Work Text:
After the war, at the risk of sounding obtuse, Harry did not feel normal.
It was not the sort of emotional existential crisis one felt after a few reasonably lethal moments in their life, but he felt physically and spiritually different.
Not in the good way, oh no. That would have been too simple for Harry’s story. One of the rules in the Universal Rules for Best Sellers (which only a select few can access, obviously, because we’d both be embarrassed if someone so orthodox in their beliefs they seem to be progressing backwards, was to publish such acclaimed works) states that the tragic protagonist must never be allowed to have a peaceful year. The time period does not necessarily have to be a year, it can be fluid, but making it a year grants maximum monetary benefit. This rule is explained by simple economics, but it takes away the romanticism of a secret tome to guarantee wealth, and we shall thus abstain from mentioning it.
Although a lot can be said about Its Holiness the Universal Rules for Best Sellers, we have to now, unfortunately, focus again on the black haired, selectively sarcastic protagonist with wounds that run way back into the old days.
Harry did not feel normal, or rather, complete. This is because he was not. We cannot observe Harry in his natural habitat, unfortunately, because he doesn’t have one. He has multiple artificial habitats. And laws for privacy vehemently forbid it, but if the Government can infringe on his daily skin care routine, so can we. So we shall observe Harry in his artificial habitats, to see how he copes with this new obstacle. Once again, according to Its Holiness the Universal Rules for Best Sellers, he must either spiral completely downwards and tease death’s waiting arms, or maintain a calm indifference to the chagrin of those around him. In this case, he opts for an interesting combination of the two. When teenagers feel incomplete, they tend to appear indifferent to their dismally weak chick magnetism, and attempt to create a major geological water body in the shower. This phenomenon has been documented numerous times, so we must rejoice at the knowledge that Harry is finally accepting the physics of regular teenagers. This possibly means he will not be special anymore, but that is too trivial a matter to care about.
Also, he felt slightly evil. He was prone to occasional pessimistic thoughts, like wanting to push an old geezer into the sewer when she kept chanting about his greatness. He only realised this because he had previously been the owner of vast quantities of goodness to compare his current actions to. These thoughts of his are commonplace in teenagers, but unlike Harry, most teenagers act on these urges. Perhaps his persistent, sickening morality might mean that he is still special, and protagonist material. Now that we have established some unimportant points, let the observation of Harry James Potter commence.