Fine Again

---******---

It seems like every day´s the same and

I´m left to discover my own.

For me, though, the days plodded on endlessly. Each class was toil, work that I had to forcemyself through and that I could not avoid for the life of me. The back of my mind nagged that there was a reason for all of this, but most of the time, I felt unable to discover it. My life had gone cold, like fingers exposed too long to the elements, overtaken by the frostbite of sorrow.

My relationships with my friends began to deteriorate as fall set in. I could not stand the smiling faces any more, but comfort and condolences just irritated me. My girlfriend, Parvati Patil, tried to stick it out with me, but there was nothing in it. We had not been that strong before, and afterwards, it all fell apart. She could not . . . connect with me, and I felt unable to share my mind with her. She was not what I needed, anyway. But I asked myself, in my more lucid moments, what did I need?

Quidditch, like my friends, was over. Practice seemed meaningless to me, in light of what had happened. Plus, my right arm did not really work right all the time, after what he did to it. Sometimes it twitched or jerked, especially when I needed it not to. Catching the snitch began to prove all but impossible, but I gave it a half-hearted try for the first couple of weeks. Then there was the time I blacked out in mid-air. That was the breaking point for me, and I do not think Madame Pomfrey would have let me play any more anyway.

I threw myself into books with renewed vigor, though. Hermione was my guide in this, when she was okay. This was not often, but all she needed to do was tell me the names of the books, and I could find them. Really, though, the reading just helped push me further from everyone. I used it like a wall, as Hermione must have done. We pushed everyone else, and most of all each other, away. She could not stand to see me, because she was angry, I guess. I could not stand to see her: she always looked like she had just been crying.

It seems like everything is gray and there´s no color to behold.

They say it´s over and I´m fine again, yeah.

Winter set in, and Ron was not there. He had always been there before, but now he was gone. No more snowball fights, no more lost house points (no more lost house points lost together), no more poking fun at Hermione about her studying, no more anything. His sister tried to comfort me now and then, and she probably did the best job of anyone. It was not that great, though. She probably had more reason to mourn than I did. It may have been selfish, but I just did not care. I could tell she wanted more from me than just my sorrow, too, and I was not ready to give that to her or anyone else. Maybe I never would be.

For me, the color bled out of life just as the blood had rushed from the gaping emptiness in Ron´s chest. Like the color, the blood ran all over the ground, into all the wrong places, none of it where it should have been. I tried, but I could not put it all back. I was not strong enough. But he had put the emptiness there. Every time I thought of it, the rage filled me again. They said I would glow with a blue-white light at times like that. I did not really notice; my vision only ran red. And sometimes I would just scream, but only when I was alone, like in the prefects´ bathroom or out near the lake. I do not know if anyone heard me, and, like a lot of other things, I did not care about that either.

They tried to tell me everything was going to be okay. Dumbledore and some of the others tried to convince me to come back to real life, but to me the life I was living was the only reality left in the world. Reality was cold, reality was hard, there was no joy in reality. I tried to explain this to them in terms they would understand, but they kept on talking to me about faith in the future and hope for a better time. They never were too quick. They could not understand what I was saying. But I tried to tell them anyway, that my faith was fury and that my hope was hatred, that my future was vengeance.

Oh, yes, I told myself. I swore and railed that I would avenge him, and believed the lie easily. I could not avenge him. If I was too weak to put the blood back in and close that terrible hole in his chest, how could I fight the one who put it there? But I got ready anyway, knowing that when the time came, I would try, and fail. How much good could I do? I was so damn weak and my pathetic right arm would do nothing for me. I could not win.

Try to stay sober feels like I´m dying again.

When I went to Hogsmeade (quite a bit more frequently than I was supposed to), I would look longingly at the "fortified" butterbeer, or at some of the Muggle alcohols. I longed to drown myself in this sorrow, which would be bad, but not as bad as what I was living. I held myself back, knowing that the moment I took that quick panacea would be the same moment my vengeance was lost completely. It tempted me nonetheless, like a candle flame tempts a moth, but worse, since I had already been burnt twice and a third time burning would not damage much that the first two times had not already destroyed. My friends counseled me to stay away from "that stuff" when they knew what I was thinking, but that was not often. I felt my control slipping little by little as winter came on in full force.

And I am aware now how

everything´s gonna be fine

one day too late. I´m in hell

I am prepared now

seemseveryone´s gonna be fine

one day too late, just as well.

