Empty Heart Spaces

This fanfiction is loosely based on the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. I’m not very sure how long it will be. It really depends. I really cannot think of anything else to say, so … I guess that’s all.

*

1

The distinct smell of rain met the nostrils of Harry Potter.

He wearily opened his right eye, taking a peek at his morning surroundings, and once he deemed it safe he opened his right and sat upward, scratching the side of his messed hair. He was shivering cold, shirtless and emotionless; his head aching the proper amount after coming in contact with a sledgehammer (if he had … which who was to say? He couldn’t remember a thing). He pushed the covers away and changed positions so that he was sitting on the side edge of the bed, his toes grazing the carpet but lightly.

The morning was silent and cold, the smell of rain still very much distinct. He moved on to scratch the back of his head, and he looked over his shoulder at his bed. It was great and big and jumbled, with blankets and pillows arranged randomly. Most importantly, however, the bed was empty aside from himself.

And it wasn’t so much that the bed was literally, physically empty aside from himself, it was that it felt so empty figuratively and emotionally. It was empty and it left him empty and unsatisfied.

When he rose fully from the bed he left to use the toilet and then to shower, and then he would go into the kitchen and make himself something to eat. After that … he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything, but of the need to get away from the mangy old cottage he sensed he had spent far too long in.

So he would.

*

He rode the Wizarding Express all damned day. He spent a good few Galleons on tickets to various locations, and he had to admit he quite enjoyed sitting back in the comfy chairs and watching the sceneries and places pass him by through the tiny square window beside him. He enjoyed exiting one train for another just to experience the same exact enjoyment he’d reveled in in the previous train. The day ended eventually, but during its duration it was never-ending (if that makes sense).

It was on his seventh train ride that he was (perceivably) the only passenger onboard. He laughed when he entered the empty train, laughed as he walked down the empty aisles to “find” a seat, laughed as he listened to the sound of silence disrupted by the sound of his laughter.

He hadn’t considered it possible for a person to have so much fun riding a train all alone. As the train left the station he pressed his face into the glass and made faces at all the little children standing on the platform. He laughed at their clueless and bewildered expressions, exchanging looks with one another. Harry Potter sat back into his chair, relaxing into it, and he closed his eyes, grinning from right ear to left.

Things were nearly too pleasant, just about over the threshold…

…he drifted off to sleep. His head fell onto his right shoulder as he dozed as innocently and freely as a child.

Harry Potter remained utterly still, napping, as a short, petite figure loomed. Outstretching her hand, the woman prodded him hard in the shoulder with her index finger. He did not wake and she jabbed him again; he did not wake and she jabbed him yet again.

When he was in such deep slumber that he still did not wake, she poked him quite hard and rudely in the shoulder. He jerked awake in an instant, for the briefest of seconds looking utterly confused before remembering his location and situation.

He looked at the woman in appraisal, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. He fixed his glasses back onto his face and said quite as rudely as she poked him in the shoulder, “Who the fuck are you?”

She seemed taken aback by his profanity, but didn’t take it to heart. “I only wanted to ask you a question,” she said somewhat carefully. She took half a step back. “I’m- I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“You don’t just wake people up like that when they’re asleep,” Harry Potter told her, “especially if you don’t know the person. Here I was thinking I was the only one on this train and so it was good and safe to take a nice nap, and then you show up!”

“I only wanted to ask you a question,” she repeated. Her voice lacked tone, and it was another thing added to a list of things Harry instantly felt annoyed with about the woman.

“A question? Oh, well, I’m sure it’s of utmost importance!” he snapped, scowling.

The woman, this time, seemed to take offense, appearing more than ready to fire back at once when truly challenged. “I’m sorry that I did not think it to be such a great big deal to kindly ask a stranger a question and expect a kind answer in return! I’m sorry—had I known you were such a prat perhaps I would have reconsidered. I’ll leave you be now; apparently catnaps are absolutely necessary after childhood contrary to popular belief.”

With that the woman turned on her heel, thick, coiled hair bouncing angrily as did her step as she marched away, down the aisle and out of the compartment. The compartment door closed with a loud thud behind her. Once she was gone Harry was left with guilt.

He sighed regretfully and rose from his seat. He supposed he had been unreasonably rude and irritable to the poor woman, and all she wanted was to ask him a simple question. Maybe she was as lonely as he was … maybe she was in need of getting away from a cottage too.

Harry left his compartment, entering the next. He spotted the woman in an instant. It wasn’t very hard considering the simple fact that the train was definitely empty save for the two of them. The moment the compartment door opened and closed the woman twisted in her seat to get a good look at him.

“Oh,” she said flatly, “it’s you. Well, you can go away. I don’t believe I want to ask you a question anymore.”

“I apologize for my rudeness and irritability,” said Harry straightaway. “I can be a right prat sometimes, and I’m sorry.” He felt nerves quivering in his insides and he immediately vowed to look anywhere but directly at her, and in doing so he began to rub the back of his neck in distraction. “You, err, can ask me that question now if you want.”

