Alice stared up at the ceiling, eyes dry from looking at once place for so long before she bolted upright. Looking at her it might have seemed like she had woken from a nightmare, but she was very much awake, had been for a very long time. There was simply a nightmare all around her. Images painted in liquid crimson stained on her hands fluttered onto the inside her eyelids as she closed them, and her mind continued to run wild when they were open. She had always been good at finding an escape, in drinks, in drugs, in friends, in Quidditch, but she hadn’t turned to any of those. Only to her books, to what could help her now, but they offered little escape and no comfort.
In instinct her legs swung off the bed, bare feet moving across the floor, down the stairs, up another set before she paused in front of the seventh year boys’ dormitory, handing hovering over the handle. Alice had been a concoction of emotion inside, still angry, and sad and frustrated, some of which was directed onto the other side of this door, although you wouldn’t know it from her face, something she was working on. But one thing Alice had always trusted was her instincts, which guided her to fall back on her habits and quietly enter the room, finding his bed even in the dark. If James was sleeping, she didn’t want to wake him, so she slowly and wordlessly slipped into bed by his side wrapping her arms around a spare pillow, as she had done so many times before. ( @siriuslyjamesii )
