[HP Vignette] "Delirium" - HG/LV
Jun. 9th, 2009 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raptureofthemoonA little vignette.
"Delirium"
In delirium
Things are not what they seem
I am not alone
I dream
~"Delirium," Emilie Autumn
She always knew when she was dreaming. This time was no exception.
The sky was a shade of crimson she'd not seen since her parents had taken her on a trip to the Painted Desert. Red merged into silver merged into blue-black and the pinpricks of stars were growing brighter toward the apex of the sky.
She was barefoot.
She was always barefoot in her dreams, but nowadays the textures beneath her feet were much more prominent. She could feel the sharp tickle of the grass blades as she walked, the crumbling earth, the occasional jagged edge of rock or pebble unearthed from the soil. She could smell the rain dampened trees. Feel the ephemeral breeze that stroked her skin. And she could move herself along whatever path she chose, explore the shadowed corners of her ephemeral world at her choosing.
Lucid dreaming had been a practice she'd put time into for the last two years. Since the Department of Mysteries. Since the nightmares she'd found herself facing most every time she closed her eyes, nightmares that locked her down, froze her mind.
And if there was one thing Hermione Granger detested, it was not having her mind under her own control.
And so she spent many late hours in the depths of the Hogwarts library, researching sleep and dreams. A few complexly-simple charms and she found herself, if not able to prevent the nightmare, to at least wake herself up before screaming became necessary.
Tonight, she glanced behind her dream-self, saw the world drop off into a smoky abyss. Before her lay stone studded ground, a mesh of wrought-iron surrounding it, silhouettes of tombs rising out of long grasses like slivers of bone.
She felt it then, that tug in her belly, an invisible chord wrapped around her abdomen, pulling her toward whatever she was meant to see.
Time eclipsed, as it often did in dreams, and she found herself further along the sandy path and moving into the grass, toward a hulking shadow of a tomb.
Death in all his dark glory spread his angel's wings and held his scythe close to the tomb as though protecting against any who might draw too near, or guarding against that which might leave. She moved closer, ran her forefinger along the granite, traced the dagger sharp edge of the lettering that was so dark and shining it seemed to swim just above the stone.
Thomas Riddle
Witch mother, she thought, tracing the letters of the name, dead at his birth. Muggle father. Patricide.
Death, she thought, recalling a quote she once read, is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.
She flinched as long, cool fingers swept along her neck, drawing her hair back, gathering it at the nape.
What do you think, Hermione? came the voice over her shoulder, a mere whisper, chilling her skin.
"I think you traded one kind of ordinary for another," she said. "How uncommon is a serial killer who was abandoned as a child, bullied, abused? Really. There are myriad profiles for this sort of thing."
Silence followed. Then...
You've an answer for everything, don't you? Fingers curled hard into her collar bone, making her wince and she wondered if she'd ever be able to keep her mouth shut at appropriate moments. But that's alright, he continued, his breath was scalding her skin as he spoke, flowing down the line of her exposed neck. Just fine. Muggle science, he spat, and even magic theory can't even begin to ken the things that I do...
Rush of warm air and she felt his teeth close on her. Vicious bite into the oh-so-tender skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and she opened her mouth to cry out only to find his hand pressing tight to her lips. He pulled back, tongue laving over the wound he'd made; he blew air from his mouth making it sting. Warmth trickled down her skin, slipped between her breasts; she knew she was bleeding.
Go now, he said, wake, seek your answers. I'll be seeing you, soon.
And she did wake. With a start, sitting straight up on the chaise.
"Hermione?" Ginny looked up from her position curled in the corner of the sofa in the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. "You alright?"
"Ummm. Fine." Hermione ran a hand over her hair, patting down static, looked around the room. "It was just a bad dream."
"Another one?” Ginny asked, then leaned forward, hand raised toward Hermione’s throat. “Did you scratch yourself?"
Hermione's own hand went to her neck reflexively and came away wet and red. "What?"
She rushed to the small water closet, peered in the dingy mirror over the sink and saw the rivulet flowing over the crest of her shoulder, trickling down her collar bone, red staining the edges of her shirt and snaking between her breasts. She accioed a clean cloth, wet it, and pressed it to her throat, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Large and dark in her pale face, they didn't have any answers for her.
~*~*~
A fire crackling in the grate kept the winter chill from the library. Surrounded by dusty books, ranging in age from ancient (the ones belonging to the Blacks) to modern (the one's she'd carried with her) she still couldn't find peace of mind or body.
