Broken Dreams Can Be Mended

"Boulevard Of Broken Dreams"

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

Always the same routine. Come to a town, find somewhere to stay, a half-decent job and then stick it for two weeks. Sometimes even three if I'm feeling stubborn. Then pack the job in, move out and walk to the next town as soon as someone tries to get close to me. Then repeat. And there you have the formula for the last three years of my life. Ta-da! That's it. Nothing else, just work then walk, work then walk. And do you know what? I actually prefer the walking. I always walk, never get a car or anything. I like walking; I used to like walking. It's really the only thing I can remember. I try to make it the only life I've ever had. The walking is the closest thing I have to a home. No, that's a lie. I used to have a home, a real home. Where is it now? Burnt to the ground, a pile of ashes, along with the first eighteen years worth of my memories. These are the memories I've forgotten. Pouf! Vanished just like that. All the summers spent in the lake, swimming, and out at the orchard, swinging and climbing trees. All the weekends playing footy with the boys from the town. All the Christmas's spent sat under the Christmas tree with the rainbow coloured lights illuminating my face, opening presents and having Christmas lunch at the table, absolutely groaning with all the food mum cooked. All the happy memories with my family and friends, gone. Just like that.

My school is a pile of rubble as well. There goes another seven years of memories. At least there's a memorial there, remembering everyone. There's no memorial at my house. So there's no one to remember there, is there? Obviously not. My family obviously vanished into thin air, just like me. There's an entire community out there looking for me. Have been ever since the night I vanished. They won't find me though. I make sure of that. I don't ever do anything they can detect. That's half the point of moving on every few weeks or so. The other half... well I don't know what the other half is, I've forgotten it, just like the last eighteen years.

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of broken dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk alone

The town I'm walking through tonight is dead. Like a ghost town. Well I suppose it's as a small town should be at half past three in the morning. I've lost count of the hours I've been walking. I just walk until I find a town that I like - no not that I like - that I think is ok and then I stop. Sometimes I think I walk for the sake of walking. It helps me to forget. I don't think I'll stop at this one. I don't really like the look if it. It looks too homey and nice. Plus I don't think anyone here will appreciate a lone redhead turning up at their door at three thirty in the morning looking for somewhere to stay.

I suppose at the moment it's what people would call cold. Freezing even, some weaker people might say. I don't feel the cold anymore. I don't feel anything anymore. It's funny, isn't it, how people can make themselves feel numb towards things? Feel nothing, think nothing. I think I've made myself numb to everything, pain, sadness, cold, especially love and affection. I think that's what I run, or walk, from. It's like my brain automatically says, Oh no someone's showing me affection! Better run for it if someone's showing an interest in me! I don't want anyone to show an interest in me. It makes it harder for you to avoid liking people if they like you. That's what I do you see. I avoid liking people. Because where has liking people ever got me? Walking on my own through some god-forsaken little town at three thirty in the morning. In other words liking people has got me to be alone, it's got me to be no one. It's got me nowhere.

I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadows the only one that walks beside me
My shallow hearts the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone.

I don't deserve to be here. I don't even deserve this half-life I've got. I deserve to be dead, buried in the ground, just like the rest of them. Everyone else. To deserve to be alive you need to have helped someone. Did I help anyone? No. I just sat there on my arse doing nothing, helping no one. When that loud crash finally came I was in the Hospital wing, all of places, having fallen over a hundred feet after helping the Gryffindor team win the Quidditch cup. Me and Madam Pomfrey were the only two who knew what that crash meant, the destruction it could, and would, cause. However we had different ideas of what we would do about that crash. My idea was to go out, to help fight. Madame Pomfreys idea was to say, "Sit down Mr Weasley, you'll be more of a hindrance than a help if you go out there. You've just fallen a hundred and twenty-three feet, you're in no fit state to do anything." push me back onto my bed and cast silencing and invisibility charms round the whole Hospital Wing. I can understand that she had to protect all her other patients, none of whom were over second year and all of whom looked petrified. But she didn't understand me. I needed to be out there helping my friends instead of stuck in that dump. I needed to be by their sides while they fought, and maybe even died. Most of all I needed to be there to die for them, if I had to, to help them save everyone else.

