Till Dawn (HS)

i

There was no feeling that came with each swing of his arm, each rapid inhale and exhale of his lungs, each collision of his torn knuckles against the jaw bone of his opponent. There was no anger or excitement, like some may have suspected; there was only numbness. His mind was a burned field, cleared and with the scent of emptiness and ashes lingering in the air.

The skin on Harry's face was flawless except for a single, faded scar that began above his left eyebrow and trailed down to the top of his cheekbone. There should have been more scars, fresher ones, given how many burly men he has had to fight in the past five years. But there wasn't, simply because he never let a single hit reach his face. Granted, there were marks and bruises that scattered his body from the few fists that had managed to get past his blocks, but they never ever reached his face.

Tonight was colder than it had been all week but Harry stood in only his loose shorts, as always, undeterred by the iciness that bit and nipped at his exposed skin. There was a thin film of frost that covered parts of the street, and the stars in the sky were barely visible behind the clouds that loomed above. It was well into the night, the clock tower a few blocks away had chimed minutes ago, meaning it was just past nine.

His opponent was weak. It was a teenager who had a smug grin but nothing behind it, probably just trying to show off to his friends and had too much pride for his actual worth. Harry had made no expression when the boy, likely aged 18, had stepped before him with his fists up and his feet spread apart in a weak, foolish stance. Harry didn't give away any notion that he was actually laughing on the inside, laughing at how stupid this kid was, and how amusing it was going to be to see him laying on the broken concrete with crimson blood streaming out of his nose.

Harry thought these things but he didn't say them. He had simply tied his long curls back and out of his face, raised his fists, and bent his knees a bit in the way that he knew would give him an easier shot at the kid's stomach.

That was where he hit him first.

He had a routine. It was something he had perfected over the years and it worked almost every time, unless the person he was fighting wasn't as clueless as the rest. Even if they managed to block one of his hits, Harry would quickly find a way to recover and carry on his formulated attack.

It was no surprise when the boy grunted as Harry's tight knuckles striked the right side of his stomach, causing him to topple forward slightly, lips parted. In that slot of time, another blow was sent straight to left side of his jaw, the boy's head forced to turn from the impact. It was only a matter of seconds before the air was knocked out of the kid's lungs, making him pant raggedly, and blood was spilling out from a cut in his lip as well his nostrils.

Harry couldn't hear the cheering and yelling from the spectators who were circled around them. He couldn't hear the heavy beating of his own heart. He only heard the painful groans of his opponent, which he listened to as a sign that he had almost won. Tonight was a shorter fight than ever before.

Harry pulled back his arm, elbow bent, and was about to finish off by punching the other side of the boy's face, which would surely leave him in a heap on the ground, but his cold eyes flickered to those of his rival and in that short moment, he saw pain. Not only pain, but regret.

He should have felt something from the sight of those fragile brown eyes, but he couldn't look past the emptiness in his body and mind to find any sort of sympathy. He felt nothing.

His knuckles collided with the boy's cheek and just as he knew would happen, the brown-eyed kid lodged backward and fell to the cold concrete, eyes barely able to stay open and his once flawless face, no longer flawless. Harry let out a few short pants, staring down at the body that almost seemed lifeless, and felt his senses come back to him. The numbness was replaced with the loud sounds of the people around him, who were either cheering because they had just won some money, or cursing because they had just lost their weekly paycheck.