Harry

Harry climbed the steps two at a time, aware of the muscles in his legs working to elevate him above the main hall of the library. He paused and glanced down, intrigued by the intricacies of every soul. The tilt of a man's head, the creased shirt pocket, the scratching of a beard. He continued up the stairs, smiling faintly at the lady-with-the-white-hair whom he saw here every so often. His favoured bench at the top of the stairs was taken by two young men, staring intently at a laptop screen. He went to the chair by the second window, sat down and closed his eyes. There was a gentle tapping sound of a keyboard, a rustling of coats and the slow, woody sound of an elderly man's breathing. The window next to him had been left half-open and he could feel a draught which sent a slight chill over his balding head. He stopped. He did nothing but take in his surroundings. 

After a certain amount of time he stood up, swinging his bag back over his shoulder. He left the library. He tried to hold on to the feeling of calm content, but it was seeping away from his mind, and the more he tried to grasp onto the sensation, the more the thin wisps of peace escaped from his being. Harry's shoe scuffed an empty bottle on the pavement and the noise seemed to jar with something in the air. His forehead began to crease into a frown. Back in the office a group of men were giggling, sharing an anecdote of their weekend. Harry sat down at his desk and took out his papers. And then the world seemed to tilt and fall away, somehow shrinking into a smaller dimension at the same time as being stretched into a grotesque exaggeration of reality. The metallic clunk of filing cabinets became distant, as if observed from behind a screen; yet at the same time amplified, intruding the quiet of Harry's mind. The work took all of his attention, sucking away all appreciation of the tiny details surrounding him. There was not the space to think. There was not the time to see, to feel, to hear. The lights were neither comforting nor harsh, merely an unacknowledged presence. The other members of the office were neither friendly nor annoying, merely a group of limbs and brains too focused to truly be alive. The hours passed slowly, dragging Harry through every stage of exhaustion until at last it was time to leave.