The Poet
:: narrated mostly by Harry Potter ::
:: Authored by just a bit potty ::
A rocky start to the school year.
See warnings and disclaimer in chapter one. Oh, and the first poem here is by me. blush
Just a warning: Some of you are wanting me to stop with the torturing as soon as possible, but I warn you it will get worse before it gets better. Much worse. That's all I'm gonna say.
To my reviewers
Special Thanks to:
wanderingwolf, LoMaRiBa, kellyerielf, Loki Ishtaar, Ningchan, MidnightMagic312, TA, Lilybee2003, erw, alicia, plumsy321, Katlyn, black pudding thief, rulerofthecows, katrina, Belle, NayNymic, Sylver Phantasy, Chris, crissy, DevilsDarling (thou who art 2 lazy 2 sign in :P), Lady Alekto, GoddessMoonLady, Lyla Snape, Spirit of Paradise, Fen, '...', walters, Mellissa Riddle, Shiv, Danie, DcSolstice, Lina Metallium, Fate, ZonyBone, Relle,Lady FoxFire, tati1, capitulatedDream, ladydarkness1212, iunjl, and mojo-jojo241!
Ko-chan to Ya-chan: Thankyou so much for reviewing and allowing me to use your poem. Domo arigato!! (I think that is the limit of my Japanese --')
Remii: I'm glad you liked the way I put in the poetry, I wasn't sure it would work out at first.
Dragenphly: Thankyou so much, it was really difficult writing this, I'm glad I pulled it off.
Answers to questions:
I don't think the staff will find out right away but eventually they will have to. I'm not exactly sure how this will be resolved at the moment, but we'll see. I think you'll all be surprised at how everyone reacts when they see Harry, too ;),
I would also like to say, for the person who asked, no I cannot make it that Vernon did not rape Harry. I know it is a horrible, terrible and painful thing to happen and it should never happen to anyone, but it is part of my story. If you can not handle it and the emotions it invokes, you do not have to read it, as I know it is a painful subject... very painful...
Sorry if I missed anybody!
I really hope I live up to everyone's expectations of me...
Chapter I - Prosthesis, the return.
"In truth, it was a passing glance
When turning, cast a look askance
And subtle though it was I saw your eyes
inside and
outside
And subtle though it was, I saw your pain.
In truth, it was dismissed as such
When thinking it did not mean much
And even though I saw such in your eyes
anger and
sadness
And even though I saw it, I did nothing.
In lies, I really did not care
When in your arms it was but air
And empty your embrace, your eyes were dead
dull and
haunted
And empty was your gaze, for you were dead."
It seems my feet are lead as they scuff along the concrete. For my life, I cannot lift them higher than an inch, and they drag until I feel the worn soles splitting even more. With my trolley jutting out before me like the front of a car, I simply bow my head and plough through the milling crowds. I ignore the affronted grunts and disapproving stares that come my way, and instead focus on how I got here. There's a mist in my mind, one I can't seem to shine through, and no matter how much I think... and think... and think... I don't remember how I came to the Kings Cross station.
There's a black hole in my head, sucking up my memories. Truthfully, I only wholly remember a scant few days of my summer. Truthfully, I don't know if I want to remember.
The voices around me merge into a drone of mindless babbling, and it makes my head ache. They talk, and talk, and talk, of nothing, of everything, yet it's all meaningless and I just want them to just shut up! Their inane chatter vibrates through my skull and makes me hurry forward to my destination—anything to escape this... noise.
To my left, a squealing child beats his tiny fist at his mother's leg.
I shuffle past quickly, keeping my head down and wishing for the noise to stop.
With a deep breath sucked through my aching throat (why does my throat hurt?), I risk a glance upward, and feel a tug in my chest that might be relief.
Poised ahead is the dull brick support between platforms nine and ten. Hovering around the hidden entrance, I see two bobbing heads of red and one of bushy brown, and already I can hear the giddy laughter.
I know they'll see me, and they'll see how ugly and decrepit I've become. They'll see my sunken face and the lily white skin that clings to my bones. They'll see the purple colours blooming over my skin like flowers. Something inside me doesn't want them to see that. They shouldn't have to see me when I'm dead like this. It's none of their business.
