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➳ the brave and the bold (harry potter)

featuring characters from j.k. rowling's harry potter series

"I REALIZED I CAN'T SHUT MYSELF away or — or crack up. [...] It could be me next, couldn't it? But if it is, I'll make sure I take as many Death Eaters with me as I can, and Voldemort too if I can manage it." - HARRY POTTER, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

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HARRY'S CHILDHOOD has always been a little like a nightmare from hell.

He doesn't think about his childhood often, not now, not while he's older and finally, blessedly, away from them. But there are times, times when he looks at the Weasleys, at their laughter and in sync, when he sees red hair and blue and brown eyes, that he cannot help but feel this... envy. It's stupid and worthless and he thinks, god Harry you're too old for this, but it threatens to consume him anyway.

Despite what anyone says, he's never been too sure that green is his color.

There's perfection in the way they work, in the way Ron and Ginny argue, in the way the twins tease their siblings with gleaming eyes, in the way Mrs. Weasley always seems to know whether or not they are lying. He can't help it sometimes, to let the urge to self-destruct flirt with his emotions. He doesn't resent them, he doesn't think he ever could, but it sometimes it's hard. Being an orphan. No one ever really notices because Harry's parents have been long dead for years now, ever since he was one year old, but he feels their absence every once in awhile. When Mrs. Weasley hugs him and smells like apples and the Burrow shampoo and he almost - almost - wants her to never let go. When Hermione writes her parents. When Charlie teases Bill about being an uncle one day. When he looks at the parent signature line of permission slips and has to fight the urge to just stop and grieve.

It's a weird emotion to him. It's weird because it never used to be like this at the Dursleys', never used to be so much emotion that he could burst because (and he knows this now) he didn't feel there. But at Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione he felt alive, he did magic and made things happen; he smiled (smiled!) and laughed (laughed!). He felt. At the Dursleys', it was just cleaning and cooking and do this now boy finish clean cook wash paint water groom you worthless freak go. And maybe it hurts so much now because it wasn't until the wizarding world that he realized that maybe there was more to life than just the Dursleys' slave, that maybe he was more than just the useless boy under the stairs. He was Harry.

That's probably where the mourning comes from. When he was pre-Hogwarts Harry (because he knows that the two are different. One is boy. One is extraordinary), he didn't dare think of his parents, except for sporadic nights where his dreams overpowered his obedience and his brain was filled with vivacious red and startling green until Aunt Petunia knocked it out of him with her short rasps on the cupboard.

It hurts more now since before his parents were just a faceless dream. Now, they are real. Now, he thinks (and how dare you boy we gave you everything we should have given you to a orphanage ungrateful brat) he may have deserved more.

Uncle Vernon is right about that at least. Harry is not grateful towards them. And he doesn't think he'll ever be.

It has been three months since Harry has slept properly, without jumping up in a cold sweat or hyperventilating silently in the middle of the night while letting Ron's snores lull him into calmness. It has been three months since Harry has last told himself the truth, that somewhere in the back of his mind he actually does need help.

No, instead it's been three months of thoughts of the Dursleys'.

Harry is not a boy who cries or falls into depression easily and will most likely never bring out the 80s saddest hits but there are times - times when his dreams are filled with horse-necked women and screaming walruses and crying five year olds and something inside of him starts to pang.

Times when he just wants to capitulate - to just bloody give up, and wouldn't it be easy, Harry, so easy to give up. Times where he thinks, even for one moment, that everything would be better if when he went to sleep, he wouldn't awaken.

And he might wake up, shaking and oh, so close, he was so close to being free. And something might prick his eyes but they cannot be tears because Harry Potter does not cry. Harry Potter refuses to cry.

Then he'll look at the Weasleys and Hermione and Tonks and Professor Lupin and guilt will gnaw away the pain. Guilt will tear down his self-destruction.

It will be like he never had a problem in the first place, like no night time terror had eaten away at him at all (unless, of course, you were looking closely. Were you looking closely? Was anyone?).

And he will be fine, of course of course he will he is a savior the boy who bloody lived while his parents died of course. And he will smile at breakfast and make sure no one can see his hands shake under the table.

Harry can save himself.

Harry will save himself.

Because he is not the boy under the cupboard, at least not anymore. He realizes now that his name isn't boy.

Nor is it the Chosen-One, nor The-Boy-Who-Lived or even Potter.

From now on, he would like it to be just Harry.

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