Rated R for swearing, violence, and suicide (and/or suicide-related issues). If this offends anyone, don't read. Thought I'd add that I own nadda. All characters, names and related indicia are property of J.K. Rowling. I am merely trying to share some of her goodness in a non-illegal way. :)

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Chapter 12: Very Far to Fall

Herbology...Defense Against the Dark Arts...

Lunch.

Charms...Transfiguration...

Dinner.

Quidditch tryouts.

Harry's day passed by him a hazy blur of colours, smells and sounds, all mingling together confusingly and causing him to hallucinate, grow dizzy, feel nauseated, become suddenly withdrawn. Everything was muffled to him, as though a veil separated himself and the world around him into two different places, two planes of existence. He felt detached from the people he so normally felt comfortable with as though they posed as a threat to him. For what purpose he couldn't quite determine, but he'd look at them sideways from time to time in distrust, his brow furrowed slightly, observing. He wondered what they'd do if they knew everything. He was sure they wouldn't help matters any, that was certain...and so he remained silent. He felt violent, thirsty, restless and fevered. This wasn't him. This wasn't him at all. He was worried but said nothing. If the people near him couldn't sense a change, then he must be fine. He was probably overreacting...

Still he troubled.

Quidditch tryouts that evening had gone absolutely horribly the first hour that they were out on the frosty pitch. Everyone who turned up was terrified at the sight of the bludger hurtling towards them and would dive out of its way and let it carry on across the pitch, not bothering to even attempt to hit it with their club. Angelina was exasperated beyond measure and all but called everything off until Ginny Weasley got up into the air and blew everyone away. She was an amazing player, and was given a position on the spot. The next one to fill the remaining Beater position was Dean Thomas, much to Ginny's displeasure, as the relationship between the two had barely lasted two weeks during the summer. Being from a Muggle family Dean had gotten quite good at the sport of baseball during the summers, and had decided to venture out and try his luck with Quidditch. It had most certainly paid off, and although Angelina later told Harry that she'd decided right on the pitch that Ginny and Dean would suit the positions nicely, she'd let the other's have a go just to be fair. No one was anywhere near the caliber of Gryffindor's newest players, however, and so now the team was set to begin training harder than ever before.

"Two Weasley's still on the team!" Ron said triumphantly as the group trooped back up to the Tower after tryouts. The sky had grown dark and the night had become so unbearably cold that nobody could bear the freezing winds that whipped at their faces and tore at their robes as they flew, so they were all granted leave.

"They won't be getting rid of us so easily, eh Ginny?"

Ginny smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "That's right, I guess...you'd better write to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes in London and tell Fred and George the good news. Maybe they'll send us some free stuff as a reward."

Something was bothering Ginny and she really wanted to talk about it...but there was only one person with whom she could do that and at the current moment his emerald eyes were millions of miles away. She kept looking at him, hoping Harry would feel her eyes on him and look around to see what it was about, but his mind was elsewhere.

Dean smiled shakily at Ron and exhaled. "This is exciting! I never thought that I would be on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Wow! What was your first game like, Ron? I don't want to be too nervous when we have to play Slytherin...tell me how you deal with it."

"I don't," Ron answered lamely.

"Here," Harry said to Ron, giving the redhead his Firebolt. "Can you put that on my bed or something for me? I need to go talk to Professor McGonagall about an assignment."

Ron absent-mindedly took Harry's broom and nodded slightly without speaking to him, his attention still on Dean. The two boys walked ahead of Harry, chatting animatedly as though he were invisible. Harry stopped to watch them and cast them a dark look (Ginny almost walked straight into him), then veered into a totally different corridor and strode down it. Ginny frowned and looked after him, puzzled. He still didn't seem to know she was there.

If Ron were paying attention, he'd remember that Professor McGonagall's office was on a totally different floor and the route Harry was supposedly taking was a horrible way to get there. Ginny followed the black-haired boy suspiciously down the torch-lit corridor, silent as a spider.

