Disclaimer: Nah, I don’t own the characters or anything related to Harry Potter.  The fic comes from my brain though and I occasionally claim that as mine.

Author’s Notes:  This goes out to the Wonks.

Won’t Look Back

It’s done.  It’s all over.  The prophecy is finished and I did my duty.  My destiny is complete, as is my time at Hogwarts.  Everyone else is down in the Great Hall at the Leaving Feast, eating merrily and waiting to listen for which House won the House Cup.  Life is so simple for them, but not for me.

It’s done.  He and I battled late into the night with rain falling on our heads.  He nearly defeated me, but I came back.  I had to come back, and I defeated him.  How I defeated him, I will not say.  It was brutal and cruel and afterward, when all was said and done, I did not recognize myself.

I could not go down to the Great Hall.  I am not one of them anymore.  I am not the boy they all used to know.  I am someone, something different.  I do not belong with them any longer.

I am leaving.  I will never again be seen by any who knew me in my former life.  My childhood rivals shall forget both me and our petty differences; the few friends I accumulated will never remember being my friend.  I will vanish from their lives and no one in the wizarding world will remember the “Boy-Who-Lived.”

As for me, I won’t look back.  I refuse to remember my past and the people in it.  I cannot, it’s a simple as that.  If I do, I will remember it all, whether it be the good or the bad.  If I look back, I will remember all the pain and anguish.  If I look back, I will remember them, and I will be in anguish.  No, I won’t look back.

There, I am packed.  I’m ready to go and live my new life.  I won’t look back.  I grab my trunk and my broom.  I feel lucky that I am able to apparate.  All I must do is leave these grounds and then I will be able to start over.  Hedwig will find me.  She shall be the only one I will allow to.

Down the stairs and out the door, that’s all I have to do.  Yet this turns out harder that what I had previously thought.  I had anticipated to leave while the feast was still going on, but I dawdled and so now I see that people are leaving the Great Hall as I drag my trunk and my broom down the marble staircases.

I won’t look back.  I keep my eyes averted towards the great oak doors that lead to my freedom and my new life.  I won’t look at any one of them.  My resolve is tested however, when I hear a voice.

“Harry!  Hey, mate, where are you going?  Why weren’t you at the feast?”

Ron.  He has been my friend since our first day on the train.  He and I have gotten into and out of so much trouble together.  Yet he is part of my past, a past I won’t look back upon.  I keep walking.  I won’t look back, I mustn’t.

“Harry?”

And there is the other voice that I did not want to hear.  She is the angel that has stuck by me whenever I needed her.  She has been my rock.  If only she knew, but I cannot tell her, especially not now.  She is also a part of my past and therefore I will not acknowledge her.  I won’t look back.

I pull open the door.  I can hear him call after me and I can hear her yelling for me to stop, but I won’t.  That part of my life is over and in a few years they won’t even remember that I existed.  No one will.  And I will live happily in my new life and I will never look back.

I leave them there in the entrance hall and head out on the grounds.  As soon as I pass through the gates I will be gone.  I am nearly halfway there and I can feel the excitement fill me, but what happened next I never anticipated.

She came after me.  Why did she have to come after me?  She cried out for me.  But I mustn’t look back.  I won’t, I can’t.

“Please, Harry,” she begs, “don’t leave us.”

I paused.  Part of me yearns to go back, yet I cannot.  I won’t.

“Please Harry, don’t leave me.”

And just like that, I look back.  She is the only person for whom I would look back and she is the only person whom I can step forward with.