Chapter Twenty-Four
Return of the One
April 3rd.
Everything seemed so different from when he had last been there. It was a strange feeling, to say the least. Harry was currently walking along the downtown streets of Little Whinging, the buildings spreading their long shadows in the early dusk light, the traffic minimal on that lazy, Sunday evening. He had been walking for some time, as it were, though he couldn't quite articulate why. There were so many things to do, including one last stop at the Dursleys, a stop which, truth be told, he had rather ambivalent feelings about. He knew it would be the last time he ever saw the three people who, by all accounts, had made his childhood miserable, if he chose to see them at all. he had no doubt he could have crept into their home unknown and extracted his belongings without them ever being the wiser. It was on that subject that he was now dwelling, and it was eating him up inside, mostly because he felt, somewhat irrationally, that the Dursleys were holding him back from seeking out Ron and Ginny and Hermione.
It seemed like such a small event, after everything that he had already faced and against the backdrop of his immediate future. Do I say good-bye to them? Harry stopped and leaned idly against a concrete building, staring unseeingly off into the distance, the glow of the setting sun making his emerald eyes glisten with untold power. It was a scene not unlike his last venture out in the Little Whinging playpark where he had gone to reflect on his life last summer.
If you try to say good-bye, they will just reject you, he thought. You will simply be setting yourself up for hurt, Potter. It will do neither you nor any of them any good, except perhaps to let them indulge in whatever pleasures they derived from your abuse. And, quite frankly, you may simply end up hexing them. But that was the crux, wasn't it? He would win either way. They could either show some remorse, and, for some inexplicable reason, he would lap it up like an ever-faithful terrier, or they could do what they'd done for the last sixteen years, in which case they would unwittingly incite his anger, to their extreme detriment. On the other hand, he could silently slip in and out under the cover of night and be done with them for good, never having given them an opportunity to say good-bye, never having given them the chance to atone, to apologize, to explain, even. If you hex them, or if you leave them without giving them that chance to be civil, to show kindness, then it will eat you up inside, one way or another. He wasn't quite sure why it would eat him up; that was just one of the many questions bothering him. Why should I care? He didn't know why it was that he cared, but he did know that he did.
You're overanalyzing, Potter, he told himself, and with that, the old resolve that often took hold in times of crisis stole over him, darkening his normally shining eyes to a forest green, making them fathomless depths that drew in the weak-minded and crushed them under an intangible and omnipresent pressure. Again, that untold power.
Night fell and Harry, erecting silencing wards and repulsion wards around his room, floated himself casually up to his bedroom window, vanishing the glass and deftly maneuvering himself through so that he landed silently on the wood floors, a silencing ward flowing from his body, dampening all sounds as he moved. Unsurprisingly, his things had been stripped away, all vestiges of his old life replaced by a vast assortment of Dudley's castoffs, which included an inordinate amount of what looked like rather expensive electronic equipment. Harry expanded his awareness to the rest of the house, detecting all three of his relatives exactly where they were supposed to be - in their bedrooms. His senses could tell that they were all relatively motionless and that they were horizontal, suggesting sleep. Harry immediately relaxed his perimeter senses and made his way to the main floor, where he went to the cupboard under the stairs. The locks were still there, which didn't surprise him in the least. He could already feel the familiar tingle of his invisibility cloak and his firebolt. He vanished the door and the locks, leaving rather ugly looking holes in the wall where the locks had been drilled in, and then packed, shrank and stowed away all his old belongings. Later he would rifle through them and pick and choose which things to keep and which things to discard. For now, he was simply content to have them in his possession, using his magical sense to identify all the items of value to him.
When He returned to the second floor and then to his bedroom, extracting the few key possessions from beneath the floor boards, swiftly vanishing some moldy old pies that the Weasley matriarch had sent him, he noticed a familiar friend perched on the window sill.
"Hedwig," he said softly, coming close, a smile gracing his lips. "Hey girl."
