On his good days, Harry often thought that Voldemort had managed to curse the entire world with his dying breath. On his bad days, he knew it was just how people were.
Harry's first glimpse of the magical world had come in summer - stumbling behind Hagrid into Diagon Alley, the sun hot on his thin face. Hagrid's legs were longer and Harry had scrambled to keep up, so that when at last they passed through the wall he leaned against it for a moment, panting and taking in deep breaths of surprisingly fresh, cool air.
Then he looked up and it was like everything he'd ever imagined had come to life. Men and women in brightly-colored robes argued over the price of dragon's liver, bat spleen, and eels' eyes; children carried brooms; men wore tall, pointy hats decorated with glimmering stars and moons; shops displayed telescopes in their windows, and strange, intricate instruments whirling in complex patterns. Harry thought delightedly that this must be the most magical place in the world, that everything that had ever existed was here, if he'd only known to look. The air around him shimmered, and he did not know whether it was from the heat of the day or the way magic was being used all around him, seeming to seep from the streets and waft swirlingly upwards on a draft of wind.
As they walked, the variety increased – there were goblins examining glimmering piles of rubies; wizards counting out thick coins of silver and gold; color-changing inks and gilt-edged quills; books bound in leather and silk; books with black eyes that looked at him hungrily from where they were chained on the shelves; another shop full of potions ingredients, the walls hung with strings of claws and feathers and sleek fangs.
At last they came to Ollivander's and Harry held his wand for the first time. In the stifling shop he felt a sudden warmth in his fingers and remembered the time in primary school he'd spent several hours carefully building a castle out of clay. Dudley had smashed the thing before he could get it home, of course, but in the moment when the sculpture came out of the kiln he'd known what it was like to be a god, to have faith in nothing but himself and his creation.
He raised the wand and sent a wave of sparks, crimson and gold, arcing through the dusty air and illuminating the delighted faces of Hagrid and Mr. Ollivander. As they left the shop he looked at the wizards and witches and thought that perhaps they were all gods, each a brightly colored strand weaving between the others against a backdrop of blue.
When Voldemort was killed, it was summer again. The Horcruxes had been carefully obliterated one by one before at last the two faced each other in battle and Harry's wand dispensed the killing curse. The dark lord's body, no longer quite alive enough to be killed so easily, was engulfed in green flame, and Harry forced himself to stand over the man who had once been Tom Riddle as he cursed and screamed and burnt and died, and the ashes of his scaly skin floated up on the hot air into Harry's eyes.
-----
After that, it had been hard for things to go back to normal for Harry. He was tired- so tired that he'd collapsed getting out of his bed at St. Mungo's; so tired that he'd even agreed to stay in hospital a little longer while he was tested for all the known, and some possibilities of unknown, variants on wasting curses. When all the tests came out clean, he was packed away with Remus to Brighton for a long restful holiday.
When they returned it was late in the winter and Hogwarts was being rebuilt.
His friends were already established in their jobs - Hermione with the Unspeakables and Ron in the Department of Magical Games and Sports – so he saw them only rarely, but it was enough. Ginny had gone to work with Bill in Egypt, and though Harry fondly remembered the bright days he'd spent with her by the lake, he was glad for her to be happy there. His chest felt tight when he thought of her, but she had not encouraged him those last few months, so he said nothing. Instead he moved quietly into Grimmauld Place, replacing Mrs. Black's portrait with a large mirror. He tried out for professional Quidditch and was taken on in training for the Montrose Magpies three days per week. All was well, until the warm weather came in again, and bright spring gave way to the blue skies and blazing heat of summer.
-----
The first one to leave him had been Remus, only a week after they'd returned.
"You're moving to Greece? Why? I mean," Harry corrected himself, "Of course I'm happy for you, if you want to go. But why go now? We're just back from holiday."
"I'm free," said Remus simply, looking him in the eye. "My whole life until now has been defined by James and Sirius and Peter. I only stayed this long because I had obligations."
"What kind of obligations?"
"To Dumbledore; to James; to what I thought was Peter's memory, and then later to Sirius, for thinking him guilty. But Voldemort is dead, you're alive, and Sirius' memory is cleared. Now I want to live for myself."
Harry swallowed over the lump in his throat. "What about Tonks?"
Remus looked tired. "I finally managed… well, let's just say we've split for good."
Harry looked away. "I see." He wanted to ask "what about me?" but couldn't quite get the words out. It was the kind of thing he'd had trained out of him early in life, the Dursley's taking great delight in answering "what about you, freak?" Instead he cleared his throat, suddenly finding it hard to breathe, as if a weight were pressing down on his chest. He forced himself to meet Remus' eyes.
