Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
Warnings: minor swearing
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He hovered in the air, gripping the broom with deathly force, narrowed eyes peering at the little ants bustling through crooked lines that were dotted with markets equally as small.
That's all they looked like from this height- ants. Tiny dots that sometimes meandered onto patches of green which managed to peek up from gray slush, pavement, or white snow; as a collective, these little dots would disappear or reappear with a pop out of tiny squares of color which he knew to the shops.
They were mindless wanderers from this height, or from any other height, really.
Mindless. Or, more exactly, unknowing.
The wind was still.
So very still; it was an especially uncommon occurrence in the Winter, when it was supposed to be scraping at his back like millions of nails trying to entrench themselves into his skin. When it was supposed to be burrowing ice crystals inbetween the gaps of his goosebumps. When it was supposed to make him shiver in the must unlikely of places like the rough skin on his elbows, the drafty area right underneath the tips of his fingernails, or perhaps around the funnels that lingered on the inner edges of his ears.
And yet it was still, as if the only thing that trembled silent in the atmosphere was his warm breath.
This was not how he had imagined it to be. This was not how it was supposed to be. In fact, there were a great number of things that were not the way they were supposed to be.
It was all too peaceful.
And crowded, very crowded, for such a small place- surely the fireworks had been distraction enough?
If not then...
then...
"Fawkes," he beckoned the bird, stretching out a shoulder for him to rest on.
He gripped the broom more tightly, poising the handle downwards to make a slow, uneasy descent into Hogsmeade.
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George coughed the remaining ash from his lungs, half laughing and half wincing at the sensation of plumes of smoke puffing out of his mouth, "Worked pretty well for Harry, but we still need to fix out the-" he coughed again, "kinks, right, brother o' mine?"
He let out another rusty wheeze when Fred pat his back, "Righto; never thought'd be this dusty-" he rasped, "When I stole from Snape's potions supplies to make it."
The two wavered in the air for a long time, relishing in the aftermath of their little prank and disguising winces with chuckles when they dared to steal a glance at the absolutely livid professors as the smoke finally cleared.
"Looks like we'll get a long time to fix it now," he guffawed, "If we aren't hanged, of course."
George grinned widely, looking down at the students to see their mixture of reactions, "Ready to meet our fate?"
"Ye..."
Looking through the ashy faces, he recognized awe, anger, disgust-
But his vision stopped on something peculiar.
Abruptly the boy tugged on his brother's sleeve, still wavering above the hall.
Eyes following down the Gryffindor table like fish following a current, they rested on one particular group of people.
Ron, Hermione, and Neville.
While the other students buzzed with excitement, they were silent. And still. Still with a solemnity which he had yet to encounter in his life, paralyzed with a...
With a...
Was it anger?
No.
Surprise?
No.
...Fear?
Yes.
They were as pale as apparitions, like ghostly and statuesque specters with eyes so wide and so unseeing that the soot on their faces only served to illustrate the weightiness of their anxiety and the perpetual shadows that lingered over them.
It was in that very moment, the center of his chest feeling like a decrepit building in an earthquake, his arms falling limply to his sides like leaden weights, that George realized something monumental.
Without knowing it, he could have just possibly made the worst decision of his life.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
Not at all.
"What did we just do?"
"I don't know."
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The buildings were so narrow that they looked like packed sardines holding their breath, bricks slathered with tacky yellows and greens and reds, crumbling in some places and supported just barely in others by magic. The cobblestone streets seemed equally as narrow and equally as packed, like a moving assembly line that just kept gaining more and more clusters of pointed hats as it scooted along.
Squeezing his broom in one hand, he grabbed the ends and shrunk it, plopping it into his the pocket of his robes and glancing up wearily at the trail of phoenixes that flew overhead.
He pulled the hood tightly over his head, digging his arms into his pockets and squeezing himself out of the tight space between two shops.
Once again exasperated by the startling lack of ominous wind, and by the abundance of loose chatter that ripened the air, Harry fought against the breeding relaxation that birthed in the marrow of his bones and seeped outward into his muscles.
Too peaceful. Much, much too peaceful. Like an inaudible melody was whistling through the air, causing laughter and sparks and an unusual happiness to fill the space.
Nobody should be happy.
Frankly, nobody should be here.
Except for Aurors-
Or guards, or something, somebody who would be wrapped in an invisible string pulled tight, somebody whose vocal cords were so squeezed that they were forced to speak in a hushed whisper. Somebody afraid. Somebody besides him who could share his muted panic, somebody he could meet eyes with that would reflect his own, that would share some sort of understanding.
