Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Author's Note: This is the first chapter of my first fanfiction. Due to the release of HP & the HBP this chapter and the next chapter have been revised slightly so that 'And Tears' now follows on from the sixth year rather than the fifth year, i.e. HP and chums are going into the seventh year. Despite this change, i'll try not to have any HBP spoilers, but I can't guarantee this so you have been warned! All reviews are welcome. Please be gentle with me.
And Tears
Chapter One
And tears. The salty water couldn't be contained, same as the wavering moans that escaped moist lips in the dark. Fingers curled around softness that lay invisible in the oppressive black. All encompassing black. It cloaked green irises, melted into black hair, assaulted his skin.
Harry didn't know what the tears were about tonight. There were so many things he could choose from, so many memories he would rather not have. Nothing in particular visited him now where he lay clutching a pillow on the small bed that had been squeezed in amongst the debris of Ron's room. Maybe that was it. The emptiness. The nothing. But Harry didn't want an answer to what made him feel as he did now. He just wanted to concentrate on burying his fingers into the pillow, instead of desperately scrabbling at whatever bare skin he could find on his body.
Taking a deep shuddering breath, Harry turned in his bed, trying to pull himself together. No longer facing the wall that he couldn't see, he opened his eyes. There was no telling the difference, the same blackness reigned. Pulling himself further out of that space where he'd been nestled within his own mind, he became more aware of his surroundings and the sounds around him. The ghoul was rattling around and howling in the attic above him and Hedwig was gently hooting in a reprimanding manner at an energetic Pig, but something was missing.
"Ron?" Harry whispered, the words barely escaping his raw throat.
"Yes, mate?" the answer came floating through the darkness.
Harry sniffed silently and clutched at the pillow he held more tightly. "Not asleep?"
"No." A pause. "Harry…"
"I'm alright." Harry turned back to face the wall again. "Goodnight."
"Harry…" Ron's voice came again, laden with concern.
"Best get some sleep. Hogwarts tomorrow." A feeling of fear blossomed somewhere within Harry's chest and radiated through his body. As it reached his face he felt his eyes begin to prickle again. "Goodnight."
"'Night," Ron replied, turning dejectedly in his bed to face the wall also.
Ron finished wrestling Hermione's trunk into the compartment's overhead carrier and flopped down into a seat very red in the face and puffing heavily.
"What did you pack in there? Rocks, along with your usual library?" Ron grumbled at Hermione who sat opposite him watching in rapt amusement.
"Don't be so silly and melodramatic. I could have done it myself, you know. I'm clueless as to why you insisted on doing it if you're just going to grouch about it with your puny, little arms," Hermione grinned. Harry laughed from where he sat beside his redheaded best friend.
"My arms are NOT puny!" Ron exclaimed, his eyes flicking between Hermione and Harry. "C'mon. Back me up, Harry," he whined.
Harry held his hands up high, laughter still cascading from his lips. "Keep me well out of it."
Ron slouched down in his seat, eyes staring intently at the window and a scowl on his face. A loud rapping noise brought him out of his sulk before he could delve in too deeply. The Hogwarts Express had yet to pull out of Platform 9¾ and Molly Weasley was currently on the platform jumping up and down, exuberantly waving her arms above her head to attract Ron's attention.
Turning a deep red, Ron jumped up and yanked open the window. "Mum!" he hissed at the middle-aged woman below.
"You're off until Christmas and I don't even get a proper goodbye! Now, lean down here and give your mother a kiss," Mrs Weasley's high-pitched voice wafted through the window.
"Mum!" Ron hissed again.
Molly's eyes flashed. "Come now," she said, a dangerous edge to her voice. Ron tried to ignore his sniggering best friends behind him as he leaned out the window so that the whole top half of his body hung perilously outside of the train. Molly clasped her hands to either side of his face and planted a loud kiss beside his mouth.
"Now you be good. Look after these two and your sister…" Releasing Ron's face suddenly so that Harry and Hermione had to grab his ankles to stop him overbalancing, the highly emotional Mrs Weasley spun around on the platform. "GINNY!" she shrieked, rushing away alongside the train to find her youngest child, Ron now completely forgotten.
