Story: The Voice Of A Hero
WordCount: 5430
Warnings: Angst, Blood, Hints of abuse,...
Genres: Angst/Hurt/Comfort
Summary: A dream of pain sends Harry into confusion. He sees a being so broken in a world so dark. He's run from his fears for so long and now they have caught up to him in a dream he cannot escape. His inner voice calls out to him and he can no longer ignore it.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me. Obviously. If it did, almost EVERY ONE would be gay and have some kind of creature in them. Ears, tail and all. The poems are of my own creation though. The ones used, and more, can be found at my FictionPress account (chibisansempei as well).
Perhaps he was dreaming. It seemed like he was. No, wait... He never knew he was dreaming when he was. Never thought to question it. Then what could it be? Perhaps it was one of those dreams... No, something would have happened by now. As it were, he was simply... floating, no, that was solid ground beneath him. Soft, solid ground. And there was a breeze. He could feel his hair being pushed around, tickling his face.
'Definitely not a 'Voldie Dream'. Well, unless he's finally jumped off the deep end. Somehow, I seriously doubt my luck's that good. Maybe...' Harry cracked open an eye. The direct sunlight, which he had only just noticed, stung and he rolled over to block his vision from the assault only to get a face full of dirt.
Slowly he let his eyes get used to the light. It took longer than it should have, like he had been locked up in a dark place for a large amount of time. After he could finally open his eyes without an unbearable sting, he stood up and saw what seemed to be the grounds at Hogwarts, near the lake. He looked at everything around him, it was his favorite spot to be more precise. To make sure this wasn't one of those dreams where you're out in public, completely nude, he didn't need another one them anytime soon thank you very much, he looked down at himself. Nope, fully clothed. Not too public either now that he thought about it.
There was no one around. It was quiet. A relaxing quiet with the soft ripple of water gently sloshing against some rocks, and the wind rustling a few leaves. He followed the lake side and sat down next to a tree, leaning back with his legs propped up on a nearby rock.
Harry smiled to himself.
After a while he began to doze off, he was so close, every muscle was relaxed. Of course, nothing good ever lasted as long as it should. A sound, like something moving in water came from his left, from the lake. Harry figured it was just the giant squid trying to ruin his good mood so he let it be. It was too peaceful in this dream like world for anyone who would try to attack. Everything was fine.
Until he heard a ruthless laugh. By time he got up and had his wand out, the laugh was gone, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he stared at the lake... or what used to be the lake. Now...
Harry stood, wide eyed, in front of a large pane of glass that was about twenty feet off the shore line. That's not what got his attention though. It was what was behind the glass.
Instead of seeing the rest of the lake and mountain side in the noon time light, Harry gaped at the almost pitch black sky tinted in red. The lake water was a dark crimson liquid with blood stained bone as makeshift rafts for bright white fires that expelled a black as night light into the air. Crisp, white papers that were written upon, glided around under the 'water' and bobbed up every now and again looking as clean and dry as ever. Small, square shaped pieces of parchment were soaring around in the air, each holding a picture, moving pictures. They looked familiar, but he couldn't put his figure on it. The scene before him was eerie, almost morbid.
Harry looked behind him, everything was as he had last seen it. He looked back in front of him. In a way it seemed to be comforting, inviting. Almost as if it were made to-
'-To question my sanity.' Harry thought. 'Like a Venus fly trap. I know it's dangerous but I'm drawn anyway then -SNAP!- I'll be decomposing in its depths. Lost forever.' He turned around to go back the tree he had vacated, putting his wand back into his pocket. He stopped.
From the corner of his eye, Harry saw a silhouette in the background of the welcoming hellish place. As he looked on, a word popped into his head but it was blocked by something. He didn't get it. The word was pounding on a door like barrier with a chair under the locked doorknob. He didn't even notice.
The silhouette came closer. A dark blob on top of what looked like a light charcoal gray mist. It got closer and closer and Harry got a feeling in the pit of his stomach. Not fear, nor dread, not even mild curiosity. He didn't know what was going on. Feelings were backwards. Thoughts weren't coherent. And movement was impossible. He wanted to leave this confusing place, to wake up. Something told him that a 'Voldie Dream' would have been more forgiving than this one.
