Characters: Regulus Black and Bellatrix Black Location: Yaxley Residence Date: Monday, December 8, 2001 Time: Middle of the Night Rating: PG
Regulus usually had trouble sleeping. That wasn't anything new. There were plenty of nights were he would be awake, staring at the ceiling. When he was younger, many times he would slip into Sirius' room, finding it easier to escape the strange noises that plagued Grimmauld Place and would filter into his dreams. Even in Hogwarts, he would often find himself awake, staring at green and silver curtains only to slip into fitful dreams that would send him starting awake, much to the annoyance of many of the boys that he roomed with. The dreams had gotten especially bad after he had joined up as Death Eater. Flashes of green and splashes of blood raced across the eye of his subconscious. They would send him stumbling from bed, trying to block out whatever he had just seen, bathed in a cold sweat and heaving in deep, uneven breaths. He couldn't imagine how he had been able to sleep at all when he begun to search out the Horcrux, to know at any moment that the Dark Lord might figure out what he was doing, and send someone, perhaps his cousin or someone he had known his entire life, after him to kill him.
Even now, that the threat of all that had disappeared from his life, certain images still managed to slip inside his mind when the lights in Yaxley Manor had been lowered and everything started to still, except for the soft and occasional creak of the floor.
And some nights, night like this one, he dreamed of hands.
They surrounded on him all sides, the skin white and decaying. The flesh just beginning to slip from its proper placement on the bed. They clawed at him, the scabbed place where nails should have been catching at the ends of his robes, pulling him back. His eyes searched the darkness for any sign of faces, of bodies and limbs and torsos that these hands belonged to, but nothing came in front him. There was a darkness and dampness enveloping him. He was sprawled on his belly, and his limbs wouldn't move, they were frigid and frozen, unmoving and unfeeling. No matter how he willed himself to move, nothing would happen. The hands wrapped tightly around his wrists and his neck, and they covered his mouth so that the could feel the cold chill of their clammed skin against his lips. The coldness would spread slowly, climbing and crawling over his skin until it consumed him completely. Eventually, the sensation would slip down the back of his throat and force its way into his lungs, making him draw a few stuttering breaths before being unable to breath at all.
Regulus woke up with a loud inhale of breath. He sat straight up, and kicked out almost feverishly, the sheets tangled wildly about his body, constraining so that it was difficult to move. He struggled against them in uneven motions, practically tearing at them in his effort to get free. It took a few moments before he managed to free himself, and then he finally became still. Drawing his knees up, he rested his forehead against them and shut his eyes. He concentrated on drawing steady breaths and drew his his hands through his mussed hair several times. He didn't want to linger on his dream, but he couldn't help the way that his mind kept straying back to it. It made him stomach clench painfully, and his head spin.