"It's over...aahh, I am through with it all." he tossed and turned for no more than a minute before he lay fast asleep.
And no sooner had he fallen asleep did darkness seep into his restless head. Cold, freezing, hungry, starving, Severus started, opened his eyes, and looked about him in a frenzy. Such fright entered him as never it had before as a dark, still, and silent shadow emerged behind his bedcurtains. Only on the other side- only an illusion- unreal- this whole night- 'just let it go', hissed that besieging voice of reason. As a child who finds himself trapped in a nightmare, held captive by illusional creatures of peril does, Severus shut tight his eyes and laid his head firmly down upon his pillow. Immediately, it fell through, down, below his bed, below his floor, below any depth known to common man. His body followed after, and the falling became endless.
"A dream can't hurt you...you can neither feel nor hurt...but in an illusion, you can hurt...You can feel..." Black's words jumped at him as he searched for comfort, for his own personal salvation.
He was thrust to the ground with a stinging pain erupting from all parts of his meager and weakening body.
'You can hurt...you can feel what it is you believe you can.' And what he felt now was something cold, dark, and impossibly slaughtered with unforgiveness rapidly approaching him- as he looked up, his fears checked in with reality as the cruelest-looking dementor he could ever envision floated above him in a fearless stone-like descent. In quick and utter panic, he began trying to call up a happy memory- and now, in morbid peril, his looming fate drawing ever nearer, he realised that there were none. They had all been destroyed by his own greed- dementors suck away happiness- yet he could feel nothing being drawn away.
"How could this be?" he questioned in a cracking voice. Trembling, he looked up at the creature and said,
"Take me if you must, but nothing more can be withdrawn. I regret to say you are wasting your time on an empty soul who has nothing to offer. I'm sorry." He choked in a raspy whisper.
It was coming, not heeding his plea, drawing close now, closer to his face. Finding there was nothing more he could do, Severus laid down and closed his eyes.
Coldness, jagged, icy hate, was being drawn from him, the pain was piercing his flesh and soul. All at once, scenes flashed before him, of things past, present, and still yet to come. He saw Narcissa, his love, crying out in anger at his greed; there was the humble beggar, freeezing in the cold; Dennis Creevy, being lowered into the ground before weeping mourners, there were his parents...his empty chair; there was Gilderoy and Carrie, his only family, eating a dismal dinner alone, without him; there was his empty chair. There was his empty grave. And there it was.
And here he was. He gasped for air and found it, wonderful, still there, still willing to accept him; the lost child who flees from home in misjudgement, then returns to family who is so overthrown with gladness that they forget their past anger.
And now gladness was truly what he had.