"The Pilgrim's Progress"
Author: bennmorland
Title: The Pilgrim’s Progress
Challenge: Post-Hogwarts #6: Dumbledore’s Tomb
Summary: A man older than his years returns to a mentor’s side.
Rating: PG
Genre: Nostalgia - not angst.
Word Count: 1,366
Beta: Many thanks to mudblood428 and madoldmrsfigg for being patient when I was not. :)
Notes/Warnings: None of the characters are mine, I take no money for this, and I hope the prompt-submitter isn’t too disappointed in me. This is my first ‘published’ H/G fic (first HP fandom fic, actually…) but don’t anyone dare be kind to me in criticism. Bring it! Poem excerpt is from When I’m Killed by Robert Graves. Used and edited utterly without any permission. Constructive criticism is always valued.
Snow covered the land like a pallid sheet to match the young man’s face. Over the past half-decade he had aged nearly beyond recognition. It was not so much his features as his eyes that belied the change within him. Lily’s green eyes still shone from beneath his father’s unruly hair but they lacked a luster that had prompted too many people to love him.
His boots trod a haggard line across the windswept, icy desert toward his destination. He was grateful for the weather’s grueling resistance to his efforts, for it gave him something to concentrate upon without thinking of where it was he was headed. Somewhere ahead was a place he had not been since before he had left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; since before he had bade his heart goodbye.
She’d had flaming hair and smoldering brown eyes. Her skin had a punctuated beauty lent to it by countless freckles. If he could have mapped her arms, legs, face, like he had been taught to map the stars, he would have done so. He had wanted only to be the astronomer to her night sky, but a pervading darkness had shut out that light.
The young man’s ears stung from the wind and wet. His glasses had fogged, though he had not noticed. He stopped and lost his balance. Throwing his hands out before him, he felt the settled snow cut into his fingers with the kind of sharp yet dull pain that told him he had bruised something. Bringing his frozen hands out of the tunnels they’d dug themselves in the wet, white snow, he took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his scarf.
Once he was back on his feet, he took stock of his position and set out again. He could see the copse of evergreens ahead, Grawp’s years-old devastation still marking the path toward the tomb. The path relieved the Pilgrim’s mind of its navigational duties and it began to wander. After five years and many fights, too many faces lived on only in memory.
The Pilgrim’s memory beckoned him like some internal Pensieve to look upon the end of his sixth year. A bushy-haired girl was in a comfortable chair, reading a book. A tall and gangly boy was seated on the floor beside her and talking. The Pilgrim’s younger self was settled on a couch. Before him brown eyes concentrated beneath a fiery feminine brow, scanning a newspaper. The young Pilgrim reached out and stroked her hair with his innocent hand. She leaned her head back, laying it on his knee. He saw her red-gold eyelashes open and shut, and her lips spreading apart. The gangly boy made a noise, and the bushy-haired girl flung a book at him. The young Pilgrim leaned forward and set his lips upon his heart.
A bough broke under the weight of ice and snow and fell with a crackling crash behind the Pilgrim. His reverie was broken, and his lips were numb from cold. He forced them into a grimace and felt them split. He swore but force-marched onward. The trees sheltered him from the wind, which now busied itself with screaming at him from amidst the trunks and branches. It did not want him here.
Another memory came galloping through the man’s mind: a room within Hogwarts made to seem as a forest’s floor where a centaur lighted a fire and instructed students to speak with its smoke. The man remembered that exiled anthropoëquine, and missed him. Such a noble creature should not have met his end by such an ignoble hand.
The snow upon the ground was thinning. The air was growing still and did not bite so angrily upon the Pilgrim’s flesh. His journey was near its end. He stood up straight, leaving the hunched posture behind with the intolerable cold.
He stopped. Ahead was the final resting place of Albus Dumbledore, perhaps the greatest wizard who ever lived. Certainly the greatest wizard who ever loved. A torch burned at the terminus of Grawp’s trail. Its flame burnt straight and true, the hostile weather doing nothing to affect its warm light. The Pilgrim took the torch from its place and held it aloft as he stepped into the glade. Despite the open space, the young man did not feel a return of the angry cold and brutal wind. He felt only a resurgence of vigor, a reminder of that power this man had had over him in life.
A sturdy yet humble granite coffin lay in the center of the small open space. The only marker was a card from a Chocolate Frog, depicting the Hogwarts Headmaster with his usual knowing smile. When he saw the Pilgrim, he winked and popped a Fizzing Whizbee into his mouth. The Pilgrim found himself smiling back, unexpectedly. He set the torch in a stand near to the stone coffin and sat on the bench across from Dumbledore’s sweet-suckling visage.
Reaching inside his robes, the Pilgrim pulled out a small piece of parchment. He looked at it for a few minutes, his breathing alternately picking up and steadying out, as though a sob was ever only just beneath the surface.