Hedwig seemed to bore into him with her yellow eyes, as if willing to communicate some deep message, which, oddly enough, Harry seemed to understand. After waiting several seconds in contemplation, Harry spoke in what could only be described as a resigned tone. "I suppose cuffing me on the ear just doesn't cut it this time, eh girl?" Hedwig remained motionless, continuing to scrutinize him with her unblinking gaze. "Would it help if I told you I was whisked away to an alternate dimension, hung out with a fragment of the Dark Lord and a pretty girl named Kittie, met my parents, ran afoul a giant acromantula not named Aragog and ate five whole jalapenos on a dare?" Okay, now Hedwig blinked. In rapid succession, in fact, as if trying to process Harry's words and deciding whether she was being led on. Deciding it probably wasn't worth the effort to reprimand her charge, she hooted softly to acknowledge his feeble apology and then flew to his shoulder where she came to rest, cuffing him on the ear in the process. Harry let out a beatific smile and said, "You know, I don't think I ever told you how important you are to me, and I think I should have. Hedwig, I love you, girl." Harry took a moment to stroke her soft feathers, tickling her at the base of the neck in the way he knew she always liked it.
A distinctly female voice made a deliberate coughing sound from the room's entrance, effectively startling Harry from his focus on Hedwig. Harry whirled around with deadly speed, his wand suddenly in hand, his eyes piercing the dark gloom for the intruder. Upon realizing that it was his aunt, he relaxed marginally, still keeping his wand in hand and staring at her with his expression schooled into neutrality. He was surprised to see her standing there, obviously cold from the draught blowing in through the open window and cutting through her thin, summer nightgown. He hadn't expected that anyone would be up, and if they had been, they certainly shouldn't have bothered coming to his former bedroom; especially since he had kept a sound dampening field in operation all around him. It had only been by virtue of the fact that his focus on Hedwig let his perimeter charms falter that she had managed to get so close to him unaware. Give them nothing, he told himself ruthlessly. You've come too far to let yourself be hurt by them now. "Yes?" he asked in as cold a tone as possible.
"You're back," she said flatly, her face a mask of sternness, her eyes seeming to bore into his as though she were trying to use legilimancy.
"That's rather perceptive of you," he responded stiffly, trying to lace his words with as much venom as possible, and not quite succeeding.
"Your friends thought you were dead," she went on. "They interrogated us for a long time and then memory charmed my husband and son. They also erected some sort of alarm system in case you ever returned. It has alerted me to you."
Ah, so that was it, he mused. His presence had triggered a ward of some kind, probably set by an Order member no doubt, and it had dragged his aunt from her bed to investigate. He should have known somebody would do that.
"And?" Harry asked, quirking an eyebrow. "You're telling me because?"
Silence followed Harry's last question, though he was not surprised. It wasn't the kind of question that was meant to be answered anyway, and it clearly revealed his own hostility toward the woman standing before him. He wondered if perhaps she were simply too groggy to grow indignant at his lack of respect for the person who kept him safe all those years, the person who made sure there was clothes on his back, food in his stomach, etc. etc.
Finally, she said, "Did you get all your things? You won't be leaving behind any of that... that unnaturalness, will you? We kept it safe, just in case you really did return."
Harry didn't bother dignifying her question with a response. Instead, he continued trying to sink his teeth into her, to inject her with his venom. "Is there a reason we're talking to one another, aunt Petunia? In a moment I will be gone and you will never see me again."
His aunt suddenly seemed visibly strained by something, as though she were trying to cope with a great cognitive dissonance, or trying to formulate a statement that would balance a complex of conflicting emotions. Finally, she settled on, "Aren't you the least bit grateful that we took you in?" The question nearly floored Harry. The apparent sincerity and honest curiosity in her tone made Harry want to either laugh or cry, or some mix of the two; it made him want to yell at her, to knock some sense into her of all people - his mother's sister. In some ways, Harry could understand uncle Vernon, who, to Harry, was just a big oaf that liked to bully people and think of his own interests before others. He could even excuse his fat pig of a cousin, Dudley, who was brought up to be hateful and self-indulgent. But Petunia - what was her excuse? She had the same parents Lily did; she was Lily's sister.
