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It started with a little voice in the back of his head. A simple statement of fact that replayed relentlessly in his mind.
Ugh, I want to die…
It barely held any meaning until it did, and suddenly the thought was completely solid, a revelation, a secret.
I want to die.
The more he tried to shoo the thought away, the more it made itself known.
I want to die!
He’d feel guilty about it sometimes, when he was reminded of his predetermined role in history, but he was also bitter about that sometimes because… Merlin, he didn't even have control over his own life, did he?
I want to die.
Sometimes those feelings would spike horribly, like a cramp, and then just... pass, leaving him numb and empty.
I want to die.
And playing the part of Harry Potter was just so easy. People were very clear with what they wanted from him. A good man, a strong man, a man who wouldn’t bend the knee, who would persist and fight until he had absolutely nothing left to give, no breath in his torn-apart body.
…I want to die.
Some mornings, his face completely disconnected from his brain, a neutral expression plastered onto it, hollow laughter leaving his lips as water seemingly entered his lungs. He looked at Dumbledore out of the corner of his eyes, silently damning the man for being so put together. So perfectly out of reach in his wisdom, a calm puppetmaster of the greater good. Harry hated disappointing him, even in his own head, damn his traitorous thoughts!
I want to die!
Ron and Hermione never even worried, which calmed and angered Harry at the same time. He wanted to yell at them that he was dying inside his own skin, a brutal, gory death, and shield them from the blood all the same.
I – want to – die.
The thoughts subsided when there was real danger. When there was a wand pointed at him and his desire could finally be filled in a heroic way. Harry Potter, dead at the hands of Death Eaters, that headline was one that Harry imagined more than once in the privacy of his shower stall or closed four-poster.
I want to die.
He could never, though. Not after Cedric. Not with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, not with the badly hidden looks of desperation and pleading his friends shot him. Not with the weight of the nation’s hope resting on his scrawny shoulders. Not with the horrible realization that the afterlife was very much real in the Wizarding World and dying would mean facing those that died only for him to stop putting up a fight.
I don’t want to die, he told himself.
Except it would be so easy in those moments. He needed to actively fight to stay alive, and he’d been fighting so hard and for so long. The ones who want him dead. Including himself.
I don’t want to die, he told himself.
Going “home” to the Dursleys’ was like falling into a coma. When he went back to Hogwarts, Harry could not remember one thing that had happened or one word that had been said. Only the beige walls and tacky wallpaper. There had been a fog over him. He’d spent his time battling the urges in his mind.
I DON’T want to die!
It was better, for a moment, when he saw his friends again. But only for a moment. Maybe he had lost the ability to project Harry Potter onto his skin, because their brows were furrowed and their words were full of worry. Then again, it had always been like that after he returned from the summer starved and bruised.
i dont want to die…
Things more or less stayed in that hazy limbo for a while. It felt very foreign to him, to shout when he was supposed to be outraged at the blatant injustice of Umbridge, and to laugh when he was supposed to be happy about their secret club meetings. But he settled after a while. The pain in his hand, dictating that he was a liar, helped some. He tried not to think about it. He even thought he might be okay in this delicate balance.
I want….
He wanted to be normal. Surely there was something he could be, some sort of normalcy he could achieve in the crevices between cupboard boy and war soldier. The desire was pungent sometimes, overshadowing his despair. Only sometimes.
I want….
Sirius died. It was the most emotion Harry had felt in years, the deep sadness that invaded him. He had no idea what to do with those feelings. He felt useless and ungrateful for his life. He missed Sirius, and he missed the delicate moments when he felt happy, that were rare before, but vanished afterwards.
I can’t think it, I can’t think it, I can’t –
He honestly couldn’t remember any of his summer after Sirius’ death, but he knew that, when he came to see the Weasleys again, they looked sadder than he had ever seen them, and they observed him out of the corner of their eyes and whispered about him at night just outside his door. Harry would feel guilty, except that he felt nothing at all. He was keeping the worst of it at bay, away from their eyes, (he told himself). They were probably staring because of the green-purple bruise that spanned half of his face. Harry only became aware of it as he brushed his teeth, next to Ron.
