Time to Rest

AN.

This is my first true publication. It is just a drabble that came to me one evening. He always fought for everyone else, and somehow it always went over everyone else's heads that he always had their backs without getting anything of the sort in return. So now I am giving him his peace.

And though may sound as such, this is not a deathfic, merely a rather dark one, though it does have some hope in there too, I think. It has no beta and has not been looked through for mistakes in spelling or grammar. My native language is not english, so please bear with me, and feel free to point out any fault you find. I love to perfect my english, as I myself find it almost insulting when someone butchers a language merely because they wont take the time to learn it properly.

Thank you, and enjoy.

Loving fiction

Time to Rest

So this was it.

It was over. And he was just so tired.

The last funeral had passed; the last speech had been spoken.

The destruction of war had ended, and now it was time to pick up the pieces and try and tape them back together. A melancholic snort escaped him as a picture of Hogwarts, rebuild and held together with Spello-tape entered his mind. Ron and the Weasley's were slowly getting back on their feet after their devastating loss of Fred. He stood as a loner, an outsider, and watched them from afar. He could see that their hardships as a family weren't over, and he had decided to keep away and let them deal with it by themselves. They all treated George as if he was made of glass, and he could see it grating on his nerves. He would probably blow up at them soon, and when he did it had the potential to either make their family even more tightknit, or rip them apart completely.

Hermione had stayed with them up until after Fred's funeral, having finally gotten together with Ron, and thus become an official part of the family. Then she left for Australia, to find her parents. Ron had feebly offered to join her, more out of obligation than actual want and Hermione had gently told him that it was alright, that he could stay and grieve with his family. She knew he would still be there when she got home and he knew she would get home. He had toyed with the idea of offering too, but decided that if Ron wasn't going he wouldn't either. It would be too much of a reminder of when Ron left them on the hunt, and he also sensed Hermione's need to do this alone.

So now, after being near-inseparable for so long, they had finally gone their separate ways. They had all three been congratulated and praised and worshipped for their part in Voldemort's downfall, Harry more-so than the others as he had been the one to strike the final blow. When the rumors then started spreading of how he had selflessly walked into the forest, intending to repeat his mother's sacrifice and protect the entire wizarding world, taking the Killing Curse for them, they only grew even more awed. Of course some scoffed, saying that now they were taking it too far, as if he would ever have done something like that! But those who knew him could see the truth and he felt the beginnings of the same pedestal that Dumbledore had been placed on, beginning to grow its roots beneath him.

He wouldn't stand for that.

He would not be some all-awed hero that no one could look at without seeing what he had done and what they wanted and supposed him to be. He would not and could not solve all their problems.

He had his own to deal with.

He had first realized it when he had jumped up in fright, having aimed and shot of a Full Body-Bind before he was even fully coherent, a day when Ron had come to wake him up. He had apologized and Ron had waved it off, though with an odd look at him.

He had put it off as aftereffects. Everyone was a bit jumpy, a bit more paranoid. They had been at war and no one had trusted anyone. Of course it would take time to realize one could lower his guard. But unlike the others, Harry kept reacting as if he was still being hunted. It was not something he did on purpose, it seemed to be ingrained into his subconscious, and for the longest while he was so very confused. The others started growing snappier at him, sending him odd glances and making subtle suggestions that maybe he should talk to someone, that maybe he had PTSD or something. But he was fine. Really he was.

Problem was no one seemed to believe him.

In the end, it took Ron blowing up at him, for him to discover.

He had once again reacted mindlessly to someone waking him up, in his mind sneaking up on and attacking him, only this time it had been Ginny, not Ron, and a Bludgeoning Hex, not a Body-Bind. He had realized, just at the last second, who he was aiming at, and had luckily managed to divert the fatally powerful spell, before it connected. But he had still scared Ginny out of her mind, and Ron had come charging in at the sound of the racket. When he realized what had happened, he hurried over to Ginny who was standing just as stunned as Harry, to see if she was okay. The spell had missed her completely, but the debris from the small explosion had given her a few cuts on her shoulder. Ron had whirled on him.

"Bloody hell! By Merlin's sodding pants mate, you've got to know when to stop fighting! Come on Gin, Mum need to take a look at that."

