The sky and I, we get along, but only when it rains. The sea and I, we get along, but only when it rains.
When waves turn rough and bitter grey,
and my eyes are made to be the same.
It was written in Dell's journal, but it wasn't her handwriting. The poem was signed by a William, which Harry guessed was probably this archrival of her's who owned the potions shop next to his favorite ancestor's once upon a time. In the seven journals he'd read over the past year since finding them, Dell had never once mentioned the man she loved to hate by name—calling him 'that man' or 'that rat-tailed cowlick' amongst other increasingly creative insults as the pages went on. She did seem to favor calling him a 'thick willy' which Harry was sure was supposed to be a derogatory comment on a piece of male anatomy but could also double as a very creative pun on his name if indeed it was true that this enemy was named William.
It had startled him to turn a page in the latest journal he was reading through and see handwriting that clearly wasn't Dell's in the pages that clearly she kept very close to her throughout her life. From what he'd gathered of this William character, he wasn't unlike Percy Weasley in how uptight he was (at least from Dell's perspective) but he clearly also had a devious, if not vindictive streak that outmatched the Wesley twins too. Or even Blaise.
In fact, Harry had started imagining this unnamed rival as a red-headed Blaise in his mind's eye which was incredibly weird but it kind of just fit too. Now that he had a name and had clearly stolen her journal to… write her poetry (?) Harry was also kind of imagining a Cedric Diggory kind of vibe to him.
Cedric was an upper year Hufflepuff that Hannah had a not-so-subtle infatuation with and she was the type of girl who would actually swoon if someone wrote her poetry. The guy wasn't that much older than them but he had a jawline cut from marble and suave coolness to him that Harry found entertaining—mostly because he'd heard Hannah go on about him for quite some time and given how it visibly annoyed Susan he would never not find that funny. He took extreme joy in asking Hannah to tell him more about Cedric's freckles just to see Susan's blood pressure rise and it was totally worth it.
But still. He had no idea if Cedric were the type of guy to write poetry but Hannah sure thought he was through her rose-tinted glasses, so Harry's mental image of this William fellow was getting odder by the second.
The clouds and I, we get along, but only when it rains. The sail and I, we get along, but only when it rains.
With rope-burn palms and stringy locks
to remind what won't be tamed.
While he'd been thankful Pomfrey kept him under to treat him after that last near-death experience of the school year, he also realized way too late that it also meant his remaining time at Hogwarts had gone from most of a week to a little under a day left very suddenly, and by the time he'd sat at the end of term feast he almost couldn't actually enjoy it from how much he was dreading the coming day. He'd had lunch at the Slytherin table and basked in how he actually felt like he belonged there now, even with most of them carefully avoiding the subject he knew was all on their minds.
Blaise had obviously made the whole house aware of what had happened even before Harry set foot out of the hospital wing, and Slytherins had complicated emotions about the dark lord. He wasn't the person they were going to talk to about it though, or even talk about it in front of him, so it kind of felt like there'd been an elephant at the table with them no one was talking about despite being otherwise actually willing to talk to him in general now.
They were willing to have him there, but that didn't mean he was going to be privy to things like that and he was quick to accept it. He had complicated emotions about that asshole dark lord too, and he wasn't about to go chatting with Theo about them despite liking the guy as a brand new friend now. He was still mulling over how to talk to Draco about it even, so he got it.
Draco had been… quiet, when he saw Pomfrey hand him a rather large box of potions and began taking him through which ones to take and when. While she didn't talk about what they were in front of another student, Draco loved potions and his godfather had been tutoring him for years before Hogwarts.
He knew.
He knew as soon as he saw them, because Harry saw his expression and there was no way he didn't know.
The blond didn't say anything about it despite it being very clear he knew, but as soon as Blaise and Theo had gotten out of earshot, he had very quietly told him to write every day over the summer. There were… complicated emotions in both of them and they were only eleven. While Harry thought himself so clever sometimes, even he knew there was no way he could actually talk about this, at least not well and definitely not in a meaningful way that would fix a damn thing, and he appreciated that Draco seemed self-aware enough to realize the same. Writing letters had always been easier for them too, for some reason. If they were going to talk and actually make progress with whatever… this was, it was likely going to be with a pen and paper, not spoken.
