Reality

It's funny how life can take its little twists and turns. Like how one minute you can be a respected hero and savior and the next minute you're living with a psychotic American in a run down house that smells like rot, sleeping on a molding cot and thinking about how to best kill the massive rats that run unconstrained throughout the hell hole you call home.

Alright, so maybe I should start from the beginning. No, not the very beginning; that would be redundant seeing as you already know my story, or at least you think you do. So I suppose I'll start from the last battle, or, “The Final Battle” as the title obsessed, capitalization junkies have thus since deemed it.

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Fire poured down from the sky as Voldemort's dragons spread their scaly wings and reveled in their power. For our part all we could do was run and dive for cover. We were ridiculously outnumbered, as it seems evil never has a shortage of those willing to wage its war.

I hit a rock as I ran, feeling the hot flames induce a sweat down my back. My ankle was jarred to the side and I tumbled forward, hitting the ground with a bruising thud. Once on my stomach I proceeded to crawl across the dusty soil on all fours. I sought refuge from the flying curses and merciless showers of flame behind a rather blackened and charred looking rock where I found Ron.

He had his wand clutched in one hand and a good luck charm from Luna in the other. He had a deep cut on his forehead and was bleeding quite a bit. I did my best to heal his wound as he spoke to me in hurried, uneven breaths.

“This is madness Harry...our guys are dropping like flies out there, I can't find Luna or, or Ginny, or...”

“Ron, where's Hermione?” I asked him in a steady voice, trying to remain calm, maintain an air of leadership.

“She was with me a moment ago... but then the dragons...”

He needn't say more because I had quickly moved away from him and commenced in peering off into the smoky mass of chaos, looking desperately for any sign of Hermione. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, but it was slow and rhythmic despite the panicked feeling that was welling up in my stomach. I suppose I really am a soldier by nature. For years I've tried to deny it, feeling that I was “just Harry.” Hermione insisted that there was more than that, that I knew of true bravery and survival. It had enraged me to hear her claim such things in fifth year, but I think I've finally come to terms with it. I'm built for war, mentally, and even physically to some degree.

I waited for my chance and then I took off across the field at a low crouch, searching for Hermione. I could feel the charred soil crunch beneath my feet, every time I breathed I tasted and smelled ash. Yet turning back wasn't an option. No, not when she could be out there somewhere... hurt, or worse yet, dying. I would do anything for her. I would have died for her and never given it a second thought. Anything she asked of me, I could not deny her. I loved her in a heart breaking sort of way. I loved her so it pained me to love her. To watch her from a far, to see her being happy with another man. It wasn't just that she was engaged to this fellow, it was more than that. Perhaps I could have told her if it weren't for this greater feeling that I would somehow ruin her life. Is it really so unjustified that I felt that way? Everyone I had ever loved has died. So I left her with this man who claimed to love her, but she was in my head at every waking moment. It's not such a surprise if you really consider it. Who else could match my stubborn nature, could deal with my dark moods, and would stand by me when no one else did? She listened to me when I needed it, scolded me when I needed it, and loved me when I needed it. She just didn't love me the way I loved her.

These thoughts were in my mind as choked on the noxious smoke that filled my lungs. I called her name once but it set off such a coughing fit in me that I didn't try again. The smoke began to clear at one point and the heat was less intense. I wiped the thick sweat and ash from my brow and inhaled deeply. It was then that I spotted her, and it knocked the wind right back out of me.

She lay motionless on the ground, a mound of dirty robes. I ran to her side, kneeling beside her and taking her into my arms. I searched for her pulse and thankfully found one. I gently brushed her hair back from her face and awoke her with a simple spell.

She looked about wildly for a moment, but relaxed when her eyes settled on my face.

“Harry” she croaked, but I quickly quieted her, not wanting her to wear out all her strength. “I'm so glad you found me” she whispered, and she moved closer to me resting her head against my chest.

“Stay awake Hermione” I commanded, feeling truly scared for the first time that day. “Just please stay awake.”

She looked up into my eyes and I studied their heart breaking beauty as she fought to remain conscious. I kissed her forehead and yearned for the right thing to say at that moment. No words came to me, only overwhelming emotions.

I didn't even notice when he approached through the black smoke, his charcoal robes blending in with the stark vision of destruction. His destruction.

“What a touching scene Potter” he spat, catching my attention. I knew his voice. It was the voice of the murderer of my parents, the cause of Sirius' death. He who had stolen my childhood from me. He who made me feel like I was 240 years old as opposed to 24.

I began to rise to face him. I had no riveting, passionate words to say, all I had was my hatred. I gently lay Hermione back down to the ground, watching the scared, confused look on her face. She grabbed my hand with whatever strength she had left.

