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The Serpent's Gaze, Book One: Hatching Snakes	By : DictionaryWrites Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 2459 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and the characters therein belong to JK Rowling; I'm playing in the sandbox, as it were, whilst claiming no ownership and making no money.

Chapter List
- 12
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- 14
Harry goes to bed at nine after eating his fill at the feast that night, and he tosses and he turns. His bed is too hot, but when he kicks off his blankets, it's too cold, and the lake is too distracting, but lying with his eyes closed is too boring. At one, he gets out of bed, gets himself a glass of water, drinks it, and goes back to bed. At three, he closes his curtains. At four, he opens them again. At five, he goes into the common room, jogs on the spot for ten minutes as quietly as he can, and returns to his dormitory.
He sleeps until seven.
The next night is worse. He sleeps, and then he wakes up, and can't sleep for ages, and then sleeps for what can't even be ten minutes before he wakes up.
The third night he cries.
The fourth night he spends half of the night in the bath, and wakes up in cold bath water at two in the morning.
He can't sleep. He can't sleep. How can he sleep?
---
“What, are you at his beck and call?” Draco demands as Harry gets up at breakfast, and Harry huffs, staring at the other boy in disbelief. He doesn't have the patience for this, doesn't want to listen to Draco being stupid and cruel for no reason.
“Draco, he just asked for me and Hermione to come down and see him. Hagrid's a nice man. Stop being such a posh, stuck-up little twit all the time – it's the reason you'll never make any friends that aren't after your money or your influence, and while you'll end up marrying some shrew who hates your guts.” Draco stares at him, obviously floored by the harsh response. Half the first year Slytherins are staring unabashedly with him, but none of them seem able to say anything, their mouths wide open. It's not just the first years, either – there are third years and two fifth years that are looking at Harry with the same mingled horror and uncertainty.
Harry doesn't feel the slightest hint of embarrassment as he walks away from the table, giving Hermione a little wave and gesturing for her to come over to him. He's too tired to feel guilty. Draco's this snooty all the time, and Harry normally doesn't respond to it, but today? He's exhausted, actually, and hasn't really slept for the past few days, for the past week and a half – he keeps thinking about all the faces in the mirror, how he and Hermione had been in that little room for hours and hours.
It's not that he wants to find the mirror again. If it was that, Hermione wouldn't be able to sleep either, but she's sleeping just fine. It's not the actual idea of the mirror, or being able to look at his family like that again: that's not the problem.
What upsets him, what scares him, what's kept him awake the last three nights, is the fact that a simple mirror kept him unaware of himself for six whole hours, and he never even suspected, never even considered, never even thought that what might be happening was less than normal.
Dumbledore had found them, but that wasn't the point. Why did a thing like that even exist? Why was it in a school? Why had it affected him and Hermione so much? Even when he sleeps for a scant hour at a time, he has horrible nightmares, and it seems like the less he sleeps the more his scar aches and pangs in his classes.
“Hagrid wants us,” he says, and Hermione frowns at him as they walk out of the castle and down towards Hagrid's hut. They have a half hour before they need to head to their afternoon classes, and when they arrive Hagrid ushers them quickly into his little, wooden cabin.
Said cabin is hot.
The heat hits Harry in the face as soon as he and Hermione enter, and he gasps for breath, settling himself shakily down in one of the chairs by Hagrid's fireplace, which is far, far hotter than it ever has been.
“What are you doing, Hagrid?” Harry asks dully, staring into the blazing fire. It hurts his eyes, but after three days of barely any sleep, everything does.
“Oh,” Hagrid says, grinning and rubbing his hands together, and Hermione moves up beside Harry, leaning down and peering into the fire.
“Oh my God, Hagrid, you haven't,” Hermione says, and Harry glances at her before staring into the fire with a bit more concentration. There's a rounded sheen in the fire, as if something is in the-
“Hagrid,” Harry says slowly, trying to force his exhausted brain into basic function. “That's not, uh, a dragon egg, is it?”
“Yep!” the groundskeeper proclaims proudly. Harry's entire body seems to say Oh, God, but his mouth can't really work out the words.
“Oh, right,” Harry says dimly, “Is it going to hatch soon?”
“Next few days, I reckon,” Hagrid says, but the pride is beginning to slip away from his face. “You alright, Harry?”
“Mmm,” Harry nods his head. He and Hermione take some tea, with Hermione looking concernedly at him the whole time – Harry is so tired he doesn't even realize he's about to put one of Hagrid's rock cakes into his actual mouth, and Hermione has to grab his wrist at the last second to stop him from breaking a tooth.
“You shouldn't come to class, Harry,” Hermione says, examining Harry in a way that makes Harry feel annoyed, but in a detached way, like he can't really get in touch with the feeling. His whole body feels heavy, like it's felt for the last week, and he feels hot and he feels cold, and he wants to sleep, but he knows he can't.
“I'm fine,” Harry repeats, mouth functioning on autopilot, and he filters into the Potions classroom behind her. Snape stands at the blackboard, hands behind his back: in neat, scrawling hand-writing across the board, the potions ingredients and instructions for that day's potions are plainly legible.
Harry stops for a second, reading through the lines and lines of white chalk. The potion has no title, and Harry guesses they're supposed to work out what the potion does by the end of the lesson. Harry's eyes scan over the lines slowly, stuntedly, and after a second or two the lines seem to blur together in a way that frustrates him. Why won't anything work today? Why?
“Potter?” he hears a voice say, and he ignores it, trying to focus on the board. Beetle eyes. Flobberworm mucus. Beetle eyes. Flobberworm mucus. Beetle eyes- aren't there any other ingredients in the bloody potion? “Potter?” The board tilts, and Harry feels a strong, bony set of fingers tighten on his shoulder, stopping the board tilt any further to the side. Harry feels limp, and his vision is darkening at its edges.
“Flobberwormmm-” Harry says blearily, and a falling sensation runs sickeningly through his body as he drops. Everything's so dark, and everything's so heavy.
When Harry opens his eyes, he's laid on the floor, on his back, and Snape is looking down at him. His hair hangs around his head in limp, slightly greasy curtains, and from his position Harry can see into the nostrils of his slightly hooked nose. He giggles. Snape frowns, black eyes widening in alarm.
“Can you hear me, Potter?”
“Yessir,” Harry says. “I can see up your nose, sir.” Snape's eyes close for a second or two, and he looks like he's suppressing the urge to snap Harry's windpipe as there's a titter around the classroom, disembodied and strange. Even lying back as he is, unmoving, Harry feels dizzy and detached, sick to his stomach and floaty.
“Be quiet, Potter,” Snape advises, and he glances up. Harry tries to follow his gaze, but the movement makes his head hurt, and he closes his eyes tightly. “Take him to the Infirmary. Mr Malfoy informs me he hasn't been sleeping well, and I suspect sleep deprivation is the spell's cause.”
“What spell is it, sir?” asks a soft, curious voice. Harry hears an exasperated sigh, not from Snape, but from Hermione.
“He means a fainting spell, Lavender, not a magic one.”
“Oh, right,” Lavender Brown says, obviously annoyed at the Slytherins' laughter, and Harry feels himself dip down again as his body begins to move. Thank God, he thinks. Levitation was making his head lurch horribly.
- 12
- 13
- 14
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The Serpent's Gaze, Book One: Hatching Snakes