Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, prologue

 

March 28, 2002.

Somewhere off the coast of England.

People always ask me, "Do you know Harry Potter?"

"Harry Potter," they persist, "You know, he’s really where it’s at—he’s the flavor of the week, the prophet of this month’s generation and jeez, I’ll never ever forget him even if, God help me, I live to be six hundred and sixty six."

Although it’s desperately hard for me to remain so bloody apathetic in the face of their blind adoration, I always without fail, reply, "Harry who?"

I think I feign ignorance because I enjoy catching the lemmings by surprise. I get a sick sort of thrill from watching their blank expressions change from ones of inane adoration to a pathetic deer in the headlights look, because, you see, they’re operating under the impression that there is no one, not one hapless soul under the sun who has not heard of their precious Mr. Potter.

But playing dumb is a double-edged sword, Harry, because they’re always willing to enlighten me about you, enlighten me, a poor heathen soul languishing in the darkness, whose only chance for salvation is to run naked into the baptismal ray of light shining out of the crack in your pearly cheeks.

Some asshole said let there be light and then God created Harry Potter.

Funnily enough, it’s always about you, Harry, when strictly speaking, its not supposed to be about you at all. You see, Harry, you’re a wanted man. Personal relationships tend to get a wee bit complicated when you have a 300 million galleon bounty on your head, but you’re up to the challenge, aren’t you? If anyone can do it, it’s you. But you don’t need such empty reassurances; you’re Harry Fucking Potter and when God said let there be light he got you instead. You’re the celestial glue holding all of us together.

Glue can really fuck you up, you know. If you sniff it long enough, it eats tunnels through your brain, big empty tunnels so if you really really wanted to, you could shrink yourself and scream something into the moth-eaten lump that had once been your medulla oblongataand hear it echoing out through the network of tunnels in your right frontal lobe. Glue eats so many holes in your brain that it looks like you have a moldy hunk of Swiss cheese, instead of an organ, resting between your temples.

Temple. That’s what its like living with you, Harry. Forget the Odd Couple, living under your roof is like trying to sleep in a fucking temple. There are people prostrating themselves on the ground all over the living room rug when I want to watch the Price is Right, some really desperate unemployed musicians without a treble cleft of talent (Ha ha, people like that make me laugh-- doncha wish you listened to your mother and gotten that economics major? Selling out puts bread in your belly. Self-righteousness is an empty emotion, isn’t it Harry? Look where it got you.) singing hymns of adoration in your honor. The hymns, if you can even call them that, sound like they were written by Berlioz on crack, which trust me, is pretty fucking scary. Berlioz makes Ozzy Ozbourne looks like a nancy-wancy pansy and when you throw crack into the picture things just spiral down and out of the bathtub of control, down the plug, down through the pipes, down, down , down and out to the front stoop which is chock full of sick bastards waiting for you Harry. They’re so ill they’re shedding five-inch pieces of their skin, but still begging, forever begging for you to heal them until their lips fall off and they can’t beg anymore.

Your temple makes me sick, Harry. It makes me feel like going out and rolling in the mud while committing sixteen mortal sins. Afterwards I’ll go bathe in a tub of vodka and screw my own mother, just so I can feel like a human being—just so I can feel alive.

You’re driving me to this, Harry. You’re driving me to ruin.

You should have never left Godric’s Hollow. They should have abandoned you, not on Dursley’s doorstep, but in the ruins of your father’s house, a squalling babe in the ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, everything tends towards entropy and within a short while your wails would have turned to sobs, your sobs to cries, your cries to whispers, and your whispers to silence.

It would have been better that way.

People always ask me, "Do you know Harry Potter?"

And do you know what I say, Golden Boy, do you know what I say in the face of that blind adoration?

"I did."

I did, I really did. Sometimes I think I still do, sometimes I can see a glimmer of life in your oh-so-saintly green eyes, but then you freeze back into a medieval effigy, an immaculate plywood halo nailed into the back of your oaken skull, your inanimate hands extended in blessing, yet bestowing nothing upon your flock except an empty promise—and an even bigger lie.

It’s not that I object to blind adoration. It can be quite useful, especially when you’re trying to get laid with a firefly girl half your age, but I do have a problem when the adoration begins to consume the object of affection from the inside out, until he becomes a hollow effigy of what he once believed with every fiber of his being—until he accepts the lies his fans are spouting, their inane praise, their legends, until he becomes the head priest in his very own Cult of Majesty.

It’s only since blind adoration has stolen your soul that I have a problem, Harry.

And if you can’t see the way, Harry, who can?

And if you believe the lies Harry, where lies the truth?

And if you don’t know what’s right Harry, who is to stop you from doing what’s wrong?

And am I the only one cursed to understand that you don’t know the way, don’t know the left from the right, yet still doggedly ignoring the wrong?

Am I the only one cursed to see that you’re just as blind as the rest of us?

Don’t make me do it, Harry, don’t make me destroy your temple, don’t make me cast out your followers and pull down your altar. But thou shalt not have any false gods—even thyself.

Even thyself.

"Hey man, do you know Harry Potter?"

Ron Weasley pulled the cigarette from between his lips and with one flick of his wrist, scattered the ash across the chipped sidewalk, watching the brief glimmers of light flare up for one brief moment of fleeting glory, then fade away into nothingness.

It took him a while to reply and that was only after he raised the cigarette to his lips and exhaled slowly, smoke curling gray around his head of red hair, forming the horrible travesty of a halo. "Harry who?"