Running. Running. Always running, that's how it always was. Her legs stumbled over the uneven ground as she ran in blind panic, clutching her most revered possession tightly in her hand. The scenery passed by in a blur; tree branches whipping her face and arms as she whizzed by, desperate to escape. Her ragged breath came out in puffs of white smoke as the stitch in her size increased with her panic. There was no hope. They would catch up with her soon and then it would be over. She could hear them, their dark presence growing stronger, relentlessly pursuing her.
She let out a choked sob as she stumbled again over a tree root and fell in an undignified heap on the ground, bruising her palms in the fall. She trembled with fear and horror as she realized that they had caught up with her. They reached out to her, with hoods covering their faces, mocking her with their cruel, high laughter. As one of them reached out to her, she screamed in terror and dread; dread for what they would do to her.
She woke up screaming as well, a high-pitched scream that reflected her terror and fear. She sat upright in bed, tears streaming down her face, heartbeat galloping, palms sweating and clutched the bed sheets to her trembling form.
As the horror of the nightmare faded away, she relinquished the now wet sheets from her slippery grasp, reached over to her nightstand and flipped on the lamplight. She reached into the drawer of her nightstand and with fumbling hands, retrieved her dream journal. She had started keeping the journal two months ago, after she had first started receiving the same type of horrific nightmares. After she quickly jotted down her newest nightmare, she flipped through the pages of the journal and looked through it to skim over her previous nightmares. They were all generally the same, she was always running from something, clutching a prized object in her hand. She could never distinguish what the object was, only that it was her most prized possession. She has surmised that it was some type of weapon because during previous nightmarish encounters with the same dark beings, she had used the object to shoot some type of laser like beam at her pursuers and slowed them down. She had never been able to actually run away or escape from her pursuers, only evade them for some time before they inevitably caught up with her. Then the real horrors would begin, they would begin by torturing her. She didn't know quite how they did it. They seemed to utter some sort of nonsensical word like Sectumsempra or Crucio and then she would feel blinding pain. Crucio seemed to cause the worst pain, which spread out through her body and felt like concentrated hot needles were being driven into her defenseless flesh. Sectumsempra felt more like a deep cut, that skewered through the defenses of her clothing and ripped into her flesh. This would continue for a while. She never knew how long, it could be minutes, hours, days; at this point she usually passed out during the nightmare and woke up screaming in her own bed.
She was thankful that today at least she had woken up before they had started torturing her. The dreams were always variations of the same nightmare and god did she hate it with a burning passion. She had tried so many methods to get rid of the accursed nightmares. She had seen a hypnotist, taken sleeping pills, and to her everlasting shame, talked to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist had recommended a dream journal so she could keep track of the dreams. She was supposed to bring the dream journal in every week and they would discuss her nightmares in detail. The psychiatrists had evaluated from her vivid nightmares that her body was under an immense amount of stress and was coping by producing the nightmares. She hadn't exactly agreed with that evaluation though, she was not particularly stressed about anything in her life. She had a stable job, a loving family, supportive friends, no partner, but she was working on that. Still she had kept the dream journal in hopes that it would produce some type of mitigating result. She was frustrated though, the dream journal wasn't helping, in fact that nightmares had gotten worse lately. The nightmares came almost every night and the overwhelming fear that she felt during the nightmares seemed to be amped up a notch every night.
She sighed, running a hand through her sweaty, knotted up curls. She took a quick peek at her alarm clock and realized that it was three am in the morning. At this rate she would never get back to sleep. She didn't know how long she could keep going on like this, at this rate she would become an insomniac and never get any sleep. These days she was lucky if she was able to sleep for three hours a night without waking up from a nightmare. She knew she wouldn't be able to get any more sleep today. She threw the dream journal back into the nightstand drawer, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, slipped her feet into her slippers, shuffled over to her dressing gown, which was flung over a chair, and slipped it on. She slowly walked through her darkened apartment to her kitchen, flipping on lights to chase away the remnants of her fear.
She quickly gathered the ingredients necessary to make strong, black coffee from her cabinets and brewed up a batch of her favorite, piping hot confection. Sitting with her head in her hands at her kitchen table, she sighed again. She needed some answers fast, before she became totally crazy or died from a heart attack from the nightmares in her sleep. She knew that there was only one option left, the option she had been dreading because it involved some unsavory questions directed at her. She was going to call her mother. She made a distasteful face at the thought but realized that her mother was probably the only who could help her through this mess. She loved her mother but her incessant questions sometimes came across as overbearing and patronizing. Of course, her mother already disapproved of the fact that she was living in a totally different continent than her parents, so it seemed that she would never be able to totally appease the highly intelligent woman.
Looking at the kitchen clock, she realized that it was already four am, meaning that in England it was seven pm, the perfect time to call her mother. She quickly gathered whatever courage she had left, shuffled over to her telephone and dialed the number of her mother. Internally she was hoping that her mother wouldn't pick up the phone, but her hopes were dashed when the phone was picked up on the second ring by an overly inquisitive and sardonic voice.
"Well hello Rose Weasley, it's certainly been awhile since you last called."
A/N: Well, this happens to be the first story I've ever written so I would appreciate any reviews expressing your hatred, love, or indifference. Tell me what you think of this story, what I could do to make it better and what you think is going to happen next. Disclaimer: I'm only going to say this once:"I solemnly swear that I own absolutely none of the characters of the wonderful J.K. Rowling. The only part of this story I own is the plot and the occasional OC character that might be part of the story."