A/N: Sorry it took so long...but college and fanfics don't exactly mix too well...I hope to keep updating more often soon...

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chpt. 2 – Blood and Tears

Tears really are a funny thing. What kind of reaction is it that, when under extreme emotion, the body's immediate reaction is to release the precious water that it spends all day trying to build up. I guess only God can ever truly appreciate the fullness of such things as emotions; such things as fear, love, hate, anger, and frustration…and how closely related they really are.

Tears really are a funny thing…

To bad they can't be stopped…

The vacuum that Harry left upon his sudden departure from the room was quickly filled with air molecules that were now under extreme scrutinizing by a Mr. Ronald Weasley. Even though it had been many minutes since Harry had stormed out of the room in a fit of anger that had been completely unexpected by the young red-head, it seemed as if Ron was unable to look at anything else. He tried to focus all of his thoughts on that one space, that piece of nothingness where his friend has so recently been, but that was obviously not happening. Slowly a tear streaked from one of his bright blue eyes to trail down his cheek and hand loosely at the tip of his chin before breaking free. It seemed to hang, suspended in mid-air for a moment before making the treacherous trek toward the earth where it shattered upon the cold stone floor. One drop shattered into a million tiny shards of water.

'Just like my heart,' he thought.

The door to the boys' dorm was suddenly wrenched open by a figure distorted by a bushy main of brown hair that appeared to be more frazzled with stress than anything else. In order to save his own face, Ron turned away out of habit, shielding his tears from any intruders.

"What did you do?"

Hermione's voice was harsh and accusing, yet somehow she managed a note of caring that carried easily to Ron's ears and caused him to not retort in his normal snappy manner.

"I…I don't know…I just asked him if he was okay and he…he just blew up…"

Ron's sentence was broken, along with his voice, and it was obvious to the young girl in the room that his throat was constricted for some reason, and only one reason made sense in her mind. Something in the situation made her smile, despite the current situation, and she quickly wiped the smile away and replaced it with a friendly and accepting face, even though the other boy wasn't even looking at her. Her next words came out firm and demanding, but she still managed to instill a voice of caring in them, as if to assure that she was not out to get him.

"Ron, you need to talk to him…"

"Me!"

Ron's voice cracked as he suddenly spun to face Hermione, now uncaring of how his face looked.

"Why just me? You're just as caught up in this as I am. Why can't we talk to him together?"

There was an uncomfortable pause, well, at least uncomfortable for Ron considering it appeared that Hermione's eyes were now glimmering with mischief.

"You know what I mean, Ronald."

With this comment, the horror that could so easily be seen behind a pair of plate sized eyes was quite enough to make even the stone faced Hermione Granger burst into a fit of giggles.

"Yes Ron, I know, and I don't care."

There was some point throughout the eternal night of one boy's mind that the ink like sky began to fade to a lighter grey and was eventually penetrated by rays of light. It was then that the voices came back.

'Who do you think you are?...Someone special?...'

'Ha…look at you…'

'Halfbreed!'

Harry shot up, guarding his face with his arms only to be overwhelmed by a wave of nausea. Just as quickly as he sat up, he collapsed into a heap in the same grass he had just risen from. Something sharp cut a gash along the underside of his right eye just deep enough to bleed a good deal and hurt like hell. He could taste the bile rising in his throat and began to gulp down the cool evening air with the hopes of not vomiting all over himself here in the middle of the school grounds. Once he finally had his stomach back under control, Harry tried once more to sit up. The process was slow, and his left arm was basically useless in the process, but after several minutes of struggling and at least two failed attempts, he managed to right himself. Throughout all of this he had managed to keep his eyes closed tight against the ever pressing rays of the sun. Slowly opening one and then the other, Harry winced at the pain and quickly placed a hand to the side of his head as he realized that he could count the beats of his heart from somewhere just beneath his temples. His head was throbbing, only matched by the throbbing in his arm, and it seemed that his chest was about to collapse in upon itself.

It was then that Harry became fully aware of his surroundings. He was still there, still sitting in the middle of a clump of bright green bushes next to the bright blue water of the lake, but there was one major change. The grass was red. It took Harry a moment to realize that this was not some weird natural phenomenon that had caused the grass to grow a different color in this one particular place, but rather the grass had been painted red by an outside source.

'That's not a good thing'

Harry's subconscious seemed to register it long before his conscious mind took control of the situation. How had he been stupid enough to lose that much blood. It was no wonder that he was so lightheaded and utterly weak. His mind was working too slowly for it's own good, and with each passing second it seemed like there was more information trying to get in than was possible to put in there. On top of all that, there were the ever present voices that lingered on the edge of his conscious. With a sudden realization, Harry's good hand shot to his left forearm, confirming that all bleeding had stopped. That took care of one problem didn't it, but that didn't take care of…

'Look at you…no wonder the world hates you…'

Them. They were still there. Slowly, Harry forced himself to stand and start moving. There was no use searching in the blood stained grass for his razor, he wouldn't need it where he was going. His path was long and inconvinent, caused by the constant swaying motion as he walked, unable to keep a strait course with the lightness of his head. It took him nearly a half an hour just to make it back to the castle while the sun sank lower against the lake, giving the castle the look of a fortress housing the dead, and Harry giggled slightly at the irony. Once inside it didn't take long to find the staircase he needed. Stumbing upward, step by step, his feet seemed like lead as he made his way toward the top of the observation tower. The top was in sight, and this was where he would fix everything.

Bursting forth into the now cool night air, Harry paused momentarily to take in the clear sky as the stars began to twinkle to life. Nearly dragging himself to the edge of the tower, he pearched himself precariously on top of one of the blocks that lined the edge. For a moment he managed to think clearly enough to wonder whether he should leave a note, but that thought didn't last long.

As Ron climbed out of the portrait hole it would have been an understatement to say that he had had a rough night. True, he may not have been through anything overly physical, but his mind what whirling with emotions that he had never even had the chance to think about before, none the less experience.

'How could she know?'

He still wasn't sure. She just said she knew, and he left it at that. Then the tears had come again. He didn't care anymore whether or not she thought of him as overly strong, he just needed someone to be there for him, and she was. She had held him comfortingly as he cried silently into her shoulder and whispered things that he now realized he couldn't remember to calm him down. All that mattered to him was that she knew, and she didn't care, so he could make everything else work…right?

Once Ron had regained his composure, he quickly washed his face to remove all traces of the weakness otherwise known as tears before he left to find his friend and put a whole mess of ordeals to an end. It was then that he was caught by surprise. Somewhere in the distance, Ron heard a noise that sounded very similar to a sack of potato's being hauled up a flight of stairs, and once he figured out what it was he was rather surprised how close he was.

At the end of the hall, climbing the stairs in a dazed sort of way that Ron had never seen before, Harry drug himself up the stairs as if his body didn't want to move at all. Following his friend, Ron came to the sub-concious decision that, at least for now, it was best to stay quite and see what was going on. Becoming lost in thought about everything that had happened that day, Ron lost his friend near the end of the stairs. Climbing the last few feet, Ron gasped with surprise as he found Harry standing, weaving back and forth and staring at the sky, from atop one of the stones that encircled the top of the tower. The distant look in Harry's eyes worried Ron more than anything else, and he decided instantly that something was wrong, and he had to change it.

"HARRY!..."

A/N: Things are finally starting to come together, but it still seems kind of blah to me…hopefully you'll see it otherwise…maybe the author is just being to hard on himself…anywho…R&R please…thanx…

MK