(no subject)
Who? Harry Potter
What? An owl to Severus
When? After their most recent fight in grownhp6words
Why? Because he can never say what he needs to say when they are sharing the same space and breathing the same air.
Author's note: Mun knowledge only unless you're Severus.
From the truth Of a thousand lies So let mercy come And wash away What I've done I'll face myself To cross out what i've become Erase myself And let go of what i've done Put to rest What you thought of me While I clean this slate With the hands of uncertainty'>
Severus,
I've come to the conclusion that any hope I have of speaking my heart as well as my mind to you is through a letter. The moment we are face to face I lose all ability to control the various emotions that your mere presence makes surface within me. Which is why, over the last decade, I have been careful not to be in your space for too long or too often. The tension between us is not as noticeable if we keep a polite distance and allow our shared friends and family to work as living, breathing, protegos. They keep us from giving in to all those thoughts that spring forward as memories crash around us. What a pair we have turned out to be.
When I was eleven I realized you hated me. You absolutely hated me. It wasn't until I was older that I realized why you hated me. You saw my father in me. I looked too much like him. How dare some spawn of James Potter have Lily Evans eyes. How infuriating it must have been for you all those years. Forced to see the living proof of the love they had shared. Yet time and time again, there you were, attempting to keep me from meeting an untimely end. Not because you wished to raise me for slaughter as Albus intended to do. No, you wished to save what was left of her. And I assume that you saw so much more of her in me over the years. You realized I had her heart. I carried emotions much like she did. I may look like my father, but I am truly her son.
Of course the funny thing about me is that I am sort of a sponge am I not? Do I not bear the markings of all that have played a role in raising me? Do I not have Remus's ability to see the good in people that others would write off? Do I not have Siri's ability to forgive all that hurt me no matter how much damage they inflict? Do I not have my dad's ability to push past my own fears and throw all those that I care about behind me so that I can shield them? Do I not have my mother's ability to comfort and soothe those who doubt themselves or are hurt for some other reason? Do I not possess your ability to do what needs to be done even if it requires stepping over those in my way? Do I not have Albus's penchant for justifying the things I do as saying the few for the many?
The man I am is a collection of the best and worst of those who raised me. Mostly the best though. At least that is what most people see when they look at me. Not you. No, you saw all those flaws in my character. All those cracks in my surface. You saw what others did not wish to see; I was capable of doing drastic devastating things even after I was no longer a horcrux. You see those things in me because they are a reflection of you. Yes, I know, how dare I speak about your mind. Blow me, Severus. You're going to hear me out once and for all.
Right, so, we have always had a complicated relationship. Long before the night in Azkaban, things were...layered. Yes, you broke me that night. You have the honor of being able to say you are the one who broke Harry Potter. Voldemort tried and failed. Bellatrix tried and failed. Umbridge tried and failed. Many tried and failed, but you succeeded. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have your mind snap? Snap like a twig off a tree in the yard. I felt it. I felt my mind snap as my heart broke, and all I could do was laugh. Because it was rather hysterical that the one who tried so hard to save the son of his beloved and his mortal enemy was the one who broke him. But what you failed to see was that after you broke me, I picked myself off the floor, and I stood up stronger than I was.
You see, Severus, what you truly broke that night was my innocence. Some how, some way, I managed to hold on tight to it despite all of the things I endured in the second war. I managed to hold on to it despite all of the things I was enduring in the third war. Then there was this moment when I came to realize that I could kill. I could take a life. It didn't matter if I was doing it to give you peace. My intentions did not matter in the least. I was capable of taking a human life. Merlin, do you understand what that meant? I was no longer the child in the shack demanding that the traitor who ruined my life and the lives of my fathers be spared from death. I was no longer the boy who would shout a disarming spell rather than the killing curse. I was no longer the boy who lived because of love. I was Albus's heir, and that is exactly who I was meant to be.
Don't you see, Severus? I was never meant to be this innocent and sheltered. I was never meant to be protected from how harsh life could be. I was supposed to be able to make the hard choices. I was supposed to be able to look at a situation and decide that the one or two for the many were acceptable losses. You cut the puppet strings from me. You removed me from being a piece on the chess board so that I could be the one who moved the pieces about. My ethics, my morality, my innocence, yes they were stripped from me that night. Yes, you brought about that glimpse of insanity that had been fighting to take hold of me for so many years, but it did not win. I would not allow it to control me any more than I will ever allow someone else to control me again.
