Chapter Text
⚡︎
𝑬𝒀𝑬𝑺 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑻 𝑨 𝑭𝑨𝑪𝑬
ᴄʜᴀᴩᴛᴇʀ ɪɪɪ . ᴍᴀᴅᴍᴇɴ ᴀɴᴅ ᴍɪᴄᴇ
⚡︎
THERE was a shadow snapping at his heels. Flighty by nature, his feet did not ground him to one place alone on that heat-drenched concrete sidewalk, but instead carried him away. Around his neck his snake-friend was hissing once more, drawn away from her little pail of water to glance over Harry's shoulder to his pursuer. There was dusk-light left to guide him down back to Privet Drive, but the stretches of road themselves felt far longer - terrifyingly elongated, the longer his strides became. It - he - called after him. Attempted to match pace with him although it became startlingly clear that every turn of Little Whinging was surprisingly unfamiliar to this stranger. Adventure, he had wanted, had he not? This does not feel like adventure. The pursuit felt more as though he were being hunted; a mess of frightened game-limbs staggering away through long leaves and high brushes from a hunter's maw and arrow.
There was something spectacularly stupid about running away.
It ought to have been a practice more acquainted with his legs, to skitter away from danger. Harry Potter had been an exceptionally lonely child. Lonely boys got targeted, lonely boys were weaker than the others who walked in packs of guffaws and chocolate-smeared lips. They had been stronger, always, but he had been faster. Fleeing, thus, was not uncharted territory for him to wander upon once again. A stranger nipped at his heels like a rabid dog searching for food, and Harry almost cursed aloud when the toe of his beaten trainer caught an uneven tile upended on the pavement. Without his glasses, he had not seen it coming whatsoever, and found himself all too abruptly jolted by it. Behind, it felt rather like a shadow was crawling in the marks that his steps left on the heated concrete slabs. It soothed the warmth, but its intensity was blistering and its will far stronger than his own; undulled by broken noses and cruel, meat-fisted cousins.
It called out once more, and the boy's voice that emerged from his throat was nothing Harry could trust. Wizards, after all, were entirely capable of brewing tricks - Polyjuice potions (of which he was, unadmittedly, guilty of dappling in) and transfiguration charms to cloak their wicked faces. Where he lived had never been a secret from many, for it had become old news that Harry Potter, Boy Wonder, had been raised by muggles. Around him, Surrey was familiar. Too, alongside it, was that burst of panic fluttering in his heart when it came to running away. Whoever it was, fast at him, was slyer than Piers Polkiss or Dudley Dursley had ever been; they displayed no outward aggression nor explicit forwardness, and if they were a wizard at all, did not act out the entirely rational decision to draw out their wand upon that lonely, secluded road and stun him there and then. Yet they were undescribably daunting.
Half-blind and staggering over his own feet, he came to the abrupt realisation that snakes had far less inhibitions over their choice of words than humans. Frequently had his throat threatened to seize in coughs and choking at a muttered curse or two hissed into his ear by a skinny tongue, bloodless scales brushing over the warmth of the base of his throat in a tightening constriction. Entirely inconvenient when attempting to escape a (without a doubt within him) madman. Even neighbours, worried Harry, who did not like him very much would not turn their eyes away from the scene of a teenage boy - albeit rumoured 'delinquent' - being chased down the street by a creep?
"Potter!" It snapped, the ire lacing that singular word jerking him with the sting of conversance that shuddered him where he stood. Slowly, Harry's feet came to a halt. No grown wizard worth themselves would hold such . . . blatant emotion within their voices, would they? Most of the adults Harry knew were often overbearing in their nonchalance, or overcompensated for it more often than not. Inexplicably, Dumbledore's face weaved itself an image in his thoughts. Harry shook his head, turned carefully on his heel, and felt his hand slip into the waistband of his jeans. The length of his holly wand rippled sparks up his arm when his fingers brushed its concealed hilt. Through the fog of his blurry vision, his eyes were useless in distinguishing the face before him, yet it was the clothing that the person wore that made his heart slow.
A wizard, undeniably, but one unaccustomed to muggle fashion. Not a particularly smart one, if they wore robes like that so boldly in Little Whinging; not a trained spy or trickster. Just a wizard. No matter how he wished it, even that thought alone was not wholly soothing.
