Disclaimer: I own none of this, quite frankly. J. K. Rowling is the creative mind behind the characters and major plots of Harry Potter. I merely take them for a little stroll.
Author's Note: This story is intended to be a one-shot, but that could possibly change. I doubt I'll make it into a full-blown fanfic, however. Let me know what you think, because my ultimate goal is to improve my writing. By the way, the rating is for subtle themes of suicide, some deeper thinking. Well, maybe it's not so subtle. The point is, I'm warning you here and now.
Thanks and enjoy!
Puppets and Puppeteers
flyinghigh
Harry Potter stood at the window of the Astronomy Tower, bent slightly at the waist with his hands pressed against the cold, damp stone. His head and shoulders protruded from the large opening, his eyes focused on the distant ground. A light misting rain clung to his limp hair and his pale skin.
His muscles twitched slightly, trembled, but the cool autumn air soothed any pain. He had just come from the dungeons of the large Hogwarts castle, from Snape's dark office, to be exact. Occlumency lessons had resumed within a week of the start of term under Dumbledore's suggestion. Harry stifled a snort. Dumbledore might have suggested the lessons, but it had been like a command. Where Harry was concerned, any of Dumbledore's suggestions carried the weight of a command.
Most of the Order had that gleam in their eyes when they referred to Dumbledore or spoke to Dumbledore or saw Dumbledore, the same look that had mesmerized Harry for so many years. Of course, deep down they knew the old wizard was fallible, but he was not as fallible as them. He made few mistakes, and admitted less. Few people truly knew the events of last term when Sirius had fallen through the veil, the numerous mistakes by numerous people that had all culminated in his godfather's death, Dumbledore not the least of them with his clever, manipulative machinations. The wizard had a knack for making puppets out of everyone else, even if his intentions were purely noble and genuine.
Fingers involuntarily tightening on the ledge, Harry breathed an even sigh to temper his emotions, something he found himself doing quite often. His arms began to shake noticeably, so he forced himself to relax again. Occlumency lessons always left him in this state, weaker and more susceptible to mental attack. He'd grown used to that fact, now understanding that Snape could do nothing about it. A few more hours of rest and he would be back to normal.
As normal as he could ever hope to be, of course.
Harry thought of Snape with a sour twisting of his mouth. The professor had been furious when he'd been instructed to begin Occlumency again, his anger over last year's pensieve incident even stronger than at the time. Harry had admitted his mistake multiple times to him, even going so far as to apologize genuinely. He knew what it felt like to have his privacy invaded, nosy people perusing his personal life as if it were a book on display in the library.
Snape had been giving him these lessons under the guise of both potions tutoring and detentions. The former was expected under the circumstances, now that Harry was in NEWT Potions, much to everyone's, including his own, surprise. He had a notion that Dumbledore's and McGonagall's hands had affected that decision, though he could never be sure. He had received an outstanding score on his potions OWL, which considering his widely known failures in the subject under Snape's instruction, seemed to be unlikely on his own.
The latter, the detentions, were just as expected. Now that Harry had miraculously made it into NEWT Potions, Snape displayed even more impatience and loathing than beforehand, handing out detentions like candy. Harry quite honestly couldn't think of anything less like candy.
Harry knew the detentions were a guise for needed Occlumency lessons, as did both Snape and Dumbledore. As far as the rest of the school was concerned, and the Order members for that matter, Harry was simply serving a great deal of his extracurricular time in Snape's unpleasant company. The true nature of these lessons was kept among the three of them for security reasons, to protect Snape's identity as a spy in Voldemort's ranks.
Dumbledore, however, remained as aloof as he could regarding these lessons. Harry was certain that Snape updated him on his progress, but little more was spoken of what occurred during those hours. Only Harry and his dear Potions professor were privy to that information, and Snape took full advantage of the situation. He required Harry to serve every second of his detention after the Occlumency lessons under the pretense that in the event that they were ever suspected of any unusual activity and administered Veritaserum, they could safely admit that Harry had truly been serving detentions. Harry suspected that this was hardly the case, and that instead Snape simply wanted to see him suffer a little while longer, as he was often in a bad state by the end of the lesson, and cleaning cauldrons with a toothbrush could be grueling work.
The rational side of Harry reasoned that maybe Snape wanted to monitor Harry's condition for another hour or so after the lessons, just in case Voldemort was to unleash some mental attack when Harry was at his weakest. Disgruntled, Harry admitted to himself that it was a likely possibility. He liked thinking of Snape as purely mean and evil, but spending so much extra time with the man had proven to Harry the exact same thing he had recently learned of Dumbledore.
He was only human.
Harry turned his face upward and stared into the thick, dark sky above. He had been coming here after every session with Snape, his mind and body nearly exhausted to the point of collapse, yet it was during these times that he felt most vulnerable to Voldemort's thoughts and feelings. The first couple of times he had stumbled back to his dorm and fallen asleep without doing anything more than kicking off his shoes. Voldemort had chosen those times to participate in one of his vile torture sessions with a prisoner, forcing Harry into becoming a horrified witness.
