Warnings: swearing, violence, character death (AU and canon), possible major character death (AU Deathly Hallows ending)
Author's Note: Written late one night while sipping on vegetable juice. Happy reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Humpty Dumpty. I make no profit from this.
Written February 2009; edited July 2012.
MUD IN HIS EYES
By LaughableBlackStorm
There is a hole in his stomach. Nothing big, he is sure, or else he wouldn't still be breathing. The sticky warmth of the humid air circulating the grounds seeps into his body through the gaping wound and battles with the ever growing dark chill poisoning his insides. He wonders if maybe the cold would be best for him, right now. Numbness is crucial in order to carry on fighting.
Except he doesn't want to fight anymore.
As his glazed eyes languidly take in the sights that surround him, he marvels at the hundreds of curses and spells illuminating the night. In the blinding flashes he can make out faces, split second photographs of their anguish and reluctance to kill the enemy.
They're just kids. Teenagers thrust into a brutal, revolting war they didn't create. Want. Need. None of them are warriors fit for this battle.
But he is.
He has been preparing himself for this day (though the day slipped into night before he could exhale the terrified breath he inhaled when it all started); he has been training for the past six years. With every death-defying experience he encountered, he gained hard learned lessons and morals. And now, on this day, he believes that everything he has gone through was all worth it. It was worth the wait.
For peace. For happiness. For sweet, blissful relief.
Because he knows that after today, he will feel everything he has been craving since he was wrapped in that baby blue blanket and set onto the wooden doorstep of his aunt's house.
It will all be worth it.
He wonders why nobody has tried to finish him off. It would be so easy, almost laughable, to simply remove him from the fight. He cannot defend himself. His only weapon is lying ten feet away from him and he has a hole in his stomach.
Screaming and maniacal laughter reverberate throughout the air, until he finds it difficult to understand that the sounds are not his own. The echoes swallow him whole and threaten to drown him in the cruel insanity of the moment. He thinks the scream closest to him belongs to a girl he knows, though he cannot recall her name. All he knows is that she is a Ravenclaw.
In fact, he can't remember much of anything anymore. He licks his chapped lips, his tongue swollen and dry. He tries to think of what he was doing last night. Tries all sorts of angles—perhaps he was with Ron and Hermione, or Neville? Malfoy, even. Or maybe he was hiding in a forest still, protected under mountains of charms he never learned from Hermione, trying to make sense of a war that is so high above his head, he does not know the root cause of it anymore.
Vibrant purple—it truly is a beautiful, captivating colour—whizzes by twenty feet in front of him and the image of the Ravenclaw girl's pretty face, twisted and frozen in death, is captured in his mind. He blinks and doesn't know how he is supposed to feel at the loss of another friend.
He hasn't seen Ron or Hermione for a while now; doesn't even know if they are still alive and fighting. Perhaps the three of them are one and the same, kneeling on the damp ground with dirt on their clothes and sweat on their skin. It is possible, however, that they have only been separated for a couple of minutes, instead of the hours he believes have passed.
Christ. His mind is slipping away.
There is a hole in his stomach, accompanied by a sharp twinge. He won't look down, doesn't allow himself to. It's probably nothing big, anyway, otherwise he wouldn't still be breathing. The wizard who put the hole there is faceless. All he saw was a stray curse smash into him. It was cerulean blue in colour.
The earth beneath him is rich and disturbed. His best guess is that a spell exploded there, leaving the ground chewed up and turned over. He raises his right hand from the mess and presses it against his stomach, only briefly worrying about infecting the wound with filth. A tiny gasp claws its way out of his burning throat at the contact. With a gag he realises that his hand can disappear into his belly if he pushes hard enough, the hole is so big.
No, he reminds himself. It's nothing big, because he is still breathing.
And he is. Even though the discovery of the size of his wound interrupted the forced expansion and contraction of his lungs, he is still doing it. He does not plan on stopping.