Dumbledore saw that I was not about to be convinced of the goodness of the world, so he began including me in his strategy discussions. I think he realized that, though my body was weak and my heart weaker, my rage and magic could be used as a weapon. He was a master planner; I could see that even through the cloud covering my eyes. He positioned the pieces, oh, how he positioned them. He positioned them with strength brought by cynicism and paranoia, two things I had never seen in him. After he let down his walls to me, I saw that I, too, was little more than a playing piece on his board to him, albeit a valuable one. He laid everything out for me: all the complicated plots, Snape´streachery and how it might play into our hands, everything. The more I looked, though, the more I saw that we were nowhere close to getting him or even finding out where he was. I sank deeper into sorrow.

News from the outside world got worse. People began disappearing from the Muggle world. At first, it was just a few, and none of them counted it as anything more than the usual fluxes in the numbers of runaways, murders, and kidnappings. Gradually, it got worse, though, and by midway through November of that icy winter, Muggle authorities were getting worried. We all knew what was happening, though, and no one doubted who was responsible. But the wizards as a group were far too weak to help anyone, just like my body was far too weak to help me. Though Dumbledore had faith in his strategies, I doubted their potency.

I grew stronger in magic. When my rage would build, I no longer glowed blue. I burned blindingly blue-white. No one could stand to be in the same room with me, at times like those. Just as well, I did not really want them there. No one could help me, just my books, my rage, my magic, and my loneliness. This became all that I was.

I feel the dream in me expire and there´s no one left to blame it on

I hear you label me a liar cause I can´t seem to get this though

I knew that this grace period of distance from my relationships would eventually die. All things die, so no surprise that this would to. Someday soon, someone would try to lash me to themselves, to grapple me back in, to stop me from spiraling away. They would fail, of course. By now, I was burning too brightly to not hurt someone who tried to come close. Even if someone was willing to suffer that pain, no ropes could hold me: ropes burn in fire.

Ginny started trying to talk to me. I did not want to deal with her or hurt her, so I put her off, and put her off, making up excuses, letting myself be forced into the world of practicality for moments on end, when I wanted to live as far from that as I could. I hated this like I hated the light, and like I hated the darkness. The practical world was full of barriers that stopped me from my future, my vengeance. My distance from my goal, him, was in the practical world. So was my weakness, and my right arm. His strength, too, lived in the real world, and I wanted to be as far from that as possible, though I wanted to get as close as I could to him.

One day, I lashed out at her. I told her she could not understand what it was like for me, and that she could not help. I told her that I did not love her, and never would. I told her I hated anyone that tried to distract me from my goal, and that her brother had meant more to me than I could possibly tell anyone. I told her that her feelings were nothing next to mine, and that she should not bother me again, ever. I made her cry, but I got rid of her. My ties to the practical world diminished again, and it pleased me.

You say it´s over, I can sigh again, yeah.

After that, people stayed away from me. I rarely saw Hermione with her red, puffy eyes anymore. Dean, Seamus, and Neville all avoided me, as did all the girls, which was just as well. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I would not have to worry: I could spend more time strengthening my poor, pathetic body and less poor, but just as pathetic, magic.

I learned much from books that winter. They filled me with the knowledge of darkness and light (both of which I hated equally, though I learned to use them to my ends). I learned how to kill people, undead, resurrects, children, demons, ghosts, and everything in between. I learned spells that could dampen pain, spells that would cause pain, spells to close wounds (had I only known them before!), spells to open wounds, spells to shape, and spells to destroy. I learned, eventually, to deflect even the most powerful curses, and practiced regularly on myself in that room that had once held the Mirror of Erised. I strove toward my new Erisedreflection, all the while knowing the new goal to be just as unattainable as the first.

Why try to stay sober when I´m dying, yeah.

In mid-January, an unnatural storm settled on Britain. The sun did not come out any more. I think it was his attempt to intimidate me, but I´m not sure. I know he must have sensed a power growing in those walls that held me, but I knew with a vile certainty that he did not fear me and was just playing with me.

One day, during our strategy conference, Dumbledore told me he could get me close to him if I felt like I could give it a shot. My right arm was doing a little better, but not much: I still could not trust it with a wand. My left was good enough, though. My magic was stronger than it had ever been, and when I sank into my rage, things around me blackened at my touch. I told him I was ready, again believing my own lie. The right hand truly knew not what the left was doing. He gave me a date, I gave him a nod, and I left. I walked calmly to my dormitory, just as I did every night. If a man feels dead, news of his impending doom does not much frighten him.

