After the battle of Hogwarts, everyone wanted to go back to life as normal. One night though, Harry realizes that some are more desperate than others want to go back. To want is human and to want is what the Mirror of Erised specializes in. Which le...
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How is it that silence could be so deafeningly loud? That was the singular thought Harry's tired mind was producing on repeat. Over and over like a mantra that sounded stranger with each iteration. Like saying the word 'Until' until it became utterly meaningless until you could finally stop the cycle. Something that probably wouldn't happen for Harry until the sun rose and he had an excuse to pull his body out of bed. Until then he just laid there, noting the full moon was pouring in through his window, making his chest ache in a whole new way.
He had never been a good sleeper per se, living under a staircase can do that to you. Mornings were always a crashing shove into wakefulness as Aunt Petunia, as light as she was, would all but stomp down the stairs, blearily searching out her morning cup of tea and spot to peer over the hedge fence. At nights Vernon, who would stay up late watching the news, oftentimes falling asleep in his recliner, snoring like a great gagging walrus which Harry could hear with such vivid clarity it seeped into his dreams. Then there was his cousin, Dudley, who may have been a master at sneaking past his parents' room, for a secretive midnight snack, but his hefty footfalls could never evade Harry's attention.
In the first year, he had the slight glimmer of hope that sleep would come easier and for a while it was. But as the first year came to an end, the nightmares started up. Repeated and foggy images of snake eyes, green lights, and screaming. He thought they were terrible as a kid, unfortunately, they only got worse. Now they had evolved into full-blown night terrors, severe enough that Harry probably should have considered therapy or at least a good bottle of Fire Whiskey and an Obliviate to the face.
Every time he closed his eyes, he sees Sirius. Every nightmare started the same, Harry was in the woods, a sunny cheery meadow with happy birds and cutesy little bunnies. Walking the path Harry would just enjoy the sounds of nature his black dog body running about barking at squirrels and rustling in bushes. They would wrestle together and race one another through the trees. Then, Sirius would disappear, jump over some overgrowth, and be gone. Harry would try and follow but as he ran the forest would grow dark and cold, clouds overhead like a hail storm were just waiting to fall. Then he would burst through the thicket and he would find Sirius. Lying beside a murky lake, as a human, dead. Skin as devoid of life as a dried white rose.
The last thing he would always see was the empty wide pupil eyed stare. Movies lied; the dead never closed their eyes.
Skin tingling, His sheets were drenched in sweat, plastering his bangs to his forehead and the front of his shirt to his chest. The night was oppressively hot with the magic holding in the heat of the long, dead fireplace. His dorm mates were all fast asleep, curtains drawn closed tight, locking out the rest of the world and providing just a modicum of privacy that a boarding school had to give.
having spent the free time after dinner to fly again, Harry didn't even bother to close his thought, he was the last to bed. It was a fruitless attempt to try and exhaust himself into sleep. Now his mind was muddy, racing and his limbs ached from overwork yet the inexplicable need to just simply keep moving.