You are cattle, not me. Don't you see how hilarious this is? You can moo in my general direction as much as you want, but you are still the pawn on the chess board. That is why you feel so empty. That is why you are simply existing rather than seizing hold of life and making the most of it. It could be your guilt. It could be your self-loathing. It could be simply that you are more comfortable huddled in the fetal position being kicked while you are down rather than to be the one the kicking. Not that you don't enjoy delivering the well placed kick here or there. I bear those scars of those lessons. However, my point is that you believe you lost yourself in the final war. I know that is what you believe because that is why you are projecting an image rather than digging deeper to find out who you really are.
Guess what, Professor? Most of us lost ourselves in that war. Have you taken a good hard look at Draco lately? How about Remus? Perhaps you would like to look at Andromeda a bit closer? My mother maybe? Oh I don't know, give Sirius a look over. My godson perhaps? Hermione? Ron? Scorpius Malfoy? Albus Severus? Rose? More of us walked away being irreversibly changed than those who remained the same as they were before. You are not a special snowflake. This war was disastrous for most everyone, and yes some of us changed more than others. And perhaps we're all wearing our own mask to a degree, but you and I have taken it to an entirely new level. It's funny really. It's as if we changed places that night in the prison. You became determined to be everything to everyone. The father, the husband, the lover, the headmaster, the friend, and I became selfish. I decided I owed no one anything anymore. I'd paid all that I had to pay in the last two wars. My family would be my first concern, and everything else could rot.
I left the auror's department because I lost my taste for fighting dark wizards. I left teaching full time because I didn't trust...how numb I felt. I wanted to be selfish. I wished to be with my wife, my parents, and my children. So I did it. I owed no one an explanation. I owed no one anything at all. They have their truce. It will remain intact because I refuse to go through another war. You allowed me to be able to make that truce. Don't you see? I can kill so if someone on either side decides to test just how far the chosen one is willing to go to keep peace then they will be made an example of. They should fear me more than Voldemort really. I'm quite certain he didn't lose himself in the last war.
What about you though? What is it going to take to make you wish to live? To really live? You say that you care about nothing, yet I see you only walking away. Are you going to annul your marriage with my mother? Will you cease contacting your children and Andromeda? Do you plan to step down from the school you swear you don't give a damn about anymore? What are you going to do, Severus? Are you honestly so lost that without your masters you are unable to make a decision for yourself? Can you not see all that you have available to you or is that the problem? Can you simply not handle being this over-indulged?
Children like us are not meant to get everything we desire. We're meant to huddle in fear in dark cupboards hoping for the door to open, yet fearing what it will mean when it does. We're not meant to find love with someone who sees all of us and loves us because of it not inspite of it. We're not meant to be good fathers. How can we be good fathers after how we were raised?
Yet here we are. Overindulged former orphans whose previous home could only be found at Hogwarts. I give up. I have tried everything I can think of to wake you up and make you see that the war is over and that I gave you peace. I have exhausted every option, and honestly the boy who thought he could save everyone died years ago. You don't even get to claim that victory. It happened when I had to bury the last of my fathers.
Do what you need to do, but I stand by the fact that this is no place for you as long as you are determined to live under the delusion that your life is meaningless. However, I will point out that while I may be your mirror image, your first child even, that I am not the one who needs you. I love you. I hate you. I do not need you to come back. My siblings will not be able to say the same. Perhaps my mother and Andromeda will not be able to say the same. Perhaps the school will not be able to say the same. But until you can live your life for a reason, be it them or yourself, you are a shell of the man you once were. You are...empty. And I have no idea how to fill you back up so I am letting you go. I couldn't do it before. Not when you died the first time. Not when you broke me in the prison. Not when I cut myself to make you see that her blood is in my veins. I have fought to keep you here, and I can not do it any longer. You have taught me so much, but now I look at you and I feel...pity.
I do not wish to pity you any more than you wish to be pitied. I can not give you death again. You already threw that away. I tried to give you peace, and that didn't help either. I gave you an enemy to fight, and you...well it does us no good to fight with each other does it? It's like fighting with ourselves.
I would highly recommend you visit Amsterdam on your travels. Find yourself a nice rooftop, get stoned, listen to some Bob Marley, and accept that the world may be able to live without you, but there are people who love you that believe they can not. I didn't come back because I gave a damn about living for me, Severus. There you have it. My secret. I came back for my family, and it is enough for me. They are enough for me. Ginny's laughter, my children's love, my parents second chances, my friends support, that is enough for me. But as much as we may be alike, you are not me, so only you can answer what is right for you.
I will not contact you again. I will keep my distance from you in the future. I see you for who you are, for who you truly are, and I love you. I have never stopped loving you even when you became the one I hated. But I will no longer force you to deal with me while hoping it will wake you up and make you live again. If you wish to see me, find me, otherwise I wish you the best in your journey.
