Title: Remembering Destruction
Author: Ashley K.
Disclaimer: No, I own nothing familiar. That belongs to the wonderful J.K.
Rowlings. Please don't sue.
Summary: Five years since the final destruction of Voldemort, but Harry
Potter still remembers.
Prologue: Nightmares
The blinding flash of green light.
Hermione's sudden scream of despair.
His own counterspell, the unforgivable spell he had learned in secret, practicing on insects and rodents. Another flash of green light.
The eerie silence of shocked horror.
Then blackness, so much blackness. And the lingering smell of death and vomit.
Harry Potter, the boy who lived, the man who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be- Named, jolted awake, inner demons catching up to him.
Yet. Again.
Drenched in sweat and shivering with.not fear, but not cold. Dread.
"Harry?" his wife, a Muggle, to whom his nightmares and former life was unknown, asked sleepily. "What is it?"
"Just a bad dream, Anne," Harry said, sitting up in their bed. "I'll be back," he whispered, placing a loving kiss on her forehead.
Muttering that she heard him, Anne rolled over and fell back asleep. Harry smiled at her innocent form.
Walking down into the basement, Harry checked over his shoulder, double- checking to see that his wife hadn't followed him. She didn't.
Whispering an unheard word, a Latin-sounding Dr. Seuss word to anyone who could have heard it, a panel opened to another, unknown room of the Potter house.
A soft owl hoot greet him. "Hello Hedwig," Harry said, greeting his old owl amicably. "Are you feeling up for a long journey?"
The snowy owl hooted back, an affirmative sound. "It's going to England, Professor Dumbledore."
Not looking at the walls that housed moving pictures of happier times, Harry wrote a letter, quickly. He sadly smiled. Once he would have used parchment paper and a quill, with maroon ink, to send this letter. Once he would have sent out two other letters.
Suddenly he stopped writing and ripped the regular piece of lined paper with blue ball-point ink scribblings up. Professor Dumbledore would not be interested in a former-hero's nightmares. He started another.
That one was also ripped up and discarded.
Anne's scream of terror stopped him from writing another letter.
Racing up the stairs, not brothering to close his secret door, but taking the time to grab his wand (eleven inches, holly and phoenix feather, nice and supple) Harry Potter made it to his wife and his bedroom just in time to see a familiar mark lingering in the bedroom.
And his Anne.
Lying there.
Eyes open.
Pure terror written across her face.
Just. Like. Ron.
"NOOOO!!!!" Harry screamed, reaching for her still (too still) form, cradling it gently, kissing her still-warm lips.
Apparating was a licensed skill. Harry had not apparated in many years.
Without second thought, he apparated for the first time in five years.
Prologue: Nightmares
The blinding flash of green light.
Hermione's sudden scream of despair.
His own counterspell, the unforgivable spell he had learned in secret, practicing on insects and rodents. Another flash of green light.
The eerie silence of shocked horror.
Then blackness, so much blackness. And the lingering smell of death and vomit.
Harry Potter, the boy who lived, the man who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be- Named, jolted awake, inner demons catching up to him.
Yet. Again.
Drenched in sweat and shivering with.not fear, but not cold. Dread.
"Harry?" his wife, a Muggle, to whom his nightmares and former life was unknown, asked sleepily. "What is it?"
"Just a bad dream, Anne," Harry said, sitting up in their bed. "I'll be back," he whispered, placing a loving kiss on her forehead.
Muttering that she heard him, Anne rolled over and fell back asleep. Harry smiled at her innocent form.
Walking down into the basement, Harry checked over his shoulder, double- checking to see that his wife hadn't followed him. She didn't.
Whispering an unheard word, a Latin-sounding Dr. Seuss word to anyone who could have heard it, a panel opened to another, unknown room of the Potter house.
A soft owl hoot greet him. "Hello Hedwig," Harry said, greeting his old owl amicably. "Are you feeling up for a long journey?"
The snowy owl hooted back, an affirmative sound. "It's going to England, Professor Dumbledore."
Not looking at the walls that housed moving pictures of happier times, Harry wrote a letter, quickly. He sadly smiled. Once he would have used parchment paper and a quill, with maroon ink, to send this letter. Once he would have sent out two other letters.
Suddenly he stopped writing and ripped the regular piece of lined paper with blue ball-point ink scribblings up. Professor Dumbledore would not be interested in a former-hero's nightmares. He started another.
That one was also ripped up and discarded.
Anne's scream of terror stopped him from writing another letter.
Racing up the stairs, not brothering to close his secret door, but taking the time to grab his wand (eleven inches, holly and phoenix feather, nice and supple) Harry Potter made it to his wife and his bedroom just in time to see a familiar mark lingering in the bedroom.
And his Anne.
Lying there.
Eyes open.
Pure terror written across her face.
Just. Like. Ron.
"NOOOO!!!!" Harry screamed, reaching for her still (too still) form, cradling it gently, kissing her still-warm lips.
Apparating was a licensed skill. Harry had not apparated in many years.
Without second thought, he apparated for the first time in five years.