At age twenty two, Harry Potter has achieved things most people believed to be impossible. Killed the most infamous dark wizard, almost, when he was all but a child, dodged the killing curse twice. He had also been the owner of the three deathly hallows, he was essentially the master of death. No one knows, of course. But still. Unachievable feats. He did them all while saving the world.
So what does he do now? What to do when you've achieved your destiny? Where to go from the end of the line?
What can he do with the indelible knowledge that he isn't supposed to be doing anything at all? He was supposed to die defeating Voldemort, but somehow he came out alive and defeated at the same time.
For a while it went good, he can't deny. Life was seemingly enjoyable and full of possibilities. He attended parties, drank his face off because it was supposed to be the time of his life, was in a relationship with the girl whose brother was like a brother to him, whose mother was the first person ever to hug him. Ginny was fun and hasty and alive and he had the whole world in his palm. Then… nothing. Harry Potter realized with wondrous disdain that dead doesn't mean gone. That if a dark thing ever touches you it leaves a hollow dent. You can't kill that dent, the cursed place in your body.
He wakes up sweating from a nightmare to the urgent call by his best friend's voice. The Jack Russell materialising from a silver mist prances around his room in an aimless jog, screaming his name, until stopping at the foot of his bed to say the next words softly.
"You're late."
Harry rolls back on his bed. He has half a mind to send his own stag with a booming and loud fuck off. But the manic laughter of Bellatrix Lestrange is still fresh in his mind for him to recall anything cheerful. So he resorts to muttering a soft curse and starting his day anyway.
He groggily gets up, the laughter of the madwoman clinking around the corners of his mind. The shaky steps he takes down the narrow stairs fall within the rhythm of the spells she casted on her cousin, his godfather.
Number thirteen, Grimmauld Place is a house for a family, a rather broken family, to be honest. The dark painted wallpapers are chafing off from places, the rooms are distant and cold and seem to grow dense with shadows with each passing day. The portraits of the Black family members are still there, their screeching loud and obnoxious and unwelcome. Overall the house gives off a general feel of forbiddance, which serves him fine. The house feels as if it does not want to be lived in, but Harry could hardly care less. But it does feel unjustly spacious for a young man who has nightmares and hardly any company.
He gets down the lean staircase and the entire house comes to life. Sirius's mother screeches, "What's the noise? "
"You're the noise," he mutters.
Phineas Nigellus says in his nosey voice, "When I was a young man I- "
"Fucked a goat."
He doesn't wait around to hear the splutter of backlash his answer brings. Sirius' ancestors are a handful, and it's worse that his godfather never agreed to a portrait. Harry would have liked to have him around, in whatever way he could have. The rest - well, he tried his best to get rid of the portraits, even Hermione interfered, but they didn't budge. The noble house of Black is soaked in magic that endured several lifetimes. Folded in on itself by every heir that ever owned the house, over and over, it is practically impossible to change any of the furnishings if you were not related to the Blacks. Hermione had managed something for a while, but then they realized that the house rebelled, in its own way. The walls seemed smaller, the corridors draped in shadow no matter how much they charmed the lamps. Harry would never cease to be amazed by magic and it's ridiculous tenacity. So they brought back the portraits, endured their poisonous taunting. And now it seems they have an understanding. They say their bit and Harry bites back and they live together in strife.
He drinks his coffee while rewinding his schedule for the day, cutting off any plans that do not suit him. So, training is out. He doesn't care if Ron brings a troop to abduct him. He has an appointment at Gringotts. Fuck that. So it leaves only -
Date with Pansy Parkinson… that's it then.
At the age of twenty two, he has seen things most people would never dream of seeing in a lifetime, but still, the possibility of them together baffles him like it would any other ordinary chap. He remembers the night they met, he was completely prepared. Kiss, touch, fuck, then pretend this never happened. Because she was pretty, even if he never admitted to himself. And that night there was something about her that felt… open, like nothing she had been at school. She was wearing something soft, something that makes you look twice without knowing why. She was shivering, slightly, from the chill. And he remembers, with embarrassing certainty, that the tip of her nose was bright pink, as was her cheeks. He wondered if it was the cold or the people. He realized that without the perpetual sneer, her face was - there is no other word for it - lovely. Absolutely lovely. He was backtracked slightly, because this was the girl who screamed his name in a room full of people, begging someone to hand him over to Voldemort. He understands why she would do that. But still. History.
