Chapter Text
“Once there was a dark eyed creature who awoke in the abyss. It turned its gaze to the mortal realm and hunted over the hills and through the caves, piercing ground, brick, blood and bone. Soon, it found what it was looking for: two individuals tangled up in the fate of one another, since the day they were born. They were laced with purpose and threaded with power. And so the dark eyes hungered for them more than anything else. It was easy to ensnare them when they were but a dream away.”
—
It’s early in the morning and Harry has been sitting at the base of a willow tree, its long branches arching and its leaves blowing gently, swaying in the morning wind. He sits quietly by the edge of the lake feeling exhausted as his wand gently hums. The sun has just started to peak over the horizon, painting the sky the colour of nectarines and cherry blossom. A light blue hue softens the stars as they slowly melt away, revealing a magnificent dawn. He can hear the birds start to sing and chirp with their lovely morning melodies and his eyes follow in a smooth, graceful motion as swallows dip into the lake, causing ripples to dance across its smooth, glassy surface: a replica of the sky above.
He laughs when he sees a large tentacle swipe at the flying forms that rejoice at the sight of day, wondering how he has never noticed how beautiful his school is. How many others viewed these grounds through his eyes? Did his parents once sit on this same grassy lawn, under this very same tree? Harry supposes he has been too busy trying to play the hero and that maybe he’s the only one who has never sat here and just admired. Never taken a moment to just pause. Never taken a moment to just appreciate the comforting silence of nature.
And then the blinding rage takes over again.
—
The great hall is exactly the same everyday. Filled with students grinning eagerly to hear any new snippets of drama. It’s one of the places where most people drop their façades and talk about anything and everything that comes to mind, but to Harry it’s a place of indifference. People often switch, sometimes admiring him with sparkling eyes and other times looking at him with disdain, the word liar etched across their tongues. At least he has his friends, but this morning they seem to be missing. That is until he spies a familiar head of bushy hair striding towards him.
“Harry thank goodness! We were looking for you practically everywhere! And after Ronald told me that you had disappeared, I was so worried that something had happened and…”
“It’s ok Hermione, I’m fine I just wanted to clear my mind a bit,” Harry chirps, swinging his legs over the side of the bench and grabbing a piece of toast. “You’re eventually going to give yourself a headache, I’m The Boy Who Lived remember? You should get used to me being in places unknown, possibly dangerous too,” Harry teases as he picks up a knife and scoops some butter.
After Hermione is strangely silent for a few seconds he turns his head to look back up at her, and is immediately hit with a newspaper. “Just because you have a target on your head doesn’t mean that you should be any less cautious! Quite the opposite actually. It gives you more reason to apprise us of your whereabouts so don’t go acting so nonchalant about it!” She scolds, hitting him on the head a second time.
“Okay, okay I’m sorry,” Harry confesses, holding his hands above his head in surrender. This seems to satisfy Hermione, and her glare eventually melts into a smile. “Do well to remember it,” she concludes and goes to drop the newspaper in front of him and skip off to talk to Ginny. Only when she’s gone does Ron slink over from his hiding spot where he spectated the whole interaction, clever enough not to get in the way of Hermione’s rage.
“Sorry mate for that, I swear I didn’t mean to tell her you were missing. She just kinda went all detective on me when you weren’t in the common room this morning… speaking of which where were you?” he questions, with a hint of concern in his voice, before ungracefully swinging himself over the bench, and grabbing a golden croissant.
“I just needed to go outside and clear my head. I also needed to finish off my essay on doxy-eyes for Snape, wouldn’t want to give him a valid reason for squandering my marks,” Harry explains and although it isn’t the exact truth, it’s close enough that Ron doesn’t seem to notice that something has gone unsaid. In actuality, Harry has just spent the last hour wandering the Hogwarts grounds and trying to break free of the parasitic emotions that have started to clench at his mind. They come in waves of pure anger and hate and it’s all Harry can do to stop himself from lashing out at his friends as it bubbles over. Every tree beside the lake has probably been hit by a stunner at least once this morning. Harry hopes his classmates won’t ever be subject to his blizzard of rage.