What followed after could only have been described by great tidals of annoyance crashing over his head like a raging thunderstorm coming down on oneself seconds after a sunny day. His pursuer slowed as he did in likewise, pausing only paces away from Harry as though he had not entirely expected him to listen. The narrowness of his shoulders was telling enough that even suspicions of being followed, of being hunted by news-crazed bigotries and Death Eaters, dissipated like ash being carried away by a whipping wind. "Potter," breathed the boy, harshly. Squinting a little, he made out the thick, displeased furrow of his brows. His voice, faintly wooden, was varnished thickly with ire. "My letter."
Harry reared back slightly. His nose twisted a little. "Look, mate," he began skeptically. "I dunno what letter you're talking about, or who you are, right-"
"Potter."
"-But here, we don't really follow people around unless you're a bit odd," He raised his hands slightly, and felt himself begin to back away with fine, shuffling steps. "I don't have what you're looking for. I'd suggest going to the doctor's for a look-"
The evasion was overtly beginning to irritate his newest companion: an utter peculiarity whom he was not sure wasn't all-consumingly batty. "I tracked it here, I am-"
Harry nodded sagely. "-St. Bernard's* isn't half-bad, I think. Good day." It was the last quip he let out before precipitately turning on his heel and making off down the road again. Half of him hoped that the boy would take his words for what they were, his elusion for what it was, and simply leave him alone . . . As always, pleasing things hardly ever happened to Harry Potter, and so it was that the tapping of footsteps behind him hastily sounded once more whilst he tried for retreat. Merlin. Never a moment's peace, was there?
In less than five minutes, Privet Drive came onto the next bend. His attachment was striding fast abreast to him, undeniably his longer legs stretching further than Harry's could hope to. It was infuriating, and though he stuck to the scanty shadows of Privet Drive as best he could, he still glimpsed Mrs. Everson at Number Two peering out of her curtains with a curious look over the china rim of her teacup. The boy at his side was not subtle, not in his dark-hued, flowing garments that fluttered around a nonexistent breeze. Harry did not let up the hold he wielded so determinedly upon his wand, and stuffed his water-bottle into a pocket of his jeans before reaching up to soothe his snake-friend's rattled nerves. Beside him, his clingy, mad companion was eerily silent.
"He smells," told his snake, by his ear. Harry hummed quietly, as to not avert suspicion towards his correspondence with a serpent half-hidden in the collar of his tee. "Like good, but like bad. Smells like grass, and flower." Confusion prickled him. A frown creased gently at his mouth, and he dipped his head slightly to murmur to her in response. "Flour?" he asked, wondering if a snake's vocabulary rules were similar to how they were in English, or if they had hit a quiet barrier between them.
By the small puncture of a noise that slipped past her tongue, it was surely the latter. "Flower. Good flower with good dark. Cold shade." Harry reckoned it was not entirely out of bounds for his strange pursuer to smell like flowers despite his . . . looming darkness. Even through the haze of his half-hearted vision he could see the sullenness driven into every feature of the boy's face. It was a pale face - paler than his own - which had never toiled in sunlight for hours like he had. He knew that, if he were to reach out and grab his hands, his palms would be as soft as Aunt Petunia's floral skirts. By the time that Number Four loomed high above them, Harry ground his teeth together.
A stubborn set to his jaw, he twisted on his heel again and faced the stranger. "You have to go," said Harry, a vague frustration lacing his tone. "You've got the wrong person. No letters come into this house." And was that not the truth. The thought sent a bitter pang through his chest, viciously curling by his heart like a nestling pup, if it had the capacity within itself to radiate rotting blackness. Indeed, for the days that summer had already stretched, not one letter from his friends had come to Number Four. No muggle post from Hermione, or owls from Ron, and the last talk he'd held with someone outside of school had been, for a short moment, Luna. An edition of the Quibbler that she had sent him still lay on his chipped desk, half-open.
With all words said, he faced the door and put a hand to the knob. Without entirely knowing as to why, Harry twisted his neck slightly and chanced a bleary look over one of his shoulders. The boy had vanished without so much a tracing whisper of his presence on the doorstep.
