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I really really want to say thank you sooo very much, Kim! You are not just the best beta in the whole wide world, you are also the best fanfic author (check out her fanfic, it rocks!).
P.S.: If you read this, you have to pay with a review!!! *please*
LiliRose. xxx :-)


Disclaimer: Hei, guess what? I do not own any of those characters! Spooky, he? ;-) They belong to the adorable Jo of course and I would rather die than ever steal them from her.

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Waiting, Waiting, Waiting.


Harry was sitting at the Dursleys’. Waiting. Waiting for what? For his 17th birthday, not because this was a very nice or pleasant day. Oh no, as if anything was pleasant these days. Or throughout the next weeks. Or maybe during the next months, until he would meet Voldemort and die. Or maybe he wouldn´t die, but would survive, but where was the difference for Harry? His life would end up the moment of a death. If it was his own death or the death of Voldemort, somebody would die. And even if he didn´t die physically, he would mentally die. Even if he killed Voldemort, he would have committed murder. That was the conclusion Harry drew lying on his bed all day and all night, waiting.

How he missed those very first days at Hogwarts! How long had it been? Too long. The day he came to Hogwarts and saw this great building full of hidden passways and moving staircases and pictures was one he would never forget. And the excitement, the happiness! Happy... that was a word that had lost its meaning to Harry over the last weeks. Dumbledore was dead. He felt so numb and cold. If he´d known that very first day at Hogwarts, if Dumbledore had just told him about everything, about the prophecy, about Voldemorts past, they would have had enough time to make up a decent plan! However, he hadn´t known and had wasted all those days and weeks and years just being a student and learning for a career that he would never ever even start. Harry could´ve had a future. If Dumbledore had just told him earlier.... but now it was all gone. All the chances he had were gone.

Harry thought about his second year. It had been Ginny´s first year. How much time they could have shared! Not as a couple, they were too young, but as friends! And then as a couple later, they could have had years! The second year was also a time with Hermione and Ron, with friends. And he didn´t have to be scared that one day he would receive a letter that said: “We are sorry Harry, but Ron, Ginny and Hermione have been killed, by Death Eaters, because they were supporting you, because they were your friends.” That was a nightmare that was creeping and slithering into his soul every evening. Nightmares full of bodies of beloved people.

Third year. It was probably one of his best years ever. He had got to know Sirius. Sirius, his godfather, and in itself a real father.

And then it all got worse. Fourth year. The year Voldemort came back. And it was all Harry´s fault. It was Harry who set Pettigrew free. He had let him go! Had let him go straight to Voldemort who killed Cedric! Who had killed his parents! The pain in Harry´s chest rose. He remembered the night Voldemort came back and he felt sick at this thought. Harry had seen him, he had seen him coming out of that cursed cauldron on the cursed graveyard and calling for his Death Eaters. And he had been unable to do anything, nobody would have heard him, there was nothing he could have done. He just watched the man rising to new power that caused so much pain and in the end would destroy his, Harry´s, life.

That was, to Harry´s mind, the night that had determined everything he had to do. It had determined his destiny.

However, what had he done in his fifth year? He had gone on pretending that it was still safe as long as there was Dumbledore and he counted on the fact that Dumbledore would always be there. And he counted on the fact that there was still Sirius.

Suddenly Sirius had died. The pain in Harry´s chest was at a maximum. He had just passed away, went away through a veil and would never ever come back. The letters he had got from him - they were the last Harry would ever get. But he had to be strong, go on living, that´s what Sirius would have wanted him to do; be strong like he had been all those years at Azkaban.

His last year at Hogwarts. The year in which the heart of the school died.

Dumbledore.

Dead.

Harry hadn´t realised the consequences when Dumbledore had fallen down the tower. He had felt the whole extent at the burial for the first time. The pain in his chest was now unbearable. He felt everything when they brought Dumbledore´s body up to the place where he was meant to rest for eternity. Dumbledore was an inexhaustable source of knowledge, wisdom and comfort. That source was now gone.

There weren´t many moments when Harry could feel the whole pain that was deep down in his soul, but when he finally felt it, it took his breath. Then, he couldn´t breathe, nor think nor move anymore, he was petrified. All that was in his mind and bones and body was death. His parent´s death. Cedric´s death. Sirius´ death. Dumbledore´s death. And the death of his friends that he feared beyond everything. Those moments, when the whole pain was inside of him, he felt like he was dieing. And he was somehow. He faced death. It was his future: death. There was nothing left between him and Voldemort. The days were over for all time when there were parents, Sirius or Dumbledore who stood between him and Voldemort. Now he was all alone by himself. Friends were no relief but a burden, a permanent fear that they would die. He couldn´t breathe.... he felt like fainting...

Suddenly the pain let go of him and went back deep, deep down in his heart where it fastened and prepared to stay for all time, eternity.

Those were the moments when Harry wasn´t able to cry, but was just relieved that the pain left for some hours before it came back, sometimes even stronger and every time creeping deeper into his soul when it finally left again.

Then Harry was lying on his bed. Waiting for the day to start his journey with the aim that was Voldemort and death. Waiting, waiting, waiting.


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I hope you could feel what I felt when I wrote this one-shot! Thanx for reading it.
And now... review! (Oh come on, it doesn´t take that long, does it?!)
Luv always, LiliRose. xxx :-)

P.S.: Don´t you feel bad without reviewing? lol