Sometimes it seems better to hold up illusions, than to face reality : Realising your own little world is breaking into more than one thousand pieces.

One night, Harry thought, I'll not be here anymore. I'll be a part of this all anymore. No one will remember me, life would go on, darkness would be rising.

But the question was when this night would come. This one night of release, of pain, of glory. He pondered if that night was approaching quickly, if life did want to give him one more chance to shine in this wold. Probably not.

Dreams haunted his thoughts. Faces, familiar, yet unknown, smiling or crying. Sometimes he saw his mother's steady gaze, his father's distracted smile, looking, studying, glaring at their own son. Everything, every emotion, but not recognition.

Sometimes he reached out for them, to their faces, to their lips. One arm, two, but never could he touch them. Never could he touch his parents. Never.

They swirled away into the darkness of his thoughts as quick as they had risen, gone. Forever gone , only living in the sheer memory he had of his mother's last moments.

Her scream, her yell, her heart-tearing « Not Harry ! No, not Harry ! » dangled through his mind every day, every hour, every minute he breathed. And it wasn't going to leave him until that night would come, the night he would die and breath his one last breath.

Sirius was a familiar image to when he slept. A stare as painful as small, falling and falling deeper into misery, his misery, his fault. Dieing because of his stupidity, his recklessnes, gone, trying to be saved, but no one reaching out for him.

Dead.

Like all the others.

Harry always woke up after this, sweat mixed with tears and a droplet of blood dripping from his bust lip, to his, chinn, in his pyiama's. He just let it slide down. He couldn't care.

There were outburst, there was anger and frustration, but everything always ended up in tears and bittersweet misery. Crying did he do, the only thing he could do at the moment, the whole night long. Silent. Nobody could hear.

Eeven Ron suspected nothing, and he even slept into the bed next to him. Ron never suspected anything. He lived on and on in his own joyful quidditch and candy-filled world, away from all danger and pain except for a small amount of little fearsome spiders beneath his fourposter-bed. Yes, Ron could be funny at times, he could even be serious when he wanted. But never would he understand. Never.

Hermione was a different case. She made it her fulltime job questioning Harry about his mood, about his thoughts, about how he felt. Biggened eyes, worried look, pursed lips, trapping him with her gaze, bequestioning him, even when she didn't part her lips in the slightest.

She knew something, he sometimes wondered. Why would she know ? How could she know ?

He did everything to hide his pain. Fake smiles, fake « o.k.'s », fake enthousiasm. Everything about him on the outside was fake, it seemed.
Harry felt sudden waves of warmth inside his stomach when Hermione-again-smiled at him. The mere existance of a smile-For him ! Who could guess that !-made him feel a little, a tiny bit more comfortable, just because he knew someone didn't forget him.

Him, the one they'd forget the night he would die. A candle, blown out, never to be enlightened again.

A slight breeze brushed his skin, throwing him back into the harsh reality. He was sitting there, on a greasy rock, in the middle of nowwhere. The Forbidden Forest, a place he had already grew familiar with, surrounded by vague trees and unknown ghosts, never seeing outlined objects, only mist and danger.

His wand felt cold and harsh in his nearly frozen hand- Lumos-ed the whole place to fear the animals and magical beasts, which succeeded-and he felt the urge to just drop the thing. But his sudden realisation of his surroundings held him. He knew some dangerous species that inherited the Forest, but certainly not all and he didn't want to face them now.

Okay, he decided, I'll go back to the castle. And with a swish of robes, he hurried towards the huge castle leering out above the trees, Hogwarts, his home.