Chapter Text
The warm orange light of the Gryffindor boys dorm reminds Harry of another place, far smaller and darker with flickering bulbs that run on electricity rather than this conjured luminescent brightness made from nothing. The curtains around his bed made the space seem smaller than it really is. It’s comforting in a way, familiar in a sense that he can pretend that he is once again shut off from the outside world.
In the cupboard, cobwebs used to cling to his skin relentlessly, even when he tried his best to remove that clinging sensation. But often, Harry didn’t want to remove them. It is, after all, what spiders consider their home. Not tiled roofs and hardened walls, not a place with laughter and love from a parent to a child and vice versa. No, for spiders it was strings and webs made from their own tiny bodies; their hard work turning it into intricate art that they use to feed and sleep on. To remove it is a cruelty that Harry can only sometimes muster the will to do so. There is no need to punish these little creatures who only desire to live without harming anyone else.
Uncle Vernon would disagree vehemently.
As long as anything that takes up space near him ruins his picture perfect life, it is tantamount to the highest of sins. He squishes the poor critters into mush using his shoes and then would make Harry clean them, including the floor. In the case that Uncle Vernon is unable to squish anything he doesn’t like into oblivion, he throws them under the cupboard instead. Giving the unwanted freak more companions in the already cramped space.
Cruelty is something that the house Number Four in Privet Drive knows intimately.
Harry would describe their cruelty as something casual; as if it’s something normal. Growing up, it certainly was. Pans swung to his head, small fists and kicks on his body at the school playground, big thick fingers wrapping around his neck hard enough to leave bruises. Occasionally, if something particularly displeasing occurred, such as a failed contract at the company or a targeted piece of gossip or something more freaky like Harry’s magic, the leather and metal of a belt would meet little Harry’s back.
It would bleed and ache and bleed some more. The fabric of his shirt sometimes gets stuck to the dried blood, providing more pain and no relief to the poor lad. Even with that, he still had to complete his long list of chores. Cooking, folding, cleaning, gardening, and everything in between.
Harry learned to get used to it.
In Hogwarts, there are no chores to do but there is certainly still pain. There are still whispers that follow his every move and hatred displaced to him. There are teachers who loathe and teachers who care but not enough . There are friends who love and fight and make him feel normal for once. There is a headmaster who is too cryptic and clearly cares but Harry just cannot trust.
But there were also three-headed dogs, trolls, possessed professors, basilisks, dementors, deadly tournaments, and death.
And now, Voldemort is back. Really back. All snake-features and dramatics, black covered servants with skull masks kissing his feet. Purebloods at a half-blood’s bidding. It was a revolting display of power at a corrupted soul’s hands. What is it that Tom really wants? Exterminating muggles? Absolute power? Immortality?
What is it that allowed numerous purebloods to fall at his feet? What could possibly be so enticing to give up freedom? To become nothing more than slaves?
Harry can never understand them. Purebloods are born into power and yet they gave it all up just for a chance, to gamble on their legacy on an insane megalomaniac hellbent on killing a single child that survived each and every attempt.
Then again, everything Harry knows of the world was turned upside down the moment he learned that he was a wizard. Nothing in this world made sense. This unpredictability itches at him, makes him more wary and tense. His fingers are always twitching, hoping for a pen to sketch and create something that makes sense. To have precision and give him back control.
That’s why he is drawing now in his sketchbook decorated with stickers on the covers. He doesn’t think that anybody really knows that he has this hobby, he never once drew publicly, only in the safety of dark corners and quiet spaces. At first it was with broken crayons and scrapped paper in the cupboard, now it’s on an impulsively bought sketchbook and mechanical pencils from a random shop in Diagon Alley that he caved into. Harry doesn’t allow himself a lot of things, thinking himself undeserving, but this he just cannot resist.
And so he sketches and draws. Hogwarts under the graceful snow when winter comes to visit, his cupboard that he misses sometimes when things got too much, Hedwig eating bacon at the Great Hall, Sirius falling through the veil and the distance between him and Harry, his own eyes and his mother reflected back, the mirror of erised and what he saw.
Harry drew and drew and drew until morning light came. Trying to escape the dreams plaguing his mind every time he closes his eyes. Cold laughter and red eyes, blood dripping from his arms, and the dead eyes of Cedric and Sirius and sometimes of his parents.
Eyes eyes eyes—always eyes.
It is the eyes that tell Harry the truth. He remembers the dull eyes of his parents—rich honey brown and bright emerald green—and wonders what it could have looked like with the passion of life. He looks back at Cedric and wonders what picture his eyes could’ve painted after happiness carves its place on his face when time takes its toll. The eyes showed the insanity of Voldemort, of what the charming Tom Riddle became in the after . Harry tried to look for the remains of the once brilliant boy he met down in the chambers, but only madness remained in the eyes of the serpentine creature . No sly cunning, no sharp intellect. He became a pathetic and corrupted mess.
