POTTER, harry james

HARRY JAMES POTTER

** 24 -- PRO SEEKER -- BRITISH -- SINGLE **

"I am brave, I am bruised

I am who I'm meant to be, this is me"

hero

The Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One. Saviour of the Wizarding World.

These are the names they give you. The names foisted on you from infancy, the names you do not want. You are a hero, hailed and famed for something you did as a small child, not in control of your own magic.

You ended a war when you were barely a year old, and you've never been allowed to forget it.

Your every move is watched, scrutinised, criticised. You are expected to be a paragon of virtue - but for what? It will not bring your parents back. It will not give you a family who loves you, the family you long for. They will never see you as a person, never allow you to make mistakes.

To them, you are Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. A shining image on a pedestal, out of reach and untouchable.

You just want to be Harry. Just Harry. You want to be allowed to make mistakes and learn who you are and be your own person, with no expectations placed upon you.

You are not.

You suppose that your "saving people thing" as Hermione calls it doesn't help matters - but you can't just leave it to the adults. Adults never fix things. Nobody listened when you said Snape was after the stone - and alright, he wasn't, but someone was, and those traps should have been a lot harder if three eleven year olds could get through them, even if Hermione is exceptional. Nobody went looking for Ginny, or the Chamber, or the monster - and a twelve year old girl figured out that it was a basilisk, so why didn't Dumbledore? Nobody fought for Sirius to have a trial much less defended his innocence. Nobody tried to figure out who put your name in the Goblet. Nobody realised that Mad-Eye Moody was being impersonated for a whole year. Nobody noticed that Sirius was dying inside living in Grimmauld Place. Nobody stopped him dying. Nobody else realised about the Horcruxes. Nobody did anything to stop Voldemort's return to power. Nobody.

You spend your whole childhood looking after yourself. You didn't catch any breaks there was no-one there to help you - if you don't help, who does? You have to be the hero because nobody else will.

athlete

Flying is the only time you feel free, and it's the only thing you know for sure that you're good at. You're the youngest Seeker in a century and your father was a Quidditch player like you and it's the first thing you ever knew of him. Up on your Firebolt, nothing can touch you. You're free as anything and there's nothing to hold you back or tie you down. You spent three months in Auror training before bailing and trying out for the Catapults, and you have never loved anything more than getting to play for a living, getting to fly and fly and fly and when you land go out with the rest of the team and be normal.

Sometimes you think about just...not stopping. Just flying until you reach the end of the world. Somewhere where nobody knows you and you can do whatever you want.

You're small and skinny and fast, the years of running from Dudley making you so. You were quick before anybody gave you a broom, flying before your feet ever left the ground - you used to run even when Dudley wasn't chasing you, just for something to do, your torn up shoes rapidly falling apart.

You spent your summers running around Little Whinging, the steady beat of your feet hitting the pavement soothing the restless thump of your heart and the relentless pounding of your brain. You run until there's hardly any oxygen left in your lungs, and then you keep going.

You've spent your whole life running, and you can't see yourself ever stopping.

raw

Your throat is raw from the screaming in the middle of the night. You don't know how the neighbours haven't heard you yet. You dream of Cedric's death, of the ritual, of the pain when he touched you, the Cruciatus, your nerves singing with fire. You dream of the dementors, coming for Sirius. You dream of your mother's screams. You dream of the last stand, Molly's wailing grief over Fred, Remus's glassy eyes. You dream of Dumbledore, falling from the tower. You dream of Quirrell, the basilisk, death on death on death, pain on endless pain.

You feel like your skin's been turned inside out, your insides left scrubbed raw for the world to see. You ache and you burn and you scream and you scream and you scream even after you're awake because there's nothing you can do to make the pain go away. You hate and you rage and you ache and your skin feels like it's been scrubbed with wire wool; every inch of you is raw and broken and you don't know how to fix it.

reckless

You don't think before you act, don't question your decisions; you just fling yourself into the fire blindly and with no regard for how you'll make it out again. Self-preservation? You have no idea what that is.

Hermione is your conscience and Ron your strategy - you just go, making decisions on the turn of a dime, driven by impulse. You don't know how to be any other way. You just go and you do and hope blindly that it'll all work out okay in the end. You don't think, never have, relying only on instinct and the wand in your hand and the feet in your boots to get you through what life throws at you.

You're a total bleeding idiot and you know it.

You don't care enough about yourself to think of the dangers before you do things. You're sodding terrified doing them, of course, but - it doesn't matter to you if you survive or not.

You should probably be worried about that.

You just...you don't care. Bad things always happen when you're around, so why shouldn't you keep on trying to fix it? Nobody else is. And clearly nobody cares enough to try and stop it from happening to you. Nobody ever cared enough to stop it. Nobody stopped the Dursley's from locking you in a cupboard, from putting bars on your window, from forcing you to do endless chores way beyond your capabilities, from calling you a freak like your father; dirty, disgusting, dark-skinned wild-haired freak.

young

You're too young for this. You've only just turned twenty-four, but you've already faced Voldemort more times than you can count, stopped a war, began another and ended that, watched men die, rescued your godfather, killed a giant snake, fought off a dragon, raced around the country hunting horcruxes, killed a man...sometimes you feel so old and all you want to do is sleep until it's over.

That's not going to happen, though - not for as long as you keep dreaming.

Other times you forget, and you think that maybe this is what it's like to feel twenty-four again. When you catch the snitch, and the team hoist you up onto their shoulders. When Hermione tells you about some new discovery, wide grin and pens jammed into her her hair. When Ginny smiles, or Ron shoves you, laughing, or you go for drinks with the team and they slap you on the back for another win. When you're the one getting the round in, when Teddy smiles at you when you take him out, when Andromeda makes you tea.

This must be what it feels like to be normal, you think to yourself.

Sometimes, you do just get to be twenty-four. Sometimes, you do smile, and mean it. Sometimes, there's hope.

You hold onto that, because it's all you've got.

OOC NAME: bea

ACCEPTED



Please be sure to fill out the appropriate claims that can be found HERE.