writing is bullshit

Given Harry does not want to see them leave his sight either, he doesn't protest.

The immediate aftermath of the battle is a blur of shell-shocked jubilation and grief.

Harry sits on the broken stones of the castle, watching quietly as Ron grieved with his family. Guilt roils in his chest, it should have been him instead, when Hermione nudges him. 

She sends him a tremulous smile. “I’m glad you’re alright Harry,” she says quietly.

His throat closes up. Harry squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry." Is all he can get out. A warm hand grips his elbow, a bit too tight but no less comforting. She doesn’t say anything.

Harry turns and hugs her, gripping the back of Hermione’s dust-covered robe and feeling absurdly grateful for the tickle of bushy strands. "Thanks for everything ‘Mione.” His voice is hoarse and choked. An impulsive urge catches hold of him. Harry wants to blurt it out, tell her he loves her, catch her face in his hands and kiss her and never let her go. 

“Oh!” Hermione gasps in surprise, then gets flustered. “Well of course, we are friends Harry but I do wish you hadn't gone-" 

Harry wants to be anywhere but here.

[...] [Details...the bane of my existence]

Abruptly Harry feels hot and cold all over, all the events and emotions of the past day, past year, really, catching up to him. His chest goes tight. All of a sudden, he really wants to go to their dorm and sleep with both Ron and Hermione close. 

[...] [Things happen in bw and I need to write it]

They cry, laugh, and fight. They bury their classmates, people they had eaten breakfast with, laid out in rows of bodies in that very same Hall. They lean on each other. They mourn.

And eventually, they rebuild.

[...]

It is five months after the Final Battle at Hogwarts, as everyone is calling it. The three of them have come to Viktor's place in Bulgaria at his insistence, gruffly worried after the months of silence and greeting them when they land, thick brows drawn in a deep frown. Harry and Hermione exchange a glance when Viktor immediately pulls Ron into a hug, saying lowly,  “I am glad you didn't die./I vud have 

Ron's ears turn a bright red, the scarlet visible even from where he's engulfed in Krum's thick coat. He sputters and extracts himself (reluctantly, they could tell), mumbling something to Krum that placates the dark frown.

 Ron does not look at them. His flush blush is making his freckles stand out and Krum is staring. Harry suppresses his laugh with great difficulty. Beside him, Hermione looks torn between giggling and scolding Ron to stop pushing Krum away just because he's embarrassed. 

Krum greets them both after, surly face brighter than usual. It makes him look his age, his small smile softening the hawklike nose and sharp planes of his face. Harry notices Ron staring at his back longingly and realizes it's a lot more serious than he assumed.

He glances sideways, ‘Mione has noticed too. She has a determined look on her face. Harry shrugs inwardly, faintly pitying Ron because there's no way he's getting out of it now. Harry smothers his grin under the high collar of the coat Krum (Viktor. You vill be living with me, you can call me by my name) hands to him. 

Placed high above in Musala, the highest point of the Rila mountain range, Viktor's place is a behemoth of a manor set in an even larger estate, emerging out of the snow-clad craggy rocks like an enormous crow. The manor, a castle really, is far away from other human settlements, the nearest town about two hours away by broom. It has large windows and forbidding arches of doors and gargoyles, but is surprisingly warm inside, fireplaces nearly in every room and soft cushions to sink into (a lot like Viktor himself, Harry thinks privately).

The three of them take to living there surprisingly quickly, but the grip the war had on them takes far longer to let go.

Harry rarely leaves except to attend all the funerals. He avoids the newspapers, preferring to let Ron give him the news and Quidditch updates. Ron and Hermione take to exploring the manor and the land around it with almost desperate gusto, but Harry stays huddled inside, hoping the warmth would leach the cold from his bones that never seems to leave. His temper flares, explosive and unpredictable, a throwback to his fifth year (Sirius is dead he's dead I should have listened it's my fault he died because of me-). His friends start tiptoeing around him again. 

Harry hates himself. 

He violently startles awake from nightmares, fleeing vivid-green light and wide, empty eyes hollowed by death set in a too-young face (Colin Creevy, too young and too reckless, trying to help and paying for it, survived by his little brother and muggle parents not knowing what to do). Harry desperately tries to bury the memory of Colin’s small body slung over Oliver Wood’s shoulder, then feels ashamed, drowning in guilt and helpless.

He spends long nights staring into the darkness, brushing off Hermione’s anxious fretting and drinking Ron’s copious amounts of tea without complaint in the mornings. He avoids Viktor’s too-knowing eyes and his friends’ worry. 