She slumped in her chair and Ginny glanced over at her.
"How long's it been since you really slept?"
"Six and a half days."
"You've tried Dreamless Sleep?"
"Of course. It doesn't work." Hermione rested her head on her hand. "It wears off in an hour and I'm back where I started."
"Hermione..."
"Don't worry, I checked. The record for no sleep is 26 days. Serafina Murlock."
"What happened to her?"
"You remember the screaming when we visited the 9th floor at St. Mungo's?"
"Oh."
"If it comes down to it...the Draught of Living Death might work. But at the moment, I'm not sure I'd bet a galleon on it."
Ginny stood and moved toward the door, dropping an air light hand--for what could she really say?--on Hermione's shoulder before exiting with a parting "I'll make us some tea."
Hermione put down her quill. It was no use, the letters were swimming together, names mixing and blending and creating histories that didn't exist except in her own mind. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, felt like she was grinding bits of sea glass into them. Specks of light flew behind her lids and her head swam. She let her hands drop, fingertips moving over her cheeks, pressing into aching bones, to the length of her throat. She brushed the bandage on her neck; the bite wound hadn't healed--the blood slowed, the wound scabbed and then reopened, leaking red. None of the draughts soothed it.
When Ginny returned, she found Hermione, head down on her book, deeply asleep, face etched in anxiety. She sat the tea aside and took a chair near her friend and waited, knowing she'd need help waking before her dreams became too awful and destroyed whatever rest she managed to glean from her sleep.
~*~*~
17 days. Thirty-six hours of sleep in 17 days. And that was rounding up.
Every time she closed her eyes, she'd see the faces. Hear the voices. People from the past, features that were almost familiar to her, the length of a nose, the curve of a mouth, the flash of green eyes, a strand of red hair.
And then the possible present.
Her mother's face, bloody and broken. Her father's reading glasses sitting inside a pile of ash and bone. Neville trembling with the after effects of cruciatus, eyes glazed and blank. Ginny strewn upon a stone altar, lilies surrounding her, dotting her fanned out hair like snowdrops. Harry's green eyes behind glass--not unusual, until her focus moved out and found them no longer attached to his face but lingering in some acrid fluid inside of a jar.
She'd swallowed more potions in the past two weeks than in 7 years of school and each one had been less effective than the last. Even Snape had seemed lost with the last trial, catching long fingers in his hair and turning from her with the most somber scowl she'd ever seen.
During the day she tried her hand at notes, found her fingers could barely hold a quill steady. Her eyes couldn't focus long enough to garner anything from the books in the Black library. Eventually she found herself sitting alone, staring at the scorch marks in the ancestral tapestry in the drawing room.
At night, she moved through Grimmauld place like a wraith. Fingers trailing in the dust that could never quite be cleaned from the furniture, repeating her steps through the library, cradling her books in her arms and fluttering through pages before leaving them, unread, on the desk.
She heard The Order whispering among themselves only to quiet when she moved into a room.
Sometimes the whispers were not those of Order members, but that of her own voice filling the quiet.
She couldn't remember when she'd started talking to herself.
~*~*~
On the 20th day, she overheard them discussing her, gathered in their morning meeting in the dining room.
I don't know that there's anything we can do. This is killing her. There must be something. Potion, charm, countercurse. She's of no use to herself. She's of no use to anyone in this state. Books have been abandoned. Sharp mind...such a shame. We may have to face it... St Mungo's...
She turned away, fled up the stairs to her room at the end of the hall, fingers clenching and unclenching in the tails of her shirt.
They were right.
They were right. She wasn't good for anything in this state.
She knew it.
He knew it.
She stumbled, tripping over a misplaced boot, and sprawled across the thick rug before her fireplace.
She'd been pacing.
The fibers felt inordinately soft against her fingers, her cheek. Maybe if she closed her eyes...just for a moment. Just to take the sting away...
Falling asleep in this state is a little bit like dying…
He stood with his back to her. Not the young man of her previous dreams, but a tall, reed-thin apparition in black, skin ghostly pale in the moonlight.
I wouldn’t know.
Are you ready, yet?
I can't. I can't.
A sigh, high pitched, like the whining of a cat. Why must you fight me? Surely, you see you cannot win. No. And even if you do manage to hold out for a few days more, there's nothing waiting for you but manacles and a room with no windows.
No.
