Bri Gemini, 90s baby, 🏳️🌈Ally🏳️⚧️ Loyal Hinny Supporter. Hufflepuff🖤💛 *I do not support JKR * ***Profile artwork created by the talented artist Blvnk**
ight so you know how the weasleys car is in the forbidden forest, right? and also how harry went in to the forest to face voldemort. just picture harry walkin up an being ready to die and everything and then the car just comes out of nowhere and absolutely creams voldemort. like 60 mph dukes of hazard type shit
you know where I sensed that Harry and Ginny would end together eventually? When In Order of the Phoenix, she puts him back in his place by stating that she was the only one he knew that had been possessed in the past and survived it. At that precise moment, I knew that no matter what would happen, these two would understand each other and get through the healing process of war and PTSD. This passage in underrated and yet so crucial.
106; ring of fire: part two
SUMMARY
In the wake of encountering Sebastian Murray, the most shocking truth unfolds before Harry of being rather closely watched in the most invasive, sickening way. The hunt had gone well, that is until Murray had unleashed hell that Harry never expected that broke the dark persona of his Auror mask. Will Harry ignore Murray's dark truth, or will he break? It's a fight for his dignity and his sanity where brute enemies linger beneath the shadows.
wc: 13.1k
rating: mature
content: violence, psychological mind games, gore
characters: Harry Potter, Alexis Jones, Sebastian Murray, Cassius Ferguson, The Elder Secrecy soldiers
"How..." Harry's voice faltered, a hairline fracture appearing in his glacial mask. His finger, once a steady metronome, began to strike the slide of his gun in a rapid, frantic staccato that mirrored the sudden, violent elevation of his heart. He swallowed, and even that felt wrong. His saliva had thickened into heavy, stubborn lumps that dragged against his throat like stones. "How is it that you know?" His stomach twisted so violently it felt as though his insides had knotted themselves shut.
Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap.
The question was a jagged edge. And the thought alone made him feel sick. Sick enough to burn. Sick enough to want to tear his own skin off. The mental image of Murray—a silent, watching presence—witnessing the rawest, sacred moment where Ginny's mouth on his chest had undone him, where he had melted into her with helpless, aching moans of ecstasy—made his gorge rise, a spiritual filth that seeped into his pores. God, it burned.
(Obviously this post deals with sensitive topics, please be careful.)
Okay, I realize most fans would automatically say that Harry James Potter was definitely not suicidal. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, though, and some things in canon have stuck with me. To be clear, he was obviously never shown to be at the point of orchestrating his own death (with the exception of giving himself up in Deathly Hallows, which of course was an entirely different category of this), but I think there’s evidence that points to him dealing with passive suicidal ideation on more than one occasion:
“Let’s go,” called Hermione from halfway up the stone steps. “This isn’t right, Harry, come on, let’s go….”
She sounded scared, much more scared than she had in the room where the brains swam, yet Harry thought the archway had a kind of beauty about it, old though it was. The gently rippling veil intrigued him; he felt a very strong inclination to climb up on the dais and walk through it.
“Harry, let’s go, okay?” said Hermione more forcefully.
“Okay,” he said, but he did not move.
- OotP, The Department of Mysteries
This particular bit where he feels an urge to walk through the veil illustrates something compelling and incredibly sad about his character. He doesn’t know what the veil is yet, only that he feels a strong pull towards it. There’s something JKR said once about Harry that’s always stuck in my mind:
“I wanted there to be a debate there, so of my three main characters – when they come into the room which examines death at the Ministry of Magic – Hermione, the ultimate sceptic and a hyper-rational person, hears nothing behind the veil and is scared of it. Ron is just uneasy…Harry’s drawn to it, and therein lies Harry’s slightly reckless, almost morbid streak, because Harry does have a hint of that dangerous adolescent trait which is the attraction to death.”
He’s lost his parents, his entire family, and therefore has a closer, more complicated relationship with death than most of his friends (except for Luna, who has also lost a parent and could hear voices beyond the veil just like Harry, though she did not appear to want to walk through it like he did).
“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human —”
“THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room. It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, “Really!”
“I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE —”
- OotP, The Lost Prophecy
We’ve all seen this horrifically heart-wrenching scene quoted a billion times by now, but if you just stop and take it in? What Harry is actually saying? He’s a fifteen-year-old kid and he’s reached his limit. He can’t regulate his emotions at all at this point, and he’s literally begging for someone to end his suffering. LIKE? What the fuck.
