Disclaimer: I, most regrettably, do not own Harry Potter or any of the magical, fantastic things or people associated with him.
***
The silent night has turned to a night of fear
With windows howling wind into your ear
You listen to the spirits far behind
These things you hear are too much for your mind
The bell strikes and your spine chills like the grave
The chill that turns your blood from red to grey
You know that with these things you see and hear
The silent night has turned to a night of fear
Image on your bedroom wall
Shadows marching in the hall
Just about to flip your mind
Just about to trip your mind
Just about to flip your mind
Just about to trip your mind
The green and purple lights affect your sight
Your mother cannot comfort you tonight
Your brain calls out for help that's never there
The silent night has turned to a night of fear
-Night of Fear, E.L.O.
***
The routine isn't hard. By now, she's perfected it to the point that she no longer has to even think about her actions; her tasks are accomplished without any real mental input on her part.
Get up. Get dressed. Relieve Harry of guard duty. Try to scrounge up something for breakfast while Harry sleeps. Argue with Harry about where they should go next; where they should be looking; why one place is less or more desirable or probable or problematic than any other. Clean the tent that doesn't really need cleaning while Harry paces back and forth, right outside of the entrance, just out of her sight (as far away from each other as they're willing to get). Ignore the bitter twisting pain in her stomach that tells her she hasn't eaten anything decently prepared and truly filling in months. Relieve Harry of guard duty. Try to scrounge up something for dinner. Put on her pajamas. Crawl into bed. Turn to face the wall. Stop moving until Harry believes she's fallen asleep.
The routine is easy. The day is easy, even though the monotony and the utter hopelessness of it all are beginning to grate on her in an exhaustion she never dreamed she could feel. She looks forward to the day (as much as she can look forward to anything) because it's something she can control, simply because of the redundancy. The day lets her escape from having to think, to feel.
…The night, however, is something beyond her capabilities to contend with.
It comes seeping in, twisting every good thought she's ever had into something bitter and blackened and evil. It's not something gradual that creeps into their camp in time with the shadows that tiptoe across the sky and bruise the last rays of light. It's something that surges over her, in desperate, angry, powerful waves. The closest thing she's ever experienced is that dementor attack in third year, when she and Harry faced an army of them, and the despair was tangible and the end was so close…
…But even that wasn't so bad, because somewhere beneath all the agony, she heard that logical little voice inside her head that reminded her that the dementors were supposed to create that pain; that the horror wasn't truly real, didn't have to be her reality.
She doesn't have that comforting logical voice telling her the same thing of the monsters she sees in the tent at night. In fact, she doesn't seem to have that logical voice telling her much of anything, any more. It seems that with the way her life has been going lately, she no longer has much of a reason to be logical.
No, that's not true. She has a very good reason to be logical. He's in the bed across the room, and even in sleep he looks vulnerable and scared and defiant and so god-damned young. But he's so hard to stay collected and logical for, because he's not the reason she's lived the last seven years of her life in a purely methodical manner and spouted off practicality with every word she spoke. That reason is the most illogical, unobservant, obtuse person she's ever met.
And he'd left them two months ago.
He revisits her, at night. He comes stealing into the tent with the other beasts and nightmarish horrors that haunt her between the hours of sundown and sunup. But he's never the same. He's always one of them; taunting her with the same reckless abandon, the same intended maliciousness, making her quiver in fear and anguish more than any of the others. And it scares her, the brooding, sullen darkness, the over-powering silence that threatens to consume her, the half-imagined flickers of shadows at the edge of her vision, him at the forefront of her mind all the while…scares her so badly that she can't do anything but shiver so uncontrollably that her body needs some kind of release and she just cries; great heaving sobs that she hopes Harry can't hear. And she can't stop, and it's so painfully frightening because that logical voice in her head can't tell her it isn't true, that the horror isn't real. Because it is.
Sometime before daybreak she'll drift off to sleep, but he's still there, mocking her in her dreams, and she always wakes feeling disconcerted and shaky. He dissolves with the first rays of morning light (or at least the first hint that it's now day), but she knows that she'll see him again that evening. But she refuses to think about that longer than she has to. So she gets up, and gets dressed. She relieves Harry of guard duty and tries to scrounge up something for breakfast while Harry sleeps. She argues with Harry about where they should go next; where they should be looking; why one place is less or more desirable or probable or problematic than any other. She cleans the tent that doesn't really need cleaning while Harry paces back and forth, right outside of the entrance, just out of her sight (as far away from each other as they're willing to get). She ignores the bitter twisting pain in her stomach that tells her she hasn't eaten anything decently prepared and truly filling in months and relieves Harry of guard duty. She tries to scrounge up something for dinner. Puts on her pajamas. Crawls into bed. Turns to face the wall. Stops moving until Harry believes she's fallen asleep.
The routine is easy. The day is easy.
But the night…the night scares her to death.
***