Gathering

Disclaimer: Hardly necessary is it? Whatever – I don't own the rights, whatnot and etc's of Harry Potter, blah, blah, yada, yada bip.

Summary:It's the end of 5th year, a depressed Harry allows himself to partake in something he would never have condoned. Too ashamed to see his friends, too jaded and scared about his fate in the wizarding world – he ran.

Warnings: slashish, rapeish (somewhere in between) language… maybe, just generally not for children, or those that can't tolerate those kinds of things. They can just turn off the internet and climb back under their rocks for all I care.

Harry lay on his bed at number 4 Private Drive, waiting. He was waiting for something, though exactly what he wasn't sure. He was waiting for energy to move, even just inclination, waiting for someone to send him news of something but then he didn't really pay much attention when they did. Most of all he was waiting for his guilt to wash away, for the day when he could just get out of bed and not think, 'my godfather is dead, because of me'. That day had yet to come and so he still lay there waiting, thinking about what he was, what he thought he was, what he really wasn't… and tears ran down his face but he didn't cry out because he was just too sad, too utterly spent to bother. The harsh reality of what he'd done, what he hadn't done and what he realised now he simply couldn't do, was just that – too harsh, and he wasn't coping.

The order was doing their best to help him, he knew they loved him and he loved them back, but that didn't change the way his stomach seemed to sit exponentially below his body, stealing any interest he may have had in food. He was becoming the physical manifestation of the way he felt – sick. He was tired and he wanted to hide away in bed, he didn't want to get up anymore, didn't want to face the world. Always so fickle, he was loved by the masses again but now he didn't want to be, he knew he was going to fail them and a vindictive part of him wanted to. He wanted to hurt them all, show them what it was like to have to suffer, like they had done to him, like they had done to Sirius…

However, he knew he could never and that just made him feel worse, he was a coward, too scared to screw the world over for his own ends and it made him angry at himself. Then as always a part of him wanted to help everyone, but still he knew now, that he was incapable, always had been, and he was going to fail them – and it hurt, to feel powerless and know that there was nothing he could do.

So he stayed in bed, away from the world – so what if he was going to fail them? There was no need for him to announce it now. He was putting off the moment when he would have to show himself to the world as a weakling. Harry knew that Sirius would not have wanted him to grieve so about his death but it was so much more then that and it didn't matter how many people clucked over him and said, 'it wasn't really his fault', and 'Sirius would have wanted to go out with a bang. He would have wanted you to be happy' and of course the one that now irked him the most 'of course you can do it, you've done so much'. That was perhaps the problem – he had done so many things, good and bad, but what for?

What was he fighting for? Who was he fighting? Voldemort? He used to think so, and that made sense – he fought Voldemort because he killed his parents… but it wasn't like he was the first child to lose his parents, and he'd never wanted to do anything to car companies, or government road bodies, back when he thought his parents had been killed in a car accident. So why did he go after Voldemort, and why did everyone encourage him to? Well Voldemort had gone after him first… except he hadn't; Voldemort had seen fit to disregard the prophecy and offer him power back in his first year, but now… He had made a nuisance of himself and given Voldemort every reason to go after him, in fact, if anything he had become like a mosquito to Voldemort, he made a lot of annoying noise but generally Voldemort only bothered to make an effort to kill him if he came within arms reach.

So surely now, Harry should think to stop getting in his way, he'd lost everything – twice! Surely, people should be telling him to leave things alone… but they weren't, Dumbledore had told him now that there was a prophecy that said he had to kill Voldemort and Harry didn't like it. It was one thing when he was sitting in Dumbledore's office listening to his reassurance that this was not something he had to do, but deep down it was something he wanted to do. That was something Harry just could not get his head around – deep down he'd always wanted to be a murderer…and everyone was happy about that? Somewhere along the lines, he'd missed something…

As much as he thought about things, he couldn't bring himself to care, partly because he refused to accept any thoughts of reality. Some mornings he would wake up and think to write a letter to Sirius and for all of about two minutes, things would be normal again, but then the giant foot would come down and kick his stomach back into it's now usual resting place – reality sucked for Harry, so he spent hours in a half-asleep daze, neither here nor there.

Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, until eventually he found himself staring dully down at the yellowing parchment that had just been brought to him by a proud tawny owl. He opened the letter with little enthusiasm and his eyes scanned straight to the signature – Dumbledore.

"Shit", Harry exclaimed, scanning the letter quickly, "shit, shit, shit" he cursed under his breath as he turned to look in the mirror. Dumbledore was coming to pick him up tonight and he looked like the living dead, in fact he smelt like the 'dead' dead.

