A Great Day For Freedom

By

VHDL

Chapter I

Brain Damage

"His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux, but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead of himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort he knew he must come, whether in a month, in year, or in ten, he felt his heart lift at thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left with Ron and Hermione."

- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Pg 652).

'One week.' That was all Harry could think of as he crossed through the front entrance of his summer residence - Number 4, Privet Drive. He had just arrived back from Hogwarts having spent a very eventful year there. Dumbledore had been murdered in cold blood by the hands of his trusty spy Severus Snape in front his very eyes. He had chased after Snape with blood-lust in his eyes, looking for revenge for what he had done to Dumbledore.

'Dumbledore – my spiritual guru, my mentor, my grandfather, my teacher, my confidant, my adviser and protector,' a man who was equally capable of looking at life with a childish innocence and living it as such, a man who could give the worst sort of men a second chance at life and love others selflessly, but also a man who could also be coldly detached and ruthlessly manipulative when dealing with enemies. 'Why did he have to die?'

'Snape killed him. Voldemort killed him. Mum and Dad, Sirius, and now Dumbledore. Voldemort killed them all. He is going die by my hands one day. That Bastard! '

'And yet I was barely a match for Snape,' he thought with a deep sense of shame and inadequacy. If he could not overpower Snape, what chance did he have to come out victorious in a duel with Voldemort?

"POTTER! Don't just stand there like the ungrateful freak that you are. Get your stuff upstairs and I expect you to come down and help your Aunt with the lunch." He was jolted out of his thoughts by his Uncle shouting out his name with the TV remote in his hand.

"Yeah whatever...Uncle Vernon, listen, I want you to know that I'm going to be staying here just for a week. You won't be seeing me ever again after that. Actually, you know what? I think I am going to go outside for a walk. Don't expect me to be back till evening."

He kept his school trunk by the cupboard under the stairs and opened Hedwig's cage to let her out. She quickly flew over to him and settled down on his shoulder, casting a disdainful look at his Aunt. Without casting a backward glance at his relatives and quickly checking that he still had his wand in his back pocket, Harry made his way out of the house barely minutes after he had just entered.

"Ahem!"

"Ahem!"

"Ahem Ahem!"

"You are awake. Jolly good! Oh my! But, you were sleeping. Of course! How silly of me to wake you up. My humble apologies. Tell me young man - is that a Bubo Scandiacus?"

Harry lazily opened a bleary eye to see a seventy year old man staring at him closely with an expression he would have likened to Luna Lovegood's grandfather to have had, even though he had never met him.

A look around showed him that dusk was fast approaching and mothers were already starting to take their children back home, slowly thinning away the temporary occupation of the neighborhood park giving it a partially deserted look.

Looking at where the old gentleman, 'probably a WWII relic,' Harry thought, was pointing he was greeted with the sight of Hedwig proudly puffing out her chest at the attention she was getting.

"Umm.. Bubo what?

"Oh. Bubo Scandiacus. A Bubo Scandiacus commonly known as Snowy Owl is a large, diurnal white Owl that has a rounded head, yellow eyes and black bill. The feet are heavily feathered. A distinctive white Owl, their overall plumage is variably barred or speckled with thin, black, horizontal bars or spots. Females and juveniles are more heavily marked than males - adult males may be almost pure white, although they have up to three tail bands. Adult females are distinctly barred throughout, and have from four to six tail bands. Immatures are very heavily barred throughout, and dark spotting may co-dominate or dominate the overall plumage. Intensity of dark spotting varies with the sex of the immatures, females being the darkest. Juveniles are uniformly brown with scattered white tips of down."

"Yeah, she's a Snowy Owl. She's gorgeous isn't she?" Harry replied with a sly grin on his face, seeing as Hedwig was almost about to faint with pleasure.

"Oh that she is, young man. That she is."

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ramses Blake I at your service," the old man said tipping his tweed cap. "Retired professor of anthropology and amateur zoologist, philosopher and littérateur. Thank you very much."

"Ramses?"

"Well, you see, my father was a bit of an Egyptologyst. Bless his soul," he replied with a chuckle.

Harry could not help but feel a pang of anguish hearing the old Professor laugh .A laugh that so closely resembled Dumbledore laughing. 'Oh why did he have to die?'

'Because I let him. I could not do anything, anything at all to stop Malfoy and the others,' he realized with a stab of guilt.

A gentle hand on his shoulder made Harry look up into the solemn eyes of the kindly old man. "Did you loose someone close to you child?" he asked in a quiet tone.

"Everyone in my family was murdered," Harry replied with a steely tone.

"I lost my wife and only child, my angel, a beautiful little girl that I would hold in my arms all day long, in 1940 during the London Blitz."