But he told himself, So what? He was attracted to a girl who had been mean in school. It happened, of course, to other people.
But then. Then his blasted brain pushed him back to the day Sirius died, and he would've run away, out of embarrassment, out of a childish, private shame had he not seen, just at his reach, the soft face of the same mean girl. Completely unfortified. Completely herself.
He asked, "Where did you learn to do that?"
And she replied, "I'm training to be a healer, Harry."
In retrospect, he realised this was the first time she's ever called him that. He felt a queer drop in his heart to realize that he liked it.
And he kissed her, lips and tongue and teeth because it wasn't enough that she'd been in his mind and stayed still with him. To him, his mind was a terrifying thing. Because when something dark touches you it leaves a mark, it leaves a piece behind. In the shadowy corners of his brain, with horror old and new, it wasn't something easily accessible, it was a maze, and to know that she's been at the place when he'd lost the first chance he had to a family, to see that and stay, he couldn't tell her what that meant to him. He couldn't understand it either. Not entirely.
All he felt that she was a wisp of light in a dark, demented forest and he wanted her, oh how he wanted her like he never wanted anyone before; on him, in him, wrapped around so tightly that he could feel her heartbeat like his own. When he pushed her down into the duvet and saw the same want and wonder mirrored at him, he sighed in relief. But still he asked.
When he asked if she was okay, and she pushed his hair off his face and said that she was, Harry Potter knew one thing - he wanted to chase this wisp, he could spend forever chasing this girl.
He cuts off all plans for the day that don't involve Pansy. Instead of attending the training or the bank, he wanders off into the muggle world. There is a subtle satisfaction in walking among muggles. Not like she described, though he understands her fine, more like a sense of mystery. The knowledge of an entire world unknown to these people. And also, admittedly, no one recognizes him here. No one stops to gasp or hold his hand or ask him just what he remembers about the Dark Lord. He wastes his time until night falls in its characteristic hesitance, and the city becomes alive, differently. He taps his fingers to the rhythm of All you need is love as he enters the Mungo's. But when he goes to her chamber ro pick her up, she isn't there.
The room is emptier, whiter. There are two very shaken elves in the middle of it.
Peony looks up at him with her enormous eyes. "She is being late."
Harry glances at the other elf who looks as if she might faint. "From what?"
"Peony can't say."
"Why?"
The other elf begins to speak, but Peony sends her a glare and she stops immediately. "Pansy said not to tell you."
He taps on a table impatiently. "Peony -"
"Peony can't say."
He begins to retort, but suddenly a noise breaks in the corridor. His heart gets stuck on his throat as he runs out, knowing in his bones that it is her. And sure enough, he sees her and the rest of the world goes distinctly blur. He feels his head set on fire, every cursed corner. Every nerve of his body is alive in threat like it's his primal instinct, like it's all he's known. He snatches her away from the man holding her. Pansy screams in laughter in a way he has never seen anyone before. Her eyes are shiny with sweat as she vibrates so gravely, he fears she will fall out of his arms. Her teeth clatter, her skin feels cold and withering almost, like a dead pansy. With a terrified heart, he follows Harriet as he follows the wisp in the dark for a tiny sliver of recognition. His Pansy, the girl he chases, soft and calm. He calls her name so she would know that he is there, still chasing her. He hopes she can hear his voice and look back.
She folds in on herself when he places her in a bed. Her body shakes and he hears the matron screaming at him to steady her.
"Pansy," he says.
She smiles. "That's my name."
When Harriet manages to calm her enough to lull her into soft unconsciousness, then rest of the emotions come in. And they come in bouts of red and black and blinding white. He pushes the man who brought her against the wall, wand at his throat.
"What happened? "
The man, middle aged, scared, splutters, "I didn't - it was - was the dementors. We didn't - a guard got reckless and they - well, I didn't do anything!"
The scream of the man sounds piercing as Harry realized the tip of his wand was burning, his rage solidified at last. He knows that it was a matter of one push, a single inconvenience, and he can blast this guy right here, but a womanly screech stops his chain of thoughts.
