Prelude: In this Fog, Only Silence…
Harry stared down the end of his arm to where his wand pointed at a gaping black hole in the ground. He stood there, head bowed, breathing ragged, and not daring to blink in case that patch of charred earth would transform back into Voldemort's skeletal figure. `He's gone,' Harry reassured himself, `he's gone;' but still he could not seem to move. His vision blurred and something wet and warm trickled down the bridge of his nose, but Harry remained frozen, like a Petrified form of himself.
"Harry! Harry!" Someone was calling him from far away.
Harry blinked. Another warm drop fell down his forehead. And then Hermione was at his shoulder, turning him away from the large blot on the ground and wrapping her arms around him, her head pressed to his chest. He began to feel something other than the fear and rage he had been thriving on since the end of sixth year, but then she pulled away, holding him by the arms instead.
"Harry, are you all right? Voldemort's gone! He's dead! You've done it!" she scanned his blank face, her brow creasing in concern. "Oh, Harry," she said, "you're bleeding."
She pulled out her wand and muttered, "Tergeo," and Harry felt the blood disappear off his face. Then, she stood on the balls of her feet to examine a tiny cut on his forehead, from where the blood came, touching it gingerly. Harry could feel her breath near his face.
She stepped back and said, "It's just a scrape, it's not serious. It's stopped bleeding now," though her brows still knotted with worry. She looked at him again, assessing him, "Harry?"
The silence roaring in his ears, Harry gazed at her, trying to understand what she was saying to him. The two looked at each other for one heart-stopping moment before Harry finally took a gasping breath, relaxed his shoulders, and said, "Yeah."
Hermione laughed in relief, and asked, "Where's Ron?"
Harry twisted around and looked across the great green expanse of the hill upon which the final battle took place.
"I don't know," he said, "the last time I remember seeing him, he was fighting Dolohov by that tree."
He pointed down the slope a ways, and felt Hermione's body instinctively leap in that direction before she caught herself and turned back to him with a questioning glance.
Harry nodded at her, "Go ahead, I'll catch you up." Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Harry cut her off, "Go, Hermione."
She closed her mouth in resignation, and hurried away.
Harry turned back to the ebony stain, all that was left of Voldemort. At his feet a light breeze swirled the ashes, scattering some in the air. `He really is gone,' Harry thought, faintly rubbing the scar on his forehead. He did not feel one ounce of pain emanating from it. Slipping his wand inside his pocket, he turned and walked down the hill after Hermione.
In the distance he spotted the tree by which he had last seen Ron; on the other side of it, he could see someone hunched over, kneeling next to something that the tall grasses partially hid from view. Frowning, he circled around the large willow, squinting at the bent figure. It was Hermione, and he saw she was leaning over a person lying spread-eagle on the ground. Her shoulders were jerking up and down, and she had one hand covering her mouth, the other over the chest of the prostrate figure. `Ron!' Harry's mind raced. He began running, cutting a path through a field mired with dead bodies, souvenirs of the final battle.
But as he came up, a few hundred yards from his two best friends, he heard Hermione give a strangled sob, and saw her incline her head towards a redheaded one, her eyelids drooping as she bent to kiss a very alive yet very injured Ron. The sight caused Harry to stop cold in his tracks and completely forget his panic.
This was the first time he had ever seen the two kiss. He had assumed they had gotten together at the end of sixth year, but the three of them had never actually discussed it, and during the search for the horcruxes and the ensuing battles, they had never publicly given any indication that they were lovers, at least not around him.
His mind went blank, but he could not seem to tear his eyes away from either of them, connected like that. It was so foreign; he felt like he was looking at a mirage. They had not even realized he was there. Harry felt a sharp jab at his side, like a knife inserted and quickly twisted out. His cheeks blazed as he watched Ron reach up and pull Hermione down to him; their kiss still unbroken.
Harry felt like he was now intruding on something private, but his feet seemed mortared to the ground. He cast around wildly in his mind for some semblance of rational thought and fell upon an image of a redheaded girl. `Ginny!' he thought, `she's waiting for me; she's been waiting for me.' A thousand desires suddenly thrust themselves upon him at once: the need for someone to hold him, the need to sleep for a thousand years, the need to get out of this body, the need to get away from this place and never come back again.
The longer he stood there, the more he felt a strange prickling on his skin, everywhere itching, pinching him, like a million spiders crawling up and down his limbs. Hardly able to stand it, he Apparated with a deafening crack; at the sound echoing through the branches of the tree, Hermione gasped and her head snapped up, looking directly at the place where Harry had been a moment ago.
