Fighter

I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises...

It is snowing, lightly. Small flakes, beautiful in their delicacy, their individuality. They fall on the pale, translucent skin of a young man, bare-armed in the bitter winter weather. He does not stop to marvel at their uniqueness, their beauty. He merely tolerates them until they melt, running in pale rivulets down his arms. He can't stand uniqueness. He wishes that everything was the same, every blade of grass, every snowflake, every person. Uniqueness has brought him nothing but pain. Because he was different, the only two people he ever loved are dead.

All lies and jest till a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...

It was the best thing to do, everyone said. So noble. So self sacrificing. Truly a Gryffindor. Truly his father's son. The young man laughs, but his laugh is hollow and bitter. His father's son? His father died nobly, trying to save the woman he loved and his infant son. He stood back. He watched his friends get hewn down, in order to buy him time. He had time. All the time in the world. Now he just wanted them back

When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers in the quiet of the railway station...

They had come to him. The Aurors. You want to help, don't you, they had said. He had nodded fervently. Yes, oh yes. He wanted to be brave, like his father was. He wanted to help. More than he had ever wanted anything. He was too young, he knew that now. Though barely three years had passed, he had aged years. But then...Then he was filled with the stupid teenage invincibility. Nothing could kill him. After all, hadn't he come face to face with Voldemort so many times? And he had lived. He had always lived. Of course he felt immortal.

Running scared, laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go looking for the places only they would know...

He says the Dark Lord now. All the cocky pride that had filled him as a boy is gone. He knows he cannot face Voldemort and win. Of course, everyone says he's gone. The Boy Who Lived has done it again, they say. Beaten him at last. He laughs again. The laugh of a boy who has become disenchanted with the world. You'd think they'd learn. After the first time. He can never go away. The Dark Lord is like death. He exists only to steal, and he can never be killed. He will hide from the world for a time, but he will be back. And this time, he will not fight. He will lay down and die. Join his friends. He ceased to fear death a long time ago. Now, when everything is gone, death is merely a relief.

Asking only workman's wages I come looking for a job but I get no offers just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there...

    A woman is watching him from the shadows. Like the boy, her arms are bare. She wears a black dress. Like her, it has seen better times. She watches him come with the half-hearted hope and cynical sneer that is adopted by most of the patrons of this street. She could be a whore. No one will ask. If she offers, they will buy. Everyone on this street has come to buy or sell. Recognition sparks in her eyes when the boy turns. She remembers, all too well, a night years ago, when she would have given anything to be allowed to stand by him as he fought. But he cupped her head in his hands and told her to stay, sealing the soft command with a gentle kiss. But the words, the actions rang hollow. She knew then that she would only ever be a replacement, a substitution for what he couldn't get from that Muggle witch, so talented, so brilliant, but so cold, so unaware. She supposes that she hates him. Hates him for leaving her, for not realizing what he meant to her. But she knows too, that she was only ever going to be second best, and she accepts that, and loves him the more for the sacrifices he made, though this love cuts her inside.

Then I'm laying out my winter clothes, and wishing I was gone going home where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me leading me to go home...

    He's tired of being strong. Tired of being the one that everyone always looks at. And, so help him, he will end it now. He doesn't want to wait for Voldemort anymore. He can end it now. All it takes is that one little bottle. The one that his Potions Master slipped him, the day before everything went wrong. Take it, he said, in case everything goes wrong. He had looked surprised. He thought that the Potions Master hated him, and here he was, giving him the answer to all his problems. After that night, he hadn't had the strength to drink it. He hadn't had the strength to do anything for a long time. He lay in the hospital wing for what must have been months, trying to make sense of what happened, what had gone wrong. Well, he was stronger now. Strong enough to drink the belladonna. He had strength enough for this smallest of tasks.

Now the years are rolling by me they are rocking evenly I am older than I once was, younger than I'll be but that's not unusual no it isn't strange after changes upon changes we are more or less the same after changes we are more or less the same.

    The woman, watching him intently, sees him lift the bottle to his lips. Instinctively, she knows what the bright ruby liquid the decanter contains is. She watches him fall, and suddenly she is running towards him, her bare feet tingling from the snow and her arms, muscles trained from years of playing Quidditch, snap out and catch him as he falls. She lays him gently on the ground, watching his eyelids weakly flutter. He looks so young, she thinks sadly, forgetting for a moment that he is a year older then she, and has seen so much more. Yet, in sleep, he looks no older than he did the day that she first saw him waiting for the train, so long ago. And she remembers that she thought then, young as she was, that this boy would be great. And here she was, watching him die...This idea, more than anything, jogs her mind, sets her heart to racing. Harry, she says, urgently, involuntarily, don't die now! Please, you have to fight! and she looks down at this boy-man, and she forgets the years of hate, and she leans down and presses her lips over his, still wet and red from the poison.

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame "I am leaving, I am leaving," but the fighter still remains...

    Something in the urgency of her kiss, in the pleading of her voice, opens a window. Rage, such that he has never seen since that fatal night, floods him, and burns out the feelings of self- pity, and weakness, and fills him with a red-hot energy, not a happy thought, but one that consumes him so utterly, he rises to meet its call. Only a moment ago, he was drowning in a blood red fire, but now he is fighting, kicking his way up to the surface, back to life. He cannot die now, he knows this much. He owes it to Ginny, who has spent three years waiting for him, and has finally found him, he owes it to his parents, who died that he may live, he owes it to Sirius, and Remus, and Dumbledore, and all the casualties of this long and bloody war. But most of all, he owes it to Ron and Hermione. He knows now that he cannot find them in death, cannot meet them, until he has found Voldemort and made him pay for the pain that he caused them, for their lives that he stole. Voldemort owes a death tithe, and it is a dear one, that sings to the tune of two broken, ruined lives, gasping their last breaths trying to protect the Boy Who Would Kill Lord Voldemort. This knowledge gives him strength, and he forces his way upward, back into Ginny's arms, though his mind is somewhere else. He draws a strong, shuddering, gasping breath, filled with rage and pain and hate, and in that breath, and in those painful seconds between life and death, he has made a promise, one he will give his life to keep. And with that promise, he is the Boy Who Lived, once more.