"Mr. Potter!"
He closes his eyes. Recalls a rhyme. When he looks at the guy after ten seconds his vision is clearer. The man is not middle aged, it seems, he has old, wrinkled skin, one of his eyes is glassy. He looks equal amounts terrified and awed. Harry lowers his wand.
"What happened?"
The man sighs shakily, his hands go up to his grey hair to fix the mess Harry created. His voice is gruff and fatherly as he speaks in surprising sympathy. "She went to see her father. Halfway through a dementor attacked. Before I came to the scene, a few more joined in… and." He sighs. "That's all."
Harry's scar prickles from rage. "That's all? Where were the guards? Why do dementors have access to visitors?"
The man doesn't answer. Harry glaces at the unconscious Pansy and then counts the rhyme she taught him again. He wills his hands to stay at his side instead of inside the wall as he looks at the man.
"Let's go to Azkaban, then."
The first time anything clearly went wrong was, unsurprisingly, on his parents' death day. He woke up, screaming and writhing. He and Ginny had attended something akin to a memorial service that day, met a variety of people whose lives Lily and James Potter had touched. The day went as good as it could have; he had learnt that at one point of his life his father considered singing, and that the marauders had thought of opening a band named Dogstar . He learned that his mother had a cheeky temper and once got arrested while flirting with a muggle cop. The facts brought about another set of feelings he wouldn't have minded to keep locked and away. They were so devastatingly young, it breaks his heart that life had so many chances for them, these young, talented people, and so many of them were lost in the grip of war, of a madman.
Of a prophecy.
But aside from the occasional glimpse of the morbid, the day passed with him imagining them happy - cheeky, cheery, dumb happy. So it was a bummer that he woke up that night from the screams of his young mother, crying so he might be spared. Ginny was sentimental and terrified and loving, she stayed with him while he cursed the dementors that made him remember.
He is cursing the dementors now.
The supervisor of Azkaban is a man made of stone. He welcomes Harry with a surprised smile when he shows up alongside Eldrich Adams, the guard whose throat features a light pink burn mark now, after Harriet had healed it. The smile of the stone-man slowly turns to a scowl when he learns the reason for his arrival.
"I am aware of this misfortune," he says in a voice like a seaside rock chafed from repeated assaults of water. "I will look into it."
"Why were the dementors there in the first place?"
He raises his eyebrows. Harry figures he isn't accustomed to answering. Most people are too satisfied with forgetting about this prison to inquire anything to the men who look after it.
The stone-man clears his voice and says, "Mr. Potter, the Azkaban is holding nefarious criminals who have committed violent crimes. We have to be careful and strict. This is mere common sense."
"Common sense is realizing that dementors are not only keeping the prisoners in, they're making them paralyzed. How is her father?"
The man turns green. "He is well, Mr. Potter -"
"Was he looked after by healers? I guess not."
"We will take care of him as we see fit."
"I have to make sure."
"This is absolutely unnecessary -"
"Have you ever been attacked by a dementor?"
"I won't be questioned by -"
"The minister is considering ridding the Azkaban of dementors altogether. He thinks this place treats prisoners inhumanely. What do you think he'll consider your approach to such a sentiment?"
"Are you threatening me?"
"No. But if someone even close to it ever happens to her I will personally see to it that you know what it's like." He takes a step to him, magic has nothing to do with the fire between his knuckles. " That's a threat."
Looking back, the signs of his demise were always there. He was just afraid to look back. Like the shadow of a large, replitilan monster, it was always slithering behind him. At night if he could stop his breath and listen carefully, he could hear it's hiss.
When he finally saw Voldemort one night in a dream, he felt an odd sense of calm. He knows the monster at the edge of the forest. The monster is white and terrifying and so familiar. He knows its middle name. He has seen its mother. The monster had lived inside him for eighteen years, he still can't be certain which part of him is entirely him and not tainted by the Dark Lord. He can't speak to snakes anymore, but he still feels the cold hard rage that makes him run. So seeing him in a dream - which he knows is a dream - is nothing.
Until he realizes that he cannot wake up.