We sat there for, oh I don't know, a couple of days probably. Long enough for me to heal completely. Madame Pomfrey only let me out when the shakings had completely stopped. She didn't let anyone else out. I was the only one in any fit state to go out anyway and I was the only one that wanted to, that needed to, to see where my friends were, hell, to see if I had any friends left. When I finally got out of there, well, let's just say that's one memory I won't be forgetting. Most of the school lay in ruins. In fact as soon as I stepped off the stairwell into what was the entrance hall it collapsed completely. The state of the school however, was nothing compared to what lay outside, in the grounds.

It was a massacre. I've been trying to come up with a different word for it since then. For three years I've been trying to come up with a word that was less, well, brutal. That's the trouble though, it was brutal. Bodies lay everywhere. The bodies of people I used to know, people I used to laugh and joke with, killed in an instant, as if they didn't matter. There were a few people walking around, most injured badly, but they were Ravenclaws, Slytherins, Hufflepuffs. What did they matter? As I walked round I could see the bodies of everyone that mattered, that had ever mattered, to me. Parvati, Lavender, Neville, Dean, Seamus, Hermione, all the friends I had ever known. All my family to. Mum, Dad, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, Ginny, everyone. All the people I had known all their lives, or all my life. All the people I had shared my dreams with, my nightmares with, my happy times and my sad, scattered on the ground like rats. As if they didn't matter to anyone. Of course they mattered. They mattered to me. But of course everyone forgot me didn't they? Like they always did. The people that had survived all gave the same account of Harry's death. They said that the death eater that killed him cursed him so thoroughly that no one found any part of his body, ever. Bellatrix Lestrange. That is her name, the death eater. Was her name. I killed her, last curse I ever muttered. I killed her just like she killed Harry, and in doing so she killed me.

Percy was brought into St Mungos. They went and called for me when he was brought in, barely alive. I saw him only once, lay spread out there on his bed, unable to speak, barely able to move. You could clearly see the skull burnt onto his forearm. The death eaters mark. After he recovered they took him to Azkaban to rot with the rest of the scum and the dementors. I think they gave him the dementors kiss in the end, so he's worse than dead. What do I care anyway? He's not my brother, he's nothing to me. I have no family, no friends. I'm alone. Always alone.

Ah-Ah Ah-Ah Ah-Ah Ahhh-Ah
Ah-Ah Ah-Ah Ah-Ah.

I can still hear the screams of that day. The moans and curses and sounds of death and destruction. They haunt me during the day and invade my dreams at night, causing me to wake up, covered in cold sweat and shaking. The thing with normal nightmares is that when you wake up it's a good thing. You can wake up and think, oh that's alright it was only a bad dream after all. But mine aren't bad dreams, mine are real. They're real nightmares. I can't wake up and share my nightmares with someone who'll tell me it's alright and make it better because my nightmares remind me there is no one there when I wake up, and there isn't.

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line of the edge
And where I walk alone

Someone even got me to go to a psychiatrist once. They came to the conclusion that I was losing my mind. Well wouldn't you be after that? I'm not though. I'm just on the border of being mental. I'm not a loony. Not like Peeves used to be. Now there's a loony if ever there was one. I'm not mental or disturbed, just lonely. Although sometimes there's a fine line between them, just like love and hate.

