A New Friend or Foe

Chapter Eleven

Harry waited for Erica until quite late that night, but she didn't come. As he paced back and forth in the common room, he felt an uneasy feeling take over him, as if someone was watching him. He glanced around, but saw no one. It was one o'clock. He shivered. The fire was dying down, and he was cold. Oh, well. He wanted to talk to Erica tonight.

Maybe, he told himself, thirty minutes later, as he sat in a plush maroon chair, about to nod off, she had come up right after classes, and was already asleep in her dorm.

He looked behind him, to the common room entrance. Now he really felt like someone was there. But he saw no one.

Erica stood right inside the common room entrance, watching Harry intently. She had just come back from a visit with her father, and was using a gift he had given her at one point—something from the depths of his heart, he had told her. But now she was beginning to wonder if he had a heart at all.

At any case, she was hiding under her new indivisibility cloak, which hid her from Harry's eyes. She was supposed to be using the cloak to sneak around Hogwarts if needed, and to get to her meetings with her father, and possibly spy on Harry. She told herself that was what she was doing now—but she wasn't too sure. Instead of watching him for suspicious activity, she was watching him because she wanted to.

She watched as he paced to and fro, looking slightly disturbed. A few times, he looked right in her direction, and she was afraid that he could see right through the cloak, but then he turned away.

She didn't want him to turn away. She liked to look at him. He had a nice face. And those eyes…

She sighed inwardly, then caught herself. What was she doing? This guy was the enemy, he was evil, he had killed her mother—the only person who had ever loved her. Or had he? She was doubting, more than ever, the truth of her father's words. Her long conversation with Harry the night before slipped back into her mind, and she recalled the sympathy in his voice, the pain as he told about his parents' deaths, and—she felt like she was melting—the compassion as he had taken her into a warm, friendly embrace.

She felt foolish, and guilty, for running off like that, but…she didn't know what else she could have done. She was so confused. Despite how much she wanted to loathe him, all of her being loved him, loved everything about him. She wanted to hug him, to continue their embrace, she wanted him to know that she wanted to be with him forever…

She shook her head. She couldn't think like that. He was evil. Her inward battle continued as she watched Harry begin to fall asleep, then jerk awake. He looked at his watch, and Erica did the same. Two-thirty.

Harry stood up, stretched, and walked towards the boys' dorm, frowning. "Guess Erica's already in bed," he mumbled blearily to himself, and walked up the stairs.

Erica froze. That's why he had been in the common room for so long? That's why he was staying up way later that he wanted? To see her?

She felt sick. Harry was so nice, so sweet to her, and she had been helping her father plot something evil against him.

"He killed your beloved mother…"

Her father's words echoed in her mind, and she paused. Could it really be true? Then, she remembered the malice that radiated with her alleged father's every word, the hate and bitterness. Somehow she knew it wasn't from pain of her mother's death. She had finally come to a conclusion, and she knew, deep in her heart, that it was the right one: her father was acting on his own greedy and personal whims. He was after Harry, but not because he had murdered her mother.

She sighed as she slipped the cloak off from around her shoulders.

"Erica? When did you get here?" She jumped as she saw Harry coming down the stairs from the boys' dormitory.

"I, uh…" he stumbled frantically for an answer, then fired back, "What about you?"

"Me? I left my Quidditch book here." He gestured to a book lying on the chair, with a picture of Quidditch players moving about on it. "Now, what about you?"

Erica sighed. It was time to tell Harry everything.

~Emachinescat ^..^