It's not that this dream was scary or frightening. There was just something in the air that screamed and yelled and ululated that something big was going to happen, something that would change him. The real him. This feeling got more pronounced as the thing floating in the crimson water got closer. It began to take shape. It looked... human. It was. It was a boy. He was just laying on the mist, like it was solid, looking as if the world gave him all it could just to break him, destroy him.
The mist stopped about four feet away from the glass and turned so that Harry could see the boys face. The clothes he wore were tattered and dirty, barely discernible as such. His exposed skin was deathly pale and had many open cuts that looked to be completely bled out, almost corps like. His eyes were closed and his hair was dark brown and looked as if it had gone through a wood shredder recently... a few time over again.
The boy coughed, causing him to curl further into himself and whimper. He was defiantly alive, if only barely. Harry took his wand back out of his pocket.
"Hey," his voice echoed, "Hey, can you hear me?" He waited but got no response. "Hello? Can you hear me? Are you oka-" The boy coughed again, convulsing this time. Harry stopped breathing for a moment but, being the Gryffindor he was, he threw his outer robes to the ground and ran into the lake, yelling to get the boys attention. Just as he reached the glass, he tripped on something and slammed into the barrier, but didn't seem to notice and started pounding on it, yelling louder.
Finally the boy stopped coughing. The problem was, he wasn't breathing either. Harry fell to his knees, not able to stand any longer. Oddly the water hardly reached his chest. "No." he whispered. "No. No, no, no, no, NO!!! This can't... i-it can't..." His hands slid down the glass, nails making an earsplitting screech that didn't reach him.
Harry looked at the boys face, he looked familiar. But, who...? Who was he. The boy's eyes shot open. Harry was so startled that he fell backwards into the water. Oh-so-green eyes stared straight at Harry, who thought he was on the verge of having a heart attack.
The boy just looked so tired. So beaten and broken. Torn apart by the horrors of the world. In his eyes you could see everything that the heart could not understand, wouldn't want to understand. Brilliant emeralds were dulled by resignation. Tears making them sparkle with pain and misery.
The charcoal gray mist began to disappear around his legs. As it vanished, he slowly slid into the water. When it got to his shoulder, he slipped into the water, not resurfacing for a while. When he did, it was at a leaded pace. The water tinted his being in an eerie red color. Finally, he stood. Harry followed, mimicking his every movement as if strings were tied to his limbs. The odd thing is, he felt as though they were his own, like it was him who had thought to move. But it wasn't so.
They stared at each other.
Harry put his hand to the glass. It was cool but didn't warm to his touch. He took his eyes off the boy and looked behind himself again, over his shoulder. 'How can these two worlds be this close to each other? They are so different.' He looked back and sighed. The boy tilted his head, a questioning look upon his face. As he blinked, a drop of red liquid ran down his face, making look like he was crying blood. He lifted his hand to his face; Harry's hand did the same, still following involuntary movements.
The boys hand lightly touched the drop and pulled away so he could see. Harry tore his eyes away long enough to stare at his own hand. His fingers were wet. But he wasn't crying... Was he? As Harry was looking at his hand, the boy lifted his right arm.
Harry saw the movement and his gaze shot up. He watched as the other slowly placed his hand where Harry's was still resting upon the glass. Somehow it had managed to stay cool, but now it was warming up. Soon the glass was at an uncomfortable temperature. In fact, it became rather hot
Harry jerked his hand away from the plane. He half expecting it to be blistered, but it wasn't, it didn't even hurt anymore. The last one confused him even more than the first as his hand was literally dripping blood. He stared at it wide eyed. Harry changed his view to that of the glass where there was... Boiling blood? The liquid was bubbling and sizzling. Harry had never heard of that ever happening.
'Great, another oddity about me.'
