Coming Home
Author: Isobel Pranger
Title: Coming Home (1/3)
Prompt: Many years after school: Harry has gotten used to being alone, having pushed people away out of fear for their safety. Hermione works an internship at the Ministry. Ginny plays Quidditch for the Harpies. Ron works internationally. The loss of Mr. or Mrs. Weasley (due to natural causes) brings friendships back together. People have moved on and Harry realizes how much he missed them. Especially a certain brown-haired witch.
Summary: Sometimes when life claims the innocence of a young soul, all that soul has left is to hide away and heal. When Ron suffers the death of his mother, can Harry pull himself together enough to mend his friendships and his heart?
Other ships: R/LL, N/G
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Sorry this is out so late after when I said it would be. I’m incredibly busy and slow. This story has been broken down into three parts, for both your viewing pleasure and my own time management. Big thanks and hugs to Steph for her beta!
Coming Home Part Ia
To most people, the life of the ever famous Boy-Who-Lived might seem lonely. Waking up every morning without another person with him and then spending the whole day in solitude, is certainly uneventful. In a world filled with grateful wizards and witches, one might question why he would wish to live out the rest of his days in a small Muggle village where his name wasn’t spelled out in lights for everyone to see. But if he was to be honest, this was the way Harry Potter liked it.
There were no people knocking down his door at all hours, no twisted, evil madmen on his tail, and no absurd hero-worship and proclaims of him being chosen. He woke up every day and ate breakfast, just like everybody else. He wore regular jeans that were just a few sizes too big, and ratty old t-shirts that were well lived in and he saw no real reason to replace. His favorite pair of trainers sat by the back door, covered in mud and stained by grass, and he wore the same silly Muggle coat he’d had since he was seventeen.
Harry Potter considered his life humble, especially whenever he took a moment to compare it with some of the greater wizards before his time. Even Dumbledore, extraordinary man that he’d been, had dressed in brilliant colors and had thousands of rare trinkets. Harry only had his house, which he would admit was rather large, built on the same site in Godric’s Hollow that his parents’ home had once rested. He wasn’t sure why he felt more secure here than any place save maybe Hogwarts, but he did. It wasn’t overly magical; in fact, its walls were filled with many simple Muggle inventions and a fair few that would have any neighborly visitors questioning.
Though no matter how far he’d try to run from it, it seemed that the one thing Harry would never escape would be gossip. It was only natural, he’d decided, for him to be used to it. He was sure the young kids at his Muggle primary school had jabbered on about him like he was some kind of freak, and the wizarding world hadn’t failed to print anything about his life from the moment he stepped in until the moment he stepped out. And part of him, or at least the part that would admit that sometimes he thought about it, was sure that they still did.
And so too had it gone for the Muggles. They had all been very interested in their new neighbor, as there were very few moving in annually, when he moved into town. The old ladies at the hair parlor had gotten right into gossip about how he lived alone, on a lot that had not been used since the early eighties, and had been rumored to have been haunted. There were also a few awkward moments involving some teenage girls chasing him up his driveway after they’d spotted him jogging down a gravel road without his t-shirt on. The one thing that got them going more than anything else, however, was his visits to the cemetery.
He’d barely lived in the Hollow for a week when the woman in charge of the grocery shop, Margaret, had spotted him dressed in his black suit walking through the headstones with flowers in his hand. He’d stopped near the top of a small hill and knelt down, softly, placing the flowers at the base of the marker. He leaned forward, rested his forehead against the stone and started to whisper something that the old woman couldn’t hear. He sat there for a long time, she would later inform her friends, he eventually stood up and walked away, but he indiscreetly wiped tears from his eyes as he left
After he’d left and Margaret had taken the opportunity to see whose final resting place it was he’d been to, she’d discovered the power to rekindle one of the greatest mysteries on the area.
It had always baffled the people of Godric’s Hollow when it came to what happened to Lily and James Potter. They’d been a handsome couple, though very young, with a small baby boy. They were rather quiet though, and kept to themselves, as if they didn’t want to draw attention. Then one morning, the sleepy town had arisen to find their home in ruins. Their bodies were being examined by authorities of anunknown nature, both parents dead and the baby alive. Lily and James were buried later on that week, and they never saw the baby again. So naturally, when a young man shows up and builds a home on that lot and visits their graves, questions and far-fetched stories had to arise.
Harry felt no need to fill them in on anything. He’d let them talk, he decided, because if it weren’t that, it would be something else. He’d rather they wonder than notice something important about him, like his magic and then he’d have to leave. He didn’t want to leave. He liked it there.
It was almost like home.
He’d made the decision to move to Godric’s Hollow a few days before his defeat of Voldemort, which he wouldn’t discuss with anyone even if they were standing next to him when it happened, thank you very much. All he’d say on the subject was that he’d stood up, battered and bloody, and walked off. He’d made no comment to the Prophet, he’d not spoken to any Aurors or any other authorities, and he’d not even blinked in the direction of a single Order member. All he’d wanted was to grab what few things in the world he considered his and go hide somewhere. Some place where no one would find him, where nobody would care about his life before now, and were he’d have no one close enough to him to ever get hurt.
Especially so no one would get hurt.
The last he’d seen of his best friends, Ron and Hermione, were a bit fuzzy. They’d been together, he remembered. He’d told them goodbye, and that even if he lived, he wouldn’t come back. Hermione had run to him and hugged him tight, and she’d whispered over and over that he couldn’t go, that they needed him. He didn’t think they would. They had each other now. That would have to be good enough. They’d never be in danger when they were together, they’d never be hurt when they weren’t with him.
