Nightmares by Verity
Once, she had a dream.
She dreams that she stands on a wide open field in a dress of soft cream; a gentle breeze blows. There are flowers tangled in her hair. Her bare feet are buried amongst dandelions.
A man comes up behind her, and ties a blindfold on her; she laughs, a lovely laugh of happy days and lovers; and chases him, blind; finally she catches up with him. She tumbles him into the grass, wrapping her arms around him.
And someone unties the blindfold, and he is Snape, looking tired and weary. Beaten.
"No," she says, "It wasn't supposed to happen like this."
"Nothing ever does," he answers her.
"I fuck up everything."
"No." And in this dream he leans forward, as he never had, and holds her. The breeze whispers around her face as he plucks the tangled and wilting flowers from her hair, sedulously, meticulously compassionate.
"You're only a dream," she whispers. "He hates me."
"Do you really think that, Hermione?"
She woke up screaming, and after that invested in sleeping pills. But always as she swallowed them, she remembered the bitter taste of asphodel and wormwood, and a fairytale life once-upon-a-time.