Soothing tingles burst all over my face, and all of a sudden I feel different. Something in my brain tells me it's safe to go on, that they won't see anything wrong.
It makes me ill, yet out of habit a smile twists my chapped red lips. It burns my mouth to do so, but I keep it there, and force my mind to the here, the now. I don't want to remember anything, I decide. I don't want to remember why these holes in my mind are gaps as big as weeks. I don't want to.
Don't... want to...
"Harry!"
"Harry, there you are!"
At the happy voices of my friends, I order my heart to do something other than beat coldly. To feel something. I should feel thrilled that they greet me with smiles. But my heart's far too entrenched in ice to do more than pump my body with cold, callous blood. Instead I adjust my taped glasses that have slid off my nose, and roll my trolley towards their frantically waving forms. Closer... I see their shining smiles from a few short metres away. I venture closer, that fake smile burning more and more.
I'm enveloped in warm, strong arms.
My stomach rolls and my body tries to jump away, an urge I know I shouldn't have. There's no reason I should feel that way... but my body stiffens against its will until the smothering arms let go. I stare up into Ron's puzzled, freckle-smattered face and for an instant I think he sees how empty I am as he stares into my eyes. My dead, empty eyes.
"Ron, you surprised me," I say, by way of greeting, and force my lips to stretch wider. Force my voice to sound happy. He seems to take that at face value and gives a genuine grin of his own.
"I missed you, mate. We had a great summer, I'll tell you on the train."
"Hey, Harry."
A much smaller hand touches my own, and I turn to see Hermione with her arms open wide for a hug. Wondering why my body now won't stop trembling, I lean in and wrap my arms around her. She's as tall as I am now, which is not very much.
Finally I pull back and stare at my friends. Distantly I wonder why they can't see how sickly I am, how thin and gaunt and pale, how my hair brushes my shoulders in a lacklustre curtain, the ends split and dry. I remind myself of Snape. Yet to them it seems I'm normal Harry, the same hair, the same glasses... the same.
"Harry, you've broken your glasses. Honestly, what do you do over the summer to get them in such a condition?"
That's something I would like to know, as well. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a stonily silent Ginny, her arms folded over her chest. She doesn't talk to me anymore, not after last year... but... I can't remember why.
"Come on, we'd better find a seat on the Hogwarts Express before it leaves without us."
While the others follow Hermione through the barrier, trusting that I'll follow, I turn and glance at the round, flat face of the station's clock.
Ten fifty-five.
I think: if I miss the train, how will I get to school? I don't have Ron's Ford Anglia; I don't have people to rescue me. I would alone.
And that doesn't really bother me at all.
My eyes are transfixed by the white-faced clock, but then the scenery is changing as I numbly push through the barrier, uncaring whether anyone sees or not. Ahead I notice my friends climbing onto the train, expecting me to be right behind them.
Like the walking dead, I wheel my trolley to where everyone's luggage is being loaded onto the train, and waft after my friends in a daze...
"I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?" [1]
Somehow I find myself seated next to Hermione.
What...? What happened... why can't I remember how I got here? Narrowing my eyes in thought, I stare out the window and choke.
My throat closes up and I can't breathe.
Can't breathe. Breathe. Can't. Can't breathe. Air. Breathe. It's my body... my body is protesting, it doesn't want to breathe anymore, but inside I feel nothing. Deep inside, I am nothing, there's nothing there and I'm not even afraid anymore.
Was I afraid before?
My eyes are locked on the blurred scenery as it rushes by, and I feel a phantom hand on my leg. Crawling up my thigh like a spider. Bad spider. Touching me...
"Harry? Harry, what's wrong?" Someone shakes my shoulder and I realise I've been clutching at my seat, my nails digging into the leather. Leather... leather seats. Just like— "Harry!"
I snap my head around and stare at Hermione. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ron, white as a sheet, sitting opposite us. Hermione touches my cheek, and though pain flares from the bruise that's there, I can't really feel it. It's as if it's not my pain, not my bruise. It's someone else's.
Hermione's eyes are sad and worried, but it's all so distant... why is she so worried? I peel off my glasses, feeling ill. I don't want to see anymore. Under the pretence of polishing the thick lens with my shirt, I ignore them... when did my glasses get fixed? They were broken only a little while ago...
