Standard disclaimer: Of course I don't own any of this; I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox!
On his son's 40th birthday, Stephen woke early, not knowing what lay ahead. He'd had no dreams the night before, at least not the dreams he'd come to fear. Just rehashes of the old dreams. It had been years since the dreams had come to guide him, and now he lived a life of total mystery, never knowing what to expect. He had tea in the kitchen, and a peach, as the morning birds sang and played in the trees. The peach was delicious and perfect, just at its peak of ripeness, and the nectar dripped down his chin, onto his stubble now grey. He shaved and dressed, and waiting in his chair for Ellie to wake. His day did not begin until Ellie was at his side.
That day, they were to take the grandchildren - James, Albert, and Eleanor - and his son Jimmy and daughter-in-law, Gwen, to the zoo in the city. The children - who were not small anymore, but teenagers - were excited for this nonetheless, and had talked of little else for weeks, it seemed. James and Eleanor were mad for the African Veldt exhibit while Albert could not stop talking abut the reptile house. Ellie shuddered melodramatically and told him, "Your grandfather will take you there. I prefer warm-blooded animals!" while Jimmy and Gwen laughed merrily.
At the zoo, he and Ellie held hands and walked slowly - they were feeling their age, and the heat of summer. Stephen and Albert had taken in the reptile house earlier, watching as enormous boa constrictors hung sleepily in their jungle bowers and cobras blinked lazily at the watchers. He reflected that their reputation for evil was unfair - they were shy, slow creatures most of the time, content to leave others alone. He felt comfortable with them.
"How were the snakes?" asked Gwen as they came out of the cool darkness into the sun, blinking like the cobras.
"Amazing, mom!" shouted Albert, laughing. "Didn't you think so, grampa?" he asked.
"They were," stephen agreed. "Strange that I like them when it was a snake that killed me…." Even as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, the wrong life, and turned scared eyes to Ellie.
"What does grampa mean," whispered Eleanor, as Gwen took her hand.
"You grandfather is old," said Ellie, sad and kind, looking into his eyes. "He gets confused sometimes." But she also looked worried, her now-white hair blowing a little in the breeze. She'd never quite understood, and he still could not explain.
The first time he'd had a dream, the dreams that felt like real life, he'd been 10. He'd had the same dream over and over, night after night, until he understood.
He was in a park, surrounded by trees, and the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen was lying down in front of him, except she was floating 5 feet off the ground, her hair floating around her head, and she was laughing. She reached out and touched him, and he floated too.
When he finally got it, he realized he knew the park. It was near the flat where he lived with his ma and da. They were decent enough people - his da drank too much, and his ma was neglectful of him, the house, everything. They were poor, but life was benign enough. But he craved more. He guessed everyone did.
The next day, he went to the park, and she was there, exactly like in the dream, except she was not floating. A girl his age, with medium-length red hair.
"Oi," he said, lamely, and she looked up at him from where she lay on the ground, and smiled, her eyes the green of new grass. She was watching another child who was running around in circles.
"Oi, I'm new here" she replied lazily, a little bored. "Who're you?"
He'd introduced himself, and she said her name was Ellie. "Short for Eleanor, but if you ever call me that, so help me, I will figure out a way to turn you into a newt."
In over 50 years, he'd never called her Eleanor. He suspected, deep down, that if anyone could turn someone into a newt, his Ellie could.
Actually, he'd seen her do things like that. Strange things, magic.
In his dreams, that was. Not that he ever told her about those things. He told her as little as he could about his dreams, and she still figured out too much.
It wasn't until they were 13, and best friends, that he told her that he'd dreamed he should go to the park, over and over, until he went and met her there.
"Maybe it was my sister you were supposed to meet," she quipped. He shoved her for that. Tillie was a sweet little girl, but she wasn't all there. She was slow, as they said. A little backwards.
"No, I'm pretty sure the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen was a redhead," he'd quipped, and although his voice was changing and squeaked a little when he said it, it didn't come out sounding as lame as all that. She'd blushed and smiled and looked at the ground for a long time, then leaned over to kiss his cheek.
At school, the boys teased him about her. "Ellie's too pretty for you," they'd tell him. They all wanted her, and would do anything to get her. And it was true. He was not a handsome boy. He was lanky, big-nosed, with hair that never looked clean, and his clothes were always dingy. By contrast, Ellie gleamed. But she never even seemed to notice. He thanked the stars every day for her, for her friendship, but he knew he wanted more.
At 15, he had a dream that woke him up in the middle of the night screaming and gasping. It was a horrible vision, of Ellie walking away from him, of him saying something so terrible to her that it was as if he had punched her, although the words of his dream meant nothing to him. In his dream, she walked from him into the arms of a handsome man, who held out a crying baby. "He will be your undoing," said the man, while the baby screamed, and they Ellie and the man were engulfed by a green light the same color as Ellie's eyes, leaving the baby lying there, howling in terror and fury. He walked to the baby and picked it up, but when he pushed back the blankets, it stared back with red, slitted eyes, and then leapt at him, clawing at his face. And he'd woken, shrieking.
