I
The man opposite him had kind, blue eyes and was old enough to be his father. It hadn’t stopped Harry from yelling at him for two minutes straight.
I don’t need you to tell me, I already know what the fucking problem is. What I need is for you to fix it.
“Well?” he glared at the man. “Can you?”
The tone was soothing but the words were not. After he’d spoken, he leaned away from Harry as if he had predicted the tantrum his words would cause.
The room had instantly filled with healers trying to restrain him. One of them had summoned his wand, as if that would matter. He’d laughed her straight in the face before he’d hurled a jug of water her way. She’d easily deflected it with a wave of wandless magic as if to mock him.
“Mr Potter, you need to calm down.” They were the last words he heard before his eyelids fell heavy.
What he needs is to get out of here and get drunk, he thinks hours later as he studies the mess he’s made of the room. Preferably to a muggle bar where Ron won’t be able to find him. Eager for a blend of booze and cocaine he sits up but his head spins to the degree that he’s forced to lie down immediately not to throw up all over himself. So it appears he’s stuck here until the sedative wears off, Merlin knows how long that’ll take. He stares at the ceiling, thirsty for any distilled brew. If he tries hard enough, he can nearly taste cheap firewhiskey mixed with lemon and ice.
So what do you think, Potter?
That it’s a good thing it’s not bottomless.
A smile, the first they share. Grey eyes with a flicker of hope and an unexpected warmth stirs inside him.
The memory hurts like fuck and he widens his eyes, staring into the sharp light above his bed until tears fall down his chin and has him whispering the name he’s called so many times before. The only reply is a weak rustle from the corner and he turns to find a woman sweeping shattered vials off the floor.
Manual labor is somewhat of an oddity in a wizarding hospital. Perhaps she’s a squib, like Filch, set out to perform the tasks wizards find beneath them. He swallows hard and digs his nails into his palms until he’s able to snap out of his head.
The woman takes no notice of him. He has no idea how long she’s been there. Her movements are soundless and she seems to have an ability to blend into the wall. For lack of better things to do, he takes his time to study her. Hair black, skin a few shades darker than his. The only sound she makes comes from the dangling beads on her leather bracelet. There’s a feather necklace around her neck that is almost too clichéd.
“What’s up Big Chief” he asks.
She turns and raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him which has him blushing.
“I didn’t mean that in a racist way, it’s from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
She rests her chin on the handle of the mop. “I wouldn’t have thought you much of a reader.”
His brain supplies him with an image of Draco Malfoy sneering at him, calling him an illiterate pleb which sends a sharp pain through his gut.
“I’m really not” he says, focusing on the woman. “I watched the movie last week.” He wishes he hadn’t. It had been a futile attempt at escape but instead of lulling him to sleep it had left him throwing a beer can at the television and taking off to one of the dodgier pubs in red light district where he’d learned why LSD and hash should not be mixed.
“It was still pretty racist” she tells him.
“Probably” he agrees. “So what is your name?”
“Seeker.”
She has no obligation to tell him her real name of course but it’s a bit unfair given that she most certainly knows his. He chooses not to push it.
“I used to be a seeker too” he offers instead. “I’m not anymore though.” There’s a good chance he’ll never fly again.
“No, you’re not” she agrees and goes back to sweeping the floor. “You’re more like the golden snitch.”
He doesn’t bother to make sense of that, perhaps she really is as loony as Chief Bromden.
“I know your problem” she says after a while.
“You’ve read my file?” He assumes the hospital archives needs cleaning too. If someone outside the ring of staff bound by the oat of silence knows, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes public.
“I didn’t need to.” Her eyes are kind when they meet his. “You don’t have to live like that though.”
“The healers disagree” he says, staring up the ceiling. “They see no other way.”
“There’s always a way forward.”
He smiles sadly, he assumes there is. Dumbledore, comes to mind, standing at the platform serene and wise. “I suppose I could border a train” he mumbles.
It should make no sense to her but there’s a flicker of interest behind the dark brown irises and she sets the mop aside and looks right into his eyes. “You would need to border an aircraft.”
II
Even sheltered by the wall of the shed, the wind tears his eyes and ruffles his hair. The sea is unusually rough today yet he is lucky, a boat is approaching, meaning someone is either entering or leaving. Since the dock is empty aside from him, he assumes it’s the latter, and sure enough, ten minutes later a man disembarks the anchored ferry.
His hood is up to provide shelter against the icy wind and it allows Harry to imagine a blond head underneath it, eyes as stormy as the sea. Of course there isn’t, there never is, but the figure is somewhat familiar and when the man comes closer he recognizes him as Stan Shunpike. His features hardened and the skin that was once blemished is now scarred. The confused look on his face is however identical to the one Harry remembers from his first ride on the knight bus years and years ago.
His eyes dart around the dock as if he doesn’t know how to go about things from here. Harry has seen it in so many others when he’s been hiding in the very same spot. Part of him wants to reach out, offer a few soothing words and let Stan know things will be OK eventually. He doesn’t, it’s not why he came and there’s a good chance he’d be lying anyway.
Stan opens a box and with a look of resignation he reaches for what looks like a bead and a moment later he’s swallowed by the air, port-keyed away to Merlin knows where.
He steps out into the raw wind. “Hello Michelle.”
She doesn’t seem surprised to see him but offers a fond smile, few people do around him anymore. “Hello Harry.”
“How is he?”
“Alright. About the same as last time. Doesn’t talk much. Reads a lot.”
“Good” he says absently, although there’s nothing good about Draco being locked up in Azkaban. “Listen I won’t be around for a while.”
She nods. “Do you want me to pass a message?”
He considers everything he wants to say, all the letters he’s written and incendioed because he knows Draco would not want to read them.
“No” he says firmly. “But I need you to keep an eye on him.”