Harry weaved throughout the people, Fawkes bowing his head so low to his shoulder, and acting so unassuming, that few people noticed he was there. Abruptly turning a corner so sharp the cobblestones had to be whittled down to triangular wedges, the boy wandered into the darker corners of Hogsmeade.
Passing Zonko's, Dervish & Bangs and Gladrags', the boy noticed the peculiar draining color of the shops, bright yellows turning into mute grays and dark reds, as well as the draining of people away from these places.
The whole area reeked of dust and cobwebs and darkness, not very much unlike Knockturn Alley, and everyone was just like him, with eyes averted to the ground and hoods up.
So closely his eyes were following the stones, that Harry almost didn't realize it when he saw a flash of blonde in his vision from beyond a window pane.
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Snape's face had long since been cleaned of all the soot from the Darkness Powder, so white and drained that both George and Fred thought he'd pass out before he'd ever managed to drag them both forcibly out of the Hall.
Of course, despite the palor of his skin, and the violent shaking of his shoulders, the man still had an unbridled strength that the collars of their robes started to rip under right as he threw them into his office.
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Harry looked up at the sign right above the door which, in faded letters, read: HOG'S HEAD. There was a crudely drawn boar with deadened eyes and red seeping out of its neck, and the boy wondered vaguely what the owner was thinking before drawing his face up to the glass.
The window was a weepy old thing, coated in grey and splatters that were viciously scrubbed at, yet the boy could only just slightly see inside.
His eyes cruised over darkened silhouettes that were perched atop stools and bent low to splintered tables.
Distinct features of everybody stood out, like the overly large nose of the bartender, not unlike that of the boar, and the rigidness of another man's face that was dug into a pitcher of some old beer. One other guy had an eye that was slightly more slanted than the other, and another was missing his right ear.
It was an odd collection of people.
Eyes narrowing, he peered through a layer of dust, and his vision immediately was drawn to one customer balancing the front two legs of her chair up into the air and holding onto the edge of the bartender's counter. Her light, wispy hair stood out like the silver flash of a fish in murky water.
"Luna?"
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His face was the color of pale oatmeal and loomed up at them like a thunder cloud, his voice as static as lightning, "Do you have any idea what you two have just done?"
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Harry entered into the shop, coughing at the dust circulating in the air.
The blonde hair gleamed brighter in his vision.
Ignoring the eyes drawn to him like strings, he extended a pale arm out towards the girl, "Luna?"
She wheeled around in the small stool, blinking with an absent expression, "It's nice to see you here, Harry."
"You need to leave. You need to get out of here," He dropped his voice down to a near inaudible whisper, clapping his arm onto her shoulder.
The edges of her mouth lifted upwards only slightly, the smile never truly reaching her eyes, "I like it here."
"You know what day it is. You know, and yet you're here," he hissed, "Why?"
"I have to work on my article," she said, rubbing her finger over the surface of the counter and examining the dirt coated on her fingerprints as if it were the most intriguing thing in the world, "You know?"
"Luna, please," Harry pawed at her wrist, bringing her attention back to him, "Please don't be here."
"It wasn't my choice, it was yours," she said, blinking up at the ceiling.
She stared back down at him, eyes a bright blue, and he grew quiet.
As the seconds ticked on, the boy saw an orange light dance over her skin and skate over her eyes like the color a flashlight makes when pointed at the little glassy pupils of a porcelain doll.
At that moment, he saw her eyes widen and her face fall, letting more of the orange bounce off of her pupils and into his, until, just like a bike's reflectors passing by in the dead of night, the orange light passed.
It was at that moment, light just leaving the last inch of her face, that shards of glass from the weepy window behind him expelled outwards and into the shop- the orange shooting into the brick just past the bartender's head.
The boy didn't know which he had heard first:
The shouted "Reducto!"
The terrified screams.
Fawkes' irritated squawk.
The spell whizzing past his left ear.
Or it obliterating the wall that once stood just five feet away from him.
One thing he was sure he had heard last was the blood whistling in his ears,
and his magic roaring in his core like a harpooned soldier,
"Go, run as fast and as far as you can," he shouted, squeezing into the girl's arms and shaking her, before wheeling the other way towards the door.
Before he could leave, he felt her fingers brush over his and, grasping him loosely, she smiled, "You shouldn't worry, everything will be okay. Okay?"
Unwittingly, some of the panic left his face, "Okay."
"Okay."
Carefully sliding his hand out of hers, the boy turned back to the door and poured out into the streets.
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