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Harry wanted to be alone. Well, the more he thought about it, he might have liked at least someone for company, but everyone was off doing other things. And the more he thought about that, the colder he grew towards people in general, so he was back to wanting to be alone again. He sighed and rounded a corner, coming upon a set of darkened stairs.

He had no idea where he was going, actually.

He walked and thought. He didn't know what to think. He was so bloody confused and stuck with everything that every time he turned around he wanted to scream out loud and just damn it all to hell, make it go away. He wanted clearness; he wanted meditation, peace, fresh air, and isolation. He wanted so many things his heart ached with the weight, and he suddenly felt very selfish. What did he want, exactly? He'd asked himself this question every night since the summer began, and tried to sum everything up into one category.

Love? No, he didn't think so. Love was impossible for him; he'd learned that long ago. Whenever he'd find it somewhere, however small it might be in quantity, it would be stripped away from him just as quickly as it was found. Nobody loved him now and nobody ever did, except for maybe his parents, but look what love had done for them. Gotten them killed. No, love wasn't what he wanted. Or needed. It would only get him into trouble.

Then what the bloody hell was it? Peace? Yes, peace would certainly be nice...Assurance? Assurance against what...Voldemort? He shook his head and banished his thoughts. They were getting him nowhere.

He came to the top of the stairs and suddenly he recognized where he was: the doorway to the balcony off the astronomy tower. Harry grabbed the cast iron ring and pulled until the heavy wooden access opened and revealed to him a vast, endless, midnight blue sky, scattered with millions of sparkling stars, all twinkling, all glowing, all mocking him as he stood on the stone, dusted with the lights and pathways of the Milky Way. Harry's breath came out into the chilled night air in gusts of steam and he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth, just staring up at the atmosphere.

Suppose his future was mapped out in the stars, as Firenze used to talk about so passionately (before informing them all that they'd never be able to decipher it themselves). Suppose he could determine what would happen in this war, as the centaur had called it, and what might possibly be the outcome of it all. How could these glittering, shimmering beacons of light yield so many mysteries and answers?

Harry walked over to the edge of the stone balcony and placed his palms flat on the wide ledge, which was raised and met him just at his middle. Hoisting himself up, he sat on the ledge and dangled his feet off the side. He dared to look down at the ground below and felt the sudden illusion as though he was going to fall. So very far, he thought oddly. So very far to fall. He looked down again into the inky blackness and could just make out the tops of the trees of the Forbidden Forest by the light of the crescent moon, which hung lazily in the sky as though suspended by wire from an invisible peg or hanger. He wondered what it would feel like to fall off a place as high as this. He knew what it felt like to fall, certainly, but still he wondered. He gazed down towards the ground, not really seeing it. Harry sighed. He never understood himself when he got into moods like this.

Harry sat. He didn't feel the cold seeping into his skin, nor did he feel the wind caressing his face, his hands, or his robes. He felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Except sadness. This was normal, though. He'd adopted the darker emotions on as a natural part of his day, because that's all he felt more often than not, except the odd time when Ron would make him laugh; although that was becoming less and less of an occurrence. He absently rummaged around in a pocket of his robes and slowly pulled out a small, crinkled picture.

Ah yes, he never went anywhere now without this photograph. He turned it over and looked upon it with empty eyes. James and Lily were beaming up at him and waving, Lily's hair done up with flowers for her wedding day. And beside the couple stood a young Sirius Black, his long hair tied into a ponytail at the back of his head, smiling festively along with the other two, looking healthy and full of life. Harry almost had to laugh at the absurdity of Sirius' lopsided grin, the way his eyes danced with light, the utter joy in his face...not knowing that in a short while the two people standing beside him would lay dead and twelve years in Azkaban awaited him. His stomach twisted into a horrible knot.

