Author: MoOnY MoNSooN ( )
Title: Love Long Lost
Rating: R (mentions of suicide and sex, some in the later chapters)
Summary: Harry Potter lost his love to someone else. Actions have consequences that reach far.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything connected with Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.
Love had changed him. It had made his heart, so used to being battered and broken but well guarded, into a weak and vulnerable thing. He had been so lulled in his sense of security and love that when it had been broken, he'd been unable to do anything to defend it. In that brief moment, a split second really (nononononono you can't I love you don't do this not with him not here in our bed no please don't) he had lost all belief in his strength.
Life had dealt him bad cards. He had accepted it and moved on. He was used to seeing people die (and no normal person should be used to that, but then again..he wasn't really normal), and he'd remained strong. He' been tortured, belittled and neglected, he'd been worshipped and bestowed with the heaviest of loads upon his shoulders (Severus always said his left soulder was lower than his right) and he'd still remained strong. He'd finished school, defeated Voldemort and become an Unspeakable after his brief spell in the Auror Squad. Life had moved on and he was still strong. And then he'd fallen in love, so deeply and so suddenly he had forgotten to shield his heart. It was too late then, and his grumpy Potions Master had crawled too deeply into his heart. It occurred to Harry now, three years later, to wonder whether he really was a naive Gryffindor, believing in love and loyalty. Their love had been bitter and black, but it was the strongest love Harry had ever felt.
It hadn't been easy with them, as nothing ever was. Harry didn't believe in romance, after all he'd been through, and Severus couldn't stand fluff. They were too jaded for flowers and ideal confessions of eternal love traded over a dinner of pasta fettucini and some very good red wine. They'd ended up in Severus' bed when Harry'd been on an assignment in Hogwarts, after a solid dinner of Hogwarts food with the staff. Later they laughed and called it 'unresolved sexual tension' but the next morning they woke up and called it a mistake.
It took many misunderstandings, many fights and many, many conversations before they even officially started their relationship. All the trouble they'd gone through to start the relationship felt like a very small matter when they moved together. Things were good after they'd furnished the house. They fought, because the arguments were as big part of the bond between them as anything else, and they had sex and took walks and cooked. They did the laundry and paid the bills and shared the newspaper over their breakfast. Life wasn't sunshine and roses, but neither of them had been expecting it to be, and so they were not disappointed.
And now, three years from the day they'd decided to begin a relationship his heart was in shatters and the trust he'd given to Severus gone in the two seconds he's stood there, watching them fuck on his side of the bed. He'd handed Severus his heart and it had been grinded under the man's heel into such tiny fragments nothing could put it back together. He had never had Severus' heart and he'd never wondered because he'd believed that if he asked, it would be given to him. This gloomy rented flat seemed a million miles away from their three-story detached house with a garden that Harry had loved and cared for. There wasn't a fireplace and a soft couch here he could curl on.
Bitterness that had been missing from his mind after Voldemort's demise returned like a trusted friend, anger he'd subdued after it had gotten his godfather killed broke free, depression Severus had erased was introduced to his life again. There were no words for him to tell people how he felt. There was no need to tell anyone, because there wasn't anyone who was interested - Ron and Hermione had been the few people he let in his heart. He still wrote to people, out of respect. They would need an explanation.He had always stayed above self-pity, because he'd never felt the need. Now he drenched himself in it, wallowing in this freedom of finally feeling something he could feel without taking other people into account. Then he picked up a parchment and quill and wrote a letter he'd never send.
They found it on the kitchen table a week later, when the neighbours started complaining about the smell. He was on the bed, under covers, dressed in his pyjamas and the fluffy socks Severus had given him because his feet were always cold. Harry had always been considerate towards other people, and so everything was in order. His personal papers, addressed to Dumbledore, in a folder. Letters for his friends and family, neatly stacked. His will with his Gringott's key on top on the kitchen table, next to the letter. And all his possessions packed away and labeled. "Shoes", "Books, Dark Arts", "Books, Potions", "Dress Robes", "Slacks" and so on. The apartment had been cleaned, the rent and utility bills paid.
And there he laid, pitiful in death, in fetal position, eyes closed, glasses neatly on the bedside table, the three vials of the Extra-Strenght Draught of the Living Death next to them. In death all the weak things in his body became even more pronounced: his still small body, the unnatural thinness he still suffered from, his not-so-healthy skin and the numerous scars adorning his body.It saddened the ones standing around his bed, because nobody had ever noticed that Harry still suffered from his childhood malnutrition. In death he would be remembered as just Harry, because death strips all notions of grandeur. What the living would bestow upon his body didn't matter, because he had died as Harry, who'd never gotten what he wished for, not as the Boy-Who-Lived who could have asked for anything.
A/N Well, that was either the only chapter or the first chapter, depending on review responses. I have written the next chapter, but will not post it if nobody is interested. This story works like this as well