Author's Note: This one shot is set at the end of 'The Dursley's Departing' chapter of 'The Deathly Hallows,' just after the Dursleys leave the room. Harry runs out and tells Dudley he has no right to care for him now, after all the years of everything he has been put through there, and exactly how he feels. Lyrics are Simple Plan's 'Welcome to my Life-' they're not in order, but they're hopefully in the right place (story-wise). Jay- for convincing me to post this- you are possibly insane, but I love ya anyway!

HAPPY EASTER Y'ALL!

Disclaimer: I am richer than the Queen. I have written the seven best books ever written. Ever. And I am a genius. Guess who? Yeah- J.K. Not Gabbi. Oh yeah- and the song is mine. I own it on CD. Not by rights.

Fighting Fate

Harry Potter stared through the doorway. His aunt had just left the room; his last blood relation in the world was walking away without bothering to waste a few words on him with her fleeting, backward glance.

It suddenly occurred to him that after all his years in the Dursley household- he deserved a lot more from the people who were supposed to be his family.

They were supposed to love him, protect him, and provide a safe, happy home for him to return to. But they never had.

Number four, Privet Drive had never, ever been a safe, happy place to him.

Overcome, Harry forgot about the pending 'guard' and all the safety measures protecting him, and ran outside to stop the Dursleys from leaving any unspoken words behind.

Dedalus Diggle was all of a dither, regarding the spectacular Muggle invention called the 'car.'

"Ooh!" he squeaked at Uncle Vernon, "Is that- the key?" His eyes widened in awe.

Vernon muttered under his breath, "Effing freaks. Don't even know how to drive… "As he started the engine.

Seconds later, Aunt Petunia very nearly screamed as Harry tapped on the car's back window and (without pause for acknowledgement) wrenched open the car door.

"Get out," he panted.

"What the bloody hell are you talking about, boy?" Vernon growled through his moustache.

Fingering the wand in his pocket, Harry repeated himself with force.



"Get out."

Dudley scrambled to remove himself from his seat. After suffering at the hands of wizards before, he had no misgivings about keeping the peace. If Harry told him to get out of the car, he got out of the car. He did not, after all, wish to find himself with a pig's tail again.

Petunia eyed Vernon cautiously before following her son. Her husband, however, would not budge as easily.

"You don't scare me, boy. You can't do m-m-magic out of school," Vernon lowered his voice so as not to rouse the neighbours.

Harry found himself again wrenching open a car door (namely, Vernon's), this time whipping out his wand and placing it dangerously close to his Uncle's heart.

"Oh no," he rasped, "Wanna try me?"

Darting his eyes between the stick of wood at his chest and his nephew, Vernon moved quietly from his seat as Harry backed away from the door, following him slowly to the lawn.

Hestia Jones popped her head out the window, "We'll just wait here then, shall we?"

As Harry nodded his consent and again pocketed his wand, Dedalus Diggle could be heard admiring the gear stick of the Dursley's Volvo.

"Amazing."

Now that he had gone to all that effort, Harry was unsure how to begin to say anything.

"Erm-"

His aunt, who had been so distant earlier in the living room, talked with startling strength, "Out with it, boy. It's cold out here!"

Do you ever feel like breaking down?

Petunia seemed as shocked at her own words as Harry was by her sudden courage to speak up, but this only served to empower him, giving him a starting point.

"It's cold out here? It's cold out here? You think this is cold; you should try sleeping in too-small summer pajamas, covered only by a light sheet, in a cupboard beneath the stairs in the middle of winter."

No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me



Petunia's eyes shifted to the ground, a slight blush creeping up to her cheeks (although this went unnoticed in the dark atmosphere). Harry found something inside him that enabled him to look past the Dursley's and all the fear they had encompassed him for the last seventeen years, and to tell them exactly what those years had been for him. He no longer cared what they did- he had the power for the moment, and he was going to use every bit of it.

To be left out in the dark

"You don't know what cold is until you've been punished needlessly, and have no-one to talk to about it because no-one in the world cares about you, or even knows who you are. But wait- what if there were millions of people who knew more about you than yourself, except you never knew that any of them existed, because your entire life was based on a lie."

No one ever lied straight to your face
No one ever stabbed you in the back

"You should try cold when you fall in a heap by the side of a lake after watching Dementors very nearly kill the one person you loved most in the world… having all the feeling drained out of you. Being pure nothing."

