Electric Avenue by DesertPlanet

Christmas was coming soon. The healers were bustling around the ward putting up decorations and various greenery and encouraging those patients who were able to do the same. It was good therapy for those who needed it.

Elias sighed as he rubbed his forehead in frustration as he looked at the bits of paper which sat before him. He had been trying to make an ornament for the tree, but his coordination was making it rather difficult. That and he kept losing focus on what he was doing with the amount of other things going on around him.

That and he had a headache which was throbbing behind his eyes making it difficult to think of anything other than that.

He was fairly certain he knew why he had a headache too. For the past several nights he had been having the vivid dreams that his father believed was his scar connecting him to the Dark Lord. The dreams were strange, almost as though he was viewing them through a fog with sounds rather muffled.

Though muffled and muted, he could still make out one common theme from the dreams: Voldemort was planning something for him. Something he was going to do to attempt to draw Harry out of wherever he was hiding. Something which Voldemort took an almost sadistic pleasure in. And it was that pleasure which drew him into the dreams.

Every time he fell asleep, be it for a brief nap or for the night, he was pulled into the twisted mind of Voldemort. The sights haunted his dreams; the whispers hung in his ears when he awoke. Occasionally, he swore he could feel the other man’s emotions through the bond.

It was unnerving, to say the least.

He tried to ignore it. He really did try. But as time went on and the days stretched into more than a week of the same terrifying dreams, it became more and more obvious that Voldemort was planning something sinister. And if he was right, someone was going to die. Someone he was close to.

Elias sighed as he looked at the papers in front of him once again and shakily tried to glue the papers together, groaning when his hands were covered in more glue than the paper and the paper was starting to stick to him. Even Alice and Frank had given up trying to make ornaments, though they hadn’t seemed to want to make the ornaments anyways, choosing instead to slowly cut their papers into smaller and smaller pieces before grabbing another sheet and repeating the action. He knew the healers wanted him to try and work more with his hands, but this was a ridiculous activity.

“Are you all done, Elly?” one of the young healers said gently as she looked at the “ornament” he had in front of him.

“Y-yeah,” Elias said quietly, picking on the skin around his fingernails nervously. How was he supposed to explain to the healers that Voldemort was wanting to murder someone? Or that he was the reason someone was about to be erased from this planet?

“Are you feeling ok?” the healer asked as she spelled the glue dry and added a small hanger to the object before levitating it onto the tree which stood in the corner by the potion’s cabinet. “You look a bit peaky.”

“‘M t-t-tired,” Elias mumbled as he rubbed his eyes for a moment before his eyes shot open in a panic. “D-da?”

“Your da said he would be back tomorrow,” Healer Strout said as she went bustling by with a cart full of various Christmas decorations. “He said he was bringing your tutor and Snuffles with him!”

“C-can he c-c-come a-and stay t-ton-night?” Elias said, panic seeping into his voice as an ominous feeling filled his stomach. “P-please?”

“I’m sorry love,” the younger healer said firmly. “He can’t stay the night. He would have to be out by nine.”

“B-but…” Elias whined, trying not to allow his emotions to overtake him. “B-but h-h-he’s in d-d-danger!”

“Elly, your da is fine,” the healer said gently. “I know nightmares can be scary, but your da is fine. I promise. Now why don’t you try to take a nap? You’ve not been sleeping well at night and I don’t want you getting sick so soon to Christmas!”

Elias shook his head at the thought as he looked in confusion at the papers which were in front of him. He knew he had been working on an ornament, but where did it go? Not that it mattered, but he was beginning to hate laying things down and losing them almost immediately. Some days were certainly better than others, but still it felt as though his thoughts were like sand, slipping through his fingers no matter how hard he tried to hang onto them.

“I hung your ornament up, Elly,” the young healer said, pointing to a rather misshapen paper ornament on the tree.

Oh, that’s where it went.

“Come on, Elly,” the healer said with a small smile as she removed the tray table from over his bed and pulled up the blankets from where they were folded at the end of the bed. “You need to take a nap.”

‘A nap does sound good,’ Elias thought as he squirmed down on the bed and allowed the healer to tuck the blankets around him.

“We’ll wake you in time for dinner, if you aren’t up by then,” the healer said softly as she pulled the curtains and dimmed the lights with a flick of her wand.

Slowly, Elias’s eyes drifted shut to the sounds of the healers voices muffled by the spells on the curtains. Someone had turned on the radio at the end of the unit and tuned it to the Wizarding Wireless Network which was playing a variety of holiday songs, only some of which Elias had ever heard before. It was an almost ethereal feeling as he slowly fell asleep, joy bubbling up in his chest as his mind drifted further and further into the land of sleep.

Malicious joy licked at his consciousness as dark figures moved around his field of vision frantically.

“Well?” he found himself saying in a voice not his own. “Has a schedule been determined as to who in that blasted organization does their little ‘guard duty’ of the Department of Mysteries?”

A face which felt rather familiar drifted into view, though its face was distorted by the mist which surrounded the figures. “Yes, my Lord. The Weasley patriarch will be there tonight for several hours.”

Sickening joy filled his chest making him want to clap his hands though he knew not why. What did these figures want with Ron’s dad?

Elias felt as though a block of ice had just fallen into his stomach as the realization of what he was seeing sunk in. It wasn’t his da the Death Eaters wanted! Of course it wasn’t going to be Severus, they didn’t know of the connection between the two men. For days now he had heard them whispering in his head of ‘the father’ and their plans for his death. For days he had thought that the father they spoke of was his own, never once realizing that their intention was not to go after Severus.