Harry drags himself out of bed every night and holes himself up in the highest ramparts of the manor, feeling the cold wind stinging his bare skin and thinks he isn’t worth having so many people die for him. He tries, but the coldness inside him only grows. He finds himself growing numb to it all, and can’t make himself care.

[...]

Viktor’s grandmother visits the manor one day, and sets him straight. Her voice was deep and unimpressed, her english with a thick accent and rounded vowels. It was kind, still. 

'You forget, Mistor Potter, I saw Grindelvald rise. I knew him ven he started his twisted experiments in Durmstrang'. 

She stared into the crackling fire, holding the mug of rakia in wiry, wizened hands. Two large mugs of the eye-wateringly strong drink had been pushed into their hands by Viktor’s mother, Ana, dark eyes silently glaring at Harry when he tried to protest. 

The alcohol was bracing against the freezing cold of the mountaintop as Vasilka led them to the balcony, its warmth carving a burning path down his throat when he chugs it. 

Vasilka tutted. She sighed, piercing eyes sharp as they take in the dark shadows under his eyes and the thinness to his face, still persistently haunt (Merope Gaunt, a beaten down woman and fool in love, rapist of Tom Riddle Senior, snake nailed to an unhinged door, the miserable end of the Gaunts, Tom Marvolo Riddle the final Gaunt, Voldemort-no stop thinking about it Harry, shut up–) even as Ron and Hermione’s cheeks fill with health and color again after months of hunger. 

'I was there with my husband and my daughter’s family when he started his vile indoctrination. We fought him. Fed your Dumbledorr and his minions information'. 

Harry listened quietly and tried not to choke at the realization Viktor’s grandmother had fought a Dark Lord. 

'Ana fought in the war until she met Ivan. We withdrew from the resistance when Ana was born, and were fortunate enough to watch our grandson grow up. Stefan would always glare when I told Viktor stories of our fighting'. Vasilka had chuckled, here, dark and bitter. 'We paid for our complacency, Har-ry'. 

[idk if the timeline fits, how would Grindelwald even been fighting that long? wasn't he defeated within a few decades?? Inconsistent. Did Vasilka fight or did Ana? I want it to work with Vasilka's guilt tho. Maybe Grindelwald came personally to kill them? Like Voldemort with the McKinnons?]

'I fought his minions when he attacked our home, and fled with our daughter while my husband bled out. That red-haired boy, Neit Scanderr, he helped us hide'. Vasilka turned to him.

'I had many a sleepless night after, Herry, too many to count'. Vasilka reached out a hand and pinched his cheek. 'If not for Ana I would have foolishly tried to duel Grindelvald in my grief, and left my daughter and grandson with no father and no mother as vell'.

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying it was not the same. Nobody had died for her. Not like they did me. 

Vasilka scoffed, 'guilt isn’t rational, you stupid man'. (Not boy, this was a man before her, she knew. Too young for the ravages of war, but when is anybody ready for war?)

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but the sharp look stopped him. 

She shook her head and tugged her shawl closer to herself. 'Stefan might not have died if not for my arrogance that Grindelvald didn’t know what I used to do. If I had been better, maybe he would have lived. Maybe Ana would have had a better life if I had been the one to die there instead'. 

He hunched over at that, it hit too close to home.

Stefan chose to fight that day because he knew there wasn’t any other way out of that house with our children alive. Your friends chose to fight because freedom was important to them. {Word replacement-Freedom? Survival? Smth smth implication of refusing to yield sort of feeling here}

'Don’t take away the weight of that choice from them, Harry Potterr. They might be dead, but you should not think they were unthinking puppets when they were alive'. {Descriptions of sound echoing - Vasilka's voice - stone ramparts?} {How does an actual Bulgarian’s english accent sound tho…?)

Harry felt his eyes burning. Vasilka noticed and patted his cheek, eyes softening. 'Foolish boy. Stop trying to ignore your grief'. {repent before being allowed to grieve}

She straightened slightly, twitching a finger and sending both their mugs to the kitchen. She put a hand on his back and pushed him back into the house. 'Take your friends’ help and mourn, Har-ry Potter. Your guilt helps no one and is a disservice to your loved ones as vell. Grieve and move forward, little mouse'. {German endearment - a la reddit - reason? Important? Elaborate? Or no?}

The numbness thawed, after that. The first time he mentions a bad dream Hermione goes teary-eyed and Ron beams, making him grin in embarrassment. 

He is more honest with them after that, spending long hours telling them what really happened in the Forbidden Forest, telling them of the Resurrection Stone and the ghosts. Of all that happened in Hogwarts over the years, of his time with the Dursleys even. 

Ron gets red-faced with anger when he admits about the cupboard, Hermione’s face goes stark white then cold like when she’s plotting. 

