𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗲, harry potter

˗ˋ 43

CHAPTER FORTY THREE
✧
-: fourth year :-

── IN WHICH HE LOSES
FOCUS

. . .

Jane was watching as he concentrated, one of his hands pushing up his glasses and the other holding a curl of her hair. Their picnic had been a success and the remains sat wrapped up in tinfoil in the bag and minutes later they had gone swimming.

The river was nice and the water wasn't too cold, but after spending quite a lot of time in the water they had decided to sit back up on the banking, in between the shade of a tree and the hot sun. The rope swing attached to the branch swung in the slight breeze, just a little wet from when they had jumped in. 

Harry was sat on a towel, with another laid across his lap with her hair spread out across it. She had tied it up whilst in the water, but it had managed to come undone during the fun and it had gotten wet. 

He had dried it for her, movements careful as he used the towel, looking a little confused when Jane held up the daisies, but easily settled into managing to twine them into the tiny plaits he was doing, scattered through the clothes.

"Do you think it's.. strange of me to be so hesitant of being adopted?" Jane spoke up, question having been on the tip of her tongue since before she had set off. 

"Not at all." Harry threaded his fingers through another lock of ginger hair, seperating it into three strands. "Even if you don't see it yourself, Flora can see that you're special in a way that no other child has been for her."

Jane's grey eyes flickered up to him, and he paused in his movements. A flicker of horror ran through him. "Did I say something wrong?" Harry asked, a shake of her head confirmation enough for him to return to plaiting the daisies into her hair.

"No - you've said something really.. right." Jane sighed, watching as he focused. "But I just feel so plain. If you take away the summer and the ability for me to have access to the Adley library, I become so.. uninteresting. Even my name - Jane; the most plain of them all."

Harry's heart ached. It seemed that, no matter how he or Flora saw her or how well she managed to hide it, there were certain aspects of herself that Jane saw as inexorably common amongst people. Harry disagreed, but he also knew that he could only convince her of this only a certain amount. 

"For the most wonderful person." Harry interjected, hoping his cheeks weren't as warm as his stomach felt. His fingers fell away from her hair as she sat up, twisting around so that she was sat facing him. 

The softest, most gentle and pretty smile was sat on her face. "Harry.." Jane's eyes met his and she continued to say something, although the Potter boy couldn't quite focus on it.

And Harry found himself sinking, her voice like honey and sticking to every part of his brain, coating his thoughts, suffocating him. Her eyes flashed with happiness, and Harry found himself drowning in the grey. But a thought suddenly struck him, reminding him of those lifeless eyes of the Hufflepuff boy who had died right beside him and he froze.

"Harry?" Her sweet tone not even breaking through his thoughts. His gaze didn't waver, eyes settled on the water in front of him. "Harry?" He couldn't seem to hear her words, his heart pounding in his ears.

A hand appeared on shoulder, shaking gently. Caught up in the nightmare of his thoughts, Harry couldn't break away just yet. Jane on the other hand, seemed to be panicking. She had noticed this before, how he could get caught up in his thoughts and have this absolutely terrified look in his eyes. 

Jane had seen it in the eyes of one of the children who came to the orphanage around a month ago. She was the older sister of a pair of twins, and whilst none of the other children had ever come to learn what had happened to them, they had all known it was something considerably traumatic. 

They would often get lost too, forever doomed to traverse over their own damaged memories. She didn't know what it was that Harry had gone through and had no idea that reminders seemed to be scattered everywhere, but it haunted him just as much as the three siblings had been.

"Harry." She repeated, even more gently so, inching closer and closer, hands raising up to cup his cheeks. "Harry." Jane persisted, watching as his eyes came back into focus. 

"I'm..." Harry blinked, a hand reaching up to push his glasses away and rub his eyes, before replacing them and meeting her eyes again. "Sorry.. I'm really sorry." 

"Don't worry." Jane reassured him quickly, but didn't yet see the cease in the panic in his eyes. "Really - Harry, it doesn't matter."

"I just." He swallowed, seeming to become acutely aware of her hands on his cheeks and quickly looked down, wiping his own, slightly damp hands on the towel over his legs. "Remembered something suddenly."

"It's okay, really." Jane repeated, the hand on his right cheek creeping up to his ear, finger brushing against the hoop in his ear before retreating. "Try not to think about it too much?" She suggsested gently. "I know it's alright for me to say but.. really, try to distract yourself."

Harry felt a sudden loss of her warmth as she stood up, smiling down at him. "I'm really sorry to do this to the daisies - but come on, into the water. It's far too hot for me to sit here any longer."

Harry had a smile on his face as he scrambled up onto his feet, following her down onto the sandy riverbank and into the warm water, doing his best to push the thought of Cedric from his mind. 

That could be saved for the nightmares that so often occured in his small bedroom at the Dursleys. But instead, he was going to spend his waking hours with someone who seemed to understand him so incredibly well. 

And so they spent another length of them in the river, water splashing over them. Behind Jane, a trail of daisies followed.

They would help each other together. 

✧

a/n
if you cant tell i really
dont think that harry's
trauma from all the shit
that happens to him was 
addressed in the books so
im doing it here