“Merry Christmas, Professor,” said the Pilgrim. “It’s Harry. Harry Potter.
“I haven’t been to see you since I attended your -” he hiccupped. “Ceremony after Sixth Year. A lot’s happened since then. Voldemort’s taken care of. The Order’s disbanded and gone its separate ways. But I’m sure you know all that already.”
The Pilgrim was silent for a while. The parchment in his hands was no longer legible, the ink having run from the gently falling snow and much nervous, mindless folding and unfolding.
“I brought a poem to read, Professor. I found it not too long ago. I think if you were able to speak to us, like Nick back at Hogwarts, you’d say this much at least. So. Here it is, then.
“When I’m killed, don’t think of me
Buried there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as in Zion think of me
With the Intolerable Good.
And there’s one thing I know well,
I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!”
The Pilgrim squinted to force out the excess water in his eyes. The hot tears flowed from between his lids and over his lashes, jaggedly trailing down to his stubbly cheeks. He reopened his eyes and tried to remember the rest of the poem:
“So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me,
Or you must wait for evermore.
You’ll find me buried, living-dead
In these verses that you’ve read.
“So when I’m killed, don’t mourn me,”
The Pilgrim’s voice caught. He did not hear the crunching footsteps behind him as he steadied his breath and continued.
“Killed and gone - don’t mourn for me.
On your lips my life is hung:
O friends and lovers-”
Then his hands opened and the parchment fell into the snow. His head could no longer be held on its own and the heels of his palms met with his brow. He wept silently until he felt a touch on his shoulder. Turning about quickly, one hand reached inside his robes for his wand, while the other he cast up to catch hold of whatever had yanked him back to the present.
A pair of brown eyes in a freckled face looked down at him. The vivid red hair was pulled back in a braid that hung low over the woman’s shoulder. It brought out the contour of a breast as it flowed like fire over her black robes.
“I thought you’d be here,” she said.
The Pilgrim just sat there, his mouth open and his bloodshot eyes blinking. In his clutch was a delicately strong freckled hand. Without a word, he brought it to his lips and kissed it. He brushed each of her fingertips and then turned the hand over and kissed the palm.
The woman smiled and knelt in the snow, gathering the exhausted Pilgrim into her arms and countering his racking sobs with the patient assurances of paradise regained. The card looking on at them, another Fizzing Whizbee found its way past the late Albus Dumbledore’s smile.
Title: The Pilgrim’s Progress
Challenge: Post-Hogwarts #6: Dumbledore’s Tomb
Summary: A man older than his years returns to a mentor’s side.
Rating: PG
Genre: Nostalgia - not angst.
Word Count: 1,366
Beta: Many thanks to mudblood428 and madoldmrsfigg for being patient when I was not. :)
Notes/Warnings: None of the characters are mine, I take no money for this, and I hope the prompt-submitter isn’t too disappointed in me. This is my first ‘published’ H/G fic (first HP fandom fic, actually…) but don’t anyone dare be kind to me in criticism. Bring it! Poem excerpt is from When I’m Killed by Robert Graves. Used and edited utterly without any permission. Constructive criticism is always valued.
Snow covered the land like a pallid sheet to match the young man’s face. Over the past half-decade he had aged nearly beyond recognition. It was not so much his features as his eyes that belied the change within him. Lily’s green eyes still shone from beneath his father’s unruly hair but they lacked a luster that had prompted too many people to love him.
His boots trod a haggard line across the windswept, icy desert toward his destination. He was grateful for the weather’s grueling resistance to his efforts, for it gave him something to concentrate upon without thinking of where it was he was headed. Somewhere ahead was a place he had not been since before he had left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; since before he had bade his heart goodbye.
She’d had flaming hair and smoldering brown eyes. Her skin had a punctuated beauty lent to it by countless freckles. If he could have mapped her arms, legs, face, like he had been taught to map the stars, he would have done so. He had wanted only to be the astronomer to her night sky, but a pervading darkness had shut out that light.
The young man’s ears stung from the wind and wet. His glasses had fogged, though he had not noticed. He stopped and lost his balance. Throwing his hands out before him, he felt the settled snow cut into his fingers with the kind of sharp yet dull pain that told him he had bruised something. Bringing his frozen hands out of the tunnels they’d dug themselves in the wet, white snow, he took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his scarf.
Once he was back on his feet, he took stock of his position and set out again. He could see the copse of evergreens ahead, Grawp’s years-old devastation still marking the path toward the tomb. The path relieved the Pilgrim’s mind of its navigational duties and it began to wander. After five years and many fights, too many faces lived on only in memory.
