“Away. Away. Away.”
Harry chanted to himself as he ran down the empty corridors. Harry didn’t care where he was going, just as long as it was far away from here, from the pain, from the anger, from the shame. He didn’t care if anyone thought him a coward for running, like Uncle Vernon always said when he tried to run away from Dudley. He just knew he had to get away.
“Away. Away. Just away.”
He was running up stairs now, fervently wishing they wouldn’t start to move while he was on them.
“Not fair. No fair. Just away.”
The last time he was this upset at school, he had been trying to avoid a game of “Harry Hunting.” He did avoid it---by apparating to the roof of the school, and that really just ended up postponing the inevitable anyway. Uncle Vernon had actually hit him a few times once he got home, and Harry never tried to avoid “Harry Hunting” again. ‘Accidental Magic’ is what that apparition was called, he remembered. Professor Snape had told him about that during one of his tutoring sessions earlier in the week. It meant that Harry was not “complete crap” at magic like some people were saying about him, but that he was quite powerful and he just needed a bit extra work to unlock his potential. Now, he was just wishing he was away from school and magic and everything was back to the way it was before he met Hagrid and came to Hogwarts.
He stumbled on the last stair and fell, crying out as his elbows connected with the hard stone floor. Again. He was going to have awful bruises there, but at least he tripped this time instead of being shoved. He lay there for a bit before he realized he was in a corridor he had never seen before. He listened for voices. No jeers and laughter. He supposed his tormentors had moved on to some other sort of fun. He knew it was lunch hour and he was supposed to be in the Great Hall. But if he went there, they would be there, and he didn’t want to see them. He didn’t want to see anyone, not even Ron or Hermione. Not even Professor Snape. He just wanted to alone.
He gingerly got to his feet and surveyed his surroundings. This corridor looked the same as the others, but it was higher in the school than he had ever been before. Much higher. He nervously started pacing in front of a tapestry of dancing trolls. If this was the corridor that was off-limits, he was sure to get in loads of trouble. He tried to remember what Professor McGonagall had told him about the forbidden places in the school the night he missed the Welcoming Feast, but wasn’t sure which floor this was on.
“Safe. I need to be safe.”
He starting rocking back and forth like he always did to calm down but stopped as he watched a door appear on the blank wall in front of him. Harry blinked. He could swear that the door hadn’t been there before. Curious, Harry pushed at the door, certain it was just a magic painting like everything else. Only it wasn’t. The door opened at his touch. Harry froze, suddenly uncertain about things. He read a book about something like this once. The girl had hidden in a closet to avoid being caught, but instead she found snow and an evil witch and a lion. He certainly didn’t want to come face to face with an evil witch. Or what if it was the Bad Wizard that was trying to kill him? He shook his head. This was a wall, first of all, not a closet, so obviously it wasn’t the same as in that book. And second of all, Professor Dumbledore had told him that at Hogwarts he was safe from the Bad Wizard. And Professor Snape had told him that, too, he remembered.
Emboldened by those thoughts, Harry closed his eyes, pushed into the room, and pulled the door closed behind him. Taking a deep breath to steel himself for whatever he might find, he opened his eyes.
“Oh wow.”
The room was different than any other room he had seen at Hogwarts, but it was as though someone knew exactly what he needed. He wondered if Professor Snape had made the room, since it had a lot of the same things his old special school had for him to use. He knew Professor Snape knew an awful lot about his Autism and how certain things helped him relax when things got too chaotic and overwhelming to handle. Things like hanging upside down, or being rocked in a hammock swing, or ordering things by size or color. The room had bars to hang from that seemed just high enough for him to hang by his knees and run his hands along the thick, soft rug that was Harry’s favorite shade of blue. And buckets of blocks in all the colors of the rainbow. But the best thing in the room was the hammock swing and its blue blanket.
“Blue is light with a wavelength of roughly 440 to 490 nanometers,” he told the room, in case whoever made it was listening. “Cerulean blue is my favorite hue of blue because it has no greenish hues. It is the color of sky. I only like the cobalt stannate version of cerulean, not the cobalt chromate one.”
He felt a little foolish as he realized whoever made the room had to have known that as they made sure to incorporate as much of that calming color into the furnishings as possible.
