A/N

Hey all! I just wanted to preface this first chapter with the fact that although the story will mostly be a drama and of course a romance, there will also be some scattered elements of horror. If you're the type of person that could be upset by that, I have included these symbols: ((( to indicate when those sequences will start and end, that way you can skip it. (And, just to let you know, there will be a quick scene like that in this first chapter, so look out for those three parenthesis if need be!)

thanks for reading. Enjoy!

Night 1

Hermione awoke with a stiff neck, her back arched in a cat-like fetal position, curled up on cold stone with a pool of drool smeared against her left cheek.

She felt a sharp twinge of panic as her eyes adjusted to the dark, and disorientedly ran her hands down her sides, searching for her wand. It wasn't there. No doubt it was still in her dorm, tucked safely under the pillow that she should be sleeping on.

She stretched her legs out and used her sleep-heavy arms to lift herself up, standing and swaying for a moment as her eyes flitted around the empty hallway.

Then, taking a final look at where she'd ended up, she dusted the fine layer of loose stone and dirt from the castle floor from off her pjs, and began to pad her way down the hall; moving in the direction of the Gryffindor towers.

Her feet were so cold they were practically numb, and she stumbled over sharp pieces of rubble that she kicked to the side as she moved. Her brain was still foggy from sleep induced confusion, but even in such a state she was able to marvel at just how far she made it this time- nearly half way to the dungeons.

It took her a full twenty minutes to make it back to the right side of the castle, clutching herself for warmth as she snuck through the dark corridors. And when her teeth began to chatter, she silently cursed herself for accidentally falling asleep without her usual preparations.

Next time I'll have it all in order. She thought bitterly.

Next time- socks, jumper, hat (maybe), and wand. Definitely wand.

Night 2

Because she didn't want to worry about where she would find herself when she woke, Hermione simply opted to stay up for the rest of the night; studying instead of sleeping.

It was a judgement call she made more often than she was willing to admit, but that she could see the effects of anytime she happened to catch her reflection in the mirror- her face a grey pallor, the skin under her eyes puffy and pronounced with discoloration.

Still though, it meant no nightmares and no waking to find herself in the middle of walking, or curled up on the castle floor.

And maybe, just maybe, she could consider that a slight improvement.

Night 3

Pulling an all nighter had its drawbacks. At this point she was used to them, but it didn't make the after effects any less unpleasant. Hermione had felt strange and sluggish for the entire day, trudging through her lessons and avoiding any and all interaction with the other Gryffindors, rubbing her eyes every five minutes to keep them from drooping.

But now that the day was finally done, she reckoned she should at least try to get some sleep, even if she knew for a fact that she wouldn't feel tired until the early hours of the morning, and that if she did manage to drift off she'd either have a horrible nightmare or wake to find herself in some unknown location. Perhaps both.

So she made absolutely sure everything was in order before she crawled into bed. She dawned a pair of heavy socks and a thick wool jumper, and triple checked that her wand was safely secured in the pocket of her pyjama pants before encasing herself in the warm comfort of her Gryffindor covers.

It took hours for her to actually fall asleep, and when she did it was heavy and thankfully dreamless, like a thick blanket of exhaustion that weighed her down completely, and smothered everything it touched.

But it didn't last long.

Less than three hours later and she'd startled herself into waking. Only, like she could have guessed, she wasn't in her dorm. She was on her knees, and her hands were cold and raw from shifting the weight of damp, crumbled stone that was heaped up in piles on the floor.

When she became coherent she was in the act of shoving a rather heavy lump of castle debris off to the side, as if she was searching for something lost within the rubble.

Hermione froze, blinked, and slowly dusted off her hand before using it to rub the sleep from her eyes. She got up to stand and let out a little cry as her knees threatened to buckle. Apparently she had been at it for quite a while, if the prickling numbness in her legs was anything to go by, or even the embarrassingly significant indent in the pile of stone.

She clutched the castle wall for support as she waited for the sensation to return, blinking down at the ground and listening to the stillness and the silence of the castle.

It was times like these when two conflicting thoughts would pop into her head.

First; thank God no one knows about this. Thank God no one has seen me do these strange, obviously concerning things.

And second; maybe I should get help.

But, like always, she quickly smothered the second one. Hermione Granger didn't need help. Hermione Granger didn't need other people to fix her problems for her, she was perfectly capable of fixing them herself.

She just- didn't know exactly how to do that, which was a very scary thing for her to admit. As it turned out, researching insomnia and sleep walking only got you as far as understanding all the intricacies of why and how such a thing was happening, but it didn't necessarily help to reverse the problem. And she'd brewed and consumed so much dreamless sleep potion that even the smell made her instantly sick to her stomach. Besides, at the end of the day it was just a bandaid for her problems.

But, and this may have been scarier than not knowing how to fix it, part of her had already begun to accept it, to believe that this was just who she was now. This was how she lived.

Which she supposed could be fine for her- as long as she was the only one who knew.

