Chance Meeting
By Alan Quicksilver
A/N: Don't ask me where this came from, 'cause I have no idea. It just hit me. It's kinda angsty too. Read it. Or don't. Whichever you prefer.
Harry Potter sat in the park in Little Winging. The swing set creaked and groaned under the weight of the almost sixteen year old boy. A slight wind was kicking up dust and, though he could care less, Harry was finding it harder and harder to see past a few feet past the edge of the swings. He hung his head dejectedly, his thoughts morbid. Not for the first time during the summer he was contemplating suicide. It seemed that his every action caused someone to suffer these days. He was constantly feeling that it was better to end his life, stop both his suffering and that of his friends. Better that he die and everyone else who, for Merlin knows what reason, loved him, live. His relatives would be pleased and Voldemort as well.
But as always when he thought this way, something stopped him. He couldn't explain why he felt as though something was tugging at his fragile lifeline. Something struggling to keep him from flying off the deep end. Nothing seemed to be going right in his life, but for some unexplainable reason, he felt as though he should go on, to keep living. His friends had been sending him letters all summer, keeping him informed of anything and everything. Not the major things, like Death Eater activity or Order preventative measures, but the little things that were going on in their lives. In addition to Hermione and the Weasley's, Harry also got mail from others. His dorm mates, Dean, Sheamus, and Neville, and several people he had met around Hogwarts.
He found nothing in those letters worth the effort of replying, but he read them anyway. The dust on the playground was settling now and everything was just the same as before. The grass was green, almost so green as to be mocking his mood. The sky was an intense blue, steadfastly contrasting with his faded and overlarge jeans. Everything around him seemed to be lively. If the old play park hadn't been abandoned for the moment, Harry was sure that people would be walking around laughing and smiling just to spite him. Everything seemed so joyous and wonderful. If only the world could know the danger it was in.
Harry sat in an apathetic silence until he heard someone talking. He listened harder, more for something to do than out of any curiosity, and found that it sounded like a little girl. Carefully looking up from under the curtain of his untidy black hair he found that just beyond his swing set, near the edge of a stand of trees was a small girl staring up into the trees. Harry watched for a moment. She didn't move nor did she shift her gaze. She just kept staring at something in the trees. After a while she spoke again, though he could not hear what she was saying.
Finally, despite his apathy, Harry's natural curiosity got the better of him. He stood from his swing and slowly approached where the little girl was standing. As he closed in he saw that she was about six or seven. She had fiery red hair and stunning green eyes and still she didn't take her eyes off of the something in the trees. He finally reached her and before he could say a word the little girl spoke. "Hello Harry." She seemed cheerful, exuberant even. Harry merely gaped at her. "Oh, do close your mouth Harry, you'll catch flies if you don't." Harry snapped his mouth shut.
"H-How do you know my name?" he questioned her. "And who are you?"
"Never mind that, ask me the right question."
"What are you talking about?" Harry asked, even more confused now.
"Ask-me-the-right-question." She spoke slowly, as though with infinite patience. Harry was stumped. He tried asking her several more times who she was and how she knew him but she always said the same thing.
Frustrated he finally said, "Fine, if you won't tell me who you are then can you please tell me what the bloody hell your looking at.?"
"Finally." she said. Without looking a way she nodded in the direction she was looking. Looking up Harry saw a little green bird, sitting on a small branch. It twitched its head a few times, staring back at the little girl, never breaking the gaze.
"What?" Harry asked, "The bird?"
"Yup."
"Why?"
She finally broke her staring contest with the bird to turn and answer him. "Because I want him to come down."
Harry looked at her quizzically, "But he won't come down if you just stare at him."
The little girl just smiled at him and turned back to her bird. "You don't know that for sure do you?"
"But he won't-"
She cut him off. "Do you?"
"Well..." he began.
"My mother started bringing me to this play park so that I could play and make friends. Most of the other kids were either too snooty to play with me or too busy to even notice. So I played by myself. One day I noticed a bird sitting in a tree looking at me," she nodded in the bird's direction, "So I looked back at it and it kept staring at me. Ever since then I have come back to this very spot every day to look at the pretty bird and hope that maybe it will come down to me so we can be friends."
Harry looked on even more puzzled than before. "But what if he never comes down?"
"Never is a very long time Harry," she said, "and even if he doesn't come down today or tomorrow, there is still hope that he will come down someday." She smiled broadly, "Even if he doesn't ever come down to me I still have fun knowing that, at least for a little while, the bird and I will have something fun to do."
Harry felt the wind push at his back. He looked around and found that he was standing near the trees, but the little girl was gone as was the bird. The sun was setting and Harry figured that it was time to go back to the Dursley's. He wondered if they would give him any supper at all when something caught his eye in the dying sunlight. A metal glint near the place where the little girl had been standing. He walked over and knelt down, squinting to see what it was.
A small polished steel bracelet lay on the ground. Harry picked it up and, examining it, found it had a name plate on it. Wiping off a little evening dew from the metal plate his eyes widened at what he saw.
Lily Evans.