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joonkorre · 1 year

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@drarrymicrofic prompt: different

Can the same route lead to a different destination? Certainly. All he has to do is get off at another stop.

But the train keeps on going, the doors are locked, and Harry is glued to his seat. AO3

Harry wakes up, mist and absolute silence surrounding him. His feet lead the way.

****

One month after his twenty-fifth birthday, Harry marries the love of his life.

The wedding takes place on the Northumberland coastline, a compromise they reached after debating whether to conduct the ceremony on a Quidditch pitch halfway across the continent or the Hogwarts courtyard. It’s overall a grand affair, with long wooden tables and burgundy centrepieces and flora emerging after every step down the aisle. Ginny has splurged on a chiffon dress that she’d never wear normally but is perfect for the theme. Harry’s allowed paparazzi for once. A wedding like this belongs nowhere except on the front page.

The kids come soon after. Ginny leaves the naming to him, and naturally, he names all three of his angels after the people they should look up to. There’s never a peaceful day with them running around, especially not when the Granger-Weasley siblings come over. Even then, Harry has to duck his tear-stained face into his wife’s neck as their youngest, Lily, boards the Hogwarts Express for her First year. Like everyone else, they adjust to the too-empty house and fill their calendar.

The young grow taller and the old crouch lower. Charlie flies over to attend Harry’s retirement party, and they laugh about the kind of back pain that magic can’t cure. By that point, James has already found himself a fiance, Ginny has been years into her full-time gardening hobby, and they’ve moved places four times. Albus comes home for weekly dinners and Lily visits once in a while, bearing souvenirs and a grin.

Life goes on just like that for a few decades. When people ask, Harry always replies that as expected, he’s perfectly content.

At 125 years old, Harry passes away with his loved ones all around him.

****

“I like to think free will is the necessary condition of being human, yes.”

Harry nods, sure as can be. Sure as death and taxes, as the white of King’s Cross.

“You say that every time,” the train driver says.

“Do I?”

“Is there free will in this?” There are tickets in the train driver’s hand, all punched in the same incomprehensible shape.

The question is easy and Harry has an answer to it, but somehow it feels odd to say. His seat jolts a bit. Looking around, his eyes widened. He doesn’t remember getting on the train.

“Where’s your next stop?”

The train driver is gone, and Harry doesn’t need to leave his compartment to know that every other one is empty.

“Wherever I arrive,” he says to the white ceiling. That, too, is routine.

****

One month after his twenty-fifth birthday, Harry celebrates his and the love of his life’s anniversary.

Ginny doesn’t mind him being distracted throughout their date as she already talks enough for the both of them. Such a great girlfriend she is. Thus, it feels logical for him to ask for her hand in marriage by the end of the night. He never checked her ring size to buy a ring, and Ginny doesn’t mind either.

Their wedding is elegant. Held in the Italian restaurant they regularly dine in, they have just over 100 guests present. No paparazzi. When Harry reads his vows, he can’t help thinking about how quickly he finished drafting them the night before. Words flowed like the lines he wrote in detention. Some guests cry when he’s done, which isn’t all that surprising. If anything, the food is decent.

Harry and Ginny make the perfect couple. They don’t fight, they share responsibilities equally, and they respect each other’s personal space. Even then, Ginny gets her knickers in a twist on occasion about how easy-going Harry is, how he doesn’t have his own opinion on important life decisions and just agrees with her. His usual reply would be “Shouldn’t that make me the ideal husband?” It doesn’t improve the situation, but it does get Ginny to not talk to him for a day.

He’s promoted to Head Auror in due time. He gets to King’s Cross every September for his three children despite his busy career, even if watching the train disappear into the distance feels wrong somehow. He doesn’t know what to make of it. Ginny comments that it’s the only time he displays real emotion anymore. He’s uncertain about that as well.