He knows that they already think he is a bit emotionally unstable due to his rage-prone reactions to even the slightest mention of Voldemort. No one seems to believe that Cedric was killed by the Dark Lord, except from his friends; For some reason, the idea of them expressing any sign of doubt tips him further along the precipice, closer to the fiery monster that he knows lurks within him.
“Oh the essay! Hermione’s going to kill me! And we have quidditch practice after this, right before our game against the snakes. I’m never going to get it done,” Ron sighs. Harry’s face falls.
“Wait! It’s practice in...” he checks the clock swinging behind them, “Five minutes! Mate we gotta run!”
Harry then proceeds to stuff the rest of his toast in his mouth just as Ron shoves him off the bench. He stumbles in his hurry but manages to right his pace and make a run for the common room, internally groaning, “we’re going to be late again!”
—
“Thank you for finally joining us Harry, Ron,” Angelina Johnson chides as Harry and his friend bend over to catch their breath. He’s just done a lot of running, and is in no mood to put up with the group of giggling Gryffindors that make up their quidditch team.
“Yeah we need our dearest Chosen One to lead us to victory, and he can’t do it without his ickle Keeper Ronnikins, right Fred?” George teases in a mock-desperate voice as he leans his arm on the still-bent-over Harry.
“Right George,” Fred replies with a smirk, mimicking his twin and propping both his elbows on his younger brother.
“Enough the both of you! Harry and Ron are not tables for goodness sakes!” scolds Angelina as she breaks up their doting over the exhausted fifth years.
“Ignore her Harry you make a great table, not so sure about Ronnie though, he is a little shaky. And if the “Boy Who Lived” thing doesn’t work out, we’d be happy to hire you.”
“I agree George, our dining room table isn’t nearly big enough because of all the preposterously boring red heads that seem to want to eat there.”
“Quite the nuisance actually.”
“I…what?” Harry manages to get out before Angelina loses it.
“Do all of you want to be beaten by a bunch of LOUSY GOOD FOR NOTHING SLYTHERINS!”
Everyone shakes their heads vigorously.
“Right then,” she says in a strangely calm tone after the outburst. The whole team are teetering on her next words. “Then let’s get practicing.”
As if a switch has been flicked, everyone starts rushing about grabbing brooms and trunks filled with balls, before waiting patiently for her next orders.
She seems more than happy about the sheer amount of obedience exhibited by her usually unruly team and a smile blooms across her face. “Let’s do some warmups and then we’ll talk strategy.”
Luckily, Harry and Ron are spared the jog so Harry mounts his broom and takes off towards the dark grey heavens, as Ron flies towards the hoops. He circles around the pitch and feels so much better up here, where he can escape the constant mental pressure that he drags around every day. This is where he can escape the Wizarding world. For as wonderful as it is, it comes with a lot of burdens. Most of it, he’s accepted, he’ll never understand and maybe it’s impossible to. Maybe it’s impossible to find the answer as to why Voldemort chose to attack his perfect little family; why Harry deserves to have survived.
Sometimes he finds himself daydreaming into the deep red Gryffindors curtains (red like blood, like snake-pupils and Expelliarmus) wondering what his life would have been like if Voldemort hadn’t destroyed everything he could have been.
Harry is pulled short from his musings when he reaches the height he’s been aiming for, and allows himself to just sit up here, a tiny pinprick in a landscape of bigger things. How he wishes that were true. But here, with the wind pounding through his skull and his heart giddy with adrenaline, maybe he can be Just Harry. Just for once. Just for him.
And he dives.
—
Harry stares at the foreboding clouds that start to roll over the mountains, signifying a wet and miserable match. The air is charged with lightning and his scar gives a prickle in response.