“Good bye” I said, not sure what I meant by it. I leaned over and kissed her on the lips this time, a simple, chaste kiss. A farewell.

Voldemort had waited in this exchange as I knew he would. He wanted me dead, but more so, he wanted me to see death coming. He wanted me to know I was about to die, to have time to recognize it. But it never happened that way.

We fought for some time... to be honest I can't say how long. We sifted in and out of the clouds of smoke. Sometimes he altogether disappeared from my line of vision. Other times I could see his face as I sought to kill him. When I finally did kill him, it was while looking into those horrid, red eyes.

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I'm entirely aware that none of this flash back bullshit has anything to do with my current living condition. Well, it may seem that way, but it has everything to do with who I am today.

A man emerging from war almost unscathed who throws away an opportune life of chances and love in exchange for living at the rock bottom of existence may seem rather idiotic, and I can't really bring myself to entirely disagree with you on that point.

Nevertheless, hear me out on this one. After I had killed Voldemort I went back to Hermione only to find that she had already been taken to the hospital wing. On the basis of the open wounds scattered across my body I was sent to the hospital wing as well. As chance would have it, the wounds were the least of my concern since the bastard had cast a spell on me that made me violently ill at some point.

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It was my second week in that cold, dark little hospital room. I can't remember who did and didn't visit me. All I can remember is the room swirling about me every time I opened my eyes, which wasn't often. Every muscle in my body hurt, my stomach couldn't hold the food Pomfrey kept trying to give it. I probably had more water pumping into my body via an IV than there was in all the English Channel. It was for naught however, as my fever seemed to keep me constantly dehydrated. Yet by the second week I was feeling semi conscious for the first time.

The first thing I truly awoke to was her...her concerned face so near as she wetted my face with a cool cloth. For a moment I allowed myself to imagine it would always be like this, she would always be there to love me, to be there for me in the worst of times. Yet I knew it was all a dream. Soon her loyalty would belong to her future husband. Not me. “Hey” I whispered and she gave me a very surprised look.

“Harry!” She exclaimed with a wide smile. Her hand was still on my cheek as she leaned over and kissed my temple. “I should get Madame Pomfrey...”

“No!” I rasped, cutting her off. “She'll kick you out.”

Hermione just laughed and took my cold, sickly hand in her warm, healthy one.

I watched her as a moment of silence passed. “When this passes Hermione... I'm leaving.”

She looked up, alarmed. “Harry, you don't know what you're saying. Please, just rest.”

“No Hermione” I said gravely, my voice regaining its old stubborn strength. “There's nothing here left for me.” I could see the hurt in her eyes, so I continued. “I love you Hermione, just as I love the Weasleys, Remus and Dumbledore. But there's no living a normal life now. After all I've seen, all that's happened to me... I can never just be a regular guy again.”

“Harry, that's absolutely preposterous” she yelled angrily. “You know that's utter lunacy. First of all, you WILL readjust. Second, it doesn't matter even if you don't! We'll all love you the same Harry. We need you.”

“No you don't” I explained softly. “I'd be living a lie to pretend I care about Quidditch any more, I'd be faking my very existence were I to say I care about what furniture I must own, who I must marry, how many kids I must have.”

“There's no `must' in anything Harry.”

“The world is a closed minded society Hermione, a world driven by the media. I am at the center of that media. Everything I do as long as I am here is dictated by the public's impressions through that media. Everything I will ever do will have to be a `must'. How can I return to the mundane things of life after I've suffered so much?”

“You're over analyzing this Harry” she softly wept. “That's supposed to be my job.”

“You know I'm right” I concluded without a trace of assertiveness. I saw her accepting the truth. Realizing she would have to let me go. “If you tell me to stay now, I will.”

She looked so lost and never had I seen her look that way before. Always she had an answer, she was so self confident and often times stubborn. That sure look in her eye vanished. She began to pace. “I can't!” She cried out, and then she fled the room.

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I never saw her again. I never received an invitation to her wedding, and I'm willing to bet it's because she couldn't locate me. I spent another week in the hospital wing, and then I was free to go off on my own. I was without restrictions or duties. I had no family, nor friends to hold me back anymore. I had no dark lord to kill on my agenda. All I had was my belongings shrunken into a backpack and my money at Gringotts.

So I flew to America. Why I chose the capitalist center of the world is beyond me to this very day. I think I must've just chosen my destination at random once I'd arrived at the airport. I bought a ticket to Boston for no real reason. I guess it was in my mind that I would head for Salem, but I quickly scratched that seeing as I was trying to avoid the limelight of the magic world.

