Your Enemies

    I’ve always heard people say, “Love your enemies,” but how can you do that when no one wants to love you back? Is it really possible to love everyone - because if you’re supposed to love your enemies, that’s what I’d have to do. I don’t think that there’s a way to love the ‘best friend’ who stole your girlfriend, or a way to love the girl who broke your heart. I don’t think there’s a way to love the people who do things like kill your parents and your godfather, or a way to love the people who let things like that happen. I don’t think there’s a way to love the people who made your life hell for 10 years and every summer for the past seven. And I don’t think there’s really a way to love yourself, not when you’ve seen all those things happen - and never tried to stop them.

~

    I sit down next to Hermione. I still don’t know how I do that every day, sitting there like my heart’s still in one piece and like I’ve never loved her before. She doesn’t say anything - she’s always half-ignored me since that day. Its almost like she thinks everything will go back to normal if she does. But it can’t.

    Now Ron comes and sits on her other side. Its been over a year since we’ve had an actual conversation. The last time I can remember having a real two-way talk with him was sometime last fall. It wasn’t so much a talk as a yelling match.

    Sometimes people say, “You don’t know what you have until its gone,” but they’re wrong. It should be, “You never know what you don’t have until its there,” because that’s what its like. You think you have a best friend and a girlfriend, but one day you find out that you haven‘t really got either, that they‘re just a loser and cheater.

    Potions is first. I think I always hated this class, but now its not a class anymore. Snape, he’s turned it into a sort of hour-long reminder that he hates me. Everyone in this classroom seems to, but I don’t even know what I did to them. I’m not sure why I have to close my eyes or I’ll see glares from every direction. The whole class is watching me like I’m Lord Voldemort himself, not the boy who vanquished him last year. And I can’t look forward; Snape’s always there, his glares the most menacing and vindictive of them all. I don’t get him either. He hates me like he did my dad, and sometimes I wonder if he even thinks he’s teaching James. I just want to take my whole cauldron of the Draught of Peace and force everyone in the class to drink some, even though its issuing some sort of grey smoke that it shouldn’t be and Snape says it’ll put the drinker into a permanent sleep. I wonder if I should drink some. But no… permanent sleep - that would mean having nightmares about Voldemort and everybody else who hates me, and even about the people who didn’t hate me but are dead now, for forever.

    Then there’s History of Magic. Its almost the same deal as Potions. History of Magic is so boring that nobody bothers to stop glaring vehemently at me. I don’t know what I’ve done. At least Binns doesn’t seem to notice me. We’ve gotten past the giant wars and now we’ve started studying Voldemort’s first rise to power. Its more than I can bear to hear it all again. Every time Binns tells us about a death, or a torturing, people look at me like its my fault. Binns is talking about the Longbottoms now, and I can see Neville trembling. I want to pity him but I doubt I have enough pity left… I’ve used it all on myself. And anyway, he’s not trembling from being sad, its from anger, its because he wants to kill me, like its my fault his parents are insane. At least they aren’t dead like mine. But Dumbledore would say insanity is worse than death if he was still here.

    There’s break next, but I don’t have anyone to talk to. I wish I could disappear under the Invisibility Cloak, but its burned. It was Ron, I remember. He held it into the fire and it just dissolved into ashes. I wish I knew why he did it, but there’s no asking him now. I sit down at a table and gasp - a white hot pain just seared through my leg. People nearby are laughing, like they think they jinxed me, but its just a mirror. Sirius’s mirror. Its broken now, its been like that for almost 2 years. I remember… I broke it after he died. I’m not sure why I did that. He was the last person who truly loved me and I broke that mirror, like Hermione broke my heart. I don’t even know why I carry it around anymore - there must be at least 50 shards of glass and the frame is split as well.

    Its funny how much the two incidents - Sirius’s mirror and Hermione - have in common. Both of them were sort of “last connections”. I thought I could make the mirror work, and see Sirius again after he’d died. I thought… even if he was dead, he’d still be around for me. But he wasn’t: he went on, just like Nick said he would. And with Hermione… well, her and Ron were my last two real friends. Of course, the average person doesn’t expect to walk in on your girlfriend and your best friend shagging. But I suppose I wasn’t really the average person. And that was when it all started - this hatred that the whole world seems to have for me.

    There are more classes, but none are as bad as Potions. I have a free period when the rest of Gryffindor is having Defense Against the Dark Arts- Dumbledore pulled me out of the class a few weeks before he died. I think he realized it was unnecessary- I mean, after finally defeating Voldemort, the class wasn’t much use to me anymore.

    Another bad class is Divination. It wouldn’t be so horrible if I was in Firenze’s class, but Dumbledore thought Trelawney should teach me, what with her only two prophecies being about me. She’s gotten worse about predicting my premature death, and I’m starting to think she’s right - you can’t live long with so many enemies.

