A Darker Form of Magic, book three: Dementors

Chapter One

There were warm arms wrapped around Harry's middle when he woke up, the touch warm like a flame on the boy's skin, chilled even in the summer's heat. Legs were twined together as a head pressed into the back of his neck. Everything about the touch was familiar, from the summer tanned skin to the calloused hands resting beneath his shirt. Everything about it was familiar, and yet the boy still felt his heart race and panic grip at his lungs, even if only for a moment.

It had been like this for almost a year now, one would think that he'd be used to it.

The hand on his side pulled him softly, turning the boy over in the small bed until he was looking at the other within it, crystal blue eyes meeting a too bright green.

Harry looked at the older boy and let his heart settle once more. Most mornings he didn't wake the other Pluto, gone before the other boy could even begin to stir. But some mornings he did, they seemed to be happening more and more often now as summer drew on.

Harry moved his hand slowly, sleep draining his movements, raising it to Jude's face and tracing the fading bruise there that looked ghastly in the fading moonlight. The Plutos had gotten into a fight with some of the other delinquents in the area only a few days before, and they'd managed to get a good hit on the teen. Harry could still see the cuts on his knuckles, and almost smell the blood that had been spilt in retaliation for such a thing as the bastard's teeth had been knocked in.

(Jude had kissed his knuckles, blood spotting the teen's lips from doing so, before pouring cheap vodka onto the wounds, something that the younger boy didn't so much as flinch at. The sentiment was nice all the same.)

"You look like death warmed over," Jude whispered, his voice quiet even though they were alone in the small room, the fear that the Matron could walk in at any moment was still there though.

Are you okay?

"No shit," Harry said, his voice as gruff as the other boy's.

I'll survive.

No one in their group was okay, they both knew that, sometimes it was just easier to pretend. Today just didn't seem to be one of them.

Harry let the warmth linger for a moment longer before drawing away and slipping out of the other boy's hold, knowing that the sun would rise soon and he would need to be long gone by that point if he didn't want to be caught.

That was how it had worked for the past month, Harry would wait until the lights turned off in the boys' home and the climb the tree by Jude's window and slip into the room at night, sleeping next to the teen, before leaving the same way in the morning before the sun rose and the rest of the house was awake. It wasn't a perfect system, not by a long shot as he'd almost been caught before and had scraped himself on tree limbs more times than he chafed to count at the beginning of the summer, not having climbed trees like he and Jude used to since the summer before, but it was better than the alternative.

Anything was.

Harry walked silently over to the closest where they'd hidden his trunk for the summer - something that had been a pain to do without magic and he was not looking forwards to figuring out how to get it down either - and changed into the clothes that he had in it: loose black jeans ripped from falling on the ground in fights, an AD/DC shirt that he'd stolen after listing to Highway to Hell for the first time at the beginning of the summer and finding it more fitting than he'd like to think about, and knock off Doc Martens that Jude had grown out of and given to the younger boy. Only the shirt was new, but that was fine because it all fit, something that he'd only had before with his robes.

Slipping his switchblade in his pocket, Harry transversed the room silently once more, his footsteps in time with the heavy breathing coming from the bed, Jude already having fallen asleep once, the moonlight from the window making the teen look ethereal in the stolen moment.