Inside, although it was as balmy as it had been the day before, the house was far cooler than it was outside. Finding himself grateful for the development, Harry put a hand to his collar and tugged it up over the little garden-snake wound 'round his throat, and slipped soundlessly into the kitchen. He did not imagine what his family would do if they discovered his new friend. Dudley and Uncle Vernon had sequestered themselves over onto the couch, hollering at the screen as it flickered and droned on a boxing channel that his uncle swore, one day, Dudley would star in. Harry did not doubt victory, if only for the fact that his cousin hadn't enough wits left in him to get them knocked out by a stronger man's fist. Aunt Petunia was sat serenely in the conservatory, dressed in pale yellow and white with a pearl choker settled atop her collarbones, holding a phone to her ear as she laughed shrilly with her friend on the other line. None of them noticed Harry. None of them ever did, when they were too gleeful with themselves.
For it, it was easy enough to grab another small packet of biscuits for Hedwig, and a few cold, dry sausages for himself before heading upstairs. The thirtieth of July meant that the Dursleys inched nearer to the age where Harry would not need their shelter anymore; they would make him a vagabond on the side of the road, if they'd their way, drinking from gold goblets with his back as a footrest. Harry's teeth worried at his lip as he slid into his room, shutting the door quietly in his wake. Hedwig was perched on the windowsill, facing away from him as though she were on a vigilant watch for something. Some part of him fancied she was looking for the horned-owl again.
The horned-owl. Oh, Harry recollected its coming well enough to have recognised its mean, beady glare. Not a name had been put to it - not until now. Draco Malfoy's face looked remarkably like his pet's. He felt dim for not having noticed it earlier. And then with that impromptu visit from that boy-
"Bugger," he murmured under his breath, reaching forward to brush his fingers along the top of Hedwig's head and crack open the biscuits for her, before leaving his sausages abandoned on the desk and rifling through the many strewn papers along its surface instead. Hermione often rebuked him for being messy, for being careless with where his things wound up; it was not always the case, however, for although the desk's surface was a maelstrom of chaos, his wardrobe was packed immaculately and his bed fixed as much as it could have been for a boy his age. Most of his life had been spent with scanty things of his own, and Harry liked having his own things - knowing they were there - which led to the maddening curdle-contrast of havoc and tidiness.
After heart-quickening seconds of rigorous searching, his fingers latched onto the rough slide of parchment. Tugging it out from beneath a copy of a muggle novel he'd taken from the local charity shop (it was short enough that his interest did not escape him so readily as a textbook), Harry sat heavily on the edge of his bed and unfolded the missive. D.M. It had been penned by, and, incredulously, he wondered where his mind had been whilst reading over the words. He had known Malfoy since first-year, and had actively upheld their rivalry until the present time; how had he not known it was him, the second his eyes had flickered unto the initials? T.N. was read much less familiarly. The letter's intended respondant. T.N.
Harry could not, for a moment, think of anyone who may have willingly adjoined themselves with Draco Malfoy without some sort of incentive, before he caught it: rapid, foggy memories of a sandy-haired boy with pale eyes lingering on the edges of Malfoy's gang, never quite participating though never detaching himself from them. A quiet boy, whose father's name he recalled as clearly as the day Sirius had died. Nott. It had been Nott who had approached him, who had somehow found him in Surrey and followed him the way back to Number Four.
Nott, who had come searching for his letter from Harry, who had told him to his face he was quite mad - and that he most certainly did not have the letter he currently held in his hands.
There was only one word that came to mind, then, as he tossed the letter back onto his desk and leaned back on his wrists. A headache had begun to throb at his scar. "Bastard."
⚡︎
July thirty-first came upon the house of Mrs. and Mr. Dursley with a deafening, shrill scream.
Harry Potter had woken with the dawn, and Hedwig had taken her leave of the house during the night with a blissful flutter of her fluffed wings and a happy nip at his fingers. He was gone before Dudley awoke to the slender, many-limbed body of a cupboard-spider clambering up his arm. A deep-teal plaid had been halfway tucked into the belted waistband of his jeans and was light enough that it laid not a bead of sweat on his skin as he stepped out into the warm day. His hair was tousled from sleep and his splintered glasses perched precariously on the edge of his regularly-shattered nose. With an unusual calmness draped upon him like the heavy weight of a blanket, he ambled merrily as he could down the road until he'd walked far enough to sight the train station on the near distance's horizon. He'd fifteen pounds - in coins - stuffed in his large pockets with a copy of his muggle novel tucked against his hip.
Though he had never celebrated his birthday as his friends had, Harry had always been fond of making his own time for peace. His birthday seemed to be the only day where the fates would let him rest, it seemed. For that, he found, he was glad enough that even fare prices could not dim his syrupy, mellow mood.
