Yeah...I don't own Harry Potter. Or the quote in the summary (which isn't in the story).


Waking Nightmares

Even now, sleep eluded him.

It was a ridiculous concept, he realized, an impossible truth that he couldn't understand. Surely he should be sleeping, that was what death was wasn't it? Sleeping without the dreams? An escape from the nightmares?

But he had the nightmares, waking terrors that felt real simply because they were. His inner demons coming to life, ruthlessly honest and almost funny in that gut-wrenchingly painful kind of way that signaled the beginning of the end.

But this was the end. Or was it? He didn't know. Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of moment of wisdom that came with being dead? Some kind of revelation or epiphany where he would learn the meaning of everything?

Unless, perhaps he wasn't dead. Perhaps he only wished he was.

He had done it before after all, in the first moments when he was in Azkaban. He had been forsaken by the world, and believed to have committed a crime so horrendous that he still could not speak of it (couldn't speak of anything at all). In that moment, he wanted to tear the world apart, split himself into so many pieces that nothing could put him back together again.

It seemed he'd got his wish, years too late, and not at all in the way he had wanted it. He had wanted oblivion, pieces of his abandoned life, not pieces of his threadbare soul.

But it was too late to change it now. (Be careful what you wish for) He had fallen, and nothing was going to undo it - it was already undone – nothing could rewind the unwinding threads of him (they had started long before this moment), nor destroy the worn remnants of his life. It was over, complete, this was the place he would spend the rest of the time he had…however long that was. Something akin to eternity.

The irony of this was not lost on him of course, and if he could have laughed he would have. (if he would ever laugh again)

In Azkaban he had wished for death, and now he almost wished for Azkaban.