Harry Potter and the Eyes of the Dragon

Chapter III: The Fight



He was so bloody tired of being The-Boy-Who-Lived’s shadow! Ron looked at Harry napping peacefully in the spare time they had between mealtime and their Transfigurations class that evening. Is not that he didn’t want him as a friend anymore, in fact, their friendship was the thing he worshiped the most. But what he couldn’t stand was the role Harry was forced to play day in and day out. He couldn’t stand the way he always ended up second when Harry was with him, but most of all, he couldn’t stand himself. He was the funny boy, the best wizard to spend time and yet invisible to the eyes of the one he wanted to be seen by. He felt he was just a good friend to Hermione, and lately she was paying more attention to stupid-prick-Malfoy than to him! Bloody hell, was he really that unattractive?


He got up from his four-poster and looked at himself in the mirror, examining his every feature. His red hair had grown longer over the last months and the strands on the front were beginning to fall on his face; he looked at his long nose above his pink thin lips. He frowned at the sight of a small chocolate stain from the pudding he had ate about half hour ago near his mouth and wiped it off.


Harry snorted behind him, bringing Ron out of his mental trap. Oh, and that’s another thing, he thought to himself, everyone sees me like this simple overgrown child. Why can’t they realize I have a racing mind that drives me insane every time I stop and think about my own bloody life! Everyone knows Harry has problems and can’t deal with them without screaming to his friends or something, but you don’t need an incredibly powerful dark wizard who has your name at the top of his black list to have problems. Though they are mundane issues the ones I have, they’re still there, bugging me until I get depressed and start up with the silly jokes again.


He took his cloak, which was lying on the floor somewhere in the mess they called a room. He had to get out of there. He stopped his way out when he already had his hand on the door knob; Harry was babbling in his sleep.


‘Leave him alone…’, Harry whined.


Ron could see a single tear run down his cheek and fall dead on the mattress. His heart flipped. He hated witnessing Harry’s brief but strong moments of weakness. He walked toward his bed and woke him up.


‘Harry… are you OK?’, he asked when his best friend opened his eyes.


He rolled around and touched his chest desperately underneath his school shirt. He closed his eyes in relief and sighed.


‘It was just a nightmare, Harry’, Ron tried to calm him down. He could see he was sweating and his breathing was faster than normal.


‘It probably was, because I can remember every bloody second of it’, Harry whispered.


‘What was it?’, Ron asked fretfully, unable to even imagine what sort of mind-torture he had just been through.


Harry opened his mouth to tell Ron what he had dreamt but he found he didn’t want to see his friends reaction, didn’t want to fill his worry-free mind with his chaos of a life.


‘I… don’t want to talk about it… now’, he said.


Ron didn’t move from the edge of his bed. He was staring at him widely, his eyes full of pity? Was that what his best friend was showing? Pity?


‘I will tell you later, you know…’, he added. He really didn’t want to, but he would’ve said anything to make his friend stop looking at him the way he was.


‘Sure, Harry. You know that, whenever you’re ready, I’ll be right here’, he offered sincerely.

‘I know.’


Harry got up and took some clean clothes from his trunk.


‘Where are you going?’


‘Take a shower’, he replied without raising his gaze from the open trunk.


Ron saw him take a few steps to the door.


‘Leave him alone…’, Ron said in a whisper making Harry stop walking suddenly. ‘You babbled in your sleep. What did that mean?’


Harry turned around in one fast movement. His right hand was clutching something in his robes pocket, and Ron knew instantly it was his wand.


‘I said I’d tell you later, didn’t I? Will you just leave me alone?!’, he was yelling at him hotly.


‘But Harry, I just…’


‘If you want to play the good friend, you will keep your But-Harrys to yourself and let me go take a bloody shower in peace! Are you a good friend, Ron?’


‘I want to help you, Harry! This is obviously disturbing you and you insist on keeping it all to yourself! It’s not healthy!’