Life goes on, as it does. There’s a throwaway fiasco with a Time-Turner, but it resolves itself out. Ginny switches from her Quidditch career to being a sports editor due to her injured legs. The children get over their teenage rebellion phases and grow to become capable adults. Both he and Ginny retire at some point. Hermione and Ron visit once in a while.

If anyone asks, Harry’d say he doesn’t remember much of the past few decades. He’s not sure if this is resignation or acceptance.

At 125 years old, Harry passes away in his sleep.

****

“I like to think free will is the necessary condition of being human, yes.”

“You say that every time,” the train driver says.

“Do I?”

The train driver closes the cabin door, and Harry’s reaction to suddenly being on the train is more instinctual than real.

“Where’s your next stop?”

Harry answers without thinking, staring at the lack of scenery outside. Suddenly, so powerfully it punches the breath from his lungs: dread.

****

One month after his twenty-fifth birthday, Harry asks the love of his life if they can get a divorce.

“No, we’ve only been married for two years,” Ginny argues, her eyes red. “Whatever’s wrong, let’s work this out together, okay?”

Harry genuinely has no idea why he was in such a hurry to propose years ago, as if he felt the edges were fraying and had to be fixed. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her. So he agrees. They work it out together. Neither of them mentions it to anyone else.

They have kids. Three, all named after proper role models. The children turn out okay, more or less, as they ought to. Since he’s a parent, Harry finds himself standing at King’s Cross every year, his wife quiet behind him, both waving at lingering black puffs of smoke as the Hogwarts Express gets farther and farther. Then they head home and clean and go to work. They fight a normal amount.

At some point, Hermione and Ron have gotten tired of him. It’s not an unexpected development, but it’d be a lie if he says it doesn’t sting. On Ginny’s part, he knows she works overtime most nights at the publication because Lavender fulfils her emotional needs. Harry cycles through being a Ministry worker, a floo technician, and a businessman, trying to find something new that he can feel accomplished about. None meets the criteria, and he’s toeing that line between frustration and apathy.

The kids pay their visit sometimes, during which he finally musters enough energy to face their resentment. He’d yell things just to yell and feel his breathing pick up and yank gravelly coughs out his sandpaper throat, and it’s then that he remembers he’s human again. In nanoseconds, he wants to ask himself why he “worked things out,” why Ginny hasn’t filed for a divorce, why everything is the same in only different packaging, why he even has these questions.

If anyone asks, Harry’d say he needs to go. Go where, he doesn’t know either.

At 125 years old, Harry dies alone in a motel room.

****

“I like to think free will is the necessary condition of being human, yes.”

“You say that every time,” the train driver says.

“Surely not,” Harry replies, and it feels like he’s wading in the deep end. “There must’ve been times when I say something else. Do something else.”

The train driver is silent.

“Right?”

Harry blinks, opening his eyes in time to spot the moment he steps over the threshold, one foot still on the station platform. The world tilts just a few degrees, and he turns his head right.

Whistling so high it’s comparable to a screech, the train barrels straight toward him.

****

One month after his twenty-fifth birthday, Harry responds to a joke from the love of his life.

“What, are you getting cold feet?” Ginny smirks, a slice of pizza halfway into her mouth.

Harry stares at her. “Yeah.”

She meets his gaze without anger and only sets her food down. When the first tears drip from their faces and splatter on the table, it’s deliverance.

“I guess you do seem different lately,” Ginny says hours later, curled up against him with her ankles brushing his. The world is dark outside their window and their canceled wedding is a week away. “After your birthday, you look agitated all the time and… I don’t know, but a part of me was preparing for it. My reaction earlier was way milder than it would’ve been otherwise.”

Harry combs his fingers through her silky hair, quiet.

“Do you regret your time with me?” He eventually asks. “I know what I did was unfair, being the one to ask for your hand in marriage just to…”

“Come on, sound it out,” Ginny pats his cheek. “I actually don’t regret it. Live and learn, y’know? And I’m glad to know that you’re a good boyfriend but a shite husband. Better now than years later, by which point I’d probably kill you for wasting years of my life. Or maybe not. That’s worse, probably.”

