𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗲, harry potter

˗ˋ 86

CHAPTER EIGHTY SIX
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-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH HARRY 
FEELS BAD

. . .

"I don't know why I'm disappointed." Harry found that his voice didn't sound like himself, far too hearty as he turned away from Jane. "I don't even know if I am disappointed or not. I feel... weird."

"That's okay." Jane replied, folding her hands diplomatically on her knees. She fiddled with lilac nail polish that had bled over her cuticles when she was trying to paint them the night before, using Harry's head to rest on as he laid on her chest. "Did you expect to get it?"

"I hadn't even thought of it." Harry replied, honestly. He hadn't even remembered that prefects were assigned at the beginning of their fifth year, despite knowing several over the years. In his first year, Percy was a new prefect and moved through the ranks to become head boy in his third year. Cedric had been a prefect, Cho was prefect, as confirmed by Mrs Weasley, Bill and Charlie had been prefects.

But he had been too anxious about getting expelled that he had forgotten all about it. He didn't even think he had considered that he could be chosen for it. Now, after finding that his two best friends had been chosen for the position, he felt something sinking in his stomach and he hated it. He really hated it. 

"I think-"

There was a knock on the door, Hermione slipped in. "Sorry - sorry." She turned pink. "I meant to ask, can I borrow Hedwig? So I can tell my mum and dad? They'll be really pleased- I mean, prefect is something they can understand -"

"Yeah." Harry nodded. His voice sounded thick and unlike him still, and he got up from the bed, balancing precariously on the edge of the chair to retrieve Hedwig's cage and handing it to Hermione without looking at her. She thanked him and shuffled out, sharing a friendly smile at Jane as Harry distracted himself by bending over his pile of laundry that Mrs Weasley had supplied and moving it towards his open trunk at the end of his bed, ensuring that it remained folded and neat.

The door closed behind him and Harry continued his work. He hated that he felt like this, and new the general honesty that seemed to come from being around Jane would completely betray him if he met her eyes. Because he hated that he felt that way, and he knew that feeling of jealousy in this situation was only a bad thing.

He layed a pair of folded grey school trousers over his jeans when he first saw the bright spark of ginger hair peering at him over the footboard of the bed. Harry glanced up for only a moment to see her chin balanced on her hand as she layed her hands on the wood. "What?" He mumbled. 

"It's okay to feel disappointed, even if you didn't remember the position existed." Jane said, her voice an almost sing-song tone with the gentleness she expressed. "After everything you've been through, I think it's best that you have a year to focus on your school work, but really it doesn't matter what I think. I also think that maybe... there's the potential you feel a little... left out."

Harry pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Why would I feel left out?" He asked cautiously, feeling stupid that the thought of it resonated with what he was feeling. 

"It always happens in groups of three. Sometimes two hang out more than with the other person, sometimes, like now, two people get something but there isn't a place for the third." Jane said. "Ron and Hermione are prefects, and you aren't." 

"My mum was." Harry said. "And both of them were Head boy and girl." 

"Well, Harry, as much as your life is influenced by them, you aren't your parents. I doubt that your mum had to deal with Voldemort trying to kill her every year at school, or partake in a competition that hasn't happened for centuries." Jane continued. "Harry.... Harry - please look at me."

His hands wavered over a knitted jumper before he met her eyes. "Yeah?" He sounded hopeful now instead of unlike himself, as if Jane could manage to make everything right. 

"It's okay to feel disappointed." She said. "I don't think it means that people don't trrust you to play the part-"

"How did you know I was thinking that?" His eyes widened, finally leaving his obsessive packing as he came to sitt next to her. "Honestly... I don't know why I'm disappointed. I think... it sounds bad... but I asked myself that if I remembered, what would I think. And I don't think my mind was lying when it said that I expected to get the position... does that make sense?"

"If you'd remembered, you would have expected to get it." Jane reassembled his words in a way that actual make sense. "I get the feeling that Ron's sort of been the underdog in this whole thing. The type of character you could call comic relief. Hermione's the incredibly smart one, you're the Boy-Who-Lived and because of that you've both been taken notice of. Ron... not so much."

"I'm an awful friend." Harry's head dropped when he realised that she was exactly right. "How can I think that about-"

"You might not have thought that, but your subconcious has and has also taken note of it to use against you in times like this." Jane reached over and placed a hand over these. "Are you happy that Ron's prefect?"

"Yes. Of course I am." He replied.

"Well, there you go. You're happy for him, disappointed that you didn't get it yourself, the predicament happens each and every day."  She shrugged. It was simple as that. And she pressed a kiss to his cheek and sat up. "I'll help you finish packing."

And Harry found himself what the hell he was going to do without her understanding until Christmas.

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a/n
hi, i have a regulus
fic out with a similar
summer-themed plot
to this! <33