"Didn't you love her at all?" Harry countered, genuine wondering in his own tone. "My God, aunt Petunia, she was your sister. Your sister, for God's sake. You two grew up together, under the same house, with the same parents, sharing the same toys and clothes and talking to one another day in and day out. You hated her just because of magic? Was it so horrible that you hated her?"
"You don't understand anything," she said, her voice now laced with venom, the old Petunia of the last sixteen years showing through.
"You never explained it to me!" Harry hissed back. "What's the big secret? Did she bully you? Push you around, hex you and embarrass you in front of your friends and parents, aunt Petunia? Were you jealous of her? Did magic take her away from you? Is it ungodly? Are you going to throw some religious 'magic's the devil' crap' at me? What? What is it?"
"There is no secret! None!" she responded, her voice rising in volume. "Don't you get it, boy! There was no big secret! I hated her, I always have. I don't even know why!" At this last statement, something in Petunia seemed to visibly snap, because her face went from taut and strained to slack and lined. Tears began pouring out, and she staggered backward until her back was pressed against the wall, whereupon she slowly slid down to the floor, tears still coming, her broken sobs punctuating the deflating tension in the room. "I don't know anything anymore. I don't know why I hated her, or where it all came from. I loved Lily. She was my sister, Goddammit. Why would I hate her?" Petunia broke down into an uncontrollable fit of muffled sobs, her face pressed into her shoulder so that she was unable to speak. She just lay there, in a crumpled, broken heap, tearstains turning her nightgown wet. "I don't know, I don't know," she kept saying whenever she found she had enough breath to speak. "God, I don't know."
The old awkwardness and uncertainty that used to grip him when confronted with crying women did not seem to present itself at this time; even despite the fact that this was his aunt, one of his torturers during those long dark days in his cupboard. Instead, Harry went to her and knelt down and held her, letting her tears fall onto him, letting her bury her demons in his shoulder, letting him carry yet another weight, another torch for another life ruined. They stayed like that for a long time, long enough that Harry's body became cramped and Petunia managed to fall asleep, snoring at an obnoxious volume right into his ear. Harry cast a temporary silencing spell on her and levitated her to the master bedroom, where he laid her next to his uncle Vernon. He had no idea if they slept holding one another in the kind of couple's embrace that told of warmth and compassion, or if they kept apart, preferring to have their own four corners of the bed. He decided to go with the latter, to be safe. For a long time, Harry stood in the shadows, watching his aunt sleep, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, not wanting to let the moment go, not wanting to cut himself from the last people he could have truly called family. In the end, however, it had to be done, and Harry left 4 Privet Drive once and for all, permitting its inhabitants to return to pure normalcy for the first time in sixteen years.
"So now where?" Minnie asked, Harry having just retrieved her from the Little Whinging playpark, Bono glancing up at the sound of his arrival.
"To tell you the truth," Harry said, flopping down on a bench and looking around at the deep gloom that signalled the imminent arrival of dawn. "I haven't the foggiest clue."
"Oh," she said, taking a seat next to him and sitting quietly and primly, waiting for him to move from there.
"S'pose we should head over to the Weasleys," he said finally, breaking the silence. And with that, he had Minnie stand next to him and Bono curl around his feet and, with a swish of his new holly and phoenix feather wand, compliments of Mr. Olivander, Diagon alley, London, England, Earth, Alternate Reality, they disappeared with a slight sucking and popping sound, only to reappear seconds later at the foot of the short walkway leading up to the Weasley ancestral home. Except, of course, that there wasn't one.
"What the fuck?" Harry asked aloud, staring at the ruin for several seconds before tentatively walking amongst the various piles of debris. Again, he repeated, mostly for the sake of emphasis. "What. The. Fuck." Where the Weasley ancestral home should have been lay nothing more than a pile of rubble, bits of stone and plaster and wood, much of it scorched by the liberal use of dark spellfire. The only thing remotely recognizable was the fireplace, strangely enough, and a few tattered pictures, Weasleys smiling and waving from them, oblivious to the plight that their home and, quite possibly, their family, would suffer in the future.
