Friday, September 1, 2017
Harry reappeared in the study at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, where he'd been living since moving out of the house he'd shared with Ginny for nearly two decades. Though, if he were to be honest with himself, that house hadn't been home in... well, a while, anyway. He'd moved the things that mattered most to him here, over the years, as their house became Ginny's and the kids'... as Harry was slowly displaced from what he'd hoped to make the center of his world. He laughed hollowly, tears drying on his cheeks, wet streaks remaining where the occasional tear still slid slowly out, trembling on his lashes for the briefest instant, then following its predecessors down, tracing out the years of his secret grief.
He'd tried to live, after the war. He really had. But he could never muster the energy, the enthusiasm for life that everyone around him seemed to have. He always felt like there was something... missing. Some secret, vital thing that, if he could only find it, would bring color and light to his life. It took him years to realize that he was the only one fumbling blind in the dark. That everyone else had grieved those they had lost, picked up the pieces, moved on with their lives. He'd become resigned to it, eventually. It made a twisted kind of sense, he supposed. He'd died twice already – what right did he have to life, after that? It was a miracle he was still clinging to a semblance of life at all.
He trailed his fingers over the objects littering the desk, the mantle. So few objects, a smattering of trinkets to mark a life never really lived. He knew them all, every contour, every flaw. He stopped, fingers closing abruptly round the object they still touched. He didn't bother to check what he held – he didn't care. They were meaningless, anyway. Empty. Like his joke of a life. He whipped around, hurled the object into the brick fireplace, where it shattered with a gratifying crash. He cast a careless reparo, waiting for the pieces to jump into his hand, reassemble themselves, then flung it once more into the flames.
It amused him, for a while. Far longer than it should have, he supposed. But he was empty. Numb. He craved destruction with everything he had. Never in his life had he wanted more to die. He, who had brushed hands with death so many times. He fell into a hypnotic rhythm, lulled by the crackle of the flames, the crash and shatter of the pieces of his past breaking, being repaired, breaking... over and over again.
When reparo failed, when the shards of whatever-it-was only trembled when he cast, he shrugged, grasped blindly behind him for the next object.
And then the next. And the next.
When he'd run out of reminders of his past, he sank to the ground, head in his hands, despairing, mourning. Then he rose to his feet, face settled into the worn lines of its familiar mask, and moved to his bedroom – the only other room in this forsaken house he'd bothered to inhabit. He stopped in the doorway, stared blindly at the empty trunk awaiting him, then whisked everything in the room into it with a quick flick of his wrist. Another careless flick shut and locked it, shrunk it, lightened it. He scooped it up under his arm, cast one last glance about the empty room, and apparated.
---
He reappeared outside the gates of Hogwarts – the one place he had ever truly felt at home. He reached out, touched the gate with one hesitant finger, remembering. Willing himself to grasp the tantalizing edges of memory, to find himself – his life – again. He leaned his forehead against the cool metal, trying to draw the quiet peace of it into his bones. Then the gate opened silently before him, and he stumbled slightly. He heaved a quiet sigh, and stepped forward into the familiar unknown.
It was time to face his future.
---
McGonagall met him at the door, and he had to choke back a sob, or perhaps a laugh, he wasn't sure which it would be, if he let it out. But he didn't, and McGonagall merely raised an eyebrow at him. She looked older, certainly, than she had in his youth. He supposed he probably did, too. He remembered suddenly a conversation half-overheard at some Weasley gathering – that she'd been semi-retired, lately, and had only returned to mentor the newly-minted graduate she'd chosen as her successor. He wondered idly who it was, but the brief flicker of interest soon faded, and he stared blankly at her once more.
Her features sagged a bit, as he stared at her, and she shook her head at him. "You, Mr. Potter, look older than I feel, and I'm afraid I've quite a few years on you yet."
He tried to dredge up a smile for her, but her eyes told him that it was a pitiful attempt. She sighed. "Come on then, Harry. I'll show you to your rooms. You won't have time to unpack now, I'm afraid – the dinner will start soon.
He nodded. He didn't much care when or if he unpacked his few belongings. His fingers slipped into his pocket, worried the worn strip of paper he found there. McGonagall, realizing, perhaps, that he wasn't going to say anything, turned with a swish of her robes and led him down a hall he'd never ventured down. There were nameplates beside the doors; he didn't bother reading them. He had no interest in his colleagues, in which room belonged to whom. He wanted only to find a quiet place to rest, to sink into the oblivion that threatened, pounding at his temples like crashing surf.
McGonagall held out her hand, stopping him, and he realized they'd arrived. The door was blank, unassuming. He felt a strange affinity for it. The small nameplate beside it read H. Potter, DADA Professor, Head of Gryffindor House.
McGonagall opened the door wordlessly, handed him the key she'd used to unlock it. "Be in the Great Hall in half an hour, Mr. Potter."
He nodded absently, then realized she was already striding down the corridor, robes swirling about her feet. He walked into his room for the foreseeable future – small, plain, bare – dropped his trunk onto the ground, idly returning it to its normal size and weight, and then collapsed bonelessly onto the narrow bed. He waved his wand lazily as an afterthought, casting a quick tempus and keying it to chime in twenty minutes. Then he closed his eyes, let his head sink onto the pillow, and welcomed oblivion.
---
Twenty-nine minutes later, he arrived at the empty seat at the head table, panting slightly, hair mussed and robes rumpled. He didn't bother to look at the faces surrounding him. His son was out there, he knew, beyond the closed doors, waiting to be sorted; his other sat with his friends at the Gryffindor table. He didn't bother to look for him, either. He would see them soon enough.
Then a strained, slightly hysterical, and all too familiar voice came from the place directly across from him. "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
Harry thought he might cry again. Or laugh. He seemed to have forgotten how to tell the difference. He wondered idly when he'd last done either, before today, as he raised his eyes to meet furious grey ones. "Hello... Malfoy. Fancy meeting you here."
The fire he saw in those eyes kindled an answering fire in his soul that he'd long forgotten. He relished it, the burning intensity. Yes. Perhaps he could learn to live again, if only to bait Malfoy. Malfoy, who had always, always, gotten under his skin as no one else could.
He wondered, not for the first time, if the fates were laughing at him, seeing how far they could push him before he snapped. He realized, with a start, that he didn't care. For whatever reason, Malfoy was the only one who could bring fire and passion back into his life. And if the only emotion he was capable of turned out to be hate, well... it was still fire. Still life. And Harry found that, after all, he wasn't ready to give up on living yet.