All of you, let me lay in the dark
What started as his greatest desire - to finally have a wand, to be able to cast magic, to be on his way to becoming a full-fledged wizard, turned into a revelation he wished he would have never stumbled upon.
When Harry left Oliivander’s, he left it seven Galleons lighter, with a wand in his pocket and his shoulders burdened by the knowledge that its brother belonged to the man who killed his parents. He walked mindlessly on the narrow backstreet, muttering idle ‘sorry’s at the people he’d almost bump into. With his head hanging low, the wizards wouldn’t even notice who he was, and he’d much rather prefer it this way, keeping his eyes fixed on the cobblestone street. Harry did not want to face anyone - he didn’t think he could handle a single person recognising him, bowing, wanting to shake his hand. All he wanted was to melt against one of the walls. Disappear.
An arm wrapped around his shoulders, and Harry stopped walking. He felt a tight squeeze, and let himself be pulled close. Still with her arm around his shoulders, her hand reached to his forehead, and the enormous sleeve of her robe almost covered him from head to toe. Harry closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
“Hold on tight, pisoi.” Harry raised his hands, and held tight onto her arm. He knew what that meant, and was thankful for not having to utter it.
The first time he had experienced Apparition, he almost vomited on the spot when they reached their destination. Despite the sensation lasting for less than a second, Harry felt squeezed like toothpaste in too narrow of a tube. Slowly, he had gotten more and more used to the sensation, however his knees still buckled when Lena let go of him.
They were back in the tiny hallway in front of his room at the Leaky Cauldron. A soft buzzing of voices was audible from downstairs, yet Harry couldn’t see anyone, and was thankful for it, as Lena unlocked his door with a spell and opened it.
“Want me to stay?”
“I don’t know.” Harry couldn’t muster to say more as he went straight to his bed and laid down, taking off his glasses before he shoved his face in the pillow. An apathy surrounded his body as he didn’t find any energy left in himself to move. He listened to the shuffle of Lena’s feet against the carpet, and his chest tightened, heart thumping. “Please stay.”
His head moved slightly, and out of the corner of his eye, he watched an orange blob glide around his room, and then a small, white blob approach his vision, becoming bigger and bigger, until it completely covered his vision. He felt a light pecking against his temple, and slowly, his chest felt lighter.
The living faces of his parents were etched in his head. Smiling in his photographs of them, looking at him, waving their hands, his father spinning his mother. That was the image Harry preserved of them. Without memories, that was the image he wanted to preserve of them. His mother, with her red hair falling alongside her face. His father, lifting his glasses in the same manner Harry picked up. He knew they were dead, he wasn’t a moron, yet until he went to Ollivander’s, he had nothing apart from the knowledge of it.
However, now, he had a wand related to the one used in their deaths.
Harry knew he wasn’t comfortable with death. He avoided it. When a beloved witch in the village died some three years ago, he was very well aware the only person in Tosci refused to participate in any of the ceremonies. He remembered watching the funeral ceremonies from afar, either atop an assortment of chairs, holding himself against their enormous fence, or climbing on the branch of a linden tree, at a safe distance from the graveyard. But he didn’t find it within himself to be there.
Even when Felix died, he remembered being stuck on the spot, his body frozen, not being able to avert his eyes as Lena bundled his body in a fresh linen sheet, and cradled the cat like a baby. He had no idea where his body went - did she bury him in the garden? In the graveyard?
Back then, at the death of the witch, he wondered, seeing lit candles in the night in her house, watching witches gather in the day to cook and gossip in the garden, watching branches of fir trees floating atop the house, what happened to his parents after they died. Did someone take care of them? Were they cried by their friends? Did anyone hold vigil for them? Did aunt Petunia ever visit her sister? Were they missed still?
Did anyone visit their graves? Did they even have graves?
One time, perhaps a year ago or so, Lena took him to a ‘famous’ graveyard - if you could call a graveyard famous. He remembered his reluctance as he held tight on her on the broom, and then shock as he saw from above the most colorful place he had ever seen. As they slowly went down, he saw not only an assortment of brilliantly vivid flowers, but the gravestones themselves were decorated in bright colors, with enormous drawings. In addition to the usual names and dates, were lines of text, which Harry soon found out were poems.
He read one about a mother-in-law “Thread lightly, not to wake her up. I’ll be damned if she comes home!” One about a single man. “Too bad the hair on my head greyed, and I’ve gotten old, and I haven’t loved enough in my life. Pray for my good looks to return!” Harry remembered his surprise, and the explanation Lena gave him.
“They cherish their loved ones by remembering their lives. What they meant to them.” She must have said more, however Harry could not remember her words as much as he remembered the bright gravestones. Even back then, he knew that was just the latest in a chain of attempts to try to get him to want to visit his parent’s graves. And he almost fell for it that day - yet decided against it right as he opened his mouth, saying instead that he’d like to go back now.
Thinking still about the bright cemetery, Harry closed his eyes, and allowed himself to fall into a deep sleep, soothed by his owl’s soft hoots.