“And Harry what do you have to do?” sighs Angelina as she finishes monologuing the team for the fifth time, just having asked Ginny to fly up and retrieve their seeker. Harry’s head snaps back from the slowly darkening sky and swaying alpines in the distance, still slightly giddy from being back on a broom. He peers at his team who are still waiting for him to answer, a few looking a little uneasy. If their little match-saver is distracted by the storm, what does that mean for them?
“Well, catch the snitch of course,” he says cheerily to try and raise spirits, when inside he knows it’s never that easy.
Not for Harry Potter.
As if sensing Harry’s thoughts, the Slytherins stride onto the pitch. Everything is bathed in a dark grey light, highlighting the hunger in their eyes; they’re a pack of wolves stalking their next meal and as proud as the Gryffindors may appear, they know this match will be dirty.
Soon the entire school has filled the stands and Harry can feel hundreds of eyes on him. Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry is probably the fiercest out of all the houses and there’s no exception today. He can practically feel the daggers that the other team are glaring into him. So he does the most Gryffindor-ish thing possible and stabs them with a sharpened glare of his own. They look quite derisive yet surprised in response, as if Harry’s behaviour is the equivalent of a rather explosive blast-ended skrewt. “It’s so easy to rile them up,” a snarky voice in his head leers.
“AND HERE COMES THE SNAKES, THEIR EYES LOCKED WITH THE LIONS! WHICH IS A SORRY EXCUSE AT TRYING TO INTIMIDATE THEM, REALLY.”
- “Mr. Jordan!”
“SORRY PROFESSOR I DIDN’T MEAN IT, PROBABLY… ANYWAY FOLKS
THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MATCH OF THE CENTURY SO HOLD ON TO YOUR UMBRELLAS!”
Harry takes his position as his eyes lock with Malfoy who is worriedly peering at the clouds. However, when he sees Harry watching him, it’s immediately replaced with a fiery glare paired with his signature snarl.
“Hey Potter! This lightnings going to do more than scar that pretty little face of yours. Better watch out, we wouldn’t want you getting struck!” spits Malfoy with as much gusto as he can muster, so that he’s heard above the screaming stands and howling of the wind.
“Scared of a little lightning?” Harry snarks back. Madame Hooch releases the balls and the crowd’s shouts rise to a roar. “Guess you haven’t seen me fly.” Right on cue, the sky gives a deafening crack as lighting paints it a blinding silver and Harry kicks off the ground.
The clouds burst.
The storm begins.
—
Harry has decided to use his usual strategy and just fly as high as possible to get a good viewpoint of the match. Malfoy is hot on his tail, seeming to think Harry has already spotted something or maybe he’s just smart enough to get out of the rapidly growing violence below. With little visibility, the players have just resulted to a game of “let’s see how maybe people we can knock of their brooms.”
After a few more metres, Malfoy falls back and flies off in another direction. “Probably too scared of the storm,” Harry thinks smugly. After all, he’s on the brink of the dark grey mass that’s pouring buckets of stinging drops as he zooms higher, and the thunder is so loud, he thinks his eardrums might rupture.
Finally, he reaches the brink of the cloud and wafts his hand along its charged surface. He can feel his hair rise with the static. This is what it feels like to be alive. He scans the pitch and suddenly, sees a glint of gold near the Ravenclaw stands. He decides he should end this match soon before it turns into a blood bath: four of their best are already in the hospital wing and more are being injured by the second. He’s a split second from a ninety-degree dive when he feels his fingers slowly start to numb.
And his heart rate triples as a familiar frosty fear squeezes at his lungs.
But it can’t be.
Not again.
The rain turns to hail around him.
And the world seems to slow as a cloaked figure appears inches away from his face, rasping and choking despair into Harry’s very bones, penetrating deep, raw and unyielding.
Something strange happens.
Then he hears the scream.
Then Harry falls.
Harry falls and falls and falls. The world spins. The deafening wind rushes past his ears. “Someone will catch me. Someone will catch me.”
But as he turns mid fall towards the sky, he sees the gnarled and icy hands reach for him; grasp like he is the only escape to its prison. Like he’s water in a dessert. Like he’s the last bit of happiness left.