Pansy told him later that what he experiences is sleep paralysis. It's a quite common phenomena in muggles. It's often seen in gifted occlumens. Despite what he feels, it's not harmful, per say. If he counts out the impending insomnia if he keeps taking those pills he got at a muggle store. It sounded nice when someone described what happens to him as something entirely normal.
"Your brain is just more active than your muscles," she said.
He chuckled. "That's the first time anyone has ever told me that."
She smiled, rolling her eyes, and went back to her report.
Oh he wants to kiss her. Smell the lavender and the citrusy smell that is so entirely her. Sweet orange, he realizes, is the citrus the day he snatched her into the tiny storeroom. Her moans are soft and breathy and so needy that matches with the punch drunk beat of his heart. He gives her what she wants, which is him, part of him, and he buries his face in the fresh smell of her hair. Lavender and sweet orange. Her. Her. Her. He kisses her to swallow her moan, his hands roam all over her. He's spinning, but It's when she looks at his eyes as she pushes her hand past his jeans that he loses it. He had been touch-starved, hungry and impatient, in many ways, but this is another sort of burn, something he can't describe. It makes him stay up at night sometimes, as he tries to navigate his way into this chaos. He is headstrong, that's his vice, but he isn't unrealistic, the chances of them being anything permanent is precarious. Because he is riddled with experiments of other people, and she takes care of her guilt as if it's precious to her.
He touches her, softly, carefully. He's not always sure that she's there, for him, with him. He's not always sure that someone so perfect for him exists in the realm of possibility, and the fact that someone is very different from what he expected. Sometimes he fears if he presses too hard, if he shows her one more demented corner of his tired brain, she will materialize into the same, fragile wisp, and disappear into thin air. Or worse. She would run back to her hiding, the hardened shell she protects herself with.
He imagines chafing the marbled edges of her shell, like Michelangelo when he created David. But Harry Potter is not a sculptor, he is not a man with the precision and skills of an artist. He was never crafty. He did not go through every aspect of a plan, he did not calculate loss and gain. He met with every force with raw, boisterous determination. But he doesn't think Pansy Parkinson should be dealt with force. He tries. His fingers spasm, his hands are shaky and needy and hasty and he fears of ruining her. Insidious thoughts plague his head. Maybe she needs someone who isn't loaded with so much baggage. Someone free from a prophecy that seems to want to murder him after all. Someone who doesn't have his own sets of needs to burden her head with.
If he found that person he'd probably punch him in the nose and tell him to fuck off.
When she wakes up, he wants to hold her, the same way she would do him. But she looks distant. Her eyes are still glassy, unattainable. Like a pearl covered with moss at the bottom of a lake. Harriet warned him this might happen. But still it elicits an odd pang at the middle of his chest to hear her voice devoid of any emotion.
"She might feel disconnected to everyone," the matron had said. She touched his elbow and added softly, "But she's alright."
What's alright ? He knows firsthand that dementors can bring out memories that would ruin you forever. It's worse that it doesn't always show. And for someone as reserved as Pansy…
He doesn't let that chain of thoughts to run.
He tries to do the best with what they're given. He tries to work with steady hands, crafty fingers.
But she resists. When he takes her to Private Drive because that's what calms him down, when he makes her hot chocolate like he knew she would like, she resists it all with some cool ferocity. He tries not to be hasty. He tries not to leak out his fear. He tries to be tender in a way he isn't really familiar with.
But still it goes wrong. He can hear the anger and fear and her own private shame she coddles foolishly when she lashes out. He tells her she doesn't mean it and she reacts with hostility. Hostility he is familiar with. That's how he deals as well. So after he absorbs her anger, he takes her to her apartment and apparates with a black hole inside his chest, hollowing out everything else from the universe. He tries to find Blaise Zabini. He goes to their usual meet-up when they dealt before. He isn't there. He tries to get through a mutual acquaintance, but she doesn't know. He apparates to pub after pub with a violent, gaping tumor growing inside him, his scar pricks like a burn. He takes deep breaths and tries to forget everything Pansy had said to him.