A violent tremor rocks his body and two of his fingers slip under the severed skin. Immediately he retracts his hand, his mouth open wide in horror and agony, but he is unable to scream. His throat has closed up and he can't think anymore because his whole abdomen is shrieking in fiery pain and he looks down and sees all the blood on his hand and shirt and surely the amount oozing into the dark soil beneath him will supply sufficient nutrients for the grass seeds to grow, crimson in colour and sharp as knives—
"Harry!"
He knows that voice. He knows that girl's voice. She's his best friend. Desperately he wants to tear his eyes away from the disgusting, messy injury but he can't. Can't gather the strength it takes to divert his gaze. Can't lower his right hand, which is still dangling in mid-air from before, when he so roughly ripped it away from his stomach.
"Harry, get up! Get up!"
His lips stretch across his face in a wide grin. He would laugh, if his throat could form a sound.
Slowly, he lowers his hand. His bones and joints creak from the effort.
"Harry! Stupi—"
And he is flying.
Flipping, twirling through the air as though he was born to never touch land. As though his body was crafted by angels who wanted him to open his wings and float up to heaven with them, in order to escape this hellish place.
He lands on his back and rolls onto his side. Dirt sprinkles onto him, remnants from the blast. He has the perfect view of the battlefield from down here, below everyone's aim. Maybe he can stay like this for ever, or at least until this is all over. Nobody wants to curse a dead man. If he pretends he's out of the game…maybe he will survive.
In his peripheral vision, a professor falls. He can't think of her name but he does know that no matter how strict she is, he still respects her. Respected her. She isn't moving and her opponent now targets a young student who cannot be more than fifteen years old. Kid doesn't stand a chance. Collapses to the ground soon after.
And he doesn't feel a thing about it. No heartache, no horror, no paralysing fear, no hatred or fury. Nothing but…numbness.
Pushing himself up onto his elbow, he looks around and spots his wand roughly fifteen feet away. He needs to get to it. He needs to join in the fight. But when he rolls onto his stomach, he can't move any more. The slippery sensation of his insides shifting towards the gaping hole—not too big not too big not too big—sends him into spasms of revulsion and panic and torture, and he twitches, facedown in the damp earth, silently screaming for all he is worth. His fingers sink into the ground and bile rises in his throat. He doesn't catch it in time and retches violently, and it is only from sheer power of will that he rolls himself onto his back again.
He can't feel his stomach anymore.
Sobbing harshly and uncontrollably, unable to stop twitching, he knows he won't be able to put himself back together again.
Voldemort is there, standing above him.
"Harry," the snake whispers, a smirk tugging at its mouth.
Harry. A breath of relief escapes his lips, because now he remembers that yes, Harry is his name.
He could never forget this man's name, though. His own name and the names of his friends may slip from his memory, but never this man's.
If there is one thing holding him down to this moment, it is Voldemort. And in a way, Harry is grateful for that. Surely, without Voldemort, Harry would have floated away with the angels long ago, when he first realised he had a hole in his stomach.
They don't exchange any words. Harry's name is all that is said, all that needs to be said. His eyelids gradually slide closed, his brain shutting down with the loss of blood and vital body parts.
When all he can see is black and he is blocked off from the rest of the world, he distantly hears Voldemort chuckle above him.
He takes them to a different place, a different time. Kneels down and grabs hold of Harry's limp wrist (the one that is supposed to be holding his wand) and transports them to some place perfect. An era without war and sickly amounts of bloodshed. An era with no fighting, no insults, no weeping mothers or lost families. No children equipped with the knowledge of death and the duty to kill.
Harry can't help smiling at the sight.
"Where are we?" he asks with a crack in his voice. His emotions are running away from him.
Voldemort doesn't answer. Instead he places a hand against Harry's stomach and pushes him backwards. On the ground, staring up at his nemesis with confused eyes, Harry realises that the hole in his stomach is gone. It has been healed upon his arrival in this Perfect Place.
He never takes his eyes off of Voldemort's ruby ones. Behind him, Harry can hear children laughing. He closes his eyes and imagines them chasing butterflies in knee high grass, jumping up and down and waving their arms wildly in the air in an attempt to capture the agile creatures. The butterflies are all sorts of colours, ranging from clear blue to deep brown to emerald green to ruby red—because in this Perfect Place there are no rivals, and Harry pictures his friends and himself learning Defense Against the Dark Arts from an aging professor by the name of Tom Riddle, a man who was never seduced by the Dark Arts, in a world that has never heard of the name Lord Voldemort. Harry can see it clearer than the photographic flashes of light back home.