They wanted me to go to the loony bin. A Psychiatric Hospital they called it. I'm not stupid though, I know they were talking about the loony bin. That's what me and Harry used to call it. I used to think that Fred and George belonged in there. Harry used to joke that my whole family needed to go in there. Looks like the last jokes on me then. Ha ha. I didn't go obviously. I ran away. Only thing I'm any good at anymore. I doubt I'm very good at Keeping or Chess, I haven't had any practice for three years. I'm good at running away though. Hi, my qualities include running away and sitting on my arse helping no one! Sounds good on a CV, huh? Yeah, I'm good at running away. What from though, I couldn't tell you.

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's all right
Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive
And I walk alone

They tried to make everything alright after that day, The Ministry. Tried to make it as though we had won. Good had triumphed over evil. Huh. There's no such thing as good and evil, as old Voldie used to say. There's only luck. Pure, dumb, luck. And no one wins in a war. Everyone loses, it's just the side that loses the least that's considered "lucky". The people that lose the most are the people that survive, I reckon. At least the people that die go wherever they go together. The people that survive are the ones that have to put the pieces back together. They have to smile and say, "Well we won, everything's all right.", just like The Ministry did that time. I felt like going up to the Minister of Magic and, in front of everyone yelling, "No, you mad old coot, everything's NOT all right! We fucked up BIG TIME and nothing will ever be all right again!" Of course, me being the coward that I am, I didn't. I just faded into the background, never to be seen again. Might it have been different if I had? I don't know, I can't see the bloody future. If you want something like that answered go and see Trelawney. Actually, don't bother, she won't be able to answer it either, mad old fraud of a bag.

I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadows the only one that walks beside me
My shallow hearts the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone

I gave up magic that night, for the people that died. I performed that last curse and then chucked it in, the whole lot. Eighteen years worth of training and I chucked it in. I didn't snap my wand though, only wizards who don't choose to become muggles have that done, and I chose to become one. I still have it, tucked up neat and snug in my backpack. I don't use it though. I've realised that all the magic in the world can't stop pain and suffering. It can't stop death. You can try, sure, like Voldemort did. But you can't stop it. Even he died in the end. He died to leave a peaceful, loving and caring world. Hah! If you believe that crap you might as well go and work for the idiots at the bloody Ministry and call it a day. If you believe that the world's all cute little bunnies and sweetness just because one person, well he was more of a thing actually, has died then you're more insane than I was ever registered. You're even more of a bloody loony than Peeves. The world still has suffering and pain in it. You think I'm being pessimistic? I know I'm being truthful and you're the one that's been wrapped up in cotton wool for your whole life. I was eighteen when that cotton wool was ripped away. You must still have it. Well, Hello! Welcome to the real world. In the real world all those people died for no reason. Their deaths were pointless. Pointless murders of hundreds of people. That's why I gave up my magic. To honour the pointless deaths of all those brave people. As a reminder to myself and the next generation. Don't fight. It only causes pain and suffering beyond anything you will have experienced. Believe me, I've got the scars. Believe me, I've experienced it.

Ah-Ah Ah-Ah Ah-Ah Ahhh-Ah
Ah-Ah Ah-Ah I walk alone, I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of broken dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a..

So many dreams were broken that night. Hermione wanted to be a Medi-witch. She could have been anything she wanted. Neville wanted to do something to do with Herbology. To be honest I didn't listen that closely. I wish I had now. Seamus wanted to go and work with my brothers at Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes. Had a job lined up there and everything. Dean wanted to play Quidditch. He was a really good chaser actually. Made the team in sixth year along with Seamus and Ginny. Ginny wanted to teach Transfiguration. I was always proud of her for that. She was always top of her class. Draco wanted to work for the Department of Mysteries. Suited him down to the ground if you ask me. Surprised I'm calling him Draco? Well he surprised us all. Said after watching his dad he didn't want to join the Death Eaters. Came onto our side instead. He was killed by his father. Wars do funny things to people you see. I think personally that his father was always a malicious sod though, 'coz I mean, bloody hell, who kills their own son? Me and Harry, well we were going to be Aurors of course. We were going to go through our training together, and then end up being paired together, a team. We were going to go round and round up all the Death Eaters. We were going to stay together forever, the Dynamic Duo. And then me and him and Hermione would find a nice place in the country to retire to and live there together into our old age, together forever. Like I said, a lot of dreams were broken that night. A lot of things people were going to do never got done. A lot of good, honest workers were lost. Workers that were only just through puberty were suddenly thrust into yet another draining situation. Situation after situation, it got you down after a while. But one thing that never changed were peoples dreams, what they were going to achieve. Well it didn't change until that night. A lot of dreams were broken that night, including mine.

