You Can Close Your Eyes (Drarry)

Chapter 1: The Other World

Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“Anything else I can get you, sir?” The brunette waitress asks chirpily, eyes trained on her notepad as she writes down Harry’s order in a rush.

“I think that’ll be all.” He forces a smile onto his tired face, muscles straining to cooperate. He can’t be rude to this sweet, young girl. What has she done to him for him to even consider taking out his exhaustion on her?

Harry waits until she leaves his table and rushes behind the counter and into the kitchen instead, for his smile to slide off his face— a tired scowl forming in its stead, muscles all sighing in relief at the familiarity. He leans back into the plush leather of the chair he is sitting at and screws his eyes shut, the dryness of a sleepless night already settling in his eyeballs. Reluctantly, he opens his eyes again to the warm light bathing the empty café, though he doesn’t pay attention to any table but the one in front of him.

His eyes are trained on its glossy wooden surface, ripples of a rich, dendrochronological past upon its face. This is his favourite table. The one with the carving of a triangle on its circular, blunt edge. It’s a two-seater but not once in Harry’s two years of living in Kingston has the other seat been welcomed by a warmth that isn’t Harry’s own belongings.

He doesn’t complain.

Solitude is the sister of serenity.

The occasional visitor, however, is one that he welcomes gladly. She isn’t here today— or perhaps she was and Harry missed her. By a good few hours, if she was a sane person who cared about sleep more than her job at the café. She would always take his order, and would always give him an extra biscuit with his tea. A gift that she pays for in the form of nerves, hoping her manager doesn’t see her slip in that extra scone or cookie.

Harry’s stomach growls in impeccable timing. He pulls up his brown suit sleeve and frowns at the hands of his watch, disappointed but not at all surprised at the amount of time that he just spent wandering about in London, right after the dinner.

The door of the café opens and the bell above it rings and Harry slides his eyes to the person shuffling inside.

Hello, number 7.

A lucky one? Perhaps a glance?

No. The old, short woman doesn’t pay Harry any more heed than she does the tears in her handbag. Harry smiles tiredly.

The Cherry stays the same.

A quarter to four in the morning, and the sky stays resolutely dark. There sits Harry, relishing the presence of every scarce stranger who fails to notice, or notices and doesn’t care that Harry Potter sits mere feet away from them. But those who ignore him aren’t really ignoring at all, for to them, Harry Potter is no one special. In fact, he isn’t even Harry Potter. He is just a slouched man in a wrinkled brown suit, sitting at the farthest table from the door of a café that they entered simply because there was nowhere else open at this ungodly hour. But he is a frequenter of The Cherry; four am or not, no one cares if you are Harry Potter. No one cares because Harry Potter is not the boy who lived, not the chosen one, not a saviour. Not among this crowd, no. Here, he is just a lonely man with no name and deep eye bags. Tonight, after the dinner at The Burrow, that is all he has been. Harry Potter, at his core, yes; but in so many ways, not Harry Potter at all.

Number 7 leaves the café, dejected and probably unhappy with what it has to offer.

“Here you go,” The waitress from before slides the ham and cheese sandwich and the iced coffee that he ordered onto the table, snapping Harry out of his exhausted daze. He thanks her with yet another smile, and then digs into his food before she has left the table.