Obliviate my Destiny {Book 5}

15. Masked

Sam was in front of me. Her face wasn't thin or gaunt, it was round and bright. Her blue eyes dazzled like the summer sky, her hair a golden halo around her head. And she was smiling at me.

"Sam?" I whispered. "Is this a dream?"

"It can be what you want it to be," she said with an open, sunshine smile. "But I'm here."

"I miss you," my voice was full of nails, and glass and pain. "I miss you so much."

"I would miss me too," she said, and her hand brushed against my arm, as light as a feather and I felt like I was going to die or cry or maybe both. "You love me, right?"

"Of course, I do."

"You have to do this for me, Aurora, otherwise people are going to be hurt," she said, and suddenly her grip seemed tighter, her eyes sharper, expression darker. And with her voice as smooth and dangerous as a blade, she leaned in and whispered in my ear, "You have to face your destiny."

Kissing the side of my head with a poisonous kiss, the world began to spin, reds and greens and blacks and ultraviolet pulsing like strobe club lightings. And a scream was heard, high pitched and afraid. And death was in the air, and blood on my hands—

And Sam's face was a skeleton with hollowed out eyes and sinewy fingers that waved when she caught onto my terror—

"Wake up, little Miss Montana." I was almost thrown out of bed in shock as I found myself not in the eye of a storm of destruction, but in my bed in Gryffindor, with Lavender talking obnoxiously loud.

"What?" I mumbled, trying to hold onto my nightmare—but the nicer aspects of it, Sam's smile, her bright eyes....

"Montana, like that muggle chick who turned into a pop star or whatever," Lavender shrugged, not looking up from applying her mascara.

"Ignore her, she rambles about weird stuff when she's stressed," Parvati said, rolling her eyes. "How did you sleep?"

"Well aware that anybody could kill me at any given moment."

"I thought as much," Parvati said, sitting on the edge of my bed. "Which is why, today you're getting a lucky plait."

"Plaits, that gives luck?" I said blankly.

Parvati moved closer to me with a trustworthy smile, "Every time I braid hair in a certain way, good things happen. It is how I passed my OWLS, the stars told me what to do."

"Well we all need some good things in our lives, that's for sure." I said with a small smile, and scooting forward, I let Parvati take Lena's thick red hair into her hands and begin to form it into something beautiful.

"It's not going to work," Lavender snorted, but I noticed she had one as well.

The three of us were silent for the next ten minutes or so as Parvati constructed her masterpiece, Lavender even sitting on my bed with her head in her hand to watch. There was something both peaceful and wrong about the scene.

Faye should be trying to learn Japanese on her bed to try and read first edition magna comics, Gennie should be giggling like an idiot over something cute Cole did, and Hermione should be telling us all to shut up because she needed to study.

"It's not the same without them," Lavender said, breaking the silence as Parvati tied the bobble around the end of the plait. "It's too quiet."

"Where is Faye?" I asked, glancing at her empty bed. Even though we didn't speak much, I liked Faye. One of her Attack on Titan posters was still stuck to her bed frame.