeezed through the groups of mingling students. She walked into the classroom as the bell rung, and hurriedly sat down in the only seat left, next to a tall girl who seemed to be staring in awe at MJ Weasly sitting on top of the desks.
"Where'd you get it?" demanded the tall girl.
"Nicked it out of the staff room fire," said MJ, and as she shifted, Merope saw that she was holding a salamander by the tail. It was spewing sparks.
"Tell Filch it was a deformed flobberworm?" asked James.
"Better," said MJ with relish. "I said it was an ashwinder. The moron went to go get another teacher, and by then I had it and he was in trouble for letting an ashwinder out. Ha, Professor Warren was so mad I though he'd make Filch use those medieval torturing devices on himself." Everyone laughed except the Slytherins in a corner. Among them were Mallory Ray and Shaela Malfoy.
"Brilliant!" said James excitedly.
"Oh, look at you all sitting there," said a voice. Merope looked up, and standing in front of the class was what appeared to be a male version of Nella. "Who are you all?"
"Er…professor, we're your Transfiguration class," said a girl in the back row.
"Transfiguration?" the professor looked confused. "I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the term."
The class raised eyebrows at each other.
"Hey, what are you all doing here? Shouldn't you be in school?" asked the professor.
"We are in school," James Potter reminded him.
"Bloody hell, it's Harry Potter!" shouted the professor, pointing at James and acting as though he had not heard a word James had said.
"Er…no," said James. "I'm James Potter."
"No, James Potter died thirty-five years ago."
"Oh, right," James replied, raising his eyebrows at MJ and Dan Weasly. He seemed to be deciding that it was no use to explain that he was James Potter II. "I forgot."
"Who are the rest of you?" asked the professor.
"We're your Transfiguration class," repeated the girl in the back row.
"Are you really?" he said, cocking his head to the side and looking at her, confused.
"Yeah…"
"Are you quite sure?"
"Yeah…"
"One moment," said the professor, and he ducked behind his desk, rummaging in the drawers. Merope tried to see what he was doing, but then he stood straight up, holding in his hand what appeared to be a black ball with a number eight on it.
"Am I the Transfiguration professor of this class?" the professor asked the ball, and he shook it furiously. The class was looking anxious again. The tall girl next to Merope had put the salamander safely in the pocket of her robes, and Shaela Malfoy had a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like, "Moron."
The professor looked at the ball. "'Reply hazy-try again later,'" he read. "Right then." He replaced the ball in his drawers and sat cross-legged on the desktop. He pulled a bag of candy that Merope recognized as Muggle gummy bears and started eating them, a wistful, content look on his face.
The class stared at him, not saying a word.
"Oh, I apologize, I was being rude," he laughed, offering the bag of candy to the class. "Gummy bear?"
Nobody said anything.
The professor shrugged. "More for me, then." The class watched him eating gummy candy for a few minutes, when suddenly the professor jerked and spilled the candy all over the room, a smile plastered to his face as though he had just won the Nobel Prize.
"Is he having a fit…?" muttered Collin Yu.
"I just had the best idea!" he exclaimed, jumping down from his desk. "Let's go swimming!"
"Uh, sir," said the tall girl next to Merope, raising her hand nervously, "it's raining."
"Well where else are we gonna get the water?" he asked her.
"Do you know anything about Transfiguration at all?" asked MJ Weasly.
"Transfiguration?" he thought for a moment. "No." MJ Weasly shrugged in a works-for-me sort of way, but not everyone was as okay with it.
"Then how in the name of Merlin's underpants did you become a professor?" demanded Shaela Malfoy. The professor looked at her, his eyes wide. He looked as though all his dreams had come true.
"I'm a professor?" he breathed. Several people slapped their foreheads. MJ Weasly banged her head on her desk. Shaela Malfoy rolled her eyes, and Merope shook her head. This was going to be a long, long year.
An hour later, Merope and the rest of the Slytherins were back down in the dungeons for double Potions with the Ravenclaws.
