Cessation.

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.

Chapter Two.

Hermione awoke with a blanket thrown around her. Harry was gone, but his smell remained. Just beyond the sick smell of decay that clung to him there was the green grass and almond smell she had fallen in love with. It clung to the sofa cushions, and she found herself breathing it in.

It was normal, she told herself. She loved him. It was so normal. She wanted so badly for it to be normal, for them to be normal.

* * *

Harry had gone out with the intention of picking up breakfast.. He wanted something huge and bad for his body. He wanted something that tasted like life, and to him life tasted a lot like fried eggs, pancakes, and sausages. He had picked these things up, brown bagged and paid for when his leg gave out. He hit the pavement outside the market with a dull wet thud, like a dropped melon.

He was out cold for a few seconds, all dark and faint noise. When he came to there was a puddle of brackish blood where his head rested. People around him were rushing toward him. He got up from the pavement, brushed the people off and limped away. In the chaos of it all he forgot his brown bag which contained things that tasted like life.

* * *

When Ron was released from police custody, his behavior explained and reasoned to be dramatic but fair, he went home. Sitting in his living room, on his couch, he felt nothing. Same goddamn living room, same goddamn couch. Ron stood to pace the room. His legs screamed at him. Too much exercise in the last few days.

He sat back down, but soon stood again. He liked the strain he felt from standing up. He liked that he felt anything. He felt like someone had scooped him out, left him hollow. He felt raw and he felt numb and he wished that he understood how he could feel both.

He grabbed his jacket and left. Soon he was out jogging the London streets. He figured that when exhaustion finally took him he would sleep where he was. It turned out to be a park bench. He was so tired that he went instantly to sleep. It was the good long and dreamless sleep of the truly tired. He slept like he used to, when he was a child.

* * *

“Sometimes I just...” Hermione turned her head but Ginny nudged her on, “Well, I mean, it's not fair, is it?”

“No, it isn't.” Ginny confirmed with a solemn nod.

“Because he's done so much, you know? He's bleed for this godforsaken place, and every time he gets a moment, just one fucking moment, of peace! It steps up to him and it asks him to just bleed a little more. And I love him, Gin, I love him so much and... and...” She dropped her head.

“I know, 'Mione. I know. We all love him.”

“But why now? I mean... GODDAMN IT! Why now! He was... we were...”

“What do you feel? Just say it.”

“I want to break something! I want to fight someone! But what's the fucking point? Right? Because it won't fix this. It won't make everything better. He's dying and here I sit, the cleverest witch of my age, and I can't do one fucking thing about it!” Hermione's eyes bulged. Tears spilled over, and Ginny could almost see her heart break.

Ginny moved in close and pulled her friend to her. She stroked her hair and held her. And together the two women sat and cried.

* * *

Harry put a bandage over his head, after the bleeding had stopped. So far he had refused to accept help with his day to day medical needs. Nothing would fix it. He was bruising so easily. His skin felt like it was waiting to be prodded so that it could burst open and fill his world with his thick, dark blood. He was afraid to scratch an itch.

He sat down in front of his bedroom mirror and looked at himself. He looked pale. He used to be so strong. Once he was a hero, now he was just one more sick person fighting through his remaining years. He let out a sigh. She would see the bandage unless he covered it.

He rummaged through his things until he turned up a baseball cap. He tucked his hair back and slid it forward on his forehead. He checked himself again in the mirror. He could see the bandage poking out under the hat. He moved it to better hid the bandage, but that failed to cover it too. He tried several other things before he realized that he couldn't hide it.

Harry, very calmly, got up and grabbed a cricket bat from the corner of his room. He began, with no passion at all, to smash his bedroom mirror into pieces. He flung the hat into a corner of the room and sat down on the bed while the adrenaline worked it's way out of his disgusting disease blood.

* * *

When Hermione got over to Harry's flat she found Harry sitting in the living room reading an old book. She noticed the bandages under his ball cap before she moved any further. She sat down next to him and touched his forehead.

“What happened?” She asked.

“Nothing.” Harry said quietly.

“Are you okay?”

Harry dogeared his book and let out a sigh, “You know what? No. I'm dying, 'Mione. On my indicator for what's 'okay' and what isn't, dying weighs in at what isn't.”

“Oh.” She blinked, “That's the first time...I've never heard you complain about it before.” She looked down and to the right, afraid to meet his eye.

“Yeah well, I'm getting tired of being asked if I'm okay.” He shook his head, “Look at me, I'm taking this out on you. It isn't you fault.” He moved her face to his own, “I'm sorry. I love you, I don't want to fight.”

She kissed him and then leaned back, tears almost escaping her eyes, “I love you, too.”

“This is too much, I know that.” He smiled a sad and weak smile, “It sucks that it had to come to this. It sucks that...”

“You have to die.” She finished with her jaw set firmly, “I don't...god, I don't even know how this can happen. It's not fair.”

Harry cupped the back of her head, “Life isn't fair, beautiful. Don't expect otherwise.”

She rolled her head against his hand, feeling as much of his skin on her own as possible, “I can't believe you're giving me advice.”

“Man gets kind of wordy when his time is come.” He nodded, “And me? I'm not going to be leaving anything behind.”

“Except me.” She kissed his shoulder, “You're leaving me behind.”

He nodded and yanked his ball cap off, “I don't want to.”

“Die?”

He looked at her, really looked at her, “Leave you behind.” He turned away and stared at the fraying edges of his living room throw rug, “I've been ready to die since I was eleven. I did once already in fact.”

“I know.”

“You know, when I was there, in that place...” He sighed, “Nevermind.”

She moved closer on the couch, pulled his hands into her own, “Tell me.”

“It was my choice to come back or not. I didn't have to. I could have just stayed. I could have slept. There would have been peace.”

“But you did come back.”

Harry nodded, “Because he wasn't dead. Because I had to finish it.”

“Are.... Do you mean to say that you wanted to die?”

Harry squeezed her hands, “That was then.” He concentrated on her face, “This is now.”

* * *

When Ron woke up he went home. He was still hollow inside. He still felt sick to his stomach, but now his body hurt.