Harry was crying. He tried to banish his guilt along with the rest of his emotions, but it was upon him now and he was defeated. The guilt, the guilt, the ever-present guilt came in waves now and Harry squeezed his eyes shut as tear after tear dropped onto the photo, causing his parents and his godfather to flee lest they be soaked. Harry cried openly into the darkness, sobbing fully now, not caring if anyone could hear him. He didn't care. This was an example of how foolish love was. This is what it did to people. This is why he would never have anything to do with it ever again. He cried and trembled, his breath steaming out in front of him, his tears burning hot against his cold flesh. The pain of seeing Sirius was too much and he ripped the picture in half with a furious cry and let the pieces drop into the air, where they almost floated downwards like feathers and out of his sight. Someone might find them later, but no one would know who they were, if they were there at all.

Of course it was his fault Sirius was gone. He'd thought about it all summer. He had needlessly led his friends to London, endangering their lives as well, over some stupid notion that Voldemort had Sirius. What could have Voldemort wanted with Sirius anyway? Harry had drawn the Order to the Department of Mysteries because of his act of selfishness. His need to...because of his saving people thing, as Hermione had so delicately put it. It was his fault. His fault. His fault. His fault that so many good people were hurt or dead.

Harry wiped his face on his sleeves.

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Ginny didn't know if she should disturb him. She peered out through the doorway, watching him while he sat in silence on the edge of the balcony, lost in his own thoughts, her eyes filling with sadness and compassion as she saw his shoulders shake with sobs. She felt like a bloody stalker and would have left him alone if she hadn't felt so strangely about where he was, if she didn't get such a bad feeling about everything.

She was going to emerge from the doorway when she saw that Harry was stirring and preparing to leave. Turning on her heels, Ginny hurried away out of sight.

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Hermione strode down the corridor from the library, tucking two new volumes into her already bulging book bag. Since everyone was at the Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts, she'd decided to stalk up on some potions books, and had studied Veritaserum until her head felt like it was going to explode, which was saying something for Hermione. She had found the newest additions to Madame Pince's potions library and couldn't wait to start reading.

She shook her head and smiled at herself...even she had to admit she was a little bonkers. Most people would only pick up the kind of books she had if they were being forced to do some complicated essay or an assignment they didn't understand. Hermione did it for fun.

She rounded a corner and didn't see the people that had emerged out of the shadows until hands had grabbed her roughly and pushed her painfully up against a wall. Hermione gasped and looked around wildly to see whom it was, praying that it was Ron or Harry playing a joke on her...

She groaned inwardly as Malfoy's face loomed close to hers.

"Hello, Granger," he drawled. "Where are all your little friends?"

"I'm really not in the mood," Hermione snapped. "So bugger off."

"Oh, touchy are we?"

Hermione looked at him, her eyes betraying her fear. He couldn't do this to her, she wouldn't allow it. She straightened her back and drew herself up to her full height, anger replacing her discomfort.

"Getting all Gryffindor and brave on us now, are you?"

Hermione gritted her teeth. "Touchy?" she repeated. "Brave? I'd say it's more like severely pissed off."

Laughter. Slow, cold laughter from all around her. "Well at least I'm getting somewhere then, aren't I?"

"Sod off, Malfoy."

"Did Weasley teach you that?" the boy whispered. "You are seeing a lot of him, aren't you, Mudblood?"

The corridors were empty except for the four Slytherins that surrounded her. It was getting late. Hermione gave Draco a look so resembling Professor McGonagall that he laughed again.

"Sensitive subject, Granger? Do you think there's a chance in hell of Weasley ever having something to do with you? A Muggle?"

"She'd match him, though," Pansy said from Hermione's side. "They're both pretty ugly."

Hermione violently shrugged off the hands that were holding her against the wall. Malfoy's eyes were bright.

"I said go away," she repeated. "Or I'll hex you. How did being turned into a ferret feel, Malfoy?"

Draco's cheeks flushed slightly. "I wouldn't be so sure of myself if I were you, you filthy stinking Mudblood. Times have changed. If you anger me, I might have to let slip to a certain...someone...that you're inconveniencing my friends and I. And we all know how the Dark Lord just loves to visit Mudbloods and Muggles such as yourself." He scowled. "Tell me...do you love your parents, Granger? Do they mean something to you?"

