It's gone. Well, not gone. It didn't grow legs by itself. It's missing. That's worse than the possibility of a definitive inanimate object’s sudden gaining of consciousness. 

Missing is worse than his journal thinking therefore being and choosing to walk away from him. 

He knows he shouldn't have brought the thing out of his dorm. Out of his locked trunk. Out of its cocoon of bunched up clothing passed down from Dudley. 

Harry's usually good at curbing temptation. He's good at telling himself off the way Marge barks back at her dogs. He's good at denying himself, putting his fiery furnace of a spirit locked under the proverbial stairs where it belongs. Resolve, some might call it, discipline, according to Hermione, and being bonkers according to Ron. 

Harry's heard it all. 

He doesn't need to try every food, buy every item of clothing, or have fun with his friends every day. He doesn't need to tend to stupid Quidditch injuries every time. There's no need to have bread twice in the same day. No need to bathe when he can shower. 

There was absolutely no need to take his journal out of its safe nest and fling it in his school bag as though it's just any other book. No need to leave his bag unattended during lunch because he was studying for the potions exam they have this Wednesday. No need to be such an idiot. 

Except there was. 

He was tired last night. Nightmares have been holding him against the wall in a chokehold lately. It's a part of him that he cannot silence. A residue of pain and misery that won't wash away. He stays awake most nights, for as long as he can, knowing that the ungodly quidditch practice hours will finish him off like a cruel yet benevolent master does a crippled horse. This is the routine: he gets tired. He gets fatigued. He gets so exhausted that he can't even form words or sentences. He carries on throughout the day by the sheer pulling and grinding of his teeth. 

He gets to his bed. He lies down. His eyelids flutter and fritter and his body jostles as he tosses and turns and hugs his pillow. And then the pillow turns into Cedric's dead body. 

Acrid terror is injected into his very veins, most nights. He doesn't even need the pillow for the routine nightmares to work. His mind is that creative. It's on its feet, bubbling with unnecessarily vivid images of violence and torture. It's insane how well he remembers the touch of a corpse. The pain wracking his own body. The Crucio. 

But anyhow. He was tired. Usually, that doesn't make a difference because he's good at imitating Marge and Petunia and denying himself for long enough that he can write a sentence or two in his journal. He needs it. He needs to write in that demented Notebook that is almost out of pages. 

He got it from his primary school teacher. A Miss Emily something. She was fresh out of uni, one could tell. Just married, just moved to the suburbs. She had that annoying glow of a young scholar about her. And all she got were smelly brats between the ages of five to seven who couldn't even count to ten. 

Not something she imagined doing with her degree in education. Or maybe it was. Harry doesn't know what Emily the muggle teacher thought about. He loved her smile. People really didn't smile at him when he was a kid. They don't smile at him now. 

She gave it to him. Because she said it wasn't good for a boy his age to be so quiet—this happened as he was regularly punished for opening his mouth at any encounter that involved the Dursleys and ended with a belt—and that young lads like him should express themselves more. 

Bless her soul, she had no idea. Harry could ramble. He curbed his tongue to avoid a painful pinch or slap or hair pull. But he couldn't curb his thoughts. He could barely write. But he could write better than Dudley. He could draw better too. To this day he still has a magnificent and yet fiendish rendition of Vernon Dursley’s face with the body of a walrus that he drew when he was six. Still makes him crack up sometimes. When he was locked in his cupboard, even in the dark, he would write. With off-beat spelling and nonsensical words he churned his way out of the pain that wrapped around his incomprehensibly small mind. His first words on those pages were: 

I wants to ran away. 

Probably why he still has problems writing essays to this day. His penmanship, whilst extensive, leaves a lot to be desired lexically and semantically. He grew older. His spelling improved. He knows how to spell people's names. How to name his own feelings even though he doesn't understand them yet. He writes every night before sleeping. Even if it's a sentence. And most nights it's a randomised version of the following paragraph: 

I am tired. 

