Current mood:	content
Current music:	Coldplay - "The Hardest Part"
Entry tags:	angst, drabble, fanfiction, hp, the hardest part

Everything is undone
A short one-shot.


Story Title The Hardest Part
Rating: PG
Genre: General, Angst
Fandom: HP
Wordcount: 1012
Summary: The hardest part was letting go, not taking part.
Notes: An odd fic in many ways - not sure if it's what you're expecting. Also hasn't been edited, so if you see any mistakes just tell me. Lyrics from Coldplay's "The Hardest Part".

The Hardest Part


”Everything I know is wrong,
Everything I do just comes undone,
And everything is torn apart.”




Everything about the room was dreary. The furniture was old and decrepit, the wallpaper peeling, and a bit of the ceiling stuck out above the doorway. Carpet tugged up at the corners, and the bedding was raggedy, but in a sense it was quite endearing. Cozy, even.


Then again, it was equally spooky as well.


But he was used to spooky. Spiders ran along the walls, but they didn’t particularly bother him. He liked spiders. He’d grown up with spiders.


Now, the owner of the room, on the other hand…


He smirked despite himself.


Over on the dresser in the back were framed photographs. They were perhaps the cleanest things in the room – they looked polished and new, although he knew they weren’t – and he could clearly see the people within them moving about nervously. He was in the bottom right corner, fixing his glasses, and a girl was looking up in irritation at her hair, which was soaked from the downpour of rain. A boy with red hair and shabby robes scuffed at the ground with his shoe next to him.


“Ah,” said a voice from behind him. “Graduation.”


He didn’t turn – the voice was quite familiar to him. “Yes. The picture never gets old.”


“I know.” A man with flaming red hair stepped up beside him and smiled. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep I just sit in here and stare.”


“And the spiders?”


“Spiders be damned,” he muttered lowly. “Besides, Lupin taught me a nifty spell about that. Really cleans up the place.”


“Hm. I see you haven’t used it anytime soon.”


His counterpart looked betrayed. “Nag.”


“You’ve got Hermione for that, remember?” He took off his glasses and rubbed them with his shirt, smiling slightly. “That’s a nice picture.”


“Where?”


He didn’t look up. “There. In the corner.”


“Oh.” The man’s expression softened. “Yeah. Creevey took it. She looked nice. It was only two weeks before – well, you know.”


“I do,” he agreed, putting back on the glasses. “She looks so… young.”


“Well, she was young, wasn’t she?” The voice was slightly bitter now.


“Yes,” he replied quietly. “She was. Too young.”


“Yeah.” His friend rubbed his eye casually. “Well, the past is the past. Glad it’s over, for my part. Now how about we get some sandwiches and play a bit of Quidditch, eh?”


He merely stared at the pictures.


“How about it?” the man repeated.


Silence.


Then he twitched suddenly, as if acknowledging the statement, yet didn’t turn his head.


“Do you ever miss it?”


The question obviously caught his friend off-guard. He made an odd expression and narrowed his eyebrows before scuffing at the floor as the boy in the picture had.


“Miss it? Miss what?” His eyes widened. “The war?”


“Not the war.” The other ran his hand through his jet-black hair. “Well, kind of. I mean, don’t you miss those days?”


“What about them?” the man shot back, frustrated. “The death? The pain?”


“No, of course not,” he muttered. His eyes flashed. “The excitement.”


“Excitement? It was a bloody war, you moron! People died!”


He shook his head. “Never mind. Forget I asked. You don’t get it.”


“Get what?”


He shrugged. “What it felt like.”


“What it felt like?”


“What it felt like to beat him.”


“Oh.” The man scratched his neck. “No, I don’t suppose I’d quite get that. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime. For now, let’s have some lunch, maybe some –”


“It was amazing, you know?” His eyes were glassing over, fixed on the pictures. “I mean, seven years of it, and finally it’s over. Finally you’ve done it. Everyone’s happy again and you’re the hero. I know you’ve wanted to be the hero before.”


“Mate, that was years ago,” his friend assured him genially. “I’ve gotten over that. I’m happy enough just to be normal now. It’s what people do.”


“I actually enjoyed it.” He smiled. “Searching for the Horcruxes, fighting them. It was a big rush. I hated it, too, of course, but you never can duplicate the experience, when you know your life is on the line. Maybe Hermione was right. I do have a ‘saving people thing’. But I enjoyed it. Now it’s gone.”


The man glared at him. “Yeah,” he said darkly, “and it took a good many with it.”


“I know. But now… everything’s calm. Dull, even.”


“You’re an Auror, for Christ’s sake!”


He glanced at him for the first time in the while. “It’s not the same.”


It was then that the man with red hair understood, understood that his friend only desired the days of his youth as all men do when age settles in upon them. His days had not been the same, but then again, when had he ever been the same? It was perfectly normal, he supposed, that he should wish to be young and foolish again. The hardest part about growing old was letting go of the past and looking to the future.


“Yeah,” he said, “it isn’t the same. But we’ve still got our memories, eh?”


His friend adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and smiled slightly. “Yeah, we do.”


“Good!” He grinned. “Now, let’s get us some food and get out on our brooms for a quick ride in the backyard. That is, if you’ll still fit on your broom. You’ve grown a bit. Horizontally, I mean.”


“No, that would be you.”


“Well, same thing.”


“Right.”


He turned and slowly exited the room, looking back as he stood in the hallway. His friend understood now and nodded, following him, albeit with one last glance at the room that had been full of life once yet now just grew old as time wore on. That was the way some things should be, though. Some things would never change, and perhaps that was for the better.


After all, letting go was the hardest part.



“And the hardest part
Was letting go, not taking part.
It was the hardest part.”