Around his wrist he wore his friend like a bracelet. The night before, in low hours talking in hushed mutters, they had decided upon a name for her. Initially, it had been tiresome having to explain the culture of naming to a cold-blooded serpent, but after assuring her it did not equate to ownership, she had grasped it with welcome . . . fangs. Harry's knowledge of names was rudimentary, however, and he could only have mustered up a single thought when he looked into her dark eyes; one of the only names he'd known for some time that felt as if it belonged to a girl. Fable. It had made him silly, suggesting it, but she had taken to it with glee. Fable, Fable, had hissed his snake. I likes it. Strong name, fearsome name.
The train to Angel left him time to think. Though he had never been an especially vivacious reader - textbooks were droll enough that his eyes turned dry if he stared at them for too long - fiction had never failed to appeal to Harry. A passtime that he never felt quite right to admit to, least of all to Hermione, tucking himself in a secluded pair of seats by the window felt a nicer place to read than the scorched park-fields or the alleys between shops and houses back in Little Whinging. The last time he had dared to hunch over a half-novel, Piers Polkiss had taken it and ripped the pages in front of Harry as he watched. Spells! Had cried Piers, with a loud, nasty laugh. You learning spells, Potter? Trying to be even more a freak than you are, yeah?
Time had passed slowly. From trying to decipher the pencilled annotations the book's last owner had left scribbled narrowly in the margins by the text, and trying desperately to think of anything else but Sirius (it was becoming harder than the day, and so he had made his hands busier for the distraction), Harry hardly noticed it when the train screeched to a stop at his station. Not until a well-dressed man and his son brushed by the seats he'd tucked himself away in did he notice, and scramble up to slip through the train-doors before they closed shut on him. With a hasty breath did he plant his feet on the platform, book back at his side and fingers clutching his ticket all the way to the barriers. Larger cities unnerved him, but they, too, posed best for privacy. There was very little privacy where he lived, and one man's secrets became a neighbourhood's in the span of a sunset.
Restraint bullied him as Harry forced his stiff jaw to relax whilst he weaved his way through thick throngs of crowds. Tourists and locals alike battled for territory on the pavement, and on more than one occasion had he almost lost his footing to a child or its parent dragging their feet irritatingly slow. It was obnoxiously loud, and by the time he ducked under the porte-cochere of a library he frequented often in his visits to London, his heart was pounding and his fingers clammy and trembling finely. Sucking in deep, hissing breaths to calm himself, Fable at his wrist flicked her tongue along the back of his sweaty hand. The shadow of the walkway cloaked them. But for a few students coming and going, there was nobody around. The clamour from the streets felt dimmer here, more muted.
"You fear," remarked Fable, dryly. "These do not feel like magics. Why are you fear?"
"Afraid," he corrected, by reflex alone. Harry'd the short consideration that he had been spending too much time around Hermione, and had been poisoned not only by her bookishness but her, at times, insufferable matter-of-factly nature. "I'm not. I feel fine."
As if she had not taken it for truth, Fable cackled quietly and hid back in his sleeve with a last flex of her tail against Harry's wristbone. With a long sigh, he continued the rest of the way down the porte-cochere and into the courtyard at its mouth. A tiny cafe was hidden away under the looming cradle of a cherry-tree that had begun to lose its lovely, pink petals and all around, up to the door of the library, benches were scattered in a juxtaposition of unfixed order. In the centre of it, a tiny fountain; more a birdbath than a true fountain, and nowhere as large as the others that Harry had ever seen before. When he'd been much younger, Harry had liked to wriggle an arm blindly around in the water and snatch however many coins he could, pilfering them away to count happily back in his cupboard at Number Four.
Glasses not yet fixed, the presence of the lenses, although cracked as they were, offered some solace to his aching eyes. He navigated his way to the bench nearest to the fountain, where he could hear the trickling of its water best, and sat down with Fable sliding nearby to where he settled his book. Without another word as to fearfulness or the oppressive nature of crowds, Harry ducked his head and stubbornly forced his eyes to fixate on the text, no matter how terribly his vision swum and refracted.
A curt clearing of the throat. People arcing in wide berths around his bench. Truth be told, he was not so vigilant enough to have noticed the strangeness of it all on his own, had he not caught the face of a woman walking past - staring at something next to him, instead of at Harry himself. Curiously, his gaze slanted sidelong to his right . . . to see Nott - presumably Nott - already sat upon the bench. Silent. Simply watching Harry like he were a fascinating bird from exotic lands. Impatiently, also, and from such a close distance he could gauge more of his face than he did the day before. "Jesus," he swore, clutching his chest as his heart raced. He had not heard so much a shuffle of breeze announcing his coming, and how he had managed to do it so quietly was beyond him.