I hate Cedric's face. I'm sorry, I killed you Cedric. I have classes tomorrow. I hate everything, including myself. 

He's good at paraphrasing. 

Last night. He was really tired. Like so tired that Ron had to carry him up to the dorms like some heroic wizard does with the damsel in distress in a book or something. Or in Ron's case, when handling a sack of potatoes. 

He wants to write. He wanted to. He even had the words ready in his head. His version of please let me die already had many colourful alliterations in it. But he was so tired. He fell asleep. He was so tired that he knew he had nightmares even though he couldn't remember them. 

So in his naivety, he wakes up in the morning. Takes out his journal and thinks I'll write something in it before noon, and then chucks the thing in his bag. Suffice to say, he does not get to do so. They have a surprise quiz in their Charms class, which goes swimmingly since he didn't even know what they were being quizzed about. Then there's the mess at the transfiguration class and Harry is given detention for zoning out—he does this regularly enough that it's become a problem—and by lunch, he remembers—Hermione tells him—that they have a potions exam on Wednesday. 

Now, since it's Snape, Harry is tempted to leave it be. In fact, between Umbridge’s reign of terror and his own distorted sense of reality due to the barrage of fucking trauma, he is most definitely tempted. But it is an established fact that Harry doesn't do temptations. 

He takes out his textbook like a good lad that he is, at lunch. Actually right over his untouched plate. He leaves his school bag open because of course, no one is fucking insane enough to snatch something out of the Harry Potter’s schoolbag at lunch. With at least dozens of people around. He props his book open, looks at the pages, registers almost nothing and then lunch is over and they actually have a double potions class during which he is barely lucid. 

Now, it's long after dinner time. He's panicking on his bed, going through his upturned and emptied-out bag as though the damn journal is going to manifest out of thin air because of his tear-soaked face. Ron is rubbing his back with one hand and uselessly going through the emptied out contents over and over again. 

“We can talk to McGonagall—” 

“It's missing. Ron—” 

Ron nods quickly, probably panicking because Harry is being stupid and unreasonable and it's just a stupid notebook. Except it's not. If anyone, even a single person reads out a single sentence out of those pages… Harry's life will be over. His chest heaves with great difficulty as Harry's disaster scenario escalated to a crescendo. What if Malfoy has it? What if he takes it out, reads it for others like some great joke? What if it's Umbridge who took it? She will torment him. Have him expelled for being so disturbed. She will get the ministry involved and the Daily Prophet will—

Everyone already hates him. He cannot. He cannot cope if it's—

“It's just a notebook, we can help look for it tonight, Hm? We'll check the classes and the Great Hall—Hermione and I have patrolling privileges.” 

Harry isn't even hearing him. He's going over his day in his head, and the day is somehow merging with the previous days, weeks, months. He's trying to think as though thinking hard enough would conjure his diary in his shaking hands. He closes his eyes, rather tightly, and hears only the blood rushing in his ears. 

They don't get it. They don't understand. No one gets it. That notebook was the most precious thing he’d ever owned. The only thing keeping him tethered to reality. Possibly the only thing that helped him not throw himself off a high tower before breakfast every morning. 

And now it's gone. No. Not gone. It's missing. When did he lose it? Did he lose it or was it taken? Why did he have to be so stupid? Why is he like this? Why is he—

“—is he okay?” 

“It's fine, Neville,” he hears Ron say, “Can you just make sure the dorm stays empty and keep him company? I'm going to go look for what he's lost—” 

Harry's heart slams itself against his ribs with resounding thuds. Like the echo of a great wail that rippled through water. His eyes remain closed, he remembers the words on those pages with vivid clarity. Words of pain that carried his youth. Apologies and bashings addressed to himself and Cedric. Depraved thoughts of freedom and death and pain and blood that he could never fulfil. Letters to Aunt Petunia, in childish hopes that she would love him someday. The yearnings for someone to love him. To have a mum. 

The same letters written and never sent to padfoot. In hopes of having someone to love him. To save him from others and himself. To have a father. 

