Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JKR. No money is being made, etc.
Author's Note: Lyrics are from James Blunt's "No Bravery" and do not belong to me. Written for Melissa (acoustics1220).
All He Needed
AndI see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
~*~
He looked upon Hell.
He knew it.
It was desolation, everywhere.
The smell of sulfur and fires and destruction and death.
And above it all, the eerie green of the Dark Mark-the many Dark Marks. For, in a gesture that seemed to show some sort of taunting, macabre humor, the Death Eaters had left their mark in the shape of a V. More than a half-dozen of the green skulls with snakes protruding from the mouths-in the shape of a V.
He wondered-with a sort of detached irony, because detachment was his only refuge right now against the tidal wave of reaction to the sight before him-whether they meant V for Voldemort or V for Victory.
Either way, it was an added horror, the unnatural green from the Dark Marks lighting up the darkness of the night.
It was the most devastation the war had yet seen, the largest attack to date by the Death Eaters, an indication of strength.
And he knew-although the Ministry had been denying it for months now-Voldemort's numbers were growing.
Some because more and more people had succumbed to the ingrained prejudices of the wizarding world but more because people had succumbed to fear.
It was what Harry thought of, with a bitter twist, as the Peter Pettigrew reasoning, the 'He was too powerful; What good was there in resisting?' The sort of reasoning that made him feel sick at times.
He didn't think the people that did so were evil-or at least, not always. He thought they were weak, cowards, sniveling rodents-and yet he understood too.
But he also understood that Voldemort didn't operate like that. And joining evil was never the way to go.
Dumbledore had said that a time would come to choose between what was right and what was easy-those people had chosen what was easy. He had chosen what was right-or had it chosen for him.
But at times like this-looking on a scene like this-he wondered just what it was he was doing.
The Order had heard some vague scuttlebutt that the Death Eaters' next target would be the small town of Embley-on-Trent. The rumor had been the more believable because Embley-on-Trent was, according to all sources, the only completely Muggle town in all of England. Every other town had at least one magical inhabitant, even if that person was a Muggle-born child. (The equally-small town of Malmesbury had, for example, only two magical people, both Muggle-born children too young to be in Hogwarts yet.) Somehow, Embley-on-Trent did not have any wizards of any kind, no Squibs even. Admittedly this might be because the total population of Embley-on-Trent hovered around 100.
The Order had heard rumors and the Inner Circle, as it was unofficially called, consisting of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Professor McGonagall, Remus, Tonks, and Mr. Weasley, had been meeting in an emergency session to try to plan security measures for the village that wouldn't stir any attention from the oblivious residents-when Bill had rushed in to say that the Death Eaters had struck.
The meeting had broken up into chaos as every person there with the exception of Professor McGonagall who remained at Hogwarts for the students and as a sort of Headquarters, immediately Apparated over to Embley-on-Trent.
To find Hell.
~*~
Houses burnt beyond repair.
The smell ofdeath is in the air.
A woman weeping in despair says,
Hehas been here.
Tracer lighting up the sky.
It's another family's turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.
~*~
They arrived too late to do anything except see the destruction of the town.
Every man, woman and child in the town had been murdered, some after they had been brutally tortured from the battered looks of some of the corpses. The bodies had been heaped together in an indiscriminate pile. Every home and structure in the town had been burnt and most had been leveled to the ground.
"Merciful God," Remus had croaked on arriving.
None of the small number had looked at each other, staring wide-eyed with horror and shock and grief and anger at the atrocity before them.
Harry heard a sort of buzzing in his ears, drowning out any other sound as he simply stared, feeling tears prick at the back of his eyes though his eyes remained dry.
As if from far away, he heard Hermione turn away to retch-and though at any other time, his first instinct would have been to try to comfort her, at that moment, in the insularity of his shock and despair and rage, he couldn't.
What could he do-what could anyone do-in the face of such evil?
They had found and destroyed 3 out of the 4 horcruxes except for Nagini who, because it remained at Voldemort's side, remained out of their reach.
They had begun to focus now on how Harry was supposed to finally defeat Voldemort, separating him from the last piece of his soul still left inside him.
Now- looking on the absolute evil of which Voldemort and his followers were capable of- he felt only despair.
What could he do? How could he fight against so much power-so much hate-so much cruelty?
