Exposure

He had always been able to feel the eyes on him somewhere between his shoulderblades, like a hot coal under his skin. People watched Harry as though they'd never seen him before, like he was some strange, unknown creature that might vanish if they so much as blinked, like a vapour trembling in the midday sun. If he thinks about it, Harry can tell you how many people are watching him at any one moment, how many eyes are trickling down his back and fingering idly through the locks of his hair and across his weather-tanned flesh, and he'll be nearly right nine times out of ten.

So it is strange that it's now, out in the back of beyond with no-one but Ron and Hermione to look at him (though most of their time is spent looking meaningfully at each other), that Harry feels exposed.

Wading through a field of golden corn as the sun sets and turns the world to amber glory Harry feels nobody looking at him and is scared, no searching eyes touching his skin and enveloping him like a shroud of sight that says, 'we know where you are'. He is alone, and that means anything could happen and no-one will see in time to warn him.

Somewhere behind him in the corn he hears Ron and Hermione giggling quietly over something, something - he doesn't know what, but something that has distracted them long enough to leave him all alone in the world for maybe the first time in seven years. The furry ends of the cornstalks tickle against his outstretched fingers like little paintbrushes and then it is dusk, the sun is beneath the horizon and it's dimmer, maybe safer or maybe more dangerous or maybe both.

"Harry? We should stop soon," Hermione calls out, but he doesn't turn to look at her, just stops where he stands and gazes out at the rolling hills and sighs in a long, silent exhalation. "Harry?"

If he answers then he'll give away his location, give it away to the things that have been waiting for this kind of opening, this lack of audience.

"Harry!"

"Yes?" His voice is tetchy despite himself, giving away too much again. "Yes, I know. Just... let's be quiet, yeah? We might be trespassing." It's not as though they're in much danger from a muggle farmer, not when they have their magic to hide and help them, but it's the only reason he can give on short notice for wanting them to be quiet, quiet as the mice who are beginning to rustle in their little mouse nests, between poppies and cornflowers and the soft calls of birds in the night. He envies them their nests, warm and carefully woven and sweet-smelling, to curl up together in the warm and the dark and sleep the sleep of the untroubled, all whiskers and fur and bright dark eyes closed under golden eyelids.

"Are you alright, mate?" Ron asks as they walk on through the field, coming to the hedge and Harry glances both ways to try and see a stile but to no avail. "Harry?"

"Ssh!"

Harry likes it better at night, when he can hear all the animals and birds and insects and plants moving around him and watching him with eyes that are like protection. So he turns right towards the loudest rustling, the most eyes, and when he finds the stile it's like he was right to trust that the eyes will protect him, that being seen will protect him from things that would like to harm him unseen.

It is only in the barn they find to sleep in that Ron and Hermione finally get full sentences out of him, though he doesn't tell them about the eyes because then everyone will think he is mad, which he's not.

He's not mad. It's just that he's realised the horror movies are wrong, that when you feel like you're being watched then you should be more comfortable than this, than being left completely alone in the silent world with nobody watching your back, no crowd of onlookers who see foul play and stop it before you die. Harry suspects no-one else would understand.

Harry wonders if anyone cares.

Of course, as always, he is ultimately alone in this. He knows well enough that his friends would rather he was not watching them, not seeing the intimate little glances and touches and the way they glow around one another, because to them it is an intensely private thing. Harry wonders what it will take for them to realise that, if he's not watching them dance around one another pretending not to be, falling in love with each other and pretending not to be, they're too distracted to notice danger in time. But Harry can't afford to lose them, his one and only bastion of safe observors, so instead he faces away and listens with all his might, willing his ears to hear further, better, sharper than they ever have before. If only he'd learned to be an animagus like his father and Sirius (and that slimy rat) then he could have been a wolf, or maybe even a lion, or an eagle, whose hearing was almost as good as its sight.

So Harry listens, and waits, and pretends not to watch, and when he falls asleep he dreams of crowds and eyes upon him once again whether friendly or indifferent, like a shield he can't produce on his own.