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Harry Potter and the Sword of Gryffindor

Chapter 3

An inexplicable chill filled the air. The train slowed, then ground to a halt. Outside the window, dusk had fallen and the compartment where Harry and his friends sat had slowly filled with a tangible darkness, as if with smoke. The air grew colder. Harry shivered.

"Why are we stopping?" Hermione wondered aloud. "We aren't anywhere near Hogwarts."

Harry and Ron sat silent, not bothering to answer.

A chill that had nothing to do with the darkness crawled up Harry's spine. He sat, still and rigid on the bench seat next to Ron, wondering if the swirling darkness before him existed only in his own eyes or if the world for Ron and Hermione was fading to black as well. He did not ask them. He did not want to hear their answer. He stared into the gathering gloom, his hands clutching the front edge of the seat on either side of his knees.

"Bloody Hell," said Ron slowly, stretching out the words like sticky chewing gum.

"What is it?" Harry asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Dementors," said Ron, "but what are they doing so far from Azkaban?"

"What's a dementor?" asked Harry.

"Blimey," answered Ron in his usual careless way that made Harry squirm. "You don't know what a dementor is?"

"I read about them," put in Hermione helpfully, "they guard the wizard's prison, Azkaban. They suck all of the joy out of people." Harry wondered what such a monster could possibly look like.

The air grew colder, darker. Harry felt his mind turning in on itself, as if every happy memory had become trapped in the mire of his brain and only the terrible, sad ones remained. He closed his eyes. In his mind the darkness had somehow turned to green, a green light, a remembered flash and some mumbled words, two instances of the lightning striking him. What were the chances, he thought, of lightning striking twice?

He heard the door of their compartment open slowly, scraping over frost that had gathered somehow upon it. Distantly he heard Hermione screaming. The green light seemed somehow to engulf him. Why can't I see? His mind churned the question over and over, a whirlpool of anguished thought. See, see, see, see…. The words echoed in his mind.

Harry felt the fear like a cold wave of ocean water washing over his brain. His senses dulled, the texture of the bench fading away from his fingers, the sound of Hermione screaming growing fainter and farther away. It was as if he was falling down a deep dark well.

All at once he put out both hands and kicked out both feet against the sides of the well. He was not going to fall. He was tired of being afraid. He was tired of struggling against the Dursleys, against the terrifying gray mist. He was tired of the green light and suddenly anger blazed up in him, warm and hot and white. He did not care if he couldn't see. He was still himself. He could still think and hear and imagine and remember. He did not care if he seemed to have the worst rotten luck. There was still beauty somewhere in the world.

It was not exactly a good thought, but it was his own thought. He was not going to let fear stop him. He had not let the green light stop him. Now he was not going to let the gray blurry mist stop him either. He would get help or adapt… do whatever he had to do. Resolve hardened inside of him and he clung tenuously to the sides of the well, refusing to slip into unconsciousness. It seemed an age that he hung there.

Expecto Patronum!

Harry jumped at the authority in the voice and at the flash of silver light that penetrated even the green light in his closed eyes. The chill receded and Harry opened his eyes. Someone switched on the compartment light, making Harry wince, the usual gray mist taking the place of the green he had seen in his mind.

"Wh-what's going on?" he asked shakily.

"Here, eat this," said a kindly voice and a blurred figure crouched before Harry. He held out an uncertain hand.

He must have looked in the wrong place because Professor Lupin had a strange edge to his voice as he said, "It's chocolate. Here you go."

A foil-wrapped bar was shoved into Harry's outstretched hand and his cheeks burned with the awkward lump in the pit of his stomach. Combined with the new feeling of anger he'd recently felt, the emotion drove away the last of the chill that the dementor's coming had caused. He knew that Professor Lupin knew he could not see the bar of chocolate and embarrassment burned on his cheeks. What was Professor Lupin thinking? Would he demand an explanation? Would he arrange for Harry to be sent back home to the Dursleys again?

Out of habit he tried to look at his hands where his fingers felt for the edges of the foil wrapper to expose the chocolate. A looming shape appeared and Ron attempted to grab the bar from his hands, muttering, "here, let me."

"No!" Harry said too sharply. "I'll do it."