Harry has to talk them down from hunting down the Dursleys, chest warm at their fierce anger on his behalf. Even if the image of Uncle Vernon with pig ears and snout is far too tempting. 

(Hermione suggests turning them into pufferfish and putting them in a muggle aquarium. She rolls her eyes at their immediate panicked NOs. ‘It wouldn’t be permanent Ronald, only until they learn their lesson!’ ‘Bloody hell ‘Mione, are you nuts?!! War heroes or not, Kingsley would throw us into Azkaban in the blink of an eye! Merlin, Mum would kill us!’ ‘Oh don’t exaggerate, that’s only if they catch us, that Skeeter woman certainly didn’t open her mouth-’)

There are a lot of tear-filled conversations and angry yelling, but they always settle their arguments before the sun sets on the snow-capped mountains {?? Where exactly is the castle/mansion/manor whatever is placed in? Rough altitude? r the ranges even that cold in the 1st place}. 

Harry goes flying again, feeling truly alive for the first time in three years, ever since Sirius died. 

He returns grinning and frozen, feeling himself go red at Hermione’s fond exasperation and Ron’s mutters about pneumonia and how he understands his mother now. Hermione rolls her eyes at Ron’s complaints from where she’s curled up in a large armchair, mouthing ‘Like he isn’t as reckless’. 

Harry’s cheeks ache with how hard he’s smiling. He sighs and thanks Hermione when she dries him with a wave of her wand, smiling up at him as he approaches. She makes space among the cushions and he sits, both just small enough to fit (Harry still recovering from their time Horcrux hunting, his childhood malnourishment making it even slower). 

Harry curls up beside his best friend and feels content, Hermione’s warmth leaching through the thick knit of his jumper. He glances at her focused expression, her hands gracefully turning the pages of the heavy tome she’d borrowed from the Krums’ library. His heart thumps. Soon. I’ll tell her soon. 

Harry falls asleep there on her shoulder, gratefully sinking into the warmth of the room and his friends’ care. One maybe more than that, soon.

It is on one such day that it happens. Harry blurts it out on one such mundane day. {?? what time? What does he say? - change placement of line elsewhere?}

The Prophet had arrived, and Hermione had been the one to get to it first. She and Ron always bicker over who gets to pull apart Rita Skeeter's latest pile of lies, a task they both do with vicious glee. Ron has discovered a hitherto unknown talent for predicting the subjects, something he claims is from his mum. {Hints of Ron’s latent seer abilities maybe - crack/comedy of sorts no major change in plot - from pinterest tumblr post hc}

They're in front of the large fireplace, Hermione is ranting about it, He and Hermione are i

Hermione finally [...]

???

He pushes down the prickling in his gut and starts searching for an empty compartment, away from all the noise and bustle of families saying their goodbyes and kids his age shrieking their excitement.

He passes a couple hugging their daughter, a bushy haired girl who was smiling widely and chattering as her father proudly patted her shoulder. Her mother looked anxious, "-call us anytime-ffessor said-an owl, wasn’t it? If you ever feel unsaf-", her worried voice gets lost in the noise.

Envy bubbles in his gut, Aunt Petunia would sooner have declared herself Queen of England before she said "worried" in the same sentence as "Harry."

(long mornings and nights spent scrubbing at the dishes, hands stinging at the harsh bleach when it was time to clean the bathrooms, do parents really tell their kids to pick their breakfast off the floor and clean up their vomit? Do aunts? Harry doesn't know. He's never gotten an answer, the only time he asked a teacher lots of people swarmed his house and there's a weird blank in his memory after that)

Harry settles in an empty compartment, thinking of the mischievous red-haired twins who'd helped him get his trunk onto the carriage. He shifts uncomfortably, remembering how they'd exclaimed about "-meeting Harry Potter Mum! He's your age Ronnie-", is Voldemort really that big of a deal? He wonders.

He doesn't want to be stared at, he's already had enough of being seen as a freak back in Privet Drive.

He pushes it aside. Hogwarts is supposed to be magic. Hagrid said it's run by one of the greatest wizards of the century. He doesn't think it would be that bad.

Harry befriends a ginger with a face full of freckles. He doesn't know it yet, but a Weasley's loyalty is for life. There will be battles, chess games where a lost King would mean a lost life, broken legs and crazy godfathers, but that is for later. 

Now, he listens, fascinated, as Ron tells him about his family, something in Harry aching at the stories of a tight-knit family, at the fondness in Ron's voice even as he complains about his elder brother Percy.

