He returned as steady as the Mountain Wind

Chapter 6: "The Dark Knight rises"

Harry was feeling empty, for lack of a better word. Yet, at the same time, he felt pressure. As if he was a pressure cooker, about to explode. As if his safety outlet had been cut off. The world seemed to turn too fast, yet time had slowed down. Everything was off balance. It was terrifying. Things he expected to be there were gone, the humming of wind magic inside him, gone. Yet at the same time, there were things he didn't know. They just were there. Unexpected. Unwanted. He wasn't able to understand them. He felt his eyes stinging, and a swelling in his throat, but any medical spells he knew came up clear. At the same time he felt his forehead fold itself together, into a frown. But he wasn't displeased. No, this feeling, this...emotion, was stronger. He wanted to scream at the world, wanted to tell the world to go to hell. He wanted... he didn't know what he wanted.

Last night, he had been awoken by pain. It had not been...nice. He felt too reminded of the Dursleys. One would think five years would have buried the scars...

He felt tired all of a sudden. He just wanted to go back to bed, but his feet were carrying him to the Great Hall...maybe he could skip breakfast...yeah...that sounded so nice...he wasn't feeling hungry anyways...

Hungry...hungry...like the voice he heard sometimes. In the walls. A hissy voice...a voice that wanted to kill. But no one else heard it. They didn't hear anything. So it couldn't be Parsel. No, maybe it was a voice in his head...a part of him, forged from all the feelings he shoved aside, created by his parents' abandonment, tempered by the Dursleys...did he wish to kill the Dursleys? On some days there was nothing he wanted more than sneaking out of bed, flying back to Little Whinging and end what he started on the day he was found by Salazar and Godric.

So maybe, the voice in the walls, the voice he was so hungry...so so hungry, maybe it was a part of himself. Salazar had that part too, the part who wanted to kill all those who had wronged him. They deserved it, after all, didn't they? Yes, they did. And Salazar...he would understand. Harry was so much like him after all. Everyone said so. Even Salazar himself.

He would kill them, and he would enjoy doing so.

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

(Friedrich W. Nietzsche)

Blaise looked at Harry. He had felt his friend being torn from sleep. As an incubus he was fine-tuned into the dreams of people surrounding him. Especially those of his friends. But last night...there had been something more. Something had deeply changed. Harry's emotions were running haywire. They were all over the place.

Usually his friend was calmer than a frozen lake. But now, Blaise realized that the lake had been a sea, a sea before the storm. A tempest of hate was raging inside Harry's mind, like a ferocious beast. It had been caged for too long and was now trying to break free in the most drastic way possible. And while Harry had proven himself to be strong, he was still a child.

And Blaise, he was also a child, and he knew what it felt like to have a voice inside your head. A voice that said "Take what you want! You have the power to do so. Why don't you?". But where Blaise had learned to tame his demons by befriending them, by finding middle ground, Harry never learned. He had shoved it all away, until he became a quite mountain lake. But the raging sea couldn't be held down forever. Only for some time. And "some time" had been over last night. But why now?

Blaise knew that Harry would break soon. It was apparent now. Before, there had been a railing of sorts, keeping Harry from falling head first into the abyss. But now...that safety net was gone. As if someone cut it.