"𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮!"
"𝐘𝐨𝐮. . . 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞?"
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How could eleven-year-old Harry Potter have guessed, that sitting next to a young Y/N LeBeau on the first of September...
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Madam Pomfrey insisted on keeping Harry in the hospital wing for the rest of the weekend. He didn't argue or complain, but he wouldn't let her throw away the shattered remnants of his Nimbus Two Thousand.
He knew he was being stupid, knew that the Nimbus was beyond repair, but Harry couldn't help it; he felt as though he'd lost one of his best friends.
Harry had many visitors, all wishing to cheer him up. The Quidditch team even came to visit, this time with Wood, who told Harry (in a hollow voice) that it wasn't his fault, and that he didn't blame him in the slightest.
Ron, Y/N, and Hermione left Harry's bedside only at night. But nothing anyone said or did could make Harry feel any better, because they knew only half of what was troubling him.
He hadn't told anyone about the Grim, not even Ron, Y/N, and Hermione, because he knew Ron would panic, Y/N would try and not show that she is frightened and Hermione would scoff.
The fact remained, however, that it had now appeared twice, and both appearances had been followed by near-fatal accidents; the first time, he had nearly been run over by the Knight Bus; the second, fallen fifty feet from his broomstick.
Was the Grim going to haunt him until he actually died? Was he going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for the beast?
And then there were the Dementors. Harry felt sick and humiliated every time he thought of them. Everyone said the Dementors were horrible, but no one else collapsed every time they went near one. No one else heard echoes in their head of their dying parents. Because Harry knew who that screaming voice belonged to now. He had heard her words, heard them over and over again during the night hours in the hospital wing while he lay awake, staring at the strips of moonlight on the ceiling. When the Dementors approached him, he heard the last moments of his mother's life, her attempts to protect him, Harry, from Lord Voldemort, and Voldemort's laughter before he murdered her...
Harry dozed fitfully, sinking into dreams full of clammy, rotted hands and petrified pleading, jerking awake to dwell again on his mother's voice.
Harry was relieved to return to the noise of the school on Monday, where he had to think of other things, even if he had to endure Draco Malfoy's taunting.
Malfoy was almost beside himself with glee at Gryffindor's defeat. He had finally taken off his bandages and celebrated having the full use of both arms again by doing spirited imitations of Harry falling off his broom.
Malfoy spent much of their next Potions class doing Dementor imitations across the dungeon; Ron finally cracked and flung a large, slippery crocodile heart at Malfoy, which hit him in the face and caused Snape to take fifty points from Gryffindor.
"If Snape's teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts again, I'm skiving off," said Ron as they headed toward Lupin's classroom after lunch. "Check who's in there, Hermione."
