Harry didn’t know how long he stared at the words.  The words written in his own chicken-scratch handwriting.  The words written indiscriminately over the deep claw marks and welts from the cane that he had received only the day before and which were looking torn and raw.  The top of his back was livid red which faded to a waxy white half way down and despite most of the damage being over his shoulder blades, the wounds on his lower back stood out far more against his clammy skin.  The writing was red on red but the torn skin around the edges of the letters was ghostly white and so very stark against the ruined skin it sat upon, especially in the icy light of the moon. 

He couldn’t seem to get his mind to work properly; it was as though it had stalled and he didn’t even have the will to close his eyes against the sight.  He couldn’t feel his neck twinging painfully in its twisted position, couldn’t feel himself shivering.  There was just silence in him and the sound of rain pelting glass outside him and that was all.  Harry had long since passed the point where the words became embedded so firmly behind his eyes that he saw his back in sharp relief every time he blinked but he still couldn’t make sense of them. 

‘I will not attempt to close my mind’.

‘I will not attempt to close my mind’.

‘I will not attempt to close my mind’.

‘I will not attempt to close my mind’.

He didn’t become aware of anything else until long after the words had ceased to mean anything. 

Moving as though underwater, Harry turned his wrenched neck with an automatic groan as nerve endings came painfully alive, losing sight of his back and hugely grateful for it as he felt himself waking from whatever trance the ghastly sight had induced.  His face, when he took the time to glance at the mirror and the extra few minutes to focus his eyes on it, remained impassive, inhuman.  He didn’t look like himself.  He didn’t recognise himself.  The messy black mop, eternally pale skin, lightning bolt scar, glinting green eyes; it was all there but he didn’t recognise himself.  Something was just... wrong.  Something was just so wrong with him. 

He looked around the room with blank eyes, utterly unsure of what to do next.  Just... lost.  He didn’t feel the biting cold attacking his bare chest or the slowing trickles and stickiness on his back.  He’d ceased feeling awhile ago.  He just stood, pivoting indecisively every once in awhile as though the new angle would present a course of action to follow but it never did.  He noted absently the way every time he stiltedly turned the moon was in a different position and eventually it disappeared entirely behind the top of the window’s arch. 

He moved forward numbly, not feeling completely aware of himself, and found that if he stood in the corner beside the window at just the right angle he could still see the moon.  The silver sphere became the only thing he saw when he closed his eyes and he stared until the rest of the world was dark and the moon was as bright as the sun and pain was thrumming behind his eyes.  Even then he didn’t look away.  When the moon threatened to disappear behind the wall again Harry sunk to the ground and curled his legs to his chest, arms around his knees, back to the corner where the draft couldn’t reach it and he could pretend it didn’t hurt, swaying the slightest bit and staring; staring at the only bright thing left.   

And that was how Ron found him. 

Well, in actuality it wasn’t; and that would have been obvious if Harry had turned his head to see the Marauder’s Map in Ron’s left hand and his father’s invisibility cloak in his right. 

“Harry?” Ron kept his voice quiet, worried about attracting attention from ghosts or prowling teachers.  When Ron caught sight of Harry huddled in the corner – fully conscious and aware as far as he could tell – he sighed in relief, having been confused and a little concerned when he saw Harry’s unmoving dot in the boys bathroom on the map.  He plonked himself down on his knees beside Harry and looked out the window to see what Harry was looking at. 

When he saw the moon he sighed, “Poor Remus.”   He looked back at Harry as he continued blithely.  “I was just up in the Owlery, you wouldn’t believe what Umbridge’s done!  She’s monitoring the mail still but she has guards there at night to make sure no one can get to any of the owls, not just the school ones but all of them!  It’s bloody ridiculous – that’s people’s familiars she’s holding hostage!  I borrowed your dad’s cloak, I knew you wouldn’t mind and I had to post... something...”  He trailed off and Harry might have noticed Ron’s complete inability to lie at all convincingly if he had been listening.  As it was his eyes had never left the moon and he hadn’t heard more than a monotonous sort of murmur coming from Ron.   From Harry’s lack of questions Ron assumed he had successfully avoided any questioning so he sat back on his haunches and watched the moon too, looking for a reason as to why his friend found it so fascinating.

It didn’t take long for Ron to look back at Harry quizzically, about to ask why he was sitting in the corner of the boys loo until he saw that what he had previously thought was a nondescript T-shirt covering the bits of Harry’s shoulder Ron could see beyond the drawn up knees was really bare skin.  Ron immediately stood and started taking off his robes.

