Indifference Towards Difference || Harry Potter

17 | The Bastard Child Of Fear And Its Puppy

CHARLIE: Paranoia is just the bastard child of fear and good sense.

JACE: Poor thing. Let's adopt it, give it a last name and raise it right.

CHARLIE: You want to get it a puppy, too?

JACE: Sure. We'll call it Panic. It and Paranoia can play together at the park and scare the hell out of all the other kids.

D.D. Barant

~~~

Sometimes, Harry wondered how he had survived over 16 years on planet Earth. For here he was, sitting at the dining room table ready for breakfast... a whole, entire hour early.

How exactly he had managed such a feat only proved a passing remark Snape had made about him once in fourth year; he was the living contradiction to the theory of evolution. The idea of "survival of the fittest" ought to have refuted Harry's mere conception.

Harry had woken up lying on the cold, wooden floor, with his glasses digging crudely into his nose. Ten years of sleeping on a thin cot in a dingy cupboard meant the sensation wasn't completely lost to him. But then the six other years of thick, downy mattresses meant his neck did have quite a stiff crick in it.

A blurred glance at Dudley's old digital watch had then told him it was 05:50 —he had less than ten minutes until breakfast. Though he was rather used to the panicked rush of getting ready in the morning— the Dursleys had trained him well for that— it was still a shock.

And so the boy who had once out-flown a dragon had leapt up to his feet... only to immediately hit the back of his head on the door handle. Hedwig's hoots had sounded suspiciously taunting.

Several minutes later, and for the second time in a week, the portraits of the manor cringed before the disgrace of a wizard with his wand in his mouth, mismatching socks (not that he owned any matching pairs, but he usually made some effort to co-ordinate them), the wrong shoe on the wrong foot, and hair pointing haphazardly in all directions.

He had then discovered that he'd read the time wrong. It had been 06:50, not 05:50. And he was completely tangled in his hoodie.

The last thing Harry really remembered was putting his head down on the table to contemplate the meaning of life. Only he must have fallen into a light sleep during his very philosophical, deep thinking, for he lifted his head to the sound of footsteps breaking through the enticing fog of sleep.

Indeed, the two Slytherins had walked in and found themselves looking at a bowed head of raven-hair, with a smugly pale figure watching and stroking a sleeping serpent. Harry woke up in time to see their unimpressed expressions.

Malfoy's pale eyebrows for one, were raised so high they practically merged with his hairline.

"Merlin, Potter," he barely breathed out, "you look sick."

Harry sniffed, then sniffed again; he really needed to blow his nose. "I'll have you know this is an authentic zombie look." The words came out rather ruggedly, quietly; his throat sounded more parched than sore. Not that that fooled anyone.