"How cool is this?!" exclaimed Terry as he sat down next to Merope, who was busy unpacking her supplies. She looked at him for a second, but then flashed back to the night before. She suppressed the urge to yell, and decided she just wouldn't look at Terry, and try to act as normal as possible. "I just had Charms; it was AWESOME! I answered all the questions that Professor Harris asked, and got Ravenclaw fifteen points! Some people didn't know the answers, can you believe it? Seriously, who doesn't know August Esfahan's theory of basic magical exchanges and/or transformations corresponding to the laws of basic physics?"
"Er…anyone without serious issues?"
"Funny, Merope," said Terry sarcastically.
"At least you're having fun," said Merope ruefully. "I just had Transfiguration, the professor is insane."
"He can't be that bad," Terry said fairly.
"Terry, he has no idea who he is, he wanted to take us swimming in the middle of the lesson—if you could call it a lesson—and his life is controlled by a magic eight ball."
"Are you sure that was the professor?" asked Terry, eyebrows raised.
"No, HE didn't even know he was the professor."
"Potions will probably be better," Terry assured her. "I've done a lot of research on it, and it looks pretty fun, actually."
Merope, remembering her potion incident over the summer, had a hunch that she would not agree.
The professor, a very tall, very fat man with the ugliest smile Merope had ever seen, started off the lesson by asking questions.
"Can anybody give me a generic definition of the word, 'potion?'" he asked. Merope could not help but notice that he spat as he spoke. Terry's hand shot into the air, along with a raven-haired Hispanic girl and a few others. Terry glared at the raven-haired girl, who returned his glare with a self-satisfied smirk.
"Yes, you." The professor gestured to the Hispanic girl. "What's your name?"
"Rosalita Arias," she said in a thick accent. Through her accent, Merope noticed that she sounded exceedingly stuck-up. "A potion is a magical concoction consisting of two or more ingredients that combine to make a solution that changes the chemical or physical properties of a person or thing."
There was a pause. Merope, and most likely a the majority of the class, didn't understand a word Rosalita had just said.
"Very good," said the professor as Rosalita smiled a sickly smile, "five points to Ravenclaw—"
"Sir, Rosalita has forgotten a few things," piped up Terry.
"Terry, its against the rules to speak out of turn," Rosalita snapped at him.
"Terry, is it?" said the professor. "Right, then. In my class, you must raise your hand to make a comment." Terry raised his hand.
"Yes?"
"I have something to add to Rosalita's…lacking…explanation." Rosalita shot him a look, and Terry turned his back on her. "Although a potion has all the qualities that Rosalita said, potions can also change the emotional state of the drinker. They can manipulate their feelings by making a person particularly lucky, honest, sad, lovesick, or even sleepy." Terry smiled at Rosalita in a very good imitation of her self-satisfied smirk.
"That's correct as well," said the professor. "Five more points to Ravenclaw."
"But sir," said Rosalita quickly, trying to make it look as though she was still smarter than Terry "you asked for a generic definition of a potion. Terry gave you a definition of several different types of potions."
"Those several different types of potions still affect the overall definition of a potion," Terry snapped back. "Potions can change emotions, not just chemical or physical properties."
"If you two don't stop I am taking all those points back," snapped the professor, and Rosalita and Terry stopped talking at once, though both were looking daggers at each other. "Today, we will be concocting a simple color-changing potion."
"Please," muttered Rosalita, "I've already made seven of those."
"Ms. Arias, do you have something more to say?" asked the professor, raising his eyebrows.
"Sir, I was wondering if perhaps I could try a more difficult potion, seeing as I am obviously much more advanced than this class," said Rosalita unblushingly in her annoyingly superior tone. Terry mimed vomiting into his cauldron. Merope could see why he didn't like her.
"Ms. Arias, you will follow the approved curriculum no matter how 'advanced' you consider yourself to be." The professor tapped the blackboard. "This is the method. All your ingredients are in your basic potions kits, and you will be working with your tablemates. You have one hour, fifteen minutes. Begin."