Actually talking about it seemed… so hard, right now.
And Harry couldn't spare the time to muster up the courage to talk about it now because he'd just spent all his energy and courage surviving a nightmare in the dark depths of this very school he loved so much and now had less than 24 hours to enjoy being here before he was going to be walking into a different sort of nightmare for the next couple months. So he did what he did so well and buried it, making a note to come back and dig it up when he was in a better place to think about such things. And maybe he would also include Draco in that mental exercise sometime but it was going to have to be his own battle first, and his friend would maybe help him deal with the aftermath when he finally got around to confronting this ugly, painful mess he was locking away for now.
He tried so hard to enjoy his last afternoon and the leaving feast, but when you try to have fun and make each moment last, suddenly it's not so fun anymore. He tried to eat but he really wasn't hungry after everything, and Gryffindor won the house cup, but he had literally never cared about that in any way so it really didn't make him feel much better. When it was announced he was mildly entertained by the filthy looks Montague received from his house, but as he was sitting at the Gryffindor table he only got a couple glimpses of it before his housemates got so rowdy and loud his head started to hurt. He even tried to finish the night off on a high note with treacle tart but the sugar on an otherwise empty stomach just made his headache worse.
Despite being miserable to do so, he called it an early night and thus slipped away his last hours at Hogwarts in a fitful sleep. He wanted to spend at least this last night with his dormmates goofing off, playing one last game of exploding snap or something—he desperately wanted to do that, but he knew he'd just be miserable there too as his headache got worse and the weariness he hadn't felt after just waking up in the hospital wing set in fully.
He didn't feel happy going to bed alone, but he knew he'd be unhappy with his friends who meant so much to him despite loving them and that would suck even worse. It was an all-around terrible situation and he defaulted on at least trying to make tomorrow better by catching some rest.
Not that it really fixed anything as he woke up the next morning still feeling horrible. He felt slightly better after taking his potions and brushing his teeth free of the taste, but it was a bad omen for this coming summer.
The wind and I, we get along, but only when it rains. The wake and I, we get along, but only when it rains.
A steady chaos, I traverse with care
that screams its song within my brain.
He was carefully saving his calming droughts so he hadn't taken one that morning as they got onto the train for home. They would only last a couple weeks before their stasis charms wore off so it was kind of a use-them-or-lose-them situation but he knew he would definitely need them more with his relatives than on a train with his friends. The unfortunate result though was that he did not feel good in the slightest.
Everyone was talking too loud, he couldn't focus for long periods of time on any one conversation, when he withdrew from conversations he felt bad for being antisocial but when he was part of it he felt awkward and annoyed by all the sounds and movement around him, he had a headache that was only getting worse, and his shoulders started to feel sore from the tension that was slowly mounting underneath his facade of calm without him noticing. The dread he felt for the train actually making it home, the desperation to enjoy what little time he had left and therefore ruining it by being too desperate, the slowly mounting irritation at everything around him…
And worst of all, as that he'd already burst into tears twice today and it wasn't even noon.
The first was all Hagrid's fault, who'd surprised him with a scrapbook of pictures of his parents.
His parents.
He'd only opened to the first page before he had exploded in tears, Hagrid being so alarmed he kind of crushed him in a hug so incredibly tight that Neville actually started wailing on Hagrid's arm to let him go before he suffocated from both the grip and the emotional meltdown he was having. They hadn't had a lot of time before Neville and Draco once again put aside their differences to all but drag him up onto the train less he be left behind (if only he could get away with that) so Harry knew he owned Hagrid a very nice thank you letter later which he hoped would be much better articulated than whatever had come out of his mouth at the time. He'd been so wrecked he actually couldn't remember what he'd said but he hoped it was gratitude and flattery.