The Pilgrim’s memory beckoned him like some internal Pensieve to look upon the end of his sixth year. A bushy-haired girl was in a comfortable chair, reading a book. A tall and gangly boy was seated on the floor beside her and talking. The Pilgrim’s younger self was settled on a couch. Before him brown eyes concentrated beneath a fiery feminine brow, scanning a newspaper. The young Pilgrim reached out and stroked her hair with his innocent hand. She leaned her head back, laying it on his knee. He saw her red-gold eyelashes open and shut, and her lips spreading apart. The gangly boy made a noise, and the bushy-haired girl flung a book at him. The young Pilgrim leaned forward and set his lips upon his heart.
A bough broke under the weight of ice and snow and fell with a crackling crash behind the Pilgrim. His reverie was broken, and his lips were numb from cold. He forced them into a grimace and felt them split. He swore but force-marched onward. The trees sheltered him from the wind, which now busied itself with screaming at him from amidst the trunks and branches. It did not want him here.
Another memory came galloping through the man’s mind: a room within Hogwarts made to seem as a forest’s floor where a centaur lighted a fire and instructed students to speak with its smoke. The man remembered that exiled anthropoëquine, and missed him. Such a noble creature should not have met his end by such an ignoble hand.
The snow upon the ground was thinning. The air was growing still and did not bite so angrily upon the Pilgrim’s flesh. His journey was near its end. He stood up straight, leaving the hunched posture behind with the intolerable cold.
He stopped. Ahead was the final resting place of Albus Dumbledore, perhaps the greatest wizard who ever lived. Certainly the greatest wizard who ever loved. A torch burned at the terminus of Grawp’s trail. Its flame burnt straight and true, the hostile weather doing nothing to affect its warm light. The Pilgrim took the torch from its place and held it aloft as he stepped into the glade. Despite the open space, the young man did not feel a return of the angry cold and brutal wind. He felt only a resurgence of vigor, a reminder of that power this man had had over him in life.
A sturdy yet humble granite coffin lay in the center of the small open space. The only marker was a card from a Chocolate Frog, depicting the Hogwarts Headmaster with his usual knowing smile. When he saw the Pilgrim, he winked and popped a Fizzing Whizbee into his mouth. The Pilgrim found himself smiling back, unexpectedly. He set the torch in a stand near to the stone coffin and sat on the bench across from Dumbledore’s sweet-suckling visage.
Reaching inside his robes, the Pilgrim pulled out a small piece of parchment. He looked at it for a few minutes, his breathing alternately picking up and steadying out, as though a sob was ever only just beneath the surface.
“Merry Christmas, Professor,” said the Pilgrim. “It’s Harry. Harry Potter.
“I haven’t been to see you since I attended your -” he hiccupped. “Ceremony after Sixth Year. A lot’s happened since then. Voldemort’s taken care of. The Order’s disbanded and gone its separate ways. But I’m sure you know all that already.”
The Pilgrim was silent for a while. The parchment in his hands was no longer legible, the ink having run from the gently falling snow and much nervous, mindless folding and unfolding.
“I brought a poem to read, Professor. I found it not too long ago. I think if you were able to speak to us, like Nick back at Hogwarts, you’d say this much at least. So. Here it is, then.
“When I’m killed, don’t think of me
Buried there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as in Zion think of me
With the Intolerable Good.
And there’s one thing I know well,
I’m damned if I’ll be damned to Hell!”
The Pilgrim squinted to force out the excess water in his eyes. The hot tears flowed from between his lids and over his lashes, jaggedly trailing down to his stubbly cheeks. He reopened his eyes and tried to remember the rest of the poem:
“So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me,
Or you must wait for evermore.
You’ll find me buried, living-dead
In these verses that you’ve read.
“So when I’m killed, don’t mourn me,”
The Pilgrim’s voice caught. He did not hear the crunching footsteps behind him as he steadied his breath and continued.
“Killed and gone - don’t mourn for me.
On your lips my life is hung:
O friends and lovers-”
Then his hands opened and the parchment fell into the snow. His head could no longer be held on its own and the heels of his palms met with his brow. He wept silently until he felt a touch on his shoulder. Turning about quickly, one hand reached inside his robes for his wand, while the other he cast up to catch hold of whatever had yanked him back to the present.
A pair of brown eyes in a freckled face looked down at him. The vivid red hair was pulled back in a braid that hung low over the woman’s shoulder. It brought out the contour of a breast as it flowed like fire over her black robes.
“I thought you’d be here,” she said.
The Pilgrim just sat there, his mouth open and his bloodshot eyes blinking. In his clutch was a delicately strong freckled hand. Without a word, he brought it to his lips and kissed it. He brushed each of her fingertips and then turned the hand over and kissed the palm.
The woman smiled and knelt in the snow, gathering the exhausted Pilgrim into her arms and countering his racking sobs with the patient assurances of paradise regained. The card looking on at them, another Fizzing Whizbee found its way past the late Albus Dumbledore’s smile.