Harry sipped at the orange juice the nurse had given him. He thought about just getting up and going back to his quiet life alone, away from his so-called friends that apparently did care for his hideous face. Harry looked at the now-empty plate that had once held his breakfast and sighed; waking up to the wonderful smells of a Hogwarts breakfast delivered to his bed was too good to walk away from. Last night, when he woke up around dinnertime, he had been provided with his first good meal in ages. The boredom that lasted all evening was not too big of a price to pay for the delicious delievered meals. He wasn't starving, but a real meal was a nice improvement from his meals in the forest.
Apparently his whereabouts hadn't circulated the school yet. Other than Ron, Hermione, and Ginny's trip, no one had come to see him. And they had only come once, last night. He was slightly hurt that they hadn't come again. Giolla was wrong; they did care about his face. They saw you twice and they still couldn't bare your face for more than a few minutes, a small voice said in the back of his head. He thought about rebuking that voice, but he realized with a sharp pang that it was right.
I'm never wrong; give them time, a hiss said. Harry laughed; great, now he was going insane. Some people talked to themselves, but Harry spoke parseltongue to himself. You're not insane, look under your bed, the hiss said irritably. Harry thought about ignoring this new voice of his, but curiosity got the better of him. He put his orange juice on the bedside table and leaned over the side of the bed.
Two beady eyes looked back at him. Harry jumped in surprise and fell off of the bed. He laid sprawled on the floor, the breath momentarily knocked out of him. How on earth did you get in here? Harry demanded. He was relieved that his...acquaintance had returned, but she had lied to him.
Never mind that, read your newspaper, the snake demanded him. Harry had noticed that the nurse had given him a copy of the Daily Prophet, but he had been avoiding reading it. It had published nothing but garbage before, why would it have changed? Go on, read it. I think you'll find it amusing.
Warily, Harry crawled back into bed and grabbed the folded newspaper. It took mere seconds for him to find what Giolla had been talking about. It was plastered on the front page, complete with a picture. Harry looked grimly at the wizard in the picture. He recognized the young man as himself, but the picture was putting a great effort into hiding behind the other people in the picture. Harry forced a smile as he saw his unmarred face dodge behind Ron. The picture Ron pushed the picture Harry to the front, and the picture Hermione helped the redhead hold the struggling young man. The Daily Prophet had used this picture before, for when Harry openly admitted to being the only one who could defeat Voldemort. Harry tore his eyes away from the picture and read the heading to the long article.
The Boy Who Lived, MIA
Harry Potter, eighteen, was deemed officially missing in action by Savage, head of Aurors Department. "We can no longer afford the search to continue. We need to use the funds elsewhere, but we do not believe Mr. Potter to be dead," he was reported to have said. The teen hero was last said to be sighted at Kings Cross Station where he took a train out of the country, possibly to Germany. Even though no official search will be conducted, the Daily Prophet will pay a reward of ten Galleons to anyone who may provide information about the boy's whereabouts.
Harry didn't bother to continue reading the article that took up much of the first page. He laughed quietly to himself. MIA, yeah right, that will change as soon as the Minister spoke to the Daily Prophet. As for being sighted, that was outlandish. He had been hiding in the Forbidden Forest ever since The Battle. His eyes roved over the reward and he wandered whether these people were concerned about Harry Potter or 'the boy who lived'.
You lied to me, Harry said after a pause, pushing the article from his mind.
I did not lie to you, Giolla said patiently. Give them time, and they'll realize how happy they are to have you back.
Ginny ran away from me. She took one look at me, tried to hex me, and ran, Harry said. He bit his lip to stop himself from saying more.
See, you do want her back, Giolla pointed out. Besides, you're the one that told her to leave last night.
Ron doesn't think I'm me, Harry said sadly. Seeing that look of suspicion in his best friend's eyes had been even more painful than Ginny running away. And he hates you, that annoying voice in the back of his head added viciously.
Shh, Giolla warned. Someone's coming, she continued. She slid underneath the bed.
"Bill, you should have seen the poor boy!" Harry's heart jumped at the concerned voice. He wanted to run over to her and bury himself in her arms, but that would have been stupid. Instead he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
"Harry, get up. You're horrible at pretending to sleep," Bill said. Harry opened his eyes sheepishly. "So how have you been, mate?" Bill asked, pulling a chair up.
"Alright," Harry shrugged. Mrs. Weasely suddenly engulfed him in a hug. Harry hugged her back.
"Harry, what happened to you?" Mrs. Weasely demanded, pulling back from the hug.
"It was a war," Harry shrugged.
"Why didn't you come straight home to get your cuts healed up?" Mrs. Weasely asked, looking at Harry with a stern eye.
