Just a Boy
Okay, apparently I am in an updating mood. This kind of popped out unexpectedly. I'm going to go reread some of my other stories and see if anything crops up. I don't need to sleep tonight. :)
I disclaim. See prior chapters for warnings, timelines, etc.
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The Boy Who Lived, twice, wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He’d spent most of the last seven years trying to prepare himself for a destiny that he fulfilled three days ago. He still wasn’t quite sure how he had lived through the experience, and even less sure of what to do with life after second non-death.
“It gets harder, actually, the more you survive.”
Harry turned sharply, surprised both by the intrusion at the Owlrey, especially as most of the top wing of Hogwarts was still structurally unsound, and that he had been surprised at all. The last year or so had made him twitchy, and a lot more aware of his senses, thanks to some long nights spent out in the woods with Remus, before he got too ill. His hand relaxed in its automatic grab for his wand when he saw who it was though.
Buffy Summers, unlike most of the wizarding community, was still definitely the worse for wear from the Last Battle. The bruises were fading slightly faster than they would on a normal person, and she looked less tired, even if the sight of bright green and yellow splashes against her tan skin was somewhat unnerving. Especially with the bruises peeking out from about fifteen different layers of winter clothing. None of it matching.
But then, the Slayer crew hadn’t exactly come prepared for a Scottish winter. Just a grand apocalyptic fight, and, perhaps, death. The remaining girls from all four Houses had cobbled together some clothes to borrow, and despite their general fashion forward focus, most of the Slayers had taken advantage of their generosity.
It surprised him still, almost two weeks after first meeting her, how small she really was. There was a silent quality to her that always made Harry think of Thestrals and therefore made the slender older woman larger than life in his mind whenever she was around him. He shook himself, and tried to concentrate on what she had said. And then wished he hadn’t.
“I had noticed that, a bit.” He self consciously ran a hand through ever shaggy hair as she entered the Owlrey and perched on an overturned bin. She wasn’t looking directly at him, instead her gaze was focused over the valley, but Harry wasn’t fooled. There was always an intensity, even despite the quietness, that told him when Buffy Summers was focusing on him. It was an unnerving and entirely unexpected experience.
“I… I’ve survived a lot.” She said finally, and Harry, feeling even more self-conscious from the words abruptly sat on the flagstones and drew his knees to his chin, more the awkward child than ever it seemed. She glanced at him, as he sat though, and he was relieved to see the quick flash of an understanding smile. “It's wrong somehow, the more you do it. Because even though everyone tells you how special you are, deep down YOU know you’re just like everyone else. And it doesn’t make sense every time you stand against the odds that you’re left standing afterward when they’re not.”
He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “You’re special. You’re The Slayer.”
Her piercing gaze found his, so sharp and sudden that he felt his breath leave in a whoosh. “No, I just a girl. You’re the Boy Who Lived.”
And even though his throat was constricting Harry managed to stutter out, “But that doesn’t MEAN anything. I’m just, I’m…”
“Just a boy whose mother died for him and who was written into prophecy. And I’m just a girl who inherited a bit of demon so that I could fight them as destined by prophecy. And none of those prophets who wrote those prophecies so long ago ever thought about what we’d be like. That three days after the end of your world you’d be walking around feeling like you were about to have a panic attack over the fact that you lived. That I lie awake at night and try to remember how many scars I’d have if they didn’t heal.”
Harry’s mouth gaped open, shut closed, and suddenly the words, the awful words that he could never tell a living soul began to rush out of him. A stream of selfishness, and terror, and shock. The humanity he had subdued to be the Boy Who Lived and not the boy who simply was. “I should have died. I should have died eight times. I mark them, on a stone behind the gold couch in the Gryffindor common room, in case I forget. And I’m not sure what’s worse, that I’ve lived so many times I shouldn’t have, or that I could forget how close I came to NOT living. That I could care so little, you know?
“And that’s how I feel, you know? That I care too little about EVERYTHING. I used to care about everyone, and I worried. I worried about school and friends, and whether or not there would be food at every meal. Because there didn’t used to be for so long, and what if one day the magic failed, and there just wasn’t any food. But now I forget to eat for days at a time and I’m happy that we saved the world, that so many of us survived, but I don’t CARE. I haven’t cried… I haven’t cried once since the Last Battle. And I should. I should still be crying because some of my friends, people who called me friends, didn’t make it.
