Sing it for me
I can't erase the stupid things I say
You're better than me
I struggle just to find a better way
So here we are
Fighting and
Trying to hide the scars
I'll be home tonight
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
The lonely road
One that I should try to walk alone
I'll be home tonight
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
You wouldn't like me
Keep moving on until forever ends
Don't try to fight me
The beauty queen has lost her crown again
So here we are
Fighting and
Trying to hide the scars
I'll be home tonight
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
The lonely road
One that I should try to walk alone
I'll be home tonight
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
Goodbye
So why are you so eager to betray?
Pick the pieces up
Pick the pieces up
So why are you the one that walks away?
Pick the pieces up
Pick the pieces up
Pick the pieces up
It rained. He stood on the soggy ground in the baggy clothes he always wore, head bowed. He was soaked thoroughly and, unlike the surrounding witches and wizards using repellant charms, he used none.
There was a halo of mist that danced around his outline as the rain hit him softly, causing his edges to look blurred, as if he was not really there. As if he was only halfway there.
No one spoke; the entire place was far too quiet, too dead. No one cried or wailed, as they had at Dumbledore's funeral. No, these people mourned silently. They mourned their misplaced distrust, and hate. They mourned the fact that they had so easily turned upon the one who had oh so subtly saved them all.
But no one actually mourned the person, as he did.
No one mourned the body of which was being buried, because none had known him.
None but him.
Sing it for me.
I can't erase the stupid things I say.
He was shouting, throwing objects and screaming at the other man, who stood stoic and unmoving, completely passive as he raged on.
The things he had screamed at the man, so many long nights ago, came back to whisper in his mind, came back to force his regret, make him wince.
"I only let this continue because I pity you!" he had screamed, throwing a large stone candleholder at the fireplace. At the time, Snape had moved forward to overpower him, press him against the wall.
"Pity me, Potter? When it is you who can't seem to stay away from this room," and while Snape had clearly convinced him that he was wrong, he knew somewhere that the words had stung. How could they not? They ate away at him, who said it, didn't they?
You're better than me.
I struggle just to find a better way
He cast his eyes down to watch a worm wriggle from the mud and then back into it, disappearing from view. The rain was taming his hair like no brush could, and it now lay in tendrils, framing his face and twining down the back of his neck.
So here we are
Here we are. A pretense funeral, to satisfy their guilt. The only one who truly knew anything was him, and he watched the mockery with disdainful indifference.
Fighting and
And now…now what? Where did this leave him? Just to go on…move on…
Trying to hide the scars
He fingered the fringe of the wet sleeve of his left arm, pulling it tighter around the base of his thumb. He could hear Snape's mocking voice echo in his mind.
"Begun that nasty habit again, have you, Potter? I should have known."
I'll be home tonight
Home…Hogwarts was all he knew of the word. Harry might return there…but he never would.
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
"Goodbye," whispered so soft, not said aloud at all.
You wouldn't like me
Keep moving on until forever ends
If this were my funeral, he thought bitterly at the deceased, you wouldn't waste your time to even show up. You'd just go on like always, unperturbed. Gods, how I loathe you sometimes.
Don't try to fight me
"It's useless," he would say, "to attempt to fight the way of things, Potter. You'll only lose more brain cells than you already have through arduous, thankless work." Harry shivered, but not from the cold. His anger and pure helplessness was causing him to shake so severely, he wondered how those next to him couldn't notice.
The beauty queen has lost her crown again
"Potter, as much as you might want it to be so, the world does not revolve around you."
He felt defeated. As if he had been cheated out of something so vitally precious to him that there were holes in his mind, as if the memories were fading away faster than he could grasp at them.
The lonely road
One that I should try to walk alone
Hermione and Ron tried to put their hands on his shoulders, but he shook them off. They had no idea. They were truly clueless when it came to him and this man. Even his nightly wanderings didn't alert them to anything other than everyday Harry Potter. And that was, he felt, how it should be. Even had they known, they would not be able to be with him in this. This was solely his, and his alone.
I'll be home tonight
Take a breath and softly say goodbye
The sermon apparently over, the crowd of black-robed witches and wizards began to disperse, leaving Harry to stand alone by the marked grave. Now, as the others faded from view, he moved to the front, standing, looming over the final resting place of Severus Snape.
Goodbye
It was goodbye. He tried to tell himself this, because apparently he didn't believe it. Not truly. Eyes still dry of any hint of tears, he sunk to his knees in the soft, wet grass and mud, twining his fingers in the green wisps.
He felt like something was being pulled from him. As if his spinal cord was being tugged from the base of his neck, through his throat. As if his stomach was being wrenched from its moorings. As if his ribs were popping out of their sockets and pulling free of the cartilage that held them together.
But it wasn't a physical pain. It was so much worse, because had it been physical, he could comprehend the pain.
This…
This was far more, so incomprehensible that he scrambled and clung to the pain, trying to understand, trying to embrace it, to accept it, to feel it. It was what could not be felt physically. And it felt like he was loosing something far more precious than blood, marrow, and cells.
So why are you so eager to betray?
Betrayed him. Betrayed everything…
Pick the pieces up
Pick the pieces up
Had he really shattered so completely, beneath his own skin? He felt whole on the outside, but inside he felt like jangled nerves so shot that they cracked and broke. Felt as if he carried thousands of broken glass pieces within himself, pieces that threatened to tear through his flesh from the inside out. Or outside in, depending on how you look at it.
Fighting and,
Trying to hide the scars
Trying to hide had never worked with Snape. The man always knew when he added a new line across his arm. He always seemed to know when he wrote a word in the blood of his flesh. It was impossible to hide it.
But now he could. Now he was hiding it. Death hid him so completely from Snape that he was free to do as he pleased with his own skin, his own knife.
So why are you the one that walks away?
Why was it always he who left? Why, in all their fights, was he the one to turn his back and walk away unhindered, unscathed.
Why was Harry left, kneeling in the rain-soaked grass, as the man walked from him, his back turned on him, forever?
Pick the pieces up
Now he cried. Soft, slow tears, creating salty trails in the freshwater rain. Leaking pain and regret from every pore, he cried.
Pick the pieces up
Pick the pieces up