Disclaimer: Nothing but our soul is ever truly ours... - Some person over a very cheesy instagram picture, probably.
A/N: This will be a chapter narrated by Harry. I tried to stick as close to his canon personality, or a least how I perceive it would have evolved under the circumstances in which I had him spend his early adulthood.
WARNINGS: Mentions of violence and adultery. Bad language. Thank you for your understanding.
Chapter 2
Potter's PoV
Who am I? I am not a man. Harry Potter is an idea; an idea of jutsice, freedom, goodness, purity, hope. It resonates within the hearts of the lost and the wretched, the ones that have been mocked or wronged. Harry Potter is a scar on my forehead, and it is an entire world's scar; it is the ghost of wars past, and the fear of wars future.
I have long since given up my right to live as any other man; to enjoy a family, a household, a dog in the front yard. I never chose to bear this burden, but since it chose me...
I cannot let them down. I am tired, but I have no right to be. For I represent an idea, and it is an idea they need. I must fight on. And on, and on, and on, and on...
The war never seems to end.
I sit beside the hospital bed, my heart heavy but empty, looking down at the fleshy mess that is supposed to be Ron. It doesn't even remotely look like Ron, I note to myself. The skin-flaying curse has ravaged most of his body, and a large portion of his face, leaving him raw and bleeding. The healers said it was a miracle he'd survived, really, since the blood loss alone could have taken out even a sturdier man. Lately St Mungo's smells like death only too often.
And there's, of course, a reason behind this wave of rising violene.
The Ministry, in their hurry to take out any remaining Death Eaters had had them executed swiftly, without trials, brutally. What a stupid bloody move. Now their friends, family, lovers, all scared for their own lives and outraged, have turned into a vengeful enemy population. 'Mione and I had tried again and again to talk of this with both the Minister and the Order, but in the hateful rage of victory, our voices of logic had been muffled and shoved aside.
Without Dumbledore and Snape, the so-called Light side has found its morals deteriorating fast. And I... Well I find it increasingly hard to identify with them anymore, for it is purely their fault that a war that should have ended with Voldemort's death is still boiling underneath the surface of wizarding society.
And Ron...
Ron has been ambushed by remnant Death Eaters. The ginger is an Auror, and very apt in dueling, but no man can possibly be vigilant at all times, at all moments. Caught unprepared, he had all the rage and fear of the dark wizards unleashed upon him like a biblical plague. Poor Ron. And yet I can't even manage to feel the necessary sadness anymore. My eyes are dry, after long years of suffering, and my mind is blank. It's not that I don't love Ron, my Ron, who's been my friend ever since I was a clueless child, who's even accepted my recent divorce with Ginny. It's just that I've become jaded, my heart worn with war and loss.
Looking down at his savaged form, I feel weary, old, spent. I've lost so much and gained so little; I've given up my entire life, sacrificed it at the altar of my Saviour role, only to get pain and regret in return. I had accepted to be their sacrificial offering, their hero and leader, their idol and symbol and lamb to the slaughter. And so I'd taken all the weight of the war onto my shoulders, all the responsibility, training hard day and night to be up to the expectations of the hopeless masses.
They needed me, they still need me, to become a new Merlin, and although I have no desire for power, no thirst for knowledge, I forced myself into the role, I have dedicated my life to becoming strong enough to bear the burden of my lightning shaped scar. To what avail?
Hermione walks into the room. Her eyes are swollen from the tears that she has shed, but they are not humid anymore. They've become dry, just like mine. I am surprised to find her here, I must confess, after that terrible fight that two have had. I wouldn't have blamed her if she didn't shown up. She did, after all, catch Ron, her husband, thrusting into Gabrielle Delacour a few days ago, and had been horribly shaken to witness the last pillar supporting her fragile heart crumbling under the weight of a busty blonde.
Her once bright and curious features are now lined and hard, slashed by repeated losses. She seemes honestly worried about Ron though, and I admire the strenght of her love for him, and her forgiveness. By now we know he's probably going to make it, of course, but we also know that children will cry at his sight, that he'll cover all of his house's mirrors, that he'll be ashamed to walk outside, to flirt with Rosmerta. I can see Hermione's trembling lower lip and it silently says 'They've made a monster out of you my love, and I am too tired to cheer you up, I have no more strenght to guide us'.
It also says 'I had hoped for a life better than that. I forgive you and I forgive everyone because I know that it's the pain that made us make all these mistakes, my love'.
It is all conveyed silently, but I can hear it all. Oh yes, we had hoped for a better life. That we had, Hermione my dearest friend, I think bitterly, a weary smile forming on my face. But these idiots, drunk on a victory that wasn't even theirs, a victory that I'd given more blood than anyone else to achieve, they've destroyed everything. They tuned the pureblood society into an animal in distress, a beast scared for its life and fighting with rage to protect its very existence. Can't we all live in peace? I used to ask myself years ago. Now I no longer hope.