You're useless to them. A waste of time and resources that could be used to anticipate the next Death Eater attack. To find my weakness... What have you to offer? Mad ramblings? The visions of a deprived mind? You couldn't even think to defeat a Devil's Snare in your state, my heart.
She was silent.
Momentarily, she saw him raise what would have been an eyebrow had he the features of a normal man.
Well?
She choked on her own air, the tightness in her chest growing, making her feel like her heart would burst.
Yes. Yes. Alright. I'll come. Please. Please. Rest--let me rest. I can't yet--I need--
Yes, my heart. But for a few hours only. And you must rise before the morning. Before any of them suspect.
With her final acquiescence, he left her sight, fading in amongst the grey tombs and the rising mists.
And she slept, her face smooth, her brow creased only with the tension of finding peace after so many nights of terror.
~*~*~
She woke before the first slivers of pre-dawn silver touched the sky, mind reeling with the effect of a deep sleep, short as it was, after so many days of deprivation.
Struggling up onto her knees, she sat, pulling at the soft threads of her rug, staring into the glowing embers of the fire. She could feel him, a steady presence in her mind, looking at the orange glow through her eyes...and waiting, waiting to see what she would do.
Unsteady, she rose, turned to her wardrobe and took out her winter cloak--long and thick and the color of a nighttime forest--and wrapped it around her, pulling the hood over her head.
She left her clothes in their drawers, her books by her bedside. Her wand--transfigured into a silver ring some time ago--sat securely on her right forefinger.
Slipping out of her room, she closed the door and started for the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as she could to prevent them creaking.
The early morning hush weighed heavy in her ears as she passed through the front hall and slipped out of the door, into the chilly air.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there, on those front steps, staring into the street. Long enough that she began the feel a pulse of irritation from him; the wound on her neck throbbed, burned hot and wet behind the bandage.
She couldn't stay, she realized with a sudden flash of clarity. Even if she were to solve the sleepless nights, the haze of her brain (and how bloody likely was that after having exhausted the resources in the Black library, not to mention the one's in Severus' own private collection?), staying was not an option.
Not with this link to him, whatever it was.
She was missing pieces; the only way to solve the puzzle was to seek them out.
Moving from the front steps, she stepped into the middle of the street, glanced back at the house. Upstairs a light flickered on in one of the bedrooms. Curtains shifted, a shadow form taking place behind them, looking down at her.
She closed her eyes and apparated.
End.
"Delirium"
In delirium
Things are not what they seem
I am not alone
I dream
~"Delirium," Emilie Autumn
She always knew when she was dreaming. This time was no exception.
The sky was a shade of crimson she'd not seen since her parents had taken her on a trip to the Painted Desert. Red merged into silver merged into blue-black and the pinpricks of stars were growing brighter toward the apex of the sky.
She was barefoot.
She was always barefoot in her dreams, but nowadays the textures beneath her feet were much more prominent. She could feel the sharp tickle of the grass blades as she walked, the crumbling earth, the occasional jagged edge of rock or pebble unearthed from the soil. She could smell the rain dampened trees. Feel the ephemeral breeze that stroked her skin. And she could move herself along whatever path she chose, explore the shadowed corners of her ephemeral world at her choosing.
Lucid dreaming had been a practice she'd put time into for the last two years. Since the Department of Mysteries. Since the nightmares she'd found herself facing most every time she closed her eyes, nightmares that locked her down, froze her mind.
And if there was one thing Hermione Granger detested, it was not having her mind under her own control.
And so she spent many late hours in the depths of the Hogwarts library, researching sleep and dreams. A few complexly-simple charms and she found herself, if not able to prevent the nightmare, to at least wake herself up before screaming became necessary.
Tonight, she glanced behind her dream-self, saw the world drop off into a smoky abyss. Before her lay stone studded ground, a mesh of wrought-iron surrounding it, silhouettes of tombs rising out of long grasses like slivers of bone.
She felt it then, that tug in her belly, an invisible chord wrapped around her abdomen, pulling her toward whatever she was meant to see.
Time eclipsed, as it often did in dreams, and she found herself further along the sandy path and moving into the grass, toward a hulking shadow of a tomb.
Death in all his dark glory spread his angel's wings and held his scythe close to the tomb as though protecting against any who might draw too near, or guarding against that which might leave. She moved closer, ran her forefinger along the granite, traced the dagger sharp edge of the lettering that was so dark and shining it seemed to swim just above the stone.
Thomas Riddle
Witch mother, she thought, tracing the letters of the name, dead at his birth. Muggle father. Patricide.
