Chapter 4 – Demented Dreams

I'm running across an all too familiar path... I push through the crowds, following the rat into the darkness of the night. We reach an abandoned bridge and that's when I see them... James, Lily... Voldemort. They're right in front of me and I start running towards them, trying to save them, trying to change fate. My feet grow heavy and I can't take another step as I'm compelled to watch my friends die by the hand of that monster. I scream into the night and charge at him, but I'm knocked off my feet as one of Peter's spells hits me square in the chest, sending me flying over the bridge railing. I'm falling... with my arms opened as if I'm embracing the night, with my eyes facing the darkened sky... I'm falling. It's a feeling that I cannot describe... it's freedom, but more than that... no worries, no thoughts, no fear... pure freedom. For a moment I feel like I know eternity. And then I hit the water...

Bang

I wake up in a pool of sweat, my pulse racing. I've been having weird dreams for a while now and they're tearing me apart. Sleep was my last refuge from all this and now all that's left of my sanctuary are the same depressing images, the same faces haunting me every night. I get up and start pacing up and down the length of my still moonlit cell.

My eyes fall upon the carvings I have made on the window sill. Ten years... has it actually been that long? Harry might be at Hogwarts by now... he'd have found it all out... My heart aches at the thought that my godson might think me nothing more than a murderer... a traitor...

What I wouldn't give to be out there, next to him... comforting his sorrow... acting like the father he never got to know. What I wouldn't give to have my old life back... I'm sick of all of it... sick of the dark, sick of the solitude... of my thoughts and of the coldness of these walls. What could possibly be worse? This is my hell!

Voices from nearby cells resound in the silence of the night. Their screeches never stop... Words of traitors and betrayal, words of vengeance... at least I'm not Peter's only enemy, this place is full of them. I listen as they pledge their vows to seek him out, how they call out to their old master... Voices from the past... voices for the future...

I lay down on the bed again, my hands beneath my head as I stare at the low ceiling. It's almost dawn and the light's growing brighter as the sun comes up.
Something starts moving across the corridor...
Breakfast time...

Another day dragged by in the hypnotically slow pace of this fortress. This routine is so weary and I'm too tired to think anymore.

I pace towards my bed and lay down on it, staring at the ceiling. Staying awake forever seems a better option than going through yet another night of torture. But I'm to weak to fight it... my eyelids feel heavy and unwillingly I fall asleep...

The room starts spinning and I find myself in the middle of a crowded city street. Houses, cars, people everywhere... I gaze around in wonder, as I wasn't expecting to be here. My dreams, as real as they seem, never vary from the same street, the same people, the same pain... But now, this... all this... is different. As I move through the passing crowd everything goes quiet... so quiet... and motionless. One could discern a needle falling on the ground a mile away in these conditions. Colour seems to fade away from everything... it's like somebody has stopped time in its tracks.

I turn around startled by a muffled noise in the distance. Something's coming my way, making the ground tremble in its path. Then I notice it... a huge, awesome ball of reddened flames is ploughing through the town, heading straight for me. I try to run, to hide away... but it's pointless, I cannot move... I cannot scream. Sweat drips off my forehead and my hands are clutched to my stomach, trying to force me to wake up. But I can't... I'm being kept there by some unknown force deep in my mind... I'm left staring upon the end... the full-stop for humanity... as it approaches... as it consumes... This moment seems frozen in time, like a still from a Muggle movie. The sky is reddened by the blaze and the air's thickened by smoke and ashes, choking me, confusing all my senses. As the fire flares in front of me, I bow down in a feeble attempt to shield myself from it. I raise my eyes one last time toward it, only to see it turning a bright marine-blue and taking the shape of a giant wave, seemingly uniting the earth with the sky above like a veil ...a bringer of death.

Water... water covering everything... water carrying me away to nothingness... I'm floating with my eyes closed in the middle of silence. I'm still here, I'm still me... I open my eyes, to see a spread of sand beneath the waves, lit up by sunrays coming from the surface. The sand glitters in the light and the greenish blue of the water is soothing... peaceful.

Somewhere beneath my eyes I see a figure buried in the sand. I glide dreamingly towards it just to find myself gazing upon my own face. Sand shrouds my image, leaving only a bit of my face sticking out of the misty sand. My eyes closed, my lashes white, my lips blue and shrivelled...

It's difficult to explain the feeling inside my head... it's not fear, it's not happiness, maybe curiosity... I notice a current passing through the water and exposing one of my image's hands. The hand seems to clutch the sand between the fingers... bluish nails and dried up skin...

I shrug and turn my eyes upon my image's face... I try to touch it...

'Gaaaaaaah!' As soon as I laid my fingers upon it, my image opened its eyes and clutched its cold hand around my arm, pulling me closer, looking me in the eyes.

'REMEMBER!' it mutters, leaving me staring blankly back at it.

In the next instant, the images in my mind start spinning and I wake up in my bed, disturbed by this last spark of my imagination. What could it mean... why now... Could this be more than one of my whims of insanity surfacing when I'm defenceless, eating me from the inside?

'Remember... remember what...?'