Boredom and Bats
He is... very disinterested.
It is the very height of emotion he could muster nowadays, unfortunately. Hermione thinks he should partake in life somehow. Eat. Talk to people. Get a flat. Live.
Except he's tried that before. Life is nothing special. He's been doing it for eons. It's Death he truly wants.
Only, Death spat him out like overchewed gum. He's been trying to get the girl to take him back, to no avail. That absolute slag.
Hermione flitters about, her form floating and swirling around him in apparent worry.
You must at least eat something, Harry! She scolds him, her pallid frame clearly distraught.
He merely tugs his coat tighter to his body in response, and remains silent.
He does not see the point of eating. He has no need for it. He's practically tried every dish known to man by now. And he cannot die (much to his consternation). He is already dead, despite living still. He also hasn't eaten in... decades, he thinks, not that starvation affects him any. Hermione has been singing an old tune that he had long since stopped listening to.
He drifts though the muddy streets of Gotham, as he'd been for the past week. In his eternal state of unlife he'd passed through many places through many times. Cities that rose and fell. Civilizations. None of them interested him much. None of them were home.
He has no home.
He settles himself by the rooftop of a high-rise, contemplating... everything. It's all he has to do nowadays, and he has all the time to just sit and... think.
He has occasional bouts of activity, of life, within him still. When something completely new happens around him. When there are new discoveries, frontiers in innovation. When humanity colonized the Solar System. But these bouts of life come by less and less now.
He eyes the cluster of police cars chasing after some criminal or another. Sees a few silhouettes of figures with grapple hooks swinging by the city. By eight-o-clock in the evening, he watches those same figures swing back to wherever they came from. He's already figured the pattern now, and though before he would've found it funny how people still hadn't figured out that the Waynes were vigilantes, by now he just observes them with a slow, yawning apathy. The uncaring manner of Death he seems to now embody. He sees them live their lives, knowing that in the end, they would die too. In the end, there's nothing too different about these people, strange hobbies aside.
Hermione floats next to him, Ron having long given up on getting him to do more than exist.
It's almost cute how they always try to be home for supper, Hermione posits. Very... normal of them.
Harry very nearly scoffs. Everyone is normal compared to him, Harry Potter, bloody resident abomination of the multiverse.
"Maybe their in-house chef is just that good," he ventures. "And unlike me, they do need to eat. They're still people, Hermione."
Unlike me, goes unsaid.
Yes, of course they are, she waves off his comment. But what are the chances that they get everything done come suppertime? I skipped many a meal for more mundane things. Studying for Owls, for example. Studying for whatever test we had to take. And that surprise test for Potions, back in fourth year, do you remember? POTIONS! Merlin, do I hate that man.
Harry raises a brow at that. "It's highly unlikely that the Waynes would need to cram for tests. From what I gathered, they're all geniuses of some sort. Even the strange inferi-like one."
I did NOT cram! Hermione hisses vehemently, in that harsh whisper she always took when he offended her. Not that anyone else but Harry would hear. ...ALL of them are geniuses? Seriously?
"All of them," he replies with a slow nod. "And speaking of Sirius... While you and Ron were having your tiff, I called him. Bloke was not chuffed, I'll tell you that. He really hates being called. Anyway, he and I looked them up. It's how I found out that the 'Bats' are all basically human supercomputers."
Thats just it, Hermione mutters. They're vigilantes, all geniuses, you say, and each fitting the body types of the Gotham vigilantes. Nobody's figured them out, for some ungodly reason. And they're somehow almost always in time for supper. It's strange, is all. Considering that what they do at night isn't... mundane. They're a... very statistically unlikely family.
"There was nothing mundane about whatever made you skip meals," Harry softly chuckles. "Unless you call getting nearly clubbed to death by a troll mundane. Or getting petrified by a basilisk. Or any of the other harebrained shenanigans we used to get up to in the middle of the night. Punching a bunch of criminal tossers isn't exactly magical."
Hermione frowns, but remains silent.
He turns to look at her then. As a ghost she is washed out, pale, avada kedavra green spellscar glowing from her right cheek. Her eyes are no longer the bright amber they used to be, her hair no longer frizzing up when she's annoyed. She'd stopped using perfume after the incident with the snatchers when she was still alive, but now she just doesn't smell like anything. She's still Hermione in a way, but her spectre is so much... less.
She's right here, but he still misses her so much.
Seemingly sensing the dark turn of his thoughts, she again looks at him worriedly, silently fussing over him once more.
"Hermione."
...Yes, Harry?
"Dont..." he sighs. "Don't worry too much. I'm fine."
Don't leave me, is what he doesn't say. He knows she won't. Can't. Not for very long, anyway. The night before she died, she Vowed to never leave him, and now she never could.
With another sigh, Harry Potter turns his gaze once more towards the bustling city below.
He is... disinterested, right now.
But mostly he's just tired.