Harry found he couldn't keep eye contact with the woman. Bill, sensing the younger boy's discomfort decided to change the subject. Harry would explain to the, why he didn't come home later. "You might have a bit of a problem getting the girls," he said, winking. Harry laughed slightly.
"Speaking of girls, Bill," Mrs. Weasely said pointedly, rounding on her eldest son. Bill sighed; he should have seen this coming. Harry sat up and looked on with interest. "You should be finding yourself a nice girl to settle down with. Harry has time to find the perfect girl, you however," Mrs. Weasely continued, letting the sentence hang in the air. "I bet if you let me just trim your hair, the girls would come after you," she said suggestively.
"Mum, I don't want a girl," Bill said tiredly, leaning back in his chair. This was apparently a common discussion. Bill swallowed a few times to dislodge the lump that had formed in his throat, but to no avail. He coughed gently and continued, "Fleur died just a few weeks ago! I can't just up and forget her!" His eyes shone as he thought about the girl that had promised to live with him forever, no matter his condition.
Mrs. Weasely looked sadly at her son. "Bill, she's gone. You have to move on," her tone was sympathetic, but the words themselves were harsh.
"Mum, after what I've become, after dealing with my love's death, how can I expect any girl to want to be near me?" Bill asked, a hint of self-pity evident in his voice that didn't belong there. "Besides, they'll think I'm just going to compare them to Fleur, the part veela. I can't look at other girls in that way this soon after Fleur's death. It just isn't right," he continued.
"Bill!" Mrs. Weasely reproached her son.
"Mum," Bill replied.
"Mrs. Weasely," Harry broke in. The woman looked at Harry as if she had forgotten he was there. "Why don't I talk to Bill? I believe you might want to talk to Ginny," he suggested. Mrs. Weasely gasped and rushed out the door.
"I owe you one," Bill said gratefully, his eyes still showing the pain thinking of Fleur had put there.
"I know how it is. What girl would want a face like this?" Harry said, pointing to his own face.
"I know of one girl," Bill said, forgetting his own girl problems for a moment.
Harry looked at the smile on the man's face, but didn't return one. "Care to refresh my memory?" he asked sadly.
"My sister," Bill said, wiping the smile off of his face.
"Try again," Harry said, shaking his head. "She looked at me and ran."
"Harry! She didn't recognize you; give her another chance."
"I don't think I can," Harry said. "Maybe I should just go away."
Bill looked down at the kind he had come to think of as another little brother. He reached out with his big hands and shook the famous boy, hard. Harry thought he felt his teeth rattle inside his head. "Would you shut up?" Bill growled. "There are people here that love and care for you and you're just going to throw that all away. What was the one power you had that Voldemort didn't?" Bill asked angrily.
Harry waited for Bill to continue his rant, but the man just waited for Harry to answer. "To love," he said quietly.
"And here you are, throwing all the love in this world away so you can go mope all by yourself. How stupid can you be?"
"But..."
Bill ran his hands through his hair. "Quit being so daft! Within the week, I want to get an owl from Ginny saying that you apologized to her and that you two are together. God knows you belong together." Bill glared at Harry, daring the younger man to argue.
Harry ignored the glare and continued. "She doesn't want me! How can I force this hideous face on her? She deserves better than me."
"Would you stop being a blubbering fool for just one minute?" Bill asked angrily. "Sweep that girl off of her feet. You're done being miserable."
"Who are you to tell me to get over it? What about your own girl problems?" Harry fired back.
"She's dead, Harry. Fleur loved me, even through my condition. But no other woman in the world would do that. Fleur was something special. I will never find another girl like her. She was one of a kind. I'm just a casualty of war. But Ginny is still alive, don't let her get away."
"Listen to yourself! And you call me a blubbering fool?" Harry told Bill.
The man paused for a minute while he thought over the few words he had just said. "So, why did you leave?" Bill asked, deciding he couldn't argue with Harry on that point.
"I had to," Harry replied simply.
"Why?" Bill pressed.
"If I had come back with everyone, can you imagine what it would have been like?"
"A whole lot better than it was," Bill said bitterly, thinking over the gray days his family had lived in all summer long.
"No it wouldn't have been. I saw too much that day," Harry said sadly.
"You saw no more than the rest of us," Bill pointed out.
"That's where you're wrong. I saw every single face mingled with fear, hate and pain. When everyone fell unconscious, their faces froze. Death Eaters and people on our side alike, no one was spared the pain and fear. More than that, I saw death. I saw my friends kill unmercifully, I saw my kind comrades shout spells, spells meant to cause pain, even to kill. I saw my friends with blood on their hands."
"We all did, Harry," Bill broke in.
"But more than seeing my friends with blood on their hands, I killed people. I ended lives that didn't have to end."
"Harry, that was your destiny going in. You had to kill Voldemort."
"He wasn't the only one, I killed Colin Creevey," Harry said heavily.
