Chapter Chapter 67: Paint It Black
Harry woke with a shout, throwing himself to his feet as he searched the room frantically for Sirius.
He was gone.
Worse, he had never really been there at all. It was just a dream.
Sirius had wasted no time returning to haunt his dreams. However, where he had been angry and sneering over the summer, he was now anything from angelic perfection to heartbroken and crying, though more often than not he was exactly as Harry had seen him last – smiling, leaning into some girl's ear, his arm draped over her shoulder. The worst nights were the ones where he couldn't look away, where he had to watch as the girl turned, and Sirius took her mouth and more. Only three nights they had been back, and he had woken up screaming or vomiting every single one of them.
He cursed his brain, dropped to the floor, closed his eyes and shifted his legs around until they were folded before him. He counted and breathed as his book had instructed. He counted and breathed as he had done over the summer. He counted and breathed until he heard his heart, steady and loud like a fist knocking on wood. He counted those beats, breathed with their steady rhythm until his body cooled. In months past, he had been able to quell his mind as well as his body, but not now. Now he just had to settle for the slow beat and the deep breath.
After a time, he stood and considered returning to bed. Experience cautioned him against it. Even with the calming affects of meditation, his brain would travel straight back to the party the moment he closed his eyes, and he would be back to sweating, screaming and sick. Better to just stay awake, no matter how early it was.
He unlocked his trunk and lifted the lid and first compartment before reaching into the deepest section only far enough to collect what he needed without releasing whatever prank James had set to spring on him. That third and largest compartment had been released from its sticking charm sometime after they arrived home, but he was in no mood to contend with a prank. Pranks, as Sirius had once said were for fun and fucking with people. Clearly, he wasn't up for any fun, and he was tired of being fucked with. Until he ran out of clean socks and pants, he would let that sleeping beast lie.
Somewhere in his brain, likely the bit at the very back that had yet to be traumatised, he knew that whatever James had sent back with him was meant to bring joy and happiness, that it came from love, but he wasn't ready for that. Not yet. Not when it still hurt just to draw breath.
Alone, he made his way to the Great Hall, falling onto a bench and waiting for food to appear before him. He had no appetite, but his father's fanaticism had worked its way under his skin. He couldn't skip a meal even if he wanted to.
"You all right, Harry?"
The boy looked up from his kippers to see Ron watching him, frown on his face and brows folded together. He had no idea when his friend had sat down, nor any of the other people sitting around him for that matter.
He was far from all right. His stomach was tight and churning, his head ached and eyes burned. Every moment he was awake he wanted to cry. Every time he closed his eyes, he wanted to scream. No, he was not all right.
"Yeah," he lied.
Without ever intending it to happen, he had built up the expectation that not just Sirius but maybe even his parents would somehow have managed to cheat fate and live to see Harry through Hogwarts and into adulthood. It was never something he consciously thought about, certainly nothing he would have dared voice. He had run from Morven's suggestion that things might have changed for the better, knowing that if that hope were seized and held tight then he was certain to be disappointed.
Fate wasn't to be cheated. James and Lily Potter died at the hands of Voldemort, just as they had before. Sirius was hit by Bellatrix's curse, just as before. Remus had grown into a clever but disappointed man, just as before. And Harry was alone, just as before.
"So what about tryouts then?" Ron questioned.
Quidditch. It seemed so stupid now. Just a game. Hardly worth playing. What good was a cup? He put on a thoughtful face and nodded. "Saturday."
"Oh good," his friend said, smile lighting up his face. "I was worried you'd be too poorly. That curse Malfoy used was a nasty one if you're still feeling sick from it." He stopped, studying his friend. "Harry, I been meaning to ask you... What hex was it? 'Cause, I mean, you left looking like one of Madam Pomfrey's demonstration skeletons, but you came back fitter than Wood. I'm no expert, but that doesn't strike me as normal."
"Just a side effect of the counter-charm," Harry said, his voice empty as he spoke the lie. Without offering an explanation or so much as a 'goodbye', he pushed himself off the bench and started making his way to class.
"Hi, Harry."
The boy stopped, staring vacantly down at the girl blocking his path. Her name was Louisa; he was pretty sure that was her name, though he barely remembered her. She was pretty enough, long blond hair forced into unnatural curls and large, dark eyes. Her mouth was a perfect bow, curled up into a nervous smile.
"Hullo," he offered.
"Um, Harry, I was wondering if you'd like to go to Hogsmeade with me," she said in a rush, her words practically blurring together.
