School and Year - Ilvermorny Year ?
Title and Link - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Theme - Write about something that is excessively protected.
Mandatory Prompt - [Setting] A bridge
Additional Prompt - [Quote] "They made you into a weapon and told you to find peace."
Word Count - 1257
Author's Note - This fic features a suicide attempt.
Bridge Over Troubled Water
The night air stung Harry's skin as he stood on the centre of the bridge. It was a huge thing, with three giant towers and a fan of bright cable stays. Even in the dark, Harry could appreciate the view. He let his eyes roam over the lights of the city reflecting off the river and wondered where he'd ended up. It could be any town really, and one town was as good as the next, but since it was to be the last town he would ever see, it would have been nice to know its name.
The wind tugged at his hair as it whipped around him in a swirling gust, so cold that it made his eyes water. He could pull up his hood, or even cast a warming charm, but he didn't. The cold was constant and comforting. So many people loved the heat, lounging in baking temperatures, oozing sweat as if they were a Sunday roast, but not Harry.
To him, the heat was cloying, suffocating. He couldn't think, and his emotions seemed to boil past the tipping point whenever he was exposed to heat for too long. He much preferred the numbing calm of the cold. His brain would slow down, and he could churn through each thought until, finally, they ceased to matter. Everything would become still and silent.
He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply before forcing himself to focus on his task. He didn't know how long he would have before the others inevitably found him.
The thought of his friends scurrying about, hunting for him like he was some naughty teenage runaway caused an icy pool of stagnated frustration to swirl in his gut. He knew they were only trying to help but, Merlin, part of him hated the claustrophobia of it all.
In the immediate days after the war, no one batted an eyelid at how removed he'd been. They'd all been grieving in their own ways, and they assumed this was his. Then they grew protective over him at the sheer volatility of the public; Death Eater sympathisers sending cursed letters and Howlers, crazed fans trying to infiltrate his home to kidnap him as their love slaves. However, when several months passed and Harry was still "depressed", they all began to worry.
Suddenly, he was inundated with invitations to parties and outings, and people would randomly pop over to "just say hi". Then Mind-healer cards and mental health pamphlets started cropping up around his house. One particularly garish leaflet had been placed strategically under his favourite tea mug. Hermione's doing, he supposed.
He'd bypassed the leaflet and went straight for his favourite chopping knife from the block next to the stove. Why bother with the balm of therapy when you could just cut the problem off? He didn't feel any pain as he sliced the skin at his wrists open.
After that, all his cooking knives had been removed, along with any alcohol and potions that may "give him ideas". They'd even taken his wand when they realised he would just Conjure or Transfigure whatever he needed. In the end, they'd placed him on an eight-hour rotation of constant supervision, where he couldn't even lock the door to go to the bathroom.
"It's for your own good, Harry," they'd said.
"You know we care about you so much," he was told umpteen times a day.
It had been exhausting to never be alone.
Desperation, it seemed, had been his friend, and after a particularly trying day of mollycoddling, he could feel his magic crackling along the surface of his skin and raising the hairs all over his body. He'd closed his eyes and wished, wished, wished to be somewhere, anywhere, just so he could be alone.
His magic had granted his wish. He'd torn through the intricate containment wards his friends had placed on his house and ended up on the most breathtaking bridge he'd ever seen. With the coloured lights illuminating the cables and the river rippling like liquid obsidian below, Harry couldn't think of a better place to spend his last moments.
He wrapped his hands around the top railing and pulled himself up, ignoring the tugging pain in his wrists. He placed one careful foot after another on the sturdy rungs of the barricade, until he was finally sitting on the top with his legs hanging over the side. The barricade was thin, and he could feel his bottom already beginning to bruise. Not that it would matter in a few moments anyway.
He held on to the fanning cables and lowered his feet to the outer side of the bottom rung. Then, ever so slowly, he let his weight pull his body forwards until he was hanging at an angle over the river, his arms straining to keep his weight steady. The wind snagged and grabbed at his clothes and hair. It was so much colder on this side of the bridge without the barricade to buffer the worst of the wind, and Harry felt his eyes tear up.
The memory of the last conversation he'd had with Hermione drifted across his mind, and he remembered how agitated she had been at him.
"You need to do something, Harry."
She'd been sitting at the kitchen table in Grimmauld Place, her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee.
"All this moping around is just making things worse. Go back to Hogwarts, or join the Aurors with Ron, or even play Quidditch, but for Godric's sake, do something!"
"Why?" Harry had asked.
He was unable to see why she was being so dogged about the whole thing. Couldn't she see he was tired?
How could he go back to Hogwarts and not see the ghosts of everyone he'd failed? How could he join the Aurors when he could barely sleep more than two hours without jumping awake and lunging for his wand?
He clenched his eyes against the blur of his tears, feeling them run down his windburned cheeks and dripping off the end of his nose. He couldn't be like Ron and Hermione, like Ginny and Neville. They each had the other and were finding their purposes in life. Harry, at age seventeen, had already fulfilled his. Now, twelve lonely and exhausting months after he should have boarded the train at Kings Cross station, he felt done.
Merlin, he needed a rest.
Harry sniffed as his glasses slipped from his face and into the ripples below. He wondered if the wind had been still, would he have heard the splash?
He couldn't make himself hold on any longer. He let his fingers slip from around the metal rung. The fall stretched out as if his body had taken on some kind of weightlessness. Time held no meaning as he floated featherlike down towards the water. It was like he had his precious Nimbus again, and he closed his eyes, imagining he was plunging into a corkscrewing dive to catch the snitch.
As he broke through the surface and plunged into the depths of the river, Harry felt his body become weightless. For the first time in his memory, he felt light.
His lungs burned with the need to breathe and river water filled his nose and mouth, but he didn't fight. Instead, he kept his eyes closed and embraced the fire lancing his body. Finally, as if he'd waited eighteen years to achieve it, he began to drift into oblivion.
Harry smiled, at peace.