Harry's eyes shifted to the boy. He was standing exactly as Harry was, the only difference being instead of Harry's shocked expression, with bugged eyes and mouth slightly open, the kid had a small sad smile and looked to be on the verge of crying. Harry's heart started to hurt. He adverted his eyes, once again looking at his hands.
Harry slowly bent down and washed his arm, making sure every stain was gone. He was sure the other boy followed his movements. He stayed kneeling in the water, watching as the red turned clear.
'Almost as if it didn't belong here in this world. Like it's being deleted, taken from existence.'
He looked up. The boy was, as he thought, doing the same thing. Except, instead of taking the blood away, it only added more.
There was some paper swimming around now, circling the boy's legs. As they both stood, he pulled one up with him. He stared at it, probably reading what was written. He smiled sadly at Harry, tilted his head and moved as if he were going to hand the paper over. This confused Harry as the glass in front of him had to be at least three inches thick. The paper passed through as if there was no glass.
He slid the paper through until his fingers press to the glass. Harry's hand involuntarily followed and grabbed the other end, his fingers also touching the glass. They paused. Neither moving.
The boys hand fell, hanging loosely at his side as Harry lifted the paper and read:
*Can anybody see my pain?
Does no one care?
Maybe if you looked a little harder
You would notice my lie
Maybe you don't want to see it
Maybe I don't want you to
Perhaps if I could trust
Then it would go away
But I don't want it to
It's the only thing I believe in
The only constant in my life
If I let it go
Then my world would stop
If I let it go
Then I would have nothing left
It's the only thing reliable in this world
And I won't, can't, mustn't let it go
But maybe I'll let you dampen it
Maybe in time I won't feel it
But still know it's there
Then again maybe not
Maybe I'll let it well up in me
And eventually I'll be able to live on my own
And not rely on the hopeless pleasures you offer me
Just maybe I'll survive in my heartless world*
As Harry read the words he had a feeling that he knew them from somewhere. They sounded so familiar. He slowly looked up again. The boy was staring as if waiting for some kind of reaction. He looked back down to the paper and read it once again. As he finished the last line, the paper began to turn to dust and blow away in the breeze. Before he could properly react, the boy was pushing another paper through the glass. Again, his arm moved at its own violation. This one touched him in a way he couldn't explain.
*Left alone for way too long,
all by myself.
In this world, surrounded my many,
None of which really know.
They all think they're inside my head,
Completely figured me out.
There's no reason for this,
The way I feel.
Always in solitude.
I wish I knew,
Knew what it meant,
What it means to be cared for.
But I am a single,
Call me Solo.
No one has been here with me.
I cannot be loved,
And I'm not able to return it.
If only the crowd could see,
All those people.
Everywhere, they are.
I'm trapped by them,
But there's no one here.
No one to comfort my shattering heart.
How can it be,
That with all those around,
I have been left?
Left alone for way to long?*
"...Wow..." was all he was able to say. Nothing else could describe it and even that was lacking. Again, the paper drifted away as another soft breeze swept by. Harry looked up, not knowing what to expect. The next one to pass through wasn't so much a poem but did sound as if it were.
*City light blur, street lights fade, house lights dim, flash lights die and the candle stub flickers. I walk in my eternal darkness, blind to all. Waiting, almost wishing, for that fatal wind to blow away the last of me. Half hoping, that along with my little flame, I too will cease to be.
Until I met you.
Now I live for the tortures you put me through. I love the soft breaths upon the slowly melting wax. Now I fear the winds and curl around my glowing stick. My own breath stutters as the light flickers in and out of existence, wavering as it reaches its end. For a heart stopping moment, I wonder why I am afraid of what I once nearly begged for.
Then I realized, I find that it wasn't an accident. I had locked myself in a black fog. Nothing had blurred, faded, dimmed or died. I simply shut it all out for what I believed to be safe.
But I was wrong.
Even as someone reaches from the outside world, I blow out my own light, not able to face what I had denied myself for so long.*
Harry could barely hold back the tears and his chest began to ache as his heart beat franticly. He looked back to the boy once again with a question in his eyes, begging to be answered. The other seemed to not understand for he slipped another paper through.
