Saviour

2 - Hardly Less, Hardly More

I took him to my house, my cavernous house, as big and empty as a cathedral or a barn. I loved my house, and I hated it. Every room was furnished exactly to my taste, but each had a secret sting. Each on prickled me as I realised that I would never share it with the people I wanted most to be with.

It was only half a house, the bricks and mortar part, as empty of emotion as the Minster's smile.

I still don't know why I took him to my bedroom, or why it was my bed that I laid him on. It just felt right.

It was obvious almost from the beginning that I didn't have the necessary skills to heal him myself, so I sent an owl to an old friend.

I only really got to know her when the fighting broke out. We were a year out of Hogwarts, and she was one year into her medical training at St. Mungo's.

Hannah Abbot was another war bride, one who was lucky enough to survive. She and Ernie have been happy for a long time now.

Out on the battlefield that summer, the summer the sky turned black and fire raged in the heavens, it was easy to see that she had what it took to succeed in the job she was born to do.

I said earlier that there was no one to share my house with. Well, I lied in a way. There are people, people that I like, people that still invite me around for dinner sporadically, but seeing them reminds me of the ones no longer here, so we rarely talk. But they still care about me, and part of me is glad because I'm not entirely alone, and part of me wishes they didn't care because it wouldn't matter quite so much if I died.

*

She cleared up his superficial wounds and then came down to my study, where I sat with a book that my tired eyes couldn't read and a bottomless glass of brandy.

"I healed as much as I could, and gave him a blood replenishing potion and also something for the pain."

"Thanks, Hannah," I smiled. "It was good of you to come."

"Not at all. It's awful, isn't it? One of the worst beatings I've seen in years."

I nodded in agreement, and she smiled.

"Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?"

"I'm all right, thanks," I replied. "I'll stay with the patient, make sure he's ok."

"Ok then. I'll drop by tomorrow to see how he's doing."

"Thanks very much."

"No problem. Bye Harry!"

"Bye Hannah."

*

I sat with him for most of the evening, with my book and my glass, and watched to make sure...to make sure... well I'm not really sure why I watched but the point is I did. He didn't wake up or anything, not that I was expecting him to, and he only moved once. Then darkness fell, and I thought about going to bed, until I remembered that my bed was occupied.

So I went to one of the guest rooms. Not the one that Michael usually slept in, not my favourite one, just an all-purpose, standard guest room, one of many.

My house really was ridiculously large for one person, even two, not that I'd have ever asked Michael to live with me. That would have meant admitting I was lonely, which of course I was, even though I tried to convince myself I wasn't.

And after setting down my book and my half-finished brandy on the bedside table, I laid down and fell into a flurry of plain and colourless sleep.

*

It didn't matter that I woke up in a strange bed in an unfamiliar part of my house. It didn't matter that my rival of almost twenty years was in my room. It didn't matter that Michael hadn't sent me an owl, or that I was supposed to be ready for another day of pointless pen-pushing at the Ministry, or that my best friends and family were dead, or that millions of people owed their lives to me, or that I was supposed to be having a haircut at noon. None of that mattered.

From the second I opened my eyes, a familiar and desensitising coldness swept through me, the reservation that had won me the war flooded my limbs, deadening any feeling, and I realised that today was going to be one of those days.

That today would be another of the days that tested me to my limits, a make-or-break kind of day, a day that nobody would wish upon anyone, especially not themselves, and a day that I had almost grown to live with.

These days were the breaks in a life of perfect routine. I knew I was supposed to be dressing for work and cleaning my teeth now, I knew that in five minutes I should eat some breakfast so that I wouldn't be hungry mid-morning, I knew that in ten I had to floo to the Ministry.

But I wasn't going to do any of that. I was going to stagger into the bathroom with legs like lead and stare at my own face in the mirror for half an hour.

Then I would either punch the mirror in anger, anger that had nothing to do with the mirror, or my face, or anything like that, and watch the blood seep, fresh from my knuckles. Or I would sit on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, clutching my knees to my chest, and spend the rest of the day in apathetic misery.

I was going to do that, like I did on every day like this, the days when nothing mattered to me anymore, the days when I wished I could just die, and tell the world to fuck off and find another hero, and no longer have to do or say or think or feel anything.

Normally I would just wait for it to pass, wait for the dark clouds in my head to clear, and for a little voice to remind me that I had something to live for, however stupid or insignificant it was.

But today was different from normal, and the dark clouds were darker than ever, and obscured any light, and filled my skull with the memories I spent six days a week trying to forget. The feeling of letting the day pass wasn't there. The feeling that told me to hang on until I found something worth living for, until things would look better, was gone, it had sunk in the violent and ceaseless pounding of the stormy seas of my mind, and there was no escape.

I did the only thing I saw fit to do, the only thing I knew how to do. I ran, and I ran and I ran, all within the space of my bathroom, all whilst sitting perfectly still on the floor. I ran to every corner of my head that I still had control over, searching in vain for refuge, but of course there was none.

So I kept running, my legs weak and shaking, to a door. In my mind I wore a key around my neck, a key to a door that would stop the black clouds forever, but a key I could only use when the storm was so fierce that I had no other option.

I thrust the key into the lock of the door at the back of my consciousness, and I opened it and went through. Inside it was sunny, and light, and although I couldn't think from there, I could still control my body.

My inner self knew that this was safety, and that I had to stay there forever, and that there was only on way to do that. So I picked myself off the bathroom floor, and went over to the cabinet, and took out a small bottle of viscous black liquid, the label faded, and uncorked it and drank it and went downstairs, with my book and my brandy, and sat in my chair and calmly waited for my release to come.

*

"Harry, are you ok?" she asked, panic in her voice.

"Apparently yes," I replied, my voice thick with the black potion. "Which is strange. Why aren't I dead?"

She took a step back from me, and looked up and down my body.

"You mean you knew about the potion? No one tried to assassinate you?"

"For Christ's sake, Hannah, I took the bloody potion."

"You did?" she replied, pale and trembling. "You wanted fourteen hours of slow and painful death?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Right. Well, you're going to be ok now."

"That's a great comfort to me," I said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

"Right," she repeated, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. "Stay there while I check up on Draco."

"I will, considering I now have my whole life in which to wait."

She left, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the clouds had cleared, and although it was far from sunny, my mind was at considerably more peace that it had been before. I was more tired than anything, which was irritating, but easier to live with than the storm. So I went to sleep.

*

"He's fine," she said, as she shook me on the shoulder and woke me from my sleep, her face pale and pinched, her eyes turned towards the floor.

"I'm glad," I replied colourlessly. I was honestly glad that he was ok, but I could guess what was coming next.

And sure enough it did.

"Why, Harry?"

"Why am I glad?" I asked, skirting around the real question in feigned confusion. "Because I don't want him to be suffering, I suppose."

"You know I didn't mean that. I mean why now? Why after all these years?"

"Why not yesterday? Because I had too many things to do yesterday, too much to occupy my mind. Why not over the last few months? I couldn't, there was still something left then. There was still some hope. Why not ten years ago, when I lost everything? I was numb then. Why now? I don't know. I can answer anything except why now."

"I can go now, I'm happy with Draco, but I'm afraid to leave you."

"Go. I'll be fine. He'll be fine."

"I'm still not sure..."

"Take everything potentially damaging away with you if you like, I don't mind. Just get back to Ernie."

"Well, all right. But I will be back tomorrow."

"I don't doubt that you will."