Written for the Slytherin Cabal's FB group Death By Quill 2019 Round 2 writing challenge. I love this challenge and participate every year! My pairing was Blaise Zabini/Luna Lovegood and the prompt was Dream Magic!

Thank you to AlexandraO for her hard beta work!

If you liked this or hated it, drop me a line in a review! Find me on Tumblr at crochetawayhpff.

Pairing: Blaise Zabini/Luna Lovegood

Rating: M

Summary: He doesn't want to have these dreams. He doesn't want to even be near her. But she traps him anyway.

Trapped

The first time it happened, Blaise Zabini didn't understand. He was asleep, but then suddenly he wasn't? Or perhaps he still was? It didn't make sense to him. But she came to him. In a strange dream-like world that he couldn't make heads or tails of.

"Hello, Blaise," her voice was low and sultry and did things to Blaise that he wasn't sure he liked. A low thrum of desire pulsed in his belly, but Blaise knew, instinctively, that he didn't desire her. Not in real life, and not in this bizarre dreamscape he found himself in now.

He didn't respond to her. If it was a dream, it wouldn't matter, and if it was something more sinister, then not responding could be the only way to get out of it. He tried to jolt himself awake, he even pinched his arm, but nothing happened. He was still in the same dream-space. It was like a wild, overgrown garden. And she was standing before him wearing nothing. Her long blonde hair provided some modesty, but not enough.

That was when he realized he too, was naked. That thought woke him up.

He sat upright, panting as he took in the details of his surroundings. He was in his bedroom, in his flat in London. Daphne was asleep at his side, her breathing reassured him. Like all dreams, the more he thought about it, the more it slipped away. Laying down again, Blaise wrapped an arm around Daphne's middle, burying his face into her back and fell asleep.

By morning, he didn't remember the dream at all.

She smiled at her first success. When she'd stumbled across the book, she hadn't thought to try out any of the spells in it. They seemed ancient, archaic in a way that perhaps wouldn't actually bode well for the caster. But then she'd seen him in the Leaky Cauldron.

She remembered him from Hogwarts, and it seemed that in his post-Hogwarts life, he was doing well for himself. The obsession started out like all obsessions do: as an interest. She was interested in his life now. Did he even remember her? Do bullies ever remember their victims?

Blaise knew he was dreaming. He knew it. It was instinctual, but damn, it seemed so real, so life-like.

"Who are you?" he asked the woman who smiled at him. He knew her name. He'd always known her name. But when he opened his mouth to ask her why she was doing this, that question came out instead.

She didn't answer him. She never answered him. She just smiled beatifically at him. It made Blaise's skin crawl. That smile. So ominous. It promised danger and other things Blaise never wanted to think about.

He pinched his arm. He needed to wake up. He had to get out of this dream. He had to get away from her. There was something wrong with her. He could feel it in his bones, this wrongness that lingered around her.

Pinching didn't help. He felt stuck. Instead, he decided to move away from her. To get out of the overgrown garden and its cloying stench of half-dead flowers and decomposing plant debris. The further he moved away from her, the harder it was. Like walking through molasses.

"What do you want?" he screamed at her as he turned around to face her again.

She wasn't yards and yards from him like he expected her to be. Instead, she was standing right behind him, still smiling that same smile. The one that made his heart skip a beat in total fear. The one that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

"Blaise," she said, but it was in Daphne's voice. It was eerie, and he reached a hand out to push her away.

And just like that, he was awake. Daphne was on the floor, looking up at him with surprised eyes.

"Shit, Daphne! What happened?" Blaise reached a hand out to pull her up, he moved over, allowing her to crawl into bed next to him.

"What happened? You pushed me out of bed! You were thrashing around, shouting, and when I tried to wake you up, you sat up and pushed my shoulder so hard, I fell out," Daphne fumed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Oh, Salazar, love. I'm sorry." Blaise went to reach for her, but she shrunk back. He rubbed his hand down his face. "It's these nightmares I've been having. No idea what brought them on."

Daphne softened at that. "Come here," she waved him over, and Blaise laid back down, his head on her chest and was asleep within moments.

