Harry Potter and the Circle of Oblivion

A/N: So, we're getting near the end and I'm drawing all of it together in bits… the main event, you know. Sorry to drag you on, but I felt this transition was necessary to get me to the end…

“Ron!” Hermione pelted into the dorm, face flushed, sending several pajama clad boys flying behind their bed curtains. “Ron! Harry's awake! He's asking for us, come on!”

Ron sat dumbfounded for a moment and sprang into action. “Maybe wait for me to put my shoes on outside the room.” He pulled a sock on hurriedly and motioned toward Seamus, whose eyeballs were peeking out from between his curtain.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Seamus, they're just pants.” She turned on her heel with a, “Two seconds, Ron,” and was outside.

“Just pants! What would she do if I came barging into her room?” Seamus' face was pink, but Ron was out the door before anything else could be said.

“When did he wake up? Is he alright? Is he ill or groggy? Or…” Ron and Hermione were racing down the corridors trying not to cause a stir in the mostly sleeping castle.

“Please be quiet, Ron. Professor McGonagall came to get me less than five minutes ago. I don't know any more than you and your questions are making me nervous.”

The hospital wing had never felt so far away.

“Harry!” Hermione called out before she could see him.

“Hermione?” Came the feeble reply.

Seconds later she'd launched herself onto his beside and thrown her arms around his neck. “We were so worried.”

“Yeah, mate,” Ron said with strength in his voice, eyes red, “Are you… ok?”

“Fine. Just a bit weak. Glad to see you both.”

Ron looked at Hermione who was holding onto Harry as if riding out a windstorm. “Er… Hermione, maybe let him go for a minute.”

“Right.” Hermione looked as if she'd just realized where she was and sat back.

The three of them stared between one another for a few lingering seconds, none sure what to say next. It was an unusual place for them to be.

“Well, someone might as well bring it up,” Harry said an hour later after they'd laughed and chatted on every topic available. He'd been glad to hear about classes, quidditch and how many times Dobby had snuck in to see him, but he drew the line at Hermione's offering of Parvati getting a new pair of shoes.

“Harry, we don't need to talk about… that. Not now.” Hermione shook her head earnestly. “It's done. That's all that matters.”

“Not really. I've killed someone, haven't I? We can't pretend that didn't happen.”

Hermione looked desperately at Ron who was no help at all.

“You honestly think anyone would think less of you for what took place?”

“I dunno.” He fastened his roaming eyes onto hers, “Do you?”

“Harry Potter, the entire wizarding world is out there celebrating you and what you did and you think…”

“I don't care about them. Not right now. I want to know what my two best friends in the world think of me.”

“Did you tell McGonagall to get us up in the middle of the night so you could ask us this, mate?” Ron said gruffly, “Because you should know the answer.”

Harry shook his head, “I should feel worse, shouldn't I, for killing a person?”

Hermione understood. He didn't doubt them. It was his own humanity…

“He wasn't a man anymore, Harry. He was evil and full of a hate and dark magic that he'd let take over any shred of the man that was left. You didn't kill a person, you killed a monster. You have to know that.”

“Yeah, don't go being a plunker, Harry.” Ron added inexpertly.

But it was that comment which Harry appreciated the most and he smiled at them both, the first real smile he'd felt in ages. Then suddenly he seemed aware of something.

“Where's Neville?”

He saw the look exchanged between his two friends and was immediately suspicious. “What is it?”

“Nothing, Harry,” Hermione began. “It's just that…”

“Well,” Ron said, “See, when I got my leg banged in, Neville sort of, well, he got in the way a bit, I think and then Voldemort shot some sort of wispy spell at him and then, it was… well, he sort of went all… you know it was like he'd…”

“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione's impatience rang out, “He's blind, Harry. Neville is blind.”

“No I'm not,” came a voice from beside the curtain.

***

“Quite amazing, really. Whatever curse Mr. Longbottom was under was completely broken at the very moment Harry Potter woke up!”

Hermione heard Professor McGonagall relating the details of the evening before to another teacher and smiled to herself. Was it really going to be that simple? Everyone safe and happy? She'd spent six years looking around corners for monsters and expecting disaster at every turn that the possibility of something uncomplicated was foreign to her. No, she decided, it would never be simple for Harry. He had so much to live with, so much pressure to exist under. The wizarding world would continue to follow him until the day he died. She wondered about his life before all this and realized there hadn't really been one. He'd been famous since the age of one and lied to for just as long. He'd been provoked and hunted and condemned for trying to live like a normal person and now he never would.

Or would he?

She shook off the thoughts rising in her brain and walked back to the tower.

April.

2 more months at Hogwarts until summer.

***

Harry fastened up his robes and looked in the mirror.

He actually had class to go to. Honestly, class? After all of this?

While extremely excited, some of his house and school mates were steering clear of him. He supposed they'd heard about the wandless magic and the terrible curse he'd had to forge.

“Oh well,” he said, half to his untidy hair in the mirror, half to his roaming mind.

They didn't see him. No one did. Not really. He felt like an enormous walking cliché and yet, it no longer bothered him. So what if someone was scared of him. So what if someone didn't want to talk to him because he'd said those two killing words. So what if everyone wanted his picture. So what? It didn't matter any more.

He'd had a long chat with Dumbledore once out of the hospital and wasn't sure he'd ever tell anyone the entirety of it. It felt like sacred space between he and his mentor. Words and secrets - of magic, and even life - had been passed between them. Harry knew Dumbledore was preparing him for the road that lay before him. A life of scrutiny - much like the life Dumbledore himself had led - and Harry felt an enormous gratitude and love for the old man that washed away any leftover hurts from the year before. These words and that conversation would stay with him forever, no matter what he faced, magical or otherwise.

And he needed wisdom, for his biggest challenge now, lay in something entirely different.