So it has come to this then, he thought grimly, fingering his wand in anticipation of cursing the Death Eaters who did this to his friends.
Minnie, seeing Harry's distress, stepped close to him and put a hand on his arm, gently tugging him away from the wreckage silently communicating empathy for the loss his friends have suffered during his absence. Harry let himself be pulled, his mind percolating, trying to figure out what the next course of action should be. Eventually, he decided upon Diagon alley, since it would be the best place to gather information, as well as take a firsthand look at the state of wizarding Britain, not to mention he could pop by the twins' joke shop.
"Maybe we should go to that Diagon place," Minnie offered, unknowingly echoing Harry's own thoughts.
His gaze still fixed on the remains of the house, his mind drifting through the numerous memories of warmth and comfort and the hustle and bustle of the large family that had taken him in, fussed over him, cared for him, sent him jumpers, made him an honorary Weasley, he just said in a quiet, strained voice, "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that."
And so, with a pop, they disappeared from Ottery St. Catchpole and reappeared at the entrance to the alley. Harry wasn't the least bit surprised when he walked onto the main street to see that a death gloom had settled like fresh snow over the street and all its shops, many of which were now boarded up. To his dismay, the Weasley shop had also been shut down, which meant he had no meaningful way of finding them.
Bono spoke up for the first time that day, poking his disillusioned head out from underneath Harry's robes, where he was tightly curled around Harry's torso. "This place looks different."
"Yeah, it does," Harry agreed, still scanning the mostly deserted streets for signs of people he knew. Hell, he would even take a Slytherin at that point, just needing to get a handle on the events that had transpired over the last eight months.
"Your friends aren't here?" Minnie asked concerned, her brow furrowing as she looked from shop to shop, wondering which one belonged to the infamous twins.
"Nope," he confirmed, deciding to continue walking down the street and survey the shops that were open. It occurred to him that the only shops to remain open would probably be the ones that had fallen under the Death Eaters' rule.
"Funny, it wasn't this bad in the other world," Minnie mused. "I wonder what the difference is."
I wonder that too, he thought, idly picking up a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet and scanning the headlines. Scrawled at the top read: RUFUS SCRIMGEOUR INSTITUTES MARSHALL LAW.
Bloody hell, he thought, quickly reading through the article. Azkaban destroyed, massacres, gang wars, factions, splinter groups, underground movements, resistances of all kinds, in-fighting. "The muggle death toll has risen to over three thousand," states one Ministry official. "Currently, we estimate that there are at least half a dozen underground movements against You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters, not to mention the myriad of supporters that have risen up for the pureblood cause since the destruction of Azkaban, where You-Know-Who came to make a show of his power..."
Disgusted by what he was reading, Harry threw the paper back atop the pile discarded papers and other knickknacks and let out a long sigh. Well, this is all rather buggered up, he thought, taking Minnie's hand and resolutely making his way along the alley, noting which shops had been shut down and which weren't. Eventually, he came to the London-side entrance and, without hesitation, opened the archway and walked through, intent on securing a room and having a chat with Tom, assuming the place was still in operation. Thankfully, it was, and Harry could only assume that the Leaky Cauldron was just too critical to the wizarding world to simply be rendered inoperable - by either side, whether it be the Dark Lord or the Ministry.
The moment Harry stepped through, all conversation ceased, and Harry mentally winced, berating himself for having forgotten to alter critical elements of his appearance. All eyes fell on the young adult and his most attractive muggle companion, who, under the scrutiny of the numerous patrons frequenting the pub, retreated behind her protector, having been all too acquainted with their magical abilities. Not much you can do about it now, short of a mass memory charm, he thought, and, further driven by his resolve, went to the bar and said to Tom, "A room please."