“Good, good,” Voldemort drawled, though Elias felt as though he could feel the words coming out of his own mouth. “Wormtail!”

“Yes, my most gracious lord?” a shorter figure said, coming to stand next to the taller one.

“Tonight, you are to apparate Nagini to the ministry,” Voldemort said silkily, his long fingers caressing the snake which slithered out of the voluminous sleeve of his robe. “As a rat, you are to find an entry point through which she can enter the Department of Mysteries. Understood?”

“Yes, your lordship!” Wormtail said, falling to his knees and kissing the hem of the Dark Lord’s robes. “Anything for you. What shall I do after I find an entrance?”

“You are to wait outside until she returns, you fool!” Voldemort exploded. “I can’t have you ruining this mission as well!”

“Y-yes, my lord,” Wormtail grovelled, Voldemort taking great joy in noting that he appeared rather fearful of the repercussions should he fail once more.

“Elly?” a distant voice called to him, only just audible over the sound of the Death Eaters speaking amongst themselves. “Elly, can you wake up for me?”

“Tonight,” Voldemort said triumphantly, raising his arms to the crowd around him. “Tonight we begin our plan to draw Potter out of hiding! Tonight we make a strike against Dumbledore’s Order he cannot ignore! One less muggle sympathizer in the world! One less blood traitor in our society! One less piece of filth for us to step on!”

“One less!” the crowd around him cheered. “One less!”

“Elly! Come on, lad,” a different voice called to him. “Wake up!”

“Is he having a seizure?” the first voice said, almost frantically.

“No,” the second voice said, cutting through the applause and celebration. “No, but I don’t know why he’s not coming out of it. Ennervate!”

Elias was suddenly back in his own body, feeling it writhe uncontrollably as he gasped and panted for air. He felt lightheaded, almost as though he were about to pass out. His muscles jerked spasmodically as he pulled himself towards the edge of the bed and wretched for a moment, almost dismayed when nothing came out.

“Elly? Elly? Are you alright?” Healer Strout said, transfiguring a scrap of paper into a cloth and wetting it before wiping his forehead with it as she gently pushed him back into bed. “Come on, lad, talk to me.”

“Mmmm,” Elias slurred, eyes jumping around the room as though people would suddenly step out of the shadows. “M-m-m-mist-t-t…. M-m-m-m-mis-s-st-t-t....”

“It’s ok, Elly,” the younger healer said gently, sitting on the bed next to him and taking his hand. “There’s no mist here.”

“W-w-w-w-easl-l-ley!” Elias cried out, desperately hanging onto any of the shreds of memory of the vision that he could. “H-help-p! P-p-please! Please!”

The two healers looked at each other in confusion momentarily before shrugging and continuing to try and placate the boy in front of them.

Elias had been having nightmares almost every night since he came to live in the Janus Thickey Ward. Most of his nightmares would cause him to wake disoriented and scared for several hours, but the longer he had been staying here, the more violent the dreams seemed to become. Where they had once been nightmares, they could now be classified as night terrors.

The more frequent he had them, the less sleep he got. The less sleep he got, the more difficult it was for him to function. The less he could participate in therapy, the more skills he was losing and the more confused he became.

He needed to sleep.

“Give him a few drops of Dreamless Sleep,” Healer Strout ordered her colleague.

The younger healer nodded and quickly strode to the potions cabinet, grabbing a bottle out as well as a pipette and knocking the cabinet door with her elbow to shut it before turning quickly and striding back to the boy who had now begun screaming incoherently.

“No! No! P-p-please!” Elias screamed as he saw the potion in her hand. He didn’t want to sleep! He couldn’t sleep! Not now! He didn’t want to go back to looking through Voldemort’s eyes! “No! D-da! Da!”

“Elly, shhh,” the younger healer said softly as she drew out a small amount of the potion into the pipette and cupped her hand around the backside of his neck to help hold his head still as she slid the pipette along the inside of his cheek. “Your da’s ok. I’m sure Weasley is ok too.”

Elias struggled against the women, nearly managing to kick Healer Strout in the stomach before he was immobilized onto the bed momentarily so they could administer the tiny amount of potion into his mouth. The two healers sighed with relief as his eyes began to cloud over despite the small dose they gave him; his body slowly relaxing from its tense position into one more conducive for sleep.

“What in Merlin’s name was that about?” Lockhart called from down the ward, looking curiously in the direction of Elias’s bed. “You’d think there was an Alp in the room with the way he was acting! I’m sure we could find someone who could get rid of it!”

Both women looked at each other and sighed before spelling the bedclothes back over the poor lad. As much as they disliked doing that to the poor lad, he needed his sleep. He hadn’t slept well or often for the past few days and it was beginning to wear on him.

“Come now, Gilderoy,” Healer Strout said, bustling down the aisle between the beds to the blonde man. “We would know if there was something that sinister in this ward! Why, it would have to sneak past so many wards to get here, it's preposterous!”

The younger healer nodded in agreement before rolling her eyes and walking back to the potions cupboard. How long would she have to work here before she remembered that bloody door didn’t like to be slammed shut?

Shutting it with a snap, she sighed with relief before turning to look at the sleeping Snape once again. With all of the other potions he had in his system, he ought to be asleep at least until around midnight.

The poor lad could do with a good long rest.