Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of these characters.
Free
I ran to you that day, because I had nowhere else to go. My eyes were stinging from tears, my face was screwed up, and my world was collapsing. When you saw me, you jumped up right away from your big armchair and ran towards me. You held me and told me that it would all be all right, even though you had no idea what was going on. I sobbed into your shirt and you kept your arms around me, pressing my face into your chest. After what felt like hours of hugging and sniffling and holding, I finally got the strength to stand up straight, brush the tears from my cheeks, and slowly become civilized again. Then, I explained everything, what happened from the start. After Ariana's funeral, Aberforth had screamed at me. He told me that it was my fault that she died, my fault that she had suffered so much in her short life. He called me a traitor and a murderer and other things too horrible to repeat. I completely lost it, telling him that he had been the one to kill her. It was him that started the duel between you and him, and might've been the one to shoot the spell that killed her. He told me to get out of the house and, even though I was older than he, I listened. I ran off, not knowing really where to go, his harsh words still echoing in my ears.
When I told you, your face contorted until you didn't look like yourself anymore, more like a demon of fury. You said that he didn't deserve to live anymore and then you told me you wanted to hurt him. I told you to stop, that he was still my bother, and you unwillingly listened to my pleas. A few moments later, after you had calmed down from your rage, your eyes sparked as if you had a brilliant idea.
"You know what?" you said slowly, looking at me.
"No, what is it?" I asked, sniffing back the remainder of my tears.
"We need a way to escape. To just forget that this happened, just for tonight."
"And how do you suggest we do that?" I asked, warily intrigued by your words.
"Well I know where my aunt keeps her alcohol, and she is out for the next two days…" You then trailed off, looking for my reaction.
"But, we're only seventeen. Isn't there a law or something against that?"
"Not if we keep it a secret. Not if we're the only ones who will ever know."
I thought for a moment. What harm could it do? My insides were still burning from the hurt that the ordeal with my brother previously had caused, but what harm could it do, really? As long as neither of us tried something completely stupid, like try to drive a muggle automobile or something, it would be fine. After that moment's contemplation, I nodded slowly. You then rushed away, down a flight of stairs, and then a few moments later you emerged with two bottles of a clear liquid: enough to get two young men completely and utterly drunk.
I ran over to you and took one of them, holding the cool glass bottle against my hot and sweaty face. The two of us went over to your kitchen table and slowly uncapped the two bottles.
"On the count of three," you said, "One… Two… Three." Then both of us raised our bottles and took a long gulp. The vodka burned like a fire going down my throat, and then settled uncomfortably in my stomach. I took long, deep breaths trying to subside the burning and, after a few minutes, we decided to try another sip.
"Ready, go." you said and we took another long sip. The two of us repeated this exercise until the bottles were only ¾ full. My head began to feel extremely fuzzy, like someone was rubbing the inside of my head with a cotton swab. The solitary light hanging above the table seemed a dozen times brighter and it hurt my eyes to look at it. Everything sounded so much louder, the sounds of glasses clinking against the table throbbing in my head. My palms were sweating so the bottles nearly slipped out of my grasp when I picked it up until I wiped them off on the legs of my pants. Everything throbbed and ached; yet we kept on drinking.
When the bottles were nearly half empty, I stood up suddenly and walked over to where you were sitting. The drink sloshed uncomfortably in my stomach, but I didn't care. After a second of just looking at you: your strong and angled face, the mop of dark hair covering one brown eye, I couldn't stand it anymore. I leaned down and put my forehead against yours, inhaling the scent of your breath that smelled exactly like the spirits that we were drinking.
"You are a beautiful person," I told you, my words slurring together and getting caught in my throat. "I want to be with you forever and ever, and we can go live in the woods and then raise bees. Yeah, bee are so cool like 'buzz, buzz, I'm a bee, buzz, buzz'." And in my mind, I was making perfect sense. You laughed a drunken man's laugh and then closed the gap in between our lips, pulling me into a drunk and sloppy kiss. I found my hands reaching up and my fingers clenched in your long hair, pulling you closer to me. You put your two hands on either side of my face, making sure that there was absolutely no space between the two of us. The next thing I knew, your tongue was pressing in between my lips, searching out every crevice and cavity inside my mouth. I pulled back from you for only a second, to get both of our shirts over our heads. It just felt like the right thing to do. When you were preoccupied with getting the buttons of your shirt unstuck from your mess of hair, I snuck another gulp from the quickly emptying bottle of vodka.