Harry turned his back on him and slammed the door behind him making Ron flinch from the noise. He roared and kicked Harry’s trunk to release his anger.



***



Vapour filled the boys’ bathroom as hot water ran in the shower whilst Harry washed his face and undressed. It was almost impossible for him to think about anything but his nightmare; it was tormenting him.


He entered the shower without even feeling the temperature of the water. He nearly screamed when the boiling hot water touched the skin on his chest. He backed off instantly with his eyes closed. It made him recall the pain that the whip from his dream had caused.


He mixed the hot and cold water and waited before getting under it again. He rubbed his wrists, where thick chains had attached him to a wall. It had all felt so bloody real! And then an evil laugh as the whip fell on his chest again and again.


He screamed and fell to his knees, crying out every felling of angst he had been keeping in since Ron had woken him up.



***



Hermione sat in between of her two best friends during Transfigurations class. She was very much aware of the tension in the air. Every time Ron and Harry looked at each other, they’d look away; they only talked to Hermione and every once in a while they insulted the other and laugh at the other’s failures attempting to transform a piglet into a frog.


‘Would you both please explain what’s wrong?’, she exclaimed, tired of their childish behaviour.


‘I won’t explain if he doesn’t’, Ron said.


‘It’s stupid and it has nothing to do with you, Hermione. So stay out of it and you’ll be fine’, Harry told her, sounding more like a warning than an explanation.


‘Harry, I don’t know if you’ve noticed how much I hate seeing the two of you like this. So if it bothers me, then it does concern me.’


‘Hermione, do stay out of it. This is between me and Harry.’


They only realized just now that the whole class and Professor McGonagall had stopped talking and working, and were all looking at them.


‘I really hope the discussion you’re having is about either piglets or frogs’, said McGonagall angrily. ‘If it’s not, please, leave it for later.’


Hermione returned to her fully-transformed piglet, even though she had nothing further to do with it.


The trio didn’t say another word for the last fifteen minutes of class and when they left the classroom Hermione asked them to work things out and headed to the library.


Harry and Ron returned to the common room sending death glares to each other. Harry saw Ron sit down near the fire so he went to his room. The redhead hesitated before getting up and following him.


‘Oh, it’s you again’, said Harry in a hurtful tone when Ron opened the door, which he slammed after the other boys’ comment. Harry was lying on his bed lazy looking.


‘Do you take me seriously, Harry?’


‘What is that supposed to mean?’, he said as he rested his body onto his elbows.


‘Do you care about me and our friendship at all?’


‘Of course, I do, you idiot!’


‘Then tell me, why do you keep blocking yourself? Why do you always reject me when all I want to do is help you?’, Ron asked with his arms crossed and an inquisitive look in his eyes.


‘I didn’t mean to reject you, Ron. But you should know by now when do I need to be alone. Today was one of those days and you were pushing me into telling you about that stupid nightmare, because that’s all it was! A bloody nightmare!’


‘How do you know? Are you just going to discard the possibility that it might not have been a nightmare because, unlike the other times, you remembered what it was about?’


‘Believe me, this has nothing to do with Voldemort’s thoughts!’, Harry yelled. Ron tried to hide his reaction to the dark wizard’s name.


‘Then why the bloody hell don’t you want to tell me what it was?!’


‘I was being tortured, OK? I could see, hear and feel a whip falling on my chest over and over again!’, Harry’s face was red and his eyes were watering again.


‘Shit…’, was all Ron could say. He was shocked and couldn’t even think. He walked towards Harry and held him tightly. ‘I’m so sorry…’


‘Yeah, well… you were worried, I get it.’


‘Are you sure he wasn’t…?’, Ron asked timidly.


‘Yes, Ron. He wasn’t even there, OK?’


‘OK.’


‘You know, I don’t want to talk about it, so what do you say if we play a game of wizard’s chess?’, said Harry, happy to have fixed everything up with his best friend.


‘Sure, mate’, Ron told him beaming. ‘Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t tell Hermione about it.’


‘Thanks, Ron.’