I walk out of St Mungo's and into a bakery, getting myself a cinammon muffin. The baker is a wizard, and he stares at me with open adoration and a note of pity, like most of them usually do. He refuses my money, and I shove them up his sleeve. There's a little table with a few chairs around, so I sit and munch the pain away.
A little girl walks up to me, with innocent aqua eyes drilling holes into my forehead, and an endearing blush spreading on her cheeks. She asks me, in her melodic voice, that has not yet been corrupted by the ugliness of this world, if I am Harry Potter.
I nod.
She gives me her muffin and smiles, and tells me how her mother told her all about how awesome I am, her eyes glittering and her lashes batting. Once upon a time I used to envy parents, and greatly desired to experienced the joys of fatherhood myself, but that was before Ginny's miscarriage, her depression, Molly's death, the divorce. That was when I still thought we'd live happily ever after.
The little girl asks to see my wand, because her mother had told her all about how famous that wand was. And she had told her all about how I had tricked You-Know-Who in believing he was in control of it. I try to smile at her naive fascination, but my muscles produce a spasm of irony. I explain to her I no longer use a wand, because my wandless magic is more powerful, and then begin eating her muffin, the one she'd so sweetly offered. I walk away.
My pace fast and uniform, I seek to take shelter in the one place that calms me down.
The place where I find myself amongst friends, loved ones, mentors, parents, classmates.
The graveyard is cold and wet, with weatherworn crosses sprouting right and left, with little statues of Cherubim, old and discoloured, with withered flowers and rotting offerings. This playground of decay and death is no longer a place of mourning for me, but a place of recollection. I sit near Snape's grave, feeling closer to the man than I'd ever been. I now understand him, his vitriolic psyche and his deeply-rooted cynicism, his inner strenght formed by years of loneliness and guilt. And I regret his death more than anyone's, somehow, with the exception, perhaps, of Albus, for now I see that it was him I was becoming, him I could relate with. Yes, he was a completely self-centered asshole, and, as a teacher, abusive (though, to his defense, he had to be a complete bastard to us Gryffindors; he had to uphold his persona at all times, given his spying "job"), but for years and years and years he managed to pull off a nerve-wrecking, inhumanly difficult act, drawing strength from nothing but personal guilt.
Severus, who in spite of having lost everything and having now nothing to gain, had still been willing to fight, to carry the burden of his given role, to find bravoury somewhere inside his blackened heart, for the sake of some impalpable absolution. A flashback of a recent event burst into my mind. A woman related to the Parkinson family, begging, with an infant crying in her arms, imploring them to believe that, in spite of her family relations, she'd never followed Voldemort's cause, she'd never done anything wrong, anything criminal.
I knew she wasn't lying, but she got executed anyway, for the real war was over and my voice was no longer needed. It was the Ministry's voice that mattered now. And from within me a scream said that they were just making themselves more enemies, they were just planting the seeds for a new war, but it never reached the ears of the wizarding state. I was a soldier, not a politician, and my work was finished here.
Sometimes I have to fight the impulse to take the whole Ministry down, the Aurors, the Wizengamot, everyone. I know I could if I decided to, I am certainly powerful enough; but I just feel there would be no point in doing something as rash. If the Ministry came crushing down, chaos would instantly rule and a civil war would break out upon the collapse of the old structures of power, where various circles of influence would try and impose their own regime. Once it had dawned to me that probably this is why exceedingly powerful wizards often succumb to the desire to become dictators.
They simply want to mould society according to their ideals, because they feel that these power-starved and petty wizards that rule us are too useless to bring about any improvement in people's lives. But I do not share that desire.
Oh, I'd make a good dictator. I am known to be ethical, caring, powerful and popular, and yet I would never fall into that trap, and as a much as I long to destroy the Ministry's regime and replace it with something better, I'll not. I'll always keep on gritting my teeth and letting society take its chosen course, as much as I resent this new era of Light state totalitarianism.
I don't know if it's lack of ambition on my part, admirable selflessness, or simply weariness. I suspect the latter.
Because hell, I am so, so tired.
Around me I see no Death Eater graves. Death Eaters get no eternal peace, no mourning. As much as they and their maniacal Lord have ruined my life, this absence still disturbs me. It disturbs me how the winners write history, now and always. And how when the second world war had ended, no mother dared to mourn her nazi son, no wife her nazi husband, how no one dared to cry for the loss of these human lives, wrong or immoral or cruel as they might have been. Perhaps I have become wise, like Dumbledore once was, and I no longer hate my enemies, but instead pity them, and mourn them as if they were my own.
Dumbledore, that manipulative geezer, who was the only one to ever reveal his pain at the loss of Grindelwald, who was the only one to dig into Voldemort's soul and see him for the lost, pathetic, poisened child he was. For all his mind games, he saw people as people. I miss Albus painfully, his gentle power and his tender wisdom, in spite of the fact that only recently did I realise how truly great a man he was, how profoundly superior in his realisation that what matters in life is love and fun. I have a life full of glory, full of magical greatness, yet without fun, without tenderness, it is all void and senseless. If I had a child, I think I'd call him Albus Severus Potter.
But I am already in my mid-twenties now, and still hopelessly alone, so I don't think I'll ever have children.