Love,
Harry
What? An owl to Severus
When? After their most recent fight in grownhp6words
Why? Because he can never say what he needs to say when they are sharing the same space and breathing the same air.
Author's note: Mun knowledge only unless you're Severus.
From the truth Of a thousand lies So let mercy come And wash away What I've done I'll face myself To cross out what i've become Erase myself And let go of what i've done Put to rest What you thought of me While I clean this slate With the hands of uncertainty'>
Severus,
I've come to the conclusion that any hope I have of speaking my heart as well as my mind to you is through a letter. The moment we are face to face I lose all ability to control the various emotions that your mere presence makes surface within me. Which is why, over the last decade, I have been careful not to be in your space for too long or too often. The tension between us is not as noticeable if we keep a polite distance and allow our shared friends and family to work as living, breathing, protegos. They keep us from giving in to all those thoughts that spring forward as memories crash around us. What a pair we have turned out to be.
When I was eleven I realized you hated me. You absolutely hated me. It wasn't until I was older that I realized why you hated me. You saw my father in me. I looked too much like him. How dare some spawn of James Potter have Lily Evans eyes. How infuriating it must have been for you all those years. Forced to see the living proof of the love they had shared. Yet time and time again, there you were, attempting to keep me from meeting an untimely end. Not because you wished to raise me for slaughter as Albus intended to do. No, you wished to save what was left of her. And I assume that you saw so much more of her in me over the years. You realized I had her heart. I carried emotions much like she did. I may look like my father, but I am truly her son.
Of course the funny thing about me is that I am sort of a sponge am I not? Do I not bear the markings of all that have played a role in raising me? Do I not have Remus's ability to see the good in people that others would write off? Do I not have Siri's ability to forgive all that hurt me no matter how much damage they inflict? Do I not have my dad's ability to push past my own fears and throw all those that I care about behind me so that I can shield them? Do I not have my mother's ability to comfort and soothe those who doubt themselves or are hurt for some other reason? Do I not possess your ability to do what needs to be done even if it requires stepping over those in my way? Do I not have Albus's penchant for justifying the things I do as saying the few for the many?
The man I am is a collection of the best and worst of those who raised me. Mostly the best though. At least that is what most people see when they look at me. Not you. No, you saw all those flaws in my character. All those cracks in my surface. You saw what others did not wish to see; I was capable of doing drastic devastating things even after I was no longer a horcrux. You see those things in me because they are a reflection of you. Yes, I know, how dare I speak about your mind. Blow me, Severus. You're going to hear me out once and for all.
Right, so, we have always had a complicated relationship. Long before the night in Azkaban, things were...layered. Yes, you broke me that night. You have the honor of being able to say you are the one who broke Harry Potter. Voldemort tried and failed. Bellatrix tried and failed. Umbridge tried and failed. Many tried and failed, but you succeeded. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have your mind snap? Snap like a twig off a tree in the yard. I felt it. I felt my mind snap as my heart broke, and all I could do was laugh. Because it was rather hysterical that the one who tried so hard to save the son of his beloved and his mortal enemy was the one who broke him. But what you failed to see was that after you broke me, I picked myself off the floor, and I stood up stronger than I was.
You see, Severus, what you truly broke that night was my innocence. Some how, some way, I managed to hold on tight to it despite all of the things I endured in the second war. I managed to hold on to it despite all of the things I was enduring in the third war. Then there was this moment when I came to realize that I could kill. I could take a life. It didn't matter if I was doing it to give you peace. My intentions did not matter in the least. I was capable of taking a human life. Merlin, do you understand what that meant? I was no longer the child in the shack demanding that the traitor who ruined my life and the lives of my fathers be spared from death. I was no longer the boy who would shout a disarming spell rather than the killing curse. I was no longer the boy who lived because of love. I was Albus's heir, and that is exactly who I was meant to be.
Don't you see, Severus? I was never meant to be this innocent and sheltered. I was never meant to be protected from how harsh life could be. I was supposed to be able to make the hard choices. I was supposed to be able to look at a situation and decide that the one or two for the many were acceptable losses. You cut the puppet strings from me. You removed me from being a piece on the chess board so that I could be the one who moved the pieces about. My ethics, my morality, my innocence, yes they were stripped from me that night. Yes, you brought about that glimpse of insanity that had been fighting to take hold of me for so many years, but it did not win. I would not allow it to control me any more than I will ever allow someone else to control me again.