I also want to add the fact that in the sixth book when Snape killed Dumbledore and Harry he was disarmed, he literally begged Snape to finish him off.
Also in the last book, after he saw the bodies lying in the great hall he immediately ran to dumbledore’s office and wished that he could rip out his heart and everything that was screaming inside him. He even said that nothing he will see in snape’s memories could be worse than his own thoughts.
And the worst thing actually happened in the fifth book after Harry taunted Bellatrix and Voldemort came. Voldemort literally raised his wand at him, ready to kill him and Harry didn’t even lift his own wand to stop at all and just let him strike him. If it wasn’t for Dumbledore putting a statue in front of Harry, he would have been killed willingly.
Harry might not be actively suicidal but he showed some sign where he wished that someone could just finish him off.
And then people continue to hate on this kid because he’s “annoying and childish”. Nothing bothers me more than ignorant people refusing to see these signs. From that scene in OotP, I knew Harry showed some signs of being suicidal and my heart aches for the kid.
a muggle AU where hinny is in a band together and ginny is the singer and harry plays guitar or bass, and they play at a bar sirus owns.
Low End
Harry's always been good at staying in the background — keeping time, making space, letting Ginny take the light. One Thursday night at Sirius's bar, watching her laugh at someone else's jokes, he realises that might be the problem.
The Stag had that specific smell of old wood and spilled beer that Sirius had never bothered to fix, and Harry had stopped noticing it about six months ago. Now it just smelled like Thursday nights.
He was running through the set on a barstool before doors opened, not plugged in, just fingers moving through muscle memory on the neck of his bass while the others set levels. The monitor feedback whined and Seamus swore at it from behind the drum kit. Dean was coiling cables near the stage stairs with the particular focused patience that made him good at it, and Ginny was—
Harry's fingers stopped.
Ginny was standing at the edge of the stage, shoes off, one foot tucked under her on the monitor wedge, reading something on her phone with her hair falling across her face. She was mouthing words. Lyrics, probably. She did this before every set — went somewhere private in her own head while the rest of them made noise around her. He'd watched her do it for two years and still couldn't quite explain why it made him feel like he'd walked into a room and forgotten why.
"Intonation on the D string," she said, without looking up.
He hadn't been playing.
He plucked the string. It was slightly flat. He adjusted the tuner peg without comment.
She still didn't look up.
***
By the time doors opened the bar had filled the way it always did — slowly, then suddenly, people appearing in coats they hadn't checked, ordering drinks they'd carry until the lights changed. Harry recognised the regulars. The couple who slow-danced badly no matter the tempo. The guy who always stood too close to the left speaker despite obviously hating it. Sirius, behind the bar, already pouring with both hands and talking without pause, that particular grin that meant someone had made the mistake of asking about the '03 motorcycle he'd supposedly driven across Scotland on a dare.
They opened with two quieter songs to let the room settle. Then Ginny stepped up to the microphone and said, very simply, "Hi," and Harry felt the room shift the way it always did.
She had that thing. He'd tried to name it once and given up. Presence, maybe, but that wasn't quite right — it wasn't loudness or performance, it was more like gravity. She didn't demand attention, she just made it so that looking away felt like a small loss. She sang like she was thinking it out for the first time and had no idea you were listening, and yet every word landed.
Harry played. The bass settled underneath her voice, underneath Dean's guitar lines, underneath Seamus's ride cymbal, and Harry stayed where he was supposed to be: in the low end, keeping time, making space. He was good at that. He liked it, actually. He didn't need to be looked at.
***
The break came after the sixth song.
Harry was unscrewing his water bottle at the side of the stage when Dean dropped down next to Ginny at the edge of the monitors and said something that made her laugh — sudden, unguarded, the one that crinkked up the corner of her left eye. She shoved Dean's shoulder. Dean said something else and she laughed again and put her face briefly in her hand, shaking her head.
Harry took a drink of water.
They looked easy together, that was the thing. Dean was like that with everyone — warm, unhurried, casually funny. Harry had always liked him. He liked him now, even, in the same removed way you like weather that isn't doing anything particularly wrong.
He just also couldn't stop watching.