"Potter." greeted Nott, stiltedly. There was an odd cadence to his voice, as if every syllable he stressed was deliberate and unnatural. A quality he had noticed in many of the purebloods in his year.
Harry blinked harshly, and felt his fingers curl tight over the page he held open. "Do you make it a habit of following people?" he bit, grousing at having not been aware of his approach whatsoever. Even after a year of Barty-Moody screeching constant vigilance! in his face, he had been outwitted by his classmate. A strange thought: 'classmate'. With pointedness, Harry drew a hand down to shove into his pocket, rustling with the multitude of coins he had stashed away within, before drawing out a slightly-crumpled letter from Draco Malfoy. Wordlessly, he handed it over to Nott. With a sweep of his wrist that was decidedly more curt than Harry's own motion, he reclaimed the piece of parchment and huffed imperiously.
Pale, lily-green eyes flicked towards him. "Libraries aren't your usual haunt." said Nott, lowly, sweeping his eyes over the letter once before tucking it away in the folds of his robes with a bored look on his face.
Collecting himself quickly, Harry pursed his lips and closed his book. Its colourful cover blared out at him, worn at the edges yet still ungiving at the spine. "People won't think to look for me here then," he told Nott, evenly, eyes darting towards Fable who had started a small clamber onto his book. When his eyes returned to the other boy, he bristled at the indecipherable look levied upon him. Partways-perplexed and all the other parts conquered by feelings he'd not the first inkling how to name, a swift discomfort found him like routine clockwork. Seconds passed, and his tongue remained stuck to the roof of his mouth like a charm-cursed fool. He had never been good with uncomfortable silences if it were him being the victim of it. For Nott, who continued to look at him unblinkingly, it appeared to be of very little matter at all.
Finally, with no ounce of sensibility left within him, Harry blurted out, "Wanna get ice cream?" The silence stretched on. His glasses allowed him to recognise the look that swept over the boy next, like he were not wholly sure Harry was being serious. Then, after no blurting laughs spilled from his lips in true, mocking Gryffindor fashion, his pale head dipped in the shallowest, most stiff, of nods. Affirmation enough, Harry shot up from the bench and scooped Fable and his book up into his arms, ignoring her screech of indignation as he did so. Nott, who demonstrated a far more composed picture, stood fluidly and stepped over the seat to look at him once again. Harry was beginning to dislike that look.
All the night before, but for the hour spent pouring over potential names for Fable, he had been pondering Malfoy's letter. The night at the graveyard had been the first prick of haunting that followed him into sleep; the poisonous, serpentine whisper of Nott's name upon the forked tongue of the Dark Lord. Cantankerous Nott, thought Harry, looking over to the taller boy at his side as they began to walk. He had been at the Ministry with Malfoy senior, he had been taken by the Aurors and thrown into Azkaban. Why had Malfoy mentioned him in his letter, on the basis of 'permission'? Without premonition, his train of thought was sharply interrupted by Nott threatening to careen into his side as they made onto the main road.
Whipping his head around, his hand had clasped Nott's forearm by instinct at the first sign of unsteadiness. Like he were grazing his hand over fire, he dropped the limb and stared as blatantly as Nott had at him before. With his poor vision, the disgust written upon the boy's face was plain to see regardless. He had glanced over his shoulder, disconcerted, to a couple who had brushed by them. Despite his chagrin, not a word came. "You good?" asked Harry, reluctantly. The line of Nott's jaw tightened. A jerky nod in reply. Back at Hogwarts, he had only seen Nott once or twice - and could not claim to know his forename no matter how rigidly he strained for it. Ron had often jeered at the Slytherin as a loner, or perhaps especially desperate to confer with the likes of Draco Malfoy for companionship.
Harry had never met someone quite like Nott, he deemed. Not that he knew him so well, if at all, was the following trail.
It was a modest gelato parlour tucked on the corner of the street that Harry led them into. Once, for his birthday, he recalled Dudley pleading with his mum to let them come here - to get the largest helping of ice-cream that they had, with bountiful accessories on top. Harry had sat there silently, watching his cousin gorge himself with no small hint of envy. But the building was one he recognised, and had for years been intrigued by, and so he thought to indulge himself on his birthday, at least. A cozy settlement, it was stuffed with a number of tourists and families huddled together on the few tables left clear. Nott's face had gone impressively still, and almost imperceptibly, he had shuffled closer to Harry - likely convincing himself he was not alone in this uncertain sea of muggles.