"C'mon, get out your supplies, hurry," Terry nagged Merope without sparing her a glance. He was to busy glaring at Rosalita as he cut his ingredients as fast as he could. Rosalita, it seemed, had been true to her word in making several of those potions already. She wasn't bothering to look at the board, and was already stirring in her third ingredient.
"Here, chop those up," Terry ordered, passing a few caterpillars to Merope. "And make sure they're even."
"Calm down," said Merope. Terry was sweating with the effort of beating Rosalita.
"Oh, god, if you can't do it, then I will," said Terry, frustrated, and he took back the caterpillars and chopped them in about three seconds before tossing them into the cauldron.
"Then what do I do?" demanded Merope.
"Stay out of the way."
Merope rolled her eyes and stepped back. She noticed that Rosalita's partner, a tall, sandy-haired Ravenclaw boy was not even bothering to try and help anymore.
After twenty minutes of working, Rosalita stepped away from her cauldron to let it stew. Terry, who was four steps behind her, gritted his teeth and muttered mean things under his breath and picked up his pace. Five minutes later, he too had stepped away from his cauldron. He set his watch for ten minutes and sat back down next to Merope, fidgeting madly and glaring at Rosalita.
"I hate that girl," he muttered. "She thinks she's so smart, just because she's memorized the whole stupid textbook…anybody could memorize a textbook if they wanted. She's probably lying, Merope."
"What a thing to lie about," replied Merope sarcastically.
"Seriously! You know, I'm going to memorize all my textbooks tonight," Terry promised. "I'll bet you anything I could memorize stuff better than her."
"I'll bet you could," said Merope, rolling her eyes. "You need to relax."
"What?" Terry looked incredulous. "Merope, weak people relax! Slackers relax! People who don't relax get the grades, the jobs—"
"The heart attacks?" suggested Merope.
"Sometimes." Rosalita started to add more ingredients. "Crap, she's started again. There's no way that was ten minutes for her. You know what? I only think she did seven. She's gonna screw up because she wasn't patient enough. I hope she screws up."
"When do I get to help with the potion?" Merope complained.
"Once I've beaten Rosalita," Terry told her.
"What's the big deal?" said Merope. "So she does a color-change solution faster than you—"
"Merope, this is a huge deal!" Terry exclaimed. "I'm better at this than she is! I'm not going to let some stuck-up future drag queen beat me!"
"Terry, drag queens are cross-dressing homosexual men."
"Or, in a word, Rosalita Arias." His watch beeped. "Ten minutes. Finally."
Terry got back to work on the potion. Fifteen minutes later, Rosalita stepped away from her cauldron.
"Professor, I'm finished," she called. Terry gritted his teeth and threw in the last of his ingredients.
"I'm finished too," Terry said. He looked exhausted, but pleased. The potion was changing colors in rainbow order, just like the blackboard described.
"Yes, but I finished first," Rosalita said, standing up a little straighter. Some of the students stopped to listen. Shaela Malfoy, Merope noticed, hadn't done anything at all to the potion; she was shouting at a little Ravenclaw girl, who was nervously adding ingredients as fast as she could.
"Yeah, but I did mine better than you!" Terry shouted back.
"Are you kidding me? That load of mush?"
"At least mine isn't all clumpy!"
"My potion is NOT clumpy!"
"Excuse me, do you have EYES? It's like oatmeal!"
"You take that back!"
"OKAY, stop shouting!" the professor yelled. Merope noticed that the entire class was staring at them. "Everyone back to work! Rosalita, let's see your potion."
The professor looked at the potion. "Nice job." Rosalita looked pleased.
"Now mine," Terry said eagerly. The professor looked into the cauldron.
"Perfect, Mr. Longbottom," commented the professor.
"See, Rosalita? Mine's perfect," Terry called over. "Yours is just nice. Mine is perfect."
