Summary: Harry went through more trauma in seventeen years then most people do in a lifetime. Is it all that strange he would come out just a little broken?
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter franchise.
Note: I tweaked the timeline a little so the flow of the ages went better. I wrote this to showcase how much trauma a child went through in Harry Potter that was kinda brushed aside.
Harry is five.
Harry is five and is he's sitting on the cot in the cupboard under the stairs with a broken arm and bruises everywhere when he stops crying.
Harry is five when he learns a lesson a child should never have to learn. He learns that crying won't help. That it won't heal his arm or make his Uncle stop.
Harry is five when he stops shedding tears. Harry's five when he breaks just a little bit.
Harry's eleven.
He's eleven and he's staring down the body of the man he just killed, murdered in cold-blood. They can say that it's not his fault. That Quirrel was going to die anyway once Voldemort left his body, but what they say doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the facts are that he didn't know that when he walked into that room.
It doesn't matter because when he saw his touch burned?
He grabbed Quirrel's throat and he squeezed.
He is eleven and he has murdered a man for the first time. And at that moment he breaks just a little bit more.
Harry's twelve, twelve when he goes down to the Chamber of Secrets to fight a battle the adults should have fought.
He's twelve when he sees a boy about sixteen with smooth words and smoother talks about similarities.
Both raised in less than favorable muggle homes. Both with Untouchable power. Both Slytherin.( even if one won't admit it) Both with pale skin and silky black hair. Both broken, Tom just a little more broken than him.
So when he kills the Basilisk, when he saves Ginny. He breaks. Because Tom is the only one that he is ever related to, the only one he saw some of himself in.
Harry is twelve and he breaks it the loss of an equal, a brother in pain.
Harry is twelve and he leaves that chamber more broken than when he came in it.
Harry's thirteen, Harry is thirteen when he stares at his parent's betrayer, his Godfather, and one of his parents best friends and holds them at wand point.
Even more horrifying, for just a moment they all see something akin to shattering glass in his eyes, something damaged but not completely broken yet.
( he had never felt more shame at that moment; not because he showed he was upset, not that at all. It was the fact he wanted nothing more than to curl up in front of the fire with tom- Voldemorts (he doesn't know anymore) diary and talk to his closest friend. )
It's a look you shouldn't ever see in a child. A look most seen in veterans who've seen the horrors of the world. A look you saw prisoners of war when they finally come home after months of capture.
It's not a look you should ever see a child, a 13-year-old child no less. The reason? The reason all of his masks, all of his walls fell down for just a moment? Because no one can keep them up while they're breaking inside and in that shack, Harry broke.
He broke when he realized that the man his parents trusted to take care of him, love him, raise as his own, dumped him in the arms of a half-giant and left to chase revenge without a second thought.
Harry is thirteen when he looked his Godfather in the eyes for the first time, and he brakes.
Harry is fourteen.
He is fourteen when he's entered into a competition for adults against his will.
He is fourteen and he's made to fight dragons, and mer people, and giant spiders, and everything else in between.
He is fourteen when he faces his parents killer for the first time.
(He doesn't count Tom because Tom wasn't quite as shattered as Voldemort. He wasn't quite Voldemort yet.)
He is fourteen when he feels the pain of the cruciatus curse for the first time by a man famous for perfecting it.
He is fourteen and he does something grown seasoned Aurors would struggle to do. He grits his teeth, goes down on his knee and Does. Not. Scream and he Does. Not. Cry.
He learned a long time ago it wouldn't help, that tears wouldn't help.
He is fourteen when he wins the respect of Voldemort and his followers.
This does not mean they won't kill him because even great enemies can have great respect for one and other, they give him a chance, an honorable chance, a fair chance to duel. He got up after being subjected to the Dark Lord's curse and he duels.
(Not a real duel it was only one spell and ancient magic.)
But what he saw broke him. He saw his parents, he spoke to them, then they left. They left as quickly as they appeared and to have his parents leave again, even if it wasn't their choice still hurt more than anything.
So at fourteen Harry port keyed back to Hogwarts clutching Cedric's lifeless body with the image of his parents burned behind his eyelids, and he broke.
