I learned something about myself while writing Stan Shunpike's dialogue - I'm crap at writing accents. Any tips are not expected but would be greatly appreciated.

Chapter content warnings: Insomnia, strange mix of humor and angst, more hazy writing.

Disclaimer: Any recognizable content belongs to JK Rowling, who unlike me, actually wrote the Harry Potter series..

Harry had not realized he'd built a routine for himself until the night things broke from what they should have been.

It was three in the morning, again. It happened at least once a day, of course, a strange constant that offset the fact that Harry Potter was in flux. Every now and again, he wondered if perhaps it was strange to rely on a time of night as a source of stability, and then he decided he did not particularly care.

The funny thing about three-in-the-morning was that Harry was always awake to greet it.

The funnier thing about three-in-the-morning was that sometimes Harry loathed it so much that he thought he must love it more than anything else.

The obnoxious grandfather clock on the floor beneath Harry's bedroom chimed the hour's inevitable arrival. Harry, who had twisted himself clockwise around his bed in a bid to get comfortable, wondered if it was possible to love something so much that the very thought of it made you cry.

At that moment, it certainly felt possible.

Harry did not cry, however. He thought his tear ducts must be sleeping, and for a moment Harry was so jealous he considered clogging them with feathers.

Instead, he just got out of bed.

Harry made his way to his front lawn, as he always did at three in the morning; his very bones were made of lead and he must have been thousands of years old, but that was okay. There were worse things to be than old and lead-boned, probably.

Stan Shunpike was there to greet him in a matter of seconds and old Harry was glad for it. Stan Shunpike was another constant that Harry sometimes loved and sometimes loathed, but Stan Shunpike said hello and made him hot chocolate when he asked and that made all the difference.

"'Arry Potter!" cried Stan, exuberant, consistent. "Come in, come in, make yooself at 'ome! It's a beautiful night for a ride!"

Consistent Stan clapped him on the shoulder and declared that he best sit down, and Harry wandered to his consistent favorite seat, the one that wasn't too hard and wasn't too soft and wouldn't stab him if he sat on it wrong and was right by the cleanest window on the bus.

The seat that Harry consistently sat in every night.

The seat that was an essential part of Harry's routine.

The seat that was somehow inexplicably, illogically, unreasonably, rudely occupied by someone else.

Harry gaped, feeling bizarrely betrayed.

"Give me my seat back," Harry said.

The head attached to the person occupying his seat turned to look him in the eye and for some reason it was wearing Draco Malfoy's face, so Harry Potter gaped some more.

Draco Malfoy looked Harry Potter in the eye, then Draco Malfoy's head fell to the side and he laughed as if Harry demanding his consistent seat back was the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard.

"No," was all Draco Malfoy deigned to say, amidst all his hilarity.

Harry recalled all the sleep he'd been getting recently - or the lack of, more accurately - and came to understand with utmost certainty that he must be hallucinating. "But ... that's my favorite seat," he managed, weakly.

At that, Draco Malfoy laughed so hard that he slapped his right knee and began to wheeze. "Harry Potter's ... favorite ... seat!" wheezed Draco Malfoy, using the window for emotional support.

Harry Potter, infuriated by the entire situation, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders and prepared to release the righteous fury of a thousand angry men upon the seat-stealing likes of Draco sodding Malfoy, and -

Inconveniently, Ernie chose just that moment to send the bus into motion.

Harry was directly and decisively thrown into the seat right behind Draco Malfoy.

Indignant but also being tossed about as if he were a teddy bear in a washing machine, Harry was left with no choice but to watch Draco Malfoy sit in his favorite seat and laugh the same way a seal might scream as it died.

That night, Harry did not see the foliage scrambling for cover, nor the other passengers coming and going; he did not even notice when the sun began to rise. Harry Potter glared and glared and glared at Draco Malfoy until the world around him ceased to matter.

Harry Potter had never felt so awake.