thirty two
————
it was dark.
harry didn't know where he was, or what he was doing there, but it was so, so dark.
and he was running.
where was he running again?
he couldn't remember, just that it was important. he needed to get there, needed to do something.
so he kept running.
he ran and ran and ran.
(through the heavy darkness that seemed to bend around him, trying to swallow him whole.)
soon his limbs grew heavy with exhaustion and slimy tendrils of hopelessness began to crawl up his throat at the thought that this darkness could be endless and he would never get out- but he couldn't stop.
he needed to keep going, he needed to- to-
what?
just as he started to slow down, the static in his ears dulled.
first he heard the erratic thudding of his heart, wild and panicked as it resounded through his tense body. then the frightful cadence of his quick, stuttering breaths joined the symphony of terror.
and then the screams.
the horrible screams.
choked up and screeching like pure pain of the highest frequency. a series of wordless pleas pulled from bloodied, unwilling lips. the sound of those endless screams consumed the darkness and made everything simultaneously sharpened and insubstantial. smears of crimson and onyx faded at the corners of harry's hazy vision, and distantly, he felt tears dripping hot down his face, scalding the tender skin of his cheeks. he knew those screams, he knew those screams, he knew those screams, oh god.
his strides sped up. he surged forward with a new desperation, tearing his way through the darkness with shaky hands. he ignored the paralyzing cold seeping into his aching bones, urging him to stop, to give up, to fall to the ground and let the darkness consume him.
he ignored it, and he ran.
he ran until his breathing sounded like ragged sobbing and the ache in his feet was nothing compared to the ache in his chest.
the screams were louder now, shrill and excruciating and painful.
as he ran, he snapped his head in every direction for the source of the noise, frantic eyes scanning the unrelenting darkness for warm brown eyes, curly brown hair, something, anything but the blackness.
and he found what he was looking for. in the midst of a strange, onyx fog, in the middle of a large, ballroom hall, he found them.
sprawled on the glossy hardwood of the shiny floor was hermione. she lay, writhing beneath bellatrix lestrange, the coils of her russet hair spread out over a growing pool of harsh crimson, her eyes layered with agonized tears, crazed with the haze of pain. she was still screaming, screaming, and ron was curled up stiffly on the floor a few feet away, holding a blood stained hand towards her collapsed form, unable to move from his place on the floor.
and there was no color.
none.
the beautiful umber eyes always shining with determination, the red hair he'd come to associate with family, e v e r y t h i n g.
colorless.
desaturated.
grey.
(except for the blood.)
in a second, he was on bellatrix, pushing her, kicking her, anything to get her away from his friends.
the next second she was a crumpled heap in the floor, and ron was sobbing, holding hermione's tear-stained face in his bloodied hands.
as he moved towards them, everything seemed to move in slow motion through the buzzing in his ears.
with every blink, the pool of blood around hermione widened, and soon it covered the pretty floorboards in a layer of scarlet. he looked down at his feet. looked at the blood splattered across his shoes, his hands, his face.
he felt nausea in the back of his throat, vision swimming when he looked back at ron and hermione.
he rushed forward and fell to his knees beside her body. he slowly lifted his quivering hands and tried to hold pressure on the wound in her stomach, whispering choked apologies at the gasps and sobs it pulled from her throat.
suddenly, he felt a horrible, crumpling force against the back of his head, and in an instant, he was flat on the ground. hermione's blood soaked through his shirt and sat warm and sickening against his back, and he gagged, murmuring some horrified question of confusion.
"it's your fault." ron scowled down at him with clenched fists. his eyes were cold, burning with a fearsome and unrecognizable anger. it was something unmerciful and monstrous, something harry never could have imagined in ron's gaze.
something foreign, yet heartbreakingly familiar all at the same time.
"w-what?"
his voice sounded strange and murky in his own ears, strangled half to death with sickened fear. ron's mouth twisted and twisted into a wrinkled scowl, whitened with disdain.
"you did this!" he growled, and a harsh cry ripped from harry's quivering lips as the toe of ron's foot collided with the churning center of his stomach. sharp, resounding pain blossomed from his heavy, maiming contact.
he couldn't help the shocked sob that choked itself from his tightly wound throat. ron had never hurt him like that before.
"you did this! you ruined us! it's all your fault!"
"r—ron..."
"you did this." a higher, more breathless voice chimed in, and harry watched with the air frozen in his lungs as hermione rose from the floor, her blood painting smears of hellish reds down her pale face and dripping soundlessly from the soaked ringlets of her hair.
"mione..." he pleaded, but the sound of his voice died on his salt stained lips.
her sharp hand slapped his cheek. another sob yanked itself from his chest.
"it's your fault, it's your fault, it's all your fault!" she screeched, and her fists rained down upon him with the rage of an unrelenting and unforgiving thunderstorm.
her unrecognizable anger made her monstrous, her eyes dead and vacant as they swallowed harry in their endless abyss, and he was left to cry on a blood soaked floor and plead, because within the depths of her piercing glare, he saw the faces of everyone who had ever hurt him.
in her curled fist, he felt dudley's curled fist slam hard into his stomach. with every slur ron shouted in tangible resentment, harry heard the voice of his uncle screaming profanities at him through the wood of the cupboard door.
he curled away from their anger, flinched away from their bruising hands, but the agony was endless. they pulled his heart from his chest and ripped it open, mocking the ruined love it left on their fingertips and grinning when he reached out with trembling hands, begging for them to please, please stop.
