He felt like a great chasm of desolation was threatening to open up inside him. Flashes of memory and pictures of the past blinked and flitted in front of his eyes like maddening sprites bent on driving him to madness. He had only an hour before just broken up with his girlfriend of as little as a month. His heart felt as if he had just ended a marriage of thirty years.
When had he ever been so happy then when he was with Ginny. His heart had never felt so free, as if he had reached out to touch some beautiful distant summit and found he had suddenly grown wings. He flew with her, had been flying in a haven of ideal bliss for a month.
Dumbledore's death and one terrible soul shattering night had stripped him of his wings and sent him spinning, plummeting back to earth.
What was it like to have so many people you depended on leave you? First his parents, then Sirius, now Dumbledore? It made you damn sure you weren't going to loose anymore! He grit his teeth and balled his hands as he shoved more of his clothing into his trunks. An air of somber depression surrounding the castle. The students of Hogwarts had suddenly found their stability gone, that nothing in life was permanent. If anything had seemed permanent and dependable it had been their headmaster.
No longer.
Harry Potter had come to his decision the night before. He wasn't going to loose one more person that mattered to him, he was not going to let Voldemort harm the people he loved. He wasn't strong enough to protect them, so that meant he had to remove them from danger. They wouldn't want to leave, they were true friends and true friends wouldn't let him go alone.
He had very few choices, he knew that but it didn't mean it wouldn't hurt him.
He slammed his trunks shut and began to haul them out of the room. As he clattered down the boys dormitory steps into the common room he wasn't surprised a bit to see Hermione, Ginny and Ron waiting for him on a couch nearest the door. When he entered all three stood up at once.
"Harry, Ginny says you've broken things off with her I know you're worried about…" Ron began, Ginny put a hand on his arm and shook her head.
"Ron forget about that, I understand." She tried to explain but Ron shook her hand away and narrowed his eyes at Harry.
"No it's not ok at all. Ginny feels a lot for you mate were you just stringing her along then?" He demanded of him harshly. Harry saw Ginny turn pink as she glared at her brother. Hermione rolled her eyes heavenward.
"If you believe that for one moment Ron you're completely blind. Voldemort will do anything to hurt Harry as long as the two of them are together she's a target he's just trying to protect her." She admonished him, she looked to Harry as if looking for his agreement.
Harry watched their interaction with growing trepidation. Where was he going to find the strength or the cruelty to do what he had to do. As Ron and Hermione began to argue back and forth Ginny was looking at him strangely. Reading his face as he knew only she could, she took a in a sharp breath as if instinctively she could sense the worst coming.
I'm sorry guys I'm so sorry.
"Will you guys stop arguing! You're always snipping at each other like a pack of wild cats and I'm bloody tired of it! I came to tell you that I'm leaving." His shout interrupted their banter like a gunshot in a graveyard.
Ron and Hermione fell into shocked silence. Hermione was the first to recover, " We know that Harry. We're all going home Harry summers nearly here and with Dumbledore gone their sending us all home." She said.
Harry shook his head, "No I'm not going back to the Dursleys. I'm Never! Never going back there!" He meant every word! He was never stepping another foot in that mockery of a home every again. The Weasleys, these people in front of him… they were his home. He would do anything to protect them. Even hurt them.
"Do you want to come home with me then mate? You know Mum and Dad love having you." Ron offered unsurely. Their was something dreadfully wrong with Harry. He could feel it like a mist clinging to him, he was unsure of where he stood and it showed in the tremor in his voice.
Harry shook his head slowly. "No. I'm finishing this, doing what I have to do. He's done the unforgivable for the last time! I'm the only one who can stop him and I wont wait till he kills someone else to do it!"
Ron and Hermione's eyes locked and he knew they understood, he could tell they were gathering their courage and making the decision that even if it meant they might die, where he went they would follow.
God how he loved them for that.
There was no way he could let them.
"Then we better go pack as well. Are you sure now is the right time Harry?" Hermione asked him.
You can do it, all you have to do is tear out your own heart. How hard can that be? Ginny was the only one who noticed his sad and utterly bitter smile.