"But hang on- I know how that feels. And you all surely know how it must be to not feel anything. Who, with any feeling in their hearts at all, could willingly and knowingly treat anyone the way that you have treated me?"

Dudley looked as though he could have cried. For the first time in his life- it also seemed real. Harry wasn't sure whether this was from a sudden realization, empathy or simply because he'd never been lectured for this long in his life.

To be on the edge of breaking down

Nevertheless, he ploughed on.

"This was supposed to be a safe place for me. A home. Where I could go and feel loved, no matter what the circumstances, and where honesty is always the best policy."

Harry's eyes lingered on his Aunt and Uncle for a few moments. Neither of them could meet his gaze.

"It wasn't supposed to be the place where I learnt to cry myself to sleep, and it sure as hell wasn't supposed to be the place where I was scared to even exist."

"I was supposed to be an equal."

He stood at the same level as them now. The funny thing was, that once they were all set at the same standard- Harry was more powerful than ever.

It had been them holding him back all those years.



Everybody always gave you what you wanted

"But I got dog food when he (pointing at Dudley) got a surround sound system, amongst others. I got a tissue when you got a new car (shrugging towards the Volvo in which Dedalus Diggle and Hestia Jones were bopping along to the radio). I got shoved and shunted and told that if I didn't pretend that I either didn't exist or that I was a criminally insane cane-attraction- that it was more than my life… But everything is- here."

To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around


They could pretend all they like, but the Dursley's were finally realizing their faults. Perhaps even beginning to see how much more joyful their own lives could have been if they had have simply treated him as a human being.

To be hurt

"Everything and anything is more to you than me (Dudley made as if to move towards Harry, as he had in the lounge room only minutes earlier), and you might say differently now, but it's taken seventeen years of pure and living hell- and we've all hated every single minute of it (Dudley swayed in his place, decidedly dejected by Harry's rejection). You might be sorry, and you might appreciate me someday for saving you from death, but where was it until now? Seventeen years. Seventeen years!"

Lights flickered in the second storey window of number five, but for the first time in their lives- the Dursley's seemed (if not unconcerned) uninterested.

"I could barely walk around this house without hanging my head in shame, and for eleven years, I had no idea why! So don't pretend to be sorry now; I'd rather you weren't at all. Because none of you could possible understand or even begin to understand anything I've been through."

And no one understands you

"You shut yourselves off to me and buried yourselves in technology, general snobbishness and gossip: you were blind to the misery and cruelty and hatred I felt every waking moment of every single living day."

Do you lock yourself in your room?
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you screaming

"I've lost my parents to the person; the evil force that is now trying it's hardest to finish the job, and I'm the only one who can stop it."



Harry halted, drawing in a deep breath and forcing the tears threatening to spill from his eyes back into his head. Regaining composure, he voiced his greatest battle to the ones destined to scoff at him.

"The fate of the world rest in my hands."

A gasp escaped Petunia's mouth, although her present company and herself were not entirely sure as to why. Whether she was concerned, or her nephew's fate had just hit her, or perhaps even her naivety- she was certain not to show any further emotion throughout Harry's speech.

Are you stuck inside a world you hate?
Are you sick of everyone around?

"Whether my next year is successful or not could determine your own futures. I've seen my godfather, and the greatest teacher and friend I ever knew; die due to my own battles. I've fought every year to defend everything good and right in the world, and you didn't see any of it."

And no one's there to save you

"You didn't want to. Because you didn't care."

It could not have been more obvious that Vernon Dursley wished to escape the uncomfortable nature of the situation at hand.

Do you ever wanna runaway?

"And now, I have to care. Whether I want to or not. Because I can't run away. I don't have that option. I can't fight fate."

Here, Harry faltered, finally talking more of what he needed to assure himself of, rather than what those standing on the lawn that with him had faltered on.

"I know what I must do, and I've finally found my place. Just know now; that I don't have to care about you, because there's never been a moment in my life when you have ever cared about me… And I know now that it's not my fault. I was hurt by you and lied to by you because you were scared of what you didn't know. But I couldn't help who my parents were, and I can't help what I was born to do."

Dudley and Vernon noted the effect that Harry's words had on his stance. He had become a man. Stronger, bolder, standing straight and brimming with courage.

Never had to work it was always there

"You'll never work a day as hard in your life as how hard it is to spend one minute standing in the presence of Lord Voldemort."