"Why Greece?"
"Less restrictive werewolf laws. Seems like here, no one will do anything about those."
"Oh." There was something pointed in Remus' gaze, a sharpness that Harry didn't understand, so he shied away from it. "I'm glad, then. You'll write, won't you?"
"Of course," said Remus, ruffling Harry's hair. But he never did.
-----
The next he had lost had been Quidditch.
At first he'd enjoyed himself immensely – flying hard and fast for hours a day, honing his Wronski Feint to a fine art and learning a number of other fantastic moves from the Magpies' starting seeker, Darren O'Hare. The weather was hot, but during practices they were protected by heavy cooling charms, and with the wind whipping past his face, Harry hardly noticed the heat. Instead he was preoccupied by the air's caress, like the doting mother's touch which he occasionally allowed himself to imagine, or by the clear, starling blue of the sky, occasionally broken by the golden darting of the snitch.
After the first few weeks, though, his happiness had dimmed. Flying was still a joy, but the team lacked the friendly camaraderie that he was used to. Most of them grouped into two factions – following Gustav Frauenlob, a snobby pureblood Beater, or Eric Reynolds, an unbelievably annoying Chaser who curtly ordered Harry to stay out of his way. None of them liked Harry, and after the third time he was forcefully told that his fame was all that had got him on the team, he stopped trying to make conversation. About the only one he could stand was O'Hare, who kept to himself more than anything, replying to Harry's careful small talk with grunts. But at least they were civil grunts.
Now Harry sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was late in the day and practice had gone on longer than usual, so his cooling charm was beginning to fade. That meant that soon they'd be called down; the team's healer had been ordered to keep close tabs on Harry's health in the wake of his long recovery from the war. All the attention was mortifying to Harry, but in a weird way he also liked it. Being fussed over meant that at least one person cared about you.
He sliced across the sky, slipping into the number twelve search pattern, an easy figure eight with a half-inverted twist in each quarter of the pitch. Below him, Frauenlob cursed loudly and swung his bat at the Bludger, sending it flying in a spiral towards Reynolds' back. One of the other Chasers called out a warning and Reynolds swooped out of the way just in time. Harry sighed and thought wistfully of Fred and George's friendly teasing.
Finally the coach called a halt to the practice and Harry landed, dropping the snitch into the chest next to the Quaffle and heading for the showers. A moment later he was pushed aside as the larger players came barreling through. Harry rolled his eyes, but moved silently out of the way.
"Bloody elf-handed Beater," said Reynolds, his voice loud enough to carry back to the edge of the pitch where Frauenlob was just landing.
"Locomotor Mortis!" Frauenlob shot back, and Reynolds went down, landing against his broom with a crunch. Immediately, a fight broke out, and Harry reached for his wand, too, thinking I've got to break this up, but then he paused.
You're doing that saving people thing again, piped up the little voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like Hermione. Shut up, he told it wearily, but he dropped his hand. Sighing again, he turned and went into the locker room.
As he stripped off his gear, Harry's exhaustion turned to anger. They were idiots, he thought, all of them. He couldn't help but resent the way people always needed to fight with each other. From his earliest memories, the things Harry had wanted most were to be left alone, and to have a family of his own. All the team members had loving families, jobs, and a distinct lack of crazed madmen trying to kill them. But somehow that didn't stop them from starting trouble.
Tossing his shin guards to one side, Harry angrily kicked the bench, then winced as pain shot through his toes.
Idiot, he told himself, and turned for the showers. O'Hare was already there, having bypassed the rest of the team even before the fight started. He nodded civilly as Harry stepped under the spray, and Harry regarded his teammate in some perplexity.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he finally burst out, eyes locked on the back of O'Hare's head. "The way they fight?"
O'Hare turned and gave him a steady look. "No," he said slowly. "It doesn't." He turned back and reached for the soap.
"Why not?" asked Harry, exasperated.
"Why should I care about what they do? It's nothing to me."
"It just seems so stupid," Harry burst out. "They've got so much to be happy about, but they don't… it's such a waste." The steam curled up between them, and O'Hare's blank face was partially obscured. A memory arose in Harry's mind of Dumbledore bent over the basin in Voldemort's guarded cave, the steam from the waters coiling around his pale and bearded face as he begged for mercy. He shoved the thought down ruthlessly and sucked in a deep breath.
O'Hare's head and shoulders came into view again as he shrugged. Suddenly Harry felt as if the steam were suffocating him, and he stumbled out of the shower into the changing rooms, desperate for a breath of fresh, cool air.
Three weeks later he quit the team citing medical reasons, Apparating away even as the healer protested that there was nothing physically wrong with him. Whatever the healing charms said, Harry knew something was wrong. Why else would he find it so hard to breathe?
