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Evil was once again present at Hogwarts.
This particular evil, however, had always been around. No one knew its origins, or who had first discovered it. All they did know, was that it came about when you were least expecting it. It could be absent for days….months….years…….and then, it creeps up on you out of nowhere. There was no known form of defense for it either.
When it chose you, there was not a thing that could be done to combat it. You were forced to succumb and comply with it, until it moved on to its next victim.
Few ever encountered it.
Those who did, were unlucky enough to encounter it more than once, at varying stages of their life.
It came for her in the dead of night, while she was safe and sound asleep. Slowly, ever slowly, it crept into her bed, and enveloped her like a blanket. It crushed her chest, suffocating the girl inch by agonizing inch.
She tried to cry out, but no sound escaped her.
As she tried to sit up, and get away from it, she found that she could not move. The girl was paralyzed, her limbs ignoring even the basic of commands. As the panic started to seep in she saw it, creeping along the edge of her bed and steadily moving about her room.
It slowly started to take shape amid the inky blackness of her surroundings, the being somehow darker than anything she had ever witnessed in her young life. A mouth grinned at her, rows of needle sharp teeth glinting in the darkness, surrounded by dead and decaying flesh. Eyes peered down at her and steadily drew nearer, a single drop of yellow amid the bloodshot whites.
She screamed but, was not heard, no sound escaping her.
She desperately tried to move, but could not.
The demonic presence drew nearer, and nearer. She could feel her heart pounding painfully in her chest as the blanket surrounding her tightened even more, constricting lungs that were struggling to work. Every breath she took in got harder and harder, until she was fighting to continue breathing.
It was like she could not even remember how to breathe, how to move.
It was getting closer.
Then out of her peripheral she saw something else moving towards her, some new horror. It was reaching for her with wrinkled hands and razor sharp nails, the vision coming closer and closer.
The panic was overwhelming; the girls breath was shortening even more, her heart was frantically beating, and she was fighting with every fiber of her being to get up.
Closer.
She can not breathe; her heart is pumping and stuttering, pumping and stuttering…..she gasps for another breath but is unable to.
Everything stops, and the evil is upon her, scant centimeters away.
A silent scream rips out of her, the pressure from the blanket so overpowering it feels as though her ribs are going to break like dried twigs.
No one can hear her.
No one can save her.
Otherworldly laughs and shrieks erupt around her and engulfs the girl as both beings fall upon her like the prey she was laid out to be, the darkness encompassing everything and forcing itself down into her prone and trembling body.
And then it was over.
“Alex wake up. Ale- Al, come on, wake up!” Susan shook her friend by the shoulders, trying to keep her voice down in an effort to not wake up the other girls in the dorm. The calico cat that had pounced on her in the middle of the night was perched on the bed next to her owner, fluffy tail twitching slowly back and forth, a loud meow echoing around them. “Iris, be quiet!! We’re just trying to wake Alex, not the entire Slytherin dorm! Geeze.”
After a moment Alex shot up into a sitting position, hazel eyes blinking owlishly in the dim green light that flooded her four-poster. She spotted the blonde sitting next to her, her lungs finally taking in a much needed breath. “Sky?” she asked groggily, batting a fuzzy tail out of her nose as Iris plodded into the girls lap and promptly curled up into a ball. In an instant she remembered her dream and hastily looked around, her eyes open wide in horror. “Where are they? Did you see them?!”
“Al,” Susan said gently, crawling across her friends lap and sitting down next to her, the curtains of the bed closing behind them and plunging them into a partial darkness. “We’ve been over this before. It was just a dream, there’s nothing in here that’s going to get you. No demon, and no scary old lady. You’re safe.”
“But Sky, it was so real!! I was awake and I couldn’t move and-”
“It felt like your chest was been squeezed, making it hard to breathe?” she asked with a yawn, curling up with the cat that had rolled over next to her. “It wasn’t real, Al. Sleep paralysis, remember?”
Alex huffed as she reluctantly laid down next to her friend, rolling over on her side to peer at her. Her heart had finally resumed its usual staccato, her chest no longer feeling like it was being crushed to death. “What about the creepy demon thing and the old lady?”
“That’s normal, too. Though when it happens to me I never see the old lady, just some creepy black blob moving around. It would probably be scarier if my eyesight wasn’t so bad…. But sometimes, it’s just different for me.”
“Different how? Why is this happening?” she asked in a small voice, subconsciously moving closer to Susan.
“The last time, I was dreaming of my family and they were all just so awful to me.” Susan caught the scared tone in her friends voice and smiled quietly to herself, reaching a hand across Iris to pat the girls arm reassuringly. “My mom said there’s no real good answer for ‘why’. You’re stressed out because of the Quidditch game coming up, our final exams are coming even closer, and our homework is piling up. Plus, you sleep on your back a lot and that can apparently cause it.”
“Mm.” came the mumbled reply, the dark haired girl slowly dropping off back to sleep now that her ordeal was over with. After a few seconds of silence her eyes popped back open and she glared over at her friend. “Wait a minute, how the hell did you know I was uuuuh….having problems?”
“Your cat came and jumped in the middle of me.” Susan said with a yawn, snuggling down into the covers beneath her. “The last time this happened you must have kicked her off your bed or something. She was very insistent.”
“Oh. Well…..how did you get in here?”
“You gave me the new password, nerd. Now are you gonna keep asking me questions or are you going to shut it and go back to sleep?”
Alex muttered mutinously under her breath as she resumed her spot next to the blonde, stifling a yawn as she once again started to drop off. “Go back to your own bed, then.”
“I’m too tired to.”
“Fine.”
Within a matter of seconds, the two were sound asleep without a care in the world.
Hopefully, it would stay that way