A bossy, bushy-haired girl bullies her way into their compartment in search of a toad (why would anyone have a toad for a pet? Harry thinks), and consequently into their lives. Harry stares at her wild hair unapologetically taking up space around her and is sure Aunt Petunia would have hated her, the brazen way she demands answers from them. When she leaves Ron and Harry are left feeling like a very large bat hit them over their heads.

They gape at the grand castle looming over them, windows with warm golden light pouring out of them. Tiny black forms stare wide-eyed as they land on wet grass, hastily straightening themselves under the stern eye of the imposing figure of Professor McGonagall. As they enter the Great Hall, Harry overhears Hermione chattering about all the spells she had learnt, and wishes he had her confidence. He always did badly in all the tests he had taken in school (though that might have been because the Dursleys would have locked him in the cupboard for ‘cheating to get more than our Dudders! You’re just like your useless layabout of your father boy! Leaving you to us hardworking folks-don’t show me cheek, you nasty, ill-mannered–’). 

He sorts into the bright gold and red house of Gryffindor (the same house his parents were in, he later finds out, and is glad he didn’t let the hat put him in Slytherin).

A fragile Remembrall, a sneering blond in green and silver, a daring dive. Harry gets a brand new broomstick and the coveted position of Seeker in Quidditch. He learns Professor McGonagall is far more passionate about winning Quidditch than sticking to the rules. 

Flying is the freest he’s ever been. 

He loves it.

Halloween arrives. Charms class, a stubborn feather and Hermione once again being the first to get the spell right. Ron’s grumbled complaint of how irritating she is sees them fighting for their lives in the girls’ bathroom, dodging an enormous, lumbering, smelly creature with a small brain and a large club. Ron’s Wingardium Leviosa, correctly pronounced this time, saves them. The professors finally arrive, far too late, and Hermione stares them down and stubbornly announces it was her fault they were there, Ron and Harry trying not to look like this is news to them. 

She makes their duo into a trio right then, at Samhain, saving their hides from McGonagall’s white-faced fury and Snape’s suspicious glare, lying to take the blame on herself. They never speak about it again, but Ron and Harry silently make room for her at the Gryffindor table during breakfast the next day, Hermione taking her place with a shaky sniff and immediately starts to talk about their Potions class, Ron groaning and Harry grinning.

Friends who would fight a mountain troll for you are rather hard to come by, aren't they?

Harry marvels. He has friends now.

He's never had one before, much less two. Dudley and his gang always chased off anyone who didn't know it was that Potter boy and tried to talk to him. They learned quickly though, to not talk to the freak Potter, did you know he once climbed up the roof? Don't go near him Rob, he's not right in the head-. Harry soon learned fast to not expect any friendly faces at school.

.

The years fly by, filled with happiness and grief in turns, the naivete of children abandoned in the face of the next Wizarding War, forced to fight in a war inherited from their parents, a war not theirs. 

Dread at end-of-the-year exams turns into dread at the sinister figure of the Dark Lord Voldemort, finally resurrected after fourteen years. Harry faces a fight he can’t run away from (weren’t all his fights like that? People older than him and claiming to be far wiser using him like a pawn). His protests fall on deaf ears as his best friends refuse to let him fight it alone. He's left relieved deep-down and is guilty with it. 

Harry thinks of how he met them, every once in a while. Ron, with a corned beef sandwich and a bully with a rat bite, Hermione with a horned toad and Hogwarts: A History. Harry never loses that quiet feeling of happiness when he thinks of that day, not really, even after all the years trying to survive Hogwarts and Voldemort.

He always carries that small ball of warmth within his chest, even as he walks into the Forbidden Forest for a final time. Even when he takes off the invisible cloak and falls amidst poisonous green light and an Avada Kedavra.Harry thinks of Hermione, then. As he faces against a corpse-like face and predatory red eyes staring him down in anticipation.

He thinks of her warm brown eyes, her plans and her brilliance, how hard she'd fought to keep him alive. How she would be yelling at him right now, Ron beside her pale-faced and freckles standing out against his skin. Harry wishes he had told her he loved her just once, that he could have seen Ron and Viktor awkwardly dance around each other and Hermione sigh at the sight in exasperation, that he could have listened to them bicker one more time.

But there isn't. His heart is beating frantically in his chest, like it knows he's going to his death. He is too-aware of his every breath, of the air filling his lungs and leaving. His chest heaving with the knowledge Snape's memories had given him, the light of the pensieve washing the stone walls with a cold blue.

His time is up.

(He's wrong.

Harry discovers he still has more to live for, his sacrifice not in vain. They win.

They triumph, the Second Wizarding War against Dark Lord Voldemort coming to a close. Tom Riddle falls, and never gets up again.)

Harry dies.