Tom's eyes immediately flicked over to Minnie and then he asked with a raised eyebrow, "One room or two?"
"One, please," Harry responded without hesitation, surprising both Minnie and Tom, who eventually just shrugged and handed Harry a key.
As he turned away to head up the stairs, he heard Tom say, "It's good to have you back, Mr. Potter."
Harry glanced over his shoulder at the barkeep and nodded and said, "It's good to be back, Tom." Harry then went to the stairs, but, before climbing up, he turned to the barkeep and said in a clear voice for all the patrons to hear, "If anyone comes looking for me, be sure to send them up to my room."
"Anyone?" Tom asked, sounding surprised.
Harry nodded, confirming his words. "Indeed, Tom. Anyone."
Taking Minnie along, the pair found their room at the end of the hall and, once inside, Harry obliterated the feeble protection wards and the various wards that prevented witches and wizards from making alterations to their room. With another stroke of his wand, he erected a giant, hollowed out null field, and then, he hit the room's many objects with chameleon transfigurations, and then added several additional wards, including perimeter charms, transparency walls and reinforced steel along the door frame and outer walls and the floor, all the while, Minnie watching in awe as Harry managed to, in under two minutes flat, create one of the safest rooms in all of Britain.
All she could say was, "Wow," to which Harry just smiled a knowing smile and said, "Come on, let's get some rest." With another swish of his wand, both of their clothes had been transfigured into nightwear and they collapsed on the bed, which Harry magically expanded from a standard double to a king-sized.
The pair snuggled up together, wrapping each other in their arms, sharing warmth and comfort and memories of long days past, beating away the interminable solitude that was ever-present, always searching, always encroaching upon them.
It took less than an hour for the whole of wizarding Britain to be alerted to the fact that Harry Potter, who many had thought dead or held in captivity, had returned. For some, especially children, it meant that hope had returned to Britain as well.
For the Dark Lord, however, it was a matter of minor irritation. He did not know where the boy had gone, and, frankly, he did not care. Reports of him bringing back a muggle floozy did even less to impress the most feared wizard on Earth. As such, he acted accordingly.
"Yes, master," said Wormtail, kneeling before his Lord and kissing the hem of his robes. "You have called me."
"Indeed, I have, Wormtail," replied Lord Voldemort. "It has come to my attention that the supposed Chosen One has returned."
Wormtail nodded. "so I have heard. Would you like me to go dispatch him for you? Or would you rather I bring him here."
"Neither," said Lord Voldemort, absently stroking Nagini's head. "No, you forget that you bear a life debt to Mr. Potter. It would not do to have you confront him directly. It may lead to... unpredictable results."
"Of course, my Lord."
"No, instead, I would rather you go and watch. I will send my soldiers against the boy when the time is ready. For now, I would simply like to see where he goes. It may prove worthwhile."
"I understand," said Wormtail, lowering his head in submission once more. "As you command." With not another word, Wormtail stood and strode from Lord Voldemort's chambers, the Dark Lord content to ponder on other things.
"So what now?" Minnie asked, her face awash with morning cloudlight, the both of them sitting together in their room sipping on tea and eating scones.
"There's one key item I have to procure and dispose of before I seek a confrontation with Lord Voldemort."
"Ooh, this is one of those soul bits, isn't it? Like Marv," she said instantly, excited to know something about Harry's very important business.
He nodded. "Yes, it is."
"And what sort of object is it this time?"
"It's an orb," he said, leaning back and wandlessly vanishing the crumbs off his tray.
"An orb?" Minnie asked, furrowing her brow. "Like one of Lynda's crystal balls?"
Harry smiled. "Precisely. Only this is no ordinary orb. This is the grand pooba of orbs." He glanced out the window at the rain that was threatening to fall, occasional mists and drizzles waxing and waning like tremors before the quake. "This is the Orb of Merlin."
Sounds fancy," Minnie said, futilely trying to wish her crumbs away the way Harry seemed to be able to do.