Bill stared at Harry a minute. Harry watched, pained at the dark, wondering thoughts he saw in the man's questioning eyes.
"In a moment of blind anger and need for revenge, I killed a young boy. He shouldn't have even been there. I developed his last picture." Harry reached underneath the pillow he was sitting up on. "Here," he said as he handed Bill the still picture.
Bill looked at it with amazement. In amongst the fighting and horror, this young boy had found a picture to capture all of it, not just the hate and fear, but also the love and grief. There was Ginny, her hair frozen in the air as she spun around. There was hate in her eyes like Bill had never seen before. They were wide open, searching for the culprit while the freely spilled tears. But Bill noticed her open jaw forming an O of surprise. A look of saddened shock was starting to form on her face as she saw who had just shouted the killing curse. Bill's eyes scanned down the picture, until he reached the hem of Ginny's robes that wrapped around her legs from the force of her spin. Where her one foot was pointing, in the direction she had been facing, a crumpled form lay on the ground. Above the dark colored robes, a red mess of hair stuck up, springing from a face full of pain and shock. Tears covered Ginny's face. Her wand was raised, clutched between white fingers as if it were going to kill whoever did this to her brother. Bill looked back up to her face, searching for a semblance to the happy sister he used to have. Her face was flushed with anger, but white from the shock was beginning to drain the color. Bill guessed the chock was from the form at her feet and from the source of the killing curse that ended this photographer's life.
"Harry," Bill started.
"I killed the boy that found this. I killed a young boy who never had a moment too sad to find a smile. This boy that was smart, talented, and devoted. I killed this boy that was a Gryffindor through and through. I took away his hopes and reams. I took away a family's little boy. I killed a brother; I killed a son; I killed a best friend; and I killed a loved one, all by killing Colin Creevey. How could I return? The press...'Boy Who Lives Brings Death,' 'Hero Kills Innocent,' 'Boy Who Lives or Boy Who Kills?', the list goes on. All I've wanted since day one was to be normal, to fit in. But ever since I was one year old, I was anything but normal. Maybe if I disappeared, people would forget my name, stop looking for my face in the crowd. And maybe someday I could come back as a new person, and live like the normal person I want to be." Harry finished talking and looked down. Bill saw Harry's eyelashes moving quickly while they tried to blink back tears.
Bill didn't know what to say. How had he thought that Harry had suffered no more than anyone else? Bill searched for something to say.
Harry helped Bill find a new subject, though. "So, what was going on while I was gone?" he asked, swallowing and looking up, a shield over his eyes, hiding the pain and guilt Bill knew the boy was feeling.
"A lot of time was spent cleaning up the mess on the battlefield. There were bodies to identify, people to send to Azkaban, and people to heal. That too up most of the summer."
"How is everyone?"
"Well, Ron was a mess, the twins moved back in, as did I, because Dad is in a coma, and Mum needs the money we make to help out with Ron and Ginny, especially since Ginny needed all new books-"
"You should have taken my money!" Harry interrupted.
"Mum would never do that you know that," Bill said.
"How is your mum?"
"All right, stressed and worried about you, but fine other than that. Charlie died, and Ginny was pretty upset all summer." The two mean looked at each other for a moment before a look of surprise came over Bill's face. "Oh, that reminds me. Ginny's been hanging around this other kid. Erik's his name. He worried me at first, but he seems okay, I guess. Fred and George seem okay with him," Bill said.
"Erik..." Harry said, storing the name in his mind for later. "Bill, I have to tell you something about that kid."
Bill looked at Harry. The younger man's dark tone did not sound like Bill was going to like this piece of information. "Go ahead."
"At the battle, I say Fleur die. Not far from where she fell, I saw Charlie fall over, his face frozen as you saw it in that picture. I didn't see anyone cast a spell, but where Charlie had been standing, I saw Erik with his wand out and a sickening smile on his face. Bill, I think Erik killed Charlie." Harry looked sorrowfully at the eldest Weasely. "I don't think Ginny should be anywhere near that guy," he said after a few moments of silence.
"Oh God," Bill finally said after what seemed an eternity. The color drained from the man's face and he put it into his large hands. Harry looked at Bill, unsure of what to say. He finally decided on nothing and leaned back on his pillows as he let this news sink into Bill's numb mind. "Are you sure?" Bill asked in a raspy voice.
"Positive."
A/N: Sorry this took so long, but my computer died, erasing all my files. So I had to retype this chapter...then edit it...again...and all that after I found my hard copy...which took forever. Well, I hope you liked it. Sorry I didn't get around to replying to your individual reviews. I'll do that tomorrow, but I figured you'd like the chapter ASAP. Hopefully the crazy long wait didn't chase people off...last chapter had 13 reviews, let's see if I get any more this time around :) well, I'm going to update now.