"Harry, please say something," Hermione's fretful voice cuts through my haze. Unblinking, I slide my glasses back on and stare. Right into her wide eyes. "Harry, stop it. Say something." There's a harder edge to her voice now.
Fake laughter jumps into my voice, "Just trying to freak you out, guys. Did it work?" Just pretending to be happy makes my stomach rebel violently. I feel bile rising in my throat.
"Jeez, Harry, that was a pretty dumb joke—you really had us worried!" exclaims Ron, shaking his head. The red of his hair looks dazzling from the corner of my eye, and my stomach protests further.
"Sorry, you were all just being such worry-warts, it was too easy."
"Harry James Potter that was a horrible prank!" Hermione's genuinely hurt, but I don't feel remorse. I don't feel anything.
"Sorry, guys, I won't do it again," there's that voice again, that sickly sweet voice that isn't mine, but still comes from my mouth. My cracked and bleeding mouth. The stranger in my mouth tells Hermione that I'm looking forward to this year, that we will learn a lot of interesting things. Hermione's eyes light up in a way mine can't and she starts lecturing us on the importance of studying for the NEWTs. I don't really listen, but my hands are twitching. I want to write again. I want to write down all these jumbled words in my head before I forget them...
The train lets out a trill whistle and grinds to a halt.
"I am dead to the world
Unfeeling, cold, indifferent
A frail, soulless shell
What is illusion, what is real?
The line between eludes me
I cannot tell one day from the next
A dream is but a respite from the nightmare,
The one I live in day by day
Yet to me the two are both the same
Unending is the cycle
Acting out the role of the living
When in truth, I am but a corpse
I cannot feel depression
I cannot feel the pain
I cannot feel anguish
Inside, I am empty
Lost to all I once knew-
I am dead to the world." [2]
My bed is a cold cloud I lay upon, drowning in the moonlight that pools around me. The pillows, stiffed with the softest of feathers, make my head ache. My hand twitches, aching from the long hours of writing, writing, writing. Words I don't even know. Ron and the others are all snoring peacefully in their respective beds, dreaming happy dreams. Waiting for tomorrow.
Dinner had been endless for me. The fake smile twisting my lips had pained me more and more as the evening wore on. Food kept blooming on my plate, hot, delicious food, begging to be eaten. The mere sight of it had me twinging in disgust. I didn't want to eat, I wanted to write. The silence in my soul was begging for release. Something... something important had to be written.
Friends pulled my attention this way and that, their mouths babbling a mile a minute about every little thing until I wanted to slap the noise from their faces. That would shut them up. Instead I grinned along with them, laughed at their stupid jokes and pretended to actually care about winning Quidditch, when all I wanted to do was flee the crowded hall and fling myself out the highest window, just to escape their idiotic chatter.
My eyes flicked briefly toward the head table, and I wondered if Snape ever felt the same? He looked as though someone had stuffed lemons into his mouth then taped a dead rat underneath his nose. His fork pushed the food around his plate under pretence of eating, but I noticed none of it ever actually made it to his mouth. Just like I was doing.
The plate full of food once more filled my vision; I didn't want to look at Snape any more. Something about him reminded me of myself. Perhaps it was that he looked just as dead as I felt. The war has really been hard on him, I know. I've seen.
Last year, his roll as a spy for the light was uncovered. Now, every day Voldemort summons him, but he cannot go. The pain he endures as a result must be torture, yet here he is, forced to continue every day as if nothing is wrong while the Order searches for something to break the spell on his Dark Mark. A hand around my heart squeezes tightly, and for a moment I struggle to breathe... But then it's gone and someone is pounding my back, forcing a gasp from my lips as I turn to glare at them.
"Jeez, Harry! Don't look so put off, I was just congratulating you!" the indignant face of Seamus Finnegan stares back at me, his eyebrows stretching up to his hairline.
"Congratulate me...?" I force myself to ask, lowering my eyes to the tablecloth.
"For being Head Boy, of course!" he sounds as if he thinks I'm a right prat. He's probably right, but right now I just don't care. An abrupt silence followed, as those around me turned to stare in surprise.
Hermione's sharp tones sliced through the sudden silence: "You're Head Boy, Harry? Why didn't you tell us?"