The buzz of that gulp was sent throughout my entire body, making me shudder with the excitement that this night was presenting us with. So this is what being alive feels like, I thought to myself, now I'm free. I'm free from being responsible, free from my brother's criticism, free from the world. Tonight is our night, and nothing is going to stop us.
The next thing I was aware of was the two of us on the couch, your long and lean body on top of mine. I was only paying attention to the feel of your body warmth on top of mine, the feeling of being alive and ready for anything, knowing that you were there with me throughout whatever happened next. There was a clash of bright and headache-inducing colors, the throbbing and pulsing heartbeats coursing throughout my entire body.
There was only one coherent thought that I could make out from the sea of blurry and intangible images and sounds and memories and ideas coursing through the wave of my mind. And that was just one word over and over again: free, free, free, free, free. This night was going to be something special, a night that would just be forgotten with the aide of booze and action, one that would be lost in a tidal wave of new experiences and would-have-beens and unpredictable tomorrows. The taste of freedom was just one of the coming and going thoughts in my head: some remembered and others long forgotten. I just knew that there was action and noise and the clinking of bottles and pulsing noise and the feel of sweating bodies together as one.
After hours of kissing and talking and drinking, you said that you had an idea.
"Let's go outside, see what it's like," you said.
The two of us walked, or more like stumbled, outside to be shocked with a wall of cold air and midnight crickets chirping in the distance. The night air pierced my bare stomach like millions of needles, causing me to gasp with the pain and the pleasure and the shock. Although the air-lancets had pricked my torso, the faint breeze felt marvelous on my sweating face. You and I, we stayed outside for a long time, just running around your block and having fun. We tried to be as quiet as we could (well I did at least), and even in my drunken stupor I still wished that we didn't wake anyone up. I didn't want them to come outside and spoil our fun. I wanted it to be you and me and no one else.
It was then that the rain started. It began as just a faint drizzle, but eventually morphed into an everlasting torrent of a storm pouring out from the heavens, as if a god had taken a knife and sliced open the sky and clouds and let the entire contents pour out, washing away the last trace of humanity from the face of the earth. My head began to ache a little more and I slowly walked over to where you were, dancing in the rain and splashing about in a newly formed puddle like a child. I told you that my head hurt and your face immediately became somber, as if you were mourning at a funeral.
"I am extremely sorry," you said morosely, bowing your head.
"Well, you've got me caught in all this mess; I guess we can blame it on the rain." I said and then your head instantly shot back up, a boyish grin on your face.
"Yeah, it was all my fault, wasn't it? But no one needs to know that, the rain did it and then washed it all away. All of the bad things, all of the sadness: it can just be swept away by the rain." Then you ran away to play in the puddle again, ignoring the rainwater dripping from your nose or eyelashes, your jeans clinging attractively to your legs because of the water. I watched you jump around for a few moments before jogging over and joining you in your fun.
At long last, the rain subsided and the burning sun began to poke its fiery orange head up beyond the horizon, casting long shadows on us and everything surrounding. Then, the birds began to pick up their merry tune and the town began to wake up. But I wasn't concerned with any of that; the only thing that was concentrating on was you and the look of pure exuberance on your face. You were grinning wildly like a madman after a murder and when you ran towards me I didn't hesitate in the slightest before opening my arms and wrapping you in a powerful hug. You made a sound like oof when I trapped you in my arms, but then returned the hug. We stood there squeezing the life out of each other before we just collapsed on the sidewalk in a fit of mad laughter and puddles.
Then, we just watched the sky as the rain clouds drifted away from Godric's Hollow and onto a new place. A world of unlimited possibilities awaited the two of us and the only thing that we needed to do to initiate those adventures was just to get up and go. Leave the whole world behind and be together on an epic whirlwind of adventure. But things like that only happened in movies. Not in real life. And even though we would never be able to get away from this and erase our past, the only thing that mattered at that moment was then, there, with you.
Life should never be wasted on sadness and regret, that's why I was so exultant that night. I could just forget and enjoy everything. I could be happy for once.
I was free.