1. Silent Pleas of an Unheard Voice

Silent Pleas

He felt empty. There was no other way to describe the all-consuming feeling of hollowness and numbness that had haunted him since the end of his fifth year. If Cedric’s death had cracked him, Sirius’s had shattered him.

Since that day, he had felt completely alone. The words revealed to him in the prophecy only intensified this feeling. They separated him from the masses, placing him on an unwanted pedestal as a messiah, a savior to rid their world of a menace. The weight of those words was slowly bearing down on his shoulders, crushing him with each passing day.

Wake me up inside

Call my name and save me from the dark

Yet no one seemed to notice. Perhaps it was the cheerful façade he had fixed so firmly in place, but he wondered how they could not see the chaotic mix of despair, loneliness, anger, and fear in his eyes. They seemed content in the belief that he had gotten over Sirius’s death during the summer and was back to his cheerful, optimistic self. He couldn’t tell if they didn’t see, or didn’t want to see.

Bid my blood to run

Before I come undone

Save me from the nothing I’ve become

A sort of helpless rage filled him, rising through his chest until he desperately wanted to stand and scream at them all, "Do you see what you’re doing? Do you see what you’ve made me?"

Now that you know what I’m without

You can’t just leave me

He was merely a tool, a weapon to kill Voldemort.

Yet they did nothing to help him prepare for the final battle against the Dark Lord. He saw it in their eyes that they knew he was unprepared. It was in Madame Pince’s eyes as she shooed him from the library late each night from studying curses; in McGonagall’s when he read defense books in her class; in Dumbledore’s gaze whenever he looked at him.

All this time, I can’t believe I couldn’t see

Kept in the dark, but you were there in front of me

The core of his anger was directed at the headmaster. For nearly five years Dumbledore had kept him in the dark, but when a light was finally shed on everything, he did nothing to help Harry. Nothing to console him as night after night he woke in a cold sweat, screaming as he saw Sirius fall through the veil or his friends lying dead on the battlefield. He did nothing to help him learn to defend himself, nothing to lessen the weight on his shoulders, nothing to reassure him that he was not alone in this fight.

As each day passed, Harry became more and more convinced that he was alone, even amongst the masses of students that flooded the halls, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems

Got to open my eyes to everything

As he looked at all the students, at his classmates, he felt incredibly old and jaded. It seemed as though he had aged overnight, becoming a thousand years old. His entire life he had been forced to grow up quickly and see the harsher sides of life. Children went hungry. Hate destroyed. People died. The world was full of pain, loneliness, hate, fear, death. None of these ideas were new to him. He had been exposed to them since a young age, since the night of his parents’ death.

Don’t let me die here

There must be something more

Bring me to life

Death. A flash of bright green light. A fluttering veil. Slitted red eyes and a hissing voice.

The thought of death both attracted and terrified him. Death would mean a freedom like none other, a freedom from obligations and responsibilities, from worry and pain and fear. He would see his parents and Sirius again. He wouldn’t have to be the Savior of the Wizarding World. He could just be Harry.

But the idea of death also scared him. The possibility that there was nothing after death terrified every cell of his being. A world of darkness and nothingness was in no way preferable to this life. He had long ago stopped believing that there was a God, but somehow still clung firmly to the belief in some sort of life after death. Yet, if there was such joy and happiness after death, why did people fear it so much?

In his view, death was either the ultimate freedom or the ultimate imprisonment.

I’ve been living a lie

There’s nothing inside

Bring me to life

When he had first come to Hogwarts, he had felt free, finally released from the confines of the Dursleys. Even the yearly face-offs with Voldemort hadn’t disturbed him. They had seemed fun somehow, each triumph like a victory in a child’s game. Now he knew that each encounter was to test him, to see if he could in fact defeat Voldemort and was worthy of being called their Savior.

Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul

And when he had passed all those tests, when he had found to be truly worthy, he had somehow ceased to be a person. He was a weapon to kill a madman. He was a robot, with a façade of cheerfulness and youth forced into place daily. His eyes, once bright and expressive, were dulled orbs leading to the emptiness of his soul. He had no voice, no choice, no chance, no help.

In essence, he had nothing.

In essence, he was nothing.