Set during the summer right after the war, say around early June or so. The main pairing is HPDM.
Chapter content warnings: Insomnia, hazy writing.
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling, who, unlike me, actually wrote the Harry Potter series.
It was three in the morning and the quiet was too loud.
Harry laid in bed with his eyes open, counting every blub-blub of his heart. It was not enough to drown the thoughts that raced through his mind, half-formed sentences and disjointed memories. The longer he laid there, exhausted and wide awake, the more the frustration and restlessness built off each other until he just gave up and decisively threw off the covers - only to indecisively lay down again, throwing himself onto his left side, and then onto his right because his back hurt, and then onto his stomach because he thought he might be cold.
It was three in the morning and Harry had not slept once in his entire life and the silence was deafening.
Harry got out of bed.
His body was unable to decide what it should be - he was exhausted and his body trembled with it; he was full of pent-up irritated energy and his body hummed as if he were an overloaded power line. He could not tell which limbs trembled and which eyeball hummed. It was horrible, Harry was helpless, and Harry was going to go downstairs and make tea because that is what you do at three in the morning when some of your limbs hum and some of your eyeballs tremble.
Instead, Harry found himself standing on his lawn in his pajamas and hailing the Knight Bus.
With a great rumble and clash, the familiar purple monstrosity burst into existence right there in Harry's front yard; with an equally great bellow, the bepimpled face of Stan Shunpike beckoned him on board as if he could not figure out why Harry was not yet standing beside him. Harry wondered where he had left his tea.
Oh, that's right; he had not made it.
"'Arry Potter!" Stan cried joyfully as Harry climbed aboard, clapping him on the shoulder as if they were friends who had not seen each other for a very long time. Harry considered this as he did every night, and determined that Stan must be one of his favorite people - as he did every night.
"Well sit down, sit down!" exclaimed Stan, who did not bother to show Harry to his seat. "Ya got a good night tonight, nice an' quiet for ya."
Harry sat in his seat. He liked his seat - not too soft, not too hard, no stabby objects, and right by the cleanest window on the bus.
Harry knew he would like his seat. It was his favorite seat.
The bus lurched left to right and inside to outside as it kicked into motion, but that was okay because the bus was just overeager and Harry thought that was better than being lackluster. Harry remembered being a kid and getting in to all kinds of trouble and wondered if he was overeager, just like the Knight Bus.
Except most days Harry felt he was rather lackluster. He wondered if the Knight Bus would be disappointed, and then he realized this was silly because buses probably didn't have feelings.
Sympathetically, Harry wondered if anyone had thought to ask a bus if it had feelings. Perhaps it had lots of feelings and nobody knew because nobody ever asked.
Harry drew his knees up to his chest, watching as the trees leapt for safety and the buildings parted in fear of the big purple bus, and the tension in his body finally - finally! - began to ease. He was being jolted in every which direction and it was so relaxing that his eyeballs stopped humming and his limbs ceased their trembling.
Piece by piece, the Knight Bus stripped away Harry's world until it faded into nothing but overeager motion and terrified foliage and low lighting.
Harry rested.