Written for the semi-finals (the semi-finals! wow!) of the QLFC. I had to write about someone being the last to know about something, a minor character at that. My additional prompts were The Three Broomsticks, All I Want, and "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want". Hope you like it. :)
When he woke from the Imperius, he was in a pub. He was fine with that, only everyone was cheering, and he had a splitting headache.
"He's gone," someone kept shouting. "Blimey, he's really gone, for good this time! He's gone!"
They were all hugging and even kissing each other, wizards pressed together like a pack of sardines, and Stan Shunpike couldn't take it. He was buggered, well and truly buggered, and this only marked the beginning of the end for him.
He wished he could remember all the awful things he must have done. But that's how it worked with the Imperius Curse. You didn't get to know, you got your identity and your very being robbed form you, and when you woke you were alone in a strange place, surrounded by strange people.
He wasn't welcome in The Three Broomsticks anymore. He didn't even know why, only that when he tried, Rosmerta shoved him right back out the door. He probably deserved it. Everyone knew that Rosmerta was a fair woman.
He went to the Hog's Head instead, because how could he properly be depressed in a pub that didn't even know about You-Know-Who? He kept hoping someone would recognize him and take him in, yelling all his awful offenses in his ear before throwing him in a cell to think. But that wasn't the kind of place the Hog's Head was. Sure, he got a few surly looks by the bearded bloke working the bar, but no one said anything to him. No one ever said anything to the spotty-faced man with a bad temper and bottles of empty beers.
Well, until one night, when a man entered the Hog's Head and sat next to him, a hood covering a shock of red hair. He looked familiar, but so did many people. He'd met most of Britain's wizarding population when he was working the Knight Bus. He missed it. He missed the Knight Bus more than anything, but he couldn't just find Ernie and ask for his job back. He didn't even know if Ernie was still alive. He could have killed him himself, how would he know?
He pushed that thought to the back of his head and blinked at the stranger, who had just said something to him.
"Wha' was that?" he said blearily, realizing how long it had been since he'd spoken to someone else.
"What's your name?" asked the stranger, smiling. The smiled looked worn, tired, as thought it had been used too often and was starting to slip away.
Stan shrugged. Even though he wanted to be caught, that just seemed a little to easy.
"I feel that," said the red-headed stranger. "I'm sick of people knowing who I am. I'm sorry, they tell me, sorry for your loss, like they know what I'm dealing with. And some of them probably do, but I'm too sick and tired and sad to think about that, you know? I'm angry and I'm about to lash out at them all and scream my brother is dead but none of them will get it, and besides, they don't deserve that. So here I am, getting drunk."
Stan just stared, mouth open.
The man laughed. "Sorry. I'm used to talking a lot. My brother and I, we used to joke a lot. We were known for it."
"The dead one?"
"Yes," said the red-headed man, laughing slightly. "The dead one."
"I'm s-" began Stan, before remembering what the man had said. "That sucks."
"It does," agreed the man, downing half the beer the strangely judgmental bartender brought them. "What about you? Why are you here, when our entire world is celebrating? Did you lose someone too?"
"I don' know," said Stan, reedy voice cracking. "I don' have any clue. Months of my life, jus' gone. And I feel like I don' have enough time, even though all I do is sit here and drink, so it probably don' even matter. It wasn't like I was doing anything with my life to begin with...but it was still my life."
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want," said the red-head solemnly. "I heard that somewhere, can't remember where. Seems pretty fitting, doesn't it?"
Stan actually smiled at that. "It does, it really does. Not just saying that, I swear I'm not."
The red-head cocked his head. "You look familiar somehow."
"A lot of people say that," said Stan, heart hammering in his chest, wondering if this was it, this was how he was caught, because it was obvious that whoever this man was, he was a hero and a hero would bring a man like him in. "I used to work on a bus, saw a lot of people." This was it, he could feel it.
The man shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. "There's only one wizarding bus in Britain."
This was it. This was really it.
"Yeah," he replied. "There is."
The silence was heavy.
"Did you know," began the red-head slowly. "Everyone under the Imperius Curse was pardoned? Come to the Ministry, Harry said, and tell us who you are. Talk to us and we'll make sure you're okay. He mentioned your name specifically. Used you as an example, said you were one case of a good man forced to do bad things."
"Me specifically?" he said, heart racing.
"Stan," said the red-head, taking his hood off with one sweep of his hand. "Go to the Ministry, and it'll all be okay."
Stan did, eventually. It took a couple days to get his courage up, but he cleaned himself up, put on his least dirty clothes, and headed to the Ministry. He'd never seen a busier place, not at least since the World Cup. People scurrying everywhere, brushing into him and almost knocking him over. People smiling, people weeping, people rebuilding.
It wasn't hard to find Harry Potter. He was at the center of it all, and when Stan walked up, he beamed at him.
"I was hoping you'd make it here," said Harry, running his fingers through his curly black hair. "None of it was your fault."
"All I want," said Stan. "Is to know what I did."
Harry smiled. "You've come to the right place."
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