    I hate to see her. She always sounds all misty and keeps sighing whenever she sees me. I can’t help blaming it all on her. If she hadn’t made the prophecy, my parents wouldn’t be dead. I wouldn’t have this blasted scar on my forehead. Voldemort would still be around but I’d have my parents and probably my godfather too and that outweighs Voldemort by a lot. I don’t even know if that’s the way prophecies work but it feels good to blame it on her…her fault.

    I stumble up to Gryffindor tower where I sit in bed. I haven’t eaten in a long time, or slept and its beginning to show. I’m even skinnier than usual and I’m so tired it looks like I have two black eyes. The green in my eyes has started to fade into a sort of grayish color. Its hard to let go of that. People used to tell me I look like my father, but now they just look away. The last time I heard, “You look just like James… except for the eyes, you have Lily’s eyes.” was sometime in fifth year.

    It doesn’t seem fair that everybody is gone. Everyone that cared. First it was my parents, but at least I was too young to really know them yet. Then there was Cedric. I can’t say he really cared, but I think he trusted me. Then it was Sirius. That probably hurt the most of them all, because… I’d come to think of him as part father… part best friend. And I really had a chance to know him. But after that the real killings started again, just like in Voldemort’s first rise to power. Don’t get me wrong, there were some people… some people that I didn’t mind them being gone. Aurors got half of the Death Eaters. I remember the look on Draco’s face when his dad was killed. It shocked me that I felt bad for him. Of course, that wasn’t by an Auror, it was by Voldemort… But there was Dumbledore, and then Lupin. Lupin dying was almost as hard as Sirius. Lupin was like… an uncle to me almost. Then there was Ron’s dad, but I hated the whole lot of them by then and wasn’t exactly distraught over it. And then there was McGonagall. She was the last person he got before I finally got him. Oh, there were more killings than that… news came every day. But they were the worst. With the head gone and then his replacement, the school was in shambles. Of course, Snape gladly stepped up to the plate…

    Everybody’s gone…

    I wish I hadn’t conquered Voldemort. Then no one here would hate me. I’d have Sirius…

    And I wouldn’t have to love everyone…

~

    A false, fluorescent light bathed the room, dying Harry’s matted black hair gold. He blinked awake as a short, fat woman pushed through the door with a push-cart rolling in front of her. He’d been dreaming, and the people in the dream had seemed real to him. It wasn’t the first time. The names didn’t come to him, and the faces were disappearing into the deepest parts of his brain, but somehow…he knew them.

    “Harry, dear,” she said, selecting a plastic tray from the cart. “Here’s your breakfast. Melissa’ll be in with your medicine in a moment, darling.” She left, locking the door with her wand.

    Harry pushed his white sheets back, seized the dull plastic fork from the table and went about eating his daisy-colored scrambled eggs and soggy waffles. A week-old bouquet of lilies sat in a glass vase by his bed.

    The door opened again and a slim, young, blonde in lime robes pushed her own cart into the door. “Visitors, dear,” she said quietly. “And your medicine, of course,” she added. She handed him a tiny glass beaker with four pink spheres and a single grey pentagonal pill inside and cup of water. He swallowed it all instinctively as the visitors came in behind her. “Just have a seat, dears.” She pushed her cart to the next bed.

    The red-haired man came in first, dressed in shoddy greying robes, followed by a tall, thin brunette holding big white daisies in her hand.

    They sat awkwardly. “Hello, Harry,” said the man.

    Harry’s eyes flicked onto them, then away. The woman nervously replaced the dying lilies with the daisies, vanishing the lilies with a wave of her wand. She sat down and awkwardly studied her nails. There was a picture of her and the man wearing white robes, on his bedside table.

    “So…mate,” said the man deliberately, trying to catch Harry’s eye. “How’re they treating you? Not to bad, I suppose? There are a lot of pretty women here,” he added, almost chuckling, staring almost longingly after Melissa.

    Harry met his eyes; looked away. The brunette slapped the man on the arm. “We miss you so much, Harry,” she said. If Harry had been looking, he would have seen the tears stinging her eyes. “But-”

    “Listen, mate,” said the man, trying to comfort her and speak at the same time. “We’ve got jobs, good ones. But…I don’t think we can come every weekend, anymore…”

    Harry’s eyes focused on the tiny medicine cups on every bedside table. What was going on? Everything was fading.

    Footsteps came up the room, but by that time the man and woman were crying, holding each other. Harry neither noticed nor cared.

    When the footsteps slowed he looked up. A tall, potentially good-looking man with sparkling teeth and wavy blond hair stood at the foot of the bed.

    “More people coming for my autograph?”