Moment Aside
I do not own Harry Potter and co.
The morning after arriving at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry has a moment…
The sun shone through the window of room 11, he noticed, when his eyes opened and immediately adjusted through his spectacles. At thirteen years of age, Harry Potter had awoken with an odd sense of both freedom and melancholy.
Yesterday had been his birthday, he remembered, making today the first of August. He let out a tired yawn as his left hand twitched slightly. He'd slept on it a little oddly and it had fallen asleep. Not a stranger to discomfort, he stayed still through the pins-and-needles tingle and scratched his cheek with his good right hand.
From the corner of his eye he could see a good view of the window and smiled softly at his good friend Hedwig, a snowy white owl who had been with him for two years now. She was just waking now as well, he saw, as her white tuft around her slits opened to show her spherical wide amber eyes with more intelligence than he had seen in even the Minister of Magic, one Cornelius Fudge the night before.
He hadn't liked the man from the beginning but chose to not think about the man.
On Privet Drive, he'd never had any choice. Everything had been expected of him to be done and he was woken up and immediately forced to work as his Aunt awoke to make him make breakfast and he was bothered with Dudley Dursley pounding hard on the Cupboard under the Stairs in order to bug him, to prove his own better.
He wasn't free yet, not really. But his new state of not-being-asleep was, while not his choice exactly, just up to him. If he wanted to he could go back to sleep. If he wanted to, he could get up and go right through the pub to Diagon Alley where Gringotts bank and the English Wizarding shops were located.
Harry had a feeling that he wouldn't be allowed back to the muggle world again, and he cursed both his luck and fame with a side of politics. Having been alone in childhood, some professions would not be particularly interesting for him.
He isn't free, and the day before had been a horrible one. But he had a choice.
Harry James Potter lay on the bed in the Leaky Cauldron, Room 11, and did nothing but relax. It would be a long time before he could take a moment to do nothing but be still again. Hedwig stood with him in the silent stillness of the sweet morning and he thought that she would be the one thing he couldn't ever lose.
End.
