Chapter 2- When Tomorrow Comes
The feast, if that is what it was to be called, was underway. Riotous laughter and shouts could be heard from the Gryffindor table, cheerful exclamations from Hufflepuff, organised arguments from Ravenclaw and cool, perfect etiquette released little sound from Slytherin. They had a reputation to uphold. They would not lower themselves to such a level. It made a very, very real mad glint appear in his cold Avada-Kedavra eyes.
His sleeves were rolled up to show he knew perfectly well that there were those around him of higher station than himself. The ghost of his smirk still lingered on his sharp, pale features. His back was straight, his posture perfect just as the dear inmates of Azkaban had taught him. And oh, how he delighted in the way he unnerved those around him. All, except for Draco it seemed.
He slowly tore his bread roll, his eyes calculating those around him. Some shivered as his gaze fell upon them…one girl whimpered though she would deny it later.
"Quit terrorizing our house mates," Draco said, his eyes dancing with amusement.
Harry's eyes slowly dragged themselves up to meet Draco's gaze. "I don't know what you mean," he drawled. "I'm simply assessing their…lives."
His play on words made one or two first years scoot further away from him. He wanted to laugh, he did, but that moment was to be saved for a truly special occasion. He hadn't, after all, laughed properly since he was just six years old. How times changed.
"Hmm?" Draco said. "And what have you deducted?"
He was not oblivious. Much of the house leaned in slightly, eager to hear what he had to say so…naturally he took his time in giving his answer. He had not interacted with people in some time; he did not count the Potters nor their associates as people.
"That boy there, the one who is poorly trying to hide the hickey on his neck," Harry started, inclining his head to a dark haired boy of about seventeen, "Had an affair with another girl over the summer and is desperately trying to hide it from his girlfriend, whom, he sits across." There was a low gasp. "I would judge his life as about a three, maybe a four if I was feeling generous. Women are not toys, they are not to be used, and therefore should not be treated as such." A feral grin drew up the corner of his mouth. "Especially for sex."
One boy coughed, hastily trying to hide his choking on the pumpkin juice his goblet so readily provided.
A first year, Theodore Nott he believed he was called, looked at him curiously though warily. "How did you know that, if it is indeed right?"
"Magic," he answered blandly.
Really now, he was not going to give away all his cards, especially the one where he revealed he could use Legilimency with ease; such a useful talent. Especially since he had merged with the blood of his inmates, something he was sure he would be grateful for in the near future.
The rest of the meal was rather droll after that. The boy that he had picked on spent it cringing away from his girlfriend, or rather, ex-girlfriend, who was hissing angrily at him through a cool, perfectly placed mask of indifference. The rest put forth their start of year power plays in mentions of how their summers had gone and the first years… They simply tried to gain allies and a form of social standing; many grasping desperately at the robes of one Draco Malfoy. Harry simply observed, he would get what he wanted without the need of grovelling. He only needed the help of one man and he was certainly not going to be found posing as a student in Slytherin House.
The Dark Lord did have some dignity after all.
Silence fell across the hall as the headmaster stood, his damned blue eyes twinkling as he smiled beneath that infuriating beard.
"Ahem- just a few more words now we have all been fed and watered. I have a few start of term notices to give you.
"First-years should note that the forest found on the grounds is strictly forbidden to all pupils, and a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well.
"I have also been asked by Mr Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.
"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch or their Heads of Houses.
"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third floor corridor on the right hand side is out of bounds to all those who do not wish to die a most painful death."
Harry's eyes narrowed and few around him nervously laughed as prefects were warily questioned. He took it as a sign that his was rare and resolved to investigate as soon as possible; it could prove very beneficial for him to do so if a painful death was the result of failure. People rarely guarded unimportant things to quite that extreme.
"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" Dumbledore cried, drawing his wand. "Everyone pick a tune and let's go."
Teachers smiles became fixed and the entirety of Slytherin table clamped their mouths shut in rather firm lines as lyrics appeared before them in cursive ribbons and the other three houses sang, or at least that is what one would call it if one were feeling generous.
"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy, Warty Hogwarts
"Teach us something please
"Whether we be old and bald
"Or young with scabby knees
"Our heads could do with filling
"With some interesting stuff
"For now they're bare and full of air
"Dead flies and bits of fluff
"So teach us things worth knowing
"Bring back what we've forgot
Just do your best, we'll do the rest
And learn until our brains all rot."