And without another word he had led Ginny from the room.

He had been stunned by his actions of course but the added revelation from Ron's statement kept him frozen for almost 10 minutes.

He didn't know how to stop fighting.

And the more he thought about it, the more he realized. He was still fighting, but how could he stop when he had never known anything else?

For 17 out of 18 years, he had been fighting. Fighting for everything. To begin with, at the Dursley's, it had been to gain their affection, to gain the love he so desperately craved and Dudley was lavished. When he realized that was not to be, he had fought to keep hope, that someone would come for him, would help him. Along with that, he had needed to fight for the necessities, for the food he ate and clothes he wore. Even Dudley's hand-me-downs, they had been loath to give him. And he had had to physically fight Dudley. He'd fought for acknowledgement as a person. Then came his Hogwarts letter, and he had had to fight for his right to that too.

Then he finally got to Hogwarts, only to discover that while he didn't have to fight for the necessities, he now had to fight to tell who truly wanted to know him and who just wanted his fame. Who was sincere and who was power-hungry. He had to fight for his right to be him, and not the image everyone had made for themselves. Fight for his opinions, his friends, his life. Especially his life. It had been subtle at first, preventing Quirrell from getting the stone, saving Ginny from the Basilisk. Fighting of the Dementors and revealing Wormtail. But then came the Tri-Wizard Tournament and everything became so much more real and dangerous. Suddenly he had been plunged headfirst into a war he had to win, but near-none wanted to acknowledge. The privacy of his mind was added to his list, while the attempts to off him now became scarily obvious. He had to continuously collide with the wall that the world put up, in an effort to pound some sense into it. When he succeeded to overturn the wall though, it just jumped up on the other side and he had to start all over with people that blamed him for the war to have started at all.

Finally it just culminated into an all-out manhunt and he was forced to flee and hide. He had spent a whole year running for his life, all the while fighting to pick off Riddle, piece by piece. The battle came and went, everyone finally fighting too. Then he had to defend his choices and actions in the aftermath, justify every move he'd made since it had begun, before it all just stopped.

It had ended, the war was over and there was no need to fight anymore. He could finally let go and relax, think of himself for change and do what he actually wanted to do. But he didn't know how.

It had all come to a startlingly abrupt end, and now he was left groping the darkness for something that had never been there. Even before his personal fight started he had been hidden with his parents to hinder Voldemort, instead of living like any other newly started family.

And just like no one had believed him, no one seemed to get it this time either. He couldn't do it by himself, and like every other time, when he actually needed help; everyone was too preoccupied to notice. The only thing that was certain, was that when he had finally muddled his way through and come out on the other side with either a violent success or devastating failure, someone would finally notice and scold him for not asking for help. And he would say he was sorry, and let them rant. They never realized that he did ask for help and that they never heard him. And he just waited patiently for them to finally discover.

He was standing in a small village graveyard, watching the attendants of the 57th and last funeral of the Hogwarts fallen. He had made a point to attend every single one, to pay his respects to all the people who had given their life to help him make sure that others could finally live in peace. He had wandered off a bit when the funeral had ended and people started paying their private respects, so now he stood in the shade of a great Poplar, next to the grave of Mike Jonah Goldberth, 'The Lord loved him so much, He called him home early'. He had died the day he turned 15 months. He thought it funny that all it would have taken was for the entities that sent out the souls to have changed their mind, and he could have been Mike. He found it oddly fitting that it was by the grave of one, whose fate could so readily have been his own, that he said goodbye to his old life and chose his new one.

He wouldn't wait for them this time, for when they would eventually notice as it all so spectacularly blew up in his face. What he needed was something he'd never had and he had realized that he couldn't get it here. He was so goddamn tired of fighting because he had to, not because he wanted to, and he had always been doing that here. Now he was ready to fight for something he wanted, because fighting was what he did best and he had always done it, but for everyone else. The time had come to do something he'd never done, but that needed to be done in a place he had never been. He needed a new start to do it. He was ready to fight for himself.

He gave a last sweeping glance to the graveyard and the last stragglers from the funeral, letting his eyes rest a second longer on Mike Goldberth's tombstone in a silent promise, before he turned on his heel and disappeared with an inaudible pop.

It was time to rest.