Opening his eyes again, he blinks and is surprised by the waterfall of tears that are flowing down his cheeks. He wipes a hand across his face and a small sob-laugh hybrid spills from his mouth. There is no dirt on his skin.
He is clean, once again. Finally, he is clean.
Maybe, in this perfect, beautiful world, he can be forgiven and he can forgive.
He looks up to the sky and the sun crawls out from behind the clouds to say hello and warm his shivering bones.
Through the narrow slit of his barely open eyes, Harry looks up to the sky.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and the all the king's men…
He doesn't understand. His eyes flicker left and right and left and right, and his fists clench and unclench. But he can't make any sense of it.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
There is no sun. No bright, cheerful anything to come and say hello. His breathing becomes erratic and he has trouble controlling how hard he cries.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
So many clouds, though. Too many of them. And he is angry at these heavy, smoky clouds because they are blocking out all the happiness that this world—this so imperfect world—needs, hiding the smiles from view, because he doesn't remember how to smile. Or how to laugh, or even what laughter sounds like. Not even the Death Eaters are bursting with cruel, derange amusement now. Perhaps their throats have grown raw, like his has, or they have forgotten the hope that amusement brings, like he has, or maybe they are all just too tired to make another sound, like he is.
He is still numb, too. Except he no longer feels the burning desire to hold his wand, his weapon, tightly in his right hand and flourish it impressively to disarm and destroy the enemy. As he stares at the drifting slate grey clouds above him, he tries to remember why he felt the need to kill so strongly before. It completely eludes his slurring mind. Murder isn't worth anything, he knows that now. There is nothing to gain from it. Revenge does not exist, only madness does. He was temporarily blinded by his own madness at the beginning of the battle, thinking constantly of avenging everyone who was taken from him. And what is there now, for him?
Nothing but a hole in his stomach and an infection in his mind, digging trenches in his memories and wriggling through them.
"Merlin… Oh, Merlin, God, no…"
He awakes to the pitiful moaning of somebody familiar. A man.
"No… Harry, please, no…"
He knows this man. Eventually, after many long seconds that Harry assumes the man uses to crawl hesitantly towards him, full of horror and petrified with fear, he can see the man's face. It's so familiar, so much clearer than the pictures he has taken so far. Ruggedly handsome with deep, thoughtful eyes…yes, he knows this person. Very well, his mind tells him.
Well, Mind, he tells himself, tell me who he is.
His mind draws a blank and he would scream in frustration if his jaw muscles would work.
"Harry. H-Harry…" The man kneels in front of him, one of his arms held out as though he wants to touch Harry, but he is hesitant to. There is a terrified, desperate and wild glint in the man's eyes, some feral emotion that Harry cannot place.
And for some reason he can't open his eyes fully because his vision is blurry. No, not simply blurry. There is something stuck in his eyes. Something dark and irritating.
He tries to ask the man his name, but no sound comes out. His throat is truly wasted now. Ripped apart by screams he doesn't remember making.
"Harry. Oh, Harry, you're…you're bleeding…so bad." The man's hand rests on Harry's cheek for a second, and it feels as though it soaks up whatever warmth is left under his dirt-caked skin, before it moves down his neck, his chest (which is rising up and down erratically), and finally hovers just above the hole in his stomach.
And he thinks to himself, Maybe the hole is big.
Maybe he doesn't stand a chance.
The man continues to murmur incoherent sounds. Harry catches a few of them, but his glazed mind forgets them only seconds later.
He realises what is agitating his eyes: dirt. From that explosion that sent him flying through the air, twirling and flipping and floating with the angels. He has dirt in his eyes, and it is blinding him. He wishes he could find his glasses to fix the problem, because he wants to stare long and hard at this man's face until he remembers who he is. He wants to see clearly again because Harry doesn't want to die with dirt fucking up his vision.
