Fic: The Boy Who Lived on Death
Title: The Boy Who Lived on Death
Rating: PG-13 for themes no more mature than canon
Warnings: All spoilers
Characters: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and friends did not come from my head
Summary: This is one part Harry dealing with post war trauma, and one part my own musings on the role that death plays in the novels. Feedback and concrit and discussion are all most welcome!
The Boy Who Lived on Death
From the age of one, Harry’s life has been marked by death. Now that the war is over, he sometimes feels like his entire 17 years can be mapped out as a trajectory of loss. It is as though his godfather really was a grim: an early omen of the tragedy he would be forced to cause and witness. People he hardly knows stop him and warn him against carrying the weight of the dead on his shoulders. But what they don’t understand is that the dead have never been his burden - they are his support. They stand behind him in a long line, and if he doesn’t continue to look over his shoulder, he’s afraid they’ll slip away and take their voices with them. Hermione tells him that it’s normal in times like these to seek out meaning and order out of chaos. Harry isn’t too concerned with normalcy at this point, but he does sometimes think about his life as though it were written in the pages of someone else’s novel, where every death is wrought with significance. So every night before he can fall asleep, Harry must count the dead and recite why they died.
First come his parents. They always come first. They are the death of the life he should have had, the origin of his tragedy. But his parents are the ones who first taught him that the dead can support, and he knows they have always been with him. Otherwise, he would have been lost long ago.
Then there was Cedric Diggory, who changed everything. Cedric taught Harry something he thought he had known his entire life: people die. Smart, athletic, popular, kind, beautiful people die, and they don’t die fairly. Cedric made death real, and in some ways, the boy Harry had hardly known was more real to him in death than he had been in life. Remember Cedric Diggory. He still remembered.
The death of Sirius Black is still one of the hardest for Harry to accept. It was the second time his family had been stolen from him, and at the hands of his own adolescent obstinacy. Despite Dumbledore’s confessions and assurances, Harry long ago accepted the fault as his own, and this truth carried him swiftly out of any lingering childish anger.
But if he thought the death of Sirius had made him come of age, he was mistaken. That did not occur until a year later when his final guardian, his last remaining shield from his own fate, abandoned him. Although he was still 16 at the time, Harry was thrust into adulthood with the same lethal force that had thrust Dumbledore’s body over the edge of the tower. He was alone, and the war had begun.
It seems strange, but he always recites the deaths of Hedwig and Alastor Moody together. Their deaths were his introduction to the realities of war, where a defenseless, loyal friend and a fearless, consummate hero could share the same fate on the same night simply because of their connection to the same boy. Their deaths were merely the coming of the storm.
He can think of no real reason for Dobby’s death. He only has the small comfort of knowing that Dobby died the way he lived: a free elf, loyal to those he loved, and not to those he feared. Dobby died a hero’s death. Harry leaves it at that.
He cannot say the same of Fred, whose death was stupid, pointless, ugly. A random explosion and he was gone, leaving his brother behind like a shattered mirror. It was the sort of casualty that didn’t belong in fiction because it exposed death’s painfully meaningless face. But then again, maybe that was the point. Unlike Dobby, the idea that Fred died laughing is no consolation.
At this point, Harry always pauses before naming Severus Snape. Among the faces of lost loved ones, he sometimes thinks he sees a familiar flash of black, greasy hair - but even in death their relationship is complex. At least he now understands Snape’s role as tragic hero, or simply tragic. What he will never know with certainty is whether his old professor had ever really cared about him.
Harry supposes there might be something romantic in how Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks had died together, but he refuses to see it. All he can see is the child, his godson, who is now alone in a way Harry will always understand. Weeks later it strikes him that Lupin’s death marked the end of the Marauders. His final bond to his father’s generation had been cut while his bond to the next generation had been forged.
And then there was small Colin Creevey, placed squarely in the path of his own approaching fate to remind Harry that death would make him small, that death made everyone small.
Harry does not think about his own death. In the fictional version of his life, it represents the moment when he conquered fear and accepted mortality. But he never did. In fact, without the support of the dead, he never would have gone through with it, so he does not think about his own death.
Instead, he pushes forward until he finally reaches Tom Riddle’s demise. The death of murder and hate and fear. The death of Death. And though none of this is true, he allows himself to believe it is with all of his heart.
Harry Potter is vaguely aware that from the age of one, people have called him ‘The Boy Who Lived.’ Only now, with the dead marching silently behind him, does he allow himself to appreciate its significance as he finally drifts to sleep.
