The Most Powerful Magic of All

Lightning flashed outside Jamy Potter's bedroom window, illuminating the darkened room. She sat on her pillow, pressed up against the wall behind her, shooting fearful glances around the room. A sudden creaking noise caught her attention and she whipped her head around to find the source of it. She found it. The closet door on the other side of the room was creaking open very slowly as if someone inside was trying to get out. Jamy sat, frozen with terror as a pale, long-fingered hand emerged around the side of the door. A figure began to slip out of the shadows, there was a flash of green light and -

Thunder crashed somewhere above the house and Jamy woke up with a terrified gasp, shaking and sweating profusely. She glanced towards the closet door. It was closed. There were no signs of it opening. Another rumble of thunder outside and Jamy shivered visibly. She hated thunder. And lightning. In fact, she was severely astraphobic.

She rubbed the lightning bolt scar on her forehead and realized there were tears on her face. Great, just great. She'd already been scared stupid by the same recurring nightmare over and over again and now she was crying about it. Big girls don't cry, she scolded herself angrily. She was eleven years old, for crying out loud! You would think that, after having varying versions of the same nightmare practically every night of her life she would have gotten accustomed to it by now, but no, she still cried when she woke up - like a big baby.

Another fork of lightning split the sky beyond her window and the fear suddenly returned. Jamy did the same thing she'd been doing every time she woke up scared by another nightmare for as far back as she could remember. She ran out of the room, crossed the hall and entered Harry's room.

Her twin was lying sprawled on his back, his mouth slightly open, clearly dead to the world, his dreams untroubled and peaceful. Jamy shook him in an effort to wake him up. Harry jerked awake and sat up with a start.

"What?" he asked, annoyed at having been woken up. His expression faltered when he saw his sister standing beside his bed, her emerald green eyes wide with fear. With the next boom of thunder Jamy leapt onto the bed, grabbed Harry around his middle and buried her face in his pajama top, now positively quivering with fright. Without another word, Harry gently pried his terrified twin's arms from around him and lay her down in the bed next to him. Then, tucking the blanket around her and lying down beside her, he wrapped his arms around her and gently shushed her.

"Sleep now, Raz," he said quietly, using the nickname they had given each other. "Time to sleep."

Perhaps it had something to do with their being twins, or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they were the only ones left when Voldemort had killed their parents ten years ago, but Jamy and Harry had always been exceptionally close. Harry knew that his sister was plagued with nightmares about Voldemort. While every other kid they knew had the regular monsters in their closets, Jamy had an evil, dark wizard in her closet.

Harry completely understood and sympathized with her though. Sometimes, he would have nightmares about his parents too, but Jamy had the extra torment of knowing that the only reason Voldemort had killed Lily and James Potter was to get to her, to kill her. Why exactly Voldemort would have wanted to kill a fifteen-month old baby though, was beyond either of their comprehensions.

Harry knew that the nightmares, for Jamy, would probably never be completely gone even with all the therapy she was having. Jamy had been seeing a psychiatrist since she was six in hopes that he could help with the nightmares. Harry couldn't see what good it was doing though. It wasn't like Jamy could come right out and tell him that her parents were a witch and wizard and had been murdered by an evil, dark wizard who had really been trying to kill Jamy, and been utterly defeated when the curse rebounded upon him for some weird reason. For now, all he could do for her was try to comfort her. Soon the sun would come up and things wouldn't seem so bad anymore. That was the last thing he thought as he drifted back to sleep.