Harry Potter - Waking Alone
Feb. 1st, 2008 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charybdisTitle: Waking Alone
Characters: Draco, Harry
Summary: The War is long past, but its ghosts still haunt the night. G, 320 words
Sometimes, Draco wakes up in the middle of the night with the vague feeling that he's being attacked by a lethifold. Darkness presses in on all sides, like stones on his chest, and even though his eyes are open, he lies blind and dumb, as his breath is squeezed out of him by steps.
He knows why it happens. He remembers after the War, hiding in the tiny, dark recesses of the Manor -- under the floor in the seventh guest bedroom, between the portrait-hall walls -- suffocating in silence, while vengeful Aurors and worse scrutinized everything, wands always, always at the ready. A litany of inventive tortures flitted across his mind, and he breathed not air, but dread, waiting to be found.
In the next room, in her own lavish bed, his wife Isobel sleeps on -- her dreams quiet, French, and untroubled by memories of the War that she never knew.
***
Sometimes, Harry bolts awake in the middle of the night, gripped by the sudden certainty that his scar is alive again. The night-light candle flickers in the sconce above the headboard, but he can't see without his glasses and anyway, there's nowhere for him to go.
He knows it shouldn't be like this. They won; he killed Voldemort, every last piece, and he has earned his happily ever after. But after ten years plus six summers of the Dursleys and seven years of mortal danger, paranoia comes as naturally (and almost as essentially) as breathing.
Next to him, her face relaxed and serene, Ginny rolls over -- long used to his nighttime fits -- and keeps snoring softly.
Characters: Draco, Harry
Summary: The War is long past, but its ghosts still haunt the night. G, 320 words
Sometimes, Draco wakes up in the middle of the night with the vague feeling that he's being attacked by a lethifold. Darkness presses in on all sides, like stones on his chest, and even though his eyes are open, he lies blind and dumb, as his breath is squeezed out of him by steps.
He knows why it happens. He remembers after the War, hiding in the tiny, dark recesses of the Manor -- under the floor in the seventh guest bedroom, between the portrait-hall walls -- suffocating in silence, while vengeful Aurors and worse scrutinized everything, wands always, always at the ready. A litany of inventive tortures flitted across his mind, and he breathed not air, but dread, waiting to be found.
In the next room, in her own lavish bed, his wife Isobel sleeps on -- her dreams quiet, French, and untroubled by memories of the War that she never knew.
***
Sometimes, Harry bolts awake in the middle of the night, gripped by the sudden certainty that his scar is alive again. The night-light candle flickers in the sconce above the headboard, but he can't see without his glasses and anyway, there's nowhere for him to go.
He knows it shouldn't be like this. They won; he killed Voldemort, every last piece, and he has earned his happily ever after. But after ten years plus six summers of the Dursleys and seven years of mortal danger, paranoia comes as naturally (and almost as essentially) as breathing.
Next to him, her face relaxed and serene, Ginny rolls over -- long used to his nighttime fits -- and keeps snoring softly.