I’m so weak… I want to–
Harry let Dumbledore take the wheel. Just for a while, he told himself, let me just turn off my brain. Sometimes he heard it when Hermione started to argue with him, full of righteous indignation, about his staying with the Dursleys, about a million other things, too. But mostly, he just drifted. Unfocused, undead.
I can’t do this.
Dumbledore died. Fell while Harry watched to the side, knowing that he was going to give even more of himself over to The Chosen One. He was the leader from that moment on, and that, if nothing else, pulled him back to the surface.
–
His vision was a little less clouded, his emotions stronger (and by emotions, he meant desperation). The intensity of it was almost overwhelming. Or it would be if Harry had even one second to think about it, instead of simply living off of the adrenalin in his veins, a poor substitute for blood. His purpose had never been clearer, and that was all he could think of.
Stay alive. Kill Voldemort.
The Horcrux on his neck made it a thousand times harder. But he hated it even more when they were around Ron or Hermione. Was that how they had been seeing him? Those months out there tested them all, but Harry was practiced in it, and his friends were not. He had to be strong. Good, strong, persistent.
Stay alive. Kill Voldemort.
He had to die in order to destroy the last Horcrux. Dumbledore had given him the Resurrection Stone. He dropped it somewhere in the forest. His friends had become strong, capable fighters. They didn’t need him to finish the war. It made sense. Harry understood that his role had been his desire all along. And he felt completely calm and placid as he came face to face with Voldemort.
I’m going to die.
He came back anyway. He killed Voldemort. He went to dozens of funerals. He kept on, trying to fade into the background, trying to make it so that his death would be less noticeable, so that it wouldn’t pile on to the tragedy. But, all at once, everyone kept pushing.
Pushing for him to speak.
Pushing for him to get married.
Pushing for him to become a symbol.
Pushing for him to become an Auror.
A poster boy.
A professor.
A Minister.
It was insanely overwhelming.
I want to die.
“Everything is well,” would read the poster that Shaklebolt wanted him to pose for. And Harry started to laugh, manic. Hermione and Ron, sitting next to him and nodding, turned wide-eyed. Logically, Harry knew he looked insane. There was no more threat to their lives. The evil lord had been defeated. The Savior was alive; his purpose fulfilled.
And yet. And yet.
Everything was horrible. It felt like everyone had died. The ones who were unfortunate enough to have kept their beating hearts were even deader. And for some reason, Harry was expected to fix that, too. He was expected to… keep on. When he himself had been a ghost for years. It felt absurd.
I want to die.
But he couldn’t, he found, stay at Number 12, Grimmauld Place forever. Time was almost nonexistent there. Whenever anyone came by it was to check if he was still alive. And they begged him to go to the Burrow. Begged him to go outside. To eat. To shower. It was disheartening to see his friends so worried. It made Harry feel less than.
A small part of him felt revindicated. That his friends were finally seeing to what they’d turned a blind eye for so long. But that was a very small part of him.
“I want to die,” he rasped, for the first time.
To an empty house.
“There is a world of possibility,” McGonagall had told him, when he was in her office looking down at his own feet, ashamed at expressing his reluctance to become an Auror.
She wasn’t wrong, but the words seemed as false as they were scary. And Harry had been strong for so long.
But he persisted.
Because when Molly said he loved him, he felt the unconditional love of a mother.
He persisted.
Because Ron and Hermione held him when he finally broke down in front of them and confessed that he felt like he was never a person at all, but an image that people filled with their own perceptions.
He persisted.
Because he was then told that while people surely did use him in that way, he was never empty. He loved flying, and investigating, and helping Molly with cooking at the Burrow. He had a sense of humor, a heart, a self.
He persisted.
And he started to believe it.
It was a slow, gradual sort of thing. Full of new experiences, good and bad. Full of uncomfortable conversations and panic attacks. Full of days where Harry couldn’t get out of bed at all and vomited up everything he’d eaten. Full of looking at himself in the mirror and reaffirming his life, his worth, through gritted teeth. Full of therapy; also full of reassuring words, kind hands, and unending support. Full of people’s help, free of judgment.
Molly’s cooking, Ron’s company, Hermione’s books, Luna’s conversations, Neville's houseplants, George’s sweets and Arthur’s rubber ducks.
The odd thought lingered, but Harry fought through it.
And he found that he didn’t have to make such a herculean effort when there were people sharing the weight with him.