Chapter One.
Unjustified.
"Because I could not stop for Death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
And Immortality.
We slowly drove-He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility-
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess-in the Ring-
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain-
We passed the Setting Sun-
Or rather-He passed Us-
The Dews drew quivering and chill-
For only Gossamer, my Gown-
My Tippet-only Tulle-
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground-
The Roof was scarcely visible-
The Cornice-in the Ground-
Since then-'tis Centuries-and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity"
By: Emily Dickinson
Somewhere in the world a stone dislodges from the rock face it had once, but for time and erosion, been a part of. It falls a distance into the small lake that rests placid at the base of the rock face. The rock strikes the still water and a flurry of ripples cascade out from the point of impact. These ripples become small, soft waves, which gently lap against the base of the rock face.
In moments the scene is once more as it had been a tall rock face and the placid lake below.
* * *
Harry wakes with a start. He wipes the sweat from his face, breathes in deeply and gets up off the bathroom tiles he had fallen asleep on. Each step is a brand new kind of pain. He tries to look down at his feet, tries to make out the problem, but his vision is blurry. He touches his face below his eye line and doesn't feel his glasses there. He squints down at his feet, he can't make out much.
He is barefoot. This much he can tell. He sees blood, he is covered in blood. He stumbles to the row of sinks and leans in close to the mirror. His face is covered in blue bruises and there is blood dripping from his scalp. He recoils in shock, only to realize that he doesn't have the strength to maintain his balance. He topples to the floor.
On his back, on a public restroom floor, Harry begins to feel the memories flood back.
* * *
Would you like to talk about the war?
(He leans forward in his chair, the light seems to go from his eyes.)
War is not something to be glorified. War is not just a situation wherein conflicting ideologies cause violent confrontation. War is not hell, either. Hell is eternal, war is so very temporary. With eternity there is the chance that you will adapt and become used to your situation. There is no comparison to hell. In hell you would never have to find out what life is when the torture is concluded.
That is all I will say about The War in this book. If you picked it up to read my thoughts on the subject, there they are, you can put the book down now. You can find accounts of my goddamn war in many other books. I have no desire to talk about war.
I want to talk about life. I want to talk about love. I want to talk about goddamn babies and sunflowers and the glory inherent in a quiet life of simple dignity. I want to talk to you, with this book, about the people who matter to me. I want to discuss the things and places that defines me. Actually, I really don't want to talk about those things. Truth told, I just want to be left alone. I want to disappear into the well deserved obscurity afforded to the casualties of my goddamn war.
But I'm told that if I don't at least try to talk about all of this, or else I will never stop being asked to do so. So this is it, this is my … whatever this is...about me. I guess to tell you about me I should start somewhere. So I'll start with this:
I don't remember my mother and father, not well at least. There are things there, floating just out of reach, and farther away every day. What I do remember is the cupboard under the stairs.
-Excerpt from the unpublished manuscript, "Don't let them down: The Autobiographic Interviews of Harry Potter."
* * *
Harry practically crawled up the stairs to the flat he shared with Ron. He would have taken more time if he knew that it stood empty.
* * *
Hermione rolled over in bed and squinted toward the ceiling. The fan spun lazy circles, and inside of herself she could feel the alcohol rear itself against her. She made it to the bathroom just in time to leave the toilet bowl flecked with bile and undigested foods.
She fell away from the cold porcelain and sat back against the tiles. She wiped her mouth. She left the bathroom consciously avoiding her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She found her way, clumsy and dehydrated, to her kitchen. She put away a few glasses of water, just enough that she could see straight.
Explosions seemed to go off behind her eyelids. She sat at her kitchen table and rubbed slow circles about her temples, doing little to relieve the tension stored within.
"I'm never going to drink again." She promised herself.
* * *
Ron pulled the drawstrings taut, bringing his hood as close to his face as possible. The sweat that had collected on his sweater was chilling in the cold autumn air. His legs hurt, his eyes were bleary from drops of shed sweat. The soles of his feet felt like fresh fire breaking out every time he felt his feet make contact with the morning cooled pavement.
