Title: All You Need Is Love
Author: re-bar
Setting: Summer after fifth year
Rating: PG (some growed-up words)
Words: 1,086
Warnings: crazy!semi-suicidal!painter!Harry
Summary: In which Harry does not paint inside the lines.
Disclaimer: I am not the proud owner of Harry Potter or any of his mates (or mortal enemies), John Lennon, his words, the rest of the Beatles, or any intensely yellow shades of paint
Harry was staring into a can of sunny yellow paint, trying to make a decision. Should he paint the eaves and framing of number four, Privet Drive in a "cheery new look" as Aunt Petunia had requested, or should he gulp down as much Buttercup Spring as possible before someone from the Order came to stop him and hope it was enough to kill him?
Not that he was suicidal or anything.
He couldn't help feeling a bit ridiculous. Here he was, standing in the middle of a front yard identical to every other front yard for one hundred, picture perfect, suburban miles, contemplating death by yellow paint, tapping his foot vaguely to a song he had stuck in his head, which was about, of all things, love. He thought it was rather ironic that the only reason he'd heard this song about love in the first place was because of his uncle's hatred for him. Uncle Vernon had wanted music in the car to "distract him from the sound of the boy's breathing", and the only station that wasn't fuzzy played nothing but the Beatles.
All you need is love
All you need is love, love,
Love is all you need…
What a crock of shit. What had John Lennon been thinking? Love was nice and all, but it certainly wasn't all that anyone needed. People needed hope and purpose and…anger. An image popped into his head of him standing in front of Voldemort, explaining that all the psychopathic baby murderer needed was some love. He was pretty sure that conversation wouldn't end well.
He leaned forward slightly and dipped the edge of the paint brush into colour and swirled until the bristles were disgustingly yellow. He raised it to his lips and imagined being dressed in a yellow suit for his funeral, to match the paint stains. He wondered if everyone at the funeral would wear yellow instead of black, it honour of his freakish death. Would the Order even let people know how he died? Yes, terribly sad, you see, Harry did not ingest the paint on purpose, it was knocked off of a stand and into his mouth by a passing owl. Tragic, just tragic. He didn't imagine that that would make a very good cover story, but perhaps it was better than having to tell people that the Boy Who Lived had gone crazy and drank an entire can of paint.
It was at this point that Harry realised he was being morbid.
What did he have to be so bitter about anyways? Sure, the only adult who had ever cared about him enough to offer him a home and a life had been murdered right in front of him, a dark lord was set on killing him and everyone he loved in a plot for world domination, he was destined to die or be a murderer… but… damn it, there had to be something good he could think about! He needed to be done wallowing before he succumbed to the urge to commit the oddest suicide anyone had ever thought of. Death by paint ingestion. What a ridiculous way to die.
He had… he had a Beatles song stuck in his head. That was happy. He was in desperate need of something happy to cling to. He could cling to that. People had said that the Beatles had saved their lives. Maybe they would save his. Maybe the song All You Need Is Love would be enough to carry him through a gruelling day of painting. Maybe it would be enough to keep him from going mad with loneliness. Maybe it would be enough to get him out of bed in the morning.
It would. It would. He could make himself believe that love was all he needed. After all, wasn't that what Dumbledore was always saying? His mother's loved saved him when he was a baby, Voldemort feared love, love was his power, blah, blah, blah.
Resolving himself to think happy, shiny, not at all suicidal thoughts about love, Harry dipped the brush again and raised it to the window frame.
And stopped.
All you need is love.
Maybe, if it was enough to keep him going, it would be enough for someone else.
All you need is love.
He should make sure that others knew, spread the joy and all that.
Love is all you need.
Before he could change his mind, before he could feel bad about all the damage control the Order would have to do, before he could consider too closely the fact that love would definitely not save him from Uncle Vernon's rage, Harry moved the paint brush away from the window frame and painted a broad streak of yellow across perfect white siding.
Mundungus Fletcher roused briefly from his nap to squint across the street at the boy he was guarding and make sure he hadn't managed to kill himself in the ten minutes since Mundungus had last looked. He saw the boy raise a paint brush to the Dursley house and was about to close his eyes again when the boy made his first brush stroke.
Mundungus blinked.
He was reasonably sure that was not what the boy's aunt had intended for him to do with the paint. He supposed he should go speak with him, find out if perhaps he had been possessed, but he wasn't very good at talking to anyone, let alone sad, skinny, grieving boys who had gone mad with the power of holding a paint brush.
He was going to have to get some assistance…
Remus did not think this was funny. Really. He wasn't feeling the least but amused. The laughter rolling from his belly was really anger in disguise.
He was glad Dung hadn't gone straight to Dumbledore and tattled, but retrieved him instead. He didn't mind starting watch a few hours early to view this work of art. He imagined that the look on Vernon Dursley's face when he got home would be an entirely different work of art. And if Dursley became angry enough with Harry to actually get violent, well, he'd feel a great deal of regret when he was forced to curse the blubbery bastard.
As he didn't think that the Dursleys would be home for several hours yet, he took a seat on the curb and began to contemplate the great, yellow words painted on the formerly pristine siding of number four, Privet Drive.
All you need is love.