Fall from Grace

Into the Abyss

Fall From Grace

Chapter 1

Into the Abyss

Sirius Black has been dead for a week and yet everyone seemed to be going on as normal. The threat of the Dark Lord was real again, the Ministry and Daily Prophet called Harry 'The-Boy-Who-Lived' once more but Harry couldn't bring himself to care for that. Nor could he care for Draco Malfoy's taunts or anyone around him. He felt hurt. Empty. His dreams were filled with Sirius falling through the veil and Bellatrix's cruel laughter. Sometimes he falls into the veil trying to grab him or he would chase after Bellatrix. But either way, he was filled with the same emotions, immeasurable guilt followed by anger. Harry wished that it was him instead. He wished that he was strong enough to save Sirius. Strong enough to take his revenge on Bellatrix. Breaking Dumbledore's office relieved some of his anger, but it just kept growing with people's expectations.

When they were all out of the hospital wing, Ron and Hermione just continued on as normal. Ron was even making jokes about Harry being the Boy-Who-Lived again. It all felt so inhumane, so insulting, to the young teenager. He just wanted to be alone, to try and process everything that has happened, and yet they were always there. Ron and Hermione never left him alone, and now after everything, Neville and Ginny appeared more frequently too with Luna. Harry hated them all for it and he hated himself for feeling like that. He was angry. He wanted to punch Ron whenever he laughed. Snap at Hermione whenever she talked about how she can now focus on SPEW. But he didn't. He let it all bottled inside him.

He visited Hagrid, and Harry hoped for some sympathy, some time to show his grief, but the groundskeeper didn't help. "I knew Sirius longer than you did," he said, "... He died in battle, and that's the way he'd have wanted to go."

Harry felt his rage fill again. "He didn't want to go at all!" he said angrily.

"Nah, I don't reckon he did," Hagrid said quietly. "But still, Harry... he was never one to sit around at home and let other people do the fighting. He couldn't have lived with himself if he hadn't gone to help—"

Harry leaped up. "I've got to go," he said mechanically.

"Oh," Hagrid said, looking rather upset. "Oh ... all right, then, Harry. ... Take care of yourself then, and drop back if you've got a moe..."

Harry crossed the door as fast as he could and pulled it open. He was out in the sunshine of the summer afternoon again before Hagrid had finished saying goodbye and walked away across the lawn. Once again, people called out to him as he passed. He closed his eyes for a few moments, wishing they would all vanish or drop dead, that he could open his eyes and find himself alone.

He walked a short way around the lake, sat down on its bank, sheltered from the gaze of passerby behind a tangle of shrubs, and stared out over the gleaming water, thinking.

Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he had felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world. He was—he had always been—a marked child. It was just that he had never really understood what that meant.

And yet sitting here on the edge of the lake, with the terrible weight of grief dragging at him, with the loss of Sirius so raw and fresh inside him, he could not muster any great sense of fear. It was sunny and the grounds around him were full of laughing people, and even though he felt as distant from them as though he belonged to a different race, it was still very hard to believe as he sat here that his life must include, or end in, murder.

He sat there for a long time, gazing out at the water, trying not to think about his godfather or to remember that it was directly across from here, on the opposite bank, that Sirius had collapsed trying to fend off a hundred dementors.