A/N: I don't what happened with this chapter, it turned into a total depression fest at the beginning! But don't worry, things will perk up and start happening soon. I know it's quite slow at the moment but I didn't want it to seem like he's been in hiding for four years with no events and then everything starts happening at once, y'know? Anyway, R&R :) Thanks.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these character's…just…erm…mess with them…Mwahaha! Don't sue:D

Midnight, Motives and the Knight Bus

Harry could not sleep. Dreams were troubling him again, dreams of flashes of green light, high cruel laughs, and the faces of dead people. Harry's scar had not troubled him since Voldemort's death, but his memory still lingered in Harry's thoughts, the nightmare shadow that had loomed over his life, even when he was unaware of it, for eighteen years, even after death the nightmare lived on.

He had been at Diagon Alley too long; he never usually spent this much time lingering there. He had been around people too long as well; their sense of normalcy, of everyday life was becoming overwhelming. For Harry it was stifling, he could not stand the structure of the typical day that swelled everywhere where there was lots of people. He did not even know if this made sense or not. He only knew that after everything that had happened, the death and destruction, the brink that he had inevitably tumbled over, he could not watch people living out their lives. He loathed the way he could sit at breakfast, go to the shops, probably even chat with the barman; it was just wrong.

There should be weeping and shouting or just…something. Yet instead, when you turned to find these things, when you turned inside yourself to find these things, there was just nothingness, a void that could not be filled, that you fell into without realising. It left you doing the things of everyday life with an insistence that had no reaction, that provoked no emotion and you hated yourself for being able to do them, you wanted the emotions and the pain and the sorrow and the grief, something other than the eternal emptiness.

But the emptiness was self-preservation, it stopped you from feeling anything because it knew if you did, if the blow of emotion should come down on you in one momentous wave then it would be too much and you would be unable to cope. So he tried to avoid the sense of everyday life as much as possible, because the lack of weeping and shouting, of reaction and emotion, were all the more prominent in the land of normality.

But he needed to go. He had been there long enough. It was time to slip back into anonymous identity and surroundings. Even being known as Lysander Reubel's had become too much, the knowledge of having a personality, a life, or at least the appearance of it, in other people's eyes was becoming to heavy a burden. He wanted to just be. Not to think, not to feel, not to remember…

The air of the Leaky Cauldron was warm and heady, candles gleaming as soft murmuring conversations were held over alcohol and a warm fire. The flickering lights provided perfect shadow as a young man stole through them, pausing to drop a bag of money for his room with a heavy clink on the counter, only to disappear into the night.

The autumn air was cold and stinging outside. Harry pulled his collar up, shivering, yet immediately feeling lighter now he was not so close to people. He was darkness now, one with the midnight silence, a nonentity that did not have to pretend to be human, because he had lost his humanity long ago.

He wandered the streets for a while, realising, when it had far passed midnight, that it was time to go. He had enjoyed it, those few brief hours when he had been nothing, when he had not had to keep up the illusion of someone with a shred of hope, to appear to be someone who had a reason for living. It was nice not to feel, because there was nothing to feel, and to accept it without question.

He pulled out his wand, standing on a kerb with his breath misting in front of him, and threw his arm out over the road. There was a deafening BANG, a sudden blinding light and a triple deckered, violently purple bus appeared out of thin air.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the-" the conductor began,

"Save me the introduction." Harry growled, shoved eleven sickles into the bewildered youth's hand and swept past him. "Evening Ernie," he muttered to the elderly wizard driver, Ernie Prang, who blinked at him from behind thick glasses.

"Forest of Dean, if you don't mind, and take your time." Harry ordered, as he ascended the twisted metal steps to the second level, he was too tired to have flown anywhere that night; the Knight Bus was the second best thing. He kicked off his boots; found a bed and blew the candle in the bracket beside it out, hoping no dreams would find him.

He woke to the sounds of footsteps shuffling past his bed. He opened his eyes groggily, just quick enough to catch a glimpse of an old witch shuffling past in her dressing gown, he peered through his messy fringe at the rest of the beds, they were empty. It was then that he realised his fringe was jet black.

Swearing under his breath he fumbled for his wand. Ofcourse the disguising spell had worn off, it always did when you fell asleep, he'd just been too tired to remember to put on a travelling cloak to hide his face. What if someone had seen him? What if that old witch had recognised his face, glanced in his direction for just a moment and realised she was looking at the sleeping form of Harry Potter, who was supposed to be dead?

It would have been all too easy. One look and he would be discovered. How could he be so stupid to let something so simple almost be the cause of his detection? He swore at himself, scolding his carelessness whilst the blonde hair replaced his own. He shuddered at the thought that anyone could have walked past and seen him whilst he slept.

He heaved himself up from his bed and slipped his feet into his boots just as the Knight Bus took a sharp left with a loud BANG, throwing Harry off the side of his bed. He swore again and pulled him self up from the floor, his arm was definitely going to be bruised, how had he slept through this? He asked himself as there was another loud BANG, and he almost ended up on the floor again. He sat back down, holding onto the bed post as the Knight Bus' progress shook him from side to side.

The night he disappeared was still vivid in his mind. It had been Ginny who had finally swayed him; despite the pain it caused to admit it he knew that she had every right to hate him. Look at what he had done to her family. He loved her, and always would, but he had no reason but his own selfishness to hang on any more, to try living a life when all he did was cause others pain.

He had spent hours that morning pacing a bridge, deciding whether to actually make true his own lie. But he couldn't do it. Cowardice, most likely, but he did not want to examine that inner struggle to closely in case that was what he found. Instead he had gone out and gotten stinking drunk with…formidable consequences. It was only a couple of months later that he realised drowning himself in Firewhiskey until he was comatose would probably have him dead soon anyway.

The first time on this bus he'd been 'on the run from the law,' in fact he'd blown up his aunt and was wondering what life as an outcast would be like. He had already been planning, he would have gone to Gringotts, taken out all the gold from his vault and started his new life as an exile. Harry shook his head; it was odd how close this ridiculous teenage panic had been to the truth. If only the prospect of going to Azkaban for a bit of accidental Underage Wizardry were the worst of his problems now.

Light was dawning outside as the bus bowled down another street, objects jumping out the way (Ernie still hadn't seemed to perfect the art of using a steering wheel) as Harry sat in silence, the snores of wizards and witches drifting up from the beds of the floor below.

A/N: Yeah so, this is pretty much all about Harry's issues, but I kind of wanted to show how deep the emotional trauma went and to pave the way for some great action later on even though I don't particularly like this chapter…also 'formidable consequences' is a bit of private joke between me and my sister that will come up later on!

Next chapter is coming as soon as possible, they're coming thick and fast at the moment thanks to Easter holidays but they might come less regularly if this story carries on till then!