She shifts and yawns a bit. “How about you? Do you regret our relationship?”

His heart breaks. Harry’s never been honest with her about how he thinks he’s been playing out a script all this time, how he’s less the captain and more the ship, unable to do anything but let ocean waves steer him about. He doesn’t plan to tell her that tonight feels like a breakthrough for him either.

“Not at all,” he says. This, he can be honest about.

People don’t take the news lightly, least of all the Weasleys. Ron socks him in the jaw, hard, since he was the one helping Harry surprise Ginny with the proposal. Harry’s still seeing stars when Molly finishes digesting the news, her face turning to the shade of Weasley red and her wand clenched to the point of shaking. Amidst it all, Harry laughs. An exhilarated, visceral laugh that makes his entire body lock up, the kind he doesn’t even think he's capable of. Ginny stops her frantic explanation to gawk at him, then she laughs as well. Harry is only banned from the Burrow for two weeks.

Harry pivots from Auroring to entering college. Being a Ministry worker straight out of Eighth Year, Hermione admits to feeling shocked that he’d be the one to choose that route. But she helps him relearn how to study, cries at his graduation ceremony, and lets him borrow her owl to send his teaching certificate to McGonagall. It’s with a raised brow, but the Hogwarts headmaster shakes Harry’s hand with barely concealed pride after their interview.

The entire time spent in the Auror Department is insignificant compared to the joy he feels when a Sixth year finally smiles, watching her first Patronus bounce across the room.

September comes. Returning students greet him as they walk past on platform nine and three-quarters. Flipping through a muggle magazine, Harry looks up and scans the crowd periodically. His brows furrow. He checks the suitcase guarded between his calves to ensure that no student-led prank got through. Spotting none, he goes back to his magazine, forgetting about the passing thought that someone is absent. Shortly after, the train arrives.

A new school year starts, and starts and starts and starts, until fifty-something years have passed and he’s taught DADA in every way thought possible. He’s participated in a few studies for novel Dark spells, refined the construction for certain defense procedures, dealt with Howlers from parents, so on and so forth. He’s also dated throughout the years, but no one sticks by him for quite as long as the towering stacks of paperwork in his office. Even then, working with cranky, hormone-filled students has divorced him from the notion of having a family of his own and bringing that issue under his roof.

But he likes his career. He likes his career, and when he announces his retirement, students hug him with red, teary eyes. Shy First years come up to him and confess that they were going to pick his class as their siblings did. Current professors who used to sleep during his lectures now shake his hand and bow.

If it hasn’t been abundantly clear to him over the past decades, it's clear now: Harry Potter is more than a child soldier. He is a beloved teacher.

Retirement is spent around the Weasleys and other retired colleagues who have little left to do but cackle obnoxiously in a pub. That goes on until he’s had enough of charming his own joints to keep working each day, so he hires a private caregiver. Janet is Ginny and that Belgian fellow’s grandchild. She’s snide enough to make him feel less like a burden; she has this uncanny ability to procure any tome or scroll he wants, no matter how esoteric; and she makes excellent sandwiches.

One day, he wakes up with the distinct knowledge that time will stop for him soon. He says—or mutters—something of the kind to Janet, and she sits down with him.

“Didn’t eat much these days,” Harry sniffs. Janet fixes his blanket and doesn’t look surprised when he continues. “Been seeing these. These little children.”

“Do you now?”

“They’re good kids,” Harry pats her hand. Smacks his dry lips and coughs a bit. “Say, why don’t I...”

It’s how he starts every book request. Janet hums patiently.

“Why don’t I have one of those yearbooks? In ‘98.”

“1999, old man.”

Harry grunts in annoyance, but she’s right. When she returns an hour later, poking out of her bag is a purple-bound book with silver embossments.

“You sure there’s nothing else you want to get?” Janet questions as she prepares afternoon tea. The other Weasley kids will visit soon along with Hermione, now wheelchair-bound and prone to napping. He ought to show them the yearbook.