She doesn't mean it. He doesn't want to just fuck her. He doesn't want to hollow her out to fill him up. There is a terrible hunger in him to be understood. But she knows that he isn't entirely made of that hunger. He has to believe she knows that, just as he knows that she isn't evil because she believed in some purity bullshit when she was fifteen. He has met evil people, scary ones, tough ones, ones that do want to make the world a better place. He runs his fist through a wall and only after feeling the burn in his knuckles that he realizes the wall was real. He apparates to another place.
When he finally finds the guy who reminds him so much of the Weasley twins after hours, his eyes are red, he has two bruised knuckles and he is past caring about formal greetings.
"You need to go and see Pansy," he hisses to the unsuspecting Zabini.
Zabini eyes his knuckles, his face is carrying a mask similar to Pansy's. "What happened?"
"Dementors. Azkaban. She went to see her father and things went out of control. She needs - someone."
The other guy takes a step, it's obvious what he's thinking. Harry feels his throat parched as he answers the unasked question, "She doesn't want me there… or anywhere. At all. I don't know. Fuck off."
To his credit, Zabini asks no questions, doesn't stretch the uncomfortable silence into something unbearable. Harry tells him to check on her mother, make her another mug of hot chocolate. Take care of her. Zabini promises he will and asks if he should take Harry home. Harry tells him to fuck off again. So he does.
When Harry reaches home. The house comes alive again. Standing with his knuckles covered in dried blood, he feels a tiredness he hadn't felt for a long time. He imagines Pansy in the dark, cold room, imagining Blaise comforting her. Something terrible rises up at his throat but he downs it. He is more than his need. He wants her to be happy.
"Why is there blood on the carpet?" Walburga Black screeches. " This is the ancient -"
Her voice goes muffled as Harry shoots her with a silencing charm.
Sirius wouldn't mind.
A week after he finally responded to the repeated summoning of Kingsley Shacklebolt, the minister of magic. What precedes is a hasty bout of preachings, almost as boring as they are intolerable. Nothing he hasn't heard before. Harry tries not to let his anger get the best of him. He tries not to shout back.
"I am aware of it's condition, and you know I try as hard as I can to get the dementors out. But you cannot threaten people with my name"
"I don't need to use anyone's name, Kingsley," he says through gritted teeth. "I threatened him because I wanted to."
He huffs, he looks so tired. "Harry, you can't just threaten Samuel Dodge. You can't walk around and think people are going to let you be because of your status as the Chosen One. You need to grow up. Take responsibilities. Your actions have consequences. You are missing your training, you are getting into drunken fights. You are… involved with the Parkinson girl?" he says her last name as if it's something bitter, and Harry gets her reticence now, he gets her shell, he understands the necessity she feels to hide away in her corner of Mungo's.
He purses his lips, he ignores the drumming of his heart. "It's none of your business. And I know my actions have consequences. I am paying dearly."
With that he walks out. His mind is buzzing like a thousand angry hornets, his scar pricks. He tries his best to look nonchalant, he bites the inside of his cheeks to counteract the pain in his head. And he thinks, Kingsley speaks out of concern. He cares for him. Doesn't mean he's right. But still a haunted thought creeps in. He gets out of the corridor and walks through people who are merely phantoms, not really there. Not real enough for him to care.
He hasn't tried to contact her in a week. He's giving her time. He's trying to ignore the tumor. So maybe it's cancerous, this aching hole growing inside of him. Maybe it's contagious. Maybe the dementors gave her some morbid sense of clarity. She's probably better off alone, or with someone who would want her and not need her. Who would look like he belongs with her, for worse or for better. Someone like Blaise Zabini, or Malfoy if he weren't dating Hermione already - which is another train wreck waiting to happen. Someone different than Harry Potter, Chosen One, fortune's fool, lamb who's still at the slaughterhouse. She needs someone who wouldn't be like a starved man at the edge of the world. He tells himself all of this, he lets the blunt edge of the knife prick at his insides. He can almost believe it… almost -
But then.
There she is, and he can't stop himself before calling her name. And as she turns back, he sees the same inescapable smile that lights up her cool, collected eyes. She looks absolutely lovely in blue, he thinks. And they are damned anyway, so when she asks if he can spare a moment, if he can talk, he wants to answer that he has forever, if she wants, he can talk and listen and ignore the rest of the world crumbling down.
"Of course," he answers.
Of course he can.