Chapter 18
“Cause I don’t care if I lose my mind,
I’m already cursed.”
-- Fairytale, Alexander Rybak.
.XoX.
Harry had always wondered what it would feel like to die. It’s something that writers do -- try to put feelings and emotions they haven’t themselves experienced into words. Like how he writes about romantic attraction. He will never fall in love, but he has imagined it before. For his writing, he’s imagined a lot of things.
He’s heard some people do more than imagining. A boy -- a Lion, who else? -- during his fourth year got a friend to stab him so he could accurately describe it. And though Harry is certainly impressed with the dedication, it’s never been something he’s been all that into himself.
He has written his injury scenes and allowed himself some degree of inaccuracy -- it’s a book, after all, and a book he has no intention of sharing to anyone else. Who will be bothered if the sensation is really more throbbing than stabbing? Not him, that’s for sure. Not him at all.
In one of his short stories, he throws a line in carelessly and thoughtlessly. A man is dead -- had gone to bed to, simply, never wake up again -- and is told that he died instantly and in his sleep and the main character wonders if it was a painless death.
If any death at all is.
And now he is dead and he has the answer. His character is not just melodramatic, he’s spot fucking on. He will write about this moment indirectly and directly in a thousand poems and a million short stories. Put some accuracy in any death scene he creates, give it a kick that no other author can feasibly supply.
He does not understand that Lion in fourth year, though. Perhaps, now, he understands him less.
Harry Potter died and came back and the moments in between were not empty. The moments after were horrifying. And though he will milk it for all its worth, because any trauma he goes through is just another arc for his character’s development…
It was not worth it.
And what does it feel like, now that the moment has come and gone, now that he has died instantly and supposedly painlessly?
It feel like fucking Hell.
.xox.
He’s sitting between his mother and father, swinging his legs idly. He is eating popcorn casually while his mother tells him about Hogwarts.
The amazement on his face -- and the freedom in the way he eats, the lack of guilt and panic and overthinking -- tunes him into the fact that this is an old memory. While he was in a marriage contract and, blissfully, unaware of it. The first time he’d heard of the school that would later become his home.
(Though he’d thought dead people didn’t have memories. Is this, he wonders, what they mean when they talk about your life flashing before your eyes?
But that’s weird, too.
Why would he be dead?)
There’s four Houses, she’s saying, running her hands along his scalp. Slytherin, for the cunning and ambitious.
“And evil,” his father adds. Lily wacks him lightly on the head.
“For those with a knack for slyness,” she supplies. “There is nothing evil about self preservation. Then there’s Ravenclaw.”
“For nerds.”
“For the clever, creative, and wise.”
“So, basically,” his father says. “For nerds.”
“I was supposed to go to Ravenclaw, I’ll have you know.”
“Yeah. ‘Cause you’re a nerd.”
She kisses him gently on the check. “I’m a brave nerd. Hence the Gryffindor.”
“Mainly a nerd, though.”
She rolls her eyes. “Then there’s Hufflepuff.”
“The loyal, fluffy badgers!”
“Not always fluffy,” she corrects softly.
“But always loyal.”
“Not always loyal, either.” She says, in a sing song voice, “And Hufflepuff takes the rest.” Harry remembers that. He had went around repeating it over and over until he’s sure both of his parents got tired of it.
And Hufflepuff takes the rest!
…When did he stop hoping to be a badger? When did he stop expecting to?
Some point after he turned ten. But he can’t remember -- not exactly -- the why or precise when.
His father shrugs. “Sure, sure. You ever met a mean Hufflepuff, though? Rarest thing ever.”
“That girl in second year begs to differ.”
“She was a Badger?!”
“Yes, she was a Badger! I can’t believe you don’t remember.”
“Sorry, love,” he says, grinning. “I guess I’m getting old.”
“Oh, please. We’re the same age.”
“Maybe we’re both getting old.”
“Love. We’re barely twenty eight.”
“Which is almost thirty.”
“Which is not old.”
“I feel old.”
“Well I don’t!”
He eyes her. “Really?”
His mother huffs, then addresses the boy between them. “Ignore him.”
“Hey!”
“What I was trying to get at -- before your father so rudely interrupted me -- is that all the Houses have their perks. And we’ll -- both of us -- be happy with your Sorting. Whatever House you end up in.”
His father grumbles, but after a stern glare from Lily, reluctantly adds, “Yeah. Whatever House you end up in.”
His mother kisses him on the forehead. Her eyes shine with adoration. He is her only child. She would do anything for him. “We just want you to be happy,” she says.
(When did that change? …Did it ever? Harry wishes he knew.)
This house. His mother and father, who love each other. Who love him. He will carry this affection in his heart even when they are dead to him.
Even when he himself is dead.
The image fades from his mind.
.xox.
(The Past.)
The homely kitchen. The scent of incense. The living room with a couch and two armchairs. Love in the air and in the food and in every person in the house. A window above the sink. (His eyes linger on the scene outside for just a moment. There is sand outside. Why would there be so much sand -- so much discolored sand -- outside?)
Even so, he recognizes this place.
Doesn’t he?