It is the eyes that Harry always looks into. The sharp gray of his godfather, shining and shimmering in the same manner the veil was. Sirius, in his last moments, looked like he was surrounded by constellations. The bright neon colors of the ongoing fight around them reminded Harry of fireworks going off in the vastness of the night sky. His godfather had never looked more like his namesake than then .
In the aftermath of his death, Harry in the hazeness of grief, memorized an entire book on constellations and stars. Sometimes he uses the invisibility cloak to sneak into the Astronomy Tower and tries to name all the lights in the sky. Sirius would always be the first to be named.
Harry would always choose him first, always.
But he doesn’t sneak out too often. Too many times Harry thought of putting one foot forward and letting go. Of free falling and feeling the wind on his face, the coldness of death’s fingers brushing against his soul. But he cannot allow himself to fall. It is not only his life at stake.
There is movement from outside his bubble. Harry stopped drawing and looked to his right, parting the curtain with his arm to see that Neville was already waking up. The illusion of being alone is now broken. Life begins to rush through his blood again.
“Good morning Neville”, Harry softly whispered.
Neville yawned and rubbed sleep away from his face. Blinking blearily, he squinted at Harry and smiled slightly.
“Morning Harry, did you get enough sleep?” Neville whispered back, furrowing his brows in concern.
“Don’t worry about me”, Harry said as he puts his sketchbook back in his bag, “I’ll take a shower first”.
Neville still looks concerned and Harry finds it sweet but truly unnecessary. He never did sleep for too long, never felt safe enough to indulge in the comforts of sweet dreams. Not that he had many. Nightmares are more frequent visitors.
Harry quietly got out of bed and grabbed his school robes and his towel. Shaking Ron awake on his way to the bathroom.
“Wha….?”, said Ron, still sleepy and not at all awake.
“It’s already morning Ron”, Harry fights back a laugh. Ron murmurs something inaudible and pulls up his blanket, cozying up to his bed.
Harry shakes his head and continued his walk to the bathroom. Not wanting to inconvenience his other roommates, he showered as fast as he could. Taking a small moment to appreciate the warmth of the waters then scrubbing away.
Afterwards, he took his brush to his hair and tried to get out all the knots he could find. Once he was sure that there were none, he placed the brush back on the cabinet. He doesn’t style his hair, it will always be a losing battle. But at least he can give some effort to looking decent which is one of the lessons Aunt Petunia drilled into him.
When Harry got out of the bathroom, most of his roommates had already woken up. Dean is stretching and popping his joints. Seamus is staring at the wall, unmoving and unnerving but also kind of funny. He was obviously not a morning person.
Ron is still warm and cozy on his bed. Harry shakes him harder this time, dodging the arms lazily batting him away. A loud groan can be heard, a long drawn out nooo loud enough for everyone to hear.
Harry and Neville’s eyes meet as the latter steps out of the other bathroom in their dorm. Both of them smiling and fighting down a laugh. This scene is almost part of their daily ritual; Ron never ever wakes up first. It’s a battle between the soft warm sheets and the horror of being late to their first class.
And it truly is a horror, since it’s Defense Against the Dark Arts first.
Harry cannot help the grimace that graces his face. Nose scrunching up with furrowed brows as he dreads the venom that will be spat on him by the one professor that competes for the first place of who hates the Boy-Who-Lived the most.
Some days, it doesn’t even anger Harry. Not anymore. It just brings about numbness and resignation, a bone deep weariness that makes everything feel a little heavier, a little colder.
When he was a first year, he once felt so hurt by the sheer amount of hatred directed towards him. Sharp vitriol towards him in class, snide comments whenever they passed each other in the hallways.
He didn’t know what he did wrong. So he reacted with anger, with resistance. There’s no reason for him to be treated that way. There’s no Dursleys to tell them of his roughness, of his otherness, his freakishness. It was supposed to be a fresh start in a new world.
But it’s just the same.
Same hurts, same experiences just with magic mixed in.
Harry snapped away from his train of thought as Ron finally rolled over from his bed to the floor. Yawning and slowly getting on his feet, he stumbled to his trunk at the foot of his bed, probably to get his school robes.
Harry smiled at the sight and went back towards his bed, tidying up his belongings and choosing what’s needed for today’s classes. He debated on whether or not his sketchbook should remain in his bag or if he should put it under his pillow, where it is often placed when not in use.
Thinking about what would happen during DADA, Harry is inclined to believe that he would need it later. And so in the bag it shall remain.
Harry hopes that he is just imagining the dread crawling up his throat. He prays for a good day to come, but deep down he knows no one will answer. He traces the edge of his sketchbook inside his bag, wondering, not for the first time, what it would feel like to stop existing. Not die, just... pause. Like a spell frozen midair, a breath held in time.