Harry's stomach twisted uncomfortably as the memories of those nights seeped from his subconscious, the bile rising into the back of his mouth. He swallowed hard and lowered his head again, eyes focusing on the same nameless spot on the ground. It was here that he had chosen to recover from the trials Snape put him through to ingrain some of the Occlumency knowledge in him.
He knew he was improving. Snape had begrudgingly admitted it once to him a couple of weeks ago. Yet despite these improvements, Voldemort's presence in Harry's mind was not fading. If anything, it was growing, a black tumor that kept slowly spreading, poisoning what it touched.
A morbid thought, Harry noted, but rather apt. Voldemort himself was like a tumor in the wizarding world, his Death Eaters behaving like malignant tendrils that kept reaching outward, dooming their society to a slow, painful, rotting death. Harry's mind was no different.
The dreams continued. Even in his waking hours Harry could catch a fleeting impression of Voldemort's emotional state, if it was strong enough. Rarely he had smelled something like burnt flesh or stale blood, or heard an echoing scream, but such sensations were gone within seconds. Harry didn't really try to hold onto them, either, but he had the feeling that if he truly made an effort, he could immerse himself even deeper within Voldemort's experiences.
Snape knew Harry still had dreams, as did Dumbledore, though neither of them really knew the extent of the teenager's connection to the dark wizard. Harry wasn't sure he even knew, or even Voldemort. This was a strange territory, and the mind was already an under explored frontier, even in the wizarding world.
So here he came to smell the fresh air and taste the cool wind on his tongue, reminding himself that life still existed outside, beyond the scope of dreary grey walls and flickering torchlight. But Harry also had a strange attraction to the height of the tower, the knowledge that with a gentle push outward he could be falling to his death. The security that knowledge gave him was difficult to explain or understand, but he cherished it.
He had to have some semblance of free will in his life, which was plagued by Trelawney's prophecy, Voldemort's constant presence, and Dumbledore's irritating suggestions. He had already learned that Dumbledore's involvement was something he could never change, at least not while he was a student at Hogwarts, or while Voldemort was still at large. At the moment, he couldn't control his connection to Voldemort, either.
So his thoughts were involuntarily drawn to the prophecy. He had spent long hours thinking about the prophecy in this spot, his ramblings always circling around to the same stifling realization. His life had only two fates. The first would be Voldemort's victory at his time of death. The second would be his victory at Voldemort's death. Such a balance of destinies, so utterly simple that they presented the most complex scenarios.
Harry stood there staring down at the ground, at the climax of his self-loathing. He struggled to breathe, forcing air into his lungs bit by bit. The ground was so far away…far enough away, he reasoned.
The prophecy said that he would either die at Voldemort's hands or Voldemort would die at his. If he jumped from this tower, he would be defying every wretched word of that prophecy, sealing his own fate. The thought sent a thrilling burst of energy through his body, a spurt of adrenalin that invariably caused him to lean even farther out the window. Never before had he felt such a strong urge to do what he so desperately wanted. It would be a test. If he was killed, then the prophecy was wrong and someone else could destroy Voldemort. If he inexplicably survived, then the prophecy would have to be true, and he would know that his destiny was Voldemort and Voldemort alone.
A surge of recklessness again flowed through him, oddly calming and tightening his muscles as if springing for an attack. His fingers gripped the edge more solidly than before… he leaned back, his arms taut and ready… with a heaving effort he lunged forward and began a spiraling descent toward the ground. For an instant, he felt an undeniable sense of freedom and contentment, a glimmer of hope that he was in control, that he had chosen his own path, no matter how twisted or abrupt.
Then with a sudden, sharp jerk, he felt himself suspended in midair, the breath knocked out of him as if he had been punched in the stomach. He felt as if he'd been tied to a rope before falling from the window and had reached the end some twenty feet down. He swung back towards the castle wall, filled with a split-second realization that he had jumped way out and he was going to hit the wall very hard.
He grunted as his left side slammed into the rough stone, his head snapping to the side and cracking against the wall. He hung there limply for a moment, conscious but dazed. Slowly he lifted his uninjured right arm to feel around his stomach, indeed feeling a thick rope pulled tightly around him. It stretched upwards toward the window from which he had fallen.
A bitter bark of laughter shook him as he swayed gently back and forth, a puppet on a string, fate's little plaything. He pulled out his wand and used a lifting charm on the rope so he would be pulled back up to the window. Seconds later he tumbled through the gaping window and lay sprawled on the smooth floor catching his breath. His left side throbbed, especially his head. He hauled himself to his feet and glanced back out the window, looking for the rope so he could destroy any evidence of what he'd done. The rope, however, had vanished.
It occurred to him as he squinted into the damp, night air that if such safety precautions had been taken against dangerous falls from the castle windows, then a professor might be notified when they activated. He fingered his wand in his pocket, a nervous habit, and turned for the door. A soft sigh parted his lips but made no noise to disturb the silence of the room. He knew what had to be done now, the fate that awaited him. Harry swore then that when his death-shrouded destiny unveiled itself, he would no longer be the puppet, but the puppeteer.