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A/N: Thankyou so much for the reviews, I'm glad you like it! I've never written fanfiction before, so it's really heartening to get reviews like that. Anyway - onwards to Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 - Desperation.
"You've been waiting a long time
To fall down on your knees"
Black and Blue - Counting Crows.
She sits alone on the windowsill of the common room, watching the stars twinkle benignly in the skies. In spite of herself she tries to identify a few, remembering her Astronomy lessons and all the effort she put into extra research in the library, poring away over textbooks in the hope that she would attain top grades; after all, what could be possibly be more important? A good education is paramount in her hopes for a dazzling future. But her priorities have slowly changed. She is gradually, reluctantly conceding that her words in her first year were true, when she saw one of her friends knocked unconscious by a giant chess piece and another resolutely disappearing through the fire to face his nemesis.
Friendship is more important.
She worries about them. Though Ron sustained no lasting injuries other than the welts on his arms, she suspects this is not the entire truth. What did those brains really do to him? He will not say. Instead he adopts his characteristic sense of bravado, playing the 'man'. But she knows him better than he would like to admit. Deep down, part of Ron died that night. The eerie, octopus-like tentacles robbed him of something that she cannot fathom.
And Harry... and Harry.
Tears spring unbidden to her eyes as she thinks of him. It hurts to think of him. His grief is all-consuming. He has
become a recluse, retreating to a different part of the castle each night. She has seen him. Seen how he rocks back and
forth, screaming silently. Heard his mutterings, nonsensical and yet, in some perverse way, completely logical. And she
has seen him afterwards, when dawn breaks, when he returns, when he makes half-hearted attempts at pretending to be
normal. He goes about his daily business - classes, quidditch, conversations with classmates. Students who only know
him by virtue of his fame assume that he is fine, that he has adjusted to the death his guardian. That the horrors of
the ambush in the Ministry of Magic and the untimely death of his godfather will become a distant memory, like a
sepia-toned silent movie. After all, as they say to each other in hushed tones, he did not know him for very long. And
Black was a wanted criminal. It will not be long before Harry is back to normal, they conclude.
They are wrong.
She has to do something for him. She cannot let himself destroy himself in this way. But how can she save him if he does not want to be saved? Will he let her love him this time, or will he simply cast her away once more?
*
He sits in the deserted tower, watching the sky. It is clear tonight, and the stars shine brightly. It will be frosty
tomorrow.
For a fleeting moment he wonders if she is watching the stars too. He smiles, but quickly replaces it with a grimace. Because he should not smile. To smile would be an insult to Sirius' memory. He does not deserve to be happy. His godfather is dead. He is not coming back.
And deep down, very deep down, Harry is sure that it is all his fault.
As if on cue, his memory starts feeding his mind's eye memories of his godfather. Happy, sad and downright frightening memories intermingle in his head, and he claws desparately at his face, trying to forget. He winces as the nerves in his skin alert him to the injury he has just inflicted upon himself, but he does not care. He feels he deserves it.
He stands up and shakily makes his way to the battlements so that he might look out at the night sky. The wind has picked up, buffeting previously unseen silvery clouds about the sky and obscuring the stars. He looks downwards and sees the trees of the Forbidden Forest, swaying gently from side-to-side as the wind rushes through them.
Suddenly he hears a noise below. He looks dispassionately, and his breath catches in his throat as his heart skips a beat. A dog is softly padding across the gravel path by the school gates. A black dog. A large black dog.
Is it - could it be - surely not - ?
He yanks off his smeary glasses and rubs them against his robes. Jamming them back on his face, he looks again.
His heart sinks, and he is sure that it has plummeted right down to Snape's dungeons. He begins to shake as his eyes insist that he accept what his imagination is hopelessly trying to fight against.
There was no dog.
He had imagined it.
His glasses are ripped off his face. The frames tinkle gently on the ground as his knees give way and he sinks to the hard stone floor of the tower. A feral howl tears from his throat as his head is thrown back and his fists hammer the ground. Furious screams issue forth from his mouth as he wrenches himself to his feet and he strikes his head rhythmically against the stony battlements.
Finally he stops and slumps once more to the floor. His chest hitches as he pulls himself into a foetal curl. His head hurts. So do his hands. But his mind insists he deserves it. As he shakes uncontrollably, looking at his bleeding hands, a small corner of his brain speaks with more gravity than any other of the thoughts clamouring for attention. As if being controlled by some external force, his aching and throbbing head slowly moves up and down, nodding.
He cannot go on like this.
He has to end it.
Now.
*
She is broken out of her reverie as the candleflame beside her flickers and dies. Dawn is slowly breaking on a new weekend. A glance at the clock in the corner of the common room tells her it will not be too long before people will be waking up and hurrying into the Great Hall for breakfast.
This observation is almost immediately overtaken by another, more worrying thought.
He has never been gone this long.
She sits up sharply, her innards taking on an icy consistency. She does not need to think. Her instincts go into overdrive as she grabs her cloak and yanks open the portrait hole, passing the loudly snoring Fat Lady.
She has to find him.
Now.
*
A/N: Whew. That was quite a bit longer than chapter 1... stay tuned to see if Hermione can get there in time. And
don't forget to review ;) T xxx