And he is so angry all of a sudden. Hatred and fury and frustration rip through the already shredded layers of his body, the layers that have already been destroyed, and all he wants to do is stand up again and grasp his wand so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and aim at all the bastards who bear the Dark Mark, who are killing his friends, his family. He wants to murder them in cold blood just to show them that they aren't the only monsters in the world. He wants to show them what they have made him become.
He blinks furiously, over and over again, in an attempt to rid himself of the flecks of dirt blinding him, but they won't come out. He is stuck lying on his back with hideous grey clouds floating above him hiding the sun that wants to say hello and the angels that want to drift away with him. He is stuck with this man sobbing beside him in horror at the state Harry is in. He has no idea where the man's hand went to, but he wants it in his own. Tears mark their course down his temple and into his matted hair and all the anger and hatred and fury are silenced by his overwhelming need for comfort and reassurance. And he wants this man to help him, because for some reason he just knows he can.
Please, he thinks as loudly as he can. Would scream it at the top of his lungs if he had enough strength to move his tongue. Please, hold my hand. Squeeze it and never let go.
Harry's eyes slide to the left, and through the stinging darkness of the dirt in his vision he meets the man's tear-filled gaze. He racks his ravaged mind for any sort of clue of who he is. A trait, a memory…but he has so few memories left. He can't even remember what his Perfect Place was all about, or how he got there, or how he even got back here.
"Harry, please," the man pleads. "Please, just hang on. I—I don't know how to fix you, but it'll be okay. I promise. I—I promise you, Harry, that everything will be just…just fine." He sobs harshly and glances over his shoulder, at the still raging battle. Harry can't understand why everybody is still going, when it is so pointless. Nobody will win. Both sides will keep attacking, will keep defending, until no one is left. He doesn't want this man to join back in the fight. He wants him to live. This man has to make it through.
"Harry! Harry!"
His eyes snap open.
Two trembling hands hold his face tightly. "Don't you dare die on me, Harry, don't you dare! I've got—I've got no one left, you hear me? Tonks is—she's—"
Tonks?
Tonks.
Remus Lupin. Remus.
And Harry is okay now. He knows the man's name. Remus Lupin. His godfather. Werewolf. One of the best men Harry has ever met, and is honoured to call him family. All he needs now is Remus to hold his hand; then he can float up with the angels.
"Okay," Remus mutters to himself. "Okay, I'm going to…to get help. Get some help… Here. Episky. There, that's…that's better, Harry."
No, it isn't. Harry's not sure anything at all changed, besides the temperature of the wound. The spell did nothing for him.
And then, faster than he can process the action, Remus is gone.
Harry can't think for a moment. How can Remus, his godfather, leave him right now, in this state? How can Remus abandon him?
His hand twitches, still searching for the warm heat that somebody will hopefully provide for him soon. He can't remember Remus' girlfriend's name anymore.
He blinks frantically, trying to wash the dirt from his eyes. And it works! Finally, he can see clearly again!
The first thing he sees is an emerald green light hit Remus in the back, and in the flash a photograph is taken.
He can't move anymore.
Can't think right.
Can't even remember his own name.
Who was that man? The one who is dead now, lying forty feet away from where he himself lies motionless?
He goes to blink and is unable to lift his eyelids again.
He is flying through the air.
He is floating with angels.
He is in that Perfect Place.
There is a hole in his stomach. Nothing big, he is sure, or else he wouldn't still be breathing. The sticky warmth of the humid air circulating the grounds seeps into his body through the gaping wound and battles with the ever growing dark chill poisoning his insides. He wonders if maybe the cold would be best for him, right now. Numbness is crucial in order to carry on fighting.
Except he doesn't want to fight anymore.
As his glazed eyes languidly take in the sights that surround him, he marvels at the hundreds of curses and spells illuminating the night. In the blinding flashes he can make out faces, split second photographs of their anguish and reluctance to kill the enemy.
They're just kids. Teenagers thrust into a brutal, revolting war they didn't create. Want. Need. None of them are warriors fit for this battle.
But he is.
The End.