*Do you know what it is that you do to me
Every time you look my way?
Slowly killing, slowly now.
Every touch is poison
Always to my skin.
If that is so
Then why is it that I'm drawn to you?
Why do I have this need to be near,
To be touched?
Why, why, why?
Every look and every thought
Killing me in side.
Yet here I am,
Silently asking for more.
This personal torture
It leaves me pleased
I've tried to forget
I've tried to move on
But nothing seems to work
You are my suicide
My precious end
Always there for me
But never really helping
It's you that is doing this to me
It's you that breaks my heart
But you'll never know.
The worst part is
I know that if I told you
You would really care
You would try to make it better
But it wouldn't be the same
You would try to mend my breaking heart
Try to put it back together
Oddly enough I'd rather it be broken
I'd rather remember it in its whole
For when it's together again
It'll only be a shadow of what it used to be
It'll only hurt me more
And every time you try to hold it
It would only cause you pain as well
My personal torture
My own grown pain
I've lived with it as it kills me
And I'll continue to do so
Until it finally does.
You unknowingly kill me
And I silently die
Always sticking with you
Seeking out the pain
One day you'll look for me
And I'll no longer be here
You'll find me another day
As my crimson freedom captures you
I never told you
And now I'll never get the chance
It'll haunt me in my death
As it did in life
Once more I think of you
As ruby drowns the white*
Harry could no longer control himself. He had to know. "Did you write these?" No answer. "Are all the papers in there poems?" Still no answer. 'Maybe he can't hear through the glass. It is rather thick.' Harry's head randomly shot up. He looked at the sky, birds were quietly flying by. Before he could wonder what was going on, he was dropping his head again. The boy had yet another piece of parchment, but this one was different. It looked old and tattered. The edges were crumbling and had many tears.
The boy stared at it for a few minutes. He smiled a little and closed his eyes, hiding the pain that was shooting within them. Without opening them, he passed it through. Just as before, both touched the glass. When he let go of the parchment, he slowly opened his eyes. Harry barely had time to see a tinge of red in them. The thought of it being Voldemort after all passed through his mind briefly before he was looking at a new scene. He was now watching something too close to home for comfort. He didn't know how, but it all seemed so recognizable. Like he knew it.
.,.,,.,.,,
Harry was standing in a hallway of doors. Between the doors was a small table with a vase of artificial flowers and a cookie cutter place mat. Screams came from one of the open doors. Screams of anger and screams of pain. Suddenly, someone was hurtling through it, smashing into a table barely missing the raven haired teen. The one sprawled on the floor looked to be the same boy that was on the other side of the glass at the lake. He didn't move. The voice that was still in the room got closer to the door frame. It sounded angrier than before. Yelling about the mess.
Harry, who couldn't even stand up for himself is a similar situation, started to back up, not wanting to be seen. He stopped though. The boy had to be in pain. There was blood all over him, clothes were ripped, and Harry was sure that laying on pieces of wood like that had to really uncomfortable. He slowly moved forward and knelt down. As he placed his hand on the boy he looked over to the still screaming man in the door way. He was rather large and Harry had doubts that even the smallest of it was muscle.
Harry seemed to recognize him from some far off dream. But the man was hiding in the shadows of the room. He couldn't be sure and didn't have time to figure it out for the hand he had placed on the boy, fell through. Instead of making contact with a trembling arm, his hand hit the floor. It startled Harry so much he fell over. What was worse was when the kid started to roll over.
By now Harry was sure that the beefy man in the doorway could not see him, but the boy... The boy most certainly could. In fact it felt as if he was searching his very soul as they locked eyes. For a moment nothing happened then, as Harry tore his gaze away, the raven noticed something. The kid on the floor looked like... no, not like, similar to, twin like to-
.,.,,.,.,,
The dream like trance ended abruptly. Harry looked around. He was back at the lake. He looked to the boy and found him still there, same as usual. Harry was about to try again with his questions, having no doubt what so ever that the boy could hear him, he just didn't want to answer. He paused however. The boy was the same, but he wasn't. He looked desperate, but not for help. It looked like he was freaking out about something. Harry looked over his shoulder. It was still the same like side view, nothing was different. Not even the slightest.