“Bloody hell Harry, you’re going to make yourself sick if you sit around half naked.”  He paused what he was doing to groan softly and mutter, “Bugger, I’m turning into Mum.”  Nevertheless he crouched in front of Harry who still hadn’t taken his eyes off of the moon and draped his robes around his friend’s shoulders.  The back of Ron’s fingers brushed Harry’s arm as he covered his friend as best he could and the redhead cursed.  “You’re frozen, how long have you been sitting here?  Harry?”

It was only when Harry continued to stare unblinkingly at the moon, showing no signs whatsoever of having noticed Ron’s arrival, let alone anything he’d said, that Ron began to think that something might be wrong.  He tried to catch Harry’s eyes but it didn’t work until he forced his head between Harry’s gaze and the moon, finally noticing just how vacant that gaze was. 

“Harry?”  Ron’s voice was much quieter now and laced with concern.  Moving very slowly, Ron put his hands on both of Harry’s where they held his knees to his chest with a force that left the knuckles white and pried them gently, finger by finger, away from his friend’s own skin.  Harry offered little resistance beyond his frozen fingers staying just as rigid once removed from his legs.  He seemed stuck in his current position and Ron remembered rare times in the past when he’d wake up in the middle of the night to see Harry like this after a particularly horrifying nightmare.  As he worked to ease his friend into a less scrunched position and then helping him to his feet – making sure to keep an arm around his back when he saw how unsteady he was on his feet – Ron murmured nonsense the entire time without paying attention to what he was saying.  It was just as well because as it was on his mind he ended up telling Harry all about the letter he’d just sent to Sirius despite all efforts not to let Harry know about it.  Harry however was paying just as little attention to his words as Ron was, taking the miniscule amount of security he could from the sound of Ron’s voice and the strong arm keeping him up and not knowing much beyond it. 

As they began to walk, slowly so that Harry’s feet which had long since fallen asleep would hold him up, Ron despaired of being caught by roaming teachers before he remembered the balled up bundle of fabric he still had.  Even as he tugged his robes further around Harry to try to cover him as much as possible and looking around the room to see Harry’s missing shirt which seemed to have disappeared altogether, Ron considered the best way to get back to Gryffindor tower.  It wasn’t likely to be easy with Harry so out of it and he had half a mind to simply take him to the infirmary but he knew his friend wouldn’t appreciate it when he came back to himself so Ron disregarded the idea.  Taking out the invisibility cloak, he pulled Harry against his side, still supporting his slouching form, as he threw the cloak over their heads.  Their feet (or more accurately, Ron’s feet since he was a good head taller than his friend) poked out the bottom but unless Mrs Norris was out he doubted they would be noticed. 

The walk back to the tower was slow going and Ron’s concern was steadily increasing because Harry still wasn’t speaking or moving without the odd nudge from Ron by the time they reached the portrait.  Muttering the password (kaleidoscope – everyone suspected Dumbledore whose robes could always be described similarly) and steering his friend towards the couch in front of the empty fireplace in the common room, Ron pushed his friend down and noticed the lack of reaction as he sat beside him.  Deciding to try methods that had worked in the past, Ron stayed silent except for a quiet incendio to set the banked embers ablaze before them.  He was determined not to fuss, yet he still found himself drawing the robes tighter together around a still unresponsive Harry before determinedly busying himself with clearing the chair on his other side of the books that had been precariously stacked and left there – no doubt by Hermione as they so often sat here to study after dinner. 

Going through the books as he tidied up he cast distracted eyes over the titles and blurbs of books as he kept one eye on Harry, waiting for some recognition to come back.  It took much longer than Ron had expected and he was beyond worried when he finally noticed Harry blinking slowly at the fire as though waking up from a very deep sleep. 

“Harry?”  It took him a moment but then Harry was turning to look at Ron and murmuring something unintelligible.  “What was that mate?”

“... Hi.”  And then Harry was looking at the fire again as though he needed to be looking at it, drawn against his will to the blinding brightness of fire in the dark.

Ron gave him some time but instead of snapping out of whatever stupor Harry had been in, his friend seemed to be sinking back into it.  Wanting more than anything to get his friend talking – he couldn’t help until he knew what was wrong, why couldn’t Harry ever understand that? – Ron tried to think of an icebreaker. 

“Harry?  Um... have you done that essay for McGonagall?”  Okay, he wasn’t very good at icebreakers.  Nonetheless, “I was going to ask Hermione to help me with it in the morning, do you want to ask too?”