“Of course I will.”
He hesitates and she reaches out to touch his hand. “Lydia and Jacob will too when I’m off the clock. Harry, he is safe.”
He swallows and nods. It’s as much reassurance he can hope for, yet he’s reluctant to leave.
“What is he reading now?”
He’s not sure why he’s asking, but he always does. It’s about the only glimpse into Draco’s present, he’s offered.
“Romeo and Juliet”
“Really?”
“Suiting isn’t it?” Draco arches an eyebrow and grins at him from where he’s slouching on the bed.
“You do know that writer is muggle?”
“Hm” Draco says, rolling his eyes at him. “One might think I would have figured that out from the characters doing absolutely everything by hand but thanks for enlightening me, Potter.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Possibly. Now are you going to let me read it?”
“Maybe, or we could do something else” Harry suggests boldly and Draco puts the book down, grinning at him.
When Harry gets closer, his expression becomes grave and his long, elegant fingers grip the binding tightly. “You do know that story doesn’t end well?”
“Harry?”
“Sorry” he says to Michelle, snapping out of it. “I’m just a bit distracted.”
She eyes him with so much sympathy it’s almost painful.
“Thank you” he says and turns around to walk away.
III
“Are you ready?”
The old woman looms over him, a set of contradictions, short and thin but powerful. Black eyes, kind but piercing through his soul as she balances his life in her hands.
She does not urge him when there’s no reply but remains by his bedside, leaving him to consider. The immediate answer would be no, because how could anyone be ready for this? Although he knows the alternative, the pain it brings him to wake each morning to face yet another day.
“Yes” he breaths weakly though it is enough for her. A warm hand comes to rest on his forehead and random memories flood before his eyes; the water of the Black Lake choking him before gillyweed turns his lungs to giles, Dudley’s tongue growing out of his mouth, an auror badge placed on his chest next to his order of Merlin, Cho Chang’s lips against his, a locket resting cold and heavy against his skin. The images rapidly change before his eyes, blend in and out of focus until they lose their meaning.
There are the ones that hurt the most which he easily lets go of; Cedric Diggory dropping dead in front of him, the light fading from Sirius’ eyes, Dumbledore falling off the astronomy tower, blood soaking through a white shirt, the chief warlock of the Wizengamot announcing a five year sentence, Gavain Robards yelling that he is suspended.
Then there are also those which are bittersweet and complex that linger with him longer; the relief as Voldemort’s dead body hits the ground, him and Ginny crying in each other’s arms at the night of their break-up, Hermione in tears, sprouting a large belly, Ron’s blurry face mingling with anger and concern as he walks up to him in a bar, tiny fingers clasping his thumb, belonging to the goddaughter he won’t see grow up.
And there is what he has loved, that which he tries to hold on to; his first Christmas at Hogwarts, a swirling sense of freedom while diving for the snitch, summers at the Burrow, laughing with Ron and Hermione by the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. The memories warms him all the way to the soul but eventually they come to fade too.
And there is Draco; distant, lonely and hurting to the degree that it aches through Harry’s bones, only slowly opening up to Harry’s persistence, and then much later stretched out naked on a bed, warm and thrusting in his arms, grey eyes glittering silver as he teases, laughter falling off his lips easily now. There’s their first kiss tasting of lemon, firewhiskey and hope. There are endless night curled together in a bed at the manor. There’s Draco inside him, a moment too intimate and wonderful to handle. Every inch of his skin and every moment they’ve shared comes to him, up until the last time he holds Draco in his arms, making a promise he will not leave. Though the most painful of them all, he grasps onto that moment the longest and lets it rip him apart, not until there is nothing left of him to hold on with does it dissolves like smoke in the wind and fade to nothingness.
IV
After what feels like a long and restless sleep Harry wakes, instinctively fumbling for his glasses and his fingers close around the familiar frames. The room that comes into view is not one he knows, the mattress is too soft for his usual berth and the fresh mountain chill finding its way through the open window is nothing like the air of his damp and dusty cupboard. For some reason the idea that he’s in Kings Cross station comes to mind but he quickly dismisses it at the improbability.
“Hagrid?” he croaks.
Even before a female voice replies, he knows it isn’t, thinking him being able to leave the Dursleys was too good to be anything but a sweet dream. But the woman standing by his bed is neither Aunt Petunia and as he studies her, he senses that the Dursleys and his cupboard were a long time ago.
“Close your eyes, tell me what you remember” she demands and it does not occur to him to disobey.
Immediately he is flooded with images from his childhood in a confused and non-chronological blend. There’s him crouching on the branch of a tree while Ripper is barking underneath it. There’s Aunt Petunia telling him not to ask questions. His cousin and two other boys searching the schoolgrounds with clenched fists while he’s hiding underneath a staircase. A snake set loose in the zoo and Uncle Vernon yelling at him. There’s a bunch of memories of the same kind but they feel distant, unimportant.
Then there’s a huge man named Hagrid bursting into his life, altering it by revealing a new world hidden behind a brick wall where there’s color, glittering gold, creatures he never knew existed and at last, the truth about his parents.
The world is small though, narrowed down to a couple of blocks and no matter how thoroughly he searches it, he doesn’t seem able to move beyond the edges.
When the giant points him to a door where he’s supposed to buy himself a wizard’s robe, his vision immediately clouds and as he turns the handle he finds himself back on the street. He keeps returning to the door, because it seems urgent to get through, like there’s someone or something he needs on the other side and if he only could reach it, it would make him whole again. But the door won’t budge and for each time he tries, the harder it becomes to remember why it’s important and eventually the door loses its meaning and he steps away from it.
He opens his eyes and looks straight at the woman. “There’s magic?” he asks.
She smiles at him. “Not yet, but there will be.”