I went by the Three Broomsticks the night before the end with something different than usual in mind. Without my friends to periodically reinforce my own determination, it had slipped further and further and eventually died. All that I had lacked was a convenient time to drink myself into oblivion, and I found it that night. But, contrary to my expectations, I did not. I drank one half-pint. I asked for a refill, but only looked at it after it had been given me. This was not how I wanted to go out, I decided. I needed something dramatic.

I picked up the glass mug and stood up in that bar which had looked alive two years ago. Now, whether it was a trick of my sight or just cold reality, it seemed dingy and dark, with too many shadows where there were shadows and too much light where there was any. I stood there and hated it, like I hated the rest of my life. Meanwhile, the attention of the people in the bar had shifted toward the man standing motionless at their center. I held the glass up, high over my head, and looked at it for a moment longer. Then I dropped it. It shattered with brilliant, horribly loud silence, shards of light and glass and brilliance spinning away from the center, where the liquid (like Ron´s blood, oh, God, Ron´s blood) splashed in all the wrong places. I walked out, thinking that those had been the shards of my life.

And I am aware now how

everything´s gonna be fine

one day too late I´m in hell

I am prepared now

seemseveryone´s gonna be fine

one day too late just as well

I had fashioned some armor for myself when I was learning to destroy and shape things. It was not strong, just enchanted, but it would not do much against what I would be facing. I put it on after I woke up. I went about it matter-of-factly, without much hesitation or fear. My mind was hogging all the fear, so not enough reached my body to make it shake, but it would have if I had let it. I left everything else, from the necklace Hermione had given me two summers back to the pictures of Parvati and me. I would not, I did not think, be coming back for them, but, then again, why ruin these things with my blood?

I walked to Dumbledore´s office as if it was any other day. Some people looked at me, but I ignored them. They were nothing but periphery to me, and I doubt that I could have brought myself to stop for anyone. Even if Hermione had come and grabbed me and begged me not to go, I think the limit of my response would have been to push her away. I did not want to waste energy on things that meant nothing anymore.

Dumbledore gave me a portkey in the shape of a heart locket and told me to activate it when I wanted to. Then he sat down and watched me. I stood there for a long time, maybe hours, but in all that time, no one came to call on him, or wondered where I was. Perhaps this place, my vengeance, was the place I had been living this whole past year, so they did not miss me, for I was nowhere I had not already been. None of these thoughts occurred to me then, though; my mind was one track like that of a tiger pursuing a gazelle, and though I was a small tiger, and the gazelle I was chasing had venom-tipped barbs, claws, and teeth that could rip my flesh, still my focus was on the hunt, and he had all my mind. Finally, I activated the portkey, and finally it pulled me away from the ruins of what I had had.

And I´m not scared now,

I must assure you

you´renever gonna get away

And I´m not scared now.

And I´m not scared now, no.

The portkey took me to a cathedral. I never would have thought that I would arrive at a cathedral, but I did. So I was there, I thought, the point of no return. But in reality, not only was I at the point of no turning back, there was also no point in turning back. I had left nothing but shambles behind, and what was ahead of me,was, by virtue of its existence, already broken too, but I pursued it because I felt it would give me some satisfaction.

I walked into the cathedral slowly, wand at the ready. The ornately carved wooden doors peeled back from my way easily, as if they were counterbalanced. The inside was well lit by candles, especially around the altar. The light annoyed me. Darkness would have been bad, but light was worse, for my only advantage was surprise,and that only nominally. But I seemed safe for the moment; there was no one inside at all, despite all the light. I put my wand away.

I walked that stone pathway quietly, wondering at my compounded fortune and misfortune. He did not appear to be here. As I approached the altar, I saw that the cathedral was set up for Communion (more blood, more blood, more blood). Feeling compelled, though not by magic, I knelt before the altar and took some of the bread and some of the wine for myself. I ate of them. As I swallowed, I heard the sound of the door to the cathedral closing softly behind me.

And I am aware now how

everything´s gonna be fine

one day too late. I´m in hell.

I am prepared now seems

everyone´s gonna be fine

one day too late, just as well.

I slowly turned around. Forty yards away from me, at the extreme bottom of the cross, I beheld the severe face of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

"You," I stated dispassionately. My calm surprised me. I wondered why the rage did not come as I had expected.

"Me," he agreed and walked closer, taking long but not hasty steps toward me. "Why are you here?"

"I have come to kill you."

"I might have guessed."

I pulled my wand out and shifted it to my left hand. "Well, are we going to get on with it?"

He glanced at me sideways, not quite where I was at the altar, but standing at the foot of the steps below me. "I do not see what great advantage you hope to gain from this throwing yourself away."

"I do not see what I could lose."

