You'll be the Death of Me

Chapter 58

Neville inwardly groaned as he heard the soft tapping of Loki at the Gryffindor tower window. Soft tapping on a weekday night meant one thing: Graces had another nightmare. It wasn't about waking up in the dead of night, Neville had no qualms with lack of sleep, it was that Graces had had difficulty sleeping for weeks. The dreamless sleep potion had worked for a week, but because of her abusing them in the summer they weren't as effective as before. Pomfrey had then given her something stronger, which Graces took for a while, but eventually stopped because the side effects made it impossible for her to do well in class.

She was always drowsy. Pomfrey's next move after that was to continue with the stronger potion and Graces would come in and take a wide eye potion in the morning and one in the afternoon if needed. Unfortunately, that caused yet another problem: anxiety. Pomfrey believed it was the combination of the potions together. The new solution was the stronger potion, the wide eye potions and a calming draught at least twice a day. The only time Graces was not taking so many potions was on the weekends when she would meet him. They stopped meeting during the week so she could take the stronger sleeping potion. The new potion required her to be able to get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep. And thus the only time he saw her during a weekday night was when she had a bad dream.

Neville had really believed that this last combinations of potions would work, that the calming draught would even go so far as to stop this stronger sleep potion from eventually not working. She was more relaxed, after all, and he figured her being relaxed would naturally help with dreams. She had not woken him up in the night since starting this new combination a week and a half ago. Everything seemed to be going well.

"Loki, if you nip me I swear to the Gods I will kill you," Neville hissed, letting the owl in and taking the parchment. The bird looked like it was about to scratch him, but Neville took out a few chocolate cockroaches and the idea seemed to leave Loki's mind. Neville let out a small relieved sigh as the owl flew away without any of his blood.

Meet me in the barn. Dress warmly.

Neville went over to his nightstand and took out a small vial of wide eye potion that Luna kept in supply for him. There were definitely perks to being close friends with a Ravenclaw. Luna hadn't even asked him any questions when he asked her for the favor. He, of course, helped her make them, which caused one batch to not be that great, and paid for all the ingredients, but she really didn't ask questions about it. He wondered if the blonde thought he was just using it to stay up all night "sleeping" with Graces, because she also offered to make a potion that would keep him up in other areas, an offer Neville was very quick to decline.

Neville tip-toed out of Gryffindor tower and wondered if Graces would take the mediwitch's advice and see a therapist. He had accidentally overheard Pomfrey telling Graces that the potions would eventually not work and she urged the stubborn blonde to talk to someone—a suggestion that Graces didn't even need to voice her distaste for, it showed so clearly on her face. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. He had gone into the hospital wing because a certain someone with gray eyes decided to shove him so hard in the hall he sprained his wrist. He was just going in to get it mended before class when he heard the conversation. Graces didn't know he heard though; he left without seeing Pomfrey, deciding he would rather Graces not know he heard. She didn't tell him either. He supposed she didn't need to, but he still wished she would have.

She didn't tell him what she dreamed either. She would just send him a note to meet her and then want to play games or listen to music, desperate to forget whatever it was that her mind had concocted. And it worked. The moment he arrived she seemed to feel better about it all and she would smile, thank him for coming and want him to hold her for a bit.

It wasn't all sad things though. On the contrary he had been having the time of his life with Graces for the past few weeks. He found out really fast that she had god awful taste in music. He had originally thought she had great taste, because back when she first admitted to liking muggle music she had listed the Sound of Silence as the song that got her into the genre. But no. She had terrible taste. So terrible it was comical.