Beautiful World ~ 𝑫𝑹𝑨𝑹𝑹𝒀

Chapter 3

The next day dawned brilliantly sunny, the kind that was almost like a guilty pleasure. So perfect that it can't possibly exist without the threat of a wicked springtime thunderstorm sometime in the near future, when the heat cracks. Harry woke up sticky with sweat, his pajamas tangled around him, stuck to him.

He deliberately turned the shower as cold as it would go, driving the sweat from his skin. Then, clean and shivering, he combed his hair and dressed, not glancing in the mirror at all. He knew his eyes would still be flat and dull, his face almost waxy, like the muscles that commanded his smiles and his frowns had just given up, stopped responding to his commands. Or maybe he'd just stopped trying to command them.

Ron was up, Hermione had promised to help him finish up his Defense Against The Dark Arts assignment. Glancing at Harry as Hermione read over his latest offering for a concluding paragraph, Ron said, "You tossed and turned all night, Harry. Bad dreams?"

Harry frowned. "I don't think I dream anymore."

"You've always dreamed. And they usually come true. What changed?" Hermione asked.

"I did," Harry replied. He didn't elaborate when she questioned him and she gave up far too easily. Homework was a distraction of course. With Hermione, it was always a priority.

They went to breakfast together and Harry made a vague attempt to involve himself in the conversations around him, but he didn't much care for them, or anything really. That is, until a group of Slytherins caused a disturbance by arriving late, Draco leading them. Even then, his interest was brief, his eyes flicking up towards the door and then away a second later. But if anyone had cared enough to look and cared enough to actually see, they may have seen that for half a second at least, Harry's eyes...well, they glowed. Just a little bit.

Harry's first class that day was Divination, and as he and Ron made their way there, Harry was lost. Not physically lost, not even lost in thought, just lost inside himself, in the strange numb darkness that had fallen over him sometime in his sleep a few nights before. If he had the strength, he would have wondered about this darkness. If he had the courage, even. But he didn't. One thing few people ever understood about Harry was that he never chose to be a hero, he was chosen for the role. Courage held by those with no other choice than to be brave is not a characteristic they can claim as their own but one they borrow when the situation demands it.

Almost inaudible above Ron's chatter, Harry became distantly aware of a set of running footsteps coming quickly down a corridor that would intersect perpendicularly with the one he was walking down. He wasn't deeply concerned and did nothing to alter his trajectory, so Draco, who was the one speeding down the hall, could not even give the excuse that it was not him, but the sound of his approach, that saved Harry's life that morning. It was not the sound that turned Harry from his path, because Harry didn't care enough about it to react, other than to raise his eyes and narrow them slightly.

Draco barreled around the corner just as something to the right creaked painfully-the sound of metal fatigue finally overcoming its molecular bonds. The nails that held the suit of armor against the wall where Harry was standing, gave way with a terrible screech.

The armor was huge, and at least six times as heavy as Harry himself, and would doubtlessly have hurt him very much, if not crushed him. He felt nothing more than a brush of cold air as it fell, however, easily over shadowed by the sudden shock to his system when Draco Malfoy slammed into him and knock him down, out of the path of falling armor.

Inertia sent Draco tumbling to the ground after Harry and flipping over him, rolling a few feet away. For a few long minutes, Harry didn't understand what had happened, and then Ron's excited shouting registered.