Counting

Counting

Eight... nine... ten... eleven... twelve...

Harry paused for just a moment, resting his arm before starting the next count of twelve. He closed his tired eyes; he had been counting all day and his head needed to rest.

He looked up quickly when he heard a clatter, but realized Ron had only dropped his wand. He watched as Ron went for it and tripped, cursing and falling. He didn't have the energy to pick himself up. No one had any energy. Tonight would mark one day since they last ate. Harry looked around at his surroundings- just this seemingly endless wall and the dusty ground. Nothing broke the endless stretch of gray-brown except his two best friends a little down the way.

Hermione was trying to pull Ron up, laughing a weak laugh that barely reached Harry's ears. It wasn't real laughter. It couldn't be. They had forgotten what real laughter was. Ron and Hermione were the only things that kept Harry from forgetting everything entirely.

Hermione planted a kiss on top of Ron's head, and with an effort, he stood up and turned back to the wall. The smile faded off of Hermione's face as she sank back into the monotony of the task at hand. Harry didn't blame her. This wall was in the middle of nowhere; they were probably in a desert of some sort, and it was only by Hermione's knowledge that they could move on. Every brick that made up the wall had a rune on it, and it took all of Hermione's information from her Ancient Runes classes to decipher them. It seemed they all had a number on them, a number from one to twelve, in some sort of twisted pattern. It was hard to keep counting.

But they had to keep counting. Most of the runes were numbers, but some were words. Harry wondered if Voldemort had written some of these to throw the reader off. Twelve across, twelve down, twelve backwards... the same runes were in Harry's mind so that he could recognize some, but when a picture popped up he didn't know, he had to call Hermione over. He could almost feel Voldemort laughing at him, mocking him, telling him how he couldn't even count. He had to counteract that feeling. He had to count.

He remembered learning about the gross in school. It seemed so long ago. Dudley had punched him twelve times, each day, for twelve days. Uncle Vernon had been so proud that Dudley managed to work what he had learned in school into his 'extra curricular activities.' And here Harry was, a whole new life later, counting those same twelve numbers as he had done in his books. Twelve after twelve after twelve... it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

But it did matter. It mattered because this will be the fourth Horcrux. They were getting closer. The runes, the numbers were counting down towards a world without Voldemort. But sometimes, Harry couldn't help but feel as if the numbers were counting down his life.

Perhaps there was a draining sort of spell on the bricks, designed to force the reader to give up, to simply disintegrate away into the dust and sand that covered the floor. Perhaps he would be here counting until he blew away in the wind. He wished Ron and Hermione would go, go somewhere with sun and color and feeling. Save themselves.

But he knew he had to move, to get up and fight back. He had to count to find the Horcrux, had to count to change the world. Such a trivial thing, learned at the youngest of ages, being used as a way to save everyone.

Harry couldn't afford to lose anymore time. He didn't know what would happen when he found the final brick that the Horcrux was behind, or what new challenges would present themselves. He just knew that he had to keep counting, for everyone's sake. Wearily, he lifted his wand to continue marking the bricks he already counted.

One... two... three... four...

Fin