~*~
There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here…
~*~
Voldemort wasn't human anymore-he could not be. He had gone too deep into the Darkest of Dark Magic, done too much to twist and corrupt what little soul he had left until he no longer deserved the title of human.
In the same way though, Voldemort was beyond human, with his power, his boundless capacity to do evil.
And at that moment, Harry simply could not see any hope.
What could he, a 17 year old boy, do?
Yes, he was a powerful enough wizard as 17 year olds went and had some strange other powers too, like his Parseltongue, but he was not Voldemort's equal in power, could not be really for Voldemort had acquired more power than was given to any human through his unblinking and determined search for immortality.
It began as a sort of trembling of his entire body-and he recognized it and moved away from everyone else, going closer toward what remained of the village until he was standing in what had used to be the town center.
He heard as if from far away Hermione's voice, "Harry…", sounding tentative and questioning.
"God…" his voice broke on the choked exclamation. "Damn it!" he burst out, his voice ringing strangely in the deathly silence.
And on the shout, he raised his hands, feeling the odd power he could never control or call up at will but had experienced several times now, the surge of emotion and will and instinct all meshed into his magic, come shooting out of his hands.
The ruins of the town seemed to tremble and then shake and then every structure was flattened-not destroyed but more disappeared. Until it was almost as if the town of Embley-on-Trent had never existed were it not for the roads which still remained, the bodies, and the Dark Marks still hovering above.
He flung one hand up to point towards the sky where the green skulls lingered and closed his eyes, feeling another surge of power go through him, and when he opened them, the skulls were dissipated.
The night was dark once again, peaceful, and above him in the sky, he could just see the twinkle of stars.
He stared around him and then down at his bare hands-shaken, drained and exhausted by what had just happened, his mind somehow too numb to make any sense of it.
He didn't know how or what had just happened-- he'd been wishing he could make it go away, grieving, and somehow it had happened…
He sensed the others drawing nearer and suddenly knew he couldn't bear to talk to anyone, even see anyone.
As always after one of his bursts of controlled-and yet uncontrollable-power, he felt uncomfortable, shaken, as if he had glimpsed something he had no right to see, touched a source of primitive, primeval magic he had no right to touch or even be aware of the existence of-as if he had, for at least a fleeting moment, become too close to the equivalent of Voldemort in magic at least.
"No!" he let out sharply and then, without even looking at the others, Apparated away to Grimmauld Place.
Grimmauld Place had become something like the unofficial Headquarters again-although most Order meetings took place at Hogwarts. He, Ron and Hermione stayed at Grimmauld Place which was once more protected by a Secret Keeper, Remus, and only known to the Order's Inner Circle and a few select others.
He made his way straight to the room which he always used, the room which had used to be Sirius's, and dropped onto the bed, lying flat on his back to stare blindly up at the ceiling.
How long he lay there he didn't know but at some point he drifted to sleep, his dreams full of strange images and sensations and nightmarish memories of what the town had looked like, the bodies of the murdered townspeople.
He awoke with a start for no reason he could identify-to hear something that made him tense and reach for his wand in instinctive reaction before he identified it as steady, even breathing and knew even before he looked, that it would be Hermione.
She was curled up on the floor by his bed, her head resting on the cushion she had left there.
He didn't understand it, hadn't stopped to question it, but somehow whenever he retreated to his room and shut the door, rebuffing Ron's attempts to talk, he always found Hermione joining him.
Usually he woke up to find she had slipped into his room while he dozed or slept but sometimes she simply opened the door and entered, not saying anything, and he found he could never tell her to leave (the first few times he'd tried and she hadn't listened anyway so he gave it up as futile) so he didn't react or speak on her entrances in such occasions-but then before long, somehow, the atmosphere in the room would lighten, his mood would lighten-and he would feel himself again.
He didn't know how or why it happened like that-but it did.
For the first time, he felt a stab of guilt-it seemed like he depended so much on Hermione for strength and comfort and didn't provide her with the same.
He slid down onto the floor beside her, shaking one shoulder gently.
"Hermione. Hermione, wake up."
She awoke with a small cry, looking disoriented for a moment before her eyes found his, and then before he could react, she moved until her face was buried in his chest, clutching him, as his arms went around her automatically.
"Oh Harry, it was so awful…" she said in a muffled whimper. "All those people… the little kids…" And she began to cry, her entire body trembling with the force of her sobs as she clung tighter to him, burrowing into his arms.