The anger blazed up in him again and he held the bar away from Ron, bashing the knuckles of his right hand into the wall of the compartment in his haste. Cloth rustled, a sleeve dropped and Ron sat back into his seat, huffing to himself as he did so. For a moment a silence that felt stiflingly heavy dropped over the room. Squinting against the light that reflected off the shiny foil, Harry at last found the seam and ripped the foil open. He broke off a chunk of the bar and held it toward Ron as a peace offering.

They sat, all four of them, munching chocolate, not talking. Harry wondered if the others were exchanging glances he could not see.

"Harry Potter," said Professor Lupin and Harry heard a weariness in the voice that surprised him. Habit forced him to look toward the voice at the sound of his name but when he saw nothing but a still, blurry gray shape sitting on the opposite bench, he waited, listening.

The question hanging in the air did not come. Harry shifted his gaze back to the floor and took another bite of chocolate to cover his confusion and embarrassment. He debated with himself whether to explain the too-long story of his vision loss to Lupin or wait until the older man asked him.

"Dementors," muttered Lupin angrily. "On the Hogwarts Express. Bloody inept Ministry."

"Why?" asked Hermione suddenly.

"I think I know," said Ron, surprising Harry. "I saw the posters when we visited Diagon Alley for our school things, you know."

Harry waited, his heart hammering. Diagon Alley. He hadn't been there yet. He'd been unable to convince the Dursleys to take him there and no one else had thought of it. Last year's robe lay folded in his luggage and he winced to think how short it would look on him. As for books, he had no idea how he would get them, nor how he would read them when he did. Rather than feeling despair, this time he felt the white anger blaze again inside him. He would find a way. Hermione might share her books. Madame Pomfrey might be able to fix his eyes. He would find a way.

He was aware that he was missing the conversation. Emerging from his thoughts and the ball of determination that had settled into his core, he listened to the others discussing the wanted posters for a criminal, Sirius Black, wanted for murder and escaped from Azkaban. Lupin opined that the dementors had been searching for Black, as if an escaped prisoner could possibly be on a train full of students bound for Hogwarts. Lupin kept muttering comments about the ineptitude of the Ministry, furious that the train should have been so waylaid.

At some point without their notice, the train had begun to move again and Harry quietly felt on the wall next to him for the light switch, plunging the compartment again into dusky shadow. He let a slow pent-up breath of relief as the searing pain eased and he sat back into the rough cloth bench. He felt another questioning silence again fill the room and he shifted in his seat.

"The light hurts," he explained lamely.

"Did something happen to your eyes?" asked Professor Lupin quietly, as if Harry's words had opened a door inviting him into the subject that had previously been closed. Harry nodded uncomfortably, not wanting to rehash the story again that he'd just told Hermione, one that he hadn't wanted to tell at all.

But Professor Lupin did not question further, merely sitting back against his seat and folding his arms with a rustle of his robes and coat. The rest of the ride to Hogwarts passed quietly. Professor Lupin did not return to his nap and the three, Ron, Harry and Hermione, did not feel comfortable with their easy conversation in front of him. As the dark of night overtook them completely, Hermione was the first to begin changing into her school robes, Harry and Ron following shortly, both fumbling in the dark and taking three times as long as they should have.

The train pulled to a stop at the small platform of Hogsmeade station. As usual the carriages waited, their lanterns like white-hot stars to Harry. Brushing past him on the crowded platform, Professor Lupin said in an undertone to Harry, "We'll talk later, yes?" Harry jumped and did not answer, an eerie prickle running up his spine.

In the dark, the blurred shapes around Harry held more detail and more contrast than they had when the torture of daylight washed them out with a searing glare. He found himself able to follow Ron down the steps of the platform and into a waiting carriage without tripping or falling and he sat forward on the seat as the carriage rolled forward wishing suddenly that he could catch the beloved first glimpse of the castle. Disappointment bit at him when he realized that it would remain hidden from him, that all he would get was a tangled garden of blurred-out lights blooming from the windows, but no shape of wall or tower. He sat back again with a frustrated sigh, choosing instead to form the image in his imagination, gleaned from details stored in his memory. He found it sufficient, to his surprise, and enjoyed the sight in his inner eye of the dark towers etched against an inky sky.

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