Harry disappears from the wizarding world for a little while after the fall of Voldemort and only like Ron Hermione and Ginny know where he’s gone
but he’s traveling. he considered backpacking Europe, but then he realized he’d had enough of camping for at least twenty years, so he teaches himself to drive and pulls enough strings to get himself an American drivers’ license and and then he’s off on a roadtrip in a beat-up car that’s still fast as anything. he doesn’t use magic if he can help it because it feels tainted, feels like it belongs to the war, feels like it marks him out again as someone with power and responsibility and the weight of a world on his shoulders. and for now he wants to find out what it is not to be a world-saving wizard, but just to be Harry.
and he meets a lot of strangers (he figures it’s safe enough picking up hitchhikers when they’re more than likely muggles and he’s got his wand if anything bad happens) and he learns what it’s like to be just another face, another car on the road and he learns all sorts of stuff on the radio, tries every genre out there. and it’s nice to listen to stuff that isn’t specifically designed to remind him of the wizarding world, but he finds so much of it surprisingly relatable and sometimes he just breaks down sobbing at the wheel and has to pull over.
and one of the hitchhikers he picks up is a veteran, and Harry doesn’t tell him much but he does say that he’s been a soldier, too, and it’s hard adjusting to a life that you never thought would exist because things were so hard that you could not imagine yourself after. hard to think about settling down and marrying the girl you thought you’d die loving. hard to think that not everyone around you is an enemy. were you a prisoner of war? the veteran asks. or undercover? both, says Harry. and lost, not knowing whether I was on the run or on a mission that was taking a year. I got back alive in the end but something—something’s definitely dead, you know?
how old are you, says the veteran. I’m eighteen, says Harry. the veteran raises his eyebrows. but they both know that some armies, some wars, don’t care about your age.
I think the dead thing is me, Harry says one day, when he’s going seventy in a fifty-five mile zone and the sun is setting in their eyes. when I killed the enemy, I killed myself.
and the veteran looks at him for a very long moment and Harry slows down and looks back at him and at last the man says, no. no, you lived. and you’re going to keep living, son, and one day you’ll be ready to marry that girl, if you love her, and now that you’ve got out of the war, it’s time to get the war out of you.
(they almost have a wreck when Harry pulls over to the side of the road, gets out, sits in the grass and laughs through his tears. flowers start to spring up around him and he feels the magic in his core, but this time it’s peaceful and pure and fun. unspoiled. and he knows it won’t always feel this way but for now things are leaking out of him, joyful things, because he is the boy who lived again, the boy who lived after the war.)
How is this not canon
Tag: wow this is great
What has been your worst “nice guy” experience?
So, possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I mean you know how you hear the “women want him, men want to *be* him” stuff in old movies? Well I’m a man and by *god* I wanted to be this guy. Anyway!
I’m having dinner with my girlfriend at the time, and behind us are a couple on a date. It is.. not going well. Guy was being rather creepy and making some pretty inappropriate comments, the girl doesn’t look at all comfortable.
The girl finishes her appetiser really quickly, my guess is she wanted to get it over with. Guy proceeds to comment on it and says “well, least I know you can swallow right?”. Loudly.
Girl goes red and tells him that isn’t appropriate, he literally waves his hand in a “shoo” type motion and says “oh calm down I was going to find out in a few hours anyway”.
I missed her exact reply as she moved to a hushed tone, but it was fairly obvious what was being said – fuck no, fuck off, fuck this. He responded with “sweetheart I picked you up, I know where you live”. She lost the colour in her face and said nothing.
No. No. Fuck no. I’m one of those “get involved” type of people and there is no way I’m sitting here watching this go down. I get up. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m 23, fighting fit and happy to put that motherfucker through a wall. I may have had a slight temper in my youth. But anyway.
I was halfway out of my chair when a hand came down on my shoulder and I look up to this mid-50s but super fit guy who says “Easy.. I’ve got this one son”. Absolute, total confidence in his voice.. so seeing as my current plan amounted to “stab him in the neck” and I’m already thinking maybe that’s not the best idea, I sit down.
He walks over, grabs a nearby chair, flips it around and sits down with the couple. Then.. he pulls out his police ID and puts it on the table. Now the guy doesn’t have any colour in his face.
Cop: “So, I’m quietly celebrating my daughters birthday with my family when I distinctly hear you threaten this young lady, would you care to explain yourself?”
Guy: “I, ah, well, um, you see..”
Cop: “That’s what I thought. Now see, we take a *very* dim view of that kind of thing, so right now I’m deciding if I want to have some of my buddies come pick you up.”
Guy: “oh no well that…”
Cop: “But that would disrupt everyone’s dinner, so how about you hand me your ID, because I wouldn’t want you running off on me, then you go see one of the staff here and settle your bill.. the full bill now, this young lady shouldn’t go hungry on account of your poor behaviour. Or we can go with the first option, I’ll leave it up to you.”
Guy: “No no! That’s perfectly fine!” *hands over ID, gets up and walks very quickly in the direction of the counter*
Cop: *while writing down the guys details* “Sorry about that miss, I hope I’m not intruding it just seemed like you could use some help. Oh and don’t worry, if you want to pursue this further I’ll have some of the boys pick him up on his way home, we can definitely take this further.”
Girl: “No, thank you so much, I wanted to run out 30 minutes ago but he drove me here”.
Cop: *shifts from hardarse cop to comforting father figure in about half a second* “Well I’m here with my daughter, she’s about your age, perhaps you’d like to finish your meal with us? We can run you home afterwards if you’d like, unless you’d prefer to call someone else?”
Girl: “Oh.. that would be really nice.. thankyou so much!”
*guy returns, so does the hardarse cop*
Guy: “Uh so, I’ve paid the bill, if I could have my ID back..”.
Cop: “There you go.. now I have your details right here so I *highly* recommend you don’t go near or contact this young lady ever again.”
Guy: “Yes yes of course, I’m so sorry!”
The guy pretty much fled the restaurant, the girl went and sat with the cop and his family and by the time we left they were still sitting around talking and laughing about random crap.
It was hands down the best way I have ever seen anybody handle any situation, ever. That cop is my hero.
Dude. I hope that man has a great rest of his life.
How cops should be!!!!!
Paperwork
Sometimes Kara wishes there would be paperwork. She’s not exactly an employee of the DEO, but she still had to fill out documents when she started her collaboration with the agency, and again when Mon-El announced to the world that they were dating. There’s never any paperwork for this however, never any paperwork for the harm she inflicts on other aliens.
Alex has paperwork. She has a single sheet with “Incident Report” stamped across the top for when she kills an alien, but that’s the same document she would have to use if she ever lost her badge or misplaced her gun. Kara thinks she should at least be glad the paper is double sided, but when she’s seen the more hefty pile an agent has to fill out after killing a human, clinging to that second side feels almost taunting.
Still, Kara wishes she had something to mark the occasion, even if it was only a single, limp piece of paper. She would fill in her answers by hand rather than use a computerized form, focusing of the weight of the pen, watching as the ink dried and made it all official.
That she had killed.
That because of her, someone else was no longer alive.
Some #alexdanvers love
I’ve been wanting to play around with her kryptonite suit for a bit, still gotta clean this up and add some other ideas I have c:#supergirl
Question of Smoke 