Work Text:
The air was humid. It had probably been a mistake to open the windows when the night was so thick he could taste it, but Harry would do anything to escape the feeling that he was trapped.
Outside the window, Private Drive was quiet. Only the occasional cricket could be heard on the street. The darkness had long pulled sun-soaked children inside for bed and tired parents to pull their curtains close. It seemed everyone was at rest.
Harry was bent over his desk, quill gripped in his hand. Sweat beaded down his forehead. His hand hovered paralyzed over the parchment. His head was stuffed up with too many different words and wishes and fears to even attempt to write them. He wished in that moment to be Hermione just for the way words flowed so readily from her as though she had hours to prepare what she wanted to say. Even Ron’s overly blunt writing would be better than staring at a blank sheet of parchment. At least what Ron’s writing lacked in eloquence it made up for in truth and compassion.
In a moment of confidence, his hand flitted across the parchment. He had nearly filled up three lines before he scratched out every word until it was completely unrecognizable. He banged his fist on the desk.
The quill fell from his grip. His hands came up to grip his hair. As he stared at his newest sheet of ruined parchment, it took him a moment to realize damp spots were appearing on its surface, further distorting the words he attempted to inscribe on it.
I’m crying, he thought. Distantly, he had the wherewithal to feel ashamed of the fact that he was crying over a sheet of parchment.
His throat was dry. It had been dry a lot in the past few weeks since the graveyard. Sometimes from crying, sometimes from forgetting he needed to drink, sometimes from the overwhelming sense of anxiety that seemed to be making a home somewhere in his head.
He wanted Sirius. His heart ached with the realization. If he had Sirius, maybe this would all go away. Maybe he wouldn’t need to write how he felt from such a distance. Maybe if Sirius saw him then he would know what to do. Sirius would know how to fix this.
He was the last person Harry had. He was the last person who hasn’t let him down.
But he wasn’t here, and he probably wouldn’t know what to do anyway. Harry has been here before. He knew what to do. He didn’t need Sirius.
Because once long ago, Harry was much smaller. He was a lonely boy in a cupboard with no friends. He was a lonely boy in a cupboard who only wished to be loved by his aunt and uncle.
Harry has been here before.
He was five and Uncle Vernon told him he would never love Harry. And somehow those five words hit worse than any blow Vernon ever laid on him. It was the first time he could remember crying himself to sleep. It was the first time he could remember the knowledge that something was wrong with him settling deep in his heart.
Harry has been here before.
He was eight and he stared blankly at a teacher as she scolded him for stealing Dudley’s snack money. She asked him why he did it. He didn’t tell her he hadn’t eaten a real meal since yesterday. Instead, he shrugged. She called his aunt. That was the first time he could remember not eating for more than two days in a row. He lay awake in his cupboard every night that week in pain but managed to distract himself by imagining stories in his head. Stories where people cared for children a little better. Stories where the children escaped and lived happily ever after.
Harry has been here before.
He was ten and his schoolteacher was nice. He let Harry eat the snacks he kept in his classroom without asking why. He let Harry stay inside during recess after Dudley started a game of Harry Hunting. He didn’t yell at Harry when he knocked over a flower pot and it shattered on the floor. The teacher had told the school that his aunt and uncle weren’t good parents. His uncle did something that got his teacher fired. Harry had curled up in his cot. His chest had ached so much that it had been hard to breathe. Everything hurt more than it had ever hurt before. For the first time in his life, Harry was filled with the indisputable knowledge that people were unreliable. That kindness was always short-lived.
Harry’s breaths were but sharp gasps punctuating the quiet night on Private Drive. He pulled his hair hard enough to make him go bald by twenty.
Harry had been here before. He has been at his lowest point. He has been lonely. He has been afraid. He has been beaten. If he had gotten out of it before he could do it again.
But his conviction was quickly overwhelmed by the dull ache in his chest that wouldn’t go away. Harry was fourteen. He had gone to Hogwarts for four years. He had friends now. He had people who cared for him. He had Ron and Hermione and Sirius and the Weasleys and his quidditch team. He has rescued the philosopher’s stone, defeated Slytherin’s basilisk, saved his godfather, and survived Voldemort’s resurrection.
Yet here he was again. The lost lonely boy trapped on Private Drive. After all these years, nothing had changed. He was still ten and eight and five and every age in between. He was certainly going insane, or at the very least whatever divine power out there was trying to drive him insane by forcing him to relive the same sad story over and over again.
The parchment was completely ruined now. The salt in his tears burned the cuts on his lip. Outside the window, the street lights flickered off. The candle burning on his desk seemed lonelier in the newfound darkness.
Was it too much to ask for a different story?