Fic: "Cloak", for sapphiretragedy
Title: Cloak
Author: inthesewalls
Recipient: sapphiretragedy
Rating: PG
Character: Harry Potter
Summary: Harry shouldn’t have to hide anymore. Voldemort is dead. It’s over.
Author's Notes: sapphiretragedy asked for character-driven fic. I hope you like it!
Cloak
The sun shines as they bury Rufus Scrimgeour.
Harry lifts his face, feeling its warmth through the thin weight of the Invisibility Cloak. The morning is only just beginning to turn back to warm again, air still crisp and chill, but the low, end-of-summer sunlight is already out.
He should smile, he realises. Now is for smiling, but he can't remember how the muscles shift. He's out of practice, and he wonders how long it's been since he last smiled. He can't remember; it never occurred to him to keep track. It never occurred to him that smiling would be a note-worthy event for a full year of his life. He closes his eyes.
Smile more often, he thinks to himself.
He can afford it, now. He doesn't need to push back everything that's not consuming hate and anger.
It's over. He can feel again.
Almost over. The war lingers on, like a bad case of dragon pox. Voldemort dies, and it's all over. Until Lucius Malfoy is finally apprehended in a gloomy cottage in Wiltshire, and it's all over. Until Bellatrix Lestrange kills the Minister for Magic.
It's not that Harry wanted to die. But he never expected not to, and he doesn't quite know how to deal with it. All of a sudden he's been allowed a future. He hasn't thought about a future beyond Voldemort since the night Cedric died. He doesn't quite know how to think about what's coming.
So for the moment he thinks about the past, and he goes to funerals. Sometimes he wears his cloak.
Sometimes not.
Everyone's good funeral robes are starting to look worn and grey. They've worn them almost more than anything else these last three weeks. The stream is slowing now, but there have been so many.
So many of the dead were dragged home, sweaty bloody hands clinging to dirty robes and limp limbs to ensure that they got a burial after all. They barely had time for that, and certainly not for anything better than that. They're making up for it now.
Harry tried not to think to hard about burying Tonks in the yard in front of number 13, Grimmauld Place as the winter sun rose behind cold grey clouds, or about how she would have hated to have been buried where so many of her ancestors and cousins had slid gently into insanity and despair.
How she would have hated to die just because Scrimgeour didn't have the balls to give the Aurors the same powers that Crouch did.
"I have every confidence in the Auror Department's ability to apprehend Death Eaters without recourse to the Unforgiveable Curses," the Minister replied to suggestions that Death Eaters were unlikely to come quietly, said the Prophet.
He refused to come to Scrimgeour's funeral, at first. He had gone to all the others', an endless succession of dead acquaintances, but Scrimgeour was not an acquaintance.
Hermione told him he should pay his respects, but Harry had no respect for somebody who'd wanted to use him as a tool. For some one who was so concerned with the façla;ades of competence that he refused to enact the measures that would have saved his life. Or let Tonks save her own.
Ron said, "People will want to see you there. Their hero bidding the Minister farewell."
Ron didn't take well to being called Scrimgeour's ghost come back to haunt him.
The crowd clusters around the grave. They're all so still, like a strange reinterpretation of Stonehenge in black-robed bodies. The Mugwump's eulogy carries across the field to where Harry is lingering.
"He always went to see the Magpies play, when he had the chance."
He pauses for a moment, and Harry realises suddenly just how quiet it is here. The wizarding world is usually so full of constant noise, the gentle susurrus of ghosts passing and paintings muttering to themselves and enchanted knitting needles clacking away gently into the wee hours of the morning. No one wanders around obsessively turning off spells like Aunt Petunia used to walk around the house unplugging everything to ensure that their electricity metre wasn't heir than her across the road's.
He listens to the sound of nothing to listen to and thinks at once of Privet Drive, when Aunt Petunia went to the shops and Dudley was out carving POTER SUX on the trees in the park on Magnolia Road. When he had the house all to himself.
Even when Aunt Petunia locked him in the cupboard under the stairs before she went out, he was still the only one there.
Harry's used to living in his own bubble of aloneness.
His family ignored him as often as they could. At school all the other kids played around him playing, unless they felt a pressing urge to ingratiate themselves with Dudley's Gang.
Hogwarts was the best place, the best home Harry ever had. But even there he still walked on his own. Just… sometimes Hermione and Ron joined him in that.
He's still doing it, he realises with a start.
He doesn't mean to. He's just spent so long hiding from Death Eaters and the Ministry and Rita Skeeter that somewhere along the way, hiding became his default.
Ron and Hermione don't know he's here. They agreed, in the end, that they would go and Harry would stay at Grimmauld Place and that wouldn't be some vast slight to the Minister. But they didn't know that he changed his mind. For once, Grimmauld Place had been too quiet.
He plucks at the Invisibility Cloak. He shouldn't have to hide anymore. He shouldn't. Voldemort is dead; it's over.
He touches the scar on his forehead. It's almost healed over again now, much darker than it used to be. He'd never felt ugly with his scar before. He'd had it forever. But this new scar is ugly and purple.
He flattens his fringe down to cover it, an automatic action.
It's not over yet. Bellatrix is still out there, and she would kill him with a laugh on her lips.
He'll hide just a little longer. Just until it's safe.
He sits, and waits, and watches as the mourners mourn.