By time Harry looked back to the other side, the boy was also looking behind himself. His eyes seemed to be following something. Probably another memory. Harry really didn't want to see another one, they were hi- Before long his thoughts were interrupted once again. This time it wasn't a memory the boy was pounding on the glass screaming, voice muffled.
Harry was hit in the back of the head. He turned around and saw a piece of paper lightly floating in the water and picked it up. As he looked back to the boy and looked in his eyes, again questioning his identity, that feeling of change came back. It was stronger this time. The boy slowly shook his head and uttered something. Harry couldn't hear it.
Now, as he took notice, the boy seemed even worse for wear than before.
"How did this happen to you? Who did it?" he whispered. The bind blew slightly, messing his hair. In his ear he heard
"You, of all people, should know, Harry. Why do you ask such a question that you already have an answer to, right before your eyes?" the voice made his heart pound more erratically. Where as the boy's mouth did not move, Harry knew it was his. He wasn't sure how he knew, but it was painstakingly obvious.
He was no longer pounding upon the glass, but he still looked upset about something. He bowed his head a little. As Harry lowered his own head, he could have sworn he saw a tear roll down the others face. Of course, that couldn't be so. It was red. Maybe a trick of the light over on his side.
Once again, this piece of paper held words, but not in poem form. It seemed more like a journal entry of sorts.
* What do you do when you find yourself wanting to cry, but are unable to? You can look back to every harsh memory you've ever had, and still nothing comes. You can read so many soul splitting stories, both fiction and real life, that they start to blend together, yet you're faced relentlessly with a pain in your being that will not cease. You can watch as everything you care for is lost to you. Again there is no release for your heart. When you lie awake for hours on end, feeling a prickling behind your troubled eyes, wishing for just a single tear, how do you get through the anguish of losing your chance when you blink it away, unwittingly drying all traces from temptation? Most people hate to cry, that's all I wish for. I have this need, somewhere inside me, screaming and yelling. It wants to be let out, to be free of its broken shell. It throbs in my chest, banging against ribs, pulling at delicate tendons. Doing all it can to get my attention. But, it already has it. It takes up every spare thought in me and some that aren't exactly unused.
Tears were swelling in Harry's eyes, almost over whelming, but just as the words read, he blinked them away, they were no more.
This one he reread a few times. The words seemed oh so familiar. He knew them from somewhere. He looked back to the words once again. He wrote these things. How can one person have so much pain in them? He looked up and saw it. The boy was crying and it was red. There was no trick of the light. He had tears of blood. They say if you cried long enough, you'll eventually cry yourself dry. What would happen to him? They were of a different liquid.
Harry slowly stepped up to the glass, fully intent on at least trying to comfort the boy. Maybe if he knew that someone cared then he- Right before Harry's fingertips touched the glass he realized. Something seemed to click in his head. Everything fit better. He finally knew. Harry looked the boy in the eyes with a question in his own. The other nodded. They stared at each other. Harry didn't even notice the paper in his hands fading in the wind.
Harry now knew that the glass plane he was looking at was not just any piece of glass. It was a mirror. He was looking into a world that lay just inside of his own mind. And the boy… The boy was his true self. How he, himself, was on the inside. The poems were his own, the memory, one of Uncle Vernon in his fits of rage. This is why he felt so comfortable looking at the place behind the glass. It was where his mind presided to shelter him from his so called friends, from the pains that their lies and deceits caused. They did this to him. They helped him to create a world where he was in so much pain that a little more hardly mattered. He had to concoct a mask so realistic that no one could tell that not only was he slowly dying inside, but he seemed to have past doing so a long time ago. He made his mask so strong that even he didn't realize the last until just now.
Harry's finger just barely brushed the glass. Time seemed to move in slow motion. It was as if the world around him wanted him to see every part of what was happening.
