Vox Corpis [Harmione]

Chapter 24

"Trevor! You bloody little… get back here!"

"Oiy, Dean, crack the window if you're going to do that, mate! Christ, no more kidney pie for you!"

"So wasn't me, you daft prat. Ron did it."

"I did not!"

"Someone open the window!"

"Don't even think about it! It's the worse out there, remember? Ugh!"

"Harry! Come on, get going, it's nearly eight already!"

Harry pulled his pillow over his head, and pressed it to little avail over his nose, and tried to block out the sounds of his roommates. The morning of their first day of classes dawned like so many others over the years at Hogwarts. The brink of chaos, disarray, and a dash of rough and tumble lest anyone forget the room was shared by five young, boisterous boys.

Only a day, and already Harry longed a bit for the quiet, calm mornings at the Grangers'.

Last night, when students finally began to leak out of the common room and up to their beds in the wee hours of the morning, Harry and Hermione had been the last to go. They had stayed together on the couch, sitting side by side, until the crowd had thinned down to just them. The peace had been more than welcome, and Harry had finally felt able to relax, beyond the sight and judgment of everyone save Hermione. He'd lingered downstairs with her as long as he could, but finally her conscious got the better of her and she shoved him toward the boys' dorm and left for her own. After all, school began the next morning and she was the eternal student.

When Harry reached the room he'd shared with Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Neville Longbottom, and Ron for four years, he found the other boys having a small-scale version of the hubbub downstairs. A bag of Bertie Bottz's Every Flavor Beans was involved, and his companions were tasting and hooting and gagging and laughing like teenage boys. Like untroubled, safe teenage boys. They'd offered Harry what looked suspiciously like a rotten-egg-flavored bean, but Harry had begged off, claiming exhaustion, and as the little dorm room reunion raged on he changed into pajamas and crawled into his familiar bed.

And he listened. He lay on his side facing the window so they wouldn't see him awake, but Harry listened to his friends, his roommates of so long, being so normal in spite of everything. He wanted so desperately to join them, to cast off the weights that sobered him, but he couldn't. He couldn't pretend Voldemort hadn't returned or that Cedric wasn't dead. Maybe if he hadn't seen it himself it would be easier to pretend, to be like his friends and shove it out of his thoughts.

Then again, Hermione had never forgotten and she hadn't been witness to that horror. But when Harry thought about it, Hermione had rarely ever been a child, emotionally or psychologically, when it came down to the bare bones of an issue. There was a place inside her where she was and had always been at least thirty years old. And it had served her, and by association him, well.

Now, as last night, his roommates were ever the same as last year, making it sound so easy to go on business as usual. Harry felt a little heartsick with it all and hugged the pillow tighter over his head to block out the sound. He wanted to go home. To his wearied pang of surprise and longing, that place was his room in Hermione's house. His favorite patch of grass at Avalon. A bench under a tree in a muggle park.

"Harry, you better get a move on or you'll be late," Ron called from across the room. Footsteps marked Dean, Seamus, and Neville's departure from the dorm and journey down the stairs.

Harry pointedly ignored his friend's urging and relaxed in relief at the absence of the others. Their laughs and jeers had been a lance, every little joke and tease another part of a youth he could no longer claim. How they flaunted it without knowing their callous end.