Hermione set her jaw and refrained from grinding her teeth. "Are you threatening me, Malfoy?"

"I suppose I am," the blond boy said quietly, looking her in the eye. Hermione pulled out her wand and her impatience overtook her. Draco didn't move.

"No magic in the corridors, Miss Mudblood Prefect," he said nastily, smirking.

Hermione had had it. She clenched her hand into a fist and punched Malfoy – again – catching him on the jaw. Angry cries erupted from all sides of her and Malfoy stumbled backwards, clutching his face. He looked up furiously and snarled.

Hermione held her wand out threateningly. "I'm going back to Gryffindor Tower," she said through clenched teeth. "And if I so much as feel someone behind me, I'll curse them into oblivion."

She turned on her heel and stalked away.

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The pain was too much. Harry stood in the shower and turned the heat up as high as he could stand it, and closed his red-rimmed and swollen eyes.

He hurt.

He hurt so much.

He wanted someone to tell him it was OK; he wanted to be told that nobody held anything against him... But there was no one. Because that wasn't true.

Harry felt the water trickling down his aching body. He looked at his bruises, some of which were beginning to heal, and stared at them for a while, thinking.

"You will stay in here for the rest of your god-forsaken summer!"

"N-no...please...please!"

Harry shook his head to clear it. He breathed heavily and punched the wall furiously and felt his knuckles open up. He punched it again and again and imagined it to be Uncle Vernon's head. The blood his hands were leaving on the wall was his Uncle's blood, and the more of it that turned the wall red, the more he punched it, imagining his Uncle laying bleeding and broken on the floor. Staining Aunt Petunia's new white rug a brilliant shade of crimson. Oh, she would be so angry with him...

The sound of the shower was all around him, encasing him, hiding him. Blood ran down his hands from his knuckles and dripped down onto the floor, fogging the water. Steam rose in billowing clouds around his body and he couldn't hear anything and nobody took notice of him.

Harry washed his hair carefully and turned the shower off.

He felt so much better now.

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Ginny pressed her face into her pillow and inhaled deeply. She brought her knees a little closer to her chest until she was curled up into a ball under her covers. A faint light spilled into the fifth year girls' dorm room from the night sky, and Ginny could just make out the sleeping forms around her. She sighed and relaxed, trying to rid her head of the thoughts and images that clouded it. Fat chance. When she'd crawl into bed for the night, everything on her mind would present itself to her, demanding to be thought about. All she wanted to do was sleep, but all she'd end up doing was thinking away the hours until it was early morning, which would mean another tired day of classes. Tonight was another night of thought.

She was confused about a number of things. The foremost was the previous night in the common room when she'd gone down to sit by the fire because she couldn't sleep. Harry had been there. He'd been strange...feverish, shaky, paralyzed. He wouldn't talk to her. And when he did eventually say something, it wasn't his voice...it had been higher, and very raspy, as though he had a very bad cold. And she could've sworn...

Ginny shook her head. No, she was being melodramatic, as her mum would always put it.

But as she'd looked into Harry's eyes they had suddenly turned red for a fleeting moment, almost like a cat's eyes with slits for pupils. And right after they had changed, Harry had passed out in his chair as Ginny screamed in surprise.

Well, it had been terrible. Horrible. She'd never seen anything as sickening as those eyes before in her life. More disgusting than when she'd walked into Fred and George's room once to put stacks of clean laundry on their beds and found a dead Doxy on Fred's pillow. No, it wasn't just the physical ugliness of it; it was the way it went into her head. For the eyes had penetrated deep into Ginny's mind as though prying thoughts out of it, feeling so violating and disturbing that even now, at the memory, she shuddered and drew herself up more into a ball as though warding it off. It frightened her. And it scared her also, because Harry was the one who had done it.

Wait, what was she thinking? Harry wasn't a Metamorphmagus; he couldn't change his features like Tonks could. And even if he had that ability, why the hell would he do that to her? Why would he choose something that looked like it would belong on a Death Eater?

