Summary: Harry is suddenly acting very weird – in both universes. Yeah, you guessed it. This is a parallell universe-fic, and the two Potters are switched, causing a lot of confusion, especially for Harry Potter himself.
Genre: Romance/AU – Rating: PG
Warning: apart from the AU and slight OOC, nothing major. This is obviously slash, but nothing graphic I think.
Pairing: Harry/Draco (also Hermoine/Ron, Ginny/Neville, Sirius/Remus, Narcissa/Lucius)
Change of Reality
Part four – Crumbling Down
Harry stared ahead of him, his wide red-rimmed eyes resting unseeingly on the seat opposite his own, and his face still wet and glistening even though he'd run out of tears by this point and weren't crying anymore. He felt numb. And he could barely think a rational thought through. What kept popping up in his head, however, was the image of Draco staring back at him with wide and almost frightened eyes and stumbling backwards with look of alarm, and... Harry swallowed thickly... disgust, on his face. Harry couldn't bear to think about it, but not thinking about it turned out to be quite impossible. No matter how hard he tried to clear his mind, as Severus had taught in their Occlumency lessons, he just couldn't seem to get the image out of his head.
There was a soft knock on the compartment door and Harry looked up immediatly, his stomach making a flip-flop movement of anticipation, before crumbling completely with the disappointment of hope being crushed, as the door slid open and that Granger-girl stuck her head in. Harry tried his best not to scowl, and his jaw clenched with the effort.
"Harry? Ehm, do you mind if I...?" she mumbled, inclining her head to indicate entrance, then without waiting for a reply to her request, she slipped inside and slid the door shut again behind her. Harry watched her warily as she fidgeted in front of him, her eyes flickering about the interior of the compartment, seemingly avoiding to notice the tear stains on his face for a while longer, even though she undoubtedly already had the minute she stuck her head through the door.
"Harry, ehm... a-are you alright? Did Malfoy, er... do something to you or, why are you upset?"
Harry blinked. Then frowned, "Excuse me...?"
"Well, you're clearly upset..." she mumbled, "What happened? What did he do to you?"
Harry didn't know what to make of all of this. The girl had clearly grown a lot of nerve over the summer, he thought dumbly. But honestly, she had better learn to control herself, because this was just plain rude.
Harry just watched her until she looked up and met his gaze before he opened his mouth to speak, keeping his voice deliberately clear as he did so that there would be no mistaking the message, although maintaining a polite tone at the same time, as he said: "I really don't see how that is any of your buisness, Granger..."
Her eyes widened despite his politeness, Harry noticed passively, and just as her lower lip began to tremble, she turned on her heel and fled the compartment. Harry frowned. He didn't like to see people upset, and he liked it even less if he was the cause of it, but the Gryffindors were all acting very odd and that Granger-girl especially.
They were all acting as though they shared some deep friendship with him, despite the fact that he had hardly ever spoken to one of them in his life. Sure, they were on civil grounds with the Gryffindors, and the Weasley twins had been really funny when they were still at school and them he'd spoken to on several occasions, but these people. Well. He had to draw the line somewhere. His boyfriend had just acted as though Harry was the spawn of Voldemort or something, so he didn't feel remotely obligated to humour these people by suffering their sudden pert interests in his private life. Frankly, even though he would probably feel bad about admitting this to himself later, he couldn't care less about that bookworm's feelings, especially not when the circumstances surrounding his lovelife seemed to be a quite more pressing matter.
Harry sighed wearily and rubbed at his eyes. His head had begun to ache from all the crying as well. He considered working a headache-spell on himself, but for some reason the dull throbbing in his temples were almost comforting, so he decided against in and leaned back instead. Resting the back of his head heavily against the headrest, Harry thought he should try and get some sleep to make the time go by, knowing full well he wouldn't be able to fall asleep even to save his life.
TBC