Chapter 4: Discussions
"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore's voice. "On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."
Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words. "My greatest strength, is it?" said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. "You haven't got a clue… you don't know…"
"What don't I know?" asked Dumbledore calmly.
It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage. "I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"
"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human."
"THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!" Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindlelegged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall.
It was dusk and the eight small dimly lit wall lamps lining two opposite walls of the hospital wing were the only source of light. Outside the windows, the sky was just distinguishable from the darker mass of trees and ground below it. The silence and stillness stretched on, broken only by sounds of gentle breathing or the soft footsteps of the matron as she methodically checked her patients. The inhabitants, utterly exhausted from the previous nights events, had slipped into the tranquil embrace of sleep – all except two. One locked into the throes of an intense psychological battle, the other completely wrapped up in his worry and intense, almost overwhelming fear of impending loss. It was this person who sat rigidly in a chair beside the bed furthest from the door, moving only to pace up and down the long rectangular room for several minutes before returning to his bedside vigil.
During the third burst of pacing, a voice softly called his name from the bed he'd just passed. Pausing midstep, Sirius turned to see Hermione's silhouette standing out against the stark white bedsheets. "Sirius, is that you?"
"Yes, it's me. Do you need anything?" he whispered back.
"No… I-I just woke up from a nightmare about yesterday... it was horrible… but it made me think about Harry's dream… He must be devastated, thinking that you're…" she trailed off almost apologetically.
"Yeah… maybe…" Sirius murmured. He couldn't help thinking of the twelve years he hadn't been there for Harry, the two years on the run, this past year trapped in Grimmauld Place. He really couldn't imagine Harry missing him much – he hadn't even been there for him most the time! Although the boy did seem quite distressed earlier… but it could be the combination of other events as well... Was it wrong to hope that it was his supposed death that had affected Harry so?
"Sirius?"
With a jolt, he realised he'd been silent for a while. "Hmm?"
"He really does love you," Hermione said earnestly, causing him to marvel at her perceptiveness. "He told me…" she hesitated for a moment, "he told me that he was beginning to think of you as a… as a father…"
Sirius drew a quick intake of breath that sounded like a gunshot in the quietness. It felt as if time had frozen. He could hear Ron's soft snoring. He could hear Harry move restlessly on his bed.
"What?" he breathed.
Hermione took his hand in both of hers. "It's true," she said simply. "He's never known what it's like to have a family who cares about you, the Dursleys were never the supportive type. I admit I wasn't sure about you earlier this year, but now I can see… you care about him… more than I originally thought." She tried to take a deep breath but let out a soft gasp at the pain it caused her healing body. "Will you promise me something? Promise that when you two get your second chance, you'll take it, for you and for Harry. I think you'd do each other a lot of good. It would –"
Her next words were cut off by an anguished cry of immeasurable grief from the next bed. "THEN… DON'T - WANT… HUMAN!"
"Harry?" Sirius was at his godson's side instantly. The boy was tossing and turning, his movements growing more and more violent until, with a wild lurch, he almost fell off the bed.
Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, "Really!"
"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE." He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.
"You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."
"I - DON'T!" Harry screamed, so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside himself.
"Oh, yes, you do," said Dumbledore, still more calmly. "You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care."
Sirius grabbed Harry around the chest before he could fall. It was a struggle to keep hold of the flailing figure.
"DON'T CARE!"
"Harry? Harry? Calm down, it's okay."
"…HAD ENOUGH… SEEN ENOUGH… WANT OUT… WANT IT TO END… DON'T CARE ANY MORE!"
Those words hit Sirius like a crashing fist, knocking the breath out of him. From behind him, he heard Ron's sharp intake of breath and Hermione's stifled sobs. His grip on Harry slackened and he stood limply, staring at the boy he'd come to care about, now more broken than he'd ever seen him. Sirius sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Harry against his chest.
"I – DON'T!" Harry screamed, so loudly his voice cracked from the strain. Then, suddenly, as if in response to Sirius' embrace, he went quiet, his laboured breathing the only sound audible against the renewed silence.
"That's it, sleep, Harry. You'll be okay, I'm not going anywhere." Sirius whispered.