“Eh,” Harry croaks, and Janet nods.

His knobbly hand slowly flips through the pages, feeling the slightest texture of yellowed years beneath his fingertips. Faces that might as well be anonymous as they are familiar, names that are no more than black-inked words, events and titles that are now footnotes in time. He sees himself and his friends repeatedly throughout the yearbook, mouthing the same words every ten seconds or walking across the frame in a loop. How these pictures were taken without him noticing, he has no idea. Or perhaps he’s forgotten. Anywho.

He skips to the index at the end, where everyone in his year (all forty of them, if one can believe it) is crowded into four pages, each dedicated to a House. The students who were absent in Eighth Year were included using their photos from years prior, lest the four pages reduce to two. Such youthful faces. If it’s not for the statues and books about him littering wizarding Britain, Harry would be more surprised at his appearance at eighteen. Sullen, angry, wounds all licked up but far from healed. He shakes his head. That boy would rather use that copper badge to hex anyone he thought was a criminal than meet a shrink.

Everyone else seemed just about what he expected. It does feel nice to put a face to hazy memories though, so he flips to the Slytherins. In front of the camera, they shed their signature smirks, and what remains is a veneer of bored arrogance he reckons only old money can don. His eyes shift to the centre of the page. They stay.

How curious.

“Jan.”

“Hm?”

“Y’know a… a Draco Malfoy?”

What makes Janet Gillard one of Hermione’s favorites is that she co-edited every new Hogwarts: A History edition until about thirty years ago. To this day, she can recite the names of every student and staff present at Hogwarts during the Final Battle.

“A who?” She speaks over the boiling kettle. “Malfoy? That line died out in the 1980s, why?”

He closes the yearbook. The doorbell rings and Janet strolls over to open the front door. When his guests come in, they bring gifts and stories to entertain him with, brightening instantly when they spot the yearbook on his lap.

He doesn’t say much as he watches them read through it, showing him and a smiling Hermione whatever they find interesting. Eventually, they reach the index, saying something about whether the Longbottom child was anything like her great-grandfather, or if the Patils have all moved to the States. When they get to the Slytherins, the chatter lessens, albeit out of respect for their elders who have dealt with these students in the past. Their gaze doesn’t gravitate to that one specific spot, their breath doesn’t stutter. Like nothing is amiss.

If anyone asks, he'd say, "That's not right." But no one does. His eyes slip to the ceiling, throat dried. He gasps.

At 125 years old, Harry dies along with the white, fleshy void of Draco Malfoy's face behind his lids.

****

“I like to think free will is the necessary condition of being human, yes.”

Harry opens his eyes to an empty corridor, the train floor rumbling beneath his feet.

“Don’t I?” He asks himself, curious.

A rattle nearly sends him bumping into a compartment, and his limbs finally move, carrying him forward. His footsteps echo in waves. Dust motes float about, the ancient air too stark a contrast to the white, almost sterilized environment of the Hogwarts Express.

The train car is too long, and Harry doesn’t know how long he’s been running. There’s no sweat on his body despite the strenuous activity, his heart rate remains nonexistent, and once he realizes this, he forces his breath to quicken. Green eyes strain, flicking every which way. This is how it’s supposed to be, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

Far ahead, the minuscule vanishing point that the train corridor converges to eventually widens. His chest heaves in relief. Ever closer, the door has a window big enough for him to see into the cab beyond—and the driver. Harry pushes his legs to go faster. Something flares in his chest, stabbing and red-hot, sounding like fabric shifting and air whipping when he wrenches the driver around by his blue-clad shoulder, makes him look Harry in the face. But he's still running, and his hand grabs air.

Sensing something, the driver’s head turns to the side. Then he stands, leaving his seat and striding toward the door. Harry is two, three paces away. The driver’s gloved hand lifts to hook a finger on the blinds, on the verge of pulling it. One more step. Harry’s hands slam against the metal—body shuddering through the shock—and his eyes lift to stare through the window.

