October

1. A-side: Safety Net

"But now this room is spinning while I'm trying just to fill in all the gaps."

| Swooning | "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Late. He was late again.

Though admittedly it wasn’t his fault this time. Like, really. Couldn’t Dudley— also Dudley. Dudley Dursley? Couldn’t his uncles think of a better name. Although coming from Vernon he couldn’t say he was surprised— make his own breakfast for once or at least finish at a decent hour so Harry could clean his mess and do it in a reasonable time so that he could not be late.

Then there had been the thing with the subway but well, Harry’s mutual ongoing hatred for subways wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

And, to make it worse it was Monday again. The first Monday of his new academy. 

Harry was fine, really no need to be angry about a change of school. 

Really. 

He had had about two months to get over it. 

And he was over it.

But still, he had spent since he was eleven at Hogwarts and just when he turned sixteen, and was entering his last two years, he had been kindly pressured to change schools and leave his friends and life behind.

To put it simply, it sucked.

Merlin Academy in Nevarah was one of the most prestigious schools, and one of the high-priced. After all it was private, super fancy facilities, the best recommendations and the most expensive.

It was also where Dudley was going to, since as Petunia said only the best of the best for his Diddykins, that and the fact that he had been expelled from his previous one and paying was the only way his cousin would pass some kind of admission process, no way Dudley would have entered otherwise. 

And Harry… 

Harry had been forced to catch up with his studies since they were apparently moving closer to Nevarah and far away from Surrey with or without him and Harry didn’t fancy spending another night in the streets.

He somehow had managed to pass the entrance exam and was now late for his first day.

If only he was still in Hogwarts Hermione would have surely appeared banging in his dorm door and making sure he was on time but sadly now the one who woke him up and who shared his dorm— sharing was a concept way too generous to describe the small room he was sleeping in, in fact it wouldn’t be wrong to say he shared more the room with spiders and dust than Dudley with him— was his cousin.

Well, Harry would be the first to admit he was surprised he had a bed at all. After sleeping in a cupboard for eleven years he would have thought the Dursleys wouldn’t have any complaints about leaving him without a roof. 

Maybe the fact that legally it was Harry’s dorm, courtesy of some fancy scholarship, and not Dudley’s and it would look weird he didn’t sleep somewhere when he had been assigned a room that made them let him sleep in the closet. 

After all, the Dursleys had always hated freakish things and everything that stuck out of the normal.

Harry normally being one of those things.

Breathless and flustered, he fumbled with the straps of his backpack as he rushed through the gates of his new academy. He could feel the weight of hundreds of eyes on him, the students and staff who had already arrived for the day. Harry was acutely aware that he was late, and the anxiety gnawed at him.

His rushed loud steps resonated on the empty hallway, he skipped classes trying to find his designated class, according to the letter he had received confirming his acceptance to the academy, he thanked all the gods again he wasn’t in the same class as Dudley. 

He wouldn't make it otherwise.

Trying the few respirations techniques Hermione had shown him to calm his breathing he prepared himself to open the door with a thousand apologies on his lips. But those died fast once he caught sight of blond hair.

A particular tone of blond.

Malfoy blond.

No, no no no nononon—

He thought he had left that behind when he had been kindly forced to abandon Hogwarts. In fact, leaving that behind might have been the only good thing about transferring schools.

Draco Malfoy, along with Dudley, had been Harry’s tormentor throughout middle school. He was the epitome of a bully, making Harry’s life miserable with taunts, insults, and relentless pranks. The memories of those years were etched deep in Harry’s psyche, and the sight of Malfoy brought them rushing back in a flood of dread.

Harry had hoped for a fresh start at this new school, a chance to escape his past and forge new connections. But now, it seemed like his past was catching up to him, and he wasn't prepared for the emotional turmoil it was going to unleash. 

His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to avoid eye contact with Malfoy. 

Panic welled up inside him, and he felt like he was suffocating. He had to get away, find a place to collect himself.

He could feel the stares of the other students, they made his skin itch. He hated attention, he hated people looking at him. It never meant anything good when they did.