The sun still shines as Harry Potter buries himself in his own thoughts.
Author: inthesewalls
Recipient: sapphiretragedy
Rating: PG
Character: Harry Potter
Summary: Harry shouldn’t have to hide anymore. Voldemort is dead. It’s over.
Author's Notes: sapphiretragedy asked for character-driven fic. I hope you like it!
Cloak
The sun shines as they bury Rufus Scrimgeour.
Harry lifts his face, feeling its warmth through the thin weight of the Invisibility Cloak. The morning is only just beginning to turn back to warm again, air still crisp and chill, but the low, end-of-summer sunlight is already out.
He should smile, he realises. Now is for smiling, but he can't remember how the muscles shift. He's out of practice, and he wonders how long it's been since he last smiled. He can't remember; it never occurred to him to keep track. It never occurred to him that smiling would be a note-worthy event for a full year of his life. He closes his eyes.
Smile more often, he thinks to himself.
He can afford it, now. He doesn't need to push back everything that's not consuming hate and anger.
It's over. He can feel again.
Almost over. The war lingers on, like a bad case of dragon pox. Voldemort dies, and it's all over. Until Lucius Malfoy is finally apprehended in a gloomy cottage in Wiltshire, and it's all over. Until Bellatrix Lestrange kills the Minister for Magic.
It's not that Harry wanted to die. But he never expected not to, and he doesn't quite know how to deal with it. All of a sudden he's been allowed a future. He hasn't thought about a future beyond Voldemort since the night Cedric died. He doesn't quite know how to think about what's coming.
So for the moment he thinks about the past, and he goes to funerals. Sometimes he wears his cloak.
Sometimes not.
Everyone's good funeral robes are starting to look worn and grey. They've worn them almost more than anything else these last three weeks. The stream is slowing now, but there have been so many.
So many of the dead were dragged home, sweaty bloody hands clinging to dirty robes and limp limbs to ensure that they got a burial after all. They barely had time for that, and certainly not for anything better than that. They're making up for it now.
Harry tried not to think to hard about burying Tonks in the yard in front of number 13, Grimmauld Place as the winter sun rose behind cold grey clouds, or about how she would have hated to have been buried where so many of her ancestors and cousins had slid gently into insanity and despair.
How she would have hated to die just because Scrimgeour didn't have the balls to give the Aurors the same powers that Crouch did.
"I have every confidence in the Auror Department's ability to apprehend Death Eaters without recourse to the Unforgiveable Curses," the Minister replied to suggestions that Death Eaters were unlikely to come quietly, said the Prophet.
He refused to come to Scrimgeour's funeral, at first. He had gone to all the others', an endless succession of dead acquaintances, but Scrimgeour was not an acquaintance.
Hermione told him he should pay his respects, but Harry had no respect for somebody who'd wanted to use him as a tool. For some one who was so concerned with the façla;ades of competence that he refused to enact the measures that would have saved his life. Or let Tonks save her own.
Ron said, "People will want to see you there. Their hero bidding the Minister farewell."
Ron didn't take well to being called Scrimgeour's ghost come back to haunt him.
The crowd clusters around the grave. They're all so still, like a strange reinterpretation of Stonehenge in black-robed bodies. The Mugwump's eulogy carries across the field to where Harry is lingering.
"He always went to see the Magpies play, when he had the chance."
He pauses for a moment, and Harry realises suddenly just how quiet it is here. The wizarding world is usually so full of constant noise, the gentle susurrus of ghosts passing and paintings muttering to themselves and enchanted knitting needles clacking away gently into the wee hours of the morning. No one wanders around obsessively turning off spells like Aunt Petunia used to walk around the house unplugging everything to ensure that their electricity metre wasn't heir than her across the road's.
He listens to the sound of nothing to listen to and thinks at once of Privet Drive, when Aunt Petunia went to the shops and Dudley was out carving POTER SUX on the trees in the park on Magnolia Road. When he had the house all to himself.
Even when Aunt Petunia locked him in the cupboard under the stairs before she went out, he was still the only one there.
Harry's used to living in his own bubble of aloneness.
His family ignored him as often as they could. At school all the other kids played around him playing, unless they felt a pressing urge to ingratiate themselves with Dudley's Gang.
Hogwarts was the best place, the best home Harry ever had. But even there he still walked on his own. Just… sometimes Hermione and Ron joined him in that.
He's still doing it, he realises with a start.
He doesn't mean to. He's just spent so long hiding from Death Eaters and the Ministry and Rita Skeeter that somewhere along the way, hiding became his default.
Ron and Hermione don't know he's here. They agreed, in the end, that they would go and Harry would stay at Grimmauld Place and that wouldn't be some vast slight to the Minister. But they didn't know that he changed his mind. For once, Grimmauld Place had been too quiet.
He plucks at the Invisibility Cloak. He shouldn't have to hide anymore. He shouldn't. Voldemort is dead; it's over.
He touches the scar on his forehead. It's almost healed over again now, much darker than it used to be. He'd never felt ugly with his scar before. He'd had it forever. But this new scar is ugly and purple.
He flattens his fringe down to cover it, an automatic action.
It's not over yet. Bellatrix is still out there, and she would kill him with a laugh on her lips.
He'll hide just a little longer. Just until it's safe.
He sits, and waits, and watches as the mourners mourn.
The sun still shines as Harry Potter buries himself in his own thoughts.