Lost in translation (Tanya)

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Tonight was one of those nights Dan always dreaded. The nights when others strong emotions from the day before burst back into his brain. Not too mention the emotions of those sleeping near him. He was tossing and turning until he finally sat up angrily, throwing his blanket down before standing up and throwing some robes on over his pajamas. His professor knew of his... Condition, ability, whatever, and understood when Dan said he needed to be alone for a while. So, after a short discussion, his headmaster led him to the Great Hall with a sleeping bag to spend the night. A big empty room. Dan didn't argue with the idea.

He was there now, lying on the ground looking up at the candlelit ceiling. His head was still pounding from the emotions that woke him. He wasn't in the sleeping bag, just laying on top of it. He was running his fingers through his hair, counting the stars when he felt someone. He felt their emotions, that is. He sat up quickly.

@tatiana

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It had been another nightmare. Tatiana had awoken in a cold sweat, shaking, in the middle of the night. She was thankful that she hadn't screamed or done anything else that could have disturbed the other girls in her dormitory, but she didn't know if she would be able to fall asleep again. Instead of taking some more Potion for Dreamless Sleep—as she knew she should have done—she got up from her bed, and, still in her pajamas and without her wand, wandered upstairs from the Hufflepuff Common Room to the ground floor.

Even the portraits were asleep in their frames, and any little creak (or simply the sound of her own footsteps) made Tania worry that an Auror or the caretaker had seen her out of bed. She knew that her excuse would sound phony to anyone who found her, too, which made her heart beat faster. She hadn't run into anyone—not even one of the school ghosts—but anything seemed possible.

Reaching the Great Hall, she thought of how its ceiling was enchanted to reflect the night sky and wondered if it might help to calm her. She pushed open the doors as slowly as she could, stepped into the room, and then closed the doors again so that they wouldn't slam.

When Tania turned to face the tables, she saw that there was someone on the floor. It was a young man, and he looked as though he was atop a sleeping bag. He sat up, and she walked forward in his direction.

“…Daniel?” she whispered, seating herself on the bench of the table nearest to him. Even in the dark, she could tell that it was her family friend. “What are you doing in the castle?” The Great Hall wasn't the Durmstrang Ship.

@daniel

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Dan's eyes started to focus on the shape and as soon as she spoke he knew exactly who it was. Her emotions were like a hurricane, rushing toward him and causing him to lean away from her. "Hey Tan," he said, trying to sound calm, but it just came out as a sort of strained choke. She sat down on the bench near him and he straightened up, placing his hands in his lap. "I just needed to get a break from that ship. Feeling a bit claustrophobic," that was pretty believable, right? It was stuffy in there with all those people. Emotional claustrophia, he'd call it.

He squinted at her, "why aren't you in bed?" he said, his eyebrows furrowing with worry.

@tatiana

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“Hey, Tan.” Daniel might have greeted her, although he sounded as stressed as she felt. He had shifted so that he was sitting up, from what Tatiana could see of his outline in the dark room. She hated that he was staying awake because of her presence, especially since sleeping in the Great Hall couldn't be as comfortable for him as sleeping aboard the Durmstrang Ship.

Explaining that he had felt claustrophobic there, Tania nodded. She had begun to calm down a bit and had pulled her legs up onto the bench of the table so that she was facing in the same direction as the bench itself.

“Why aren't you in bed?”

Tania bent her knees but kept her feet flat against the bench. “I couldn't sleep,” she replied, wishing that she could focus on the stars above her head. Her mind was too awake for sleep. “I… had a nightmare.” It was embarrassing, but Dan had known her her entire life. He couldn't judge her for having had a nightmare, could he?

@daniel