A Snake Named Voldemort

Chapter 21

"Harry? Are you alright?"

Harry looked up from his breakfast, of which the only thing he had accomplished was pushing his eggs a complete three-hundred-sixty degree lap around his plate rather than eating it. Hermione was examining him with concerned eyes, and Harry forced himself to smile. He might have succeeded in that, but his face was rather numb so he wasn't sure.

"I'm fine, Hermione. I'm not very hungry this morning, for some reason." For emphasis, he dropped his fork down on the table and placed his hand in his lap.

"Are you sick?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think so. Just...not hungry," he said blandly. Unwilling to draw more of Hermione's attention towards himself, Harry pushed away from the table and stood up. "I'm going to the library. I'll see you in class, alright?"

"Okay, Harry," Hermione said softly, still watching him in poorly concealed concern. Harry attempted another smile, and thought he had gotten this one right when Hermione smiled in return. Harry left the Great Hall and pointed his feet in the direction of the library, because it was as good a place as any to go. He wondered if there was a book there about how to pretend everything was fine when it really wasn't.

Harry had been emotionally hurt, before, and rather awfully at that. It didn't make the hurt he felt now any easier. He knew the risks; of course he did. Love was a perilous thing, after all. His happiness in general usually didn't last long, anyway, so why should he have thought things would be any different now?

There was no one who he could turn to, no one he could share his problems with, and since there was no one to talk to he simply gave nobody a reason to ask questions. His slip up this morning with Hermione wouldn't happen again.

Harry sighed and continued down the hall.

He went around the next couple of weeks on autopilot; externally, life for everyone, including Harry, wasn't much different than before. In the hidden parts of Harry's soul, thought, it was a different story. He just wasn't happy. Harry wanted to blame someone, or something, but he knew he would never be able to decide who or what to settle on. His mind considered such questions as: Why did his life always have to suck? Why did Tom have to be such a callous bastard? Why did he have to care so much? Why couldn't he, just for once, have something good happen to him?

Why did he have to fall in love with the bloody Dark Lord in the first place?

Harry hadn't forgotten who Tom was, not exactly. But, he had become enamoured with the new side of him he'd never seen before; indeed, perhaps no one had seen. He didn't know if that part of Tom had been there all along, someone he'd always been but kept hidden, or if it was only what he could have been...should have been, if only his life was a little different. Harry hadn't been able to help himself, and love knew no bounds.

As far as Harry could tell, his and Tom's...disagreement...hadn't made the powerful man revert to his original policies. So far, everything was well, and Emrys Aleron was quickly becoming a popular individual, with Voldemort still working obtrusively in the background of everyone's minds, but never overwhelming.

The fallout of Rita Skeeter's article had been as massive as Harry had predicted it would. Wizarding Britain talked about it for a long time; some people were scandalised, others felt justified, and then there were those who ooh'd and ahh'd over the article and fell right into the trap that had been set for them. Harry was pleased to see that the horrid interview with Rita had been worth it, but he had also come to despise it because of the amount of people that came up to him and asked about his life and his new guardian when he would have rather done without having to pretend things between him and Tom, or "Emrys", were perfectly fine. It just...it hurt to have to think about him anymore than he already did. He knew he was desponding, but he didn't care.