He didn't dream anymore that night.

He kept trying to get away, to escape the world she was creating for him, for them. Frankly, it angered her. He wasn't supposed to be getting away. He wasn't supposed to be trying to leave her. She must be doing something wrong for him to be reacting that way.

Resolved, she went back to those old books she'd found. They had belonged to her mother, and if there was one person she had always looked up to, it was her mother. Her beautiful, brilliant, dead mother.

Blaise was running. His pulse thrummed in his veins. He'd always enjoyed running, but soon that enjoyment turned to fear. He opened his eyes. He was running, but it was in that damned overgrown garden. Shapeless plants whipped in a wind that Blaise couldn't feel. The high that running had always given him, now felt like fear. Like a shot of adrenaline straight into his bloodstream.

He was still running, though nothing around him moved. He was running in place? Blaise looked down at his feet to see that they weren't moving at all. He wasn't running. If he wasn't running, why was his heart beating so quickly? He turned around and there she was.

"Hello Blaise," she smiled at him. She stepped closer and reached out a hand, placing it on his chest over his heart. If possible, his heart began beating faster. "Do you feel that?"

"Why?" he gasped. He couldn't catch his breath. His pulse raced, and he panted as though he'd run for miles and wasn't standing completely still.

"Why what?" she asked, placing both hands on his chest. His blood suddenly felt like fire in his veins.

"Why are you doing this?" Blaise choked out. His body felt like he was about to explode. Too much sensation. Not like the Cruciatus, but more like a heart attack. It felt as though there was a live flame licking along the inside of his skin.

"It's an experiment," she smiled up at him. Her smile was wrong. It was too big for her face, her teeth too sharp.

Blaise woke screaming.

Daphne had taken to sleeping in the spare bedroom so as not to be disturbed. Blaise's dreams were getting worse. And nothing he found during his waking hours had helped.

This time, instead of going back to sleep he stayed up.

He didn't sleep for close to a week.

Her experiments were going well. He was responding the way she wanted him too. That was until he decided to stop sleeping. That wasn't a deterrent though. She'd seen him rather recently, shopping in Diagon Alley with his wife.

A quick tracking spell on his person and she was alerted each time he fell asleep. All she had to wait for was him to reach a REM-cycle, and she could easily slip inside his head.

Caffeine was only doing so much to get Blaise through his week. It was when he began hallucinating that Daphne insisted he lay down for some rest.

"I'll stay right here with you," Daphne said. "If you start thrashing, I'll wake you up again. I promise."

Blaise believed her. But somehow he also knew that there wasn't anything Daphne would be able to do if he dreamed of her again.

At first, after he laid down, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to sleep. But then, he rolled over onto his side, and he was out. Blissful nothingness and his body slowly relaxed.

Even before he opened his eyes, he knew he was in that damned garden. He could smell it. He could feel the sun beating down on his skin. He could hear the tick and whizz of the insects. He didn't know how she was doing it, he only knew that she was.

"Hello Blaise," she said. He still hadn't opened his eyes. He didn't want to believe it was real. Surely, he couldn't actually be hurt in a dream, could he? "You can't avoid me forever, you know." Her tone was light, conversational even. But it still made the hair on the back of Blaise's neck stand up.

"What do you want?" he asked as he finally opened his eyes. She was standing before him, entirely nude, and smiling serenely. For a moment, Blaise felt like they were back in their Hogwarts days. All the wrongness that he'd seen from her over the last months in his dreams had dropped away. She looked like a young girl again.

"You," she said.

The wrongness slapped him in the face at that statement. It was as if he had been wearing a pair of sun shades and they slipped off. It glared at him, and he flinched away from it...from her.

"No," Blaise shook his head. "No, you can't. I won't."

She laughed. A sound that jangled unpleasantly, like two keys being hit next to each other on a piano. It made his blood run cold. And then he knew. This was it.

Blaise never woke again.

Daphne had him installed in the Janus Thickey Ward at St Mungo's.

In his head, Blaise screamed himself raw to attempt to get away from her, but nothing he did worked. He was trapped.

~Fin~