Ginny tucked her hair behind her ear and looked up at something Dean said and Harry thought, plainly, like the thought belonged to someone else: she's it. Not in a dramatic way. In the way of finally solving an equation you'd been carrying wrong for months. Just a quiet, dreadful click.
He looked down at his bass.
He looked back up.
She was looking at him. Not for any particular reason — just the casual way people look at people they know well, checking in, existing in the same space. Her expression didn't change. She just looked, and then she looked back at Dean.
Harry's chest did something he was going to pretend it didn't do.
He went to get another water from the bar.
***
"You alright, kid?"
Sirius was already leaning on the bar when Harry got there, in the way that suggested he'd been watching for a while and had simply decided not to pretend otherwise.
"Fine," Harry said. "Just grabbing water."
"Mm." Sirius pulled a bottle from under the bar without being asked. Then he looked, with absolutely no subtlety, across the room at where Ginny and Dean were still talking. Then he looked back at Harry. "How long have you been fine?"
"I don't know what you're—"
"Kid." Sirius put both elbows on the bar. "I have been watching you stare at Ginny Weasley with the face of a man who has just been informed of his own execution for the better part of forty-five minutes. You were doing it during Disappear Slowly. It was not subtle. Seamus noticed. I noticed. The couple who can't waltz noticed."
Harry said nothing.
"She looked at you," Sirius said, helpfully. "You looked like someone had removed your spinal cord."
"Can I just have the water?"
"You can have the water." Sirius pushed it across. Then, still very pleasant: "You're in love with her, by the way. In case you were workshopping other explanations. I know you're thorough."
Harry unscrewed the cap.
"I'm just saying," Sirius continued, at no one in particular, now apparently wiping down the bar for something to do, "I own this establishment. I see things. It's basically my job. And what I see is a guitarist—"
"Bass."
"—bass player, sure, who has the emotional self-awareness of a very talented houseplant, standing at my bar while the girl he's clearly—"
"Sirius."
"—clearly gone on for God knows how long laughs at someone else's jokes and he's over here getting water."
Harry looked across the bar.
Ginny was climbing back onto the stage now, rolling her shoulders back, checking the mic with one tap of her finger. She glanced out at the room the way she always did before the second half — not nervous, just looking, taking stock. Her eyes found Harry at the bar and she tilted her head slightly. Coming?
He held up the water bottle.
She made a face like obviously, and turned back to the mic.
He was already moving toward the stage.
"That's what I thought," Sirius said, to no one, and went back to pouring drinks.
The Potter family are going shopping - and there's one purchase in particular that Harry's most excited about.
On 24th July 1991, Harry Potter received his Hogwarts letter.
This was a cause for much celebration in the Potter household. Or at least, it was for Harry and his parents. Harry’s younger siblings were significantly less impressed—four year-old Simon and toddler Daisy were far too busy squabbling over the increasingly soggy remains of a digestive biscuit to pay any attention. Leaving his mother to referee the ensuing snotty, tearful chaos, Harry dragged his father to the kitchen table to pore over the enclosed equipment list.
“Right! Clothing,” read James. “Blimey, I don’t think this has changed since we were first years, Lils! Standard black work robes, a pointed hat, dragon-hide gloves—you’ll need two pairs of those, Harry, they always go missing—and a black winter cloak.”
“Full uniform, I assume?” interjected Lily, wiping Simon’s face with a damp cloth.
“Yes. Grey trousers, white shirts, woollen jumper and a tie,” confirmed James.
“Fine. We’ll get you some more socks and pants too, love,” Lily informed her son.
“Mum!” protested Harry, cheeks flushing at her casual mention of underwear.
“And pyjamas,” continued Lily, unabashed. “Flannel ones. That castle can be cold.”
Harry leaned forward eagerly, expecting some dazzling display of magic. Instead, a white blur shot through his eyesight.
“Hedwig!”
Before either boy could react, the snowy owl landed squarely in Ron's lap, snatched Scabbers in her talons, and launched herself back into the corridor.
“My rat!” Ron shouted.
“Hedwig, no!”
The two boys burst from the compartment and sprinted after her down the length of the Hogwarts Express.
“I can't believe Harry Potter's owl ate my pet!” Ron yelled.
Students poked their heads out of compartments as they raced past. Laughter, pointing fingers, and confused shouts followed them down the train.
