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Race you to the stars

Race you to the stars
LadyBraken

Summary:

"Harry's thoughts were chaotic. He couldn't believe he was sitting silently and peacefully beside his worst enemy, a Dark Lord, a psychotic serial murderer, a tyrant in his spare time ... at Hogwarts. He had managed to break through the magic barriers of Hogwarts. And this information, entering softly in his mind, terrified him more than anything."

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever- or else swoon to death.
Bright Star - John Keats
Harry could not stand it anymore. It was just ... too much. Too much pressure from all sides, too many expectations.

Half of the school looked at him like he was crazy. He had asked for nothing, nothing!

The last lesson of occlumency with Snape had been the drop of water that flowed the bucket. Umbridge had assured him that he felt helpless, and Snape had taken advantage of it. It was useless.

But he had to keep fighting. He just needed ... just a little air. He needed to go out, to get away from the stifling walls that enclosed him, chained him, reported on all of his actions and gestures. He needed to feel the wind on his skin, in his lungs, to be able to close his eyes knowing that he was alone.

Harry slid down the corridors, grazing the walls. He did not have the strength to go back to the tower to get his cloak of invisibility. But years of being chased and pursued, by his cousin, journalists, teachers, Death Eaters and many other people had taught him to be as discreet and silent as a shadow.

He hated winter.

He ended up finding a window big enough for him to get through. The secret passages were guarded and too obvious. Moreover, Harry did not want to leave Hogwarts, only to be out in the open. Or somewhere alone, anywhere. He conjured his broom, not even paying attention to the fact that he had done it without his wand.

He could hear the faint sounds of the new year's party somewhere below him.

His scar pulsed against his skull.

With a thrust of his foot, he stepped over the parapets and dropped into the night. He took advantage of the adrenaline, the air that trampled his whole body in his fall, the sensation of abandonment ...

He pulled his broom up a few meters from the ground before landing softly.

The moon was high in the sky, almost round, but bright and white, untouched by the few black clouds brought by the winter.

A slight smile spread over his face for the first time since last year as he took a deep breath. The air smelled of snow, sap, magic, the tumultuous water of the dark lake, the night, the stone, the damp earth, and that particular fragrance of the forbidden forest. His home.

He did not know why he was so attracted to the forbidden forest. Perhaps the sensation of danger lured his Gryffindor side, perhaps it was the certainty of never being disturbed, perhaps the ambient magic calmed his nerves. It seemed to him that the trees whispered in the wind and the roots were rumbling to seize more and more land, always closer to Hogwarts like a sweet, slow, almost languorous invasion. Or was it the smell, which he could not find anywhere else, in this place where the dead were not buried but always part of a whole, always had a usefulness, and allowed life to begin again, the flowers line the floor and the unicorns in the clearings.