I rode the crowded, uncomfortable plane listening to the incessant ramblings of the man sitting next to me. He told me his phony little stories as the flight attendants gave me phony little smiles, and the next thing I knew I was about ready to jump off the plane.

I think it was the plane ride that really confirmed the psychotic notion in my mind that I ought to move far away from reality. I had developed a sort of saying in my head- that reality is all about fallacies.

So with this little philosophy I found myself in Boston with naught but a back pack full of my “oh so precious” belongings. At one point I had took to the idea of tossing the whole damned thing off into Boston Harbor, but I decided enough junk had been thrown in there. I ate lunch at some lousy food court. My food tasted of like expectations closed in a neatly sealed Styrofoam box. Every bite was the public telling me I HAD to enjoy the taste of rubbery beef drenched in cholesterol.

My arrival into Boston was the beginning of my rapid slide into becoming a paranoid, anti social cynic. I often feel as though I've changed so much since I went to Hogwarts that perhaps someone put a mind altering spell on me at some point. Yet I know I'm being delusional about such things. I hate society because it would expect me to be one way when war has made me another. I over analyze the world because it keeps me from analyzing myself.

In my slide from a worn soldier to a psychotic reject I met the perfect person to help. Addison Walker. You're probably wondering `what sort of name is Addison?' It's a very strange one, meaning “Son of Adam” which was just another of life's little ironies since isn't even god's son. He belongs to nobody.

I found him in a trash can searching for old electronics. He had a grand scheme in mind to build a radio that would allow one to converse with people of the past. It was utter lunacy.

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I had wandered Boston with no destination in mind. Life is so desolate when you are in a city where you know nobody. I heard a noise coming from a dumpster and so I approached it with an odd sort of fascination. Suddenly, a thin shaved headed man with clever brown eyes and a sneaky grin popped out (I later found out he had shaved his head because he was thinking of becoming a monk).

“Hand me that bag will ya?” He asked with an indistinct accent. Like I said, he belonged to nobody, and as far as I can tell, he came from no real place.

I did as he asked and soon he was throwing an old VCR into the bag. He hopped out covered in slime and other less than pleasant things.

We had our introductions and then Addison randomly suggested I come by his house with him and check out his “invention.” Naturally, being the sort of fellow he is, he failed to mention he lived about an hour away. We drove through suburban town after suburban town taking in the sight of glorious SUVs and countless soccer fields. Finally we were in a mill town filled with old run down houses, many of which looked abandoned, yet unfortunately, none of which were.

He drove a bumper sticker covered station wagon a bit like a mad man, swerving about, driving up onto the sidewalk. He didn't slow to pull into the driveway; he just made a sharp turn and then slammed on the breaks.

The house he lived in was crooked as could be, it looked a bit like a parallelogram. There was no real door in the front, just a sheet hanging down stuck up by rusted nails. When we went in an old street bum was on his way out, but that didn't seem to surprise Addison none.

I spent the night there getting drunk with him. He told me far fetched tales of people he knew and places he'd gone. He told me he'd invented a whole number of things. He even told me he had written the bible. He lied in the most obvious and blatant manner, and I admired that about him. He didn't conform to a single expectation in the world. He didn't make lies that he tried to pass off as the truth like the media. He made lies just for the sake of lying.

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After spending about a week at his cruddy place I just made up my mind to live there. I got a job at the only operating mill left in town. I didn't need the money, I just loved the feeling of being killed a little each day by the noxious fumes, going gradually deaf. I just wanted to get sickly again, I suppose because I thought if I did, I'd wake up to Hermione once more.

I picked up Addison's habits, such as chain smoking, getting drunk on Fridays and Saturdays and writing random things. He once told me, “you never know what might make a good book someday.” I had no aspirations to be a writer, it was just something I did. We would run about town at night like teenaged boys, yelling out whatever we felt was philosophical whilst we were drunk. When we were sober we would lounge about and discuss what was wrong with the world. Two smoking drunks who live in a crumbling house, saying the world is wrong, not us.

To this day we still do those things. Which is why right now I'm lying here smoking, watching the water leak through the ceiling, dropping onto the floor and scattering the rats. I have on a pair of frayed plaid boxers and an ugly torn bathrobe.

I can't stop thinking about her now. It's been two years since I left. I'm now 26, and I'm living like an immature boy. A boy with a crush on a girl he can never have.

I blow out a puff of smoke and bring the cigarette up to my lips, brooding, thinking. Then the phone rings.

“It's for you Potter!” Addison yells.

“Who the fuck is it?” I snap back hoping like hell it isn't that girl I tried to date last week and ended up ditching (as usual).