How he wished at the age of eight, to sleep and not wake up the day after because he was sick of chores and pain and getting beaten and pushed around.

Petunia had swung at his head with a frying pan. She missed the first time. But not the second. He remembers wishing he had died.

And someone now has access to all those things. They know everything. 

“—can help look for it.” 

“No, no!” Ronald rushes to say, possibly sensing the way Harry’s body goes impossibly rigid under his touch, “Just keep him company here. And um… don't touch him.” 

Harry loses touch with himself. He can only feel Ron's body heat removed from his side, and Neville nervously and silently settles on the floor near Harry's bed. 

Lunch. He remembers seeing it at lunch. He got his textbook out of the bag and the journal was there. He cannot remember if it was still there when he stuffed his textbook back in the damn thing. No one approached him. People don't approach him in general. No one looks at him or talks to him or smiles at him. The only company he has are Ron and Hermione. The only people who even sit near him during meal times are Ron and Hermione. And they've been busy trying to calm him the fuck down since he realised that the notebook is missing. 

It's been at least three hours already. More if it went missing at lunch. 

Not missing. Hermione went to look. It wasn't there. It was taken.

Ron and Hermione return that night, probably after hours of scouring the castle, empty-handed. By that point in time, Harry had already reached the conclusion that the journal was not even missing. It was taken. It was most definitely, indubitably, taken. 

And now, he has to spend the rest of his days here in dread and breathtaking pain, until someone lets something slip and tears his vicariously fragile life apart. Hogwarts, as tumultuous as it is, is his safe space. And that's saying something, since the large majority of the people here currently either think he's crazy, or killed Cedric Diggory. They're frightened of him. They don't look him in the eyes. His house mates think that he's insane. 

And now, if that someone publishes the damn diary…those suspicions will be proved true once and for all. Everyone will know about the abuse. The beatings. That he's unloved and unwanted. They'll know about the nightmares. About how much he hates himself just like they hate him. They'll know his deepest secrets, his darkest thoughts. 

He cannot eat. He can barely sleep. He did neither of those things properly before, but in the coming week, his health takes a deep dive to the bottom of an endless pit. His friends are worried, even the twins, whom he barely has any interaction with keep throwing concerned glances at him. His professors look at him with something akin to severe disappointment and pity when he fails to procure any of the assignments they've been given the week prior. Above all, his anxiety in keeping the missing journal secret is positively eating at him. He has nothing to grasp onto. No suspects. No chances of asking anyone whether they'd seen the notebook. No shots of finding what has been lost. 

“I wrote to my parents last night,” Hermione is telling him, diligently piling his plates with roasted potatoes, “They can buy you a new muggle notebook from the markets and send it over next week.” 

Ron clasps a hand on his back, “Thank Merlin. See? It's all fine, Harry.” 

But it's not fine. They don't know that the notebook was his journal. They don't know that Harry poured his heart and soul into what that primary school teacher gave to him in order to escape his humanity. And now he's stuck with it, like a bite of food lodged in his throat and suffocating him. The words are trapped in his chest, piling up, building sediment, and Harry's not quite sure much longer he can live in this constant state of panic. 

He thanks Hermione, silently and looks down at his chicken and potatoes. They might as well have been served raw, for they don't look appetising to Harry at all.

It's Wednesday. Miraculously. He wants to say that he barely felt time pass in his haze, but that is just simply a lie. He felt every agonising second. It's Wednesday. They have double potions with the Slytherins. Harry has detention with Umbridge afterwards right until dinner. 

He cannot even remember what he did to get that detention. He cannot remember much about the things that he's done during the week. He blinks his eyes several times, and he's suddenly not in the Great Hall anymore. He's in the dungeons. The potions classroom to be exact. 

Sluggishly he looks around, and Hermione is by his side, her hand a warm little thing on the small of his back. Harry swallows the bile in his throat, “Where's Ron?” 