"Oh, he just pities you," Rosalita snapped, though she was trying to look into Terry's cauldron to see if it was really perfect. "There's no such thing as a perfect potion, everyone who's read Advanced Potion Making knows that."
"'Perfect' is still a better comment than just 'nice job,'" Terry replied.
"If you two don't shut your mouths I'm going to glue your teeth together in your sleep!" shouted Collin Yu from the back of the room. Terry and Rosalita glared at each other before sitting back down, muttering under their breaths.
The bell rang a few minutes later, and the class bustled out of the room.
.:That Terry kid's annoying:.
I didn't know he was that competitive.
.:He's got issues, Merope. I'll bet you that someday he's gonna commit suicide or something:.
He's not self-destructive.
.:So, wanna tell me why we woke up on the edge of the Forbidden Forest?:.
Okay, I woke up on the edge of the Forest, not we. I control the brain, remember?
.:Yeah, fine, whatever:.
It was weird. I think I sleep-walked or something, because remember, I was dreaming about the Forest.
.:I don't remember. I can't see your dreams:.
You can't?
.:No, moron. I see your thoughts. That's it. There's another guy that controls dreams and stuff:.
Wait, there's MORE of you in there?!
.:Well, yeah! There's logic—me—and then there's the dream and memory kid, and then there's emotions—that's you. And then we've got the guys who sort through the images your eyes send us, and the guys that do all the things the nerves tell them to do, and then there's Boss, who makes sure everything is going okay. You know, like so you don't go insane or have brain problems or something. People who have bad Bosses are the ones who turn out cracked:.
…oh.
.:You have a lot to learn about your head:.
Does everyone know this much about their head?
.:I dunno. Why are you always asking me stuff like that? I only know the stuff you know, the stuff that's in your brain. The only things that I know that you don't are the way things work in your brain, since I live here and you can't see inside your head:.
Wait. If you can't see my dreams, then do you have your own dreams?
.:I don't sleep. I stay awake, figuring stuff out. That's how people always have breakthrough moments in the mornings. Their subconscious is thinking stuff out:.
That's a little freaky. Merope really didn't like the idea of multiple "people" with minds of their own sitting up in her head. How come the others aren't talking to me?
.:I'm more advanced than them. I'm the one who sees everything. They can't see anything. They just do their jobs. My job is to help you out, so I have to know these things:.
Do you have a name?
.:Just Merope, I think, because I'm part of you. What is that you call me? Non-Merope?:.
Yeah.
.:Interesting:.
Are you laughing at me?
.:A little:.
Do you want a name?
.:I don't care. Just…just call me Eporem:.
Eporem? Why Eporem?
.:Merope backwards. You know, cause I'm the opposite of you:.
Got it.
.:You should pay attention. Your Charms professor is talking and you probably want to hear this:.
Right.
Midnight
"Come on, Merope!" said Terry, running up the spiral staircases. "Hurry up!"
"Wait, I'm coming!" Merope ran after him. He was going so fast it seemed like his feet never touched the ground. They tore up the stairs until they reached a stone gargoyle. The headmaster's office.
"We can't go in there," Merope said.
"Sure we can," Terry replied. "It doesn't look that dangerous."
"No," insisted Merope. "I don't want to get in trouble."
"But there's nothing up here," said Terry, pointing at the gargoyle.
"Well…"
"Look, I'll go in first." Terry whispered a password, and the gargoyle jumped aside. Terry stepped in. "See? Everything's fine."
"Well, I guess it looks alright," Merope said, and she stepped in next to Terry.
"Now let me show you something really cool," said Terry, but his voice was distorted and it made the hairs on Merope's neck stand on end. She gasped; the skin on Terry's face was falling off—in fact, all his skin was falling off—
"NO!" Merope jolted herself awake, and again found herself standing in front of a stone gargoyle—the Headmaster's office—a pocketknife raised, ready to break in.
A/N: CLIFFHANGER!