Rating: PG-13 for themes no more mature than canon
Warnings: All spoilers
Characters: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and friends did not come from my head
Summary: This is one part Harry dealing with post war trauma, and one part my own musings on the role that death plays in the novels. Feedback and concrit and discussion are all most welcome!
The Boy Who Lived on Death
From the age of one, Harry’s life has been marked by death. Now that the war is over, he sometimes feels like his entire 17 years can be mapped out as a trajectory of loss. It is as though his godfather really was a grim: an early omen of the tragedy he would be forced to cause and witness. People he hardly knows stop him and warn him against carrying the weight of the dead on his shoulders. But what they don’t understand is that the dead have never been his burden - they are his support. They stand behind him in a long line, and if he doesn’t continue to look over his shoulder, he’s afraid they’ll slip away and take their voices with them. Hermione tells him that it’s normal in times like these to seek out meaning and order out of chaos. Harry isn’t too concerned with normalcy at this point, but he does sometimes think about his life as though it were written in the pages of someone else’s novel, where every death is wrought with significance. So every night before he can fall asleep, Harry must count the dead and recite why they died.
First come his parents. They always come first. They are the death of the life he should have had, the origin of his tragedy. But his parents are the ones who first taught him that the dead can support, and he knows they have always been with him. Otherwise, he would have been lost long ago.
Then there was Cedric Diggory, who changed everything. Cedric taught Harry something he thought he had known his entire life: people die. Smart, athletic, popular, kind, beautiful people die, and they don’t die fairly. Cedric made death real, and in some ways, the boy Harry had hardly known was more real to him in death than he had been in life. Remember Cedric Diggory. He still remembered.
The death of Sirius Black is still one of the hardest for Harry to accept. It was the second time his family had been stolen from him, and at the hands of his own adolescent obstinacy. Despite Dumbledore’s confessions and assurances, Harry long ago accepted the fault as his own, and this truth carried him swiftly out of any lingering childish anger.
But if he thought the death of Sirius had made him come of age, he was mistaken. That did not occur until a year later when his final guardian, his last remaining shield from his own fate, abandoned him. Although he was still 16 at the time, Harry was thrust into adulthood with the same lethal force that had thrust Dumbledore’s body over the edge of the tower. He was alone, and the war had begun.
It seems strange, but he always recites the deaths of Hedwig and Alastor Moody together. Their deaths were his introduction to the realities of war, where a defenseless, loyal friend and a fearless, consummate hero could share the same fate on the same night simply because of their connection to the same boy. Their deaths were merely the coming of the storm.
He can think of no real reason for Dobby’s death. He only has the small comfort of knowing that Dobby died the way he lived: a free elf, loyal to those he loved, and not to those he feared. Dobby died a hero’s death. Harry leaves it at that.
He cannot say the same of Fred, whose death was stupid, pointless, ugly. A random explosion and he was gone, leaving his brother behind like a shattered mirror. It was the sort of casualty that didn’t belong in fiction because it exposed death’s painfully meaningless face. But then again, maybe that was the point. Unlike Dobby, the idea that Fred died laughing is no consolation.
At this point, Harry always pauses before naming Severus Snape. Among the faces of lost loved ones, he sometimes thinks he sees a familiar flash of black, greasy hair - but even in death their relationship is complex. At least he now understands Snape’s role as tragic hero, or simply tragic. What he will never know with certainty is whether his old professor had ever really cared about him.
Harry supposes there might be something romantic in how Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks had died together, but he refuses to see it. All he can see is the child, his godson, who is now alone in a way Harry will always understand. Weeks later it strikes him that Lupin’s death marked the end of the Marauders. His final bond to his father’s generation had been cut while his bond to the next generation had been forged.
And then there was small Colin Creevey, placed squarely in the path of his own approaching fate to remind Harry that death would make him small, that death made everyone small.
Harry does not think about his own death. In the fictional version of his life, it represents the moment when he conquered fear and accepted mortality. But he never did. In fact, without the support of the dead, he never would have gone through with it, so he does not think about his own death.
Instead, he pushes forward until he finally reaches Tom Riddle’s demise. The death of murder and hate and fear. The death of Death. And though none of this is true, he allows himself to believe it is with all of his heart.
Harry Potter is vaguely aware that from the age of one, people have called him ‘The Boy Who Lived.’ Only now, with the dead marching silently behind him, does he allow himself to appreciate its significance as he finally drifts to sleep.