Habit kills
At first he calls it 'routine' – the velvety certainty that everything will be alright, that he'll have dinner with Ginny and his children, that he won't receive any deadly mission, because Voldemort is dead and remain only some Death Eaters' residues scattered in England.
Then routine becomes enervating – is no more as in the days of Hogwarts. He already knows what will happen even before this occurs, he feels imprisoned – he can only see bars and a wet prison.
He already knows Ginny will wake up at seven o'clock, will make sure that kids are still asleep, will get off the stairs – and each time the slight noise of her steps echo loud in his head –, will prepare breakfast, will raise all of them and then she'll go to the Daily Prophet.
He already knows his day will begin twenty minutes after that of his wife, and he will eat pancakes cooked for him, will dress, will smile to his perfect happy family, will go to work – and he almost looks forward, because Harry also knows that the Ministry of magic may be the only way out from that omniscience which irritates him so much.
However, there doesn't change much: a high pile of paperwork will wait for him and perhaps – if it'll be a very lucky day – the Minister will need a guard to go somewhere.
Routine is like a vine, that now reveals the harmful leaves, grown around him – but he seems to be the only one that looks at it with suspicion, because everyone appreciates what they lovingly call 'habit'.
Harry knows that habit isn't good: he try in vain to shake it off – and he'd love for something to happen, anything. But something never happens.
He realizes it in a quiet November evening, ordinary as all the others. Ginny is going to bring the roast to the table, when Albus asks him what he did that day. Nothing, he answers, just as usual – in his mind, Harry slams the knife and goes away.
Habit isn't what he wants – not him, who still runs after adventures, as if he is again seventeen and he could leave everything to go with his best friends. He'd like to tell the children a different story every day – about how he defeated a dark wizard behind the other, how he haven't feared the danger, how he has even gone to face it. Because danger is better than habit. Especially danger.
Habit is the cancer which is poisoning his cells: he can't find any cure, because it isn't a disease. Everyone talks about habit as a miracle – even Hermione and Ron, who should share his torture, because they know, they lived all that isn't habit. The adrenaline of moving every day, risking their lives to find answers, turning their backs if they'd be imprisoned in the same place too long.
They can't understand, not they who found their happiness in the daily squabbles, in a family as lovely as his – Harry is really, really glad and he just want they to notice the habit before it leaves scorched ground behind itself.
He realizes he's alone in this battle while he's talking with Ginny. There are always the same answers to the same questions, until she asks him what he has in recent times – he'd like answering "Nothing", kissing her and going as far as possible to vent his frustration, but he knows it won't work.
Because Ginny loves him and she knows him better than anyone, because she used to wait for things that should have happened and that have never occurred.
And yet she shakes her head and seems to not understand. She sighs, looks away uncomfortably, would say something, but she keeps silent and gives him a sympathetic look. Ginny knows – she knows that the habit could drive her husband crazy – but she prefers to ignore it.
He almost wouldn't want to forgive her, but Harry always justifies her behavior – perhaps because of habit, perhaps because of that love which initially prevented him from collapsing, which could make him accept even the regularity of every day, if habit wasn't a killer.
He can only nod in front of those beautiful eyes he loves so much – the same eyes who ask him at least to pretend, to play his role, to convince everyone habit is good to him, that it is the only thing he wants.
So Harry disappears, swallowed up in everyday life, in smiles that don't belong to him, in actions made mechanically – getting up, getting dressed, eating, kissing Ginny, writing letters to his children at Hogwarts –; in thoughts that touch him no more – but there are dreams, where he found his oasis and habit has become a nasty memory –; in Christmases spent with his family and in summers spent on holiday; in Butterbeers drunk on Saturday night with the old Gryffindor mates, in Quidditch matches viewed at the stadium; in the beard which sometimes he forgets to shave and in white hair increased beyond measure.
Harry is an ordinary man, who lives like others hundreds before him – the Boy Who Lived is more legend than reality, everything has been forgotten, buried under layers of habit: the philosopher's stone was destroyed; the Chamber of Secrets Lost; the Prisoner of Azkaban is dead, without even a body to bury; the Goblet of Fire lies unused for decades in somewhere in the Ministry; the Order of the Phoenix has been dissolved and there are only faded photos and graves with white flowers; nobody knows about the Half Blood Prince and nobody will know; Deathly Hallows, for that he had fought so hard, will never be reunited.
The Chosen One was dead at the end of the war – habit had killed him.
Because habit kills. Silently, it appears in your life, and first it switches off the sounds, after it fades the colors and then it deletes the images. Habit kills every day a little more, but no one notices that. This is Harry's problem: habit kills, but he's the only one to know it.
Author's notes:
hi everyone! This is the first story I publish – it was a bit difficult because I'm Italian and even if I speak quite well, I had few problems with the translation (if anyone has noticed some mistakes, please, let me know!).
By the way, I don't think the story needs explanations – everyone thought about a Harry who become depressed at the end of the one at least once, I suppose – so, this is how I figure it.
Hope you liked it!
- Fede