Harry could feel his face burning. This was ridiculous. He desperately hoped Hedwig wasn't actually eating Scabbers. If she was, Ron might punch him. Or worse.
Harry imagined himself being sent home before even reaching Hogwarts.
Sorry, Professor. My owl murdered a rat. The story sounded ridiculous in his head.
The Dursleys would never let him hear the end of it.
“Ronald!” A pompous voice cut through the commotion.
“You should not be running on the train!”
“Harry Potter's owl is eating Scabbers, Percy!” Ron shouted over his shoulder.
They neared the end of the train car just in time to see Hedwig swoop toward the end of the carriage.
Then everything happened at once.
Ron crashed into Harry.
Harry crashed into Hedwig.
Hedwig slammed into the wall.
There was a loud crack.
For a moment, Harry thought they'd broken part of the train.
Then he blinked.
Instead of a rat dangling from Hedwig's claws, a short, balding man in shabby robes was sprawled across the floor.
Hedwig was furiously pecking his head.
“Scabbers?” Ron asked weakly.
Harry stared.
“Is it normal for rats to turn into men in the wizarding world?”
Ron shook his head. “No.”
The man scrambled backward on all fours, wild-eyed and trembling. He looked around frantically before his gaze landed on Harry.
His expression turned to horror.
“James?” the man squeaked.
“No,” Harry said. “I'm Harry.”
The man swallowed hard and then he bolted. He darted into the nearest compartment and immediately began struggling with the window latch.
“Is he trying to jump out?” Ron asked.
“He knew my dad's name,” Harry said, a strange feeling twisted in his stomach.
“Stop!” Ron shouted, grabbing the man's robes. “What did you do to my rat?”
The man yanked free with ease. Unfortunately for him, he threw himself backward at exactly the wrong moment.
CRACK.
His head connected with the window frame. He collapsed instantly.
Ron and Harry looked down at the unconscious man.
Then at each other.
“I don't think that's what the spell was supposed to do,” Harry said.
“No,” Ron agreed. “Definitely not.”
By the time they arrived at the train station, Hagrid was gathering the first-years.
“First years! Follow me!”
Harry hurried over.
“Hagrid, there's an unconscious man on the train.”
Hagrid blinked.
“A what?”
Harry quickly explained.
“Well, I'd better talk ter the conductor. He can send a message ter Professor Dumbledore.”
Soon, Harry found himself crossing the dark lake with the other first-years. The illuminated castle rose above them, magnificent and impossibly large.
When they reached the shore, a tall witch with square glasses was waiting.
“Hagrid,” she said. “Professor Dumbledore received your message. Please take the first-years to the Great Hall. I will escort Mr. Potter to the Headmaster's office.”
Harry's stomach dropped. This was it, he was being expelled.
He'd barely been at Hogwarts five minutes, and already his owl had apparently attacked a man who used to be a rat.
Professor McGonagall led him through winding corridors until they reached a stone gargoyle. Waiting beside it stood a tall wizard with a long white beard and a purple pointed hat.
“Welcome to Hogwarts, Mr. Potter,” he said warmly. “I understand you had an eventful journey.”
Harry stared at his shoes.
“I'm sorry, sir.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Potter.”
The old wizard's expression became grave.
“I believe I owe you an apology.”
Harry looked up.
“Sir?”
“I have just had an opportunity to speak with the man found aboard the train. His presence reveals that I have made a very serious mistake.”
“I don't understand.”
“No,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I suspect you do not.
“I am about to tell you the story of a man named Peter Pettigrew, who, until this evening, we believed to be dead. I am also going to tell you about a man named Sirius Black, who has spent the last ten years imprisoned for Pettigrew's murder.”
Dumbledore paused.
“And, Mr. Potter, I am afraid both of those men have a great deal to do with your father.”
In honor of summer heating up I am ready for a repeat of Hot Hinny Summer and Chastise.
Things are going to be a little different this time. @seriouslysam8 is now my beta and I want pure chaos in my life. So I am doing a Choose Your Own Adventure Fic.
First stop where the hell this story will take place. From there I will come up with a Title. Hope everyone has fun and wants to play along!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
We're getting closer, folks! There's two (maybe three if things get unwieldy) chapters to go. There's a lotta business in this one, but I'd like to think it's also emotionally satisfying. Hope you enjoy!