Drabble:166
After the death of his parents, Christian started to have nightmares. Nightmares that were too vivid and gory for anyone to handle, let alone a 7 year old boy. At that tender age, Christian Ozera, son of royals-turned-strigoi-turned-dead parents, became an insomniac- afraid of his dreams.
He was then staying with his aunt Tasha, who was spending quite a few sleepless nights of her own, battling her inner demons and anxieties, and coming to terms with her new scars and the responsibility of being Christian's guardian, all in her early twenties.
Unable to watch her precious nephew suffer for too long, she tried several remedies to get his nightmares to stop, but nothing seemed to work…till she got him hooked onto books. She bought bundles of books for him, and to appease her, he read them all, but his nightly demons remained, though they came to him less frequently than before…
But then he got started on Harry Potter…and it was like his world had changed. Tasha saw him bouncing back, from the tired, listless boy to a normal exuberant kid, who wanted, no demanded, that she buy the rest of the series for him ASAP. Christian slept again and dreamt, of magical owls and enchanted castles and chocolate frogs, and when Tasha bought him a purple starry robe for his birthday, Christian almost suffered a stroke from joy.
He couldn't wait to become 11, and receive his letter from Hogwarts, (Hey, he was a vampire, a supposedly mythical creature, who existed, so was it really implausible for a wizardly school to exist?).
Christian couldn't wait to get to Hogwarts, and bond with likeminded people, who would accept his as one of their own, not point at him and whisper behind his back like the kids at St Vlad's did. He wanted to have friends, with whom he could pull pranks, and have fun, and not be the butt of a joke or be shoved into a locker for once. He wanted to practice spells and charms, and have an owl and befriend the kitchen elves in hopes of an extra slice of chocolate cake after dinner….
But his 11th birthday came and went, and no letter came. He was sure that his letter must have been misplaced, so he waited…..but September came and went, and still he remained, at Vampire Academy…
At first he was desolate, but then he begin to have doubts, that maybe he wasn't chosen because he wasn't worthy; that maybe he was really as much of a loser as his contemporaries at the school claimed. That maybe it was his fault his parents died. He started having insomnia once more, and eventually his health deteriorated to the point that the school called Tasha for intervention. Looking at her beautiful, upset face, he disclosed the reason for his heartbreak. And cried in her arms, when she told him that Hogwarts didn't exist, that it was just a myth, just like Santa Claus, and he should move on from it.
Going back to his dorm, Christian packed up his Harry potter books and other paraphernalia, and told Tasha to take them away from him. That he never wanted to see those things again. That day, his childhood innocence officially died, and he accepted the fact that the world was a cruel, unfriendly place, where people were judged for being different, sometimes for sins that never were their own. That day, Christian Ozera was forced to grow up.
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