Prologue
After the war ended, Harry couldn't sleep. The nights on the run, the battle of Hogwarts, and the dead faces of his friends haunted his dreams. He tried to paint them away- throwing swirls of paint onto a canvas, onto the walls, onto himself- but it never worked. The paintings came out dark and muddy, and his sleep was still restless and fitful. Hermione worried, and Mrs. Weasley worried even more, but he wouldn't let them try to get him help. All the therapists reminded him of people- there was the one who looked like Dumbledore, then the one who looked like Remus, and worst of all, the one who was a Metamorphagus and who tried to put him at ease by transforming her nose into a pig's snout. Harry walked out on all the therapists within a week, and went back to Grimmauld Place and painted. He tried to paint happy things- sunsets, flowers, animals- but instead he found himself shading paint to form Voldemort's red eyes, splashing blood-red pigments around paintings of the battlefield, and creating huge portraits of Dementors. He barely ate, he barely slept, and he hadn't come out of the house for weeks. Hermione was close to staging an intervention. And then, one night, things changed.
...
The streets in this part of London are dim, lit only by occasional street lamps. Most of the normal members of Muggle society are asleep.
A darkly clad figure slips out of what seems to be a crack between two buildings, into the foggy night air. Tall cans of spray paint are stuck through his belt like swords. A polished stick pokes out of his pocket. Sticking to the alleyways, the figure navigates the dim streets. None of the surly, shifty-eyed people he passes on the street speak to him, and he does not acknowledge them. They know him: the green-eyed man- boy, really- walks the city most nights. The streetwalkers and assorted thugs are used to how this silent figure seems to slip from between buildings and then off into the city.
Sometimes they follow him through the night, sparsely lit by street lamps. He doesn't seem to mind- it's like he knows the curious teenagers and homeless people are there, and yet doesn't care. Every night, followers or no, the man does the same thing. He wanders purposefully over the pavement, towards the river and the Parliament building and the clock tower that all the tourists flock to- and then he'll crouch down in the street, prize open a manhole cover, and lower himself down on a knotted rope to the tunnels below.
No one follows him: superstitions abound among the homeless about mad people wandering the tunnels underneath the streets of London, among the other monstrosities that can't bear the light of day. The boy doesn't hesitate, striding through the tunnels, occasionally ducking for a low lintel or ceiling. Once he clambers into a hole in the wall of a corridor and crawls, and then after few more twisting tunnels, he's reached his destination: a large cavern, its walls full of color, candles splashing yellow light on the walls. there are a few teenagers already there, spray paint hissing out of their cans onto the walls. The new arrival walks to a corner of the room, and soon is painting wild swirls of color on a previously blank part of a wall.
When he finishes, he steps back and looks at his work. Faces line the wall: a pair of red-headed twins, a sparkling-eyed, widely smiling woman with hair that seems to change color and features that seem to fluidly change by the second (but surely that's a trick of the light) next to a pale, drawn man whose tired eyes look at her like she's the only thing in the world, an old man with half-moon spectacles and a long beard, a snowy owl, a grey-eyed man with a charming smirk and shoulder-length black hair, and a big-eyed creature with huge ears and a slightly worried, devoted look in its tennis-ball sized green eyes.
The man bent and signed the bottom corner of the painting "HP", and finally turned away from the wall, sighing with a sense of completion at last, then heading up into the night again. When he again slipped between the buildings, a bushy-haired girl was waiting for him just inside the door.
"Harry? Are you okay?"
"I painted them. Painted them all. I think I'm okay now." When he got up to his room, he slept well for the first time in
months
. All was well.