Darkness of Souls

When Harry awoke again, he was laying on the conservatory floor with Petunia hovering over him and a headache fast approaching.



"Harry! Are you in pain? Can you see?" One might have thought she was actually concerned, but Harry knew better. If he hadn't woken up in time to go back to school, she would get a visit from a certain headmaster she rather wanted to avoid like the plague.



"'m fine," Harry mumbled, pushing himself upright and immediately regretting it. He grabbed onto the table to stop the world spinning around him.



Groaning, he lay back down again, clutching his head in both hands, the headache catching up with him. He clamped his eyes shut and regretted ever saying he was ok.



"Good, well you can get up then and start cooking!" Petunia's brisk manner was back in a second as she stood and made her way back across the sunny room and into the main house.



Harry sat up again, slowly this time hoping the world would stay still and the pounding oh his brain get fed up and go away. The ground stayed put, but his head still throbbed painfully with every step he made as he walked into the cool kitchen.



"I want you to cook Dudley's dinner and then go and pack for that school of yours!" Petunia instructed as soon as he had stepped through the door. "Don't want those freaks in my house any longer than necessary.



Harry grimaced at the reference to freaks and made his way over to the cooker, feeling that all he'd done all holiday was cook.



~*~*~



Not soon enough, the doorbell rang. Harry jumped up from where he had been sitting on the stairs only to have Vernon get there first.



"Boy!" He yelled as soon as the door was opened, "Get down here now!" The door slammed shut and the sound of many voices filled the hallway.



Harry ran downstairs, pulling his trunk after him and making the most awful racket as he did so.



"Boy!" Vernon yelled again, "Stop making that horrible racket!" Harry smiled at the use of the words he had just thought and jumped the last few steps without the trunk and then proceeded to lift it down, whilst trying to avoid being squashed by it.



"Potter," Moody greeted him shortly. "You ready?" Harry nodded in response and caught sight of Snape out of the corner of his eye. Anger and nausea swirled within him as he watched the older man twirl his wand between his fingers, looking very bored and completely uninterested in those surrounding him.



He pushed down the feelings, trying not to gag as he fought the acrid tang rising up his throat.



"Wotcher Harry, time to go!" Harry looked up and saw Tonks standing over him, her hair the trademark bubblegum pink and her eyes aqua. She grinned mischievously at him, like a small child with an idea, like how to get into the cookie jar.



He grinned back at the thought of Tonks as a hyperactive toddler hankering for cookies. It was an amusing thought, if only for a second before he was yanked away and out into the street.



~*~*~



"Harry!" Harry turned as was immediately engulfed in bushy brown hair. Hermione clung to him like a limpet asking how he was and what he had been doing.



As it had turned out, Hermione had spent the best part of the summer in France with Ron and her parents. Harry could guess, by the state of their swollen lips what they had been doing for most of their time there.



For a moment after he thought this, Harry felt rather like a third wheel around his two best friends and the now familiar feelings of anger and nausea filled his senses once again.



Shaking himself, Harry remembered that Ron and Hermione had every right to be together, and he shouldn't interfere.



With a forced smile, Harry excused himself and disappeared off upstairs to his room.



~*~*~



Life at Grimauld Place passed quickly for Ron and Hermione, who spent most of their time curled up together on the sofa, petting one another and kissing, but much slower for Harry, who spent the majority of his time, hidden away in his room, reluctant to leave it lest he walked into Ron and Hermione again. He was starting to feel nautious every time he saw them, making eyes at each other like the perfect cople that they were.



He was jelous, he still wouldn't admit it to anyone other than himself, and even that he did reluctantly, but he was jelous, jelous of the ease of his best friends' relationship, jelous that he could never find anyone to spend his life with the way they did. He was expected to carry on the Potter name, he had found out all about legacy in a book he found in the library at Hogwarts; he had to carry on the Potter name by marrying and producing a child, or several children, him being the last Potter alive.



It was times like this that he cursed the Wizarding community, muggles had ceremonys that let gays marry, as far as he could see, Wizards had none, and that left him thinking that he was unnatural, and dirty. Wizards obviously despised gays, and therefore, would despise him and then he would get no backup to win this war atall. Damn you Hogwarts he thought, cursing his Wizarding heratige.