The woman seemed deep in contemplation. She gazed at him for a very long time with vague brown eyes full of depth and an unreadable expression on her face. Little did she know her prolonged contemplation caused Harry Potter a sea of nerves. Finally, she nodded and then shrugged in acceptance.

“All right, I suppose I can forgive you, though I don’t need my question answered any longer.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I decided it’s not very important,” she said dismissively.

“Oh … all right then.”

She stared at him for a few seconds. “Did you know I was on the train? That wasn’t the question, by the way.”

Harry shook his head no, moving closer. “I didn’t. I guess that’s also why I was so rude. I hate being surprised—I hate strangers seeing me sleep.”

“Why?” she asked, though he sensed she somehow already knew what his answer would be, as if she had had this conversation with him before. There was something about her that he couldn’t quite place his finger on.

“When you’re asleep you’re most vulnerable,” he confessed, shrugging. “I prefer not to sleep in front of strangers—or enemies. You shouldn’t sleep around those you don’t trust. Only those you really do.”

There was a slight pause before she replied very quietly, “I agree.”

He broke eye contact with her, no longer to hold the gaze they were sharing. He felt very frustrated by her presence, but at the same time perplexed and definitely intrigued.

“Where are you going?” he asked, changing the subject.

She looked away and toward the window. Outside the scenery was of blank fields with tall grass and thick trees. The sky was a menacing and dark gray, matching the seemingly heavy clouds. When her eyes returned to his, they were dark and of depth, and he got goosebumps.

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling a bit. “I suppose I felt like riding the train.”

Harry wasn’t completely sure that was the truth, but he didn’t think it was important anyway.

“Yeah, well, me too,” he said. He took a few steps closer, hesitated, and then sat down in the seat next to her. Once he had he questioned himself over a dozen times why he had done so, how he had done it almost without any thought whatsoever, as if he were naturally supposed to sit next to her…

“I haven’t slept in hours,” the woman said quietly, turning in her seat so that she was face-to-face with him.

“You should really get some rest then,” Harry advised sincerely. He himself could not bear to go very long without sleep; he liked to sleep. Sleep was escape and sleep was emptiness, meaninglessness. He really liked to sleep.

“I know,” she said. She glanced down at her folded hands, a graceful, delicate way about every movement she made, even in the way her bushy hair shuffled with every turn of her head. “I stayed up much too late last night doing my two very favorite things in the world. I spent half the night reading and the other half knitting some scarves.”

“You knit?”

“Dreadfully. I mean, I’m not very good,” she remarked. “By the time I was done with both it was sunrise and I made myself some coffee. I remember when I was a child my mum always used to scold me for staying up so late, always to read. She never scolded very seriously, though. I think that’s why I never learned my lesson.”

He found himself smiling slightly. “Your mum sounds nice.”

She released a laugh, slumping in her seat. “She is very nice even if she never had much time for me with her career. She is quite nice. Though the only thing my mum has ever been persistently strict about is my getting married and having her some beautiful grandchildren. She really regrets only having one daughter.”

“Have you?” he asked, unsure of whether or not it was his place to ask.

“Oh, I really don’t think you want to hear about that,” she said mysteriously. She shifted in her seat, eyes still closed. She seemed determined to keep her face blank and casual, though as Harry watched her he was sure he saw fleeting expressions of nostalgia and heartache.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a little concerned.

“I’m fine. I’m relaxing.”

Those four words were the last he heard of her for a while. She fell asleep after that, dozing off just as innocently and freely as he had done earlier, and her head fell sideways too, but to the left. He continued to watch her as she slept, taking note of every detail about her.

She was beautiful, though not classically. She had very simple features, but it was that simplicity that made her beautiful—it was her deep brown eyes, the small point of her nose, the curves of her cheeks, the way her smile was bright and to the point of being infectious. He quite enjoyed her features, and as he watched her sleep he still could not shake the feeling that there was something all too familiar about her.

He felt as if he were on the brink of remembering just what, but couldn’t quite; as if he were just a hair short of remembering or reaching that piece of information, but he couldn’t. He tried very hard to remember and he couldn’t.

The woman eventually came to rest her head on his shoulder. She seemed to nestle into him as if she thought he were her pillow, and she was clearly so deep in sleep he didn’t want to wake her or correct her. She hadn’t rested in a very long time, so he figured it proper to remain there with her until she woke. Until she did, he’d allow her to use him as a pillow.

And as the woman slept he couldn’t help hearing the echo of part of their conversation from earlier inside his head:

“When you’re asleep you’re most vulnerable. I prefer not to sleep in front of strangers— or enemies. You shouldn’t sleep around those you don’t trust. Only those you really do.”

“I agree.”

Harry Potter felt a shiver course its way down his spine.

*

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