I lay on the wet grass and call forth my Patronus, made out of my childhood in Hogwards, out of the Weasly twins' laughter, now forever faded, out of Ginny's freckles, Ron's constantly dirty nose and Hermione's constantly raised finger, out of our Marauders' map, and our every-flavoured beans. The stag comes to me and his nose touches me gently. I am so experienced with this spell, so well-trained a wizard, that my stag is no longer an ethereal apparation, but a real, corporeal, material stag full of light and laughter.
I caress it and it kneels next to me. I miss you Dad, I think, and then I try not to think of that again, for I've always been an orphan and I have no excuse to still be aching for my parents.
Infinitely tired, I fall asleep, and I dream of Albus, my spiritual father, my guide. He embraces me, and I tell him that I've lost the will to live, and that I hate being so powerful when there is nothing I can rectify with that power.
"Albus" I murmur, "Is this what I offered my soul for?". If so, I add in my head, it's unfair, and I've been tricked by destiny, and laughed upon by the Gods. Mocked, and used, and pranked. It's not fair. It's not bloody fair.
"You can't always set things right, my boy." He replies softly, in his fatherly manner.
"Why?" I ask, in all honesty, and for the first time in years, my eyes are humid, and they tingle with unshed tears.
"Because fate is a great wheel, and sometimes it has been set in motion far before we could have done anything to prevent it. This is not a fairy tale. Heroes do not are not always rewarded with the endings they deserve," Comes his gentle reply, and his washed-out eyes twinkle with affection.
"A wheel? That's your answer? Well, fuck this wheel" I say, my voice trembling with rage and regret, and my fist tightens on Albus's chest, as he pulls me closer. "I'll go back and change everything. How about that? It should be doable. And if it isn't, well, I'm Harry freaking Potter, I'm not to do the undoable."
"Going back is a very tricky thing, my boy," Albus tells me, his voice alarmed and paternalising. "Time-travel has never been a hard feat for the most skilled amongst us. Many time-turners circulate in the black market, and more even are in the Ministry's possession. And yet, no one tries to rectify their lives by means of playing with fate, Harry. No one dares. Do you not wonder why?"
"It's dangerous. It's Hubris. It's immoral. It's selfish. I know. But, Albus, if I did it for the ones I love, and not for myself, if I did it to prevent a war, to save both my allies and my enemies, would it not be the right thing to do?" I say, and I pin my eyes on him. My voice sounds cracked and desperate.
His eyes twinkle again, and somehow this makes me uneasy. He smiles, a smile timeless, wise and mysterious.
"If these are your reasons, then yes, it would be the right thing to do. Is this really the course of action you wish to follow, Harry?" He asks, and he doesan't look like Albus anymore, but like something ancient and eternal, terrible and beautiful.
"Yes," I whisper hoarsely, for I am scared, unsure of my answer, confused. I have no idea what this question means, and why this feels less and less like a dream, more and more like a trial. But I manage to say yes, and then there is light.
Not a dream... Then what..?
After the light there is grass, and I smell the soil's humidity and the wetness of leaves. I'm in a graveyard. The same graveyard, only much smaller, with many less dead, much less sadness. Instantly, I feel a surge of magic and I know that I am no longer in my rightful time. For a split second my mind is filled with panic and fear, but I brush it aside, regain my calm and control over my magic; I am a weatherworn, hardened warrior, and if this is part of the war I've chosen to fight, so be it.
This what I think to myself as I get up, my body aching as if my muschles move for the first time after aeons of immobility and sleep. I walk towards a very fresh grave and I read "Alexander Lovegood, 1885-1940". I deduce thus that I am in 1940, and try hard to understand why that year would be any special.
1940?
How did I end up here?
And more importantly, why?
If I was meant to prevent the Grindenwald war, it would already be a tad too late, for by now that war was already ready to take gigantic dimensions. No, I can't have been meant to stop the magic or muggle wars of the early forties, that would make the future too different, that is too big a mission for me to carry through with. Who knows how the world might evolve without WWII; and who's to say it would not be for the worst if the world does not learn that lesson.
And all of a sudden I think of Voldemort.
His first Horcrux was created in the beginning of his sixth year in Hogwards, if I recall. And he first commited murder in his fifth, it occurs to me, as the image of Myrtle's annoying and infatuated ghost flashes through my memory, and I feel a surge of anger at all the injustice done to Hagrid. But in my time, Hagrid is dead, and in this one, he is merely a child, so my anger is soothed, and as the word child echoes in my mind, I realise the purpose of 1940. In 1940, Voldemort was not Voldemort yet.
He already was an exceptionally intelligent and studious child, a teenager with dark ambitions surely, but neither a murderer nor a Dark Lord. My hero complex kicks in, and I think to myself that maybe I could still in some way aid him, get him off that road he's on, prevent him from triggering that horrible future I had to endure.
Maybe I could still save him, and if I can't, I'll just have to kill him.
...
And also figure out how in Merlin's beard I tore through the fabric of time and space without a spell or artifact.