Chapter 2: Gap

Disclaimer: All characters belongs to J. K. Rowling!

2- Gap

"What do you mean?" asked Harry, barely containing his anger.

"You know!" his redheaded friend shouted back. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you!"

"Then enlighten me Ron". His anger dissipated and he replied with a coldness that frightened his friend and Hermione.

"You are...you are..." he hesitated, with his red ears. He knew Harry perfectly. He could control his friend during an explosion, but when that coldness invaded him...

"Irrational!" He encouraged himself to complete. "Since it all ended, you've done nothing but lock yourself up and escape, you've devastated Ginny, and you've mistreated and avoided everyone who stood in front of you!" He continued, emboldened to be able to vent all his fury. "You have discharged your anger on Hermione and me several times! Leave Hermione alone at least!" At this point, Ron was screaming at loud voice, and his whole face was a big red spot.

They were arguing standing in a corner of the kitchen. The air in the Burrow could be cut with a knife, and Molly and Arthur sat at the table without daring to interfere; Ginny had retired angrily to her room a few minutes earlier. They had decided to invite Harry to lunch to try to reconcile the trio, but things were not going as planned.

"Ron, calm down, will you? Harry hasn't done anything to me!" Said Hermione with her glazed eyes and a barely audible thread of voice, terrified by Harry's face. She knew that her friend's limit of patience was being tested.

"And why are you so angry?Are you mental?" Ron insisted, ignoring his girlfriend. "Why do you keep using Hermione and me as your stooges? And why the hell did you make Ginny suffer so much? Because you're the bloody hero of the Magic World?"

"I told you don't understand..." Harry tried to say with his teeth and his fury breaking through his throat, but he was interrupted by his friend's screams.

"Of course! I'm Harry Potter's stupid friend again!"

Harry closed his eyes, trying to forget that last sentence.

"Ron! Enough!" Hermione begged with a broken voice, she knew something was about to break...or explode.

"Are you still furious about the Prophet?" Ron raised his voice more and more.

"You shouldn't have mentioned Voldemort's immortality or the objects we destroyed..." Harry whispered in rage, but was interrupted again.

"AND I TOLD YOU I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE HORCRUXES! NOTHING! DO YOU WANT ME TO SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU?"

"DO YOU THINK THE PROPHET'S IS FULL OF IDIOTS? DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES THEY CAME TO ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT IT? I'VE BEEN CHASED, INVESTIGATED AND SPIED ON SINCE YOUR INTERVIEW FOR ALMOST THREE WEEKS!" Harry exploded, and tried to calm himself by taking a breath. He definitely didn't want to lose his temper in the Burrow.

"WELL, I'M SORRY, BUT I DIDN'T MEAN TO!" Ron's ears were going to explode. "I DON'T HAVE AS MUCH EXPERIENCE WITH REPORTERS AS YOU DO!"

"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TOLD THEM ANYTHING! NO ONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HORCRUXES OR THE HALLOWS!" shouted Harry.

"I HAVEN'T TOLD THEM ANYTHING! NOTHING!"

"Ron, please don't shout anymore! Many things have happened..." said Hermione tearing with a knot in her throat.

"DON'T SHUT ME UP! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DEFEND HIM?" Ron shouted more and more furiously, pointing to Harry. "DO YOU FEEL MISUNDERSTOOD, MISERABLE PERHAPS?" The redhead was beginning to touch Harry´s weak spots. "JUST SO YOU KNOW, WE'VE ALL LOST FAMILY AND FRIENDS!"

At that point, both Molly and Arthur were startled by two reasons: the aggressiveness of the discussion and Harry's murderous silence. Hermione covered her mouth in a gesture of disbelief and panic, she thought she was in the eye of the hurricane.

Ron turned furiously and looked out of the window. After a few moments of nodding, he continued. "The universe does not rotate around you, Harry, not anymore. Voldemort is dead, if you want to keep acting like a victim, do it. And if you want to keep poisoning yourself, well, that's fine! But leave Hermione and me alone, and my family! And stay away from Ginny!"

"You´re and idiot, Ron." Harry snorted in anger.

"GET LOST!"

Harry stormed out and walked steadily to the limits of the protective barriers of the Burrow. Before he disapparated from there, he waited a few seconds without looking back. He hoped for something that didn´t happened and shaking his head he went away, regretting for the first time in his life that he had come to the Burrow, his second favorite place in the world.

***HP***

"Bloody hell, not again!" Harry muttered as soon as he opened his eyes and saw that he had appeared in the wrong place.

Those horrible memories kept tormenting him and he couldn't leave them behind.

He already knew Gap and he should know how to apparate in the outskirts of the village, but he was still failing in his destiny as the last four times he had gone there in the last two months, and this was the fifth. He wanted to apparate on the hills just north of Gap and walk in like a muggle to not attract anyone's attention, but he couldn't. He still remembered the previous one, when after four attempts he had to ask for directions from an older man riding a bicycle on a narrow paved road in the French countryside, far away from his destiny.

"Bloody Twycross and his bloody three D's." He closed his eyes and concentrated on the slope of the small hill north of the beautiful village. After a few moments of darkness and not being able to breathe, he opened them again to discover that he was on the slope of a much higher hill, on the opposite side of the small valley where Gap was. Fearful of getting splinched because of many failed attempts, he decided to walk the few kilometres separating him from the village.

"Why can't I apparate properly? I had done it before, I could not have forgotten."

Like the previous times he had failed, Harry began to think hard looking for an explanation. He turned the matter over and over again, not wanting to acknowledge that most of the time it had been with Hermione; yet he remembered the time he took Dumbledore to Hogsmeade from the caves, or the time he escaped from the Malfoy Mansion with Dobby.

