Eighth Year

Primus

Harry tried not to look out of the window as McGonagall was talking to him. He really did.
It was just that her words seemed never to penetrate the thick bubble that had encased his mind, his heart, his entire being.

His head felt like it was full of thick cotton swabs. Every once in a while one of McGonnagalls words would miraculously make it through the muddled mess that was his thoughts. He would then look at it, turn it around in his head, and eventually watch it leave again, as if it had never existed.
Gone in a puff of smoke.

"Responsibility", she said to him, "war". He repeated the syllables in his head, over and over, again and again, until they became the same sort of chaos that their meaning had already become to him.
Suddenly something changed.
He couldn't quite place what it was. Harry looked at his headmistress, and found his confused reflection in her eyes.

"Mister Potter - have you been listening to me?" Harry could barely register the warbled sounds. By the time he'd thought of a reaction their meaning was already lost to him again, and answering seemed pointless.
He nodded curtly, then rearranged his features into a pained smile and left.
He didn't trust his voice to be able to excuse him.

***

It had been a couple weeks since the start of the term.
Every night, Harry would sneak out into the halls, wandering around aimlessly with the help of his invisibility cloak.
While walking didn't exactly clear his head, it was much better than being tortured by nightmare after nightmare until the early rays of the sun saved him.

The boys dormitory had become suffocating to him, and when he thought of sleeping there again, he would start shivering and shaking. His breathing would hitch, and tears would threaten to spill out of his eyes.
You'd think that the nightmares would stop after Voldemort's death, but they just got more frequent. And more unpredictable. Every night he would relive scenes from the war; some that he had witnessed and others that he had never seen before.

He would be forced to watch Bellatrix torture Hermione, her blood curdling screams echoing through his mind. He would see Remus and Tonks' bodies stiffen and fall to the ground lifelessly after a sickening green light hit them. He would watch Dumbledore tumble and fall from the Astronomy tower.
And the Cruciatus. Oh, the Cruciatus. Every fibre of his being would scream for it to stop, but it would continue for what felt like days.

Inevitably, he would wake up exhausted and drenched in sweat, grateful for the beginning day and the relief that it brought.

So instead he chose not to sleep, surviving instead on sleeping draughts, energy-restoring spells and the odd nap here or there, never longer than the shortest time he could manage - else his nightmares would start again.

On this particular night, something was different though. As he watched the dancing moonbeams falling through the high windows of the castle with a mixture of fascination and disinterest, he noticed something. A shift in the atmosphere that he couldn't quite place. Slowly, he tried to focus. Something… something… there!

It was something that he heard. He tried to focus, but it kept slipping from his mind, the thing, as if it didn't want him to know, or to realize, that it was there.

He shook his head. It was probably nothing.

***

The next night he had already forgotten about the thing. His memory felt like a sieve lately, nothing small would stay there, only the giants that he simply couldn't forget.  Not that any of the smaller things that he kept forgetting made any sense to him. Even though he physically was safe, mentally, he was always surrounded by death, torture, and betrayal. It seemed like anything else that could find its way into his muddled mind could be of little importance compared to all that, and even if it was - there would be no space to accommodate it.

But then, walking past the exact same windows, watching the exact same moonbeams, that something started nagging him. It was distant, and quiet, but it was definitely there. It sounded almost like - no, he was sure it had to be - music. Maybe a violin? He had never been very good at telling the difference between stringed instruments, and the lack of musical education at Hogwarts certainly hadn't done anything to mitigate his inadequacies.

Slowly, he walked towards the sound. As he walked, it became clearer and clearer. Like a muddy pond that had just been stirred and was now calming down again, making visible again whatever was hidden in its waters.

The sound came from the astronomy tower.

As he climbed the stairs, the sound became louder and louder. When he reached the door, he stopped. It was standing slightly ajar, almost like an invitation to come in. But Harry was afraid. Not just nervous or a little scared, there was a deeply rooted fear stopping him from entering through that door. It was inexplicable to him where this fear came from, but the past year had taken him through so much that he dared not face this fear: Who knew why it was there and what he would find as soon as he walked through? As he explored this feeling, he realized that it wasn't the thing behind the door that he was afraid of, no, he actually found it calming, but he was afraid of the action of facing it.

So he didn't, and the fact that he for once in his life didn't have to fight his fears gave him a strange satisfaction. Instead he sat down on the small landing in front of the door and leant against the icy cold wall with his back, and listened.

Hesitantly he closed his eyes. The music washed over him. As he listened, he felt it rush through his body, not invigorating, but cleansing somehow, as if it slowly but surely took the crumbling darkness and hatred and fear within him, replacing it with with its colorful notes.

For the first time since probably Sirius´ death he felt the darkness within him begin to crumble. It wasn’t as if he was magically healed, or suddenly happy, but all the negative emotions that were curled up inside him suddenly found a new order instead of constantly being tied up in a inextricable Gordian knot.

And so he sat there, how long he could later not remember, soaking up the melody, letting the music wash up his heart and give it a new life. Absentmindedly he thought that the musician must be ridiculously strong for being able to play so long without tiring.

Suddenly, he felt the melody pushing at something inside him, like a dark rock, a muddled mess that Harry had never touched, afraid of unraveling it, afraid that, if he even tried, he’d find himself lost inside of it, never making it out of its endless maze of corridors that were filled terrors better forgotten.

He jumped up. His tired, aching muscles complied too slowly, having slowly been freezing up against the cold floor and wall. He almost fell down the stairs as he tripped on his own feet, running, running, as fast as he could, as long as it would take him away from the terrifyingly beautiful music.

As he stumbled through the portrait hole, his face would have shown his shock, had it been visible under the cloak. As it was, he simply fell onto the couch of the common room, shaking like a leaf and staring into the fire until his eyes hurt.