Drifting
Diagon Alley was alive with the hum of people, the warm glow of lanterns casting long shadows against cobblestone streets. The air smelled of ink, old parchment, and the distant scent of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. It was the kind of evening where families lingered, where groups of students gathered outside Quality Quidditch Supplies, where the world felt... full.
Harry moved through it all like a ghost.
His footsteps were light, soundless, his presence barely a whisper among the crowd. No one looked at him. No one acknowledged him. He was just another figure, lost in the movement of the world.
It was better this way.
Teeth had left earlier. To hunt, most likely. The house had been too empty without him—too silent in a way that gnawed at Harry’s ribs like hunger. So he had left too. Wandering, drifting, letting the tide of the crowd carry him along without purpose.
A child laughed nearby, high and shrill, and something twisted inside him.
He ignored it.
His fingers brushed the fabric of his sleeve absentmindedly, his nails digging into the material. His thoughts wandered, slipping into places he didn’t often let them go.
The basilisk.
She was still there. Waiting beneath the castle. A creature older than Hogwarts itself, hidden away in the dark, unseen by human eyes for centuries.
He wondered what she would be like.
Would she speak? Would she recognize him as something different from the others?
Would she understand?
His lips pressed together. It was a strange thought—to want understanding from something so utterly alien. But then again, what was human understanding worth?
His housemates, his so-called ‘friends,’ they didn’t see him. Not really. To them, he was a legend, a story to be told in hushed voices. A trophy to be displayed.
But Teeth saw him.
And Tom had seen him.
It was strange, really. That the only two beings who had truly acknowledged him—who had looked beyond the name, beyond the titles—were a monster and the shade of a boy who should have never been born.
He exhaled, long and slow, watching as his breath curled in the cooling evening air.
A flicker of motion caught his eye. A man, older, heavyset, stepping out of a shop and nearly colliding with him. Harry stopped just in time, but the man sneered anyway, muttering something under his breath before brushing past him.
Harry didn’t react.
Didn’t feel anything.
It was expected, wasn’t it? People never saw what they didn’t want to see.
The shadows stretched longer. The warmth of the alley felt thinner now, the golden glow of the lanterns failing to reach him.
He should go back.
Teeth would return soon.
And maybe, if he was lucky, he would dream of green scales and unseen eyes waiting for him in the dark.