Harry Potter reminisces on being a hero.
Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling, the rest is mine. No money is being made of this.
You know, I always wondered what it would be like to be a hero. When I was younger, I dreamed of being a hero, of doing things in fairytales. I dreamed of dragons, of unicorns, and feeling the way that hero's do when the rescue the princess in the tower. I wished, I wished so very badly to feel like a hero did, to be brave and noble and courageous. I dreamed of people praising me, looking up at me, and yes, when I really let my imagination run wild I dreamed of people loving me. I dreamed of all the rewards, all the glory and the prestige that being a hero would bring to me, I don't think that I ever really realized the consequences of what I wished for, until it came true. When I turned eleven my whole world was turned upside down. The thing that I had dreamed about for such a long time finally came true, I became a hero. I don think that I truly understood what that meant until after I had faced Voldemort in my first year, looked at my hands and seen them bloody.
After that it all went downhill, I started to open my eyes and realized that people didn't really see me, they saw the scar, the reputation, and the power that I had, no one saw me. In my second year the lesson was reinforced, the whole school turned against me, and I realized that the saying was true "no matter how much people like hero's, there is nothing more that they like than watching a hero fall" the whole bloody school immediately turned its back on me. I heard a kid call me you know who, I saw kids going out of their way to avoid me. People that I thought were friends suddenly had a million excuses to not be around me anymore and as I watched my life crumble I started to wonder if maybe something like this hadn't happened to Voldemort, that's when I started wondering what exactly caused him to turn from just another kid into the feared Lord Voldemort. Learning that he was Tom Riddle didn't help me either, I started thinking about what made a prefect, a Head Boy, the poster child for perfection go bad, I started wondering, if maybe, just maybe being a hero wasn't all it was cracked up to be. At the end of the year, after I defeated Tom Riddle we had a feast, for most it was just another feast, not for me, for me it was a sick feast because we were rejoicing the second time that I had killed, all for the greater good of course. But I was the hero, I was supposed to sit there and smile and laugh and rejoice about the fact that I'd almost died and killed a human being in the process, again. Somehow, at that moment looking around at everyone's smiling faces, being a hero suddenly didn't seem all that great.
Fast forward two years and Im in a graveyard. After being shunned by the whole school, hounded by the press and made to face things that no normal fourteen year old child should have to face I was ripped from Hogwarts and thrown at the feet of my greatest enemy. I saw a boy die, I saw Voldemort's reincarnation, I dueled with the most feared dark wizard of our time and out of sheer bloody luck I was able to escape. After that a professor that I trusted tried to kill me, I found out that a professor was one of Voldemort's most loyal followers, and then, to top it of I was accused of murder, told that I was insane, that I was a liar and a person not to be trusted. It was like a repeat of my second year where everyone suddenly turned against the hero, kids went out of their way to avoid me, people stopped talking the second I entered a room, and kids that I trusted looked at me with acussation in their eyes. Now I sit here in "the smallest bedroom in privet drive" and I know that next year people will still avoid me as if I were the plague, a dark wizard will still be out to kill me, and people will expect me to smile and laugh and pretend as if everything were fine because I'm a bloody hero. Now, as I set here, waiting for the clock to strike twelve in a house full of muggles that hate me I wonder, I wonder very silently in that small part of me that silently rebels against what society expects of me, If maybe, just maybe I would have been better off not being what I am. I wonder if I would have been better off not being a hero. I wonder if it would not be better if I had never felt that joy of being a hero, a joy that later on turned bittersweet.