Riddle
Dreams have been defined throughout ages of times past in a myriad of ways, but I have found that every description is, in truth, the same: A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring a person's mind. A cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal. An unrealistic or self-deluding fantasy. Day-dreams, hallucinations, even nightmares have been characterized by their falsity drawn of deepest desires and fears, buried deep within our minds beneath inexorable layers of logic and reason and rationality; in the subconscious- the liar of the brain, twisting reality to the form we want it, seeing ourselves the way we wish we were. Dreams are built of fantasy, ideas and hopes set free to roam and consume us only when the mind drifts and is able to give way to the darkest yearnings, long since forgotten and brushed off as only fiction.
But I have never heard anyone talk about the hidden veracity of dreams. More specifically, the veracity of my dreams. As I mentioned before, dreams are stitched not only of illogicality but of lust and want and need- now tell me: what is more logical, what is more honest than opening ourselves to our deepest desires? Sifting through and accepting what we find, finally knowing ourselves. I believe that this is the most truthful thing of all.
But my dreams speak truth in other ways, in flashes of smeared grey and red, blending past and present into unfathomable blurs. Each night I lay staring at the walls, serpent green melting into shadow before my very eyes and tormenting me with bygone and needless pain. My followers (because can I really count among them a single "friend"?) say that nightmares are for infants, but no child would ever dream the things that I dream. Days drift and I am lost in my mind, fleeting retention of startling clarity flickering forever behind my eyelids of unnamed horrors both experienced and yet to be experienced. Sometimes I wonder, if I could banish these thoughts forever, would I? And the answer I search for is an inexplicable no.
In my dreams I scream, but when I wake I am silent.
Sometimes one of my more audacious "friends" will try to talk to me, invade my deep layers of psychology in an attempt to truly understand who I "really am". Maybe it's because my mother abandoned me that I am quick to anger. Maybe it's because I was raised in a care home that I feel nothing for other's suffering. Maybe it's because I was found with muggles that I speak the term "mudblood".
Maybe it's because of these things that after every interrogation, I torture you again and again in my sleep watching you bleed but never allowed to reach silent serenity, before I wake with wet eyes and a barren hunger that only my night-time expressions seem to satisfy. I've been told that on the surface I am cold. Years of learned manipulation and carefully constructed indifference concealing the fact that underneath I am blazing hot. Resentment and anger and most of all hate blistering just below my skin, scorching my intestines, blackening my heart to softly glowing embers. Pieces of me escape in flashes of violent rage that disappear almost as quickly as they come to be and I am poised, composed, and icy once more. Vaguely I wonder what is wrong with my brain, but then I turn to wonder what is wrong with this world because all I have seen in my brief stay on Earth is shadow and weakness. I have been weak, mocked and tormented, but in the end it was I who held the power and relished in every whimper extracted from rosy, infantile lips. And it was you who were weak beneath blackened glare and fingertips. Everything has become twisted and while my mind remains clear, my subconscious lacks such clarity and I wander between fear and desire until the two are no longer distinguishable and my world is coloured a stunning grey.
In my dreams I am not human, and I bathe in the blood of infants.
This is where my philosophy comes in, and dream supersedes reality. I have spent my time at Hogwarts well, I have learnt of magic, how to use it for my own advances. I have discerned chambers of divine, haunting secrets watching blood run with an intimate kind of fascination. I have attested my beliefs once and for all and put to rest the knowledge running through my core. I know I am exceptional. Why do I have to hide it? Muggles ought to cower in dread from us, not the other way around and wizard-kind has existed too long in fearful sanctuary. Benign and jaded.
It draws out emotions long since buried behind stone walls of shame and hurt and I will not be weak again.
In my dreams I fly above a crowd of people with no faces.
And so, here we sit, my cronies departed to allow my favourite teacher and I time to discuss your latest homework assignment. The table stretches a furnished glass between us, lucid as my voice, seducing you with promise of the admiration you so willing give to others yet ache to receive in return. And so, you give in, apprehension lacing your expression into quiet uncertainty, but my eyes reflect your fear and you are severed by the curve of my lips.
"Horocruxes" I ask and you oh so willingly oblige.
Now my head is filled with anticipation and dark desire flooding through my nerves and winding around my every bone, caressing every organ. Every fibre of my being is taut and tensed and for the first time in my life, future is all I see stretching miles before me; grandiose and elegant. I can captivate with a single lilt, seduce with a dark-eyed glance and I baptise my disciples one by one in agony and atonement, until they are branded irretrievably as mine, their minds and arms tattooed. By the time I leave this school, we will be indestructible.
Plans unfold, starting with a girl. I will never forget her wide, translucent eyes, reflecting green of the locket around her neck and the honeyed breathe that escapes her ruby lips for the final time. I hold her in my arms as she slips into nothingness, I am irresistible poison running through her veins. Then comes the pain- it sends shudders through me and wracks my entire body. It spirals cracks through my core, but my soul is torn and I am one step closer.
In my dreams I paint in the red finality I will never know.
I no longer have to manipulate, and my dexterity is second only to my power. I am within fingers grasp of the ambition I've seen only countless times yet never with my eyes. But still, I dream and now my visions have evolved into darkness and light and emotion I left behind long ago. I have made the world fear me and now even shadows scatter at my approach, yet they leave behind them trails of dusty light; ageless and unceasing and no matter how much authority I edict, the flickers do not waver. Golden shards penetrate the fragmented piece of myself I permit to remain, staining my darkness in piercing light. Enduring years unchanging and unyielding does nothing to soften the pale-edged unease clawing at my subconscious, and the solitude is searing. In attaining my greatest longing, I have also realised my greatest fear and I am left an immortal shadow.
In my dreams I am trapped in a photograph, the sun slowly bleeding away the colour.