I risked it, and stole a glimpse at Ron's face. It was slowly turning purple with jealous fury. When he spoke, his voice was laced with poison, spitting words at my face, "You're Head Boy, and you didn't tell me? I thought we were friends, Harry!"
I stared at him for a long time, silence wrapped around me like a blanket. Finally I rose from my seat, and with my head high, strode from the hall. In truth, I was just glad to get out of there.
I didn't hear Hermione's motherly tones scolding Ron.
I didn't hear Seamus' incensed voice asking just what had happened.
I didn't hear the Great Hall suddenly light up with Harry-centric conversation.
Didn't they have their own lives?
Why did they have to invade mine?
Why did Ron care that I was Head Boy?
I didn't.
I didn't care, as I burst through the large doors, startling the gaggle of fresh first years and Old McGonagall, that I should be back in there, ready to witness the Sorting and welcome the frightened newcomers to this prestigious school.
I ignored Professor McGonagall's outraged squawking as I stalked away, drawing the following silence around my like a cloak.
I just didn't care.
"In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded--of that indescribable
look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm--and at night the moon so
unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather
the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long, long have they pass'd--faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure--or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time--But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream." [3]
It was hours later when Hermione came and found me, riding the staircases, with her hands planted on her hips and harsh words dripping from her tongue. They sped past my ears with all the meaning of a baby's babble, but I forced myself to nod pleasantly and spout words of apology, along with the promise to console Ron's bruise ego and wounded feelings.
As Head Girl, she doled out the password that I'd missed in my haste to leave the Hall, and we trickled back toward the Gryffindor tower, she speaking earnestly about what had happened in the Great Hall, how many new House members we had, while I listened dutifully. By the time we reached the entrance portrait, with the Fat Lady dozing peacefully, her head nodding to one side, my eyes were blurry and any energy I'd had left was draining in a puddle beneath my feet, leaving me cold and boneless. Hermione seemed to sense my tiredness, as she hooked her arm around mine and led us through after awakening the portrait with a murmur of 'Knutsickles'.
By now, most of Gryffindor had toddled off to bed, and only a few lingered around the common room. Hermione pulled me toward the roaring hearth, where Ron sat petulantly, flicking through a book as if studying fervently. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was upside down.
His bright red head shot up as soon as he realised we were there, his blue eyes shooting daggers at me. Something inside me cracked a little, and I felt infinitely more tired as I stared into him. Minutes crawled by, with Hermione's determined grip on my bruised arm and Ron's hurt glaring.
I... I don't know what he saw then, in my eyes... It... could have been anything. Reflecting just how numb I felt, gazing at him as his anger melted slowly. Then with a sigh, he averted his eyes and whispered, "I'm sorry, Harry. It was wrong of me to get so mad at you."
What else could I do but accept his apology?
Now I'm here curled on my blankets, staring at the tear stained parchment scattered around me. My chest aches irritatingly, and heavy weights urge my eyes to close. But I can't stop staring... I know if I read those pieces of paper, I will remember... the gaping holes in my memory will fill, and I'll know why my body is suffering, why my skin is purple with bruises no one can see.
The lids of my eyes slam shut against my cheeks, too weak to stay open. My breath escapes me in short gasps, and I can feel sweat beading on my forehead. I'm just... so tired... but... I...
"The weeping child could not be heard..."
I don't want to sleep. Something... something always happens to be when I sleep.
"...The weeping parents wept in vain..."
Whispered words drift through my consciousness, voiceless, bodiless. Are they... are they... my words?
"...They stripped him to his little shirt..."
I'm... so cold. Tired. But... something bad will happen if I fall asleep...
"...And bound him in an iron chain..."
Falling... asleep...
"And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such thing done on Albion's shore?" [4]
I'm so cold.
To be continued...
[1] 'A Dream Within A Dream', classic poem by Edgar Allen Poe
[2] This one was actually from a reviewer of mine, Ko-chan to Ya-chan, written in honour of this fic. Thankyou!
[3] 'In Midnight Sleep', written by Walt Whitman. I read this one, and some for some reason thought of Harry.
[4] The last two stanzas from the poem 'A Little Boy Lost' by William Blake.