Silent Pleas of an Unheard Voice by elfandtroll

Rating: PG13
Genres: Angst
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 23/03/2005
Last Updated: 23/03/2005
Status: Completed

A songfic to Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life". Those pleas that go unheard are
often the most desperate; those cries heard only in our hearts are often the most forlorn. A
depressing story that delves into Harry's views on life, those around him, and himself after
his fifth year.




1. Silent Pleas of an Unheard Voice
-----------------------------------

**Silent Pleas**

He felt empty. There was no other way to describe the all-consuming feeling of hollowness and
numbness that had haunted him since the end of his fifth year. If Cedric’s death had cracked him,
Sirius’s had shattered him.

Since that day, he had felt completely alone. The words revealed to him in the prophecy only
intensified this feeling. They separated him from the masses, placing him on an unwanted pedestal
as a messiah, a savior to rid their world of a menace. The weight of those words was slowly bearing
down on his shoulders, crushing him with each passing day.

*Wake me up inside*

*Wake me up inside*

*Call my name and save me from the dark*

Yet no one seemed to notice. Perhaps it was the cheerful façade he had fixed so firmly in place,
but he wondered how they could not see the chaotic mix of despair, loneliness, anger, and fear in
his eyes. They seemed content in the belief that he had gotten over Sirius’s death during the
summer and was back to his cheerful, optimistic self. He couldn’t tell if they didn’t see, or
didn’t want to see.

*Bid my blood to run*

*Before I come undone*

*Save me from the nothing I’ve become*

A sort of helpless rage filled him, rising through his chest until he desperately wanted to
stand and scream at them all, "Do you see what you’re doing? Do you see what you’ve made
me?"

*Now that you know what I’m without*

*You can’t just leave me*

He was merely a tool, a weapon to kill Voldemort.

Yet they did nothing to help him prepare for the final battle against the Dark Lord. He saw it
in their eyes that they *knew* he was unprepared. It was in Madame Pince’s eyes as she shooed
him from the library late each night from studying curses; in McGonagall’s when he read defense
books in her class; in Dumbledore’s gaze whenever he looked at him.

*All this time, I can’t believe I couldn’t see*

*Kept in the dark, but you were there in front of me*

The core of his anger was directed at the headmaster. For nearly five years Dumbledore had kept
him in the dark, but when a light was finally shed on everything, he did nothing to help Harry.
Nothing to console him as night after night he woke in a cold sweat, screaming as he saw Sirius
fall through the veil or his friends lying dead on the battlefield. He did nothing to help him
learn to defend himself, nothing to lessen the weight on his shoulders, nothing to reassure him
that he was not alone in this fight.

As each day passed, Harry became more and more convinced that he was alone, even amongst the
masses of students that flooded the halls, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

*I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems*

*Got to open my eyes to everything*

As he looked at all the students, at his classmates, he felt incredibly old and jaded. It seemed
as though he had aged overnight, becoming a thousand years old. His entire life he had been forced
to grow up quickly and see the harsher sides of life. Children went hungry. Hate destroyed. People
died. The world was full of pain, loneliness, hate, fear, death. None of these ideas were new to
him. He had been exposed to them since a young age, since the night of his parents’ death.

*Don’t let me die here*

*There must be something more*

*Bring me to life*

Death. A flash of bright green light. A fluttering veil. Slitted red eyes and a hissing
voice.

The thought of death both attracted and terrified him. Death would mean a freedom like none
other, a freedom from obligations and responsibilities, from worry and pain and fear. He would see
his parents and Sirius again. He wouldn’t have to be the Savior of the Wizarding World. He could
just be Harry.

But the idea of death also scared him. The possibility that there was nothing after death
terrified every cell of his being. A world of darkness and nothingness was in no way preferable to
this life. He had long ago stopped believing that there was a God, but somehow still clung firmly
to the belief in some sort of life after death. Yet, if there was such joy and happiness after
death, why did people fear it so much?

In his view, death was either the ultimate freedom or the ultimate imprisonment.

*I’ve been living a lie*

*There’s nothing inside*

*Bring me to life*

When he had first come to Hogwarts, he had felt free, finally released from the confines of the
Dursleys. Even the yearly face-offs with Voldemort hadn’t disturbed him. They had seemed fun
somehow, each triumph like a victory in a child’s game. Now he knew that each encounter was to test
him, to see if he could in fact defeat Voldemort and was worthy of being called their Savior.

*Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul*

And when he had passed all those tests, when he had found to be truly worthy, he had somehow
ceased to be a person. He was a weapon to kill a madman. He was a robot, with a façade of
cheerfulness and youth forced into place daily. His eyes, once bright and expressive, were dulled
orbs leading to the emptiness of his soul. He had no voice, no choice, no chance, no help.

In essence, he had nothing.

In essence, he was nothing.