He still wasn't over it, he knew. He'd never had pictures of his parents before, only seeing them for the first time in that fucking mirror, but this was so much better he—
No.
Make it back to private drive, lock himself in the shed, finally put that muggle-repelling ward stone to some use, and then he would let it all out. For now, he reeled it in and kept the book clutched tightly to his chest like it'd fly away like a bludger if he didn't keep tight hold of it.
He'd only finally put it into his bag during his second emotional breakdown of the day, when Blaise had come by to flaunt about his present giving skills again. He didn't know if he was being exceptionally obvious or Draco and Neville were used to reading his bullshit by now, but they both realized he was in no mood for dealing with people and after rotating around several cabins of all four houses alike and Harry getting overstimulated to the point of being rather bitchy honestly, they settled on an empty one for just the three of them and for once Harry was happy that the conversation was usually quiet and stilted between his Slytherin and Gryffindor friends. He was just in no mood to banter with Draco nor to poke and prod to get Neville out of his shell, so he was happy to just curl up on one of the benches and let Neville lean into him bodily while they leafed through Dell's journal and Harry informed him all about his favorite adopted ancestor as a lovely distraction from… everything. Draco had taken the other bench and reading a quidditch book minding his own business, his comfortable presence being enough and the fact that that was the most casual thing Harry had ever seen a Slytherin reading making the atmosphere even more relaxed.
Blaise had been ditched in one of the cabins they'd jumped around in earlier and was a spoiled brat who couldn't let that slide so of course he'd come to visit, even if he didn't have much to talk about. He'd settled for bragging about his gift again but Harry hadn't seen what was so great about them—they were two journals that were obviously of incredible quality, but still just journals. Theo had given him a journal for Christmas and thanks to Daphne he now knew what kind of underhanded insult that was in Slytherin-gift-giving-language, so he failed to see the wonderful thing about them.
Blaise had just rolled his eyes and demanded he take them out—which he did because he was curious where he was going with this, and then got his emotional stability wrecked for the second time in one morning when the tall Slytherin had revealed they were enchanted linked journals.Whatever you wrote in one, would appear in the other. Blaise had then very pointedly taken one back from him and shoved it in Draco's wide-eyed face all the while calling Harry incredibly thick headed, loudly.
It took him several seconds to realize the implications, and promptly burst out crying—again.
He'd jumped up and glomped the untouchable Slytherin in a tight hug and Blaise screamed bloody murder like he was being stabbed in true Blaise fashion—tossing him off and fleeing the sobbing Gryffindor with due haste. Draco had laughed brightly at that reaction before gathering himself to help Neville piece their friend back together after his second breakdown of the day, and thankfully playing around with the journals some had helped Harry get back to the calm atmosphere Blaise had ruined and mercifully it remained that way the rest of the trip to King's Crossing.
Overall, his journey home was… not a good one. There were some serious ups and downs and he was not fairing well at getting over any of them. The only saving grace was that Draco and Neville seemed fully there for him, although he recognized he was being selfish and not really paying attention to their reactions or attitudes for this odd train ride. He thought he was at least pretending to keep it together at least on the surface, but by how they were being nothing but polite and cordial to each other Harry knew he was probably a visible mess. They didn't like each other, and he knew that for certain—the fact they were pretending everything was fine and no one but Blaise had come to bother them meant that everyone knew nothing about this was fine at all.
Still.
The fact they were pretending for his sake meant everything.
He was going to need to be a less selfish friend in the future, but for now this was everything to him and he was so relieved to pretend they were all just so happy together because he really needed it right now. Because nothing was okay and if he started thinking too hard on that it would start to unravel until he was nothing but a bit of useless string on the ground.
He knew that time was coming, but just for now… this was all he could handle.
The sun and I, we get along, but our friendship will be strained, for I hate that lying liquid light, that stranger sea…
for it's the sky and I, we get along, but only when it rains.
The sea and I, we get along, but only when it rains.