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Darkness laced the night, though only small bursts of frightened stars, melancholic in their brethren’s absence, lay there upon the Void in shattered petrification. The Chariot of Artemis glistened with an ominous requiem; it was almost as though it was in mourning, obscuring itself with clouds of darkened midnight in an attempt to hide itself from the world. Or perhaps it was chilled to its core, and was attempting to enshroud itself with the floating objects; objects that prophesied imminent destruction - either way, the storm it was brewing could have made the Earth cry out in justified blame. The lights of lampposts flickered, reverence filling them to their very cores. However, soon-to-be curiosity directed them towards two men, whom of were distanced from one another, and equally as broken as shattered glass on the peak of an avalanche.
A radio cackled, disrupting the tense atmosphere of the night. The song it was woefully singing was disrupted, as it tittered with agitation.
“Come on,” a lone man grumbled. He scowled at the insufferable thing. Alas, his groaning, to nobodies surprise, did little use to stop the breakdown the radio was unknowingly having. The man decided to leave it until the morning, as aching fingers turned the vehicle he was inside into parking. The door opened with a click as he exited. A huge exhale of relief escaped his airways as the stifling air of the car transformed into the luxurious, refreshing, cool, crisp air of which naturally came with the night.
He locked the dark silhouette of an ocean-washed machine, before humbly entering an apartment block. He trudged up several flights of creaking, light oak stairs, illuminated by nothing but landing lights. When he arrived to his destination, legs feeling like led, his frozen fingers nipped a frozen key at a cool-embraced lock. He fell through the door as soon as it had enthusiastically swung open to greet him.
It took him less than a minute to enter his bedroom, close his curtains, strip down to nothing but his pants, and claw himself onto his king-sized, crimson-covered bed.
A headache that had been persistently annoying all day and had woken him up that very morning, slowly faded into the background. Within minutes, he was out like a candle-fire being suffocated by a Reaper wind.
Harry Potter didn’t usually dream.
Sure, he had nightmares, but those came rarely. They were- well, he didn’t enjoy thinking about them. If someone had to know, he’d tell them they were… intriguing, to say the least.
This time was no different.
He found himself in a dark-tiled bathroom, with a black marble toilet and a similar sink for company. The rest of his surroundings were blurry- gods, he could barely identify those to statures themselves. His vision was just- swaying all over the place. Harry was stumbling- there was a mirror.
Blood pounded through his head, achingly resilient, forcing him to muffle a groan of pain. Stumbling towards the sink as the nearest object, he gripped it so tight he could start to feel its bemoaning, freezing structure dig deep into his skin. He tried to focus on the reflection in front of him; he was hazy, murky, indistinct in his figure.
Focus.
Terrified to his core, he squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed for the Earth to swallow him whole. When he opened his eyes, finally, he blinked a few times, and was able to focus on the image in front of him with somewhat more accuracy.
And yet, to his horror, all he saw were two crimson marbles stare back at him.
The man who Harry had reluctantly been forced to be trapped inside, to become, rose two bloodied fingers and, as though focused and mesmerised with nothing else in his capacity, wrote two, small, singular words onto the space in front of him.
Help me.
Harry woke up.
Water slammed as minuscule forms onto glass panes lodged inside immense structures of a darkened cream shade. They made menacing noises that penetrated the strengthened, double-paned windows. They wormed their ways into the ears of people who stood in lines, who sat down upon pastel pink chairs, eating, or talking to their friends- everyone who wasn’t deaf could hear it. It was unavoidable.
Thunder stormed outside, and his will to live faded with it.
“Bloody hell, you look like sh|t,” his best friend, Ron, stated, as he sat down opposite him and started to messily eat his tuna, mayo, sweetcorn, cucumber, and lettuce sandwich.
“No need to rub it into my face,” Harry grumbled. He tried to focus on eating the cold pizza slice in his hands. The thing was, Ron had the emotional range of a teaspoon (Hermione’s words, not his), and if he could notice the bags under his eyes, then that meant everyone else definitely could. He was honest to the gods surprised that no one else had came up to him yet in an exclamation to state the obvious.
Unfortunately, after his lunch break, he still had work to do, and the rest of the day went similarly to this.
He was alone.
He just felt so numb.
The coworkers he was semi-friends with, such as Neville Longbottom and Susan Bones, also commented on this mayhap called lack of sleep. He didn’t want them to worry, so he painted a well-practiced smile onto his face. I’m fine, he lied, I just didn’t get that much sleep last night.
Thankfully, they let it slide.
When night came, when he reluctantly entered his covers’ embrace, when he closed his eyes-
-he shivered.
This time, he found himself in a forest.
Come on, he thought, clambering over spare roots and overturned rocks which littered the ground in no orderly style. The time of when the night would arrive was nearing as the sun trickled into a homely abyss on the horizon line, just out of reach from his grasp- ever getting further and further away.
Nearly there.
He had spotted a small cave out of the edge of his vision.
It was a small alcove dug into the edge of an overhanging cliff, small and intimate. Hoping it was void of any dangerous animals, he approached the place wearily, bone-dead tired. At last, after a thorough investigation, he entered the cave and begun a fitful sleep of what he knew was something not real.
The sound of a marching band played in the distanced sky as the first drops of innocent tears began in their torrential torture.