“Behind us with Dean.” Hermione doesn't force him to physically turn and see for himself, “Are you unwell? I think I need to take you to the infirmary—” 

The door is thrown open in its usual fashion when Snape enters the classroom. Hermione cuts herself off as the billowing robes brush past their station and the man strides to the head of the class by the board. A stack of parchment papers are floating behind him in a more graceful manner. 

“Students,” Snape turns, his voice the same stuffy and deep baritone it always was, “Your exam papers were corrected.”

The parchment papers start floating off the pile and flying to random students—well, not exactly random. Snape stands with his arms crossed as students gasp or pale or flush as they inspect the disgrace. Snape watches on impassively. And Harry wants to throw up. 

“It is quite curious,” Snape says as the pile grows smaller and smaller, “The inadequacy and the sinking of the intellectual property of students who should know better than to disappoint me.” 

Hermione gasps next to him as he parchment paper lands into her hands, almost entirely covered by red scribbles and corrections. Still, Harry is sure she got a higher mark than those around them. He cannot even remember taking this exam. 

“One wonders how you students manage to find your way about and take care of your bodily functions with this distressing performance of your inability to conjure logic,” Snape drawls on, his voice deeper and deeper and venom dripping from every word. He starts walking between the rows of students. The Slytherins surely with bowed heads and stiff backs, and Harry is sure, the Gryffindors are slouched and glaring at the man. 

He drops his own gaze on the desk. He feels so tired. 

“Abysmal. Simply and indignantly so. I would deduct points for this embarrassment of a result received from this class, but I'm afraid neither house has enough points for me to prove the gravity of my point.” 

His shoes click on the stone tiles, his robes shuffle. Harry can feel the man behind him but doesn't turn to check. He hopes that Snape keeps rambling the whole class. His eyes flutter as the very last parchment lands right in front of him. Hermione gasps again, peering at the empty parchment.

Harry stares at it too. The only indicator that this is his paper is the name. No red ink. No black ink either. He vaguely recalls turning it in blank and it makes sense. He doesn't even remember writing his name. Snape comes to stand right by his station, peering down on him numbly looking down at the empty exam sheet. Harry braces himself for the jeer. The barrage of insults. Snape snatching the parchment and showing it off to class with a sneer. 

Clearly, Fame isn't everything.

Harry remembers crying the night he heard that sentence out of the man's mouth. He recalls ranting about it in his notebook. Writing furiously under his covers as he cried, feeling the tightness in his chest, the aching behind his eyes that was all too familiar to him. He was only eleven. A child without a bedroom. Without his own clothes. A child who was so eager to learn that he took notes of every word out of his potions professor’s mouth. A child he hated. A child who killed Cedric Diggory. 

Fame isn't everything. He wrote, Fame ruined me and I don't even have it. I just wanted to do well. 

Years later Cedric dies and Harry writes the same words. 

I don't want anything. I never wanted anything. I just wanted to do well. I just wanted to survive. 

Well, he's here now. Having survived. It's an unpalatable concept now. Surviving for what exactly? For empty exam sheets and crippling depression and everyone hating him? Surviving for Snape and Umbridge to torment him? 

There's a gaping hole in his chest and he swallows. He can feel Snape's unnervingly quiet presence right by his side and the tepid silence that is kept by the class and its terrified students. 

He holds his breath, and finally looks up as the elongated silence stretches on. Snape has an unreadable expression on his face, and he's looking at Harry, not the parchment. 

“See me after class in my office, Mister Potter.” He says, very softly, and then walks away. As he makes his way to the board, the man raises his voice, “And as for the rest of you,” he sneers and turns to look at the flabbergasted students, “I will make you write so many essays on the qualities of the dried dragon daffodils that your fingers will bleed. I will not tolerate laziness.” 

His eyes barely flitter across the class to meet Harry's. And Harry drops his gaze once again with a new ball of anxiety in his stomach. Snape knows. 

Harry doesn't know how or why or…he saw it on the man's face. The shadow crossed his face. The look in his eyes that barely lasted a second. 

Snape knows. Snape knows. Snape knows.