Ron had reached the point where he was sure he was talking to himself until Harry’s quiet voice stopped him from opening his mouth again.  “Yeah... haven’t done that yet... think she’d mind?”  Ron was too relieved to be getting sense out of him to hold in his quiet laugh on a sigh.

“Who, Hermione or McGonagall?”  Harry didn’t even blink let alone smile but Ron didn’t mind, at least he was talking.  And he could see how Harry’s shoulders had lost some of their slump; he simply looked exhausted instead of cowed and Ron knew it was partly due to the return on normality so he continued trying to put his friend at ease.  “’Cos I don’t think Hermione will mind too much but if McGonagall catches us at it again she’ll have kittens... at least Trelawney doesn’t care so much about essays, just those stupid charts and diaries.  Still prefer McGonagall though.  Who wouldn’t?” 

Ron continued to make mindless observations he knew by heart as he surreptitiously studied Harry and watched his posture change from haunted to tired but relatively normal, filing in the back of his mind the fact that tired seemed to be normal for Harry since... well, always.

Eventually he noticed Harry’s eyes drooping and as much as he could talk until Harry fell into a dreamless sleep, he wasn’t stupid and knew that wasn’t likely to happen given his earlier behaviour.  He also knew just how painful these couches could be to sleep on unless some serious charms were added first to stop a person’s back bending unnaturally through the night.  Thus he reluctantly wound down his one-sided conversation before yawning and stretching.  He almost made it a suggestion but thought better of it and decided to do what he seemed to do best.  Reaching down, he didn’t give Harry a choice as he hauled him up as carefully as he could, not caring anywhere near so much when his announcement of “bedtime,” reminded him once more of his mother.

And so, when Harry awoke on Wednesday morning from the dizzy array of horrible nightmares that was his life by vomiting over the side of his bed, he immediately looked to the bed next to his to see that Ron was still asleep and was guiltily but overwhelmingly grateful for the late night and his own nightmares that has ensured his early morning.  Not that given half a choice he wouldn’t have preferred to have a restful night rather than the disturbed ‘rest’ he somehow managed.

He snuck around the dorm as the others slept, trying not to trip over anything in the pre-dawn darkness as he collected clothes from his trunk and ignored his back and the pain and dampness he could feel there.  He could almost convince himself that he was too used to it to be able to feel that pain anymore as he pulled what felt like very coarse fabric over his wet back.  He was almost successful. 

As he half-threw himself out of the door to escape the dorm – not anyone in particular, he just had to get out... – Harry felt a spike of adrenaline, a much smaller, muted version of the kind he’d had the last time he’d faced Voldemort, the kind that made his head pound and his heart race and he felt like he could run laps around the castle and as though his legs would give out all at once.  He took a moment and a deep breath to shake off the persistent light-headedness that still clung to him before attempting to descend the stairs to the common room without falling down them. 

When he reached the common room he looked out the nearest window, noting the fact that it was still so dark that the sky hadn’t even begun lightening yet.  He wasn’t hungry but he knew he wouldn’t want to face Ron for quite awhile and really, what else was there to do at four or five in the morning?  With that in mind, Harry threw on the black robes he’d found in his trunk – last years; it was a testament to his living environment through the summer that he hadn’t really needed new ones when he went shopping for his school supplies this year as his old ones still fit – and left the tower, making his way down to the kitchens in search of something very small and plain to eat.  He doubted he could stomach anything more.

He regretted his decision fifteen minutes later when he found out just how much of a morning person... elf... Dobby could be but since there was nowhere better for him to be he simply slouched in his seat at the small bench in the kitchens with his mounds of food in front of him and elves speeding around him so fast that the food they bore could barely keep up with them (if the leaning tower of raw bacon was anything to go by – and didn’t that just turn his stomach inside out).

After half a slice of barely browned bread he pushed his plate away and ignored the platters he was surrounded by and the elves plying him with food – especially Dobby who managed to make his head feel fit to exploding within an amazingly short amount of time – and crossed his arms on the table before resting his aching head on them.  He didn’t want to go anywhere else; despite the noise and veritable tornado of activity of which he was the eye, he was happy enough here.  Comfortable.  More so than he knew he would be anywhere else where the silence and the events of the night before could come back to him in greater detail than the vague, broken recollections he had now. 

