Harry Potter Male Reader Insert - Book 3

Chapter 9.

1

They'd been watching Harry for some time, speaking of things only without true sense to them because Percy was sitting close about them four in the Great Hall. The moon had turned red and crimson. When they went to the common room it was crowded and afire wood a smell of that wood and orange and they saw Fred and George but Harry didn't want to speak with them and slipped away unseen to the deserted dormitory and came to his bedside cabinet. He pushed the books aside and found the leatherbound photo album Hagrid had given him two years before. It was full of pictures of his parents. He sat down on his bed and drew the hangings around him and was searching.

He stopped on a picture of his parents' wedding day. God didn't bring rescue on that holy day. There was his father waving at him, accoutred in a black suit. There was his mother, wearing white and face of utmost happiness. They stood arm in arm. There was their best man. Harry hadn't thought about it earlier. You couldn't guess it was the same man facing you. Now face sunken and waxy, then handsome and bright. Had he already been consumed by dark? Was he planning killing already behind that smile? Did he know what would change to that face turn his motives unintelligible? Twelve years. Devil's best man. Harry closed the album and reached over and stuffed it back into the cabinet and took off his robe and glasses and got into bed, making sure he wasn't seen from the other side of the hangings. The dormitory door opened and the light he saw and the sound of conversation he heard toward which all he gifted no mind.

"Harry?" Ron said.

Harry didn't reply to that. He lay still as if turned to stone and pretended to sleep. Ron quit. Harry turned in his bed and lay with opened eyes wide. Hatred. "Keeper of Secrets," he said. He imagined the slaying. He didn't sleep that night. But dreamed, like a madman, a sleepless dream.

2

The night had turned to day instead. That event was as true anew as the conclusion that would creep to closing on when it could. The red moon didn't see Harry sleep. He rested only on the sun's watch. He'd turned awake to find the dormitory lonely. He dressed and went down to the common room and there were no people save for Ron and Hermione and Y/N. Ron was sitting about doing nothing, Hermione was doing homework which Harry hadn't done yet, and Y/N was resting with his arms on the table and from that curled position was watching her with a great deal of curiosity.

"Where is everyone?" Harry said and only then they looked about him.

"Gone," Ron said. "It's the first day of the holidays."

"Right."

"It's nearly lunchtime. I was going to come and wake you up."

"No need for that," Harry walked closer and squatted on a chair next to the fire, still burning the fire was while snow decorated the land white and cold outside the windows and cats lay about curled in front of the fire and gray and orange.

"You look bad, Potter," Y/N said.

"Not as bad as you," Harry said.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing, Y/N," Hermione said and tapped his warm hand gently. "You look fine."

"At least someone."

"But really, Harry," she said and gestured with her hand toward him, "we know you're upset."

"I'm not."

"You mustn't go and do something stupid."

"Like?"

"Like going after Black," Ron said and looked around as if Black were standing there invisible and dangerous.

"You won't, will you?" Hermione said.