This was inspired by all of those stories with summaries that say something like "Harry realizes his feelings for so and so". I just thought ' how can you realize something that isn't there?'. So this is going to be about his changing feelings, and I say changing since they will have existed, only in a form different from love.
This will be slash. I hope if you have stumbled on this that you don't mind, but if it squicks you please leave without any cruel remarks, thank you.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I never will. If I happen to mention something that has a trademark or rights reserved on it, then it also is not mine.
Thank you for clicking on my humble story, I hope to make it better than my last. If you can guess who Harry is referring to in this chapter, then drop me a line after the chapter with your guess, it shouldn't be that hard.
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People have been waiting for me all my life.
The Dursleys waited for me to leave them. The wizarding world has been waiting for me to save them.
And some even wait for me to 'finally realize my feelings for them'.
As I sit here now, I know that the Dursleys had the most realistic goals. I was going to leave their household eventually, it was inevitable. As soon as I was a legal adult, out the door I went. But that is another story for another time. Besides, it's not very interesting anyway.
The wizarding world waited for me to save them, to get off the pedestal they put me on and do something. Anything. I succeeded once against Voldemort, why not again? It wasn't as if I had a life or anything, I simply existed to fulfill a prophecy and to symbolize 'hope' and 'light'. It seems as if neither of these things were something I attracted. Maybe it was that I saw more of the negative things in life, too much to properly weigh out what was an average amount of evil to experience in a lifetime. Still, I say it's all relative. For me, there was more evil but there seemed to be a balance between the two.
On the 'realizing feelings' bit? I will say this, how can you realize feelings if they were never there? It is possible to have feelings grow, or begin or something. To have them realized means that I would have had to of had them in the first place, to enable them to grow, to become significant enough to be consciously acknowledged. Otherwise I am quite afraid that all of those saying this like a mantra over, and over inside their minds are setting themselves up for quite the fall.
As I sit here, even after rebuking all of the things people were waiting for me to do I know that there is no denying the fact that, yes, all of the above did come about. When I became an adult I left the Dursleys. I may not have held a spot in their hearts and I may have known that, but I still didn't want to be kicked out. It would have been quite the blow to the self confidence. As small as it can get sometimes I knew I didn't need that kind of mentality when I started my last year at school, knew that if I came back depressed too many questions would be asked, questions that would lead to answers I wasn't able to handle people knowing.
I eventually killed Voldemort, thought it was done with help. Can it honestly be expected of me to it entirely alone? Obviously, yes, it was because the wizarding world was rather put off that I had needed help. I was sixteen and now that I think about it, I was lucky that I didn't try to do it all alone. It would have been the death of me.
As for realizing my feelings? I can say that there were those who waited in vain, and there were those who didn't wait at all. It was a rather disturbing time. It's not that I didn't find some of them attractive.. it's just that I wasn't looking for a relationship with them. It was something I hadn't thought about until after I had killed Voldemort. Did you know that I hadn't expected to live? Everyone thought that I was going to save them on my white horse; swoop down and save the damsel that was England. In my own mind I thought that I was going to die trying, and not succeed. You can imagine how odd it must have felt to know that there was a chance I might have a future ahead of me. I wasn't ready to cut myself off with commitment. I had already done that with my commitment to the cause.
I have already said that you can't have feelings develop from nowhere, that they have to have existed before to grow. Did I mention that hate can sometimes grow to love, or at least friendship? Well, it can and for me it did. When I started my seventh year there were many Slytherins who were still angry with me out of habit or because they actually had reason to hate me. Some though eventually became my friends, or as much of a friend as one can have in someone who has been trained since childhood to be careful and to think of only what is in store for them.
All of these things had happened before or during my seventh year. I have told you the highlights would you like to know the details? The details of the last hope that people were waiting for me to achieve from me? Would you like to know that the one person that I did finally 'realize my feelings' for (and yes they were there, they were just different) was the one person who could have cared less?