𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸, harry potter

˗ˋ 121

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
AND TWENTY ONE
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-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH HARRY IS 
CONFLICTED

. . .

Harry felt... odd. He didn't know particularly how to describe what he was feeling, as the Extendable Ears dropped from his fingertips and he and the twins (Fred and George were practically seething at the thought of Aviana being able to join the order and them not) trudged to bed, slipping back under their duvets and trying to fall asleep. 

Harry couldn't. Ron snored merrily away next to him and he remained laid there, eyes shut and praying to find some comfortable position and peace of mind to lull himself back to tiredness but he just couldn't. Since that moment when he had heard the footsteps and seen Sirius and Aviana heading downstairs he had been just as awake and alert the moment he emerged out of the nightmare of seeing Mr Weasley being attacked by the snake. 

He never expected for Aviana to tell him everything. And he did expect that, considering some of the vague comments she made and her behaviour towards certain things - like in the ward, before she met Mrs Longbottom - that she knew far more than anyone expected her to. And he wasn't going to push her for answers, no matter what irked him, because Aviana thought things out, more than the average person.

She considered things to a degree of obsession, of how, as a result of her actions, the many scenarios could play out, and he could only assume that she had considered the ramifications that would follow this information she was keeping from all of them.

Yet still Harry found himself wondering. 

Aviana was still entirely a mystery to him, with glimpses into her persona some sort of reward. And yet somehow, she had managed to leverage her way, hold back information and what she knew - and certainly what she had figured out in the ward, of which he had no idea about - into getting a position in the Order. 

He lay awake, for several hours, and he heard the footsteps on the stairs, the slow, quiet closing of a door on the floor above him as the meeting came to a close. With no idea what it was about, and no idea what she had told them, Aviana returned to her bedroom and the meeting was over. 

A meeting in front of Dumbledore, no less, which Harry had been fighting tooth and nail for since that summer, and instead he was sitting down with the daughter - adoptive, but daughter no less - of an imprisoned Death Eater. It was something they could have done as soon as Aviana arrived in Grimmauld Place, but instead they waited until the very moment she was amiable and open enough to tell them what they needed from her. 

He couldn't sleep, some kind of internal battle of upset and anger raging within him, keeping him wide awake, without even a hint of that former need to fall asleep that had been so present until he heard those footsteps. 

Because Aviana was his girlfriend. And it appeared as though she was opening up to him at time and then an entirely closed book any other - and she knew everything about him and he only thought he knew her, when in reality he hardly knew anything about her and she was a member of the Order of the Phoenix and somewhere, amongst the explosion of Christmas festivities in his life and the utter soul-wrecking anxiety that he was somehow getting his mind read by Voldemort he didn't quite know just how to deal with it all. 

Somewhere he knew it made sense, that she wasn't telling him things for a reason, but alternatively, the very moment she joined the Order, or at the very least sat in on a meeting, it was almost as though she became one with the very group sworn to protect him and yet was simultaneously telling him absolutely nothing that he could do to help himself. 

And, even if she did want to help them, it certainly didn't seem like it. Harry found, driven deep amongst the whirlwind of thoughts, that should he be provided with the same chance of divulging important information to a group who not only believed the return of Voldemort but was actively fighting against him as the rest of the wizarding world ignored and ridiculed the very notion, he would have been honoured just at the idea. 

The information that Aviana had was leverage. Everything she did was a means to her end. A member of the Order, making out with him in corridors because she was annoyed with Draco and hated Umbridge. 

But maybe he was just tired, and far too conflicted with his own ideals and goals to actually see things clearly. Perhaps he had missed her point entirely, and instead of dreams, in his confusion about his position, he was formulating narratives spun from a web of lies only created in order to console him in a time of utmost confusion. 

And, not for the first time, the idea of her left a bitter taste in his mouth, contradicted with something so idyllically wonderful. 

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