Theodore Nott (maybenott) wrote in changedrpg, @ 2011-10-22 05:58:00 |
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Current music: | ooc: it is 6am, how is it 6am, when did this happen, why, what?! |
Who: Theodore Nott & Astoria Greengrass
When: Friday night, 2am
Where: Slytherin Common Room
What: Can't sleep, nightmares
Rating: PG-13?
When he was little, before he knew what other more immediate horrors the world had to offer, before he'd been subjected to some of them, Theo had been scared of fire. More accurately, of being burned alive. Before he'd observed his father enough and developed the ability to form an independent opinion about Muggles and blood purity, he'd been taught in the cradle through lullabies and bedtime stories that Muggles were filth, vermin, butchering monsters. His father had told him about their (recent) ancestors, throw into water while tied to stones, hanged, beheaded and burned alive if Muggles caught them. He spoke to portraits who even then shook and whimpered when they recalled what had happened and was shown pictures of family membesr tied to the stake.
He'd thought of Muggles as monsters and he feared rather than hated them, at least until he began to see the inconsistencies in the way his father lived, in his praise of Voldemort; his father soon overtook the Muggles as a figure of fear but Theo always had that little flicker in the back of his mind that made him wary of the Muggleborn, although he'd lost that fear around them halfway through his first year at Hogwarts.
Fire was always somewhere in Theo's nightmares, even if it was just a glow tinting his dreams or the sight of smoke, but that night, after he woke coughing and gagging on smoke that wasn't there, he remembered the sound of a woman screaming. It was a sound too familiar although he couldn't work out why, along with the roast pork smell of burning flesh and over it all, for whatever reason, the smell of parma violets.
He woke with a searing headache, his heart racing, and he knew he wouldn't want to get anymore sleep tonight. He snuck out of bed, the rest of the dorm undisturbed thanks to the charms he warded his bed with every night, and went down into the common room in pyjama bottoms, a tshirt and socks to curl up tight in a corner of the sofa like a cat, hoping his inability to relax in a public space would keep him from falling back into the sound of screams. It didn't stop him thinking the dream over though, remembering only little; dark hair, desperate eyes, shadows moving across the floor... he'd been lying on the floor, he thought. The angle was strange, like he was looking up...
He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. He didn't want to think about that anymore.