Harry Potter and the Revelation of Prophecy

The sun shown lazily, shining high over the rooftops of one Privet Drive, in the town of Little Whinging, in the county of Surrey, in the grand old United Kingdom.  It was quite a warm day out, the perfect day to just relax and enjoy life, sipping cool lemonade, or taking a swim in one’s pool.  However, there was one resident of who was doing none of the above.  He had no lemonade, nor did he have a pool.  No matter how hard he tried, he could not bear to relax, and if anyone was enjoying life the least at that moment in time, it was him.  All one Harry James Potter could bear to do was lay on his now-too-small bed, among the rumpled sheets that had not been made in years, and stare out the window. 

A pitiful existence was his.  The moment dear Harry tried to do anything to occupy his thoughts, he lost all will to do anything at all.  He ran a hand through his messy black hair (he had long given up any pretense of having any semblance of control over it) and sighed.  It seemed that he was doing that a lot lately, sighing.  So as to not think about the reason, he turned his attention back to the street below him.  He saw a group of three young children playing with a ball in the middle of the street.  The carefree looks on each face infuriated him to no end. 

‘Did these children not know what was about to begin?  Did they not know how much the world was suffering?  DID THEY NOT KNOW?’

He raged inside his head.  It was at times like this that Harry bemoaned the separation of the Magic and Muggle worlds.  Because of this separation, everyone in the Muggle world remained blissfully ignorant of the re-risen and now-hell-bent-on-world-domination Lord Voldemort.  They continued to live their lives as though a tyrannical evil wizard couldn’t swoop down on them at any minute and end their lives with a simple Avada Kedavra.  This was made all the more likely by their living near the Boy-Who-Lived.  For because of a blasted prophecy made by some half-witted Seer twenty years before, Harry was now marked as the equal of the Dark Lord, and fated to either end his life or have his life ended. 

Even with his being the only person standing between Lord Voldemort and the complete domination of the entire world and the wholesale slaughter of all Muggles and Muggle-born wizards everywhere, he was forced to live, one month out of the year, in the house of his aunt, his last living blood relative.  Most of the time, though, he tried to forget about her unfortunate relation to him, as he had long since stopped thinking of her as his aunt.  She was only Petunia Dursley, the wife of and mother of Dudley Dursley.  His relatives’ dislike of abnormalities was only exceeded by their dislike of the Potters, and since Harry was both abnormal and a Potter, the first eleven years of his life were not the most pleasant of experiences.  He hated the fact that the rest of his friends got to spend their summers in loving homes, and then were to precede his going to , the home of his late Godfather.  He hated the fact that his best friends would be spending so much time alone without him.  He hated the fact that he would not be with Hermione…

           

During the time Harry had been with the Dursleys, he had had quite a bit of time to think on the experiences of the past year.  By and large the majority of his thoughts were focused on the death of his Godfather.  Harry had accepted that his death, mostly, was not his fault.  The others simply did not understand that thought was Harry’s method of dealing with complex feelings.  He still threw some of the blame on himself, but he now was able to see that most of the fault should fall to Bellatrix Lestrange, who actually did the killing.  He now had a list of people who had to die before he could be free.  Voldemort was at the top, but Bellatrix Lestrange was right beneath him. 

Thoughts such as these occupied most of his time, but when his mind went blank, his thoughts would, of their own accord, shift to thoughts of his best friend.  For he now considered Hermione, not Ron, his best friend.  Ron was a good friend, of course.  One of his best.  But not THE best.  For in times when Harry was sorely in need of friends, Ron chose to abandon him for his own selfishness.  When Harry’s name had been placed in the Goblet of Fire by the fugitive Barty Crouch, Ron considered this to be, like most of the school did, another chance for Harry to gain more attention for himself.  Ron’s upbringing, constantly in the shadow of his five older brothers, left him with a severe inferiority complex, and a bad temper ran throughout his family.  These things combined in a dangerous combination in Ron, who hated to be in the shadow of anyone, and seemed to think he was in Harry’s shadow, as well. 

But Hermione…she had never turned her back on him, had always supported him no matter the cost to her.  But Harry found his thoughts turning far too often towards Hermione, more so than should be ordinary, in his opinion, for even best friends.  So Harry decided to do some research, something that Hermione would be proud of…

‘Damn, not again.  No more thoughts of Hermione until this is done.’

He cautiously turned the knob of the door and crept out. 

‘Good, no sign of anyone.’ 

The Dursleys had left for the evening, and he only then, an hour later, decided to sneak out for his mission.  He wanted to find out why he could not keep his thoughts off of Hermione, and his mind had turned to a conversation he had overheard between his Uncle and cousin.  His cousin was apparently having problems with his girlfriend (Harry thought he knew the problem; he seriously doubted the sanity of any girl who would go out with ).  Vernon, being his usually unemotional self, waved off and told him that anything he needed could be found on the internet.  He then told the combination to the padlock that protected his study (“Potter-proof,” sneered Uncle Vernon, when he was showing it to everyone at dinner.  “I don’t want anything unnatural being done on my computer.  You know the government is watching us these days, and I wouldn’t want them knowing what we’ve got here,” he had said with a contemptuous nod to Harry.). 

