Harry is tired. Mentally and physically exhausted. He barely eats and sleeps even less. When he does sleep, he has heavy nightmares. The nightmares though, aren't restricted to when his eyes are closed. The cruelly he sees at night follow him into the light. Throughout the days he keeps seeing the worst and everywhere he looks those awful red eyes are in sight. His own eyes, never unseeing and his body always feeling the pain - it's horrible and Harry does not know what to do when his sight is always blurred with the edge of red.
He walks through the halls of Hogwarts as a zombie. Dragging forth his body even if it protests, screams at him for a moment of peace but he can't sit, can't relax. He must walk, can't stay in one place. He must move - go somewhere, anywhere in the hope to shake the feeling of being hunted. Alas, he isn't hunted. Not anymore. No, he's haunted. Haunted by his own ghosts of evil and guilt. It's damnation.
He always has the Marauders Map at the ready- rounding another corner, walking another mile, running past classes and from the lights into the shadows - nowhere to hide, yet, he keeps going all the while wondering; trying and failing to understand why he is here. Here at Hogwarts when he could be anywhere else, searching for that one place he might feel safe and secure, already knowing he can't find it in the castle. Or maybe he can, maybe he hasn't searched well enough. Still. He doesn't get why he is here or maybe he does. It was all because the school board decided they, seventh years who didn't graduate, must be back - were forced back to complete their schooling and find a place in life.
It doesn't mean he wants too though. It's just to unnatural to be forced and then expected to life happily, cheerfully, smile and go trough the school routine as if they didn't just fought a war. As if they hadn't buried people they knew and cared about. If they hadn't seen the things war brought. They couldn't expect just because they took the child out of war, the war would be out of the child - Except they did. They just made them do, without a hand of help and expected them to succeeded in being a happy teenager who kindly went to lessons and made their homework. Twisted.
How could they? Harry, again – never stopping, always on the move rounded another corner, went trough a door and ran up the many stairs. Couldn't they see? How did they not know they needed time and a soft helping hand? Did they have no feels, couldn't they see that what the ordered them to be was impossible? Unbelievable?
Many a times Harry asked himself these questions. Maybe they all asked the same things or maybe they all had a slightly different answer, he just was at a loss and failed to understand. He needed to understand. Even now, as he sat down on the ledge of the Astronomy tower, legs dropped over the edge swinging back and forth. Every once in a while Harry shook his head to try and rid the feeling of being watched and forcing himself to stay put and not plummet himself into the touching nothingness, miles and miles down to the ground.
Couldn't or wouldn't they see the pain within them?
Like, how Hermione was throwing herself on her books as if there was nothing left in the world? All she did was studying, learning and then reading some more way past midnight by the lights of a small candle until she fell asleep, using her latest read as a pillow. How she woke up, barely hours later with a cry, brushing her un-kept curls out of her blurry face, the lines of the pages pressed red in her skin and immediately went back, straight to there where she had left off?
Couldn't they see how Ron's bloodshot, puffy eyes never looked at anybody anymore? How he grew thinner as time went by just because he had no appetite? He blamed himself over many deaths and of course obvious one, his brother, mourning the losses every waking moment.
Couldn't they see, how could not one teacher see that Seamus clenched his quill to tightly, snapped several per class and cursed without sound every time his eyes fell to Dean's empty seat?
Their classes had too many empty seats. Some were empty for a while, because their owners where still stuck for a long term stay at St. Mungo's and some chairs would stay empty because those students stayed a couple floors above the long term stayers. They were there for a life long, to never be released. Some were empty because their owners weren't coming back, gone for ever. Like Dean. The dark skinned boy wouldn't come back, ever, and Seamus couldn't cooperate with it.
Everybody looked at one or another chair differently, like Millicent Bulstrode who couldn't keep her hopeful, longing eyes of the empty chair beside her - Pansy Parkinsons' seat. The girl who's still in St. Mungo's, undergoing long term recovery, if they could call it that. The staff was still trying to stop and counter the crushing curse that's trying to turn her inside out.
She was just rooms away from Zacharias Smith, he's being hit, time and time again with face reconstruction and healing spells to undo the damage done by a nameless low ranked Death Eater who left the boy upside down for dead in the mud - his face blown away - the sight of an erupting crater a more pleasant sight.
They, Harry knew, were just the few of many, going over it by the top of his head. Yet, the greatest examples of the elder generations ignoring, letting them fend for themselves and not acknowledging what was really going on came from themselves.
The new Defense teacher was an idiot. The man didn't understand why the whole class fought up a riot when he stood to his point that werewolves were harmless creatures and people just like the rest outside the full moon.
Of course they knew that. They all knew Remus Lupin and what a lovely man he had been but those rational thoughts fell in an empty void when they had been eyewitnesses to Fenrir Greybacks' brutal slaughtering. They stood mere meters away, watching how he mercilessly clawed, ripped Lavender Brown apart. He had left her in pieces and smiled - Smiled while her blood was dripping off his face and winked, running up and towards his next victim and nobody, not even the three Aurors that engaged in fight with him could stop the beast.
The same happened during Potions. The teacher decided to introduce them to the newest study objects within the ministry and gave note of wanting a discussing about it. The man hit home with a sucker punch to the gut when the potion in question turned out to be a liquefied form of the Cruciatus curse. They all, one by one, had seen the unforgivables, all three, but even with the numerous horrible and painful spells the Death Eaters used they all had personal experiences with the curse the teacher spoke of, mentioning it as if they barely knew what it did. As one, they stood and left the class room - only to be tapped on the fingers later.
Just suck it up and do your detention and please do, do listen to your teacher. Do as he says, follow your lessons and be good little students. Harry couldn't believe his ears when that was what they were basically told. The headmistress may have said it differently, but, that was what she meant. He knew it.
And Harry sat there, atop of the tower thinking that moment over and he was so angry, felt so helpless. He was wobbling his legs back and forth and screamed. He screamed from the top of his lungs into the dark night "Why are they looking at us with blind eyes?!"