If Vernon was ready to protest, his weakness had most assuredly gotten the better of him.



"To stand face to face with someone who has killed all the good in the world and ruined so many lives, is draining enough. To experience his emotions is altogether too much-

But you'll never know it. You'll never understand it."

Do you wanna be somebody else?

"I'm about to lead everyone I love into the worst war the world will ever see, and you are blind to it in a way that most knowing Muggles would never choose to be. I kept thinking that I wish someone else could do it, or that my place in the world was different… And then I remembered my cupboard, and all that I had left to look forward to if I backed out. And I realised I would rather be anywhere than here."

To feel lost

Harry turned to face the house that had been the cause of nightmares since his early years- real ones. And it seemed as if he was talking to himself; thinking aloud all that the Dursley's needed to hear from the one person who could tell them.

Do you ever feel out of place?
Like somehow you just don't belong

"I always wanted to belong here, and now I want nothing more but than to be rid of this place forever."

Are you sick of feeling so left out?

Turning back to his last living relatives, he looked them over with the air of a man about to leave them behind him forever- in more ways than one.

"And before you think I'm happy to be away from you and this place, think again… I'm going out to live for so much more, but I know the horror and evil and death that I'll be facing- and it scares me to death. It makes me so angry to think that there is more cruelty and evil out there than what I ever experienced here. The only difference is that I can fight them. You can go on living your fake, materialistic lives; but I'll be out there, and I'll be fighting for my life, so I can go back permanently, to living in a world where there is none of what I have had to live through in my time here."

Are you stuck inside a world you hate?
Are you sick of everyone around?

"I won't be ok at all. I'll probably be dying inside until this war is over… but here tonight, this war ends."

While deep inside you're bleeding

"I'll probably never see you again. You probably won't even know if I'm alive or dead, but you will know that- even after everything- everything you put me through-"



You might think I'm happy but I'm not gonna be okay

Harry paused, if not for dramatic effect then to make his following words more powerful than anything he had said so far.

"- I fought to make this world a safe place for you to live in, because she (gesturing towards his Aunt) was my mother's sister. None of you deserve it- but my mother did. She died for me, and if I die- I died for you."

Are you desperate to find something more?
Before your life is over

Harry found his eyes easily searching out those of the strangers standing around him.

"I'm not thanking you. I'm not grateful to you for anything. How could I be?"

No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me

"In fact, I hope these coming days bring you fear and anger and a sense of being isolated from all those who know more than you. I hope you have to live each day for it's very moments, and I hope that you hate every minute of it. I hope you feel low and small and hopeless yourselves. I hope you forget civilization and everything you have known here, to the point where you think your life is normal."

"And even though you'll never be able to comprehend it, I hope you realise that that was my life every second I spent with you… If you live in fear if I lose this war, I might even smile if I can see you suffer only a little of have over the last seventeen years, so don't be grateful to me now. It's far too late for any of that."

Harry scanned the Dursleys…

No, you don't know what it's like

Dudley slumped his shoulders forwards, turning his face ashamedly.

Vernon squinted up at the night sky, seeming eager to escape, yet as uncomfortable as Harry had aimed to make him feel.

Petunia stood erect, her icy eyes somewhat softening for the first time Harry had ever seen as she met his own- the only one finally able to connect with him.

What it's like

Too late.



Harry turned his back on them.

"I have to go and fight fate.

And you have to go and live out your own.

Goodbye."

Welcome to my life

With that, he walked away from his only living relatives with ease. Nothing left unsaid, he knew now that he had the strength to fight anything, because he'd finally overcome the greatest hurdle of them all- what lay closest to home.

Welcome to my life

As he shut the door of number four, Privet Drive, in the face of what could have been described by some as his family, he blocked them out forever.

After the war, he wanted only peace and love and happiness in his heart.

All that he had never had there.

Welcome to my life

Dedalus Diggle's squeal of excitement was unavoidably overheard by him, nonetheless, over the rumble of the ignition.

"It works! It works!"

Harry Potter sighed.

Magic had chosen his fate, but sometimes it was the 'simple' things that reminded him of the pure magic in the world.

FIN

Please let me know what you think! I know there wasn't really a storyline as such, but I really feel that this needed to be written, if not for me, then for Harry's sake haha.

All reviews welcome!

Gabbi xx