"Ah, yes, that is also true." He stopped and sighed. "Harry, I hate to do this to you. Well, rather, I had always envisioned it differently. I would come to Hogwarts and destroy your pathetic, conniving headmaster, who has destroyed so many of my servants, by destroying you, his prime possession, then leaving him alive. I had never envisioned such an . . . unglamourous end to you. Ah, well, not everything works out the way I plan, though most things do. Is there anything you would like to ask me before I make you . . . ah, go?"

I had thought of everything that could happen, and I had thought of this. I knew my question already. "Why Ron, why not me?"I said, my voice catching.

He looked up at me with disdain. "Still stuck on that? Well, I suppose you should be, you see, that´s why I did it. I wanted you to suffer, that´s all." He shrugged it off like it was some kind of badly thought out prank. The rage slammed into me at full force.

I am prepared now, seems everything´s gonna be fine

My voiced changed with my transformation into the Burning One. In a voice that was both beautifully high and powerfully low at the same time, I asked him, "You did all this just to hurt me?"

He was taken aback by my transformation, but seemed still unafraid. "Why else? Let me end your pain now. Avada Kedavra!" The green bolt of death magic hit my breastplate, shattering the plate and the green light at the same time. The pieces fell to the floor, all glowing brightly. I stood, unharmed.

A voice screamed from the remnants of my armor, "SPELL LOCKED!"

His eyes widened again, but he still seemed very under control. "Tricky one, aren´t you? Let me try again. Avada Kedavra!" Though his wand glowed green, nothing happened. He looked up at me, sadness replaced by anger. "What have you done?"

For me, for me, for myself

"Now we can fight on an equal footing," I replied. I clapped my hands in front of me. A sword sprang from the air, impaling the ground, hilt stopping right where my hands were. I lifted it.

"We´ll see about that," he said, shifting his weight. "A simple curse will finish you. You have no means of blocking my power. Expelliarmus!" I brought up my sword and deflected the curse, which ricocheted and shattered part of the wall above me and to my left. Before I could move again, though, he had already launched another attack. A wall of air struck me in the gut and lifted me off my feet, throwing me over the altar. My body, the Burning One, grabbed for something to hold on to, and caught the edge of the altar, flipping itself down and behind, under cover. Just as well, because a fireball sailed into the space where I had been just a moment before.

For me, for me, for myself

I stood, burning tapestries my backdrop. Tears in my eyes, I screamed in that beautiful/powerful voice, "You have no idea how much you have hurt me!" Only then did I see the lightning bolt that he had thrown toward me. It struck me with dazzling force, electricity playing over my flesh, scorching me, until I realized that I could not burn, for I was already on Fire. The Burning One within me called out to him, "But you cannot hurt me any more, there is nothing left here that you have not already touched." The lightning dispelled, shattering into the air.

Now he stepped back, suddenly less confident. I lifted my sword and touched it to myself, lighting it on fire. Blue-white fire. "Now let me touch you." He took another step back.

For me, for me, for myself

I am prepared now, for myself

I began to speed up my sense of time with a Hastening spell. He was already turning to flee, but he had lost his chance to run. It must have looked to him as if I had suddenly turned into a blur, moving toward him too fast for him to escape. Before his eyes had even left the point where I had been standing moments before, I had my sword to his throat. My own Burning eyes glaring into the Darkness in his.

He tried to throw his soul into an Apparation, but I reached out with my magic and clamped it down to his body. He would not evade me, now that I was so close.

"You hurt me very badly, Dark One. I thought I would never be whole after what you did. I may not be. But I can tell you with certainty that you will never be fine again." With that, I touched my sword to him.

He began screaming. The flames spread quickly, soon engulfing his body and his soul, burning all the pacts he had made with evil creatures for immortality, burning all connections between him and this world, casting him away into darkness from whence he would never, ever return. Killing him. No hole, like the one he put in Ron. I would not dignify him with that. He would have to burn, that was the only thing for him.

The ashes began falling to the ground.

I am prepared now, and I am fine.

I was not fine again after it was done. I morphed (by choice, now) into myself, putting the Burning One away for the moment. I knew I could call him again whenever I needed him, now. I walked weakly back up to the altar and collapsed on the steps in front of it. I could not bring myself to approach it any closer than I had already come. I put my head in my hands and wept. Eventually, people began coming into the cathedral. Wizards. Dumbledore arrived, but did not try to talk to me. No one came close to me for a long time. At some point, Hermione arrived. She was the first to come to me, and she held me while I cried. She whispered over and over in my ear that someday I would be fine again.