There was something wrong with him. It was blatantly obvious. She just didn't know if she wanted to interfere with it. There was always the chance that he didn't want any help, and that would make him think of her as a clutchy nag. Which she really didn't want. Oh bugger it, out of all the males in Hogwarts she had to feel an attraction for the tortured one.

Shrugging to herself, she suddenly became aware of someone snoring loudly in their sleep and she groped for her wand to mutter a silencing spell at them before she fell into a deep slumber.

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"He was bothering you again?"

The flames crackled loudly in the hearth.

Hermione nodded tiredly and rubbed her eyes. "He and his miscreants found me as I was coming back from the library."

Harry closed his eyes. "Did he hurt you?"

Hermione smiled sadly. "Not as much as I hurt him. If he doesn't use a glamour spell tomorrow, we'll all get a nice view of a bruised jaw by breakfast."

Harry grinned and looked at Hermione fondly. "What'd you do, hit him with a textbook?"

"No, my fist."

A loud pop emitted from the flames.

Harry chuckled and shook his head. His mood had greatly improved. Any news that Draco was feeling pain, physical or emotional, was reason to celebrate.

"How did Quidditch tryouts go? I never got a chance to talk to Ron after he got back. He went straight up to bed, I guess."

Harry shrugged. "It was horrible until Ginny and Seamus got up. Angelina was thinking about canceling it altogether."

"I see."

Silence descended upon the two as they sat alone in front of the fire. Harry was draped exhaustedly across one of the armchairs while Hermione was tucked into the other one, a new potions book open on her lap. The girl was pretending to read, but Harry noted that her eyes remained fixed on the same spot. She was thinking about something.

"Harry..." she said quietly after a while longer, in which Harry had closed his eyes and begun to doze off.

"Mmmm?"

"Has Ron seemed...a little...distant to you?"

Harry wrenched his eyelids apart and met Hermione's gaze. He looked down. "Sort of. Why are you asking?"

"I've just noticed a change," she said, scratching her nose. "He's been really horrible to you lately and he won't talk to me as much as he used to. He's turning into a prize idiot, if you ask me."

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, I've noticed that too. I really don't care though."

"You don't?"

"Not really."

Liar.

"Oh." Hermione looked slightly put out. She blinked a couple times and returned to staring blearily at her book. "He's your best friend, though. What made this happen?"

Harry winced as he clasped his hands together. The bandages he'd put on his knuckles were beginning to turn red and he sincerely hoped that his hands wouldn't bleed come the morning. He would use a glamour spell to hide the wounds, just as he was constantly doing on his arms.

Don't think about that.

"Everything," Harry blurted. At Hermione's questioning stare, he shot her a warning look. He wasn't in the mood for long explanations. "I...we...I don't know. We're drifting. We've been drifting since fourth year."

"Oh, Harry..." she looked at him sadly. "I know. I'm sorry."

Harry's brow furrowed and he shrugged. "It's nothing."

Of course he was lying. The pain of Ron's rejection hurt him beyond words. The betrayal, the way he'd lately been shrugging Harry off altogether. It wasn't Ron and it hurt him, although in the past he'd told himself that he preferred being alone. There was the connection he'd always had with Ron that no one else had managed to establish with Harry, the kind of connection that would have you give your life for the other person if the situation arose. Now it was nothing.

Hermione closed her book softly and defied the laws of physics by cramming it into her bag along with the twenty million other books that were currently stashed there. She stood up and stretched, her robes wrinkled from where she'd been sitting.

"I'm going to bed, Harry. Will you be all right here by yourself?"

Harry nodded, suddenly hating the way she'd said that. As though he couldn't take care of anything. Oh shut up, you're being selfish again.

Hermione bent down and placed a kiss on his cheek again before dragging herself towards the girls' dormitory stairs.

Harry's head leaned on the squashy armrest and he stared, mesmerized, at the fire once more, not knowing that Ron had heard everything.

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