Hourglass

"It was as if I was nothing.
I lay there weak and shattered:
an hourglass with broken glass and split sand; useless."

The sky was very dark.

Harry sprinted through the trees and stumbled again and again, scrambling up each time before he made his way again through the forest. Wet leaves slapped at his face and water clung to his glasses; he was blind by it, and only knew to run away from the screaming. There were whispers of coward in his head, but he was pushed forward by panic and his own momentum and the knowledge that Ron and Hermione were behind him. With each second that passed he was farther ahead and farther away from... the attack.

Again, he heard the word coward whispered in his head, and again, he ignored it.

Suddenly there were no trees and the rain fell unobstructed to the ground; he stumbled to a stop and wiped the moisture from his glasses and looked around. The night was lit up by a green glow that reminded him of daydreams from when he was younger - he looked up.

The Dark Mark hung in the sky like the moon, as if it had always been there. He could hear Hermione and Ron, only a few feet behind him, gasping and saying things, but registered nothing. He heard only the rain pounding down and the echoes in the distance of Death Eaters and wizards and muggles and screams and yells and running and then for no reason at all his ears began to ring an he could hear his blood pounding...

There was noise and people crashed through the bushes only a minute later. Harry saw Mr. Weasley, screaming: "That's my son! That's my son!", and for a moment Harry thought he was talking about him, but then everything clicked and he understood.

There was some fuss and a House Elf was found in the bushes, the accusations stopped when it was revealed that he was Harry freaking Potter, and then they were all led out of the damp forest to so-called safer places.

Harry looked back, wand now in hand, and perhaps his glasses were misting again, but the man who had just fired his House Elf seemed to be looking at him very seriously, almost like a deer in headlights. And it was only a moment, sure, but he was looking at him with such intensity that he felt he shivered. Crouch looked hungry, almost. Longing.

He didn't mind.

"Percy?" he found himself asking months later. (Was it months? It felt like years or days or... something. He'd fought a freaking dragon...)

The boy with the horn-rimmed glasses pulled the door shut tight behind him and frowned at Harry. His expression was one born of both stress and irritation, but he sighed and readjusted the pile of books in his hands, obviously prepared to listen. "Yes?"

"I was, er, wondering, if there was a time I could speak to Mr. Crouch when he's not busy?"

The words sounded foolish as soon as they left his mouth, and he saw that opinion reflected on Percy's face. "No. Mr. Crouch is a very busy man. I don't believe that you're allowed to speak with him, anyway. Please don't think Mr. Crouch will give you any extra points for being the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry." The tone was warning, not vicious. Not quite.

He turned to leave and nearly ran into someone turning the corner. There was a moment of confusion before Harry registed who the man was - the familiar form was wrapped in his cloak, probably off to something important. Of course.

"Weatherby," he said, eyes flickering over to Harry only briefly before they returned to Percy. "Go on and deal with what we discussed earlier."

"Yessir," Percy replied, almost breathless, and Harry felt a flash of jealousy fly through him before it was replaced by disgust. And then, just outside of the library, in the hallway, he and Crouch stood completly alone.

He stared into the older man's eyes for a good bit of time before turning his gaze to the floor. Cho was supposed to be his crush, and more importantly, a girl was supposed to be his crush. Not an man, certainly not a man much older than him.

He felt sick with himself and forced his gaze upward in a silent question: What are we doing and why are we doing this? If Crouch saw any more than a glare, though, he didn't know, but the man did move forward and put his hands on Harry's shoulders.

Harry allowed himself no feeling, worried for what he might find, and instead allowed himself simply to be used.

Turned into a bone and buried. By his own son, not that it was important. Turned into a bone and buried.

In the middle of the night Harry rose out of bed, kicked his sticky sheets off of him, and stumbled to the bathroom. He was sick in the toilet and did not move after that for a very long time.

The sky outside was very dark.

"It was as if I had everything.
I stood there strong and whole:
His hand lay in mine as if it had always been there."

Response for Expecting Rain's Challenge: "Cruel and Unusual Pairings", on xoxLewrahxox's Bellatrix Lestrange: The Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum. The challenge was: "There are some strange pairings out there, and then there are some which could be described as 'cruel and unusual'. Your challenge is to write one of these cruel and unusual pairings and write it as seriously as you can." ... and between 100 and 1,000 words.

910 words. Reviews are greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.