STAND BY ME

Chapter 3

Sorrow

Outside number 4 Privet Drive the rain lashed down from the dark night sky. Lightening split the sky in two and a moment later a loud peel of thunder echoed all around.

It was the night before his 16th birthday, a boy like no other lay staring moodily up at the ceiling. The weather matched his mood. Anger just below the surface always so ready to strike these days. He wanted to lash out at all the unfair things that had happened in his life. He had seen many horrors, more than many people three times his own age. His life had been snatched from him at the age of one.

The boy of course was Harry Potter.

He had started thinking about his past. It had started with him thinking with slight amusement that DADA teachers did not have very good luck and the position had to be cursed because, for as long as he had been in the school not one of them had lasted more than a year Quirrell was dead, Lockhart having been useless, had gone mad from a back fired spell, Lupin the best teacher of the subject they had ever had was no longer teaching because of his 'condition'.

The impostor Moody was worse than dead having suffered from a Dementor's Kiss and Umbridge. Well she was just a ministry employed bitch that got lost in the Forbidden Forest and got scared of a few centaurs.

The weather had started him thinking about all that had happened in his short 16 years of life. He had seen much, lost much but in the end had always come out fighting. It took the boy's thoughts back to a night almost exactly 5 years earlier to the minute. When he had thought he was a normal eleven year old boy. Yes, strange things had always happened around him which he could not explain but did that really bother him. His cousin Dudley and his friends had always picked on him but he had supposed that there was always a family that happened to, even in the best of neighbourhoods. He had dreamed he could be taken away to a better place, that a long lost friend of his parents (who he had believed had died in a car crash) would come and rescue him and show him the life he had always wanted.

That had actually happened.

He had been happier than he could ever remember being. He was told the story of what had actually happened to his parents. They had been murdered.

He had lost his parents Lily and James Potter to a mad man. The most feared Dark Wizard of there time, Lord Voldemort. Then Voldemort turned his wand on Harry hoping to kill him but because of his mothers sacrifice he had lived. She loved so much the she was willing to give everything even life itself to save him.

'that's why I'm famous because a mad man killed my parents and tried to off me while he was at it. Some fame. Some sacrifice. Some life.' He thought viciously. As soon as he thought this he felt bad. His mother sacrifice was not something to be scoffed at. Deep down he knew.

"It was all my fault." He whispered to the darkness.

After that fateful day he and the rest of the wizarding world thought he and they were safe from the dark maniac but no nothing was ever that simple in his life.

The happiness of that day was no more. That dream was been shattered. He had not known the horrors that awaited for him in that glorious new life he had always dreamed of.

In his first year he had come face to face with the man (if you could call him that) that had killed his parents. He had taken the guise of a second face of his servant, a man that had been placed in a position of trust and authority, as a teacher at Hogwarts, Professor Quirrell. Then he had had his mother's protection. In her sacrifice she had left a gift given in love. A protection that was more than skin deep. Quirrell could not touch him. In his attempt to get the Philosophers stone from Harry, he had caused himself severe injury and that together with his possession of Voldemort had eventually killed him. Even to this day, Harry did not truly understand the 'Old Magic' that his mother had called upon to protect him all he knew was that it had worked whatever she did, even though he had almost died in the attempt to save the stone.

Then Harry thought he had managed to defeat him but that was a child's wishful thinking. In his next year he had come in contact with Voldemort's 16 year old self and found out his true name Tom Marvolo Riddle. Tom had possessed Ginny Weasley having conserved himself in a diary that was 50 years old. He had almost killed her and many of the muggle born witches and wizards in the school including one of his best friends; Hermione Granger, so that he could regain his pitiful life, not caring for yet another life that he was steeling from an innocent child. If it had not been for Harry she would be dead, but saying that if it had not been for Harry she would never have been in that situation in the first place. He had again, almost died and if it had not been for Fawkes, Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Harry would in fact be dead. The bird answered to his cry for aid. He had managed to get a sword from the sorting hat, and with Fawkes help (who had pecked out the giant snakes deadly eyes) he had managed to stop the Basilisk but had suffered a bite from the snake's poisonous fangs. He then took on Riddle with the poison flooding though his veins. He had gone back to Ginny whose life force was almost gone and Riddle started taunting him how he was going to be beaten by a memory. He had taken the tooth that was in his arm and plunged it into the bowels of the diary destroying it and the memory of Riddle. Ginny regained consciousness and was horrified both at the fact that she had almost killed so many people than she had seen Harry's wound. He told her to go to Ron, not wanting her to see him die. Then to their amazement Fawkes had healed Harry's arm with his tears. They were safe for the time being.