He had been running every morning. Running until he was too exhausted to think, too damn tired to feel. He had been running until he was far enough away from human that he wouldn't hurt. He felt the moisture hit his neck, he had felt it run down his face. He hoped that he was perspiring enough that it wouldn't look like tears.
* * *
Sometimes it feels like we fought for everything, sometimes it feels like we fought for nothing. Sometimes... No. I promised not to talk about war. I think... Look, I know what I want to leave behind me, y'know? I know what my legacy ought to be. I know what I want it to be.
Do you want to talk about Hermione?
I don't know what I would even say. Is it right to say that I love her? I don't know. Lately... Lately I feel like it's worth looking into that, you know? Because love is forever, and so little else is. I kind of want forever sometimes.
Is it because of the diagnosis?
Isn't everything? My whole life has always been about something beyond my control! Why should the end of it be any different?
You feel as though you have no control?
...Illustrate to me how I do. (He sits back and crosses his arms, and I confess that I have nothing to tell him. There are no words.) That's what I thought.
-Excerpt from the unpublished manuscript, "Don't let them down: The Autobiographic Interviews of Harry Potter."
* * *
Six months ago the doctor had looked over a clip board and told Harry that he didn't know how to say what he told him next. The trauma of sharing a life force, and having that life force end inside of him, it had basically been damage done.
Some kind of residual effect. It was like dying, but without the pain. Without the pain? Well, there will be pain of course. You're body is dying, it just won't be violent pain. It'll feel like withering. Like a loss of strength. You'll be...I don't know...rickety.
How long? Optimistically, a handful of decades. I can't say much more than that. This is, I mean, no one has every suffered from this before. The magic that caused it, it's simply not done, you understand. Most of this is speculation.
He would live to be in his thirties, optimistically anyway.
Worst case, a few years.
A few goddamn years.
* * *
Harry sat down that Fall and began to tell his story, the story of the life that wasn't in his biographies. The life that wasn't, and in so many ways had never been, in his hands at all. The story of a poor, lost soul who was forced into glory. The story of a sad little king and his tragic tale of endings upon endings.
The story of Harry Potter but also, because one cannot be told without the telling of the other, The story of Hermione Granger.
* * *
Harry closed his eyes and slept. He had fallen asleep on the couch. His dreams were troubled. He had set out to live everyday as though it were his last, and it was killing him. No one ever told him that you would need a vacation from the exertion of dealing with a terminal illness.
Every morning when he got up he was still tired. His joints ached. He found that he smelled almost like rotting fruit most of the time. It would take forever for a scratch to close up. He would bleed, thick black-red disease blood, for days at a time.
He would spend hours screaming, hours sitting so still that he seemed dead already, and hours more wishing he was someone else. Anyone else.
* * *
Hermione came over later, crawled onto the couch next to Harry and breathed in his scent. It wasn't fair, not to her, but she had learned long ago not to expect the world to be fair. In his sleep he put his arm around her and she felt like she belonged. She bit back tears, because she knew she would never feel this way with someone else.
* * *
Ron had stopped running. He had locked himself in the public restroom of a twenty-four hour convenience store and began to cry. When he was as raccoon faced as he was going to get he began to get destructive. He ripped out the sink, threw it through the back of the toilet, punched out the mirror and shattered the hanging florescent bulbs.
When he was through, and before the police arrived, he curled into a ball in the corner and shook with rage because his body was too dry to cry anymore.
"Fuck." He said, and over and over, ever quieter until he was either choking on the words or simply silent, he repeated it.
Author's Note:
Just a fair warning, Updates aren't going to be quick coming. I'm working through a very real thing that happened in my own life with this story. It can be painful to right about, and I just hope to do it justice. So, sorry, but it's going to be slow going.
Also, and maybe this goes without saying but, this isn't going to be a happy ending kind of story.