The glass started to crack, busting into tiny veins everywhere. Harry backed up in surprise, he made his way to the shore but didn't quite make it. He tripped over his feet when he looked back. What he saw made him falter.
The glass. Not only was it no longer whole and slowly falling to bits but it also seemed to take a shape. In the center based where he was previously standing, was the design of a heart. As he fell, Harry saw the whole wall of glass shatter. It was like the slow motion had been turned off.
The great crashing of the glass as it exploded echoed all around disturbing all the birds and other animals on his side. They all went running of in the opposite direction as the noise burst their eardrums, probably rendering them deaf for the rest of their lives.
It took a few seconds for Harry to get back to his feet. But when he did, he wished he hadn't. Little bit of glass were flying around in the air, the red waters were flooding the rest mixing crimson and pure liquids creating an eerie marble design and the sky lights had been taken over by the dark red of the other world. The only part of the mirror still standing was the shattered heart and the boy- no, he was still standing, looking on as if he expected this all to happen. The rest started to slowly crumble as well.
Harry made his way back to the mirror and stared at his dead reflection. He reached out to touch the glass again thinking that it could hardly hurt anything considering what the rest of it did. The reflection bowed its head as it crumbled and fell to the floor of the lake.
As the last of the glass fell from the air, everything suddenly became still before a large wave of crimson water crashed. The whole world was disturbed trees were uprooted, large boulders were lifted and moved great distances. Harry barely had enough time to take a deep breath but it was for naught because it was knocked out of him not long after. Debris hit him from all sides, glass cut at him from every direction, embedding into his skin, melding with his flesh.
A wall of paper and dirt rushed past him creating gashes all over that he was sure he would die from.
Every time he surfaced to try and catch his breath, something dragged him further below causing him to become weaker and weaker. Soon he was so lost in the water that he didn't know which way was up. He was swimming as hard as he could, trying to get anywhere.
A piece of glass hurtled at him, hitting his neck. He wrenched it free, trying to scream but only losing more air, more blood, than he had left in him. With a final look into the glass he saw an eye. It was crying. But there was something else. It also seemed to be laughing. Making fun of his pain, mocking his death. Even in the drowning currents he was in, tears of blood fell strongly from his own eyes, mixing with the already thick water as the mirror piece softly slipped from his dead grasp to float around, watching over the body the would never be found, the soul that would never be missed or cared for. It watched as pieces of its self tore and shredded the corps, destroying all remains of the existing in order to save its host from the pain that it had to live through.
PlotBunnie: It's about time! I was thinking I would die before you posted this thing.
Chibi: Well, I didn't know how to write it. It had to be very detailed, otherwise it would have been no good. You should be happy that I got it this well. Did you not read the FIRST copy?
PlotBunnie: No, It looked pretty bad.
Chibi: EXACTLY!!!! It was only like 100 words! ... If I was lucky!!!
PlotBunnie: Whatever.
Chibi: ... It's no wonder I can only write depressing stuff! You guys aren't exactly the most suportive things around.
PlotBunnie: Well, you're practicly starving us. We have NO inspration what-so-ever. Your friend had to FedEx some over!! And some of THAT got lost on it's way!
Chibi: You heard the bunnie. We need insparation. Review us please. It feeds the bunnies and trust me... I have A LOT of them to feed. Even a 'Well written.' or 'It was pretty good.' or something would work. I also like to know about even the smallest of mistakes all the way down to a misspelled word or extra space where it isn't needed. Please, no flames. The insparation carrots I'm trying to grow are heat sensitive and will shriver into nothing everytime I get one. Also, all poems are mine and I would really like it if you read my others as well. They are at FictionPress . Com under chibisansempei. Thank you.
Oh!! Also, even though I kind of made it seem like it Harry did not really die. It was just a dream. That act, along with most of everything else is symbolic. Basically, he's dieing inside and only just realized it now that it's too late to fix anything. ... Yeah... ^.^
Ja
-Chibi
(4-11-09)