Well, this was different. He couldn't recall a single instance in this decade when a girl had asked him out. It had been a struggle to find a date for the Yule Ball, but suddenly girls were pursuing him? He wanted to be pleased, to be elated that he could get back to the normal rites boys his age were meant to be performing – dates with girls, kissing girls, having feelings for girls. It's what was normal and expected of him, but he couldn't do it. He looked at the girl again and felt nothing.
"Sorry, no, I have detention," he said, stepping around her and walking away. He didn't know how she responded, nor did he much care. To him, she wasn't even there.
He moved through the throng of students making their way through the entrance hall, barely aware of any of them. All their noises – the shouting and laughing – it echoed in his ears, meaningless sounds. He barely registered his name being called. It wasn't until someone barrelled into him, knocking him to the flagstones, that he bothered paying any attention. The tall woman lying on top of him was grinning a wide, toothy grin. He nearly thought it was Tildy, but then she spoke.
"Harry Potter, you are one sexy beast!" Her hands dove under his jumper, playing across his abdomen and chest, sliding down his ribs.
He managed to hide the flinch of being tickled beneath a smile. "I do try, Tonks."
Memories of her lying on his chest flashed before him, those dark eyes huge in her young face, her hair more tangles than curls. She smiled at him in just the same way again, this time from beneath sharp pink spikes.
"You planning on getting up any time soon?" he questioned.
"Do I have to?" pouted the woman even as she pushed herself up to her feet. Her hands grabbed his, and she hauled him up.
Brushing the dust of the floor off his trousers, he was aware of Tonks watching him with a carefully blank face, though her eyes were somehow even larger than normal and her cheeks stained pink.
"Tonks—"
"I wasn't checking out your arse just now, I swear!" she insisted far too quickly, her skin turning even pinker.
He laughed for the first time since leaving his parents in 1977. The few days since their parting hadn't offered much worth laughing about; three days of moving like a ghost through the castle. Not even seeing Malfoy's face fall into disbelief had been enough to stir any feeling in him. Tonks could always make him smile. She winks and flirted and disregarded any notion of personal space. Hermione had once commented that she never did that with anyone else, not with Ron or any of the older Weasley boys. Only with Harry. Hermione's intention had been to demonstrate just how oblivious Harry truly was to the nature of Sirius and his flirting, but did that mean Tonks had been flirting with him properly since summer, as well?
Harry considered the woman, her flirtation and touching so like Sirius it made his heart ache to think about it. Just as with the girl who might have been named Louisa, Harry felt nothing for Tonks; he liked her well enough as a person, but when he considered her in any way other than a friend, he felt empty. Still, he knew all the tricks to pull her in, to turn her flirtation into something more than just play, to make her properly like him. Everything he loved in Sirius, he liked first in Tonks. It could be a way to hold on to the boy he had loved and lost.
Almost as soon as the thought entered his brain, he threw it away. Tonks wasn't Sirius. Making her into a cheap substitute would lessen her and reduce what he and Sirius had to little more than nothing.
He forced a smile onto his face, "Of course you weren't. So why are you accosting me in the entrance hall?"
She blushed again. "Remus said you were back. I wanted to see for myself."
"Do I pass inspection?"
"Most certainly," she agreed with an enthusiastic nod that transferred to her entire body. "Better than when you left the Burrow, that's for sure."
"Mostly," he agreed. No need mentioning that the muscles belied a broken and hollow centre, now was there?
"Where you heading?"
He had to think before replying. The schedule he kept in 1977 wasn't the same. Tuesdays he used to have Transfiguration in the morning, but now it was Potions. Tonks walked with him through the corridors and down to the dungeon levels, chatting away and not quite keeping his mind from wandering down one more level to where he had shoved Sirius away, to where the boy had said he loved him.
"Harry?"
He blinked.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," he said without pause. "Worried about Potions."
"Don't be. Slug's a pussycat."
Harry blinked again, this time in confusion. "Slug?"
"Slughorn. He was my Potions prof. A bit long-winded, but always made sure we knew how to brew," she said, dropping her voice low as she added, "Not like Snape, from what I heard."
Harry nodded. So that's why they'd put him down for Potions. He knew he hadn't managed the grades Snape required.
"Well, I'm off. Just came to check on you, Hot Harry," she grinned.
He offered a smile that only barely manage to reach his eyes. In the dim light, she didn't notice. As she left, the corridor seemed that much darker for her absence. The world went back to the dull echoes of before, like the sounds of a television playing in another room. He sighed and followed the students, sitting at a bench and waiting for class to start. His hand took notes, though his brain failed to register any of what was being said. He sliced and chopped, simmered and stirred until he had a potion as good as any other, though if asked he wouldn't have been able to say what he had made or what he had done to make it. His body performed actions by rote while his head remained blessedly, wretchedly hollow.