WHO: Laurel Fawley & Theodore Nott WHAT: Sleepwalking WHEN: Wednesday morning/night (01/06/16) around 1am? WHERE: Prince's Grove, Knockturn Alley RATING: R-Lite - mentions of past child abuse/spell damage
Theo had never slept well, even at Hogwarts, something about seeing your mother murdered and then being cursed and hexed and Crucio'd as a child did that to a person. He'd learned how to hide the shouting and screaming that bled through during his memory-nightmares before he'd made it through his first term at Hogwarts and when he'd found himself wandering the Common Room or woke up wedged between Greg's bed and the wall he'd started charming himself down to the bed at night too. The restraint had made him panicky but he could struggle and cry out as much as he liked behind the curtains of the four poster bed and no one would be any the wiser, assuming he'd charmed the bed properly.
Nothing had really changed for him since then, although he'd been assured by his therapist that the longer they worked together the easier he'd find it to sleep. As it was, he tended to try and stay awake - a difficult challenge when he hated the taste of coffee but still used it to keep himself going - or try and find some way to sleep that wouldn't have him getting up and moving around as he did. Dreamless Sleep Potion had worked for a while, but his therapist frowned at him having a supply of it (there was still a concern that he'd harm himself with it somehow) and it lost it's efficiency as his body became accustomed to it.
His latest trick was to try and work himself into the ground, to tire himself out to the point that he could only crawl into bed to sleep when he got home, but his boss was wise to his tricks and had started keeping a closer eye on how Theo was working; this made the former Slytherin feel guilty enough that he cut back and had to make do with wearing himself out after work. He hadn't had to resort to any tricks today though; chiselling into his thumb by mistake had been frustrating because it had hindered his ability to carry out his usual duties. Sure, his boss had allowed him to do more desk work than actual construction, but he felt himself a burden and had berated himself into the ground for being so stupid and clumsy in the first place.
He'd been grumpy since then but he managed to lose himself in some bookwork until he'd been told to go home for the day. He'd poked at his dinner of fish pie until it had turned into a puddle of mash and fish mush before being thrown into the bin and had then gone to bed with a bellyful of potion and a determination to get some sleep so that he could do a better day's work in the morning. He didn't realise that he'd forgotten his usually nightly routine of charming his bedroom door to wake him if he tried to step out, or his front door to do the same. Some stupid hour of the morning found him struggling out of the stranglehold that his blankts had become from his tossing and turning in them, trying to escape hands that wanted to throttle him in his dreams, and getting up to wander around.
He moved somewhat aimlessly but with a great amount of distress, his breathing coming in quick shallow pants like some hunted prey animal. He left his bedroom and then his apartment, moving down the communal corridor that easily equated to the halls of the Nott Estate in his mind, that cold and dark forbidding place not nearly as welcoming or comforting as even the sparse but brightly lit common area. He actually managed to make it down the steps without falling and breaking his neck, the staircase of his childhood home and his current residence as one in his sleeping mind, but then he found himself in another corridor and the nightmare turned on him again, trapping him in an endless loop of hallways that he couldn't escape from.
He heard footsteps in his sleep, brisk and businesslike, the barely suppressed irritated huff of the man he so feared approaching him. He cowered down against the wall in his sleep, waiting helplessly for a torture that he knew he had no chance of evading, a man who may have been a cruel god to him in his seeming omniscience and capacity for hurt. In his dreams Theodore saw the wand brandished and felt the bright exquisite pain that was the trademark agony caused by the Cruciatus Curse, the stink of burning hair with no source in the air as the pain strangled him with the intensity of it.
Outside in the real world his body had no such restrictions and Theo jerked back against someone else's door and screamed.