No, he didn’t need any more detail than knowing in an abstract sort of way that his back was branded with words that would haunt him – with curiosity if nothing else – and that Ron had seen him at a time he would have preferred not to be seen.   Had helped him out of a stupor with gentle words and actions and from the corner of a bathroom to the common room, then bed.  That Ron would want questions answered now that he was more lucid.  Questions he didn’t feel up to asking himself, let alone answering to someone else.  No, out of the question.  But here, in a kitchen where he was surrounded by busy little workers, in this place that made him think of some strange scene in his head from times when he was younger and making breakfast at the Dursleys – well, the memory wasn’t happy and it wasn’t comfortable, but it was normal and away from here and the knowledge that he could handle that made him feel that maybe he could handle this too.  Just sitting, resting in this place that could have been in his head, where no questions needed to be answered and he had the knowledge that he was home and surrounded by beings who didn’t mean him harm; here he could rest.

And he did until Dobby shook him out of what he realised had to have been a heavy doze. 

“Master Harry Potter Sir is being late if he doesn’t leave now!  Lessons started thirty minutes ago.”

Harry swore but there was not much heat behind it, he was so tired.  Which wasn’t odd in itself but the fact that he’d slept for so long when he hadn’t meant to without dreaming... not really... well, that was unusual.  Dobby was wringing his hands fretfully and Harry had to ask before he left, “How long were you trying to wake me up?”

“Dobby is shaking young master but Harry Potter isn’t waking up so Dobby left him for another five minutes, and then another five minutes, and then another five minutes and then two minutes and then-”

“Okay, I get it.  Thanks Dobby.  I’ll see you later okay?”  He was out the door before he heard a response and belatedly hoped that Dobby hadn’t punished himself when he couldn’t wake him up.  Why hadn’t he woken up?  He knew how much strength the little elf was capable of, he shouldn’t have been able to sleep through that.  But he had.  Not only had he fallen asleep but for at least half an hour he hadn’t been able to be woken.  His thoughts cut off abruptly when he reached his first class – transfiguration – and realised before his fist hit the wood of the door but after he could have aborted the movement that he hadn’t done his homework.  A snatch of conversation played in his head from the night before as though a tape recorder had been waiting for just that moment.  

“Come in.”

Oh crap.  Sucking in a breath that made him so lightheaded he had to lean against the doorframe, Harry pushed the door open and tried to convince himself he was ready to face the worst.

McGonagall was not happy.  She never seemed to be on a normal day but today she was already in a bad mood for some reason or other and the classroom was overflowing with tension that only got worse when the Transfiguration Professor saw that it was a late Harry Potter.

“Mr Potter, can I assume you have a valid reason for being late; did you perhaps get lost on your way here or was it your lack of a timekeeper?”  Harry floundered for a moment before McGonagall spoke again, not so much taking pity on him as immediately growing tired of waiting any longer due to his interruption.  “Take a seat Mr Potter.  10 points from Gryffindor for your tardiness and I want to see you at the end of class.”

Harry moved forward a pace before he noticed Ron’s eyes on him, the questions practically flying from them straight at him, demanding to be answered.  Unable to handle it, Harry simply sunk into the nearest seat at the back of the room.  Ron frowned and stared at him as much as was possible for the entire lesson while Hermione simply watched, rarely taking her own eyes off of him but clearly finding it harder to split her concentration between Harry and taking notes.  He wished he could tell them not to bother themselves worrying.  He was fine.  I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.  Funny how little weight those words possessed when used too often.  Or inaccurately.

Talking to McGonagall was irritating in the extreme and both left the lesson in a snit, Harry more than annoyed that the woman could be so distracted and still demand ridiculous amounts of ‘common courtesy’ on his part (though luckily she forbore to sentence him to even more detentions).  Still, it was better to face her than his friends.  Which was why he was that much more irritated to find them waiting for him, despite how late it made all three of them for DADA.  He wasn’t irritated as in angry, it was more like a wound being irritated... like my back... and he could have done without it.  Unfortunately, neither of them were very good at taking hints.  Surprisingly it was Hermione who was taking the more direct approach and it was Ron telling her to leave off by the time they reached their next class. 

Harry was more than a little surprised when Umbridge gave them a sickly sweet smile and told them not to be late again before telling them to sit and ignoring them completely.  If Umbridge was in a good mood... well, it didn’t bode well for Harry.  But then, nothing concerning the woman seemed to bode at all well for him.  He avoided her eyes at all costs, still going to great lengths to stop himself from thinking about the previous night, and she seemed to notice because she was in high spirits by the end of the class.