My shadows the only one that walks beside me
My shallow hearts the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone!

Sometimes I wish that some wizard would find me. But then I think How would they? All the wizards I want to find me are dead. Long gone. Harry Hermione, mum, dad, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, Ginny, they couldn't find me if they wanted to.

I think I'll stop at this town I'm coming to. I like the look of it. It's the early hours of the morning now, people will be getting up, they won't mind me looking for a place to stay. I like the look of this town, it looks familiar, almost as if I've been here before.

Suddenly a hear a whoosh and footsteps walking behind me. That's strange, I think. There was no one there before.

"Ron?" a voice calls. God, it's been so long since anyone's called me Ron. For the past three years I've asked everyone to call me Ronald. But I recognise that voice. How could I not? My imagination has called my name in that voice so many times that I don't answer it any more. I might as well answer it this one last time though.

What I see when I turn around is a boy. An ordinary boy. A lot skinnier than he should be, and a lot older looking than twenty-one. Black hair looks untidy, straw like, unwashed. Bright green eyes that usually look deadened, uncaring, suddenly have a slight spark of hope, of happiness to them. This is the boy from my nightmares. One difference. He's still here, alive standing in front of me. This is the boy from my dreams.

"Harry?" My voice sounds just as disbelieving, just as unreal. That name is one I never thought I would say to myself again. I stopped myself from saying so long ago that it's a relief to say it, a huge relief.

Suddenly I find myself wrapped in arms, a huge hug from someone who's supposed to be dead.

"I was so worried," mumbled Harry through my shirt. "I thought you were dead."

"Me?" I retort. "I just disappeared! I have eyewitnesses to your death however! What the bloody hell happened?"

Harry gave a weak chuckle, like he'd forgotten how to do it. It was better than the best music in the world to me though.

"I did a Peter Pettigrew," he said finally. "I knew that Voldemort was dead so I just wanted to disappear. What people actually saw was me disappearing just before the curse hit me."

"Oh God," I murmured. "I killed Bellatrix Lestrange for that. I shouldn't have. I really shouldn't have."

Harry unfolded his arms and took hold of my shoulders. His eyes pierced into mine, fierce and angry.

"Don't you ever believe what you just said," he said angrily. "She deserved to die. She killed Sirius remember? She deserved everything bad that happened to her and don't you let anyone else tell you any different. She killed an innocent man."

"But..." I was trying to get my head round the fact that someone I had believed to have been dead for three years, was alive and telling me that me killing someone was not a bad thing. "Why did you disappear? Why did you not contact me?"

"I couldn't find you! Do you really think I would have left you if I'd have known where you were?" he demanded. "And I needed to disappear because I needed to, well I needed to..."

"Forget," I finished quietly. "Just like I had to. Did you manage to?"

"No," he replied. "But I managed to do something much better. I managed to remember. I managed to remember everything good about the past twenty-one years, and you were the best thing Ron. You were the best memory."

"We will be alright won't we Harry?" I asked, scared.

"Of course we will!" He sounded brighter already. "Don't you realize where you are?"

It was only then I noticed the sign on the edge of the road, announcing the name of the town.

Ottery St Catchpole.

"Home," I replied, a huge smile spreading across my face. It felt strange as though it was something I hadn't done for a long time. And it wasn't. I hadn't done it for three years. Somehow though, I realized I'd be doing it a lot more now.

"I'm home."

The End.