'Oh fuck' he thought staring into the mirror as he flung off his tattered grey shirt. It landed in a pile on the floor, his aunt could deal with it, most likely it would be incinerated. The good thing about not changing one's clothes for several weeks was that he had no need to pack his suitcase, as it had never been opened. The bad thing was, it didn't have the best effects on the clothes he had been wearing.

The grey shirt had sweat stains around the underarms, testament to the reach of a particularly blaring summer's heat. His worn jeans were stained where he had dropped soup on them, one of the few times he had brought himself to eat, and they smelt, they just stunk… actually he stunk, all over, he was a mess. His skin was white, his hair was so greasy it stood up much more firmly then usual and it was still quite shaggy – his aunt wouldn't have been able to look at him, his eyes were dead and his glasses did nothing to hide it. He glanced quickly around the room, apart from the bed which appeared as festering as himself, it was fine, practically spotless. He glanced back in the mirror and decided a shower was probably the best he could do.

xxXxx

Stepping out of the shower sometime later, Harry dried himself quickly and wrapped the towel around his waist. Staring into a mirror once again, the results were not so different. His eyes were still dead and his skin was still white, his hair at least looked better and he generally smelt much better. Overall however, his look remained the same. He was thin, not a skeleton, but he had past the description of 'peaky'. He looked… fragile, and like all young males, he was not happy about it, but it was far from the top of his 'reasons to go back to bed' list.

With a sigh, he made his way out of the bathroom, having to stop abruptly to avoid a collision with Dudley and his friend Piers, who were no doubt making their way to Dudley's room to try out his latest Playstation game. Dudley gave him a nod and went on his way, Piers however was looking at him with a smirk.

"Well, well, well Big-D, you never said how big little Harry had gotten" he said mockingly, his smirk widening at the glowering look Harry gave him.

"Leave him P", said Dudley, trying to sound uninterested. Harry took the opportunity to walk away from the pair of them and into his room. He tried to shut the door but found Piers was stopping it from closing.

"Just leave him Piers, he doesn't do anything", Dudley said as he tried to get Piers to let go of the door. Piers brushed him off and edged his way further into Harry's room. Harry meanwhile was keeping out of arms reach of the pair of them.

"Piss off Dudley, don't get your knickers in a knot. We're just gonna have a conversation of… like interests", he said cheerfully.

"I don't think he shares your interests P" Dudley said more forcefully, "Just leave him alone."

"I wouldn't know D" Piers said getting equally more forceful, "because you're gettin' in the way of our conversation"

"Look Piers that's my cousin, just leave him alone" Dudley said in a voice of finality.

"Dudley, I got so much dirt on you I could start my own landscaping business. Now if you don't get in your room and put the stereo on right now I just might, know what I mean? We're just going to talk, you needn't fret mother" He said giving Dudley a final push out the door before shutting it firmly. Dudley lingered there for a second before seeming to decide Harry could look after himself and heading to his room where he turned his music on quite loud.

"Finally" said Piers after he was sure Dudley had gone "I thought lardmuffin would never leave" he finished as he walked his way slowly towards Harry who was standing in front of his wooden wardrobe.

"What do you want Piers" asked Harry standing up straight, trying to sound bored and look a lot bigger then he felt with Dudley's huge well muscled boxing friend towering into his personal space.

"Oh so many things" Piers whispered as he continued his way across the creaking floorboards, effectively backing Harry slowly against the wardrobe. A fact he remained unaware of until his back hit the smooth wooden panel. He breathed in sharply at the shock of it, and then had to force himself not to repeat the action when he refocused and realised Piers' whole body was barely an inch away from his. He never thought the day would come when he wouldn't be happy that someone didn't want to hurt him, but right at that moment, when everything was getting so utterly bewildering, he hoped desperately that Piers was going to sock him in the face. When did anything ever go his way though?

A/N: Spur of the moment thing, it's 1am, this hasn't been checked or anything like that yet but I just wrote it so I wanted to post it now…

In other things A/N – rant time, I'm sick of people not reviewing my stories, it's annoying. If you can read then I hope you have the ability to type but perhaps not. Previous story of mine, 'Caged': currently 888 hits, 2 c2s, 6 favs, 3 alerts and a whopping grand total of 6 reviews. So, I'm a bit of a writer, I have a bit of a vocabulary, so here's three words: indolent, obtuse, abhor.

If you got this far and you're thinking you wont review – why don't you just pick one of those words and copy/paste it into the review box. Then I'll know if your not reviewing is because you don't feel like it, because you're literacy talents render you incapable of it, or if you simply detest my story and I.

Rant complete – though I reserve the right to remain on the bandwagon.

Katty xx