He almost smiled at the contrary picture of an austerely-shouldered pureblood seeking out another for - what, soothing? Harry could not fault him for it, however.
"What d'you want?" he asked Nott, tilting himself at a narrow enough angle that it could have been the slightest of turns towards him. Already was his hand back in his pocket, rifling through his coins. Fable had made herself back at home on his wrist, hissing about the strange scents of the people around them. The pureblood was not looking at him, but instead at tourists talking loudly, and a young child crooning little wails in her father's arms. Harry poked him in the side. It was amusing, he noted, to see such composure falter and harden into an indignant glower. Harry did not ever think he had heard someone mutter 'caramel' with such pique before.
When he returned, book stuffed unceremoniously in the band of his jeans whilst he juggled a plastic cup of caramel ice-cream in one hand and vanilla-chocolate in the other, Nott seized Harry by the hem of his plaid between two fingers and hauled him out of the parlour. "I'll repay you," he told Harry, hard. "I don't leave debts unpaid, Potter." The tail-end of his sentence elicited the largest eye roll he could muster from the other.
"It was like eight quid, Nott. Anyway, it's an offering. Eat." Gladder than Nott ate his own, Harry took large bites of his ice-cream and only felt half-ashamed when he finished it in record time. In the meanwhile, Nott appeared content to eat languidly, and continued to eye him in that uncanny way he was beginning to understand was entirely unique to the other boy. "What?" he asked, only slightly self-conscious after the one-minute mark. They turned onto a thinner, more secluded street that looked to loosen the tension wrung in his . . . companion. The boy blinked, only the most fleet flutter of lashes before his lips thinned and he took another thin spoon of his own gelato. Fable appeared delighted beyond anything to whisper to herself of how lovely Nott smelled, and how a local man who walked by them reeked of sweat and dirt in opposite to him.
After minutes had passed, Harry had considered the exchange done, until, from seemingly nowhere, Nott started up again. His voice remained low. "You're an idiot." declared Nott, bitingly. It was not the most surprising thing he had ever heard from a Slytherin, but certainly unexpected from the boy who had been, up until now, as soundless as a mouse. Aside from staring hard at Harry for long, as though he were constipated, his eyes, too, wandered to all the muggle architecture around them - the muggle devices and even, when they crossed the road, gazed with perplexity at the crossing light. Somehow it had not occurred to Harry that a pureblood like he would have had very little, if any, contact with the 'mundane' world.
Before he could dare ask - more so 'demand' - what exactly he had meant by that, Nott drew up a hand to sweep the air before Harry's face. Startled, he reared back at the sound of a thousand crackles quite so near to his ears that it sounded gratingly loud. He blinked hard, head spinning, before he realised what Nott had done. Having tossed his empty ice-cream cup aside, a hand was left free to prod at his glasses, which had become as if new. Untouched - fixed.
They turned down another alley, inside which Nott paused, looked at Harry sharply once again, before fastening his hold on the small cup he held. Long moments were spent in thickening silence, which he wished above anything to break with some ill-timed quip that would send a vicious hex his way. His restraint was more sensible than he was, however, and held fast. However Nott had known about that particular turn, he did not know, but not a soul interrupted them in the time that followed. "Happy birthday, Potter." said the boy, rigidly, before giving a frown so severe it could rival Snape's sneers, and twisting on his heel . . .
. . . Only to promptly disappear with an ear-splitting crack!
Dumbly did he keep his eyes fixated upon the empty space that Nott had once inhabited. A thousand questions lay like melted sugar on the tip of his tongue, but none had dared leave - nor had been given the oppportunity to. Despite himself, a prickle of disappointment hit him like a freight despite its minuteness. The most queer exchange he had ever held in his life remained with Harry even after he took the last train back to Surrey and dragged his feet back to Number Four, Privet Drive. Although his little stunt with Dudley and one of his cupboard-spiders had revoked his dinner rights, he went to sleep feeling lighter than he had in days.
Fable kept post on the sill, murmuring of the covered stars and the many tiled roofs around them, as Harry watched the ticking clock on his desk obsessively. The clock struck twelve, and July was ended.
⚡︎