He had no idea what it meant, but by now he knew how to interpret the meanings of his dreams. He needed to make sure Ellie never left him. If she did, it would destroy him.
He dreamed the nightmare every night for 3 months, during which he scrimped and saved every pence he could earn or find, until he had enough to buy what his dream demanded.
The ring he bought was made of cheap plated brass, with a chip of glass affixed to it, and even to his untrained eye, it looked like junk, but he knew the dream wouldn't stop until he had it in hand, until he had asked her. Once he'd had the ring in his possession, he had held it in his hand inside his pocket, warming it and rubbing it until he'd feared the cheap plating would come off. He'd woken up several times that night to find it clutched between his palms, as if he was praying with it.
After school the next day, they walked along their usual path, and when they reached the park where they had first met, where they stopped sometimes, he took her hand. They strolled along silently until they reached the small wooded area, and when they were invisible to anyone passing by, he turned, took her other hand, and looked her in the eyes.
"We have to talk," he'd said, after a long pause, his voice cracking, and she gasped.
Later, she'd tell him that she thought he was going to ditch her, that he'd found someone else. That shocked him. Someone else? Him? He wasn't even aware that there were other girls, except in a detached kind of way. But that's what she had thought.
"You're my best friend," he said. She tugged one hand away and covered her mouth, tears springing up in her eyes. "Don't cry! Please don't cry!" he cried, and he felt like throwing up, like running away, or sinking into the ground. Then he threw caution to the wind because there was no going back and he knew he was not a coward, no matter what anyone at school had ever said. He sank to one knee, and fixed his eyes on her nose, where she had a small pimple. Somehow the presence of that flaw allowed him to continue.
"You're my best friend," he repeated, "and I am nothing next to you. I'm not a good person except uhm… when I'm with you." He'd practiced this a million times over the last 3 months, and all his romantic intentions aside, he knew it sounded stupid. His voice wobbled and was too loud and sounded weird, like he'd swallowed a bubble. "You are so beautiful and I'm, er, not. Every boy at school is in love with you." She shook her head, but he continued before she could speak. "But I'm more in love with you then they will ever be and I know we're too young but please say that when we're old enough, you'll marry me…" this last coming out like one long word, and he gasped for breath and chanced to look into her eyes. They were wide with shock, and she was shaking her head in confusion. He felt his heart cave and fall into the ground, and his ears filled with buzzing as he realized he'd made a terrible mistake, that she was shaking her head, "no," and she would never want a worm like him.
But then she was down on her knees next to him, sobbing into his shoulder and saying something over and over, and it felt like a lifetime until he realized she was saying, over and over, "Yes, yes, yes."
When he tried to put the ring on her finger, she started laughing, still in tears, that he must an have impossible image of her "delicate" hands. The ring fit only on her pinky. Later, when he had a job teaching chemistry to secondary school children, he bought her a proper one, gold with a small but genuine diamond, and the brass ring went into a special place in her jewelry box.
They never actually married. It was as if that day in the park, in the shade of a few scraggly trees, they'd sealed themselves together, and no god or man ever needed preside over their love again. For years, they talked about "when we get married," but it never happened and eventually they stopped mentioning it. He couldn't remember ever caring. It was an oddity at the time, but eventually no one who knew cared, and no one who might have cared knew.
The dreams were worse a few years later. The year he was 18, they were filled with pain and anguish. When he and Ellie were together, he found himself clutching at her unexpectedly as if she would disappear at any second. She grew annoyed with his neediness, and he thought he might lose her to one of the handsome men she knew from the precinct, where she worked as a police constable.
The year they turned 19, they moved into small flat together, and his dreams were filled with horrors he could barely describe. He woke babbling incoherently about murders and torture, but he was the perpetrator of these crimes, not the victim. He grew morose and would spend hours staring at his hands as if wondering how they could commit such heinous acts as he slept.
"I'm living another life," he finally announced one evening, over dinner. He knew that usually, when people believed this, they felt their waking life was somehow less, and their dream life was the one they wanted. This could not have been further from the truth for Stephen.
Ellie eyed him flatly. "What?" she finally asked, tiredly. He had woken her the night before, again, and she had dark circles under her eyes.
"These dreams," he said, lamely, realizing it sounded thin. "They're some other life. Like I'm living another life in them. Like this isn't my real life. Or my only life."
She looked hurt, and that hurt him. "I don't want to live it," he insisted. "It not a good life. I'm a bad person in it. I told you before, I am not a good person without you, and in these dreams, you're not with me."
She smiled then, and took his hand, and her beauty was almost painful. "This is your life, Stephen," she said quietly. "Live it."
He vowed to her that he would.
The dreams got worse, but he taught himself to deal with them, to control his mind so that he stopped waking with screams. The pieces fit together like a brutal puzzle - the baby, the green light, the red-eyed, slit-eyed monster, and the feeling through it all that he had to keep Ellie at his side no matter what or worse still would happen.
When they were 21, Ellie died.
