By darthelwig
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This is just a stream of consciousness story that I wrote late one night. I don’t own the characters. J.K. Rowling does.
This is rated PG-13.
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Harry had always been alone.
The Dursleys hadn’t wanted him in the first place and his parents were long gone. He had grown up believing that no one could love him. After all, why did he deserve it? His Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had always told him how worthless he was. Especially when compared to Dudley.
He had only recently begun to recognize his own worth.
Not that it helped the pain. His parents were still dead. Seeing them in the Mirror of Erised had been bittersweet, since he knew it couldn’t bring them back. All it could give him was a fleeting glimpse of something that would never be.
The enchanted pictures he now possessed thanks to Hagrid were all happy shots of his parents and their friends, but what comfort could that be to him? How could seeing his parents happy so many years ago possible cheer him up? It just made him think of all the things, all the love and all the experiences he would never have. Having those pictures was both a blessing and a curse, though he would never say that to Hagrid, who had only been trying to help Harry. And to tell the truth, he valued those images a great deal. Sure, they made his heart break every time he looked at them, but those were his parents.
He could not forget the pain, though. He felt, he knew, he had been cheated. Voldemort had stolen his parents from him. And for what? For power, greed and pure evil. Harry had sworn that he would make Voldemort pay for what he had done, and he had every intention of fulfilling that oath. He was going to destroy the man who had stolen so very much from him.
Every time someone told him he looked like James or Lily, he felt the hurt all over again. Every time he thought about Sirius and his unexpected death, his heart clenched up until he could barely breathe. How many more people would he have to lose? What about his friends? They weren’t safe. He didn’t want to lose them as well. They were his only comfort in a world gone cold and unforgiving. He would die to protect them.
But it always seemed that, whatever happiness Harry found, it was fleeting at best. It always ended. There was always something to ruin it. And at the end of his fourth year, on the heels of having completed and tied for the win during the Triwizard Tournament, Cedric Diggory had died. It was a senseless and random murder done because the boy had simply been in the way. Harry hadn’t had anything to prepare him for seeing Cedric die, and was still reeling from that when Sirius had been ripped from him as well. Death had become Harry’s fear. The knowledge that it could come at any moment was his only constant companion, and because of that, he was often morose and depressed.
His friends were worried, but he couldn’t explain. How do you explain the sudden absence of a person in your life? He didn’t know if he could talk about it. He didn’t have the words to describe what he was feeling. He didn’t even know if he understood exactly what he was feeling.
All Harry was certain of was this… Voldemort would die by his hand. Vengeance was sweet and he would have his. Voldemort had cursed him into a life of loneliness and pain. It was only fitting that Harry return the favor in his own way.
That was the only thought that kept Harry going these days.