Sirius & Harry Week - Nightmares
Prompt: Family Feels or Nightmares
@siriusandharryweekarchive
This is hot off the press, but you know I gotta get in on Sirius & Harry week. Here I've slipped in not only nightmares but also, sick fic :)
In his dreams, he’s the one to cast the Killing Curse. In his dreams, he forgets that it was Voldemort, and he cannot remember that James died first. In his dreams, the door opens wide, and James and Lily beam, pleased to see him, grateful for his company, and he kills them both and Harry too. But Harry isn’t a baby. Instead, he is the boy Sirius met just last year, and when the jet of green light hits, the boy is still smiling when he hits the floor. The dream doesn’t end there, but he wants it to stop. He kneels and sees their smiles lingering, and he can pretend they’re sleeping. And he knows it’s a dream, but he cannot get free—or perhaps he doesn’t want to because James is still warm—
There is a tug on his arm. He looks down, frowning. Harry’s eyes have flown open and he is saying Sirius’s name.
“But you’re dead,” he tells Harry.
“I’m not. You’re asleep.”
“I know. I can’t wake up.”
The damp autumn evening drips away as Harry shakes his arm. And sure enough, the cottage is gone, and Sirius realizes, blinking, that their places are switched—he is lying on the ground, and Harry is the one that kneels.
It is a moment before he remembers the cave. A deep ache courses through his thighs and arms, and he knows that whatever illness he has must have matured in his sleep to become a plague on his pathetically frail immune system. He’s so cold. He must have been so weak that he couldn’t hold his Animagus form.
“Harry?” Sirius croaks. His throat burns. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You haven’t written,” says Harry. “I thought something might be wrong. And I was right.”
“You should have sent Dumbledore.”
But Sirius, annoyed as he is that Harry is so flippant with his own safety, is also warmed by Harry’s concern. When a shudder wracks Sirius’s body, a cloak is thrown over him.
“You’re really ill,” Harry mutters. “No wonder. It’s freezing in here. Why don’t you sleep on Buckbeak?”
“Sometimes he crushes me,” says Sirius. He winces as he tries to sit. Harry watches him with his own doubting grimace.
“Maybe you should go back to sleep.”
Sirius wrinkles his nose at the thought of returning to his nightmare. He cannot bear the thought of leaving the world where Harry lives to sink into one where Harry is dead.
“I’ll be all right,” Sirius assures him. “It’s not a Hogsmeade weekend, is it? You’ll have to go back to school.”
“It’s fine. No one saw me leave, and I’ve got my dad’s cloak. Ron knows I’m here, so I can stay all night, really. You can sleep; I’ll make sure you’re all right.”
The terror of his nightmare keeps him awake. The cave floor is frigid, and usually, it doesn’t bother him, but now, it is like sleeping on a frozen lake. His weakness pushes him to the ground and he’s fighting to keep his eyes open.
“I think you should rest, Sirius.”
Sirius doesn’t want to admit the truth. “We never chat, you and I,” he says. “We’ve finally got a chance, now. Tell me something. Talk to me.”
And perhaps it is Harry’s ploy to get him to sleep because he starts talking about his schoolwork and the pointless, annoying squabbles between Ron and Hermione, specifically one that just happened this morning, and as Harry gets comfortable, he goes on to talk about girls and his budding feelings for one who turned him down for the Yule Ball, and Sirius can’t help himself from drifting off, squeezing a warm hand and forgetting what it was that he had feared about falling asleep in the first place.