Life You Left Behind

I'm so tired of being here

Suppressed by all of my childish fears

He's gone and you saved me from myself. I wanted so desperately to self-destruct when it was all over. He can't hurt me now. He has no power here. He's gone.

He's gone.

And you're still here. How?

You're a light at the edge of my vision. When I fall asleep I still think I can feel you. My hand moves to caress your hip but it meets empty air. The wind calls to me in your voice.

He took you with him.

I wish I could kill him all over again. Not with a spell this time. Nothing so neat as that. I want see red; I want to feel wet. I want to feel the last gust of breath. I want to do what those words of so long ago said: rip, tear.

And if you have to leave

I wish you would just leave

Because your presence still lingers here

And it won't leave me alone

Can't you move on? You confront me day after day in the corridors. You are in the very walls of this place. Maybe I should leave.

I see you in the enchanted ceiling, outlined in a starry night. You are in the vapors from Professor Snape's brews. You are in the ripples of the lake. In the patterns of falling leaves.

Sometimes Ron forgets himself and touches me. No one touches me any more. It was his last "gift" to me, this curse. You would not have been afraid. You would have searched for an answer, a cure. Ron just sulks in a corner and hopes by the next day the feeling would be gone.

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These wounds won't seem to heal

This pain is just too real

There's just too much that time cannot erase

I had a dream last night, like every night.

It was Sixth year, I knew this because you were wearing your prefects badge, and you standing by the common room fire. The firelight surrounded you in a golden nimbus as if you were light personified. You heard me enter and turned to me with a smile. You reached out your hands and I walked towards you. I pass the couch and see Harry passed out from exhaustion. You put your finger to your lips in the universal gesture for quiet. I gathered you in my arms and then you disappeared. Gone.

I always wake up and reach for you. But I only see Harry, pale and cold in the moonlight. Body clenched tight into a ball, his backbone a rigged curve, afraid to feel, to be felt. He thinks I hate to touch him.

He's wrong.

It's his expression on his face that makes me retreat. I do not want to be on the other end of that anger. I don't blame him. But he'd never believe me if I ever told him.

We are alone; we are not the same without you. No one can hold us together anymore.

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When you cried I'd wipe away all your tears

When you'd scream I'd fight away all of you fear

And I've held your hand through all of these years

But you still have all of me

They are solitary men. All they need to do is reach and they would have each other. Didn't they realize that?

Stubbornness must be imbedded in men. To say I was the glue that held them together or some other clichéd saying is preposterous. What were they, if not friends, before I came along?

Yes, Harry I do watch over you. How could I not? I'm not yet finished here. Sometimes I play with the natural order of things for you to see me and give you hope. I think I'm failing. You never broke. No matter what those horrible relations did to you, no matter how Voldemort tortured you. You gave me strength. You gave me hope. You truly are a great wizard.

I wish I could be with you.

I visit your dreams, Ron. That is the only way you accept me. I've tried to be a bit fancy, like with Harry, but you just blink and move on, refusing to see what's there.

I see you come down those stairs and you are as you are now, not as the man-child you were then. Your eyes are so hooded with pain. Just because our last words were in anger (over a Chudley Cannon's jersey, no less) doesn't mean it was your fault. You can't hold me because even your dream-self won't accept me.

So I am between Here and There.

Watching.

Waiting.

Longing.

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You used to captivate me

By your resonating light

But now I'm bound by the life you left behind

Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams

Your voice has chased away all the sanity in me

"Why do you do this to me?" I whispered. I was amazed he heard me from across the room.

He arched a red brow over the Daily Prophet. "Do what to you?"

"Try to make me feel. I don't want to. She's the ghost between us and we can never forget that."

He folded the paper, rose up out the chair, and crossed his arms. Defensive position.

"Do you think I'd prefer a bloody statue to you? Though are doing a pretty good impression of one, you aren't one no matter how still you are. I'd like to think that you're my friend, my companion but all you do is shut me out. I wasn't there, okay? I think about it a thousand times a day and curse myself for it. Ginny called on me to play big brother, knock out the jerk that wouldn't leave her alone. And I left you guys here. Alone. And then he got in. And when I heard left Ginny without a goodbye and got here too late. And she was on the floor and this weird light surrounded you and he was gone, too. I froze. I wasn't there. I wasn't there. You're here but your never here anymore. I want the old Harry back!"

He paused for a breath. I wanted to say something to him but my mind blanked.

"Did you know I see her in my dreams? Every night. I wake up and forget she isn't here. There's this empty space between us where she should be! There's this cold wall there that turns to ice the closer it gets to you. I don't know why I bother; it's like your not even there at all. But I do it for you, Harry. And I hope that one night I can touch you and you won't turn away or get that look and leave me all alone again. I've sneaked so many touches from you that I don't even feel it anymore. How could you have thought a thing like that would keep me away? After all we've been through!"

He finished with a glare. I want to be insane because no sane person would ever have willingly given up on this. Words cannot help me now. I swear I could hear her voice: "Harry Potter, you're no coward!"

It's so hard to be the courageous one the one that always has to fight for what is right. I realize I'm tired of struggling. I realize I'm tired of being shut off. I refuse for the world to hold weariness for me any longer.

I go to him and embrace him.

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I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

And though you're still with me

I've been alone all along

She was there. We know that know. It's been five years since out Big Blowup, as I like to call it, and we can no longer see her.

It's hard to forget someone who had been part of your life for so long. But memories fade and feelings cannot be duplicated in another.

I watch Harry as he cheers on the Cannons. I watch the people who watch Harry. They love him but they don't know why. He pretends to be oblivious to them but I know he feels them, pressing along his senses. Sometimes another in the stands will accidentally brush his bare skin and they will turn green and rush off. He is always considerate, covering up as much skin as he can when we go a public place, but accidents do happen.

He glances at me, light glinting off his glasses, and reaches for my hand. She will always be between us.