Death, she thought, recalling a quote she once read, is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.
She flinched as long, cool fingers swept along her neck, drawing her hair back, gathering it at the nape.
What do you think, Hermione? came the voice over her shoulder, a mere whisper, chilling her skin.
"I think you traded one kind of ordinary for another," she said. "How uncommon is a serial killer who was abandoned as a child, bullied, abused? Really. There are myriad profiles for this sort of thing."
Silence followed. Then...
You've an answer for everything, don't you? Fingers curled hard into her collar bone, making her wince and she wondered if she'd ever be able to keep her mouth shut at appropriate moments. But that's alright, he continued, his breath was scalding her skin as he spoke, flowing down the line of her exposed neck. Just fine. Muggle science, he spat, and even magic theory can't even begin to ken the things that I do...
Rush of warm air and she felt his teeth close on her. Vicious bite into the oh-so-tender skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and she opened her mouth to cry out only to find his hand pressing tight to her lips. He pulled back, tongue laving over the wound he'd made; he blew air from his mouth making it sting. Warmth trickled down her skin, slipped between her breasts; she knew she was bleeding.
Go now, he said, wake, seek your answers. I'll be seeing you, soon.
And she did wake. With a start, sitting straight up on the chaise.
"Hermione?" Ginny looked up from her position curled in the corner of the sofa in the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. "You alright?"
"Ummm. Fine." Hermione ran a hand over her hair, patting down static, looked around the room. "It was just a bad dream."
"Another one?” Ginny asked, then leaned forward, hand raised toward Hermione’s throat. “Did you scratch yourself?"
Hermione's own hand went to her neck reflexively and came away wet and red. "What?"
She rushed to the small water closet, peered in the dingy mirror over the sink and saw the rivulet flowing over the crest of her shoulder, trickling down her collar bone, red staining the edges of her shirt and snaking between her breasts. She accioed a clean cloth, wet it, and pressed it to her throat, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Large and dark in her pale face, they didn't have any answers for her.
~*~*~
A fire crackling in the grate kept the winter chill from the library. Surrounded by dusty books, ranging in age from ancient (the ones belonging to the Blacks) to modern (the one's she'd carried with her) she still couldn't find peace of mind or body.
She slumped in her chair and Ginny glanced over at her.
"How long's it been since you really slept?"
"Six and a half days."
"You've tried Dreamless Sleep?"
"Of course. It doesn't work." Hermione rested her head on her hand. "It wears off in an hour and I'm back where I started."
"Hermione..."
"Don't worry, I checked. The record for no sleep is 26 days. Serafina Murlock."
"What happened to her?"
"You remember the screaming when we visited the 9th floor at St. Mungo's?"
"Oh."
"If it comes down to it...the Draught of Living Death might work. But at the moment, I'm not sure I'd bet a galleon on it."
Ginny stood and moved toward the door, dropping an air light hand--for what could she really say?--on Hermione's shoulder before exiting with a parting "I'll make us some tea."
Hermione put down her quill. It was no use, the letters were swimming together, names mixing and blending and creating histories that didn't exist except in her own mind. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, felt like she was grinding bits of sea glass into them. Specks of light flew behind her lids and her head swam. She let her hands drop, fingertips moving over her cheeks, pressing into aching bones, to the length of her throat. She brushed the bandage on her neck; the bite wound hadn't healed--the blood slowed, the wound scabbed and then reopened, leaking red. None of the draughts soothed it.
When Ginny returned, she found Hermione, head down on her book, deeply asleep, face etched in anxiety. She sat the tea aside and took a chair near her friend and waited, knowing she'd need help waking before her dreams became too awful and destroyed whatever rest she managed to glean from her sleep.
~*~*~
17 days. Thirty-six hours of sleep in 17 days. And that was rounding up.
Every time she closed her eyes, she'd see the faces. Hear the voices. People from the past, features that were almost familiar to her, the length of a nose, the curve of a mouth, the flash of green eyes, a strand of red hair.
And then the possible present.
Her mother's face, bloody and broken. Her father's reading glasses sitting inside a pile of ash and bone. Neville trembling with the after effects of cruciatus, eyes glazed and blank. Ginny strewn upon a stone altar, lilies surrounding her, dotting her fanned out hair like snowdrops. Harry's green eyes behind glass--not unusual, until her focus moved out and found them no longer attached to his face but lingering in some acrid fluid inside of a jar.
