It Meant Family

28th - 29th of December 1993

"I'm tired of it. I'm sick of picking up the pieces and marching bravely onward. I want things to work out just once." More Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin

Hogwarts, Scotland

They had the school mostly to themselves, but had settled on the boy's dormitory to do their homework. Hermione spread her things in the middle of the room and worked on her Arithmancy essay laying on the floor, Ron sat on his desk with his transfiguration book propped open leaning against the wall and a roll of parchment with half a sentence written in over an hour. Across the room, Harry's head rested on one hand as he thoughtlessly drew constellations for his Astronomy assignment.

His mind painted pictures of Moony curled up in the corner of his room, Padfoot sitting beside him trying to offer any kind of comfort. In his head, he replayed some version of Remus' transformation he'd puzzled together over the years from books he read and Sirius and Remus' retelling. He imagined the pain as every bone of his godfather's body broke and rearranged itself, his skin and muscles stretching and remodelling into a new shape, his consciousness being torn away just to be put back by the wolfsbane potion. His skin crawled.

He preferred when he had classes to worry about and Quidditch practices to distract him or when he was too exhausted from sleepless nights to stress over the lack of things he could do for Remus. Anxiety pulled at his heart and pushed against his stomach and he felt powerless to stop it.

"Harry." Ron had walked over from his desk and slapped his arm with the back of his hand.

"Huh?" He sat up confused as if he'd completely forgotten his friend was there at all.

"I asked if I could have your notes on the basic parameters of animal transfiguration."

"Oh, uhm," He blinked as if he'd just woken up from a bad dream, "sure." He reached over for a dark green leather bound notebook on his nightstand and handed it to Ron, he opened it on a page almost halfway through and frowned.

"The properties of snake fangs?" He questioned.

"Sorry, that's-" Harry snatched the notebook back and stuffed it in a drawer, "not that." He took another notebook from the top of the nightstand and opened it on the desk. "Here." It was bound in burgundy leather and filled with much neater handwriting, he stopped on a page and slid it over to his friend, it had a detailed sketch of a rat next to an owlet, each with arrows explaining which part of the rodent had become which part of the bird.

"Are you alright, mate?" He asked, not paying attention to the notes.

"Fine." Harry replied, returning to his Astronomy assignment.

"I don't think the placements of those Pleiades stars are right, Harry." Hermione had gotten up from the floor and walked closer to peer over his shoulder. "You can usually do these with your eyes closed."

"I'm just tired." He squinted at the parchment looking at all the misplaced starts. "Think I'll go to bed." He decided. He rolled up the chart and tucked it in his bag.

Harry dragged his feet to bed, pulled his curtains. He knew he wouldn't sleep, but the world was too quiet for him to focus on anything other than the fuming trains in his head. He needed noise, like music or chatter or a storm. He wanted to get his broom and fly so fast the world turned into a blur, but it was past curfew and the Dementors were still around the school. So he tossed and turned until Hermione decided to go back to the girl's dormitory, until he heard Ron turn the shower on and off, until he saw him blow out the candles in their room, climb into bed and drift off to sleep.

As the night passed, the world became so quiet Harry could hear himself breathing, he could hear the Monster Book of Monster snoring inside his trunk and the snow pelting against the stone outside and suddenly it all sounded so loud to his anxious ears as if it echoed against his spiralling thoughts.