Night 4

It was as if her subconscious mind was aware that she had a blissfully dreamless night, and wanted to make up for it by assaulting her with the absolute worst of her nightmares.

In reality she probably only slept a total of two, maybe three hours, but for her it felt like an eternity of watching her worst fears come to life.

(((

They were always a twisted version of what actually happened during the war, and what could have been, sprinkled with some utterly surreal, utterly terrifying shit. She would relive the moments she saw her dead friends; rapid flashes of Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Lavender; their faces stuck in a freeze-frame of horror, splashes of blood outlining their face like a morbid homage to Jackson Pollock.

And as if that wasn't enough, her mind liked to invent new scenarios too. Harry, dead in Hagrid's arms, only instead of coming back to life his limbs were nearly all torn away, dangling by shreds of skin, his mouth impossibly wide, an all consuming blackness pitched like a tunnel at the back of his throat.

Ron, stuck in a pool of dried blood, holding him to the floor and crippling him as if he was encased in cement.

Her parents, their bodies elongated and wrongly twisted like they were made out of clay, each wrapped around a leg of Voldemort, clinging to him like demented children.

The dream she'd been having just now was an amalgamation of these and other like images, only it was closing out with a new twist that was honestly impressive in just how odd and disturbing it was.

Hermione was on the floor, looking up at Bellatrix's face as she was being tortured. Then, as she screamed and writhed, Bellatrix slowly began to open her mouth in a wide, gaping smile. Similar to the haunting image of harry, Hermione found herself strangely transfixed by the dark expanse nestled within the witch's mouth, her eyes locked onto what seemed like a bottomless pit, shrouded by rows of jagged decaying teeth.

And once she saw it she couldn't tear her gaze away. In fact, it began to pull her in like a blackhole until all of a sudden she was there; literally inside of Bellatrix's mouth. She could smell the stench of her teeth, feel her swollen protruding gums and the slick heat of her tongue.

She tried to scream- but her voice filled the cave of Bellatrix's mouth, and when the sound came out it wasn't her voice at all: it was Bellatrix's laugh.

The louder she screamed, the louder Bellatrix laughed, until it was reverberating painfully in her head; until she was sure she couldn't take it anymore and that she'd die from the pressing weight of it, from the pounding in her skull, and the sound and the stench-

(((

She woke up, drenched in cold sweat, and the first thing she did was fall onto her back with a loud thud, effectively getting the wind knocked out of her.

She was wide-eyed and startled as she caught her breath, half expecting to see Bellatrix looming over her in the dark. But no one else was there; Hermione was alone in another abandoned corridor, and she had been- she had been climbing.

She wasn't sure how she'd even done it, but she knew that she must have fallen a decent distance, and that the only thing in front of her was a half blown up statue of a knight and a tall alcove covered by a tapestry. It seemed she had somehow been trying to climb up the wall, to get to the top of the alcove for whatever unfathomable reason.

Shaking off her bewilderment, Hermione leaned her head back onto the stone floor, and let her breath finally start to settle.

Her wand was still with her and she numbly pulled it from her pocket, checking to make sure she hadn't snapped it, and thanking Merlin when she found it wholly intact. She was also belatedly grateful that she didn't crack her head open and die, which she supposed was another blessing, given the fact that she was apparently attempting to scale the castle walls like some deranged gremlin.

She let herself lie there for a long time, breathing deeply on the cold ground, and slowly recovering from the fear of her dream and the very real pain that was now running down her spine.

That had been a bad one. Perhaps not the worst, but she couldn't deny that things were ramping up. She wished that it would all somehow plateau, that the lack of sleep would become manageable, or that she would eventually be desensitized to the horrific sequences that plagued her in her dreams. But the feeling of exhaustion and of panic, of adrenaline coursing through her body and making her blood pump faster, was becoming an ever present fixture of her nights.

It felt like she had never left the battle. Like it swallowed her whole, and now she was living out the rest of her life in the belly of that beast.

She blinked up at the castle ceiling, the high, noble arches of it that were still mostly intact, and allowed herself a few seconds of self pity.

She didn't wallow in it though. It was just a passing moment- a brief acknowledgment that her life should be been better, that really there was no good reason for her to be suffering this much. She didn't deserve it. As far as she could tell, she had done everything right.

But maybe that was life. Maybe, that was war. There never was a good reason for suffering, never a justifiable answer for why bad things happen to good people. They just happen. And they had happened to her, and to the people she loved, and if she focused on that and that alone, then she would be lying here all night, staring up at a drafty ceiling.

She had to remind herself that in reality, Harry was alive. Ron was alive. Her parents were fine, even if they didn't know who she was, and somehow, impossibly, that had to be enough.

So she forced the self pity back into some lonesome corner of her mind, and got up. Slowly at first, and then all at once, ignoring the ache in her muscles and the way her legs shook faintly from the weight of her body. She turned away from the dark expanse of the ruined corridor, and without looking back, she walked to the Gryffindor towers, watching through the tattered windows as the rising sun began to unveil a new day.