"They were cases of extreme necessity," he thought as he continued down the hill dodging rocks and small bushes. "Maybe I'm not concentrating enough, maybe..." Harry stopped worried about a strong hunch. He instantly reached into his backpack, pulled out his wand, and looked around making sure no one was there.

Wand in hand, he aimed at the air as he hadn't done for almost two months and closed his eyes for a happy memory.

"Expecto Patronum!" The wand remained impassive. Again he closed his eyes and concentrated on another happy memory, and cried out loudly.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" The wand remained undisturbed, though Harry realized what was happening.

For the third time, he closed his eyes and tried to remember his friends, shouting with all his might. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Despite the great effort, he only got a poor cloud of silvery steam that disappeared a few seconds later.

Confused and with glassy eyes, he sat down on a flat stone watching the wand in his hand with concern. "It can't be broken, the Elder Wand repaired it, I used it myself later."

No, Harry knew it wasn't that. When he tried to remember the feelings of happiness and relief at the end of defeating Voldemort and the bustle of people around him congratulating him, the bloody images of dozens of lifeless bodies lying in the same Great Hall prevailed and filled him with anger and sadness.

It didn't go well when he wanted to focus on his friends: he only managed to remember the bitter fights with Ron and Ginny, and a Hermione sitting on the floor crying disconsolately as he yelled at her before running away to France.

"I need happy memories to cast a Patronus, I'm not losing the magic..." He aimed to a nearby rock. "Accio rock!" The rock shook and trembled, but did not move from its place.

Something was not right inside him, with his magic. He rose and resumed his march, noticing with some curiosity how little he cared.

He had had breakfast at the hotel he was staying in Toulon and gave the key of his room very early that morning foreseeing obstacles in his apparitions, but had never calculated to arrive at his destination that late at midday. Tired, sweaty, and with his hair more agitated than ever Harry finally walked down a narrow winding alley away from the muggle commercial center, and after about ten minutes he reached a small square surrounded by medieval buildings covered by thick trees, tables, and chairs.

Unlike London, Gap had no Diagon Alley simile, it was not even a magical community separate from the rest of the village or did it have an entrance like the one of the Leaky Cauldron. Around the square several wizards and witches had their stores, and coexisted (though furtively) side by side with the muggles establishments. It was a nice and beautiful place where no one would ever think of finding magic people, as they dressed and acted like muggles. Several alleys ran into the square, so there were always tourists and curious people who wandered around observing the shops or having breakfast or lunch at the tables. Harry liked that place very much, and each time he came to send an owl he would sit down to eat and watch the people walking by, looking for potential "magicians". But what he liked most about the place was that it went completely unnoticed, without anyone even looking at him.

Harry went to the only magic store he had entered since he arrived in France. The owner of the shop, Mr. Laffitte, sold all sorts of Gap sweets and souvenirs to tourists, but at the back of the store he ran a hidden small owl service. The magic community there was small, so he only had two owls available for international deliveries. One was snow-white and yellow-eyed.

"Bonjour Monsieur Martans! Vous êtes bien?"

"Tres bien, merci beacoup." Harry replied with one of the few phrases he had learned. He was always slow to respond, because he had not yet been able to get used to being called by his "new" identity: Jean Martans, a name he saw in a newspaper just before acquiring his new small house in the outskirts of Toulon.

"Oh, you probably want to use the post, don't you?" asked Mr. Laffitte, with a smile on his face and a wink of an eye, to which Harry nodded. "Come on, this way." Harry knew the routine and followed the man to the back. Mr. Laffitte was old, about 70 years old, and his hair was fuzzy and gray, somehow like Ollivander, though his English was very limited and hard to understand. On the way, he could not help but notice a newspaper folded correctly on a table, and in spite of the darkness he could see that it was the "La Provence Matin" and that its cover was covered almost entirely by the photograph of some people...who were moving. Subtly shaking his head, Harry reached the back of the store, an open space with the perimeter covered by bushes and large cages on his right.

"Here's Chantelle, your favourite owl monsieur." The owl stood on a round wooden bar, and its white plumage shone in the sunlight. It was separated from the rest of the smaller owls, probably used for local deliveries. Harry found it amusing to think that the owl did not want to mix with the others.

"Hello Chantelle, would you like a long nice ride to England?" He muttered as he gently stroked her with his fingers and a bitter smile. Memories would definitely never leave him.

After a long time, Mr. Laffitte came back with some blank sheets of paper and a pen and extended them to Harry, who was still absorbed looking at and caressing the owl with big, beautiful yellow eyes.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" asked the old man. "Someday you'll tell me why the sadness on your face?"

Harry smiled. The same questions with the same words every time he came to send correspondence.

"I used to have a very similar owl. Her name was Hedwig." He replied laconically.

The old man nodded, understanding. "I must suppose she's dead, isn't she?"

Harry only nodded.

"All right monsieur, take your time to write your letters."

When Mr. Laffitte was leaving, Harry asked him, "Excuse me, is Claudette available? I need to send two letters this time."

"Oui monsieur, in that case it will be 700 francs, but I'll leave it at 600 francs." That said, he turned around and went to the front of his store. Harry always thought the service was expensive (about 25 pounds per owl) but as he always had one of his own, he never knew (or did not remember) how much the owl postal service cost in England.

He looked with his eyes for the ramshackle wooden table that served as a support for writing his letters. The one addressed to the Weasleys was quick, even with the addition addressed to his friend Ron, but writing Hermione's this time was being hard to him. He finally decided and finished it, and after placing the letters in the special compartment within her foot he stared at the two owls flying north, wishing that one of those letters the white owl was carrying to be read and not thrown into the garbage can.