That… woman there, the one chopping apples at the kitchen counter, he knows her. Knows her voice, knows that red hair, knows that old, old apron. He knows her. He wants to love her.
Why doesn’t he?
The woman pipes up, back still turned to him, “Are you hungry?”
“No!” he snaps… and he sounds young. The adolescence is back in his voice like it never went away, and maybe it didn’t. Maybe he is wrong to think that he is ten years old again because maybe he never wasn’t.
The woman -- he’s still searching for her name, he thinks he does know it -- pauses in her cutting. She glances at him over her shoulder with eyes so brightly green. “Are you alright?” she asks quietly.
He eyes the apple with narrowed, glaring eyes. The red is vivid. It is so, so juicy and fresh. It looks delicious. Was it picked from the apple tree outside, home grown? It must have been.
But he can’t have it. He’s trying to do something.
(...What is he trying to do again? His mind is all wrong. His memories are all jumbled up. Any and all knowledge is both inherent and not concrete.
It is like a large chunk of his brain has been blown out and here he is, sorting through the pieces.)
“No,” he says again, wrapping his arms over his chest. “Why would I be okay?” His tantrum (is that the right word for it? For some reason, he doesn’t know) is his self destruction.
What a weird response to pain, he thinks. To make it hurt more.
The lady sighs, wiping her knife on her apron. Mother, he thinks, finally. She is his mother.
(His mother, the one he wants so badly to love and be loved by. The one he isn’t and doesn’t. But -- and he cannot place this, cannot place anything -- …why? Why does he hate her? This hatred feels fresh on his soul. He wonders, so young, if he will ever grow out of it.)
(He knows, oldly, that he won’t.)
She grabs the cutting board of apples and places them down on the middle of the table. She takes her seat across from him.
He eyes the food with a watering mouth. He’s… new to this, to starvation. Will he ever get used to it? He wants to. Needs to. How will he ever die if he cannot persist through mere fruit?
“I understand you’re hurting,” she’s telling him. She knows he is young, too. She knows he is young and thinks he is too young -- too young to know the truth, too young to be hurting himself in the absence of it. “But, I promise, this is for the best. You need to eat. It’s been days,” and she does say his name at the end of it, a desperate plea, but it comes out as static and white noise.
He pouts his lip out further. He pushes the apples off of the table and onto the floor with an angry wave of his hand. A tantrum. He’s yet to pick a side between outward and inward destruction. But he will in time.
(And time… feels fluid here. Why can’t he pinpoint why? Why can’t he pinpoint where here is?)
His mother sighs. Not angry, not disappointed… not with him at any rate. She bends over in her chair and picks up, carefully, the apple slices, placing them in one hand.
When she sits up again, his mother is gone and in her place is a girl, his age, with pale grey eyes and embroidered clothing. The word ‘sharp’ can be used.
(The Present.)
He clears his throat. He feels the guilt of age in him now. (Will he ever outgrow that, too? Guilt for the things he did and the things he didn’t and things he should’ve. He wonders if he will die with it. If he already has.) “I’m sorry for…” he points a finger toward the now dirty food in her hand. “You know.”
“That I do,” she says, eyes lidded. “It’s alright.”
“Is it?” he asks. He is not just talking about the apples.
“...I don’t know,” she admits. “But I think so. Is that worth something?”
She… he recognizes, is a friend. He will only ever sometimes call her that. Why? What did she do? What did he do?
He doesn’t know. But he’s sorry. If that is worth something.
She stands from her chair. She’s going to grab another apple. One for her, because she is hungry. She is hungry and willing and able to eat.
She will offer one to him, too, knowing he will not take it.
Why can’t he be like her? So strong, so stable, able to establish boundaries when she needs them… Healthy. The word he is looking for is physically and mentally healthy.
What happened to him? He is a mess. There is a reason he is a mess. And why…
Why can’t he remember why?
When he considers it -- the start of this predicament, his hatred of his body, of its needs, of himself -- nothing comes up. Images presented are foggy and voices he does not know give him out of context clips of a conversation he should and does not remember.
You will change your mind when you’re older.
It is a good thing for you, too.
We love you anyway, of course.
The only clear image is a man with chestnut hair and red eyes. He’s evil normally. He’s evil here, too.
He is not sure how. But he is sure.
When his friend -- his penpal, his victim, all of it, all at once -- turns around, holding a bright red apple in her hand, in her stead is a ghost. A ghost with a skeletal body and cheeks so sunken in she looks half-rotted. A ghost.
No, he thinks, watching her with something akin to envy, to regret. She is no ghost. She is not dead because fiction does not die.
He does know this girl. There is nothing foggy about this memory.
“Katherine,” he breathes.
(The Future.)
“What…” he says, looking around, looking at her, looking out the window. There is something wrong going on outside. There is something wrong going on inside. “What are you… doing here?”
She feels the apple in her hand, tossing it up and catching it once. Looking at her reflection in the shine. She is ugly. She’d been asked to paint beauty and instead painted herself. But she is working on it. (There is beauty in life.)
“I’m eating,” she answers.
“Wh…what?”
“I’m eating,” she repeats. “To get better.”