Harry had toed off his shoes and socks to revel in the softness of the carpet while he spoke to the room. He made his way over to the hammock swing that sat beneath a large skylight. It had to be a magic window, he decided, because the sun was out and the sky was perfectly blue, like from a painting. He laughed. The window was like a better version of the Great Hall ceiling, he decided. Because it showed the best weather, not just the actual weather.
He shrugged out of his robes and threw them into a corner. They were ruined anyway. He didn’t have a way of mending them, not without going to a teacher. He winced, and felt the panic return. Going to a teacher meant telling someone he couldn’t defend himself, not with magic or anything. Not even his fists. He didn’t want everyone to know he was really a sissy boy. If everyone knew, then Hogwarts really would be like before when the rest of the school followed Dudley and no one wanted to be his friend. Probably even Ron and Hermione would decide not to be his friends when they found out he couldn’t stop those boys from hurting him. He would just have to find a way to get new robes without going to a teacher, he decided.
The anxiety he had been fighting since coming to Hogwarts finally became too much to bear. He found himself hyperventilating and unable to handle the sudden agony of clothing touching his skin. He didn’t care that he was eleven and deemed too old to run around naked. He just knew that he couldn’t breath and that everything was just too tight, too painful. The room couldn’t care, he decided. It was his room, made for him.
“My room. My Mary Poppins room,” Harry whispered as he stripped down. He sighed with relief when he finally freed himself from the hateful clothing. “This is my safe room.”
Wrapping himself up in the heavy blue blanket that didn’t seem to bother his skin, he crawled onto the hammock swing, careful to not bump any part of himself more than necessary. He felt tears start to fall as he realized he would have to visit the infirmary soon to take care of the bruises. That meant the school would know he was a sissy boy, just like Uncle Vernon always said. He started humming to himself. The room wouldn’t care if he was humming to himself, after all, and it made things feel better. Between the humming, the rocking, and the comforting weight of the blanket, Harry found himself drifting off to sleep.
“Thank you, Room,” he mumbled before allowing his eyes to stay closed.
---------------------
Severus paced back and forth in front of the Headmaster’s desk. Professor McGonagall was panicked, but stood still. Even Professor Dumbledore looked slightly concerned. Harry Potter was missing. Harry Potter had been missing for several hours, probably longer.
Hagrid had been sent into the Forbidden Forrest to see if Harry was there. He had not reported back yet.
Severus fought back the urge to slap the six boys standing in front of the Headmaster’s desk. Barely four weeks into the term and already they were ganging up on students in the hallway. But not any student, Snape reminded himself. They had ganged up on the one student least able to defend himself properly, least likely to realize what was going on until it was too late.
Neville Longbottom had gone to McGonagall as soon as he had realized Harry had missed lunch and wasn’t in his room or the library. Minerva had the school prefects from all four houses to scour the castle. It was a Slytherin prefect that overheard the gloating whispers of four first years about the “spot of fun” they’d had with Harry Potter that morning after breakfast. They had been unceremoniously shoved into Snape’s office, all but Malfoy white with shock and fear. Snape marched them all to the Headmaster’s office and explained the situation. Minerva summoned the two Gryffindor boys who had been tormenting Harry, reminding Snape that whatever injustices he had suffered at the hands of her precious lions growing up were not to be repeated with Harry. He felt a pang of jealousy, but ruthlessly ignored it. This was not about him, it was about Harry.
He stopped his pacing when he noticed Fawkes fly into the office and sit on Dumbledore’s shoulder. The bird apparently told him something only the headmaster could understand, but as the small signs of worry disappeared from his face, Snape realized that Harry had been found.
“He is safe.”
The relief in the room was palpable, though Severus was careful to quickly sneer at the six boys who clearly thought they were out of serious trouble. Annoyed beyond measure, he opened his mouth to let loose what he was sure would have been the greatest tongue lashing ever given to these juvenile hoodlums, only to have Dumbledore interrupt him before he could utter a single syllable.
“He is on the seventh floor, Severus. He is safe on the seventh floor.”
Understanding what was unsaid, Snape nodded and left the headmaster’s office and headed towards the seventh floor. Albus was right. It was better for him to help Harry and leave the rest to them. So Harry had found The Come and Go Room, as Severus liked to call it, as it came and went as needed. Harry was safe in The Room. With that knowledge, Severus found could breath again, the deep worry he hadn’t known he could feel replaced with relief.
Chapter 9