A/N: For Macceh's Three AM Challenge.
"Petunia!"
Pause.
"Petunia!"
Pause.
Insistent jabbing now. "Petuniapetuniapetuniapet-"
"What?" Petunia finally mumbled, forcing her eyes half open. Lily's worried face stared back at her.
"Are you awake?" she whispered.
"Of course I'm awake. I didn't have much of a choice, did I?" Petunia heaved her tired body into sitting position and rubbed her eyes, "What's so urgent that you had to wake me up in the middle of the night?"
"It's not the night, it's three AM," Lily said, crawling on to the end of the bed.
"Well, that's just as bad a time," Petunia snapped.
"I'm sorry."
"Look, what do you want?"
Lily flinched as though struck. A part of Petunia instantly regretted her sharpness, but she didn't apologize. Instead, she scooted a little farther away from her sister, curling her knees up to her chest. The gap between them felt cold and obvious in the shadowy bedroom, and she hated it, but she didn't try to do anything to change it.
"I…I…I had a dream," Lily admitted.
Petunia sighed loudly. "A dream. Do you really think three in the morning is the appropriate time to be discussing this?"
"I'm sorry," Lily repeated. There had been a time when neither of them had had to be so rueful with each other, but that time had disappeared with the arrival of the Snape boy. Stupid Severus, with his know-it-all attitude and horrid magic…
"I dreamed about…you, actually," Lily continued, "Me and you were in the playground, we were playing on the swings, and suddenly everything got dark. When I looked around, we were in Azkaban – that's the wizard prison -"
"I know," Petunia interrupted through gritted teeth.
"- and there were these black shadow things coming towards us, and then I got really scared, because I realized they were Dementors." She paused, her eyes round with fright. "Do you know what a Dementor is?"
"Yes," Petunia hissed, clenching her fingers. Stupid Snape and stupid Lily and their stupid chats about their oh-so precious magic…
"Well, there were Dementors, and suddenly Sev came out of nowhere and saved me, but he wouldn't save you, so I started screaming that you should run away, but you didn't, and the Dementors came closer, and then… and then I woke up." She ended in a whisper, her eyes round with fright.
There was a short silence.
"You are okay, aren't you?" Lily finally asked.
No, Petunia wasn't okay. Because it wasn't fair, none of it, the fact that everyone liked Lily and no one liked her, the fact that her sister was so sweet and innocent and still she kept hurting her, the fact that she wanted it to stop but she didn't know how. It wasn't fair and it wasn't okay.
"I'm fine," Petunia grumbled, "You're the one that needs checking. Waking someone at three AM just to tell them a dream; honestly!" She flopped back on to her bed and pulled the blankets up over her head. Her eyes were still wide open, though, as Lily sniffed quietly and padded back to her bed. They were still open as the gap between her and her sister expanded and the Dementors whispered, and even when she closed them, she could still see it all etched behind her eyes. An eternal image of what they had become.
A/N: I know, I use a lot of run-on-type sentences, but I always do, when I'm writing about fear. I always thought it gave more of a fearful, jumbled, nightmaric feeling.