He knew the teacher said something disapproving about his entrance and he managed to mutter an apology pointedly avoiding piercing grey eyes and stumbled through the rows of chairs of the classroom, his vision swimming with anxiety. 

He leaned against a desk, clutching his chest, desperately trying to calm his racing heart and the next thing he remembers is sitting on an uncomfortable white chair.

But the memories of Malfoy’s cruelty continued to torment him. The names he had been called, the humiliation he had endured—it was all too much to bear. 

His breathing grew shallow and erratic, and spots danced before his eyes. The world seemed to spin around him, and he felt himself losing control.

Harry honestly didn’t hear a thing the new teacher said. He only managed to grasp his new homeroom teacher name, and it was because it was neatly written on the blackboard in a fancy calligraphy.

Terius Baronsworth.

Harry felt, had been feeling for the last months, and he would dare to say that ever since he had memory, like he was losing control. 

It didn’t matter what he did or how he did it, it was always wrong.

It started at home, if he could even call the number four of privet drive a home. 

He hadn’t understood at first, and if he was honest with himself he never would, why did their uncles hate him for. It had stung, would always do, that he wasn’t worthy of their love, but he had come to learn, after many insults and remarks and a few hits, that he, in their eyes, would never be.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t deserving of love— even if he had days he couldn’t manage to make himself believe it. 

It wasn’t Harry they hated. How could they hate him, when they didn’t even know him, when most of the days they pretended he didn’t exist except when they needed him.

Just what Harry represented, what Harry meant to them. 

They didn’t hate his habit of biting his lip when nervous, or him humming random melodies that had stuck in his head from the few times he heard the radio. They didn’t hate how sometimes he snuck out and fed stray cats, they didn’t hate how he dug his nails into his palms when he was overwhelmed. 

They didn’t hate the things that made him Harry, not really. They just hated them because he did them, because they had to put up with them when they didn’t want to. 

And so Harry had reached the conclusion that he couldn’t do a thing to make them love him or at least like him. There wasn’t a single thing he could change that would make them modify their opinion of him, because it would still be something that he did and that was enough reason for them to hate it.

And that was what he had to live with. It would never be up to him to change it, no many nights he cried himself to sleep muffling his sobs on his already pillow wishing someone would look at him and see him. 

Wishing that his family loved him.

No matter how many times he took his glasses to not see their hateful looks and pretend the blurry forms were instead looking at him with adoration. 

He had learned his limitations, accepted his reality but now it felt like the room was spinning while he was trying just to fill in all the gaps. 

And failing miserably. 

Harry had learned to deal with what he had. But now, now everything was new and he didn’t have a Hermione to catch him. 

Now he was alone, the fragile and precarious safety net he had painfully and slowly sewed was unraveling in his hands and Harry didn’t know if he had enough thread to build another or if he even had enough strength to do so. 

Why would he do it if it was going to break again. Nothing good ever lasted when it came to him.

The glimpse of pale blond hair he could see only served as a reminder of that. Something to make him understand that it was hopeless to hope when every time he was dragged back with no way to escape.

Lately it seemed that he couldn’t catch a break, it was like he was watching himself doing things but had no control over them, he heard noise around him but he wasn’t able to understand a single thing, his head was spinning and he was gasping desperate for air.

Harry was vaguely aware of people gathering around him, their voices distant and muffled. But when a hand touched his shoulder he couldn’t help but flinch, and face his seatmate and the owner of said hand. 

Pretty chocolate-hued curls— Brown hair, not blond— framed sharp and piercing golden eyes that were focused on him. He was saying something but Harry couldn’t listen. He tried to, but everything was happening so fast. He just wanted to curl up under a blanket and cry but he was distantly aware that he was in a classroom and he was probably making the worst impression. 

Suddenly something was thrust in front of him and Harry had to blink a few times to manage to decipher they were four fingers.

This time Harry managed to understand what the soft voice of his pretty seatmate was saying “How many fingers am I holding up?” But it was already too late, Harry was too far gone to respond.

He would have liked to answer but his world became black and sounds of the world grew distant. His seatmate’s soft voice was the last thing he heard before he swooned, collapsing into the arms of those who had come to his aid.