Having helped Harry pull a very embarrassed Ron back into the train, Hermione grabbed the latter's hand, dragging him towards the compartment door.
"Come on, we'll be late for the meeting with the other prefects, the Head Boy and the Head Girl," Hermione urged Ron, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. The pink spots that rose in her cheeks and the flash of the gold badge on her robes, which were engraved with capital letters 'H' and 'G', thwarted any chance of this being successful.
"Yet again making sure we don't foolishly make the mistake of thinking that badge's sole purpose is to remind us of your initials…" Ron said, almost wistfully.
Shoving the lanky boy out the door, Hermione turned back to Harry. "We'll come back after. I'm sure Ginny will come along after she's done being assaulted by Mrs Weasley."
"Hey! That's my mother you're talking about!" Ron near on squealed out in the aisle.
Harry chuckled as he heard Hermione respond with something that ended with her referring to Ron as 'Puny Arms' before she snapped the sliding door of the compartment shut.
Suddenly alone, Harry leant his head back, closing his eyes as the whistle blew that signalled the start of the long journey north. As he felt the Hogwarts Express begin to slowly chug out of the station, Harry allowed his mind to wander.
It was his first time being alone since he managed to battle his way into the shower at the Burrow that morning. If he ignored his bathroom breaks, it was his first time being properly alone since the beginning of the summer when he had been locked away in his bedroom at Privet Drive. Despite the Order's warning to Uncle Vernon, Harry had still found himself roughly bundled into his bedroom as soon as he'd arrived at the Dursleys' that day.
Rather than feeling disappointment or anger at the treatment and immediately sending an owl to Lupin, Harry had felt only relief at the opportunity for some solitude. He'd been allowed to wallow in his grief and despair without interruption, not even being called upon to do chores. Dotted amongst the oceanic weeks of salt water that endlessly poured from his eyes and surrounded him, threatening to ruthlessly drown his barely beating heart, Harry also stumbled onto arid island days of numbness where tears just wouldn't come. Feelings were foreign on those days and he would just lay in bed, staring at the crack in the ceiling, the bulge in the wall, the branch outside the window.
Sat on the Hogwarts Express now, eyes closed against the scenery of fields and trees that seemed to slip past the window on a loop now that the train had left the concrete grey of London, Harry felt himself drifting off into a comforting doze. Wishing to hold onto this newfound state, he neglected to open his eyes when he heard the door slide open and then shut again. Not hearing any greeting he decided that the person who had opened the door had shut it again without entering the compartment. Harry let his head roll slightly to the left so that he faced the window and could feel the sunlight warm his features as he escaped to the sleep that had avoided him the night before.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"
Harry's eyes snapped open as the shriek penetrated his nap. Bleary eyes struggled to take in a pink-cheeked Ginny standing in the open doorway with a rather nervous looking Neville Longbottom standing behind her, his hands gripped tightly around the toad Trevor.
"Well I was sleeping…" Harry muttered angrily, nudging his glasses back up his nose.
"N-Not you," Neville stuttered, cutting Harry off mid-sentence. "Him."
Harry turned, still groggy from his nap, to see who was sitting in the seat that Neville had indicated with a shaky thrust of his toad. What he saw woke him up like a bucket of ice-cold water in the face.
"Malfoy?" Harry stood quickly, towering over the other boy. "What are you doing here?"
The platinum blond haired youth didn't utter a word. He merely sat there, face turned up, eyes meeting Harry's. Though his pose was defiant, the rigid body, lifted chin and scowling lips; his pale grey eyes held no challenge. They held no challenge yet held Harry prisoner.
Harry shuffled his feet uneasily at the prolonged eye contact. "Um… Malfoy?" he asked quietly.
In the silence, Harry's eyes flicked to Ginny and Neville, who still stood in the doorway, as if begging for their support. He got only confused looks in return. In the short time that the eye contact between the two polar opposites had been broken, Malfoy found his feet.