"your fault, your fault, your fault!"
"no!"
they didn't stop beating him until there was nothing left. he was empty and alone on the wet floor, lost in the darkness. the silence invaded his ears and replaced the squealing cadence of his own terrified voice. the silence was a dangerous thing, and it reigned so absolutely, it felt louder than anything else. it reminded him of his solitude.
"hermione...ron please—come—come back—please..." he cried pathetically into the void. "please! please! i'll be better, i—i promise!"
just don't leave me alone.
then he heard the sound of heavy footfalls pounding restlessly against loose wooden floorboards. a familiar low growl reached his ears.
"worthless waste of space!"
uncle vernon.
harry flinched away from that long resented voice just as the pained cry of a child pierced the air around him.
the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he swallowed the burning knot in his throat with watery eyes and trembling lips.
he knew those cries.
he turned with a ragged gasp and met the terrified eyes of a small child. his skin was pale and littered with bruises (red, blue, yellow), all sunken cheeks and hunched shoulders and tears. his hair was messy, no doubt the result of careless hands yanking the dark strands like puppet strings. his eyes looked like they might've been green, but they were so dull it was hard to tell. tears flowed down his cheeks but he didn't make a sound.
it was him.
a warbled noise slipped out of harry's mouth, and just as he reached out, the young boy's eyes fixed on something behind him.
"draco..."
harry blinked and his younger self was gone. instead draco appeared by his side.
draco was the brightest thing harry had seen, still shining and luminescent as he always was. a beacon, calling for undivided attention. harry reached out for him, desperation gripping his lungs, and draco smiled in that soft, sweet way he did when they were alone.
"shh, it's alright." he murmured, and his hand found its way to harry's locks. harry shuddered a cry.
harry grasped draco's thin shoulders, frightened he would soon disappear, and draco tilted his head curiously, confused. a red poppy appeared behind the curve of his ear, a stark redness against his blonde head, and though beautiful, something about it struck him as terrifying.
draco's lips moved, and harry realized he was saying something to him. but his speech was warbled and drowned, and harry could do nothing but let himself fold into draco's embrace. a mistake.
as soon as draco's warm arms wrapped around him, they fell to the ground.
for a moment, harry couldn't see. he could only feel the cold, hard ground underneath him, and draco's hands on his back.
he opened his mouth to ask a question, squinting through the dark. but then draco's hands seized around his arms, nails digging into his flesh with a wild desperation that had harry reeling. his heart sunk to his stomach.
he looked down.
crimson, crimson, crimson, everywhere.
draco's clothes were seeping with huge blotches of slowly growing scarlet, pools of red seeping onto the hard tiles of myrtle's bathroom, and he's cold now. harry felt for his chest, for the wound, mind blurred with white hot panic, his lungs on fire. draco grew colder, his breathing strangling itself as it pushed raggedly through his paper white lips.
he was dying. he was dying.
harry choked out sob after sob, and he was frantic, where was the wound, where was it, draco was dying, it was his fault, he had to do something—
draco stared at him with fading eyes.
"don't leave me!" harry cried, pressing down hard on draco's stomach. the blood poured out, splattering his marble white flesh in the color of death. "don't leave me!"
draco was like stone beneath him. he could no longer feel his breathing. but then, something horrible and hideous twisted his face, and he looked at harry with unbridled malice.
harry gasped.
"i hate you, i hate you, i hate you!"
he left harry's arms with the words curled on his lips.
"NO!" harry screamed, clutching draco harder, lungs constricting as he struggled to breathe.
"see harry? you've destroyed everything. you're just like me." a high a cold voice whispered into the dark. harry folded in on himself, stuffing his bloodied fingers against his ears.
he shook his head, shoulders pulling together with the force of his sobs.
"i'm not like you!" he screamed brokenly, but the stain of vermillion on his palms said otherwise. he was covered in the blood of others, burned from every battle won at the cost of another life. he carried the ghosts of those foolish enough to care for him on his back. he could feel the weight of it crushing him.
"you are," voldemort hissed. something cold pinched harry's skin, spread like liquid fear across his flesh. "look at him."
harry refused. his stomach turned and lurched as wet blood traced the palms of his hands. the high voice grew louder, sharpening with rage.
"look at him!"
harry jerked, and stiffly obliged even as his mind screamed in nauseated protest. draco's blank, vacant face greeted him. gray and gaunt and still marred with that horrific expression. his mouth still curled around those words.
"i hate you!"
he'd screamed it like he'd meant it. of course he'd meant it. harry had killed him. he'd killed him, he'd killed him, all of them—
he was gone. he was really gone.
"it's your fault. it's all your fault."
the world was stained in blood.
and it was only then that harry remembered.
poppies meant death.
a/n: haha ༼ ಥ ‿ ಥ ༽