home is where the heart is (and you hold mine)

my best friends (always standing with me)

Chapter 2

my best friends (always standing with me)

Harry spent a grand total of 17 days in the Hospital Wing - he'd been asked to preform multiple tests to confirm his cognitive functionality - speech, remembrance, physical movement, hand to eye coordination (he preformed like a seeker on that), spell performance, reasoning, intuition. All until Madame Pomphrey had scribbled so much on her parchment that Harry was surprised the her quill wasn't smoking.

Professor Snape had come as well and preformed more tests on him, all that had to do with his magic. Offensive magic, defensive magic, random charms and spell. There were times when Harry had a dizzy spell when he was using his magic, mainly due to the fact that his spells came out incredibly overpowered. There had been a time when he blacked out for a total of 6 seconds which had gotten him bed ridden for the rest of the day by Madame Pomphrey.

Ron and Hermione hadn't really said anything, but they had told him that he had been pleading for them to kill him. That had quieted Harry for a few moments - he wasn't at all sure what he was supposed to say or think about that. So he acknowledged it and continued on. Though with how crippling the pain had been, he wasn't really surprised by that.

After 17 days, he was allowed on Monday morning, October 17th, Harry was allowed out. But that didn't mean that nobody was hovering over him. Hermione and Ron had gotten even worse about making sure that he was eating and sleeping and not stressing himself out.

Even when they were researching, he wasn't allowed to carry more than 5 books - as if that could cause a dizzy spell. Which they probably think it did when he had nearly collapsed after picking up 7 books when his vision glitched so forcefully that it had messed with his equilibrium. And even when he did carry 5 or less books, they were still hovering around him.

By the end of classes on Wednesday, he was utterly exhausted and done with it. Harry stormed into the Common Room and to his dorm after yelling at them - not his finest moment that's for sure - and locked himself in the bathroom.

They don't need to monitor me taking a bath, do they? Don't want the great Harry Potter to kill himself because he slipped, he thought bitterly. And then he berated himself because he was aware that he was being unfair towards them but the constant watching was giving him paranoia.

Harry sighed and rubbed his face. He needed to calm down but honestly, all he wanted was peace. He wanted to be left alone and nobody was leaving him alone.

"Childe, why are you so upset?"

Alarm bells rang in his head. Harry spun around so fast, his neck cracked and blinked at the sight in front of him. Could he add hallucinations to what he was experiencing? Because he was fairly sure he was having a very vivid hallucination.

In front of him was a face; the features were not feminine nor were they masculine. Pale grey skin, shallow cheeks and sunken eyes that were a dull, soulless brown like dead grass; their lips had a blueish twinge like they'd drowned, their hair was a dark black and probably the only thing that seemed to have an inkling of life in it. And even so with these features, they weren't unpleasing to look at just unconventional.

"Childe?"

Harry blinked as he registered the voice; it was a resonating sound, young, old, male, female all at the same time. There was the carefree sound of children just as much as there was the soft wisdom of the elderly. It was soothing in a odd way and unsettling a very normal way.

"Hullo..."

"What upsets you so, Childe?"

Harry figured he probably shouldn't be talking to a hallucination but answered anyway. "My best friends... they're hovering around me a lot after something happened to me. I have a limit of how many picks I can carry and they're monitoring how much I can eat and how well I'm sleeping. It's annoying and I'm just... I'm exhausted."