"They took away everything I held precious. Over the next few weeks, I managed to smuggle myself across the French border and kill the 24 German officers who had survived the RAF retaliation. I killed them in cold blood with the very knife my wife was holding when she died."

"Do you seek revenge as well?"

"It is to kill or be killed for me, Mr Blake. And yes, I seek revenge – lot's of it. But I don't know how I will ever be able to do that to other living and breathing people, if you can call them that. I can't off anyone!"

"You know Harry, till many years after what I did to those men, I couldn't bring myself to look in the mirror. Did what I do, truly make me evil? It was only many years later that a old friend of mine, casually slipped in an old torn book on my reading desk. After reading that book, I learnt a lot about myself that day Harry. I learnt to forgive myself. I would like to tell you the same thing today. That you grieve for those who are not worthy of grief, and yet you manage to speak words of wisdom. The wise grieves neither for the living nor for the dead."

While the old man was gently explaining to him about his past, Harry who had been listening aptly to what was being said, immediately became wary and secretly reached for his wand, when the man called him by his first name. 'How does he know my name? Oh, please let him not be a Death Eater. I was just starting to like him.'

"Ah, your name? Harry Potter. You see young man, you were broadcasting your thoughts rather loudly, if I may say so. Oh no no. Not your name. You suddenly got rather tense about how I knew your name. Well you see, some the women who happen to come to this park can be quite gossipy. I sometimes come here in the evenings to have a look at the local fauna. Overhearing chatty women is just a added bonus. At the very least, I am able understand what they are saying compared to what those birds currently engaged in roosting over there are chirping about," he said pointing at an Oak tree in the distance."

"That and the little fact that I am a squib, though I haven't had contact with anyone from your world for a little less than twenty years."

"So I know who you are, Harry Potter. It was easy enough for me to hypothesize about the task you have in front of you."

Harry was vexed. On one hand here was a learned man offering him words of wisdom. On the other hand, he hardly knew him. Considering what he had seen so far of the man and the way he carried himself, Harry could not help but give his trust to this man. At least for the time being.

"Do you know Leglimency, Mr. Blake? How did you know what I was thinking?" Harry asked with an inquisitive expression.

"Harry, listen carefully to what I say to you" Ramses told Harry with a serious look.

"Remember, the book I mentioned earlier. There was much wisdom in it. After all a 7,000 year old philosophy that survived the test of time must have something worth knowing. It tells you that the contact of the senses with sense objects give rise to the feelings of heat and cold, and pain and pleasure. They are transitory and impermanent. Therefore, one should learn to endure them.

When your intellect will completely pierce the veil of confusion, then you will become indifferent to what has been heard and what is to be heard. A person whose mind is unperturbed by sorrow, who does not crave pleasures, and who is completely free from attachment, fear, and anger, is called an enlightened man of steady intellect. When one can completely withdraw the senses from the sense objects as a tortoise withdraws its limbs into the shell for protection from calamity, then the intellect of such a person is considered steady. And therein lies the secret to what you term as Occlumency. Occlumency, in my honest opinion is simply a lesser art. Also, considering your duty as a warrior you should not waver like this. Because there is nothing more auspicious for a warrior than a righteous war. Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, and victory and defeat alike, engage yourself in your duty. "

2 hours later, Harry found himself walking back to his Aunt's house in deep thought. Even Hedwig seemed to be thinking hard, judging from her serious expression atop Harry's shoulder.

Snippets from his earlier conversation with the Professor kept coming back to him as he made his way home.

'A disciplined person, enjoying sense objects with senses that are under control and free from attachments and aversions, attains tranquility.'

'Because the mind, when controlled by the roving senses, steals away the intellect as a storm takes away a boat on the sea from its destination the spiritual shore of peace and happiness. '

'A person of self-restraint, remains wakeful when it is night for all others.'

'One attains peace, within whose mind all desires dissipate without creating any mental disturbance, as river waters enter the full ocean without creating any disturbance.'

'Harry, this is the superconscious state of mind. Attaining this state, one is no longer deluded.

The one who controls the senses by the trained and purified mind and intellect, and engages the organs of action to selfless service is considered superior. Perform your obligatory duty, because working is indeed better than sitting idle.'

A very different and changed Harry Potter came back into the house, that he had left with intense feelings of dislike in the afternoon that same day.

'Dumbledore would have loved this man,' Harry thought as he carried his luggage lying at the entrance to the living room upstairs.

AN: My second story after a long gap. Hooyah! Hope it is well received.

The spiritual discussion and conversation is derived from an Indo-Aryan scripture, the Gita. There is tonnes of wisdom to be found in it. Also, I got the description for Hedwig from wwwdotowlpagesdotcom. Had a few fun minutes checking out Owl facts and when I felt a short circuit coming on, got the hell out of there. This chapter is titled Brain Damage for a reason :)

Read & Review.

Thanks!