“But,” he says, the author of her book, the god of her world, “Katherine was never supposed to recover.”
“Well then, Harry Potter. Maybe it’s time to write a sequel.”
She bites into the apple.
Juice runs down her chin.
.xox.
When Harry blinks the house -- his home -- is gone. He lies on the ground, naked and tired.
His head hurts.
Beneath him and around him is sand. Green sand, nearing blue, stretching on for miles and miles. Above him is a pastel sky of holographic watercolor.
Air enters his lungs roughly. Breathing pokes the sensitive flesh of his throat and nose. He smells sea salt.
Where is he?
No.
That’s not the right question.
What is he?
“You,” a voice says, “are unwell.”
Harry rises on his arms shakily and shifts so he is looking behind him. It’s a woman. A tall woman -- nearing ten feet -- though Harry can only see her backside. Long black hair comes down to her middle back.
When he speaks his voice comes out a sad croak. “Unwell?” He coughs into his fist.
She looks at him -- her eyes, he notes, are a brown so dark it is nearly black -- then back at her work. She’s cleaning his clothes the old fashioned way. She is wearing robes -- school robes? -- that are a deep navy blue. Around the edges, there is bronze.
“Unwell,” she says, her voice firm, her tone carrying well, “is one word for it.”
“Am I dead?” What prompted him to ask the question, he’s unsure. He doesn’t remember how he got here, what happened beforehand, but dead…
Dying feels about right.
“Dead is another.” She dips his undershirt into the water.
He settles himself into criss crossing his legs, looking at his still trembling hands absently.
Dead, he thinks. I am dead.
He doesn’t like it.
Why doesn’t he like it?
“What happened?” he asks.
“You saved one of our own,” she answers. There is a trace amount of pride in her words. “The most Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist, how you might put it. You saved her. You then died. Tragic.”
“...Do you mean Luna?”
“Who else?”
“I just,” he shifts, feeling the fine sand under him. “Did not think that she was the most ‘Raven Ravenclaw.’”
“Think twice, then,” she says, sounding tired of him. “For she would never have to.”
“I saved her,” he says, ignoring the urge to snap at her. “What from?”
“That’s hardly the right question.”
Harry gets it. “Who from?”
“You already know the answer to that,” she says, wringing water out of his shirt.
“No, I don’t.”
“You do.”
Like she knows him better than he does. “No,” he says, frustrated. “I don’t.”
“It’s somewhere in there,” she says. “I have faith you’ll find it.”
Harry doesn’t. But it is not the last of his questions, so he continues, “Who are you?”
“You know that, too. Work for it. Guess.”
Harry’s first answer comes immediately. “Death,” he says. “You’re Death.”
She pauses. “Not entirely correct,” she admits, shrugging her shoulders. “But not entirely wrong. Try again.”
Harry grips his hands into fists.
I know it already?
What do I know?
(Blue and bronze.
“Saved one of our own.”
Speaking in riddles, in questions…
“The most Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist.”)
“You’re Rowena Ravenclaw,” he says, awed. “One -- one of the Founders of Hogwarts.”
“Yes,” she says, proud of herself, proud of him. She folds his clothes over her arm, still damp. “I am also much more. For now, though… For now, Rowena Ravenclaw is all you need to know. I have… I suppose, two things left to tell you. We haven’t much time.”
“Before what?”
“Before you wake up. Before you return to the land of the living.”
Harry isn’t following. “I thought I was dead.”
“You are,” she said. “Though not for much longer.”
He feels relief. He never thought he would feel relief at living -- but he does not like it here. His head hurts. He has things left to do.
(He had worked so hard to kill himself before. Why had he done that, if this is what he would get in return?)
She kneels beside him. He is dwarfed in comparison. She hands him his clothes. “You are my champion.”
“Like -- like of the Tournament?”
She goes quiet. A small smile makes it way onto her face. “If you wish to think of it that way. There are other champions. You already know one.”
“I… I don’t think I do.” (Even so, face comes to mind. He is sitting at the Slytherin table and watching a Snake fight a Badger.)
“You do. You will need to gather the others -- and then you will need to find me.”
“I don’t understand.” Nothing she’s saying is making any sense -- like, champions? He died and now he’s being revivied and it doesn’t take a Luna fucking Lovegood to figure out that isn’t supposed to happen.
He is the least Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist. If there is anyone worthy of Rowena’s presence, it isn’t him.
And…
And if he died to see her, and she wants him to see her again, then what exactly is she asking?
“Yes, you do. You will. Listen, Harry. Listen.” She looks into his eyes, taking his hands -- so small -- into her own. “Are you listening?”
He says, quiet, “I am.” He is not understanding but he is listening.
“The Deathly Hallows are a lie.”
And then he wakes up on a hospital bed, wearing a diadem with a hole in his head.
.XoX.
“I marvel at the beauty of life.
I marvel at the rising chest of a yet dead cat.
I marvel at the voice of a friend;
The laugh they are still able to produce.
My body is not a temple,
But a shack
And even shacks, I suppose
Work as shelter.”
-- Harry Potter, “The Empress.”