"Excuse me," he muttered before turning on his heel and pushing past the stunned red-haired and round-faced Gryffindors on his way out of the compartment.
"What the hell..?" Harry began but his question petered away as his mouth hung open, lost for words.
"I should've hexed him!" Ginny grimaced, nudging Harry's mouth shut as she stepped into the compartment and flung herself angrily into a seat. "What happened, Harry?" she asked when all three of them were seated.
Harry Potter shook his head, at a complete loss, and then gave a feeble shrug. He had no clue what had happened. He had been asleep and then had woken up to that whole rather bizarre scenario. He shrugged again, just as Ron and Hermione stumbled into the compartment. Hermione placed herself beside Ginny while Ron flumped down next to a rather flummoxed looking Harry.
"That meeting was killer… then traipsing along the train sorting out all those hysterical first-years… Ugh, I'm beat!" Ron exclaimed, failing to pick up the strange atmosphere that had filled the compartment from before his and Hermione's entrance. "And guess what, that Ernie Macmillan has somehow managed to be Head Boy! But he does seem better this year, I mean, he didn't act pompous once during the whole meeting… but then again we could all see he was Head Boy, he didn't need to gloat. I bet he loved us all sitting there in silence, listening to his instructions. Hah, he'll be lucky if he'll have another meeting like that. Malfoy didn't turn up and you know that one can't shut his mouth. Can't wait to see when they clash…"
"What's going on?" Hermione asked, interrupting Ron's monologue, eyes travelling over the befuddled expressions of her friends. Ron followed Hermione's lead, realising that something must be awry solely by the concern in her voice.
"Malfoy turned up here instead," Ginny offered, in a somewhat gruff tone.
"What?" Ron shouted. He turned to look at Harry, who just shrugged in return, then the redhead turned his pale blue eyes back to his younger sibling as she continued.
"Neville and I walked in to find Malfoy just sitting here, watching Harry sleep. It was kind of creepy," Ginny uttered with a shudder.
"Yeah, it was really strange," Neville added, idly squeezing Trevor so that the toad's eyes bulged even more than Umbridge's before stopping himself with a decidedly dismissive shrug.
The shrug did nothing to soothe Hermione who looked completely horrified at what she was hearing. A thought seemed to suddenly hit her as she turned to Harry with a gasp and asked, "Did he do anything to you?"
Harry shook his head. "No. Well, I don't think so. I was asleep…" Harry bit his lip at the thought of Malfoy hexing him in his sleep. "How would I know?"
All eyes turned to Hermione, whose brown ones widened at the sudden focus she was being subjected to. "I-I… Oh, Harry, I don't know! We'll take you straight to Madam Pomfrey when we get to Hogwarts. Do you feel alright?"
Harry thought about it, surreptitiously moving different parts of his body. He looked around at the other occupants of the compartment who all had their eyes trained carefully on him and shrugged. "Yeah, I feel fine."
The compartment door slid open slowly and Luna Lovegood drifted in, climbing over the legs of the Gryffindors and settling down between Harry and the window without a word. The seventh-years exchanged a look between them as Ginny stared disbelievingly at the only Ravenclaw amongst the lions.
"Hi, Loony," the red-haired girl said loudly.
Hermione elbowed Ginny in the ribs then turned to face the blonde girl. "Luna," she said with a polite smile.
"Malfoy's in tears," Luna responded in a rather bored and detached tone, her eyes fixed on the blurred greens and darkening blue sky outside.
"WHAT?" the Gryffindors yelled as one. Seemingly in response, the compartment door slammed open again spewing forth a gleeful Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas. Seamus was grinning as if Ireland had just won the Quidditch World Cup all over again, and Dean as if West Ham had finally actually mastered the art of football.
"Oh, Jaysus! MALFOY'S CRYING! Malfoy is crying his little heart out a few compartments down! Crabbe and Goyle are dancing around him with these disgusted looks on their faces; they have absolutely no clue what to do! He's proper blubbering like a baby! You should see it, it's GREAT!" Seamus shouted through uncontrollable laughter.
Author's Note: Hope it wasn't too horrific. Feel free to review and let me know.