He realised that Ginny had been as worried for him as he was for her. She had been through a lot and had to deal with the fact people could have died because of her even before Harry had ever thought about considering it. He tended to run into danger first and think about the consequences later shown in his following years at Hogwarts. 'His saving people thing' as Hermione called it.

I'll kill you for what you have done to me and mine, if it's the last thing I do. He thought. But could I? Could I become that which I hate? Deep down he did not know but he also knew that only time could tell.

In his third year Harry had come in contact with Dementors. Horrible creatures that made you relive the worst times of your life. He hated the creatures but in some ways thanked them for showing him what had happened to his parents. That year something good had also happened in his life for a change. He had found his godfather, who had been in prison for 12 years. He could have been free from his life at Privet Drive forever but it was not to be. He was not to go and live with his father's best friend because a person that his father had trusted with his life had betrayed not only Harry, his DADA teacher Remus Lupin (He was all that Harry had left of what family he would have had if it was not for the war. He had to protect him no matter what.), Sirius Black his godfather but had also betrayed his father and his mother.

If it had not been for him his parents would be alive and Harry would not have had to live the life he had.

Wormtail.

The unworthy scum did not deserve to live but something in him just could not bring him to let his fathers best friends do such a thing and become murderers.

Could I do it now?

The man was not worth it but only if Harry had let them than the rest of the events that unfolded would never of happened. Voldemort would not have had the means of coming back.

"My fault" He whispered again sitting up and hugging his knees to his chest, curling up at the top corner of the bed.

That lead him on to thinking about his forth year the year that the final nail had been inserted into the coffin of his childhood and innocence. It had herald the beginning of the darkest time in Harry's life. When he had seen and remembered death for the first time.

He had been entered into a prestigious championship that had meant that he had the chance of winning 1000 galleons prize money. Everyone thought that he had entered himself, but why he would have ever have thought of that doing that was beyond him.

He never wanted the fame that he was given. It was strange; those who didn't have it wanted fame and glory and those who did would give everything they had to get rid of it. It had almost cost him the friendship of one of his best and closest friends Ron.

His new DADA teacher turned out to be an impostor (Lupin could not continue teaching because the school had found out that he was a werewolf) who had tried to kill him and was also indirectly responsible for the death of Cedric Diggory the other Hogwarts champion. He had forced him to take the cup with him. If he had not done that then the other boy would be alive. It had taken Harry a long time to come to terms with the fact that he too had be indirectly responsible for his death. The thoughts of that dark graveyard haunted him to this day.

There was nothing, he now realised, he could have done to save Diggory.

"I'm sorry Cedric" he thought out loud, starting to rock back and forwards.

His fifth year had be the worst so far, not because of any squabbles he had had or injuries he had received but because of one fact. He had lost Sirius, the closest living person he had ever considered a father.

He still blamed himself and no matter what anyone said. He had gone to the Department of Mysteries that night. He wished with all his heart that he had just listened to Hermione and not gone. He had put all his friends in danger. They could have died as well and it would have been all his fault.

I can't lose them too they are all I have left.

Sirius had died and for what? Some stupid prophecy.

The prophecy.

He had had two prophecies made about him or concerning him in his lifetime why couldn't that bloody Trelawney woman go and pick on someone else for a change?

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the 7th month dies … and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives … the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the 7th month dies.

What power? The one where I get everyone that I love and care about killed?

Deep down Harry knew it was not his fault he was just having a hard time accepting the fact. It was so hard to have lost so much. As the headmaster had once said "What would come would come and he would have to face it when it did."

If he hadn't died for me I would have died for him. Mum, Dad, Cedric, Sirius. Another tear slid down his cheek. Help me when the time is right. He thought as he slowly cried himself to sleep.

I wrote this chapter to let you see what kind of emotional state Harry is in at the moment. It also contained some hints to what is going to happen later on in thestory. (the title of the story is also a big hint)

I know it had been a month since I last updated but I promiseI will try to update faster but it could be hard seens as I start Uni on Monday.

Till next I update

see you