At the end of the class Harry excused himself from his friends with the excuse that he needed to use the loo and would meet them in the Great Hall for lunch.   He then proceeded to hide for the duration of their lunch break in the third floor boys’ toilets where he found his bloodied shirt from the night before in a chipped sink he doubted anyone had gone near in years.  Maybe his luck was turning up after all.

The rest of the day passed in much the same way his morning had; dodging Ron and Hermione, ignoring his stomach which swung between roiling as though he’d eaten too much and aching with hunger (but then he’d had a lot of experience ignoring his stomach so that wasn’t terribly difficult) and when he wasn’t sitting in the back of classes to avoid his friends he was hiding in the boys loo.  It actually reminded him a lot of school before Hogwarts.  Hiding and dodging and spending too much time in a place he otherwise wouldn’t have gone near but for once a day.  It was more than a little depressing to realise Hogwarts had become just like living with the Dursleys.  He even had his own Uncle Vernon here.  One who could use magic and frequently abused that power... abuse of power... not so dissimilar at all.  It helped to know that the reason he was hiding at the moment was due to the fact that he had friends here who cared enough about him to want to interrogate him to find out what was wrong.  But then he realised that because of that he was sitting on an old, incredibly uncomfortable marble cistern and had been for the last forty minutes and the thought ceased to be quite so reassuring, because really, what was he supposed to tell them?

Instead of trying to think it through – again – Harry sat and stared into space, contemplating whether or not it meant he was meditating if he couldn’t feel his back anymore.  Apparently he’d been doing it too long because he was once again late for class.  This time he got lucky; it was Divination...

Harry found when he climbed the ladder – with weak, uncoordinated scuttling sort of motions that he was glad no one else had seen – that he much preferred Trelawney who didn’t notice his arrival, so intent on her crystal ball was she.  Unfortunately there was no seat at the back of the room he could hide in this time, only the cushion beside Ron.  Ron, who was giving him a look that was challenge and frustration and strong concern all at once.  With a resigned sigh that seemed to annoy Ron no end, Harry slumped onto the cushion and pointedly ignored him.  Needless to say his strategy didn’t work very well.

“You finished avoiding me yet?” 

Ron’s voice wasn’t noticed by Trelawney the way no one else’s had been so far – Harry could pick out five distinct conversations being held within earshot.  At the question, full of exasperation at Harry’s behaviour; behaviour which Harry was entirely too tired to realise had actually been a little childish; Harry cast his friend a sidelong look reminiscent of a reticent little boy avoiding a telling off.  Harry noticed the change in Ron immediately after that, the way he was all concern and a bit of surprise, as if that look had reminded Ron that Harry was a different person than the one he’d been expecting. 

For his part, it had been the realisation that Harry hadn’t looked stubborn so much as hunted that had wiped away Ron’s exasperation and replaced it with shock as he really saw Harry.  The way his eyes were huge and glazed behind his glasses and the bruise-like shadows beneath them, the white skin that made them look impossibly dark, and that look he didn’t think he’d seen in Harry’s eyes before.  He looked... younger.  Younger than Ron had ever seen him.  Younger than he’d looked at eleven, though only just.  Ron didn’t know what could possibly have made Harry look that way and it scared him a little.

Harry just kept his eyes averted, trying to ignore the person who was sitting so close beside him and failing hugely.  Especially when that person put a hand on his arm.

“Harry?”  The voice was soft now and filled with none of the irritation from earlier and Harry slanted him another glance that seemed to further unsettle his friend.  “You don’t have to hide from me, I...” Ron seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment before saying defeatedly, “I won’t ask you anything alright?  Just don’t disappear again.  Please?”  Feeling unaccountably childlike and hesitant at the rawness of Ron’s words and tone, Harry gave him a small nod he wasn’t entirely sure of before focussing on the crystal ball that sat before him and trying to block out all feeling.  It didn’t work very well given that the fumes that only yesterday had seemed cloying now felt suffocating and his head was swamped within minutes.  He noticed the looks Ron was so blatantly giving him – or the one long look since he didn’t think his friend so much as glanced anywhere else for the entirety of the lesson.

Yes, Harry decided over the next thirty minutes, he much preferred Trelawney – and figured it was probably because throughout the hour he could feel himself turning white... or perhaps grey; he certainly felt awful, and the woman took just as much notice as she paid the rest of reality.  His head was pounding heavily and felt far too big for his neck when they were finally allowed to leave and he didn’t refuse when Ron steadied him as he stood, finding that he didn’t mind the support or the weakness it implied.  Not when it brought back such broken but vivid memories from the night before; of having a strong arm to keep him standing and a best friend who genuinely had his back.