“Some lady name Molly Weasle” he hollers back.

I sit straight up, the bed creaking loudly causing the rats to scatter again. Molly Weasle? I ponder. He must mean Weasley. I run down the steps quickly to get the phone.

“She sounds hot” Addison winks, and I almost wretch at the thought of kind, plump Mrs. Weasley as being “hot”.

“Hello” I croak, my once fine British accent becoming broken from two years away from home and two years of smoking and inhaling dangerous fumes.

“Harry dear? Is that you?” She asks on the other line.

“Yes mam. How is everything?”

“Oh fine Harry, just wonderful. I'm a grandmother of five now! Can you believe it?”

I really can, after all, she does have seven kids. However, I reply with a polite, “No kidding! Congratulations!”

“Thank you, but that's not why I'm calling, oh how I do get sidetracked. See, we're having our family Christmas party, and I know you've missed the last two but they all kept telling me I needed to leave you alone and not call. Oh but Harry dear, we all miss you so much! They don't know I'm calling, but you simply must come.”

I let the line hang in a heavy silence. It's not like I'm hiding from anything, oh, except maybe the press, and Hermione as well. I don't want to see her with her perfect husband and perfect babies. I want to stay in my little fantasy world of imperfections.

I run may hand through my hair. It's long and greasy. I'm growing a sloppy, crooked beard simply from not shaving. I own only one nice outfit. I can hear the happy sounds of the Weasley family in the background. A kind, happy family that did its best to raise six men and one woman into outstanding people. That is what real life is about. Not the media, not lies and expectations. Reality wasn't always about fallacies. For people like the Weasleys, reality is love, courage and doing the right thing.

“Harry?” Mrs. Weasley's voice asks with concern.

“When is it?”

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On the plane ride to Britain I enjoy the kindness of the flight attendants as they try their best to make their fake smiles, not always because they're being controlled by expectations, but because they really want to be kind. I politely listen to the man sitting next to me as he honestly wants to be friendly with is little stories about his business.

My hair is cut short and washed. My clothes are brand new. I'm shaved, I feel new, I feel whole.

I feel lighter and better than I even did. Once I'm off the plane I head through the terminal and go to wait outside to be picked up by Ron in a ministry car. I go to pull out a cigarette and then threw the pack away. I no longer care about becoming sickly, I'm through with those fantasies of waking up to Hermione's kind touch.

When Ron pulls up we embrace like brothers. He talks about Quidditch and I find myself interested. I had told Hermione I could never go back to caring about the mundane things of life, but now that I had lived my bizarre fantasy, I found the comforts of an ordinary life, not dictated by expectation but rather something desirable to obtain.

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I walk the hallway of the Weasley home. It smells of a long distant familiarity, a scent that I once more associate with home. I find it far more pleasant than the smell of rot that I had lived in for the past two years.

The crowd of friends and family is enormous, and little Weasley children totter around or are otherwise passed around by their proud uncles. I have a drink of fire whiskey in one hand as I navigate my way to the porch of the house. I need a fresh breath of air, a chance to be apart from my suffocating past for just a moment. As I walk out the door I crash into someone trying to come in. Life just loves coincidence. I grab out and catch the falling person, apologizing profusely. It is only then that I realize that it's her. Hermione Granger.

An awkward silence passes between us. She studies my face as though looking for some mark of change, and I'm almost tempted to ask her if she sees any.

“Harry... I didn't know you'd be here” she whispered, still in utter shock.

“I can leave” I reply in a flat tone.

“No, don't be... where have you been all these years?”

“No place real” I say with a small, private smile. “How's uh... what's his name?”

“Harry, we broke up shortly after you left for, wherever the hell you went. You said it yourself, how can we return to the more mundane things of life after we've suffered so much?”

It's hard for me to contemplate that all these years I've been living I was not alone in trying to come to terms with the past. She had suffered as well, and I'm sure every last one of those in the war found returning to regular life near impossible. Yet here we are, two pasts literally colliding in a doorway, forced to remember.

We hold one another's gaze for a while, not sure what to say. So I kiss her. A real kiss this time. Not a farewell, but a testimony to every last emotion brewing in me. Then I pull back.

“I've waited to do that for so long” I tell her, not apologizing. I don't want to apologize for the realist thing I've felt in two years. I step away and head for the stairs, going to walk out into the heavy snow that falls from the beautiful grey sky.

“Harry” she says, and I turn back to her. “I want you to stay.” Then she kisses me. I'm outside in the snow, standing at the bottom of the steps as she stands at the top. My head is tilted back as she kisses me. I can feel every cool snowflake melt into my burning flesh. Those are the words I've waited so long for. I want you to stay.

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