-----
After that, he'd lost Hermione.
Two weeks of solid tests at St. Mungo's and even the Healer in Charge couldn't find an explanation for Harry's respiratory problems. He wasn't under the influence of any known charm, curse, jinx, hex, or potion. His lungs were in good shape since he was fairly athletic, and there was nothing wrong with his throat or trachea. He hadn't quite known what to feel, trapped in the hospital bed, being graciously allowed to floo back to Grimmauld Place every other day for new clothes. Mostly he'd settled on bitterness, and he'd sent back Ron and Hermione's frequent owls, leaving their messages unopened.
Of course, Hermione hadn't let that stop her. She'd bullied her way into his hospital room, then suggested (at the point of her wand) that they let her sit in on his treatment, running some tests herself, including a number them that Healer Pye apparently hadn't recognized. Even those had no results, and her face got tighter every day she visited. Finally, the hospital sent him home with instructions to rest, and Healer Pye had muttered something about Brighton to Hermione as he pressed his seal onto Harry's records with a flourish.
At Grimmauld Place, Harry fell into his favorite chair with a sigh, idly reminding himself to renew the cooling charms on the house.
"What now?" he asked Hermione. "It must be a bloody dark curse, if even St. Mungo's doesn't know about it." He waited for Hermione's characteristic outburst of research possibilities, but when he looked up, she was regarding him silently with what could only be pity.
"Harry," she said softly, "I don't… I don't think it's a curse."
"What is it, then?" He leaned forward intently.
"I think…" she twisted her head, letting her bushy hair fall into her face. "Harry, the war is over. You can't keep defining yourself by what's come before."
"What are you saying?" His fists clenched. "You think I'm making this up? You think I'm a liar?"
"No!" Her eyes came up. "I just think… maybe you're a little paranoid. There's no one out to get you, Harry. All that's in the past."
"There are still Death Eaters out there," Harry pointed out, breathing heavily but forcing himself to be reasonable.
"The Aurors took care of that," she shot back. "But you can't seem to trust them. You won't trust anyone."
"I trusted you," he said bitterly, and she flinched, then anger spread across her face.
"No, you didn't. You wanted me to be one of your supporters, that's all. You want to know what I think? I think you still have that saving people thing. You still want to be the hero, the center of attention. And if no one's paying attention because we've all moved on, got lives of our own, well, you'll find a reason to suck everyone back in. That's all this stupid breathing trouble is — another way to make you into poor, persecuted hero Harry."
Harry was only speechless for a moment, the air knocked out of his lungs. Then he rallied. "You sound like Ron back in fourth year," he replied. "But I thought you knew better. I've never wanted fame or attention. I've always only ever wanted to be normal, to have friends and a family of my own. Things happen to me. I don't make them happen!"
"That's just what you tell yourself," she said, and her anger turned to pity again. "And maybe on some level you even believe it. But deep down, it isn't true. You're doing this to yourself," she said sanctimoniously.
Harry squeezed his hands into fists even more tightly. "I can't believe you'd say that, Hermione. Not after all we've been through. You know what they're capable of. And you ought to know what kind of person I am."
Hermione only sighed. "Harry… you don't have to do this. You don't have to make this into some great battle between light and dark just so you can feel good about being on the right side."
It was as if all the air had been sucked from the room, and Harry felt the blood drain from his face.
"I could help you," Hermione said, her voice sounding oddly hesitant. "I could take care of you."
Harry was dizzy, half from the sudden lack of oxygen and half from anger. He sagged back into the chair and put his face in his hands, gasping.
"Harry," she said disapprovingly, her mood turning in an instant, "you're doing it again. Just because I said something you're not happy about—"
"Hermione, go away," he choked out.
"Harry—"
"GO AWAY!" he roared, and Hermione squeaked in surprise, then made an unhappy noise as she turned for the fireplace.
"Fine." Hermione sniffed, and he almost regretted his harsh words. "But I know I'm right. And you know it, too." Harry's chest tightened again as she Apparated away. Harry pushed himself to his feet, ignoring his pounding heartbeat and the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him. As he moved towards his bedroom, Harry caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror, and paused in shock at what he saw – face pale, eyes wide, a faint patina of sweat covering his cheeks, and most of all, his lips – a startling deep blue.
-----
After that, Harry didn't out again for three days, moving only from the bed to the loo to the kitchen and back, fighting each time the feeling of stolen breath. Ron wrote every day, still, but Harry set the letters aside without reading them, too afraid of what they might say. Hermione's accusations sat heavy on his mind, and when he'd calmed down enough he examined them carefully for any hint of truth. But eventually Harry concluded there was none. Really he'd been perfectly happy playing Quidditch and minding his own business, and try as he might, he couldn't find any indication, however minute, that he'd secretly wanted to take over the spotlight again.