And when he spins to look down, he can see the all too familiar quidditch pitch coming
closer, closer, closer.
He doesn’t see a way out and just hopes that someone will catch him, like in his third year. Someone will notice his flailing body, drenched with rain and starting to freeze over from the closeness of his pursuer.
Ten metres.
Six metres,
4 metres…
Please someone catch him.
—
Two dark eyes stare at him, soulless and voided of any emotion. It feels like he is on the brink of life and death. A pit-less void. Like everything is timeless.
The dark eyes before him are home to a vessel shrouded in darkness, yet he can feel an ancient dread drape across his bones. It feels cold. It feels familiar….
And the eyes continue to stare, swimming with every emotion and yet none; thousands of lives colliding into one, a thousand lives never lived. They feel so deeply penetrating that every secret he holds seems useless, vulnerable, transparent. Like his very existence was torn apart and laid bare for those eyes to judge, and yet, he can’t look away.
The figure eventually breaks the silence, and it seems as though something eternal and unyielding shatters. The voice is barely a whisper, but it echoes in the non-existent chasm that he knows he is slowly falling into.
“You will be mine, dearest fracture.” But the whisper of such a creature sounds like a threat, like a blade to the heart. The voice is not normal, it ebbs with danger and something…deeper, darker.
Without another word, the dark-eyed figure fabricates a wafting hand and reaches out. The arm is cloaked, and the fabric seems to be made of the deepest darkness as it ripples in a wind that never was. He watches as it wafts closer and hands he can’t see grab his own in a caress. It’s soothing… yet something deep within his soul screams that this is horribly wrong. It feels like a deadly frost consuming a flower.
—
Harry is shaken awake by a startled looking Ron. He feels like he has been pulled from the depths of the sea, like a great pressure has left his chest and every part of him is undeniably, inescapably frozen. He can remember a dark eyed figure beginning to laugh, but it had sounded like a dying child, like a snapping tree: demented… victorious. Like a caged bird let free.
And then he had been yanked back into reality and saved from the dark and terrifying void of his nightmare —by no other than his best friend.
He slowly sits up in bed and looks around, recognising that he’s in the hospital wing with, out of all people, a bored looking Snape with his signature sneer and a slightly pale Ron. He eventually registers the state of his body and observes that he is breathing extremely heavily, as if the oxygen can’t reach his lungs fast enough. As if his body is learning to live for the first time.
The other times he’s had dreams like this, it has always had something to do with Voldemort terrorising people with undertones of anger and hatred. This time he felt scared, alone, and like he was the victim. Every spike of fear that threatened to make his knees give way was his own. And it was cold. So cold he could feel his bones freezing. He could feel the merciless icicles that crawled over his rib cage, that threatened to penetrate his heart until he was sure it would shatter. It felt more real than any other dream he has ever had.
“…Harry? You there…?” Ron asks for the sixth time, gripping onto Harry’s hand which feels ice cold, yet is slippery with sweat. Harry just continues to sit in his bed, staring into nothing and attempting to slow his breathing.
“Hey mate, maybe I should call Madam Promfrey… she’ll know what to do,” Ron says gently, rubbing Harry’s shoulder to try and comfort him and get his attention. Harry finally looks up at Ron and his eyes swim with what can only be described as pure terror. Yet something awakens deep behind those piercing emerald eyes. Something Ron doesn’t know how to name. And for the first time, he can see the fear behind the Gryffindor mask, leaking through the cracks.
After the unnatural silence that hangs heavy in the air, Harry finally slides his legs over the side of the bed and reaches for his glasses. There was a dementor. He was falling. He had a nightmare. The pieces don’t seem to be fitting together.
So he says the only thing he can and waits for another tale about how he’s defied death yet again. But it feels like he’s still seconds away from the grave.
“What happened?”
Ron takes a deep breath.
Snape furrows his brows.
And Harry thinks, “this is going to be a loong year.”