She'd swallowed more potions in the past two weeks than in 7 years of school and each one had been less effective than the last. Even Snape had seemed lost with the last trial, catching long fingers in his hair and turning from her with the most somber scowl she'd ever seen.
During the day she tried her hand at notes, found her fingers could barely hold a quill steady. Her eyes couldn't focus long enough to garner anything from the books in the Black library. Eventually she found herself sitting alone, staring at the scorch marks in the ancestral tapestry in the drawing room.
At night, she moved through Grimmauld place like a wraith. Fingers trailing in the dust that could never quite be cleaned from the furniture, repeating her steps through the library, cradling her books in her arms and fluttering through pages before leaving them, unread, on the desk.
She heard The Order whispering among themselves only to quiet when she moved into a room.
Sometimes the whispers were not those of Order members, but that of her own voice filling the quiet.
She couldn't remember when she'd started talking to herself.
~*~*~
On the 20th day, she overheard them discussing her, gathered in their morning meeting in the dining room.
I don't know that there's anything we can do. This is killing her. There must be something. Potion, charm, countercurse. She's of no use to herself. She's of no use to anyone in this state. Books have been abandoned. Sharp mind...such a shame. We may have to face it... St Mungo's...
She turned away, fled up the stairs to her room at the end of the hall, fingers clenching and unclenching in the tails of her shirt.
They were right.
They were right. She wasn't good for anything in this state.
She knew it.
He knew it.
She stumbled, tripping over a misplaced boot, and sprawled across the thick rug before her fireplace.
She'd been pacing.
The fibers felt inordinately soft against her fingers, her cheek. Maybe if she closed her eyes...just for a moment. Just to take the sting away...
Falling asleep in this state is a little bit like dying…
He stood with his back to her. Not the young man of her previous dreams, but a tall, reed-thin apparition in black, skin ghostly pale in the moonlight.
I wouldn’t know.
Are you ready, yet?
I can't. I can't.
A sigh, high pitched, like the whining of a cat. Why must you fight me? Surely, you see you cannot win. No. And even if you do manage to hold out for a few days more, there's nothing waiting for you but manacles and a room with no windows.
No.
You're useless to them. A waste of time and resources that could be used to anticipate the next Death Eater attack. To find my weakness... What have you to offer? Mad ramblings? The visions of a deprived mind? You couldn't even think to defeat a Devil's Snare in your state, my heart.
She was silent.
Momentarily, she saw him raise what would have been an eyebrow had he the features of a normal man.
Well?
She choked on her own air, the tightness in her chest growing, making her feel like her heart would burst.
Yes. Yes. Alright. I'll come. Please. Please. Rest--let me rest. I can't yet--I need--
Yes, my heart. But for a few hours only. And you must rise before the morning. Before any of them suspect.
With her final acquiescence, he left her sight, fading in amongst the grey tombs and the rising mists.
And she slept, her face smooth, her brow creased only with the tension of finding peace after so many nights of terror.
~*~*~
She woke before the first slivers of pre-dawn silver touched the sky, mind reeling with the effect of a deep sleep, short as it was, after so many days of deprivation.
Struggling up onto her knees, she sat, pulling at the soft threads of her rug, staring into the glowing embers of the fire. She could feel him, a steady presence in her mind, looking at the orange glow through her eyes...and waiting, waiting to see what she would do.
Unsteady, she rose, turned to her wardrobe and took out her winter cloak--long and thick and the color of a nighttime forest--and wrapped it around her, pulling the hood over her head.
She left her clothes in their drawers, her books by her bedside. Her wand--transfigured into a silver ring some time ago--sat securely on her right forefinger.
Slipping out of her room, she closed the door and started for the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as she could to prevent them creaking.
The early morning hush weighed heavy in her ears as she passed through the front hall and slipped out of the door, into the chilly air.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there, on those front steps, staring into the street. Long enough that she began the feel a pulse of irritation from him; the wound on her neck throbbed, burned hot and wet behind the bandage.
She couldn't stay, she realized with a sudden flash of clarity. Even if she were to solve the sleepless nights, the haze of her brain (and how bloody likely was that after having exhausted the resources in the Black library, not to mention the one's in Severus' own private collection?), staying was not an option.
Not with this link to him, whatever it was.
She was missing pieces; the only way to solve the puzzle was to seek them out.
Moving from the front steps, she stepped into the middle of the street, glanced back at the house. Upstairs a light flickered on in one of the bedrooms. Curtains shifted, a shadow form taking place behind them, looking down at her.
She closed her eyes and apparated.
End.