Our Sorrows Went to Hell
By: Born of Starlight
Words: 768
Inspired by: the music of Josiah Leming
Disclaimer: I own neither the Harry Potter rights, nor Angels Undercover (the song the title came from), by Josiah Leming. I'm simply using them as muses for a time.
Summary: Alternate Post-War setting –- Harry has given up.
Warnings: Talk of self harm and suicide attempts.
HPHPHP
Harry drew on his cigarette, the smoke smooth in his nose and mouth, and exhaled.
He had found out, long ago, that he could not die by magical means. Not by spell, not by potion. The first time he had tried to kill himself, he had been eighteen - barely - and had taken his wand and placed it to his temple. Avada Kedavra had not worked then, and hadn't worked the next three times he'd tried it, either. He'd then brewed the most fatal potion he'd been able to find, only to have it strike him down with crippling cramps for the next five days. When he had still been breathing at the end of that torturous period, he had put his fist through a window in despair.
Another smoky breath in, and then the slow exhale...
He remembered it so clearly, the sharp, shattering pain, and then the warm trickling of blood running down his arm from where the glass had pierced his skin. His hand had been all torn up, and had continued to hurt and bleed for some time after he had picked the glass out. He had watched, fascinated, as his blood mixed with the water against the white background of the bathroom sink.
It had put ideas in his head, that image. He had kept the largest shard of glass, kept it in the top drawer of his bedside table. Like it was some precious memento.
Breathe in, the feeling of sparks reaching his fingers, and he exhaled as he crushed the cigarette into the dirt. A graveyard of cigarette butts rose out of the dark earth. Harry stared at it for a long moment, then lit the next cigarette.
Deep breath in. Slow breath out.
It had started out as small cuts, high enough on his forearm that no one would see them. Over the months, the cuts had become progressively deeper, had begun to leave scars behind - little silver lines drawn against his tan skin. Then, one morning before work, he'd cut just that little bit deeper, along the big vein, and watched as his blood dripped to the washroom tile at his feet. Barefoot, he had gone back to the small sitting room in his flat, and sat down in front of the fireplace to wait. He had been twenty.
When he hadn't shown up at work, they had firecalled his apartment. The secretary who had made the call had seen him unconscious, bleeding out, on his sofa. She had saved his life, contacting St. Mungo's, who had promptly apparated him to their emergency ward. They had made him attend therapy sessions, determining that he, like many other survivors of the Second War, had been traumatized. In fact, they had seemed shocked that he hadn't come to them on his own for help recovering.
He had stopped cutting, then, but he had not stopped dying.
Harry took another drag at his cigarette. Smoking had been his newest idea, subtler than his other attempts by far.
They just couldn't understand what it was like, to be so disconnect from everything. He knew, clinically, it was depression. But to feel nothing...and everything with such bone-aching clarity... Harry didn't want it anymore. Life, the wizarding world, none of it. Escape seemed only truly possible through mortality. He drew harder on the cigarette, willing the smoke into his lungs. His throat and mouth filled with a smoky warmth, contrasting to the cool stone at his back.
He knew better. He did, really. But he didn't care any longer. Life was for the living, after all, and he wasn't that. Hadn't been that for a long time.
Harry Potter, suicidal.
It was almost funny, if he thought about it too long. He was The Boy Who Lived, Hero of the Wizarding World...
Now he was the Man Who Wanted to Die. "Ironic" didn't even begin to cover it.
He stood up, flicking the end of his cigarette to the ground at his feet. He took a long look at the names of his friends and family, engraved deep in polished marble stone. They were buried in the new part of the Heroes' Cemetery. His parents were buried just over the hill. He smoked a pack with them every morning, and one with his friends every evening.
He drew in a breath of fresh air, as the sun sank below the building in the distance.
"...see you tomorrow, Ron, Hermione..."
He sincerely hoped he would, that he wouldn't have to wake up again to yet another day without them.
Harry Potter walked away.
The End