On the fourth day, he had felt well enough to go out again, so he'd dragged himself off to Diagon Alley, remembering the joy of those first few moments in the magical world and wanting more than anything else to recapture that feeling. Some sun will do me good, he thought.
But as Harry bought his ice cream at Florian Fortescue's, he felt as if all the magic had gone out of the magical world. He'd killed Voldemort, bringing an end to the world of nightmares, but somehow a lot of small fears had arisen in the Dark Lord's wake, taking their chance to come to life. In the alley, the people hurried past quickly, their bright robes dusty, on their way to work or shopping or any number of tasks. None of them smiled.
As Harry walked, he heard angry haggling over rare and precious potions ingredients; he saw a group of children carrying brooms taunting another in tattered clothes. Passing Gringotts, he caught the mutter of voices discussing the viciousness of goblins; at Flourish & Blott's, he saw books delicately bound in the wings of butterflies, rustling desperately against their chains in an attempt to get free. Fred and George's shop was doing a brisk business, but even the children's laughter was subdued, and as Harry watched one child started to cry around a mouth swollen by a Ton-Tongue Toffee. The air around him shimmered, and he did not know whether it was from the heat of the day or from the tiredness in his eyes.
Swallowing the last of his ice cream, Harry felt his chest tighten again, pulled taut with an emotion he couldn't quite name. He licked the spoon and Apparated back to Grimmauld Place.
-----
The last to leave him had been Ron, and then Harry found himself alone again.
After his visit to of Diagon Alley, Harry had suddenly wanted to see Ron again, for the first time in a few weeks. Ron, he thought, would understand about Hermione's need to control everything around her; Ron would sympathize. Ron, most of all, was always good for some worry-free fun. Harry smiled, his faintly blue-tinged lips turning upward at the remembrance of the nights they'd spent playing Gobstones together while searching for the Horcruxes. He hadn't seen Ron, really seen him since then. They'd had their moments – a pint at the Scarlet Salamander with Ron's co-workers, cut short by Harry's inability to stand their awed looks, and then a quick, chance meeting at the Ministry when Harry came in to fill out the paperwork for his resignation from the Magpies.
Suddenly, he realized that he hadn't had an owl from Ron in a couple of days, and thought guiltily of the pile of letters he'd abandoned at St. Mungo's, and the smaller pile he'd collected while brooding about Hermione's accusations. Heaving himself from the chair, he pulled these latest from his desk and started flipping through.
Harry, said the first, dated a week back, what's going on? Hermione's mental, of course – if you wanted attention, why would you be ignoring all our letters? But, well, you know… I wish you'd trust us.
Then the second: This is bollocks. What is this about, that you can't bloody write your mate back just to let him know you're alive? I can't believe you won't trust me with whatever it is. You of all people should know I'd look after you. You should know what kind of person I am. Reading his own words thrown back in his face made Harry's breath whoosh from his lungs. He sighed miserably, realizing how much of a disservice he'd done his friend. He turned to the third letter.
You utter git, Ron wrote. I haven't wanted to say it, Harry, but you're being a piss-poor friend. I know you've been in hospital and all, but couldn't you take the time to bloody write? Harry hung his head, feeling like the world's biggest idiot. The letter went on. I needed a friend this week, it said. Not bloody Hermione or Mum trying to run my life for me, or Ginny writing about how happy she is now that she's finally got away from us all, or the twins taking every opportunity to make me look like an ass. I needed you, and you weren't bloody there. I guess Hermione's right about you. During the war I understood - I didn't like it, but I understood. It was about you and that prophecy. But the war's over and it's still all about you… I guess it's always going to be about you. That was the end of the letter.
Harry heard a drop of moisture fall onto the paper and told himself it was a bead of sweat instead of a tear.
-----
That evening Harry stood in front of the hallway mirror again, and let the cooling charms drop from the house. He'd been reduced to panting and shallow breaths for the last two weeks, but that day the suffocating feeling had reached a peak, and his head spun with the lack of oxygen. As the hot air rushed in, he forced himself to suck in one last deep breath, his lungs laboring heavily. He held it in as long as he could, and let dizziness overtake him. In his mind he was flying again, almost straight up into the burning blue. When he could hold the breath no longer, he turned and for a brief moment looked down at the earth, now far, far away. All he could see was blue.
At Grimmauld Place, Harry brought his wand up in one convulsive, slashing motion against his throat. In the sky, he plummeted.