A/N:
Not my sandbox, just my sand castle. I don't own anything from Harry Potter. Additionally, no one has permission to bind and sell my works, fandom or otherwise. I can't believe in this day and age we have to go back to making this disclaimer. Shame on you for exploiting other people's works!
Additionally, no part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. (Thanks Penguin Random House for the wording, and good on you for protecting intellectual properties!)
Going up wet, so all mistakes are mine!
Word Count: 741
Disclaimers/Warnings: wartime horrors, ptsd, unhealthy coping, addiction
Summary: After the war ended, nothing changed. Hermione now just had to deal with night terrors on top of everything else.
Prompts:
Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Assignment 7 - Due April 11th
Perfume & Aromatherapy with Professor Gen
Task 2: Lavender & Vanilla (Sleep) – Write about someone taking a sleeping potion (or some other kind of sleep aid).
"Haunted"
The end of the war had been hard for Hermione. Society had gone almost back to normal within a few weeks, jarringly changing nothing despite the atrocities the Death Eaters had committed not even the month before. There were less people in Diagon Alley…less people in Hogsmeade…and it wasn't because they were afraid to go outside anymore.
They just weren't there.
Seeing the devastation at Hogwarts from the Final Battle – and the newspapers were already sanitizing the events that happened, diminishing their sacrifices and ordeals until it almost seemed like it was just a schoolyard scrap that had happened instead of the fight against a genocide.
Hermione likened it to the Muggle Holocaust.
She was exhausted from running, exhausted from fighting, exhausted from being held up in the spotlight with Harry and Ron for bringing about the end of the war.
And yet she still couldn't sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the dead faces of her friends and comrades staring back at her. Bellatrix and the Cruciatus aftershocks haunted Hermione's days, but when she was finally able to pass out, well...
The faces of Fenrir Greyback and the snatchers who had brought them to Malfoy Manor starred in her nightmares.
Madam Pomfrey had prescribed her Dreamless Sleep, max of three times a week in case Hermione couldn't get consistently good sleep. At first, she resisted using it, staring at the bottle sitting on her nightstand as if it would bite her. Hermione struggled until one day she fell asleep while waiting in line at Gringotts for a withdrawal.
She had collapsed, and when other patrons had tried to help her, she had snapped to, wand in hand, panic on her face as she expected to be attacked at any moment. Had she not already mended her relationship with the Goblin Nation, she would have been beheaded as soon as she drew her wand in the lobby of the bank.
Instead, she was pulled back into one of the conference rooms, forcibly given a dreamless sleep potion, and left to sleep off her mania.
Waking up from such a peaceful sleep had her hooked.
Hermione knew it was irresponsible to take a dose of the sleeping aid every night, but she couldn't help it. She could pretend to be okay during the day if she had gotten enough sleep. She knew it was addictive. She knew that, eventually, her body would get used to the current doses and would need more of it, stronger versions of it to do the same effects the current dose would.
Within a week, she had gone through almost her entire stash of potions the Hogwarts matron had given her, and Hermione knew she couldn't ask for more. She couldn't let anyone else know how much she was struggling.
She could easily brew it herself. She could make it stronger, so she only needed a little bit instead of the normal dose. Several of her friends struggled too. She could help them out. Hermione knew Lavender still had nightmares about Greyback. Ron's loss of Fred saw him becoming drawn and thinner than he already was.
Harry had disappeared from the public eye entirely, disappearing with Andromeda and Teddy to one of the Black family properties to never be seen again. Hermione felt his loss keenly.
Shaking her head, Hermione held up the first dose of her more potent version of the Dreamless Sleep to inspect it more closely, the purple liquid inside swirled with shimmering silver clouds. According to her calculations, just a sip would do what a full dose of the normal variety would do. In case she was horribly wrong – she wasn't, but she had to have contingencies in place in case she was – her notes were laid out on the brewing table next to her cleaned up station. The rest of the potion was bottled up in vials in a secure box next to the bed, and Hermione was finally ready to test her creation.
There was no hesitation as she laid down on her bed, Crookshanks curling up against her side. Hermione lifted the vial to her lips and knocked the whole thing back like a shot. She was out before her head hit the pillow, the vial slipping from her limp fingers and dropping to the wooden floor, the bottle shattering instantly.
Crookshanks meowed sadly, rubbing up against Hermione's other hand before settling in for his own nap.
