Ch 3: Decisions, Decisions
Later that afternoon, Harry felt much better. With a much clearer head, he began thinking about last night and the past couple of weeks. He thought long and hard about what he had viewed last night and compared it with his own experiences. He had certainly suffered mightily in his fifteen years of life. But so had countless others-both Muggle-born and Magic-born. He wasn't much younger than many of those soldiers he had seen march off to war last night. And he was as old or older than many of the victims of the terrible war he had seen as well. There was something comforting, horrible as the notion might seem, that he no longer felt so alone in his suffering. True, his individual trials had been different, in fact unique from everyone else's, but he was not the only person to suffer great and tremendous loss because of evil.
He thought of his parents, of their love and sacrifice for his life and tears flowed once more down his face. He thought of Cedric and Sirius, of Neville's parents at St. Mungo's, of the many other victims of Voldemort and his Death Eaters that he didn't really know and the tears stopped, replaced by a growing determination to do something. He remembered the words from the prophecy describing how his parents had defied Voldemort three times successfully and thought, "You were wrong. They defied him a fourth time by saving me. And I will make their sacrifice mean something. I can't change what has passed, and I don't know how I can affect the future. But I will. I don't know how I can defeat Voldemort, but there must be a way. And I will find it. No matter what. I promise you Mum, Dad, Sirius. I swear that your deaths won't have been in vain. I will fight Voldemort and find some way to defeat him. I promise you that."
He remembered two of the lessons he had drawn from watching the documentary the night before. The first was that neither good nor evil seemed to ever suffer a complete, permanent defeat. Though Hitler and the Nazis had been defeated, and defeated decisively, it wasn't long after the war that a new threat to world peace had risen. Just like Voldemort. Everyone, well, almost everyone, had thought he had been defeated and was gone for good. But he came back. The war between good and evil was never truly over, there were only pauses between conflicts. Those pauses could be long and peaceful if good triumphed, or dark and terrible if evil was victorious.
The second lesson was that evil had to be opposed. It couldn't be ignored, or bought off, or reasoned with. It had to be fought. Those who knew about the evil had to confront it, no matter the odds of winning. Evil had to be fought, no matter what. For some reason, one of Moody's favorite sayings-even though it hadn't been the real Moody who had said it to Harry-popped into Harry's mind, "Constant vigilance, Potter. Constant vigilance." Harry smiled and thought to himself. "Yes, constant vigilance. But then action." Like the actions taken by the Order of the Phoenix.
And what had he done? He had moped and felt sorry for himself and taken out his anger on all those who were closest to him. Harry's cheeks burned with shame as he recalled his behavior from the year before. His anger and stubbornness had nearly cost the lives of several of his fellow students, including his best friends. And it had cost the life of his godfather Sirius. Bowing his head, Harry nearly felt his heart break as waves of guilt and self-recrimination broke over him again. He sat huddled on his bed for a long time, rocking back and forth gently with his knees tucked to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around them.
A flapping at the window broke his quiet recollection. The active little Pig, buzzing like a hummingbird, was busily searching for a way through his window. When Harry opened it a crack, he shot through like an arrow and flew delightedly around Harry as he reached for a treat. Pig had a scroll wrapped around each of his legs.
"That's odd," thought Potter as he unrolled the smaller one and began reading it softly out loud to himself.
"Hello Harry," began the letter in Ron's scrawling handwriting.
"I hope everything's going well so far this summer. Hermione and I are a bit worried since we haven't heard from you yet this summer. I guess you're doing alright since nobody has launched a rescue mission yet."
Harry grinned at that, recalling the various threats his friends in the Order of the Phoenix had made to his Uncle and Aunt at the train station a few weeks ago. He had responded with very brief messages to Lupin's messages that came every other day, but hadn't bothered responding to anyone else's messages.
"As you may have guessed, both Hermione and I are back at the same place we were last year-but don't worry, we don't know anything and we're not having any fun at all."
This time, a wider grin spread momentarily over Harry's face, one that almost reached his sad eyes, as he recalled his angry outbursts last summer when he finally arrived at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, his godfather's family home at Grimwauld Place in London.
"Don't worry mate, we're trying to make sure you can come and visit as soon as possible. Let us know if there's anything you need. Mom's dying to send you some food. You know I'm really sorry about you know what, and I wish I could have done more to help. I'm really sorry. I hope to see you soon. Best, Ron."