Night 5

At first, Hermione had thought that Hogwarts, in the current state that it was in, was a hollow thing. Like the shed skin of a snake, an empty chasm that only held a faint remembrance of what had been. Devoid, abandoned, and so completely removed from its origins that it had become a separate entity altogether, there to stand in contrast with the pleasantries of the past.

She could remember the fear she felt when she first woke up, standing in a corridor that was half blown to bits. The restoration of Hogwarts had been and was even now, slow to take effect. As it stood currently, the professors had managed to restore a little more than half of the building; but back then so little of it had been fixed, unable to heal from the physical trauma of dark magic. There were large chasms of open space scattered throughout, significant sections of wall ripped away to reveal the cold night air, the distant sway of trees, and light speckles of stars.

It was in one such place that Hermione had her introduction to this whole affair. She had woken up from a bad dream to find that she was standing near the edge of a torn up hallway, her body rocked by the wind that rolled off the tops of the trees in the forbidden forest and into the demolished castle. It had been incredibly unsettling and discombobulating, especially when she realized that she was in her pj's and without a wand, with no recollection of how she came to be that way. She had ran back to her dorm, thinking she had somehow been transported back to the night of the battle before she realized that she was alone, and that she had been sleep walking through the abandoned wings.

But then it kept happening, again and again. And because of that, her initial fear of this 'different' version Hogwarts began to morph into a sort of morbid curiosity. Sure, she was still trying to cope from the horrid nightmares and her inability to catch a good nights sleep, but her relationship with the castle itself seemed somehow separate from all that.

She began to want to roam the halls at night. The unfinished ones, the restricted ones that were a mess of stone and glass, still obviously mangled from what had happened. Somehow, it felt better to see it; the embodiment of the event that had torn through all of their lives and then forced them to deal with the aftermath. Besides, it wasn't as if it was difficult. There weren't any spells stopping her from wandering in because the added magic would slow the restoration process, and on top of this everyone seemed to assume that simply no one would want to travel to this part of the castle. Even the ghosts avoided it, which was saying something.

But to her, it was like a strange sort of therapy; to feel as if she had her own secret world, where she could study and process all of the events that everyone else was too hurt to talk about, confronting their lingering existence rather than hoping it would all simply go away.

It was this gradual change that had her taking longer walks back to her dorm some nights; skimming her hand over torn tapestries and slashed paintings, making pathways with her feet through the rubble, and cataloguing all the changes she saw.

Tonight was turning out to be one of those nights, when she felt that strange urge to explore even further than her dreaming state took her. She didn't know why exactly, she only knew that she didn't want to go back to her bed yet and that somehow doing this was better.

Later though, she would greatly regret this decision.

She had been absentmindedly wandering about the dark corridors, her feet crunching over bits of broken glass, allowing her thoughts to escape into some faraway place they liked to go. But, quite surprisingly, her internal ramblings were cut short by a not so distant sound, un-belonging to her.

Thankfully her wand was tucked safely in her sleeve, which made for easy access when she suddenly became aware of the footsteps that were echoing through the corridor she was about to come up on.

Immediately she stilled, and listened quietly for a few seconds, just to be sure she wasn't imagining it. Then, when she was sure she hadn't, she pulled off to the side; hiding in the shadows with her wand gripped tightly in her hand.

The steps were erratic, and meandering; they scuffed and came to a stop then slowly started back up again, as if whoever it was was taking their time exploring the abandoned halls.

After only a moment of listening to them, her heart rate started to settle, and her curiosity kicked in. She began inching slowly along the wall, peeking ever so slightly around the corner to see who could possibly be up so late, traversing the broken wings of Hogwarts, like her.

She only caught a glimpse of him, but it was enough. His striking blonde hair was an obvious beacon that immediately sparked recognition within her.

He was wearing an oversized jumper and what she assumed was a pair of shorts (or even, God forbid, boxers), and he didn't have any shoes on. It was very odd. But she didn't have much time to analyze it, she only saw the back of him before he moved into what was once an abandoned classroom, gone from sight just as quickly as he had come into view.

She blinked at the empty space he left behind.

For a second she thought; maybe this is another nightmare, maybe I'm still dreaming. But she was far too lucid, and she knew that she wasn't, that she couldn't be. That he was really there, for whatever strange and inexplicable reason.

After a moment of contemplation she turned, and as quietly as possible, walked back the way she came.

But all the while her brain was whirring with questions; with possibilities and suspicion.

It was the first time she'd ever seen anyone else down here, the first time she'd ever encountered another soul on her late night walks.

And it made her wonder-

What the fuck was Draco Malfoy up to?

.

.

.

Thanks for sticking it out until the end of this chapter, I really hope you guys liked it! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also if you are someone that suffers from sleep walking, insomnia, or any other sleep related disorders, there are some fantastic recourses on the CDC website that I highly suggest taking a look at. Stay safe and get good rest!