Harry Potter and the Whispering Veil
Part One
As the sun crept over the horizon one Monday morning in February, sleepily poking its rays into windows across the countryside, an elderly man began to stir. His name was Harry Potter, and on this particular Monday morning -- and almost every other morning -- he was silently cursing the fact that he hadn't gotten a full night of sleep in about twenty years.
At least twenty, he thought to himself with increasing self-pity. The last time I got a full night in, Justin Finch-Fletchley was Minister of Magic.
Nonetheless, he took great care to avoid waking his wife as he clambered out of bed, although the aching in his bones that made his nights torturous scarcely wore off during the day. This was easier said than done these days because, despite his stubborn refusal to admit anything of the sort to his family and friends, his body simply wasn't as cooperative as it used to be. The only time his body kept up with his mind was when he was on his broomstick, speeding through the air like he was a boy again. However, as the sleeping woman next to him was so fond of reminding him, he couldn't keep "flitting through the air like an owl with a death wish." And so it was that Harry and his beloved broomstick were doomed to occasional clandestine liaisons when Harry was home alone, because Ginny Potter was not a force to be reckoned with.
Of course, there were other reasons why Harry's body had lost its youthful vigor. Darker reasons that he tried to avoid thinking about as much as possible, even though painful memories had a tendency to crop up in his mind like a treacherous fog. For years he had desperately tried to disassociate his variant injuries from the memories that they were tied with and now, as he neared his seventieth year, he usually able to do so. A scar was just a scar, and the lightning bolt-shaped one on his forehead was simply another wrinkle.
And this, he thought as he strapped on his metal leg, struggling to keep his mind blank, is simply a gift from friends.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind when a barrage of unwanted memories flooded his mind, swirling about frantically like the contents of a pensieve.