“Maybe that makes me a monster, you know? Maybe one day, one day I’ll get bitter and angry, and be JUST LIKE HIM. I mean, I could you know? I know most of the spells, and my friends could kill for me, and well, it wouldn’t be so hard. To care so little to become like that. Right?”
And he did start crying then, when, at the end of his awful tirade, Buffy simply, gently, smiled. The tears surprised him, because they weren’t silent. They weren’t the tears of fear he had shed at night in the dorms, so the other boys wouldn’t hear. They weren’t the tears of rage that streaked his face as he defied the forces of darkness. They were tears that came with loud, wet sobs that racked his body and rocked him back and forth from the thing that Buffy had broken in him. The emotional wall that he hadn’t even known could be broken.
And just as suddenly she was on the floor next to him, and his head was on her shoulder, and when she stroked his hair he wondered, vaguely, if this was what it would have been like if he mom had lived. Because as much as he loved Mrs. Weasley, Molly just didn’t match the fierceness that he related to the mental image of his mother. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered and when he finally began to calm down, after what seemed like hours of crying, he hoarsely asked:
“How is it okay? How can any of that be okay?”
“Because you have today to live. To breathe, and eat three meals. And tomorrow to figure out the future. And if you go evil, we’ll fix you. We fixed Willow with a crayon and a hug, and she’s much scarier than you.” Buffy unwound one of the scarves from around her neck and handed it to him. “Blow.” And, surprisingly enough, he obeyed.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
Buffy Summers ruffled his hair and fluidly rose before leaning down to offer him a hand. “Harry, don’t be sorry that you lived, and be okay that it might take some time to figure out how to do it properly, without all the grown up brink of death stuff. Now what do you say we go crash the Hufflepuff common room? Some of the girls worked with the witchlets to rig American television to play and with the time difference its just about time for Saturday morning cartoons.”
He stared at the outstretched hand. “Does it get easier?”
The older woman laughed and it was a horribly joyful sound. All life and edges that cut to the bone no knife could. “No, but it gets better. With more cartoons. But only if we leave the Owlrey before all we can catch are the boring talk shows.”
And he didn’t laugh, but his own smile touched his eyes for the first time in days as he firmly grasped her hand and let her help him up.
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In most of his dreams, he couldn’t seem Amelie’s face the night he took their son from her arms for the last time. It wasn’t that Severus couldn’t recall it. There was little in his life that he couldn’t recall with calm precision. Anywhere but his dreams he could still sketch his dead wife’s face in a matter of minutes. Down to the freckle on the side of her nose that had so fascinated him while she slept. When he had been allowed, for so briefly, to be happy.
It was perhaps a self defense mechanism, that he usually couldn’t see the condemnation, the rage in her bright blue eyes as they blazed at him, hatred darkening them almost to black. He never, ever, ever blamed her. He couldn’t, not after what he had done. But tonight was different. Tonight apparently there were to be no defense barriers. No games of cat and mouse with his own mind.
And yet, as the awful scene began to unfurl, as his lips repeated the lines he had spoken so many years ago, as Amelie clutched screaming Alexander to her breast and defied that he should take their son, the color of the walls began to swirl, and though he could see Amelie’s eyes the rest of her began to melt away and the eyes… the eyes swirled from blue to brown.
Worried brown eyes…
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Willow frowned with worry, not at the older man who tossed and turned in magic induced sleep, though the older man’s brow was wet with sweat and he moaned, occasionally, in pain. She worried instead at the younger man standing silently at his bedside.
Xander’s back was ramrod straight, a classic sign of distress, but his shoulders were hunched inward, and Willow ached at the terror that must indicate. She remembered, probably better than Xander did, and that was for the best, what his parents had been like, especially when they were younger. When his dad hadn’t been afraid that Xander would one day hit back yet. When it was just her, Xander, and Jesse. Before Buffy and Giles came and saved them all in their own way, even if that meant a clean death.
It was the first time Xander had come down to the Mediwitch’s wing. Usually he spent a lot of time with any girls who got wounded after an attack. Helping the usually hyperactive Slayers pass the time. But in this, he had stayed away. Had stayed quiet in a way that made her throat ache with things she didn’t know if she should say.
Could say.
Their friendship had saved her once, but she didn’t know if it was friendship of a father Xander needed right now. She could provide the first, the second was out of even her considerable league. But she could be there for him, when he needed her. When Severus Snape woke up.
