There wasn't enough space to cover in Hogwarts Castle. Not enough for the run I was desperately trying to finish. I ran the entire lengths of countless corridors, up and down any staircase I came across, but still I could not be done running. I would run out of the castle and into the forest and away, but that meant going past crowded halls, and I hated the thought of people right now, more than I could previously fathom.

It hurt. Merlin, it hurt like nothing else possibly ever could. I wanted to disappear, to forfeit the rest of my life, to have never lived to begin with. But for now, I could only run.

So I sought out more corridors, more halls to quell this need to just run.

Eventually, long after the last tolling of bells, I came to stand before a now-familiar door. I opened it and stepped inside, closing it again behind me. The room was exactly how it was when I had first gone into it, and I was again drawn to the large piano at the centre.

I raised a hand and helplessly wished the piano would take away all the pain from inside me and fill me with lifeless, unfeeling cotton stuffing once more. I touched the polished wood, surrendering, but it would grant me no release. Digging my nails into the cold wood, I collapsed onto the floor, and darkness ultimately took over my senses.

"Harry, mate, wake up!" It was Ron's voice. I'd almost forgotten what he sounded like.

I heard Hermione gasp. "Harry, your hands!"

I couldn't understand her at first, but then I started to feel the throbbing at the tips of my fingers. I finally opened my eyes, but the world remained a blur.

"You broke your glasses," she said, wand obligingly raised in her hand.

She fixed the cracked glass, but then the world became too bright, so I pulled the glasses off and reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose. My fingers throbbed harder. I heard Hermione wince, and I could smell dried blood.

"We better get that seen to, Harry," Hermione advised, and Ron moved in to support me. I held up a hand in protest.

"Leave me. I'm tired."

"But, Harry…" she tried again, and I shook my head.

Ron insisted to move me. I shoved him away, harder than I meant to. I felt myself losing control.

"Get out!" I hadn't meant to yell it, but that's what I did, and when Ron and Hermione refused to leave again, I simply repeated myself.

In the end, they relented, and I lied back down on the rough stone floor, shutting it all away again.

I awoke later to sounds of the storm outside. I sat up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I felt around for my glasses and found them a few feet from my place on the floor. I put them on.

Someone was at the door. I sat up.

A small girl let herself into the room. "Harry?"

I looked up, expecting to see my pain mirrored in Abigail's eyes. But when I met them, they held no pain – they held nothing. I hung my head.

"I didn't know what I expected," I heard myself say. "Did it hurt you, knowing he didn't want to be yours, the way you were already his?"

She moved to kneel in front of me, and I waited for no answer, "Did it hurt like this?"

Abigail said something I didn't hear.

"You said you knew something I didn't… I thought you meant it as a good thing…"

Her voice was faint in my ears, and I could not make out what she had just said.

"Is this what you knew?" A thought occurred to me then, and anger built up inside me again.

"Did you know he wouldn't be mine, either? Did you send me out there so I would feel this pain? Your pain? You just wanted me to be as miserable as you are!"

She had placed both hands on my shoulders, and she was yelling now, something about me needing to listen to her.

"I WON'T LISTEN TO YOU! YOU CARE ABOUT NOTHING AND NO ONE BUT YOURSELF!"

I felt a sharp blow to my stomach then. I doubled over in physical pain. The brat punched me!

She said something, but I heard nothing again. I let the pain recede before I moved in to retaliate.

I haven't fought like a muggle in years now. At one point, I had her pinned under me, but then she reached up and pressed her fingers sharply against the flesh of my throat, briefly paralysing me. Whenever I managed to overpower her with my strength, she would defeat me with tricks like that; sending me off-balance, poking parts of my body where it surprisingly hurt, and somehow weaving out of my grasp while I still held on firmly.

In the end, she had me face-down on the floor with my arm pulled painfully over my back, her full weight resting on it.

"Do you yield? DO YOU YIELD?" I heard her properly for the first time since she entered the room.

"I YIELD, I YIELD!" I shouted desperately and stilled my movements in surrender.

She released me and moved to sit beside me. We sat up gasping for air.

"How in the blazes did you do that?" I breathed out.

"You- could become- completely- invisible. I- could start- a fight- and win." She said, panting.

"No, really, how?"

"I'm- smaller- but-" she waved an arm, "lemme just-" chest heaving, she stopped talking.

In another moment, her hands were clasped onto my shoulders again. "Are you with me right now?" she asked, her breathing still heavy.

I looked up at her. She fixed me with a determined look.

"Yes."

"Okay." A pause, "What happened?"

I didn't want to be thinking about Malfoy so soon, but something akin to guilt was swelling up inside me, and I soon remembered backing him to a bookshelf in a secluded corner of a deserted library, how he had stood as if frozen between my arms, eyes widened. I was angry at the time, I hadn't realised.

"I told Malfoy..." I trailed off.

"How?"

"I… sort of… Not very calmly."

"What's that supposed to mean? Did you force yourself on him?"

Was that what I did? I couldn't be sure… "Maybe I kind of did…"

"Bad!" She said, and thwacked me round the head. "Very bad move, Harry!"

I felt like Crookshanks when Hermione would scold him for being a 'bad kitty'. I gave her an incredulous look, and very little else.

She was unmoved. "He's inconsolable! He just got out of hospital! He almost died, remember?"

I wanted to remind her that she had no right to be giving me that tone, but we were talking about Malfoy, not me or her.

And she was right; I have made a terrible mistake. I had acted desperately, and out of some amount of anger. I've probably made the impression that I would treat him the way Theodore Nott had. This last thought sobered me up considerably.

Abigail took my hand then. I winced, involuntarily. I had forgotten that I had hurt them earlier.

"Come on, go get this seen to." She said after a brief inspection of my fingers.

She helped me to my feet and sent me out of the room. "And get your own hideout!"

As I let Madam Pomfrey fuss over my purple fingertips later at the hospital wing, I wondered how I could possibly save this one.

I returned to Gryffindor Tower that night and was met with the stressed out faces of Ron and Hermione. I slowly went up to them.

"I'm sorry," was all I could say at this point. Ron crossed his arms. Hermione searched my face.

"I really am. For this morning. For getting you into this mess. For everything."

Hermione placed a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye.

"I'm sorry," I felt like saying it over and over, to anyone who would listen.

"What's wrong, Harry?" I heard Ron ask. I was guided to sit down on a sofa.

I felt the cold metal inside my pocket again. Closing my eyes, I answered him honestly. "Malfoy. I don't know how I'm going to fix things with him."

There was nothing but silence at first. Then, someone squeezed my shoulder. I looked to see sympathy in Ron's eyes. "You will, though."

Hermione had launched herself at me, stroking my hair as if I were a cat. "Oh, Harry."

What was going on? "You know?" I asked them both.

"We know. Big deal." Ron shrugged.

I felt something stinging my eye. "But it is. And you're not mad at me?"

I was squeezed again, this time by Hermione. "How can we be mad at you for just …being in love with someone?"

I smiled. It was liberating to hear her say that.

But I wished Malfoy would liberate me. How was I going to tell him? Would he even see me now?

[Author's Notes]

I think Harry's turned into a kitty cat in my head. Finals do weird things to my psyche. Now then, how will Harry patch things up with Malfoy? I should really study, but I'd rather find this out.