Much of Slytherin sneered as the students all finished at different paces, the Weasley twins finishing last at a slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with an unnecessary flourish and once all fell silent, he was one of those who clapped the loudest. Harry surprised much of Slytherin by clapping also, though his was one of mocking sarcasm, a bored look on his face.
"Ah, music," sighed the meddlesome fool, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"
Cool and collected as they should be, Slytherin House stood, the prefects ushering the first years to flock before them, and they left calmly rather than the rushed madness that ensued when the other houses attempted to leave through the wide double doors. Harry ducked his head so that no-one could hear the insane giggle that escaped him or see the terrifyingly mad grin that had formed on his face. He was in. He'd been sorted. And oh, let the games begin.
.
He sat in the windowsill beside his bed, looking out into the depths of the Black Lake as his dorm-mates slept. They had been split into two groups, the boys, and he had found himself in a dorm with Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zambini. He was pleased. They at least had the intelligence to converse pleasantly with, unlike the two aspiring trolls, Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe.
Unbeknownst to everyone except one, the young survivor had a haunting singing voice like no other. It was not beautiful and nor was it unpleasant, it just was and it pulled and tugged at your very core, bowing and submitting it to listen and to drown in its watery depths. It was. It had been. And it would be. It was a soul, a voice, magic at its purest and so it sung, deep into the night.
"I wish that I had known in that first minute we met, the unpayable debt that I owed you.
'Cause you'd been abused by that bone that refused you, and you hired me to make up for that."
Unknowingly, the two sleeping boys shivered in their sleep as the melody, the lyrics, bled into their dreams, casting a haunting outlook as they slept on. And still the young survivor continued, almost hoping that the intended could hear, and draw comfort from the fact he had not forgotten and he would never forget.
"Walking in that room when you had tubes in your arms, those singing morphine alarms out of tune.
They kept you sleeping and even, and I didn't believe them when they called you a hurricane thunderclap."
His usually cold eyes were glazed and full of raw power and emotion and no-one had never and could never see him; not in this private moment. It was not to be shared.
"When I was checking vitals I suggested a smile. You didn't talk for a while, you were freezing.
You said you hated my tone, it made you feel so alone, and so you told me I ought to be leaving."
He gave a shuddering breath that rattled his bones and everyone else's. He had learnt from the best. The Dementors. His endless torment…
"But something kept me standing by that hospital bed, I should have quit but instead I took care of you.
You made me sleep all uneven, and I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you."
He leant back, his head resting against the stonewall, eyes looking up to the heavens as if begging for an answer to the prayers he had given since he was six years old. A single tear escaped, rolling down the hollow cheeks; a memory of a life once lived, and emotion once felt, and a family he once had.
Harrison James Potter.
And tomorrow, the last line to a family he hated, who had hurt him beyond repair, would be snapped. And his last cord that held him up would break.
.
Thousands of miles away, across an angry grey ocean and beneath a sky the colour of a pain and despair, and under attack from the storms that raged on behalf of the prisoners, the inmates of Azkaban prison began to scream as life was stripped away from them. The maddening glint in their eyes was dull and became duller still as they clawed at their skin, the stone walls, stone floors, iron bars, iron manacles that had long been out of use.
A girl, just eight-years-old stilled, her blank eyes staring up at the endless grey, her lips slightly parted in an ended, silent scream. Tears slipped under heavy eyelashes as the melody washed over her. It was as if he was there, running a hand through her dirty blonde curls, promising her something better, a land where the sun shone and the people laughed.
Her broken, bleeding nails scraped at the rock beneath her as she lay alone, the screams of her world echoing and shrieking around her as they swooped down, just begging for a reason; the kiss is what they wanted as they slowly drank them dry.
Elladora Cynthia Lestrange.
And tomorrow, it would come again, they would come again. An endless cycle with but hours to recover in-between. To imagine being held by her father who was but cells away. To imagine being pulled close by her mother who just out of reaching distance, as she had always had been. As he had always had been. To be stuck in this never-ending hell with only a promise to keep her moving forward.
Update: All mistakes rid of