Disclaimer: The characters, settings and world used in this piece are borrowed from JK Rowling's Harry Potter book series.
Retrieval of a Lost Love
He lived—that's what he was famous for after all—in a home built on the site of his first home at Godric's Hollow. It was expected; it seemed significant, so he took the original warding stone that the Order had used and placed it in the center of the lot and built around it. As soon as it was finished, he moved his trunk's worth of possessions from his room in the late headmaster's old quarters to the empty structure and stared at the white paint on the blank walls until morning.
Year zero, the year of the duel that reset the balance of good and evil, reset the world to the way it was supposed to be and reset calendars everywhere, the Ministry and Order had decided to give him the deed to the lot. It had never been his parents' to own like he thought it had; the Order had used it as a safe house for years to harbor whatever families or aurors were most at risk. The new building looked like the original shown in old newspaper clippings from seventeen years before the dual, 17 BD. Now, two years after the house was built, four years after he had sworn never to return to the only other house he could remember living in, he realized that he had left something important behind and needed to go back.
Leaving was supposed to have been forever, but he forgot something and had to return to retrieve it. He took the Knight Bus back. He could have Apparated, but it felt important somehow that he arrive the way he had left. That choice had been his alone at a time when choices were rare and precious. Leaving had felt like picking raspberries in warm fields barefoot and tire swings and mud puddles—at least he thought it must be like all these things; he couldn't know for sure. Leaving was supposed to have been forever, but he forgot something and had to return to retrieve it.
The Knight Bus was still so garishly comical that he could hardly believe it was real, just like the last time. Some things didn't change. Some things did. The bus came to a screeching halt and he was flung forward with all the awkwardness of his youth. He never was able to master magical travel. Thanking the driver, his hair pushed down over his forehead by a cheap muggle hat, the Lord and Savior of the Light, the Man Who Won, Who Saved Us All, stepped out in front of just Harry's home.
There was a wizarding plaque for a tacky war tour next to a flower bed lined with the rows of pastel tulips just Harry had tended after the last frost in his younger years and in the summer months a bit later. "The childhood home of Harry Potter from 17 to 2 BD, still inhabited by his muggle aunt, uncle and cousin." Dudley had never left. The thought made the man laugh. Just Harry would have laughed too.
Muggles were supposed to see a fire hydrant, or so he had been told. He saw a plaque bearing an engraving of two young boys playing with a ball while a tall woman and an obese man stood gazing at them fondly from a wooden porch. The Savior tried to imagine what just Harry would have thought about the engraved plaque. He wanted to sneer, but just Harry would have been secretly delighted and a little bit smug at his relatives' reactions to the purple robed men and the women with pointy hats hugging a fire hydrant and snapping pictures at all times of the day.
But the dangerous looking defense master did not come to take pictures in front of the flower bed, an arm draped around the fire hydrant, with a cheap, careless smile across his face. He came to find something left behind from a time when he was still just Harry.
The last time just Harry had opened the front door, he had been hiding wrapped up in his invisibility cloak, feeling oddly like the fifth marauder beneath the full moon. He remembered expecting to see Sirius like the time he had ran away, three years before he had run away for what was supposed to have been forever. Professor Potter did not need his cloak to be invisible anymore and he no longer expected or hoped for his godfather's return. Still, he stared at the bushes and imagined a mass of black fur and dug out his father's invisibility cloak from the knapsack he had worn when he had made his escape four years ago.
"Alohomora," he whispered as his hand passed over the doorknob. This, the only magic he had ever intentionally done at 4 Privet Drive. He waited, but no Ministry owls came—why would they? Still, it felt unfair that the Man Who Won would be afforded this little freedom when it didn't matter anymore and the Boy Who Lived had not been afforded anything even when nothing else could have mattered more.
Silently, Potter crept into just Harry's childhood prison, still inhabited by his muggle aunt, uncle and cousin. He knelt down in front of an oddly shaped door that was wide at the hinges and tapered down paralleling the descending stairs. The professor's head shook free of the cloak. His finger tips brushed the space between the door and the frame, collecting a pinch of dust. He breathed in the dust—the comfort and security it provided like the scent of a lost loved one's favorite shirt. Closing his eyes, he imagined it smelled of a mother's embrace. He moved trembling, dusty hands to teary eyes and anointed himself with the holy ash of sacrificed innocence and love.
A crying man and a lonely child reached to open the cupboard door and crawled onto the long forgotten cot. Harry Potter's arms wrapped around his knees as he listened to the nighttime sounds of a shifting and settling house. There was a pulsing, rushing noise that seemed to come from the walls and a steady beating sound from the sitting room's grandfather clock. He thought of the blood magic that made him need to call this house home for so many years. Harry reached out to touch the piece of wood covering an old mouse hole where he had carved "Harry Potter's Cupboard." It still was his cupboard, a small room all his own. It was morbid and dark but he found comfort in thinking of his mother's death as his own too.
Harry closed the cupboard door and fell asleep nestled in the death, blood and love he had left behind because he hadn't known it was there, hadn't known how to take it with him, and hadn't known he would miss it after too many raspberries left him sick and too many mud puddles left him cold and too long on the tire swing left him confused and bare feet left him hurt.