Ravenclaw HoH, Short 2, [Emotion] Relief, WC: 577
Draco Malfoy, reflecting after the war.
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Sleep has evaded me ever since the war.
Every night, I feel as though I am ready to settle into some form of slumber. The sheets surround me, the lights dimmed, and windows closed from the chill of outside. Warm, comfortable, in the dark. One might think these were perfect conditions in which to have a restful sleep.
And yet, every night, I can't.
I turn over, churning the sheets, hot and cold, furious and sad. The cause is something common, the doctors said. A Healer told me it was something that would happen after the war – after the trauma we all endured. That I might not feel relief for a while - whether through sleeping or waking.
It is beyond exhausting.
I've tried to explain my predicament to people when they ask how I am, but no one seems to quite understand. I think that everyone is dealing with the stress and the anxiety in different ways, and that they have had a multitude of different consequences. Then there is the issue that not many enquire about my wellbeing. I don't have many friends, being who I am.
One of the main problems, I think, is that my family took part in the Death Eater activities. I am accused of hating Muggles. I am accused for my attempts on Dumbledore's life. I am accused of believing in the roles my parents played in the Dark Lord's plans. I am accused of being as toxic and evil as the rest of them.
Maybe I was, for a while. Maybe I did believe that the purest witches and wizards are those who are genetically so.
But I swear to all that I love in the world – granted, this isn't much – that I would never intend to hurt people in the way I saw those muggle-born families being hurt. Not once in my existence did I consider any of that just, or right.
And here I am. Accused by association to people I didn't choose. I cannot find any relief.
My dreams are only apparitions of my thoughts – they hang in the liminal space between waking and sleeping, and they terrify me. More than ever, they are images of the dead. I wonder what people think of when they die. Whether there is a moment of acknowledgement of death, or whether life is simply stripped of them before they can have a significant thought. Before they can consider their life, and all those they love.
My dreams are faces of the dead, of the abused, and of the tortured.
Although sleep has not come for many years, life will not always be that way.
It feels almost selfish to choose death, when there are so many people who would not have chosen death even into their hundreds. I'm not even close to middle-aged, and yet this appears to be my only way out.
I am always suspecting someone to approach me in the street, murder me there and then. I wouldn't blame them if they did, and I would certainly welcome their attempt upon my life.
I exist halfway between sleeping and waking now.
The whiskey rests on the bedside table, the empty bottle of antidepressants some inches from my shaking hands.
A warm relief floods through me, because I will no longer have to endure the sleepless nights, the burning stares, the fear of living beyond what the victims did.
I'll sleep now I'm dead.
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Thank you for reading!
