Harry stayed there on the floor, freezing water still rolling down his bare skin, for many hours after Draco stormed out. He couldn't bring himself to leave the unforgiving cold water.

When he began to sneeze and feel feverish, Harry left the painful chill of the showers to return to the common room where his friends were waiting anxiously.

"Harry!" Hermione exclaimed as Harry appeared exiting the portrait hole.

"Where have you been mate?" Ron demanded, then Harry sneezed with such ferocity that several first years in the nearby armchairs jumped.

Harry continued to walk past his friends and up to the dormitory. He past the beds of Ron, Dean, and Seamus and when he got to his own four-poster, he closed the hangings and sagged back onto the pillows sobbing.

Ron entered the room with the profound door slam.

"Well me and Hermione love the way you paying attention to us!" Ron said sarcastically, as he ripped open the hangings but his face changed suddenly when he saw that Harry was crying for the first time in Ron's memory.

"Oh, Harry are…are you ok?" Ron asked considerably more concerned with Harry than he had been the last time he was in the hospital wing. This sensitive side of Harry was a little frightening to someone who had only ever seen the hero. Harry sneezed again, this time falsely, to try and stifle the sob he had just uttered.

"Oh yeah," he sniffs, "I'm just great!" mustering up enough enthusiasm to make this remark somewhat fierce.

"Harry what's wrong?" Ron asked, now desperate to get anything useful out of his tearful friend.

Harry did not respond, but instead pulled the hangings together in Ron's face and cemented them together with a spell.

Ron stormed out of the dormitory-all worry for his friend had been forgotten-cursing Harry's new "attitude changes" under his breath. He stumbled down to the bottom of the stairs where Hermione paced nervously.

"Is he okay, Ron? What happened to him?" Hermione was frantic, she too was afraid for this new side of her old friend.

"You know what? If you want to try to get anything out of Harry you can go up there and let him blow your head off. But if you wish to remain intact, I would wait a few hours before you try to interact with that bastard," explained Ron loudly, not even trying to mask the anger behind his words.

Up in the dormitory, Harry had stopped trying to hold back any of his sadness and was now crying so much his blankets were drenched in his salty tears. He longed to take back the things he had said to cause Draco so much pain, which in turn had caused him so much pain. Since he couldn't very well change the past he sought for another way relieve his emotional anguish. In such a state, he could not possibly go and try to apologize. Not that Malfoy would accept an apology from me.

He could only think of one way to alleviate pain of this magnitude, the only way he ever had. Harry place his wand at the seam of the curtains to remove the spell, and turned to his bedside table. He opened the drawer with such agility that, for once, it did not squeak. Once he had found what he was looking for, he withdrew his hand with a small pocket knife gleaming in the semi-darkness of dusk.

Harry turned to face the end of his bed again and slowly raised his seemingly uninjured hand and rested it upon his bent knees. Upon further examination of his palm, he could make out the marks of days past, four in all. He had one for the day that he first knew what actually happened to his parents, one for the day he unknowingly lead Cedric to his death, one for the day he had taken a risky chance that ended in the death of the only parental figure he had ever known, Sirius Black, and the last was for the day he had kept quiet, not for lack of trying to be heard, as his mentor, Albus Dumbledore, was killed by an alleged friend. These are the reminders that those atrocities were my fault and this one and the next one will mean the same thing.

He drew the knife up a few inches higher than his hand and brought it down slowly slicing his scarred flesh, so that it bled anew. The surrounding skin was now covered in the red of his blood and small vermillion drops were staining his clothes and sheets. Harry could feel the pain of his encounter with Draco sliding away. Now he only felt this pain. And it doesn't hurt half as much. He stared at his bleeding hand with a morbid fascination.

Dropping the hand, he got out of bed as slowly and quietly as possible so as to not forewarn those downstairs of his movement and crossed the room to the sinks near Dean's four-poster. Before rinsing the blood down the drain, Harry took a short take of the oozing liquid. Best not to waste all of it.

Once his cut was clean and had stopped most of the bleeding, Harry returned to bed and lay upon the now spotted sheets. Too many thoughts ran through his mind for tonight's sleep to be natural, so, deciding he would think about everything tomorrow, he delved back into his drawer to retrieve the leftover Dreamless Sleep Draught he kept there and downed a mouthful. Almost instantly he could feel himself drifting away from everything: the pain, the heartache, all was lost in a torrent of nothingness…