Harry sat with his head in his hands, staring out the window without seeing.
He had been sitting like this for several hours, glad to be left alone to his thoughts. In a few hours the Hogwarts Express was due to arrive, and he would have to abandon his quiet solitude.
He wanted to see his friends. He wanted to get back to a normal routine.
Voldemort was dead. Even now the Ministry was rounding up the last of his supporters. It was over.
It was the middle of January. His Fifth Year had been interrupted nearly a month before Christmas break, when the school had to be evacuated. Harry had returned to the Dursleys, only to be attacked his very first night back. Professor Dumbledore had arrived barely in time to keep Harry out of Voldemort's clutches.
The Dursleys had not been so lucky.
Harry remembered vaguely that he had despised the Dursleys. Now they were gone. He tried to feel something, anything, but it was an effort just to remember what they had looked like.
The numbness had been with him since the night Dumbledore brought him back to Hogwarts. He ate, slept, studied, but felt nothing.
Even his part in Voldemort's demise had been like a dream, through which he had moved as if sleepwalking.
For a brief moment he had rejoiced with the rest of the world, and had felt the icy shell around him crumble. He felt free, he felt on fire.
Then the news had come, and his heart had shattered, leaving a void in its place which he knew could never be filled again.
Sirius was dead.
There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to feel. Harry might as well have died himself.
He relived that moment over and over in his head. He no longer felt the pain that had nearly destroyed him. The memory was empty of emotion; there were only the images repeating ceaselessly whenever he closed his eyes.
He saw again Dumbledore crossing the Great Hall toward him, his face pale and drawn, his eyes anguished. He saw Lupin collapse against the frame of the staffroom door; heard the cry that was torn from his throat. He saw arms reaching out to him, hands grabbing at him, trying to stop him. His feet carried him up hundreds of stairs. He fell; his knees bled. He felt Snape's arms around him, keeping him from the balcony, leaving bruises as he struggled. He saw himself, almost as though from outside his own body, as he collapsed to the floor.
Now the students would return to Hogwarts, and the school year would continue. He welcomed it. He would throw himself into his studies. He would surround himself with friends. He would live!
If only outwardly.
No one could know. There was too much pain already, he would not be the cause of more. He would play his part.
That was all that was left of his life.