"What a friend," thought Harry. "And he blamed himself for not helping more. If only Ron knew how much he had already done for him, how much his friendship meant to him. And he had done everything he could. It wasn't his fault he couldn't do more. He really shouldn't blame himself-after all, he was busy trying to defend his friends and Sirius was a powerful wizard, fully capable of taking care of himself…" and then it hit him. Harry staggered for a moment and fell back on his bed as the realization struck him.
Everyone was trying to take the blame for Sirius' death-Ron, Dumbledore, and mostly Harry himself. Yes, there had been things they could have done differently that might have avoided the circumstances that led to Sirius' death, but they had all done the best they could before and during the battle at the Ministry. But there were too many what if's and could have been's. The real blame lay with those who had killed Sirius, Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Sirius and the rest had only been doing what they had to do, opposing evil to the best of their abilities. Though his grief for the loss of Sirius was not any less, Harry nevertheless felt like an enormous burden had just been lifted from his shoulders.
Feeling somewhat lighter inside, Harry turned to the other rolled scroll. The neat, meticulous penmanship of Hermione greeted his eyes as he unrolled the parchment.
"Dear Harry, I hope those relatives of yours are treating you decently. I do wish you would write back to let us know how you are doing. Lupin has been sharing your brief letters, but there isn't much in them. I completely understand if you don't feel like talking about what happened, but I hope you understand we just want to help any way we can. We are trying to get you here as soon as possible, but we understand you might not want to come here because of, well you know, but we're not sure Ron's home would be as safe. Everyone here is…"
Scanning down, Harry thought that, "Hermione seems very out of sorts, she's just rambling through most of this letter and keeps repeating herself. I hope she's OK."
"…anyways, if there is anything we"-here it looked as if we had been rewritten over the top of a capital I-"can do, please let us"-again, it seemed as if us had been written over the word me-"know. With Love, Hermione." The word with looked like it had been squeezed in front of the word love as an afterthought.
"What a bizarre letter," mused Harry.
Guiltily, Harry thought about how he had ignored his friends so far this summer and had treated them most of last year. Sighing, Harry determined to do better in the future. "I can't change what happened last year, but I can do better this year. And I will." He then sat down and wrote a short note to both Ron and Hermione.
"Hello Ron and Hermione, I'm sorry I have ignored your letters this summer and that I was such an insufferable prat last year. I promise to treat you both better this year. I'm doing fine, in fact, your letters really helped me feel a lot better today. I hope you both realize how much your friendship means to me. I'll see both of you soon, Harry." Harry called for Pig and tied the short note to his leg, gave him a bit of water, and let him out the window, having checked to make sure none of the neighbors were watching.
Returning to his bed, he looked around the messy room and decided to tidy up a bit as his thoughts wandered. Satisfied that everything was in some sort of order, Harry sat down in a chair by his window, propped up his feet on the sill, and sat, quietly thinking the rest of the afternoon. He hadn't felt this good in a long time. The last twelve hours seemed to have marked a monumental shift in his life somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it exactly, but he almost felt like a new person as he quietly pondered the view outside his window.
Though he still feared for his friends, and dreaded the eventual confrontation with Voldemort, he no longer felt immobilized by fear and despair. He still grieved for Sirius, Cedric, and his parents, but he no longer blamed himself entirely for their deaths. He felt a burning desire to do something, to stop letting others act for him and make all the decisions, but to take a more active part in his own life. He was tired of waiting and worrying about what Voldemort planned to do to him or his friends. He knew he would never defeat Voldemort that way. If he was really the key to defeating Voldemort, then he would have to do something more than he had been. Raging at his friends and feeling sorry for himself was not going to help him beat Voldemort. He had spent five years at Hogwarts, but still felt very unprepared to take on Voldemort, a wizard with amazing powers and years of practice and experience. If he had any of the powers mentioned by the prophecy, he realized he had better discover them and develop them quickly, because he knew Voldemort wouldn't wait much longer to attack him again. He needed more time. But how? How?
*** Author's note-Quotations in italics indicate that the character is thinking those thoughts rather than saying them out loud. Thanks again to everyone for all of the great reviews.
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