Not the real Ellie, but the dream version. He lived through her death and, for nights after, the recriminations on him - it was somehow his fault, although he was not sure how. In his grief, he could barely tell the difference between the real Ellie and the one who had been killed by someone he feared and worshipped, and he supposed this was the origin of his guilt. Seeing her lying still in sleep terrified him. He would find himself sobbing as he did the washing up, or walking to the market, weeping over his complicity in Ellie's death and over his loss of her, even as she held him and whispered that she loved him and that she was all right.
Later, he'd reflect on how lucky he was that Ellie didn't leave him during that time.
After that, things improved a little. They had a son whom Ellie insisted they name James, called Jimmy, after a great uncle who'd died in the War, and although he somewhat took after his father in looks, he was better looking than Stephen should have hoped for any child of his, and improved by having Ellie's beautiful eyes. Jimmy was a mama's boy, in a way - as a child, he was never close to Stephen, whom he seemed to fear and resent a little, but as he grew into adulthood, their relationship improved. Stephen could feel only pride as he watched his son play football, and later, followed his mother's footsteps into law enforcement. They shared a sense of right and wrong that frankly left Stephen baffled, but filled with mute love for these ferocious, proud, brave members of his family.
Over the years, the dreams quieted. Ellie was promoted, became an inspector. She enjoyed making sure that the bad guys got what as coming to them. Stephen always felt worried about this, as if he might be a bad guy himself, his hands stained with spots that only he could see, but those were only dreams, he reminded himself. Only sometimes they felt more real than his own life.
His son married a woman who was almost as beautiful as Ellie, with the same dark red hair. Stephen was eager for grandchildren and they came, in time. The oldest was James Jr., who was stiff and formal, yet like a serious version of Jimmy. Albert Stephen was next - a quirky, comedic child with a soul too old for his years, and they said he took after Stephen, though Stephen could not see it. And little Eleanor, who, though named after his Ellie, looked like Stephen's own mother come back to life - small and dark-skinned, with masses of long black hair that took more work than one could imagine, and a mind like Ellie's, with a personality like quicksilver set afire.
The dreams became almost boring, mirroring his own life, in some ways. Classes of uninspired children met his wrath on both sides of sleep (he enjoyed the subtle science of chemistry, but he loathed teaching most of the time, and was not well loved by many of his students), and he felt the oppression of school authorities both sleeping and waking. Sleep became a pale life, which suited him. He had all he could want in his waking life. Other people would talk about dreams as fantastic journeys into unreality, but he never knew that sensation. His dreams were, at best, boring - and at worst, nightmares that felt real.
Until the night he died.
If he'd thought it was bad to watch Ellie die in his dreams, it was nothing like slowly bleeding to death while someone who was almost exactly unlike his own son, yet almost exactly like him too, peered cooly into his eyes. He knew dreams could feel epic, and this one did - as if whole worlds hung in the balance, and his own death was a small sacrifice and one he deserved, as the same old red slitted eyes that had haunted him for years looked sadly on and told him they were sorry but he had to be killed, and an enormous snake ripped his throat out. He was going to join his love - he thought of her by another name, something not quite the same, but he knew it was his beautiful Ellie in all but name.
When he woke, he was hoarse, and he lay abed for hours, not even going in to work that day. He had never been sick before, but now he stared at the ceiling, until Ellie left work and came home to sit at his side, holding his hand, and he gazed into her eyes for hours. Perhaps he slept. But he did not dream.
He never dreamed those tortuous drams again. It was glorious to sleep and dream like a normal man. Normalcy was the only thing he craved.
At the zoo, there was one area left that they had not explored - a petting zoo with farm animals and some tamed, captive born creatures that let people near them. Sheep and goats, though common enough, were fun to pet, and a chicken flew up to Eleanor's shoulder and perched there. The grandchildren were laughing, and Ellie lead the way to an enclosure that held some lovely red deer. Inside the fence, a doe walked up to Ellie expectantly, and began to rub her head against Ellie's arm with enough force to push Ellie off balance. Stephen stepped forward to steady her, and time slowed, everything around him telescoping out and away, everyone seemingly frozen.
He swayed, his arm reaching toward Ellie, and felt something in his chest burst and sputter. Down to one knee he went, slowly. Another doe stepped up to him, as if sensing his need, and leaned down, whickering softly in his face as he sank to the ground. Then Ellie was there at his side, shoving the doe away and leaning down to take him in her arms, understanding what was happening, and then his son was there, leaning over him, saying, "Da? Da?" Ellie and Jimmy's twinned eyes searched his face. He locked gazes with each in turn, as he lay in the dirt, in the heaven that was the lap of the woman he'd loved since he was 10, and he finally and quietly left the life he'd tried to live, a false life perhaps, one lived in a world with no magic except for love.
~SSLESSLESSLESSLE~
Author's Note: We read fantasy to remove ourselves from the real world, with its boring normalcy. But in my imaginings, I thought of a man almost like our hero, but not. A muggle in a world without magic, who can't shake the feeling that he's living another life, that he's living a lie. But what he has given up is more than repaid: unlike Severus, Stephen gets the girl.
I know this won't be popular, and I'm okay with that!