The pulled-low cap shifts a fraction of an inch, but Harry sees it. Wrinkled brows, a panicked glance. The rest of his face is covered behind the uniform’s overly high collar. Snap, and the blinds are down.

“Stop derailing it,” the train driver’s voice surrounds Harry.

His body sags against the door, eyes shutting no matter how much he tries to do otherwise. But he sees it anyway.

Pure silver.

****

One month into his twenty-fifth birthday, Harry stares down at the contract on his lap.

“Thursday next week, we’ll—Harry?” Robards snaps his fingers. Harry doesn’t jolt, and his head lifts to face the frowning Head Auror. “Training hasn’t even started and we’re getting distracted already? Focus.”

“I,” Harry starts. He says nothing more, just now registering the quill against his palm, smooth and waiting. Beneath it is the empty space where his signature goes.

At Harry’s silence, Robards shoots him a warning glance before continuing the speech. Something about schedules, benefits, duties, important missions that need someone full of potential like Harry to come and solve. Didn’t know why Harry was dithering about instead of joining the Aurors immediately after Eighth Year, seeing as the department offers mind counselling as well, but one can’t fault a young man for enjoying his prime while it lasts. Harry will get back on track soon enough.

The floor rumbles below Harry’s soles. He looks up from the contract, but Robards is still leaning against his cherry wood desk, unaffected, and nothing trembles. Shifting his gaze to the large artificial window behind that desk, Harry scans the manufactured blue sky and the looping white clouds. Realistic they may be, but he can never forget that he’s underground.

The white of those clouds feels too much. Almost clinical. Harry blinks at the thought, eyes aching, and it turns out he hasn’t blinked in a while. Robards has moved on to anecdotes, Harry can vaguely tell. Staring at the clouds for this long does something odd to his sight. A sheen of static-like specks fills his vision like every other time Harry stares at something until it becomes incomprehensible. But it’s different now. Why, he doesn’t know, but something changes.

Harry inhales. Stale air that didn’t exist before in this office fills his lungs, and a section of his brain sparks. He exhales. Metal heaves in his ears, ageless machines pumping a way through the fog. Always one designated way.

The air is back to its scentless quality. Harry tries to remember how it was earlier when something else floated through his nose and into his system, but memories slip past him. Maybe it’s not even a memory. Brows knitting together, Harry clenches his eyes shut and forces himself to read through the contract once more.

Words stop making sense. As his eyes flit across the parchment, Harry thinks of death, of lingering, of a tattered veil swaying in windless space, of whispers from the depth. The contract feels heavy in his hand, the quill too rough. Cold sweat dripping down the back of his nape, Harry’s head whips up so fast Robards stops talking. He doesn’t look at the Head Auror but at the clouds.

Pure silver is all he can see.

“Harry, what’s going on with you—”

“Sir, I’m sorry,” he starts. This time, he keeps going. “But I don’t think the Auror Department is right for me.”

Meeting Robards’s eyes, Harry smiles.

“Before I stop wasting your time, do you know the process of applying for the Department of Mysteries? Particularly the Death Chamber?”

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thesherrinfordfacility · 10 months

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the thing that is actually making me giddy with the possible angst is that i really think that we are about to see the most monumental shift in not only how we saw these characters but also how they previously saw each other.

the fact that we literally now have confirmation that a) they knew each other before the fall, b) aziraphale has had heart eyes since before time began, and c) crowley... possibly not so much, completely changes the context on not just the eden scene but also all the historic scenes that followed.

aziraphale knew crowley as an angel, and knew even then when crowley was meant to be 'perfect' that crowley was maybe a bit different, always asking questions and toeing the line. maybe out of a bit of bastardy himself, or out of begrudging awe of his ability but also his audacity, or just plain attraction, aziraphale immediate takes to him. but this has meant that aziraphale has placed crowley, perhaps unconsciously, upon a pedestal. and the pedestal that aziraphale puts crowley on from that moment may have wobbled throughout their history together, but it's stayed relatively intact.

