Shadows || A Severus Snape Fanfiction

Chapter 19 - Nightmares

Asha skipped dinner and went straight to bed. That was the night her dreams began. At least, that's what she assumed they were. The first time it happened she awoke suddenly with her heart racing and sweat beading on her forehead. She continued to lie very still and tried to remember what she had been dreaming about, but couldn't.

The next night it happened again. She bolted upright with a gasp and grasped the edges of the mattress as fear slowly drained from her body.

Two days later, Jules reported Asha had been thrashing beneath her blankets for minutes at a time and mumbling in her sleep.

On the fifth night, both Asha and her roommates awoke to her indiscernible yelling. After that, she made sure to cast a muffling spell around her bed before she went to sleep.

These episodes began to happen multiple times per night and it was getting to the point where Asha was dreading going to sleep, knowing she would wake a few hours later with a sweat-soaked shirt and her heart ready to burst from her chest. It frustrated her to no end that she couldn't remember what the nightmares were about, although, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Totally exhausted from her disturbed sleep, and wanting to avoid social interaction, Asha spent all of Saturday sitting by the Black Lake, leaning against the trunk of a large tree. It was now well into autumn and orange leaves carpeted the hard, frosty ground. Despite the chill, she was warm and comfortable in her thick, heating-charmed coat. It was peaceful. Only once did a group of Durmstrang boys wander past and harass her about accompanying them to Hogsmeade. Between drifting in and out of light sleep, she contemplated the unsolvable mysteries of her life, and whether or not Snape had talked to Dumbledore about what she'd told him.

*

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the world was suddenly filled with a horrific, rasping scream. Asha awoke with such a force that she fell off her four-poster onto the cold stone floor, wrapped in a cocoon of tangled blankets. Only then did she realise the screams were her own. The noise stopped abruptly as she sat up, panting and shaking, listening to the pulse of rushing blood in her ears. Her throat was raw. How long had she been screaming like that?

Even though Asha felt tired enough to drop back to sleep immediately, she pulled on an over-sized sweater and a pair of woollen socks, grabbed her wand, and crept out into the common room. For a while, she sat by the dimly glowing hearth, determined not to succumb to sleep. But her eyelids continued to stubbornly droop and she realised she would have to stay on her feet if she wanted to evade the nightmares.

The corridors of Hogwarts were pitch black and freezing. Asha could feel the stone floor sucking her body heat through her socks as she padded around the castle. She still felt weak and shaky and her breathing was shallow. Even if she couldn't remember her nightmares, it seemed her body certainly did. Adrenaline put her on edge and she kept imagining terrible creatures lurking in the darkness. The suits of armour cast ominous shadows in the glow of her wand and occasionally portraits would grumble at the light, demanding what sort of hour she called this.

After a few laps of the first floor, Asha stopped abruptly and did a one-eighty. Her heart skipped a beat. What was that? She'd heard a noise. A whisper maybe. Suddenly a light began to grow from behind the corner she had just rounded. A tapping noise echoed about the corridor. Her heart-rate doubled but she was frozen to the spot with fear, her wand pointing in the direction of the fast-approaching white light. A tiny yelp escaped Asha's lips as a glowing ball rounded the corner followed by a terrifying dark mass. Instinctively she cast a powerful protective spell which formed a glowing blue web that filled the entire width of the corridor. The dark mass halted and the blinding light dimmed.