I spent a while away from Harry, and now he's back to his position of friend and reading partner. I thought I'd post a little one-shot I wrote this morning to sort of say hello again. I hope you all are enjoying the new year... reviews would be much, much appreciated!
By the way, the title is from Rachael Cantu's great song, "Devil's Thunder."
After the lonely days; after the too-full days; after that ache of sleepless night; after the cold faces of just-dead, still-bloody figures; after the headlines and the swollen burst of sunlight over the night, over the misted green caves and the blackened trees and the dreary skies; after the end: that is when everything happened.
When the world ended, he stood silent, shocked into silence, really. There were no words until there were, suddenly a roaring tide of words and screams and he stood there and heard them. Heard their songs. And all he knew was the overwhelming fatigue. (It’s all over.) Time to go home. Time to sleep. Please, please, and thank you.
And, finally, after the interviews and the gold he pushed away and all the dirty little hands he held and the foreheads he kissed because he was them, and he, too, cried: after that, that is when everything happened.
All the people saturated the halls of the great and broken school. Hordes and throngs of heaving screaming celebrating weeping people, people who forgot sisters and brothers because everyone was a tall twisted intricate intimate family. And as he walked past, it would part like the Red Sea and silence would fall upon them like a blanket. But then he saw her, through the thick glass window, and the world broke apart again. (Break apart, stitch together, he knew the drill.) With blood and sunshine binding them like frilly, fluid octopus tentacles, he walked to her and said, Hello. And her eyes were glassy and so were his, and both of them weighed so much, but she smiled, and it cut through her face like sunrise. And the world broke apart again.
And after they called his name; after he went to just a few press conferences (because all good heroes swallow their embarrassment, but at least he had his two best mates with him); after the colored funerals (Let’s celebrate their lives, okay?); the weddings; after he knelt to the rough, dry ground and after he slept (blissful, blissful sleep, had he ever slept before?): that’s when it all, all of it, everything happened.
He watched his friends falling in love. And he did not feel lonely. He, too, was in love. And he, too, was alive. Funny how it took his death to make him realize that.
After everything happened, everything happened. The world was a changed place, so different that it was the nothings that were everything. (He did not complain.)
She graduated in plain black robes and a breathtaking grin and he went to work and got paid for fighting the bad guys (a first). She moved into a little apartment, and her mouth was on his mouth, and they cried as they made love for the first time and he said, I love you I love you. He admired the sweep of neck to shoulder, breast to waist, thigh to calf, the curl of her toes and the red of her hair. He admired the beat of his heart in his fingertips, the undulations of blood through his veins. They spent lots of time at his house, kissing on countertops and baking chocolate chip cookies and grieving and planting flowers and fighting and breaking up and stitching themselves back together. (He loved her so much. Didn’t she know that she broke his world apart?)
Years passed (they took it slow) and they traveled by bus when they went places together, sitting intertwined in the very back seat, because why on Earth should you go places quickly when you can enjoy them slowly? She told him she couldn’t wait for the rest of their lives, the days when they’d wake up together in a bed that belonged to both of them. He agreed. In fact, the next day, he said, Mr. Weasley would it be alright with you if I married your daughter. Please. Two days after that she was wearing his mother’s old engagement ring and she laughed and laughed as they told the family, the neighbors, the man at the greengrocer’s. Mrs. Potter, she said, The Girl Who Was in Love.
After he’d spent eighteen years looking for food in trashcans, stealing meat off the heels of tired dirt-caked shoes, he was ravenously and breathlessly hungry, and so she spent seven years feeding him, bringing him round to her mother’s for more food. And after that: then she said, Let’s pick out a big white cake.
Sometimes he visited the stones once a week, sometimes once a month, sometimes in his dreams. Sometimes she came, too, diamond on her finger, and she said, You are alive. They are dead but you are not, do you understand me? And you can even love a dead person and you can even love an alive person. (Sometimes he wished she would not speak but usually her words, or her silences, or whatever fell from her open lips was the only thing he wanted.)
The wedding was in May in a little white church, nothing fancy, just sunshine on wood floors like them. A woman with very, very curly brown hair rested a hand on her blossoming belly and said, This wedding has been a long time coming. A man with bright red hair and lots of freckles said, I can finally return the favor, and I won’t even lose the rings like you did, and the groom said, You’ll always be my best man and I’m really sorry about the rings but I did find them eventually.
He pushed the cameras away and said, This is not for you. This is After and you do not belong here. And he was right; it was after, and it was everything, and everything finally happened and he was The Boy Who Was Alive and The Boy Who Was Happy and The Boy Who Was Married.
After the war, people kept dying (of fear, of love, of disease.) And after the war, after the fight, people continued fighting for lists and lists of things. After the war, his life was in ribbons and she broke the world apart and after the war, he emerged from the water, gasping, the air thin and the rain falling. After the war, he was in love, feet afire, going down with the devil’s thunder: finally, finally. After everything came everything else. And. And he was not hungry or tired or lonely or scared.
And she said, I love you, and he said, Yes.
So... not that long, but I really needed to write it. Was slightly cathartic. I know that the writing was vague in certain ways, but it was about Harry's life after he killed Voldemort; how he fell in love with Ginny and dealt with death, et cetera. I also messed with the time a little bit... Hermione is already pregnant at Harry and Ginny's wedding.
I hope you enjoyed... feedback is greatly appreciated!
Hugs,
Anna