You are cattle, not me. Don't you see how hilarious this is? You can moo in my general direction as much as you want, but you are still the pawn on the chess board. That is why you feel so empty. That is why you are simply existing rather than seizing hold of life and making the most of it. It could be your guilt. It could be your self-loathing. It could be simply that you are more comfortable huddled in the fetal position being kicked while you are down rather than to be the one the kicking. Not that you don't enjoy delivering the well placed kick here or there. I bear those scars of those lessons. However, my point is that you believe you lost yourself in the final war. I know that is what you believe because that is why you are projecting an image rather than digging deeper to find out who you really are.
Guess what, Professor? Most of us lost ourselves in that war. Have you taken a good hard look at Draco lately? How about Remus? Perhaps you would like to look at Andromeda a bit closer? My mother maybe? Oh I don't know, give Sirius a look over. My godson perhaps? Hermione? Ron? Scorpius Malfoy? Albus Severus? Rose? More of us walked away being irreversibly changed than those who remained the same as they were before. You are not a special snowflake. This war was disastrous for most everyone, and yes some of us changed more than others. And perhaps we're all wearing our own mask to a degree, but you and I have taken it to an entirely new level. It's funny really. It's as if we changed places that night in the prison. You became determined to be everything to everyone. The father, the husband, the lover, the headmaster, the friend, and I became selfish. I decided I owed no one anything anymore. I'd paid all that I had to pay in the last two wars. My family would be my first concern, and everything else could rot.
I left the auror's department because I lost my taste for fighting dark wizards. I left teaching full time because I didn't trust...how numb I felt. I wanted to be selfish. I wished to be with my wife, my parents, and my children. So I did it. I owed no one an explanation. I owed no one anything at all. They have their truce. It will remain intact because I refuse to go through another war. You allowed me to be able to make that truce. Don't you see? I can kill so if someone on either side decides to test just how far the chosen one is willing to go to keep peace then they will be made an example of. They should fear me more than Voldemort really. I'm quite certain he didn't lose himself in the last war.
What about you though? What is it going to take to make you wish to live? To really live? You say that you care about nothing, yet I see you only walking away. Are you going to annul your marriage with my mother? Will you cease contacting your children and Andromeda? Do you plan to step down from the school you swear you don't give a damn about anymore? What are you going to do, Severus? Are you honestly so lost that without your masters you are unable to make a decision for yourself? Can you not see all that you have available to you or is that the problem? Can you simply not handle being this over-indulged?
Children like us are not meant to get everything we desire. We're meant to huddle in fear in dark cupboards hoping for the door to open, yet fearing what it will mean when it does. We're not meant to find love with someone who sees all of us and loves us because of it not inspite of it. We're not meant to be good fathers. How can we be good fathers after how we were raised?
Yet here we are. Overindulged former orphans whose previous home could only be found at Hogwarts. I give up. I have tried everything I can think of to wake you up and make you see that the war is over and that I gave you peace. I have exhausted every option, and honestly the boy who thought he could save everyone died years ago. You don't even get to claim that victory. It happened when I had to bury the last of my fathers.
Do what you need to do, but I stand by the fact that this is no place for you as long as you are determined to live under the delusion that your life is meaningless. However, I will point out that while I may be your mirror image, your first child even, that I am not the one who needs you. I love you. I hate you. I do not need you to come back. My siblings will not be able to say the same. Perhaps my mother and Andromeda will not be able to say the same. Perhaps the school will not be able to say the same. But until you can live your life for a reason, be it them or yourself, you are a shell of the man you once were. You are...empty. And I have no idea how to fill you back up so I am letting you go. I couldn't do it before. Not when you died the first time. Not when you broke me in the prison. Not when I cut myself to make you see that her blood is in my veins. I have fought to keep you here, and I can not do it any longer. You have taught me so much, but now I look at you and I feel...pity.
I do not wish to pity you any more than you wish to be pitied. I can not give you death again. You already threw that away. I tried to give you peace, and that didn't help either. I gave you an enemy to fight, and you...well it does us no good to fight with each other does it? It's like fighting with ourselves.
I would highly recommend you visit Amsterdam on your travels. Find yourself a nice rooftop, get stoned, listen to some Bob Marley, and accept that the world may be able to live without you, but there are people who love you that believe they can not. I didn't come back because I gave a damn about living for me, Severus. There you have it. My secret. I came back for my family, and it is enough for me. They are enough for me. Ginny's laughter, my children's love, my parents second chances, my friends support, that is enough for me. But as much as we may be alike, you are not me, so only you can answer what is right for you.
I will not contact you again. I will keep my distance from you in the future. I see you for who you are, for who you truly are, and I love you. I have never stopped loving you even when you became the one I hated. But I will no longer force you to deal with me while hoping it will wake you up and make you live again. If you wish to see me, find me, otherwise I wish you the best in your journey.
Love,
Harry