Dobby had been the only one to follow him. Dobby and that painful sack of skin, Kreacher. They’d served him for years, with pay of course, until Kreacher died. The first instinct Harry had was to build a bonfire, but the sound of Hermione’s voice in his head, telling him that Kreacher should be treated like a person, prompted a shady funeral service at the far end of his backyard. Only he and Dobby were in attendance.
To say that Harry separated himself from his past all together would be a bit harsh. He’d not tried to forget it or lock it all away in a box in his attic. He no longer read the Prophet and it would be a long time before anyone ever saw him in Diagon Alley again, but he’d not forgotten. In fact, he had a wall in his library dedicated specially for it. He’d nailed up many important items from his past, including what remained of his invisibility cloak, the Marauder’s Map, the label to his old broom servicing kit, a few stray Exploding Snap cards, the Dumbledore card from his first chocolate frog, and the mirror that Sirius had given him.
While Harry had never been much of a reader, one of his favorite places was his library. The walls were covered in books, some he’d read and many more that he hadn’t. There were several he’d taken from best-selling lists and several more that Hermione had suggested to him at one point or another in their years in Hogwarts. It was a large room that he could sit in and feel like the rest of the world was just a million miles away, and he loved it.
Which was perhaps why Harry was so surprised when, of all creatures, Hedwig came flying up to the window of his library one dark, cloudy afternoon. He’d been sprawled out on a couch in the middle of the room, a small stack of books on the floor close by and one lying comfortably on his stomach.
He’d been grumpy and irritable when he reached the window and let the owl in, having completely forgotten that he’d let her out in the first place. She’d ruffled her feathers and stuck her beak up to him, shoving her leg out into his hand like he didn’t deserve what she had to offer. He peeled the envelope open, once she’d allowed him to have it, and tugged the letter free.
“Oh,” he said, scanning over his old friend’s handwriting, “Fuck.”
* * * * * * * *
Hermione Granger’s ride to the Burrow was without incident, though had there been any she would hardly have noticed. Life had just taken a sudden and scary turn for the worst, and while she liked to consider herself the kind of person who could easily roll with the punches, she’d become too comfortable and out of practice to do it now.
It had been a long time since she’d been to the Burrow. Five years, maybe, if she were to track it backwards. That didn’t mean she’d cut herself out of the Weasley family’s life all together like that of her former best friend, Harry Potter. Oh, no, she’d visited with them often. Catching Mr. Weasley in the Ministry or having lunch with Percy. She sometimes stopped into the Wheezes in Diagon when she was feeling down, and Fred and George were always willing to do whatever they could to help pick her up. She was still good friends with Neville and Ginny, and though there was an unspoken strain between her and Ron, they still found the time to exchange owls from time to time.
The car she rode in stopped in front of the funny looking house at the furthest corner of Ottery St. Catchpole, the front yard covered family members dressed in black. Looking out, she could see countless Weasleys, spouses of Weasleys, and even a Weasling or two. Some of them were talking to one another, some were just hugging and crying, and there were a few stray mourners who simply stared ahead and said nothing.
She’d known that Molly Weasley had suffered a form of cancer, she wasn’t sure which, and Ron had told her in no uncertain terms a few months ago that it had gotten worse. It didn’t stop the owl tapping on the bedroom window of her London flat from being a shock, though. She wouldn’t lie and say that she hadn’t cried like it had been her own mother, because she had. She’d rocked herself back and forth and sobbed, and she was sure she wasn’t the only one. Once she’d composed herself she wasted no time in owling Ron back, informing him in a note stained with tears that she would be the first one there for the funeral.
She pushed the car door open and tipped the man who’d driven it for her, since she’d never officially learned how to drive herself. She slowly climbed out, taking hold of the doorframe and pulling herself to her feet. The heels of her shoes stunk into the ground that was completely saturated from a night of solid rain. As she walked across the front yard in search of either Ron or some other close Weasley who needed comfort, she spotted Neville Longbottom standing uncomfortably outside a ring of females that were hugging and crying together.
“Hello Neville,” she said, as pleasantly as possible, stopping to stand next to him. Neville took his time in pulling his attention away from the mob of sobbing women before looking to Hermione and smiling for her weakly.
“Nice to see you, Hermione,” he said, turning to her and initiating the appropriate embrace that should be exchanged at a time like this, “So terrible that we must meet on such an occasion,” he said, looking back to the women. Hermione nodded in agreement. Neville and Ginny had come together a few months after the end of the war, both depressed and lonely after the final battle. Hermione supposed, at the time, that it would only be natural since there were parts of their past that they shared with very few others. And while most had believed it would be a short relationship in the absence of who was popularly felt to be Ginny’s ‘ideal man,’ Harry, Neville had taken it upon himself to prove them wrong. Hermione couldn’t deny that they loved each other more than anyone she’d known up to this point, and had been very excited when they chose to marry three years ago in the back yard of this very house.
“How has Ginny been holding up?” Hermione asked, gesturing to the scene before them, a tangle of red Weasley hair slightly visible from somewhere near the middle.
“As well as can be expected, I guess,” Neville said, shrugging. Hermione got the impression that he’d tried his best, but as it goes in a family like that of the Weasley clan, the only way to heal is in a group, and one man couldn’t bear that load. “She’s been crying every moment since we heard it was over. But it’s getting better. At first she wouldn’t get out of bed. She got up and did a few minor things around the house yesterday and she was up bright and early this morning… I think it’s safe to take that as a good sign.”
*** continued here