Hero's Mask
The sun is starting to set, filling the room with a red gold wash. Beside me you sleep on, and I find myself hoping that this will be one night when you are free of nightmares. Tenderly I stoke your hair, sticky with drying sweat, enjoying the weight of you pressed to me. I don't ever want this to end.
Strange, how things change. Years ago, if anyone had even mention the prospect of falling in love, I would have laughed in their face. Love was for the weak. I would never fall in love.
How wrong I was.
Look at me now. Curled up with you in our bed, in our bedroom, in our flat. In the fifth year of our relationship. In love.
I never ever thought this would happen. It went against all odds, we were too different, it seemed. To opposite ends of the scale, it could never be. The rules were, Gryffindors and Slytherins don't mix.
But you never gave a flying fuck about anyone's rules. According to you, rules seemed to be made for the sole purpose of breaking them.
And I think now, that perhaps we aren't so different after all.
Besides being a Gryffindor, there is a definite Slytherin side to you. You're quick, you're calculating, you have an absolutely venomous tongue when you want to. Most importantly, when you want something, you make sure you get it, no matter what the cost.
Perhaps it's one of the things that makes us work.
I remember how surprised I was when you told me the Sorting Hat had wanted to put you in Slytherin. I still wonder what it would have been like it you had been, if I had been the one to first sit with you on the train, instead of Weasley, or if you had taken my hand in friendship.
Probably less hard, but definitely not as interesting.
If I could go back in time, I don't think I would change a thing, not with the way things eventually worked out.
The room's nearly dark now, the last of the sun fading from the sky. I wonder if I should light a candle. Sometimes you hate the dark, sometimes you revel in it. It's confusing to say the least. Sometimes there seems to be two Harrys. The proud Gryffindor, Boy-Who-Lived, Harry. Who is always the righteous Hero. Always sacrificing for others. Destroyer-of-Voldemort Harry. Then there is human Harry. I like to think of this as the Slytherin Harry. The Harry who lives with the memories of an abusive childhood, of being discarded an uncared for. Of being used as a weapon in the war against evil. The Harry who lives under the Hero Mask. The Harry who has real feelings, who hates the spotlight, who doesn't always want to save the world, but would like to be able to curl up with a book once or twice. The Harry with less than righteous emotions, like anger, maliciousness, frustration and revenge.
I like to think of him as My Harry. Because only I ever get to see him. To the rest of the world, and even to Weasley and Granger, you're still Gryffindor Harry.
As a child, I always wondered what it would be like to be you, to be the hero. My mother told me about you, even before I met you. She spoke of you with hushed wonder, and told me never to tell my father about you. And when my father got angry, I used to think of you. Harry Potter survived You-Know-Who, I can survive this.
And then I met you.
I'll freely admit that, shamefully, I was just like everyone else. I expected a hero, a walking god. I met a human, but I wouldn't let go of the hero image.
And so when you turned down my hand, I was disappointed, bitterly disappointed in you. You hardly seemed a hero then. I was angry, you'd let me down. But it wasn't your fault. And though all that, I wouldn't let go of Hero Harry. I just assumed you weren't my hero.
It's people like me, isn't it, that forced you to become what you so hated. An idol, an image, not a real person. Your entire life, you had been ignored and cast aside and in the wizard world it wasn't so very different. We weren't interested in you, just your name, just your image, just what we had made your name represent.
And so you put on the fake smile, put on the Hero's mask, and you became what everyone wanted, even though inside, you were hating yourself.
We took your name away and gave it back misshapen and unrecognizable to you.
I'll never forget the first moment I met Human Harry. You were standing in the astronomy tower, at the top level, open to the night air. And you were crying, and you had a knife. It was the scariest and most profound moment of my life. I fell in love with you that night, or rather I acknowledged and accepted what had been growing steadily inside of me.
I learned so much that night. About you, about myself. About the world. We called a truce, that night, shaking hands under the starry sky, closing one door and flinging another wide open.
Over the weeks that passed after that, I grew to know you more, and once in a while you'd let Human Harry out, in brief tantalizing glimpses, before Hero Harry came back.
But I learned. I learned how to draw Human Harry out, how to make him stay. How to make you act like you. And you grew to trust me, you told me things you had never told anyone else, not even Granger or Weasley.
And then, on Christmas Eve in sixth year, I kissed you.
And you kissed back.
And that was the start of something else entirely.
Beside me, you let out a soft cry in your sleep. I quickly pull you close, trying to soothe you through another nightmare.
You still refuse to talk about these. You won't tell me what goes on in these dreams, you won't tell me what happen in that final battle with Voldemort. My finger curls around the one lock of white hair in your messy raven mop. You haven't spoken a single word since that day.
But I still know that you love me. You never speak, but I can see it in your eyes, in you actions, the way you move, the way you exist, I know I am a part of it. And one day I'll get you to sleep again.
You quiet down next to me, your brow unfurrows, and a look of peace returns, whatever it was, it's past now.
I lean back, letting sleep start to take me as well. Hero or Human, I love you.
But I know I'll break the mask one day.
-fin-
A/N: Well that was wordy and melodramatic. But my muse, insisted. Oh well. As for the white hair thing, well people who go through a moment of intense, and I mean intense, stress or trauma often lose pigment in their hair. (Like Rouge from x-men or that kid from the sixth sense) anyway that clears that up. Same goes with the not speaking thing. I always figured that Harry's battle with Voldemort wouldn't be a walk in the park sorta thing.