this worries me, that aziraphale may not have quite let go of the fact that crowley just isn't that person any more, maybe never was to begin with, and continues in some measure to idolise him. my interpretation of this is that yes, crowley can be a bit of a dick (because, well, obviously) and aziraphale knows this, has done since the beginning, but aziraphale continues to hold crowley to an overall moral ideal that is so firmly ensconced in aziraphale's first perception of him as an angel that crowley will never be able to live up to it. not because he isn't a nice person, or because he can't live up to it, but maybe... he just simply doesn't want to.

but the issue is that throughout the ages (including the job minisode which ive had corrected for me, so Crowley Anger is now simply simmering), crowley's actions have only reinforced to aziraphale that despite being technically a demon, he has a huge heart and is not a horrible person. bit of a bastard, but not cruel. all of this just feeds and feeds into this image of crowley that aziraphale has built of him, and when crowley has his flashes of, in fact, not being honourable or kind, this threatens to upset the pedestal altogether.

these wobbly moments - when he thinks crowley is going to kill the children, when crowley snaps at him in rome, when crowley first proposes the arrangement, the prospect that he came up with the french revolt, the holy water request, the bandstand, "how can someone as clever as you be so stupid?"... moments where just for a second, in a small or huge measure, aziraphale's faith in crowley... flickers.

and of course aziraphale has been here before, right? he's had his faith, his devotion, his loyalty tested to the absolute limit of angelic endurance. so when his faith in heaven (never lost it in god) was obliterated, well - it had to cling to something. something that wouldnt mean that aziraphale has to lose the concept of faith altogether. so we're back to the old standby of idolatry, that aziraphale's heavenly faith is replaced by his faith in crowley, this angel that despite never originally giving aziraphale the time of day, aziraphale cannot see - for all of crowley's faults and bastardy and the frustration he poses - crowley as anything less than something to be worshipped.

this is exactly why i think that one of the main points of s2 is going to be a rift between them both. obviously i haven't talked about crowley's perspective of this and maybe i will in another post, but i do think that crowley is going to do something, a bad thing for the right reasons, but aziraphale isn't going to see it like that. that crowley will do something awful to protect aziraphale, but all aziraphale will be able to see is the betrayal or the cruelty or the despair, he can't see wood for the trees, and just lose that last vestige of faith he had altogether.

i feel like once all the disillusion and disenchantment has been swept away, and they're both laid bare at each other's feet... that they may not quite like what they find. from aziraphale's perspective, that whatever crowley does in s2 might be crossing aziraphale's line in the sand, and now aziraphale is starting to see crowley as someone that is truly grey, fluctuating between doing things that are Good, and things that are Good for Crowley.

and it's not as if aziraphale was blind to this before, but instead now... he kind of finally sees who crowley is? who he has been all along? the film has lifted from his eyes. realises that love and worship are not the same thing. what he loves, who he loves, doesn't equate to worshipping it/them, idolising them. there's a very big difference that echoes down to the very core tenet of who aziraphale is and his experiences with having and losing faith, but love having remained.

so stripped of the pedestal, crowley is now just simply... crowley. a person, not an angel, not a demon. and there is the distinct possibility that aziraphale might be completely blindsided by what he finds.

#good omens #good omens season 2 #ill let you in on a secret - no idea where i was going with this #but what im essentially saying is that aziraphale has this shiny picture of crowley in his head and heart #and when crowley continues to do crowley things aziraphale kinda steps back and is like #“huh... has it been this was all along?”#and if I'm wrong well honestly THANK GOD #but i feel like there is going to be a real reckoning at the end of s2 where faith and love is concerned #that the two are very different but aziraphale kinda confuses the two #anyway #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens... speculation? Sure why not #not a shitpost but its good omens babyyyy #im saying theyre in somewhat of a toxic and disillusioned relationship and its likely going to (temporarily) end v badly im afraid #rhi needs to stop manifesting

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