ROSIER

13

Midas
...

Gwen never had trouble recognizing the difference between a dream and reality. An instance that did not make her nightmares any more bearable.

They followed a scheme. A rhythm she memorized down to the smallest of details soon forgotten once she woke up. Like how the flames of the candles, lighting her way through Hogwarts, were sort of stiff and lifeless. And cold, which she recognized every time her hand went right through them.

Or how the night sky was deprived of stars. But of course, something beautiful like them had no place in a bad dream.

Her legs did not belong to her. Two limbs following a greater will than the brain they were connected to. They took her through the tunnel system and past the shed, which was playing a nursery rhyme of her childhood over and over again. She could see shadowy figures through the window, but she knew her unwilling calls for help were worthless. She was alone. No one would come to save her.

The trees were gigantic. Only the stomps were visible as they reached tall and thick into the sky. Unsettling noises began to grow louder the closer she came to the final act of her nightmare. She tried to fight it. Tried to run from it, but as always, her steps ended in the place Ivan had stood in his final night.

Gwen fell to the ground. Her legs forced her into place. Her gaze drifted to the bush she once hid in. A pair of eyes, green as her own stared back at her with a menacing grin. She waited for it to happen. She wanted it to happen. Gwen's face wandered to the sky above her. The dark blue slowly turned into a deep maroon as it bled over the earth.

Footsteps became audible. The noises unbearable, until finally, she looked down on herself. Gwen was holding her wand against her body on the ground. It pleaded, wringing under the spell she forced upon herself. The blonde on the ground was scared and helpless, and the blonde who was the cause for it felt a sick kind of pleasure from it. She felt strong. She felt powerful.

Gwen hoped to wake up. It was the end. The one she remembered from last time, but the torture was not finished just yet. The ground filled with blood. The drops rained thick from the sky, and the figure on the ground would drown eventually. She felt the warm liquid against her skin, unable to stop hoping the version of herself wringing on the ground would stop screaming. Would stop fighting and finally end the misery with a final breath.

But with an uncontrollable laugh coming from her mouth, strange and insane, she watched her figure on the ground slowly transform before her. Long blonde hair turned brown and short. Green eyes turned into the warm ones whose gaze she could never get enough of. The nightmare worsened, and her laughter grew. It wasn't herself in torturous pain anymore, but Remus. Gwen's eyes flashed dangerously as the darkest of all curses was pushed through her lips, seeing her wide smile reflecting in his dying eyes as the scene faded to green.

Gwen woke up in a cold sweat. She pressed her teeth together to prevent any noise from slipping out. She forced her breath to steady. Then her muscles relaxed, and finally, her eyes to draw from the ceiling above her. She could see the view from the windows slowly disappear as the room moved into a different place. The fire was still burning around the sleeping gargoyle, but the spot next to her was empty.

Her heart threatened to burst past her ribs from fear as she rushed up to look for Remus. He looked deadly pale in the light of the fire. He was seated on the ground, fast asleep in a rather uncomfortable position. A dreadful moment long, she mistook his sleep for death. She feared her dream to be real in the most terrible way. But he was breathing just like her.

She bit her lips as she felt tears swell up inside her eyes. It was a terrible feeling. A lump grew in her throat. Her nose cloaked, and a heaviness expanded in her chest, infecting her lungs, stomach, and especially her heart. No, crying was not something enjoyable, but despite her willpower to hold it all in, the first tears to fall over her cheeks were like a leak of a fountain.