"You don't want us to come with do you Harry." She spoke quietly, he could see a sheen of wetness gathering in her eyes.
The first wave of soul shattering pain hit him. He shook his head.
"HARRY! But you need us!" Ron and Hermione instantly protested.
"That's where you're wrong. I don't need any of you."
A person who could utter such a lie should have their tongue ripped from their mouth. It was an abomination of the very idea of truth.
"How can you say that!" Ron blustered,
"Harry that's afoul!" Hermione gapped.
He couldn't handle this one more moment, he wanted it over and done with. If he had to rip his heart out better to rip it out in one quick thrust.
"Look! Who is it that
found the stone? Who rescued Ginny and defeated that Voldemort? Who
had to face him in that graveyard? It was me! I don't need you, I
never have. You'd all just be in my way! Ron your always blundering
about and you couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag! Hermione
you think you know everything but your just a silly little girl! And
Ginny…"
His voice faltered when he saw the emotion welling in
her eyes. Instead of cringing and crying as Hermione had begun to do,
or staring at him like he'd shot her like Ron was, she just watched
him. Her eyes shining with tears, her arms folded across her chest
waiting for him to end it all. Bravely waiting for him to say the
words that would shatter what they had shared.
"..I just don't need you." He finished lamely.
Hermione shuddered and with a sob turned away and strode quickly from the room. Ron glared at him and spit out. "You know what Harry, I wouldn't have believed it of you. I had actually convinced myself you weren't a glory seeking pratt!" He went to grab Ginny's arm and haul her from the room but she shrugged him off. With a cry of exasperation he stormed off.
The two of them stood their staring at each other, he wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to beg her for her forgiveness. He wanted to throw himself in her arms and just breath in the scent that was her and feel all that he had felt in the last month.
He couldn't. Not if he loved her.
"I hope Harry that you really don't mean those things. Part of me hopes that your doing this out of some misguided attempt to drive us away. Tell me that's it…please." She whispered softly.
He could confess, he could say it had all been lies. He could cry and she would hold him and he wouldn't feel so terribly shattered.
No. Then he'd be right back where he started, she and the others would still insist on coming with him in the end. They just didn't have it in them to let him go alone. Not unless he drove them away.
He steeled himself and said the cruelest words he could think of.
"Please Don't Ginny. Look it was fun it really was. Loads better then Chang or any other girl I've been with. I tried to let you off easy all that stuff about Voldemort and protecting you but you kept on insisting. It's just done, we're done. If you want me to be brutally honest I'm just bored with it ok. It doesn't matter to me."
He wished some one would kill him. At that moment when she balled her fist and turned away from him he believed he deserved it. To his surprise instead of leaving in tears as Hermione had done she whirled around a blaze of anger in her eyes.
"you know what Harry? I'm not stupid! I can see right through you I'm not angry about the load of rubbish you just spouted or the fact that you must think I have a brain the size of a needle. I'm angry because you're a coward! Your going to give up without even trying! Your giving up on your two best friends without giving them the chance to be your friends! Your giving up on me, on us because you're scared!" She said with passion.
He made himself shrug. "if it helps your pride to think so, go ahead and think that."
With a cry of frustration and what sounded suspiciously like tears she turned away in a whirl of robes and strode from the room with angry dignity. When she reached the door however she stopped turn back to say softly, "I hope you don't regret this too much one day Harry. I hope you can be happy alone." Then she disappeared through the portrait hole and was gone.
Harry felt his knees quake and he slowly slid to the floor. He would not cry…he would not cry.
He had done what he had to do, and his work wasn't done. He had to finish the war Voldemort had started nearly seventeen years ago on an October night. He had done what was necessary to protect the people who mattered to him most.
He was used to making sacrifices, had made them many times before. Now he would never have to worry about making another one again.
No sacrifice would hurt as much as this one had.
He would be resilient, he would be strong. He would do what he had to do…He would not cry.
A single tear rolled off his cheek and splashed on the floor. It was all Harry James Potter would allow.
Authors note: Fini! Woosh that was kind of long for a prologue I know. Comments are seriously and wondrously adored.
