Reformation (Book 4 of The Corruption Sequence)

Chapter 3. Not All Plain Sailing

By the middle of the afternoon Harry was in a better mood, but not a great one and he was reading a Quidditch magazine, because he couldn't concentrate on anything else. It probably wasn't the wisest choice given the fact that the article he was reading was putting down one of his favourite players with all sorts of incorrect facts and it was pissing him off even more, but at least it was distracting him.

He was, however, just about ready to rip the thing in half when something dragged his attention away from it. It was a strange feeling and he wasn't sure what had startled him out of reading, so he sat there, looking around the room to see if he could see anything.

He was alone, totally and completely alone; Jeremy was not even in his frame, but something had definitely disturbed him. Anger stirred in the pit of his belly, but it felt remote, not really real somehow. He was very familiar with how angry he could become in a very short space of time and this was not the same sensation at all. For some reason his mind had him thinking of Draco, only it wasn't distracting him from what was catching his attention. It took him a little while to put the two things together and then it suddenly began to make sense; the anger was coming from Draco.

It was new and he did not understand how he knew, but he did and he stood up, throwing the magazine down and marching towards the entrance.

"Let me out," he demanded as soon as he reached the portrait.

For a while there was no response and then Jeremy stepped into his frame.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Jeremy said in his usual polite tones, "but I can't do that."

"Let me out," he literally growled at the painting.

His perception of the room changed, growing brighter and he felt several of his less human traits rise to the surface.

"I am not permitted to do that," Jeremy replied simply.

Harry's patience snapped and he swiped at the portrait, vicious claws ripping through the canvas as Jeremy darted out of the way.

"I need to get out," he snarled, claws just bouncing off the magically reinforced wood as he moved on to the door.

Something was making Draco angry, very angry, with just a touch of fear as well, and Harry wanted to get to his lover. The fact that letting him out of the Room of Requirements to run free through Hogwarts would be dangerous to the other students was about the farthest thing from his mind—he wanted out and that was that.

Acting on instinct rather than thought, he pushed at the door, trying to go through it as he had done at the manor, but the wards forced him back. His prison would not let him out and that made him angry. He hit the door hard, making it shake in its frame, but it was not just wood in his way and it did not budge. The dark oak stayed firmly in place even as he threw all of his weight against it, using demonic strength and dark magic to try and get through.

The more he tried, the more it repelled him and the angrier he became until he all but screamed his fury at it, finally turning away and picking up the first thing within reach. It was one of the chairs and he lifted it above his head, hurling it at the door. He threw it with such force it splintered and folded in on itself, crumpling and falling to the floor. There wasn't even a scratch on the door where it had hit and in that moment Harry hated his prison, hated being kept in and he set about destroying everything he could find.

The furniture didn't stand a chance and, after he had finished wrecking it, he used bits of it to destroy the fake windows. The only things he couldn't rend to pieces were the books; when he tried to take them off the shelves his hands passed straight through them and it was only that which began to bring him back to reality. He was breathing hard and swiped at the books several times, but they refused to come into being as they usually did and, eventually, it finally dawned on him that they weren't going to, not while he intended to destroy them.