"I think maybe I'll leave you here for a day or two while I go retrieve it," Harry went on. "It probably wouldn't do to have you about, as it will be rather dangerous."
"No!" she exclaimed, her attention riveting itself to Harry. "Don't you dare! You're so not leaving me out of this, Harry James Potter!"
The vehemence with which she spoke startled Harry, and he took direct notice of her for the first time, watching the lines around her eyes form as she concentrated fixedly on him. They engaged in a momentary staring contest, and Harry found himself looking away after a mere minute, sighing and then relenting. "All right," he said, knowing that it was bloody reckless to have her along. "You can come."
Minnie's expression transformed from stern to elated instantly as she broke out into a large smile. "See? That wasn't so hard." And with that, she stood and flounced off to the bathroom to clean herself up and prepare for their little adventure. Harry just sighed again, thinking that it would be a really long day.
All told the Orb of Merlin was a rather easy object to retrieve. Harry and Minnie apparated to a lighthouse near the northernmost port in England, climbed the steps, disabled multiple wards, including null fields, which Harry seemed to have a special affinity with. In the end, it was Bono who retrieved the object, using his considerable magical prowess and lithe form to slip between two evisceration wards and, with a heavy thump of his now formidable tail, sent the delicate ball flying in Harry's direction, who easily caught it in one hand. Inferi seemed to sprout out of the woodwork at Harry's handling of the orb, causing Minnie to scream in fright and almost flee into the warded space. However, Harry managed to immobilize her wandlessly and, remembering all too well his ineptitude back in the cave the night of Dumbledore's death, intoned, "Inflammus." A beam of fire shot out of his wand, and, like Dumbledore on that same night, Harry bent the flames to his will, forming a large ring with it that encased himself and Minnie and Bono. The nearest one shrieked as her skin was lit aflame by the magical fire, and Harry had a moment of sorrow for these dead bodies that had been so unjustly used by the Dark Lord, her body already partly rotted away, one eye missing and the other one rolling about aimlessly in her eye socket and not really looking like an eye at all but more like a balled up cheese omelet. The others all backed away to the four corners of the room, but Harry didn't cut them any slack. He pressed the ring of fire outward until it touched every single inferi, lighting them up and causing them to run around in circles until they dropped dead. One of them, a young boy with greying hair and no lips had the presence of mind to charge Harry, despite the flames. However, he hit Harry's null field and collapsed to the ground a pile of burning mess of bones and blood and flesh and bile, the charms animating it having effectively been dissipated.
"You okay?" Harry asked, pulling Minnie close, trying to divert her attention from the sight of the burning corpses. "I'm sorry," Harry said finally, seeing that she had been deeply disturbed by them, her gaze suggesting that she was still trying to reconcile what she saw with her understanding of the world. "I shouldn't have brought you here."
"Who would do such a thing?" Minnie asked, though her question seemed to be to no one, and Harry did not respond. In truth, he couldn't quite imagine who would, even though he understood intimately the kind of tunnel-vision that one had to have in order to exclude all other considerations from their mind in the pursuit of their goal; in this case, power.
"Let's go," he said, pulling her gently away from the carnage.
From there, Minnie and Harry and Bono ascended to the top of the lighthouse, both of them awed at the beautiful sight that mother nature permitted to exist in their world. For miles upon miles, they could see the waves thrumming forward, rolling towards land, each ripple in them visible through the clear air, gulls crying, the sun peeking out as it descended on the horizon, lighting up clouds and the sky in a brilliant rainbow of reds and oranges and yellows, filling the otherwise cool blue and grey sky with an untold warmth.
The wind was strong up there and chilled Minnie despite the otherwise warm day, and Harry, feeling that perhaps casting a spell wasn't right at that moment, feeling that they were on the cusp of feeling a magic altogether unlike anything he learned at Hogwarts, elected not to use a warming charm and instead pulled Minnie close and lifted up the collar of her spring jacket to protect her neck. Bono curled up around Harry's torso as he had grown used to doing and watched as well, Harry wondering momentarily if the basilisk saw the world differently from the way humans saw it.
