Pockets Full of Posies

And after the war's over, what's left to do? Harry's been broken, and, really, what do you expect from a child? That's what happens to children: you send them off to war and they come back hollow-eyed and mute. Harry remembers - back when he was a Muggle - he remembers watching television sometimes in the evenings, if the Dursleys let him out of the closet - and there was always a war somewhere, always grainy images of small dark children holding guns in the street. That's what Harry feels like: poor and dirty and used.

He's camped out in the ruins of his parents' house and he's vaguely surprised that nobody's come to look for him yet. They must know where he is. They must have decided to leave him alone for a while, the way people leave dangerous animals alone: Come now, let's go this way, if we don't provoke it maybe it won't hurt us.

Harry feels like an animal. He suspects he looks like one, too, his hair tangled and matted, his skin shadowed with ground-in dirt. He has a torn corner of a striped green scarf, and a metal cup, and an extra pair of shoelaces - and every day he lines them up on one of the crumbled walls of the house. Here's my scarf, he thinks. Here's my cup. His wand is in pieces somewhere, buried under mud and splinters of bone. His owl is dead. His heart's not worth thinking about. When he places a palm on his chest he feels nothing. He's making a list in his head of the people who could have stolen his heart from him. The list goes like this: #1 Draco and after that nothing.

Late at night, sometimes, Harry thinks about the last time he saw Draco, naked and pale as milk in the dim light of Harry's tent. Pale and warm and right after that Draco went out and betrayed them all. And right after that Harry killed Draco and right after that Harry killed Voldemort. And right after that Harry broke his own wand and disappeared off the face of the earth. He likes the sound of that phrase, those words all strung together. Off the face of the earth. It sounds final, complete. Permanent.

It hurts to think too much. Summer's arrived in full force, and the days are dulled to a fine point by the heat. Harry makes simple traps and catches rabbits in them, eats them raw or cooked over a fire if he can be bothered. Some hero now, he thinks bitterly. Some hero.

When he first learned that he was going to be a hero, Harry thought it meant slaying dragons or saving maidens in distress or being the clever youngest son who saves everyone and wins half the kingdom. Not watching your friends being killed, one by one. Not killing the one person you love the most.

Harry remembers a nursery rhyme from his childhood: something about pockets and roses and falling down. Ashes, ashes. He remembers a schoolyard and skinned knees, his face shoved into asphalt. We all fall down, Harry thinks.

Harry is seventeen. His wand is broken. His owl is dead. Late at night, sometimes, he hears Draco whispering to him, and can't get the sound of it out of his head.