Luckily, since he didn’t know Harry was around, he said the combination aloud.  Unfortunately, Harry had not heard the password, as they were approaching where he was standing, forcing him to scamper away.  It had seemingly worked for , for a week later, he still had the same girlfriend.  Harry was considering owling St. Mungo’s for an antipsychotic, and tricking into slipping it to her, but thought better of it.  In any event, if whatever could be found on the internet could convince a girl to stay with , then he would give it a shot. 

Five years ago, in his last year of Muggle school, Harry had been taught to use a computer, and he had heard on the few occasions that he had been able to watch the TV (when the Dursleys were all out) he had heard about websites that allowed you to search for things.  ‘These, in combination, should be enough,’ he thought, trying to convince himself that he wouldn’t blow up the Dursleys’ computer in anger.

He went to the door of the study and unlocked the padlock.  Slipping in, he sat down in ’s oversized (for Harry, not for ) chair, and turned the computer on.

‘Alright, I’m here, now what could ’s password be?’

‘?  Nope, not it.  Dursley?  Nope.  Petunia?  Nope.  Death to Potter?  Wait, I was joking!  Well, what do you know?  Interesting password…’

He searched the internet on a site he had heard about on an advertisement, until he came upon an online advice column that described a situation just like his:

<b>Q:  Dear Isaiah,

            Hello, I’m a young man from and I was wondering.  I have a best friend who is also a girl.  We have known each other for about ten years and I have always felt a strong connection to her.  However, she went to University in a few weeks ago, and I feel as though I am going mad.  I cannot keep my mind off of her!  I do not get much sleep, and have lost my appetite.  Why can’t I function without her around?

Please Help,

Insanity

A:  Dear Insanity,

            I believe you have a serious problem.

‘Oh God,’ Harry thought, ‘what serious problem do I have?  Goodness knows I have enough of those already.’

He willed himself to keep reading.

That problem is that you seem to have fallen in love with your best friend.

“What!!!” Harry shouted aloud.  “I have fallen in LOVE with HERMIONE!?”

<b>Tell me, do you seem to not be able to get your mind off her when she is not around?  Do you have an unnatural amount of empathy for her feelings?  Does her happiness make you happy, her sadness make you sad?  Would you fight for her, kill for her, die for her? 

‘Uh oh, yes to all.’

<b>If so, then I fear you do indeed love your best friend.  This can be a very precarious situation, as she might not feel the same.  However, if her friendship seems to be the same to you as yours is for her, she just might.  It is your choice whether or not to pursue this, but I wish you the best of luck.

God Bless,

Isaiah</b>

Harry was stunned thoughtless, so he blankly walked back upstairs from Vernon’s study, closed his door, and fell asleep.  This time, though, his dreams were not full of images of Sirius falling through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, but of a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl…

            Now, as he thought on it, he considered himself a fool for not realizing his feelings earlier.  For now, he knew that these feelings were not a new development, but a continuation of feelings he had had for most of the past five years.  Also thinking back, he noticed her feelings as well.  She always had shown a marked preference for him over Ron, and he had shared most of his experiences with her, more than Ron.  Even those things that she did that annoyed him to no end, such as her telling Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt sent to him Christmas of his third year, which led to its confiscation, were for his own good.  He was sure she had feelings for him as well, and decided he would make her his once her saw her, since now that he knew, he couldn’t bear the thought of her thinking he did not care about her as she wanted him to.  Unfortunately, he could do little in his present location.

           

Bemoaning the injustice of his own life, and unable to continue watching the happy-go-lucky scene below him in the street, Harry spun around and faced the four walls of his room.  The walls were lined with shelves, upon which were the various toys that Harry’s cousin Dudley had outgrown (i.e., the novelty had worn off), but did not wish to throw out.  The only things to give a clue that this was not the bedroom of an ordinary Muggle boy, or a storeroom for that matter, were the owl perch near the window, empty at the moment, since his owl, Hedwig, was out carrying a letter to Hermione, and the titles of the many books strewn about in a half-hearted attempt, early on, to read.  No ORDINARY child had books on Potions and A History of Magic and The Standard Book of Spells, Grade V, as his relatives constantly reminded him.  He laid his head on his pillow and sighed.

‘Why was I chosen for this?  Why must I carry the burden of being the Savior of the World?  There must not be a God, for a true and just God would not allow such things to come to pass.  If there were a God, I would have the power and authority behind me to train to defeat Voldemort.  If there was a God, Sirius would not have been killed.  If there was a God, I could be with Hermione…’

He then fell into a fitful slumber.  Unnoticed to him, two figures continued to watch him from their positions in the corner of the room.  One turned to the other, who seemed to show deference to him, and said,

“Hmm, so he thinks there’s no God?  Well, go on, Gabriel; let’s show him a thing or two.”

The other being bowed low and then disappeared.  This was quite a feat, as Dumbledore had put up anti-apparation wards years before.  The being then turned back towards Harry’s sleeping form and smiled.

“Don’t worry, Harry, things are not as bad as they seem right now.  Just wait and see.  You were wrong about one thing, though…

There is so a God,

And I am he.”

With that, the being faded away, mumbling something about his computer.  Harry shot up in bed, thinking he had heard something, but finding his room empty.  He lay back down and fell asleep, but this time, with an odd feeling of contentment.

A/N:  And so it begins.  Please tell me what you think.  Your input is appreciated and can only make this story better!