After a long time of standing, long after their legs had grown numb by the running breeze, Harry made a sudden motion, pitching the orb into the distance, his innate magic carrying it along the winds of the Atlantic. It seemed to hang in the sky for a moment longer than what gravity would normally allow, its iridescent surface lit aflame around the edges by the deepening golden backdrop. And then, suddenly, as if a force were pushing it down, it plummeted towards the water below, the rapid shift in altitude upsetting its volatile contents, causing the orb to shatter into innumerable fine grains of glass that disappeared into the roiling ocean, the mercurial liquid inside aerosolizing and diffusing into oblivion.
"There's that, Harry thought, his mind and body unusually relaxed. With the orb gone, there was only one more horcrux to destroy before Voldemort himself. The end is nigh, he realized as he and Minnie stood before the setting sun, the horizon turning into a dark line crested with gold and scarlet. The thought seemed both comforting and sad. For a long time, he had never really considered what his future would look like. He had once entertained some vague notion of becoming an auror, but, looking back at his danger-ridden life, looking back at all the horrors and traumas, the intensities of battle and love and friendships tested, he realized that he couldn't go on to do that. He couldn't go on to be a dark wizard hunter like Tonks and Shacklebolt, pushing paper from time to time, for the Ministry, sometimes watching over the guards, spending his life waiting for the next Dark Lord to rise up. He couldn't play Quidditch either, though he knew he was good for a career in it, being both a celebrity and damn good at the sport. No, it wasn't the lifestyle he wanted; he didn't want the empty glory it offered. So what then? his mind mused.
He glanced over at Minnie, her expression one of peaceful contentment, her face soft and lineless, showing that she was in a state of tranquility. It hit him that what he wanted was the same thing she wanted: retirement. He wanted time away from it all; time to do the little things, like maybe tend to a garden, build a place he could call home, fix himself to the ground for the first time, learn to take comfort in the stability of a new life. A life he would forge slowly and surely, like his parents did, only this time it would be free of the rising dark. He knew then he wanted to do it some place quiet, most likely on an acreage, or a farm or some sort of countryside property where he could be away from the magical world. Possibly even a suburban muggle neighbourhood; not unlike Privet Drive, though preferably with more sincere and honest, down-to-Earth residents.
For others, like Ron and Ginny and his schoolmates, the war was something new and foreign. It only started two years ago formally when the return of Lord Voldemort had been announced, and it only hit home last year with the invasion of Hogwarts. For them, it was a nasty hurdle a bump in the road to get over so they could continue planning the lives they began planning when they first came to Hogwarts. For Harry though, the war had been his life, ever since he had come out of his cupboard when he was eleven, he had been bred for this war. First, it was through the stories that people told him, and then it was through the realization that the world would not treat him the same as his peers, and, eventually, it was his enemies who sought to break him, and, finally, it was Fate herself, who had charged Harry with the task of ridding the world of the Dark Lord.
Yes, he realized, the gnawing feeling of uncertainty finally taking shape, Harry finally understanding what it was he was feeling - that his time was coming to an end. It's just taken you awhile to realize that, he thought. You've never really been that quick on the draw, no offense. Maybe one day you'll come back. After it's all over. One day, two or three years from now, you'll step out the front door and let your feet take you somewhere, and maybe you'll find yourself on another fool's adventure, crusading through graveyards and other worlds and acromantula dens and through the arms of friends and enemies. Or maybe you'll find yourself taking a back seat and giving guidance to the next generation of sodbusters and ranchers and wandering gunslingers.
"You ready to go?" Harry asked, looking down at Minnie's form, marvelling at how well she seemed to fit against him.
She just nodded and snuggled closer.
"Hold on then," he said, turning slightly and taking her in both his arms so that her head was pillowed against his chest, his fingers laced together and pressing into the small of her back, holding her tight against him. Silently, they disapparated, the wind passing through where they stood just moments before, filling the spaces between, leaving no trace of their presence.
