Captain Backfire

Dull green eyes bored into mine, his aged body lifeless and yet filled with such a passionate hate that it radiated off him in nauseating waves, his tainted aura filling the room with shivers. His pale, sunless skin sagged, his white hair speckled with unbecoming black splotches and a pair of intelligent spectacles sat perched atop the end of his nose. His clothes were obviously old and well worn, his gray robes starting to fray. A silver chain hung around his neck, a metal band hanging calmly on his chest and glinting dully in the poor firelight. I tore my eyes away and pulled my cloak tighter around me, the room having dropped a few degrees since when I had first arrived minutes earlier. And we still sat in silence.

There was nothing warm about his manor or him; the vines crawling up the walls a vague reminder of how unwelcome visitors really were. The place was made of gray stone and everything there was dull. There were no rich hangings or expensive draperies. There were no servants, no tea times for two, and definitely no trespassing into the West Wing. That much was evident. The pitch-black hall to the right of the entrance was evidence enough. Thick particles of dust fluttered from darkness into light. The sun seemed to abandon the mansion and the hill it sat upon, and the few acres surrounding his home.

He coughed, piercing the silence, and I knew if he could have helped it he would have, his body no longer responsive to his every whim. I myself feared death, but this man didn't, couldn't. Something told me he had died a long time ago.

I handed him my handkerchief and he took it ungratefully. I looked around until he was done expelling some of his diseases.

I hadn't forgotten my mission, my purpose here. This man was going to die very soon and he had a story to tell. His legend needed to be heard from his point of view. The public needed to know. I was curious and excited myself. My name would probably become a part of history simply because this man was so deeply twined with it. If I could tell his story to the world I would be remembered.

He looked at me again, dreading the question and secretly adoring the answer. So I asked him the one thing I knew he did and didn't want to hear.

"Tell me your story, Mr. Potter."

His eyes narrowed, his dislike for his past showing through his demeanor. His shoulders slouched, his fingers threaded in his lap, and his posture wasn't as stiff as it had been. He suddenly looked like a three year old about ready to throw a fit.

"No."

"Mr. Potter, I think you would like to oblige," I said coaxingly.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it once more. "No."

"Mr. Potter," I leaned forward, my hands on my knees, and looked him squarely in the eyes. "You're story needs to be told. And you... you need to tell it."

I could see this sour, lonely man was considering my words. He hadn't told anyone about the incident and the repercussions that followed. One could only speculate, but without his facts we would never know the truth. And the truth was becoming more and more difficult to find as of late. Besides, he must have been dying to talk to someone.

"Okay."

I did a double take. That had been way too easy. I was expecting this ex-Auror to put up a fight.

"But... there's a catch."

I nodded. Of course there was.

"When the time comes, you need to do something for me."

"All right, Mr. Potter," I hastily agreed. I would have committed murder for this.

"Where... do I begin?" So uncertain. How could a brave young man turn into this? My generation grew up admiring his picture in History classes. He'd been laughing, smiling, joking; his eyes twinkling and his arm casually looped around his best mate's neck. If I were to touch him now I would have been thrown out.

"The beginning, Mr. Potter, is always a marvelous place to start."

He looked at me with an odd expression. Maybe it was the ghost of a smile flitting along his lips.

"The beginning..." Harry trailed off, idly tracing his lips. "Who is to say where the beginning starts, and where one ends and another begins? Time is seamless. There are many starts and ends, sometimes simultaneous, sometimes not. There have been many beginnings in my life; phases in which I felt different emotions, experienced new things. Important happenings in one's life dictate an end and a beginning, I assume." He shifted and leaned toward me, his intelligent mind racing with over thought ideas. "As many beginnings I have suffered, I have also known ends. Deaths, tragedies... do these not dictate your life just as much -or even more so- as love and marriage?" Harry sat back, self-satisfied. "That is how society functions. When one thinks the world will end, it ends. When one thinks the world is reborn anew, it begins. But isn't a beginning just another death?" My companion's voice lowered to a sad whisper by the time he was done and he was staring off, lost somewhere I couldn't see.

"My life... is full of death." Harry focused on me again, his life done flashing inside his mind. "I'll be frank with you. I'm about to tear myself open, hand you the bloody pieces of my heart and watch you steal my life. Forgive me if at some moments I need time to," he lazily waved his hand as he looked for the word, "recover. For someone who has spent all these years alone, I am foreign to my own memories." He swallowed and if I knew him any better then I would have known he was sheepish as he asked, " But first, can I have a glass of water?"

I acquiesced and thought a hundred different things at once, my feet following Harry Potter's instructions while my mind was busy elsewhere. The halls were lined with portraits of a dominantly blond lineage, their frowns staring me down to a millimeter. I didn't reach the kitchen fast enough and once there I was amazed. The walls were clean, the surfaces untouched, and a beam of light spilled forth through the kitchen window and onto the floor. Whoever said, 'once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right' couldn't have been anymore precise.

After I hurried back and we were both settled comfortably, Harry now with a glass of water in hand, my gaze was expectant. This was it; no more excuses, no more distractions. It was just me and Harry Potter and a long, winding trip down his life.

He sighed, resigned to our agreement, and said, "It was almost ninety years ago when I got messed up in this sordid affair. I was a bright-eyed twenty year old looking for an adventure and thinking I could conquer the world. My first slap in the face was when I finally got here, actually. Foreboding place, isn't it? And so very clichéd. An ancient manor on top a decrepit hill with anorexic trees dotting the sparse countryside."

Harry's eyes shifted and he wasn't looking at me anymore. Instead his mind had switched gears and topics, and my quill scratching across the parchment couldn't follow fast enough and I blotted the paper while he continued on, oblivious.

"...his power was something terrible, one in which you would only find in a beautiful nightmare and the darkest of dreams. Reality was..." Harry paused, licked his lips, and closed his old eyes in brief remembrance of a time so long ago, "no match for him. Or me. That, perhaps, was our downfall."

He looked at me then, his haunted gaze something I still have not forgotten. He was a man possessed. "We were partners in a game that had no rules, no boundaries, and no teams." He smiled, his lips twisted in a cruel mockery of what was once quite charming. "We were destined to lose from the start."

And then he proceeded to tell me everything.

tbc...