Harry Apparated to the Burrow with the intention of seeing Ginny, but for some reason could not bring himself to walk up the path to the front door. `But this is what you wanted, isn't it?' he reasoned with himself. `All those long months searching and destroying those horcruxes…all those battles to get closer to Voldemort…you fought, you killed to avenge those who died for you, to save those who love you…and now that he's gone, you can return to her and lead a normal life, the life you've always wanted!`
`Is that what you really want?' a small voice contested in the back of his mind.
`YES!`
He tried mentally screaming at the dissenting voice with all his might, yet it only seemed to come out as a choked whisper. He wanted to be surrounded by all of his loved ones; Lupin, the Weasleys, especially Ron and Hermione. `But what if Ron and Hermione don't want to be around you?'
His mind shot back to the scene he had just left. They did not need him anymore; he had defeated Voldemort. There was no need to spare his feelings, make certain he did not feel like the third wheel. They could get on with their lives now. `And, he supposed, their lives revolved around each other now. Where do I fit in? With Ginny?`
That's how he had planned it, during those grating, sleepless nights while journeying for the horcruxes. If he were still alive after fighting Voldemort, then he would return to the Burrow to be with Ginny, Hermione would be with Ron, and they would all be one big, happy-but, no! He discovered the strangest feeling of revulsion in the pit of his stomach as he thought of going into that house in front of him, his favorite place in the world. That feeling frightened him, and made him feel like the biggest git alive.
He felt a tug in his gut to return to the battlefield. He wanted to be with Ron and Hermione, to celebrate with them; he wanted to go back to second year when he and Ron had solved the mystery of the chamber and Hermione had been Unpetrified and had practically flown down the Great Hall towards them.
But he did not belong under that tree with Ron and Hermione kissing. Had he just not escaped from there, not being able to stand it a second longer? He hung his head; the heat of the battle, the tension in his bones, and the conflicted thoughts hammering in his head all seemed to gather right behind his eyes. Suddenly, they felt sore and heavy.
`Don't cry,' he warned himself, `don't cry, you big git. What have you got to cry about? You should be happy! Voldemort's gone, and you're alive!'
But he could feel the weight behind his eyes increase.
`She'll be so mad at you; she'll be right pissed. Her mum will find out, and then Mrs. Weasley will be furious with you too. You'll push away the only family you have.'
But despite all his remonstrances, he could not persuade himself inside the house. Vague feelings pounded away at his battered heart, but he had no wish to examine them. He just wanted to leave. So, away he Apparated again, and from inside the Burrow, where Ginny Weasley was indeed sitting, she did not even notice the crack.
Harry found himself at King's Cross station, behind a bin outside an abandoned toilet. Upon Disapparating from the Burrow, Harry had barely realized to where he would be Apparating, though once he inhaled the familiar odor of steam and beheld the well-known train tracks, he knew instinctually that he had been thinking of coming here the entire time he had been standing outside the Burrow.
Twilight was falling over London; autumn had arrived while Harry had been fighting Voldemort. A dense fog had rolled into the station, obscuring the bustling crowd. Harry gratefully enveloped himself in this anonymity, and walked to the column between platforms nine and ten. Stepping to the side in the pretense of letting an old woman by, Harry put his back up against the bricks and fell gracefully through to platform nine and three-quarters.
With the corners of his mouth turned up fractionally, Harry smiled for what seemed like the first time in over a year as he took in the familiar railway station, empty except for himself and the fog, which, it appeared, had followed him from the Muggle world. While moments before Harry had basked in the haze, as it swirled around him now, caressing his tired face, he felt a strange emptiness not in his stomach, but higher up his ribcage, near his sternum.
He let his mind drift with the mist as it drew tendrils of smoke above the railway tracks, as if beckoning for the Hogwarts Express. A fleeting image of Hermione, holding Crookshanks in his cage and stepping up onto one of the train cars, swept across his mind, but Harry shook his head, dispersing it into the fog.
He did not want to think about that; that time was over and done with. He was not in school any longer; he was an adult wizard; he had been for over a year now. Hermione would not be by his side, nagging him and Ron to do their homework or to not break that rule; she would be taking care of Ron now. Harry did not realize until then just how much he would miss that.
He rolled his shoulders beneath his singed robes, and snorted at his own sentimentality. `I need to get away,' he thought, putting on a tough exterior instead. `France, maybe?' And with a decisive step and turn, he vanished for the third time in under an hour, and for the last time in a long time, out of London.
To be continued
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