And somehow the sound of her tears, her words that brought the searing images from tonight back to the forefront of his mind, broke through the walls he had put up, the detachment he'd tried to hold on to, and he felt tears well in his eyes.
He cried for the lives lost, he cried for his own uncertainty and doubt that he could do what he needed to do, he cried for the heartbreak he could feel in Hermione's sobs, he cried for the helplessness of them all against the growing menace of Voldemort. He cried as he would never have allowed himself to cry, as he hadn't allowed himself to cry for anyone-not even for Sirius or Dumbledore-but he cried for them now…
He held her tightly, knowing she would know he was crying too but it didn't matter.
He could cry; he didn't have to keep it inside or be strong at that moment. With her-somehow, he realized-he knew he didn't have to be strong. He could, at least in that moment, just be himself and give in to all his fears and sorrow-because it was her.
In some tiny portion of his mind, he was aware that he was immensely grateful to have her, that he could let himself go with her-but he didn't concentrate on that.
For now, all he was conscious of was that he didn't have to be strong because he had her, and even in her own grief, she comforted him.
How long they held each other, he didn't know.
His tears stopped and he was almost ashamed of himself for having shed them. He tightened his arms around her, moving one hand in aimless, comforting motions on her back.
He was the first one to speak some time later when her sobs, too, had quieted until she was simply leaning against him. "It's getting so hard to keep hoping."
"I know." She didn't say anything more, didn't need to say anything more.
He loved that he knew she understood, loved that she didn't feel the need to say anything like some cliché about how hope was vital. He loved that he felt so comfortable with her that he could tell her his fears, that he could cry, that holding her like this even though he never had before somehow didn't feel awkward.
"I don't know if I can do this."
She shifted, moving slightly away from him enough so she could look at his face.
The eyes that met hers were so bleak-so dark-hopeless, she thought, as if he had lost any will, any courage, to go on… The pain in his eyes was so deep it hurt her to see it with an almost physical pain, as if someone had stabbed a knife into her heart and was twisting it.
~*~
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes, anymore.
Only sadness.
~*~
"I- I don't know if I can help you." Her voice faltered but she continued on. "But you have to. It's hard, it's terrible, it's unfair-but you have to go on. I don't know-I can't give you hope…"
She trailed off into silence.
He stared at her, seeing the tears lingering in her eyes, the pain in them-and felt the beginnings of something-he didn't know what to call it- stir inside him. Not quite hope, not quite confidence, not quite belief, not quite faith-but something that was the beginnings of all those things, something that for the first time since seeing all those dead bodies made him feel as if, after all, he hadn't lost everything.
And he didn't know why or what had started it-except that somehow he knew he could not bear to see Hermione look like that, couldn't bear to hear the defeated note in her voice as she told him that she couldn't give him hope.
Staring at her, he heard her voice in his head again, I can't give you hope… She was right, she couldn't…
But, a little voice inside his head, the one that sounded like Hermione, told him, she could direct him to what could give him hope… Remind him of what was really important, what was at stake-and why he couldn't give up, why he wouldn't give up…
And she had…
He didn't understand it but he felt it, acknowledged it- it was her.
At times when he felt lost, when he felt as if he could just give up, she was there-grounding him, keeping him connected, reminding him that it wasn't for himself or for some abstract principle of right that he needed to do this. It was for her-for every person whose kindness made them feel the pain of others, for every person who felt afraid because they weren't born to magical parents, for every person who thought sometimes that they could not go on…
It was her, he realized; she was the thing he reached for, held onto, when he needed it. When he was weak, she was there, giving him strength even without his realizing it.
She couldn't give him hope-but she had led him to it. In some ways, he thought, she was his hope.
I can't give you hope…
"You don't have to," he blurted out. "You just helped me find it."
You give me the reason I need to do this and I can't give up. You are my reason…
She didn't say anything in response and he said nothing more.
He just tightened his arms around her as she nestled against him once again.
They stayed there, leaning against his bed, through the long, quiet hours of the night. And all he did was hold her-it was all he needed.
Find arms that will hold you at your weakest, eyes that will see you at your ugliest and a heart that will love you at your worst. Then you have found true love. -Unknown
All I did was hold you and it was the best night of my life. -Unknown