The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|130| Dumbledore's Lies

The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut.... I could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear... I climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in... She had no wand upon her either... How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments...

I forced the door open, cast aside the dresser against it with one lazy wave of my wand... and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of me, she dropped her daughter into the crib behind her where her son already stood and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding them from sight she hoped to be chosen instead...

"Move out of the way you foolish girl."

"No! P-Please, not my children. T-Take me instead—"

"Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now."

"Not Harry, please no, not Maisey! K-Kill me instead—"

"This is my last warning —"

"Not my children! Please, please— Have mercy, have—"

I could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all...

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The children were crying all this time: The girl could stand, clutching the bars of her crib, and she looked up into the intruder's face with a sad kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was her father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and her mother would pop up any moment, laughing —

I pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face first: I wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry harder: It had seen that he was not James. I did not like it crying, I had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage —

"Goodbye, little boy," I sneered, "Avada Kedavra!"

"No," I moaned.

The baby boy fell behind the girl, her cries getting louder. The cries annoying me more. This time I pointed my wand at the baby girl and shouted the same curse.

And then I broke: I was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and I must hide myself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the children were trapped and screaming, but far away... far away...

"No," I moaned louder.

The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and I had killed the children, and yet I was the girl and the boy at once...

"No..."

And now I stood at the broken window of Bathilda's house, immersed in memories of the greatest loss, and at my feet the great snake slithered over broken china and glass... I looked down and saw something... something incredible...

"No!" I shouted and sprung up from where I was.

I was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a heap of blankets. I could tell that it was almost dawn by the stillness and the quality of the cold, flat light beyond the canvas ceiling. Looking around, I saw Hermione sitting at my bed, in between mine and Harry's. He was drenched in sweat, as was I; I could feel it on the sheets and blankets.

I was me... Maisey, not Voldemort... and the rustling was not a snake.

"Maisey, are you alright?" Hermione whispered.