Lamp
Harry didn’t sleep in the dark.
Whether it was the buzzing light from the streetlight outside his bedroom window or a nightlight plugged into the electric socket, Harry didn’t dare keep a light off.
There was something about the shadows—the unending darkness—that unsettled him. Long before his relatives had locked him away in a cupboard under the stairs, there was just something to it. Something more.
Like he was being watched as closely as he was watching it.
Ron didn’t understand his fear, about as sympathetic as anyone could hope to be when a grown man refused to sleep with the light off. And Hermione, well, the pity was palpable. Try as she might to hide it, Harry always noticed it. A faint flicker, a downward tilt of her upper lip. It was there.
She thought he was scared of the dark because of his relatives, because of abuse, and while she wasn’t wrong to believe that, Harry couldn’t say it was only because of the Dursleys.
There was something off about it, but he wasn’t about to explain that to them. So Harry shut off the lights when they were around, if only to avoid that pity, to unending questions about what was wrong.
But alone?
At least one light had to be on.
Harry burrowed deeper into his sheets, casting a quick glance around his bedroom to survey the way his lamp illuminated his bedroom in a golden glow. It never quite reached the closet or the corners around his drawers, but it was enough to relieve that little nagging voice in his head warning him away from absolute darkness, urging him that he wasn’t alone.
Okay, Harry. Let’s try to sleep.
Closing his eyes, Harry tried to follow that familiar lull of sleep, to focus on his own breathing instead of the strange buzzing thoughts in the back of his mind terrified of the dark.
One, two, three and inhale.
A beat, or two, and Harry was controlling his breaths.
Three, four, five, six and exhale.
Harry repeated it many times, allowing himself to focus on the warm press of the sheets against his skin, on the scent of lavender and eucalyptus in his pillow. He relaxed into that haze, drifting further and further away, until his voice was no longer counting his breaths, until his heart and mind were no longer latching on to each thought fixating on the shadows.
He was floating up and away, up and away—
Sssssshhh.
Harry jolted, his arm snatching his glasses from the nightstand before putting on his glasses and looking around his room.
There was nothing there.
The room was still haloed in gold, the shadows in the same places he remembered them being. His bedroom door and closet, too, were shut. Everything was as it should be.
Harry frowned, his shoulders tense.
It had been a sound, no louder than a whisper, then a dying breeze in a beach. At any other time, Harry might not have noticed it at all, but in the dark, right when he was about to fall asleep, it might as well have been a gunshot for all he cared.
And it was one he hadn’t recognised.
He knew every creak, every bloody moan, of this house. He’d been living in it long enough to tell a creak from a mouse scurrying in the night, but this—
Harry gripped his sheets tight enough for his knuckles to go white.
There was no way he could sleep tonight, even with the lamp on. It was absolutely out of the question. His heart hadn’t recovered from the shock, and his mouth was still dry with unease. All those feelings he’d been trying to repress, were now eating him from the inside out. There was no way, not when—
It’s watching me. It’s watching me. It’s watching me.
No, Harry, no. It’s fine. It’s fine.
He stared into his bedroom for a moment longer before forcing himself to burrow back down to his sheets, to shut his eyes, and relex.
It’s fine.
It was going to be fine.
The lamp went out, thrusting him in absolute darkness.
Harry screamed that itch in the back of his mind, that unease in the marrow of his bones crested, curdled like spoiled milk. He was choking on it, struggling to control the fear threatening to swallow him whole.
The darkness was absolute, was unending. There was nowhere Harry looked that wasn’t bathed in black, that wasn’t opaque and indiscernible and unrecognisable.
Ssssshhhhh.
Harry didn’t scream this time, couldn’t, not with his fear squeezing his throat like a vice.
It was louder this time, the noise. It sounded like—
Harry was tempted to hide his head beneath the sheets like a terrified child, but he didn’t. His arms were rooted in place, his fingers refusing to release their stubborn hold on the comforter.
Those noise, it was like something was slithering on his floor, twitching and writhing like a giant centipede or snake.
Ssssssshhhhh.
It was coming closer and closer. It was so loud that Harry couldn’t hear the panic shrieking in his mind, the rapid thrum of his heart beating too hard in his ribcage.
Harry closed his eyes.
Oh god, please. No. No.
Then, everything fell still.
The lamp came back on, the slithering sound stopped.
It was only Harry’s haggard breaths and racing pulse, now. It was blissfully silent. Harry sucked in desperate breaths through his lungs, one at a time, to calm down, to ease the fear churning in his belly.
Harry didn’t know how long he sat there, breathing, but it could easily have been hours.
Slowly, Harry opened his eyes and—
There was a face staring back at him.
Bone white.
Red eyes.
“Hello, Harry.”
Harry screamed, the lamp’s light going out one last time.