Harry was fifteen.
He was fifteen and this year has been hell.
He could take blood quill torture sessions (after all he can't remember a defense teacher who didn't hurt him in some way. Sorry Moony.) He could take Snape pillaging his mind and looking at his most intimate memories. ( Snape had always hated him it wasn't anything new) he could take teaching dozens of kids when he was just a kid himself, he could take that. He could take going to fight another battle the adults should have fought. He can take not being told about the prophecy.
But what he Could. Not. Take. was to see his only chance at leaving the Dursleys fall through the veil of death.
At this point he was so, so, broken and so, so, damaged that he lost his mind just a little bit.
So when he tortured Bellatrix with the cruciatus curse anyone with a brain could see the cloud of madness in his eyes.
It was Voldemort's voice that brought him out of the madness and back to reality. It was the voice of his equal. Harry's enemy was the one who cleared the clouds of madness from his eyes. Even if they didn't know it yet he and Voldemort were tied in so many ways. In fate, in destiny, in soul, even his equal couldn't fix the damage that had been done.
At fifteen Harry Potter was broken a way that he would never fully heal from.
He was sixteen when Harry went on a camping trip from hell.
He and Hermione and Ron were hunting Horcruxes. And it wasn't the stress, or the hunger, or even the Horcrux around his neck
( if anything having another piece of Voldemort's Soul soothed him ).
No none of that broke him.
It was being trapped in a basement cell and hearing his best friend, his sisters screams. Hearing her lie to Bellatrix while being tortured, and at that moment. His subsequent pride in her and overwhelming anger at Bellatrix broke him.
It was only trying to figure out a plan to save her, to save them all that kept him sane.
At sixteen Harry escaped Malfoy Manor his sanity hanging by a thread.
Harry is seventeen.
He is seventeen and he's watching bodies fall around him. He's watching friends, mothers, fathers, He's watching his brothers and sisters in arms dying and it hurts.
Hurts like no beating, no torture ever could or will.
So when he sees Mrs. Weasley cry over her dead son he knows there's no choice.
He will go to Voldemort. He will go to is equal. So he does.
By himself, with the ghost of his family around him, he goes through the eerily quiet Forest to the violent Death Eaters.
When he looked Him in the eye their eyes meet and life and death meet. Though not the way you would think because Voldemort's eyes are like the color of blood, and blood is life but Harry's are the color of death, the Sickly Averda Kaverda green so many fear.
So life and death meet and for a moment everything is still and peaceful and perfect and something passes in those eyes that neither can see
( or at least nothing either will admit )
So they talk and they duel and everything still again, and heavy and Harry is dead.
Harry is seventeen and he's dead he's never felt more broken.
But he goes back to fight a battle that yet again the adult should have ended long ago. But no he seventeen and he's alive again it's the voice of his equal that keeps his glass that is his mind from shattering; from turning to sand. So they battle, they fight like never before. And just before Voldemort dies Harry see something in his eyes.
He sees sanity.
So when he hears his dying words he turns the sand because his equal says to him
" My equal. My opposite. My everything. "
he turns to sand. He's seventeen and he turns to sand and this time his equals not there to bring him back.
So when they find him laughing, sobbing, screaming, crying.
As he looks at them, his friends, his family his brothers and sisters in arms and they are not enough.
How could they possibly compare to the soul that had been intertwined with his since before he could remember; and how could they possibly understand the bond that formed because of that.
Harry was seventeen when he killed himself.
So he is buried next to his equal. It only seemed fitting after all. Because no one could bring themselves to put him anywhere but with the man he died to be with again even if they didn't understand.
No, what they understood was the desperate longing and grief when Harry was sobbing over Voldemort's dead body.
They were buried together. Two graves one headstone simple no names just a quote no one knows how it got there.
"Neither can live if the other does not survive"
Some people believe home is a place. Some believe it's a person.
Harry believes in the latter. He has to because looking at Tom as they board a train to nowhere both of their eyes clear and all the madness is gone. He looks into his eyes and Harry knows.
Harry is seventeen and he is home.
I'm not sure why I wrote this it just seemed like this story wanted to be explored.
Please review and favorite.
Thank You,
labass