Masks

Suzy stood leaning against the wall in the shadowy part of the common room, one of her feet was propped up on the wall behind her. Her eyes were half-closed. She wanted so much to sleep but she just can't. She has insomnia and there's nothing she can do about it.

Sighing, the brown-eyed girl leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling, staring at it without actually looking at it. Her mind was running a hundred miles a second, not really thinking of one thing but a few things. She didn't dwell too much on her thoughts nor did she even try to.

Her face was a perfectly emotionless mask, no-one could even guess what the girl was thinking or what emotions she was feeling. It was perfect for her, no-one knew her that well and that was for the best.

It hid her.

The fifth year Slytherin yawned as she got out of bed, rubbing her eyes as she awoke from another of those nightmares of hers. Except, they were all the same in the first place. And to think about them was already a routine. An everyday situation. The images, seeing herself in them and all those people whom she wished she had forgotten, were just mere fragments of the past to be kept away in a basement or some kind dungeon. But she got used to them. She never felt any emotional pain every night, every morning she would get up from sleep. This, seemed older than being in school and getting the nerves of a shadowed slash ignored first year. Seeing them every time she slept was and will ever be a day to day encounter. And to recall about her past years having them and actually practising Occlumency, those can now be called useless. She could have waited for herself to be strong enough to handle them maturely.

The sleepy-headed young girl descended the stairs from the dormitories, deciding to have some piece of serenity in front of the fireplace and just be with the emerald-green couches. She remembered everything in here. Three years ago. She rarely spent her time in the common room during her third year. She was mostly outside drinking or weeping. And being with her best friends and Vee. She missed them. She wanted to breakdown again even if her eyes became dry for all her moping long ago.

The place was deserted as she stepped on the last flight. She scanned the surroundings, yawning the second time, and made out a figure standing up in one of the corners of the room. She scratched her eyes to get a full view and spoke like a drunkhead, "Anybody out there?" she looked down at the floor, glancing from her furry slippers she had worn for years since her first in Hogwarts, and walked towards the couches.

Frances gave one last look around her, drowsily closing her eyelids till she heard her calm heartbeat, wishing that she was like it, and slumped her body against the comfy pillows, drifting into a shallow yet temporary sleep.

"Isn't this enthralling," Mars said. He was seated on the stairs leading to the boys dorms. "Broody and sleepy. You girls know how to have good time, don't you?" He rose to his feet and stretched.

Walking farther into the room he sprawled down next to the girl on the sofa. "You girls got names are are you just gonna keep brooding and sleeping?"

"Muffinland..." Frances mumbled in her sleep, rolling forwards then bouncing her head against the hard surface of the couch. She gasped as she came into her senses, returning into a new world and vanishing from paradise. She yawned, scratched her eyes, and heard more voices behind, then suddenly beside her. Picturing faintly through her sunken eyes, she tried her best to reply drowsily in an annoyed manner for causing her to immediately leave her reign, reality have done it again sadly indeed,

"What the? Shit. I was in Muffinland for Merlin's sake! A field of all kinds of muffins and... and rivers of blueberry filling! Oh come on!" she grunted, took a pillow from her back, and buried her head against it, forcing her body to fall asleep again, "I'm the Muffin Queen." she introduced herself under the muffled covers of her mouth.