Harry brought foundation that morning.
“You seem to look better today.” Luna’s velvety voice drifted into his ear canal, wedging itself into his brain before turning back to the user in a wondrous, silent flourish.
Glancing through his contacts, Harry let a small, genuine smile shine through. He was still tired- okay, that was a lie, he was f\/cking exhausted- and he hoped the nightmares were just two, coincidental blips in his day-to-day life. But it was nice to know the foundation was working.
He hoped it was not another relapse.
“The Flufferbeas are making you look okay, but the Wrackspurts are making your head fuzzy.” Owlishly, she blinked. “I would go get you some protection from them, but I have a feeling that soon you’ll be lost to the Winds before they put you down upon rocks near Tesco. See you later, Harry.”
Luna turned and walked away.
It was the third night when it happened.
Shivering, sweating- it was cold, freezing, even. Though that might have just been the rain. It was dark- was it not midnight? He couldn’t tell. There were clouds- it was still raining. His torn, ravaged clothes were filthy. His skin- a deathly fair tone (that was one of the ways he could tell he was someone else, as he was a dark tan) underneath several layers of gods-knew-what. But he needed to know.
What did he need to know?
Searching. Looking for something- a sign. What sign? Everything felt blurry.
There.
It was mahogany-coloured painted plastic, overgrown with flattened vegetation. It had some words on it- he could only just make out some of the letters.
Th_ Fo_b___en _ore_t
That was what he needed.
Why?
This time, Harry had forced himself to wake. It was only a dream- a nightmare, if anything- that hadn’t even lasted… He squinted at the slight blue-hue giving-off clock on his nightstand. Ten minutes?
He shook his head. No matter.
Harry hadn’t bothered getting fully undressed this time, and as soon as the roughened sheets had slipped off of his scrawny body, he pulled his trousers from where they were resting as a crumpled heap on the ground near his bed, and threw them on. The time he usually had for a belt was zero to naught in the mornings, so he usually just didn’t bother. It wasn’t as though he actually had any, anyway, and that was always a bonus for when he had to do something- like that time Hermione had slipped and had to go to the Hospital while she was pregnant, and him, being her best friend, was obviously called and had to get going as soon as possible to be moral support for her husband, aka Ron.
That’s what best friends were for, right?
And while this wasn’t an emergency like that one, it sure dam well seemed to enjoy f\/cking with his head like it was.
Sprinting out of his apartment, he had his almost-forgotten keys in one hand and a blanket inside plastic bag- wrapped inside of another one, just to make sure- in the other. The lift would have taken too long, and that’s why he took the stairs, running and almost flying down several flights of them. The car started with a familiar thrum of energy, seemingly as adrenaline-induced as he was with the way it broke over a hundred different speed limits without breaking a sweat.
The drive took over an hour, with only the need to stop for fuel once, and his heart kept beating a ferocious, all-consuming rhythm. He could feel it thud frantically and erratically against his rib cage. This held true all the way to where he was to arrive, and only when he stepped out of the car and into the frigid, stone-cold waterfall falling from the sky, did he think, This is the place.
He hadn’t thought to bring a coat with him until he was outside of his apartment and already in his car, but he’d figured there would have been little point when he was planning to drive straight back as soon as he confirmed that yes, those were only dreams, Harry, don’t be ridiculous.
The wind didn’t help in his endeavour. Thus, when he got to the tree line a few metres away, he was completely, absolutely, drenched to the bone. The blanket was in the backseat, still surrounded by two layers of bags, almost forgotten.
It didn’t take long to find what he had believed was only a figure in his dreams.
But that’s impossible, any person would say.
Apparently not.
Ignoring all the red flags that it was throwing him, he helped the man get to his feet. He seemed to be- confused. Bewildered.
“Harry?”
Shivering, not just from the cold, Harry thought that it could have been the wind whispering his name like a long-forgotten friend, if he hadn’t watched his name pass through the man’s lips.
“Not now, Tom.” Harry scowled, helping him past the tree line and through the battlefield, before they got to his car, where he opened that door to the backseat and shoved the man inside, before following him with more grace.
“I can’t believe you.” Harry grimaced, and helped his- nothing, his nothing take off his t-shirt, and it peeled back to reveal several, brutal bruises.
“I knew you would come for me.” Tom’s smile would have been charming, if not for the wince following it in suit.
Harry busied himself with helping Tom as to ignore the growing blush blossoming on his cheeks.
“You’re an ar$e.” Tom chuckled at the predicament.
“Yet you love me anyway.” Harry was silent.
With Tom stripped down in nothing but his underwear and covered by a patchwork blanket in his backseat, Harry clambered through to the other side, and began the long, winding ride home.
“I love you.” The statement was soft, tender, and falsely innocent.
“You should have said that before you got captured by the Dark Lord because you dared steal from him, Tom.” Pausing, he sighed, the last few nights making themselves known to him as they finally caught up with his pace. “I love you too.”
When they got home, Tom got into the shower, while Harry got out some clothes that were his size- Just in case he’ll come back, he had thought, packing away his husband’s clothes into a box, only to be shoved into the far corners of his wardrobe, when his husband had disappeared.
Harry got into bed, uncaring if Tom joined him or (preferably) took the couch, as the lampposts flickered with the echoes of an estranged beginning.