FULL NAME: Harry James Potter, aka, "The Boy Who Lived," aka, "The Chosen One"
AGE/BIRTHDATE: 31 July 1980
HOUSE AND YEAR: Gryfffindor, 7th Year
BLOODLINE: Halfblood
PARENTS: James and Lily Potter, both deceased. Godfather Sirius Black, also deceased.
WAND: Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple; an unusual combination.
SEXUALITY: Straight, quite. He hasn't given much thought to it; he wants a family like his parents had, and that requires man plus woman. Fancying a boy does not enter into that equation.
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Quite committed to one Miss Weasley.
Over his march towards adulthood, Harry's personality has run the gauntlet. Naive and wrapped in the wonder of the magic. Bratty, petulant teenage timebomb. The days where Hermione was terrified of upsetting him, where Ron yelled at him for being a jerk. Good times. But now, war-tested and, to be honest, back from the dead, Harry is just tired.
He knows his classmates still look to him to lead, but for now, at Hogwarts the home he never had as a child, he just wants to be a normal student. He didn't need to come back to school, he was told that over and over. He could have gone straight to work. He could have gone off to travel and relax. But Harry felt like he had to come back to Hogwarts: this is the place that feels like home, and he feels like he owes the school something. Besides, his friends are here - his two best friends in the world, the girl he loves, and Neville and Luna, who he values more every day.
So he came back, and he's not the same boy. He's tired. Quieter, more reserved. He was always a bit private, but now he just seems older than he should be. He's treated like he's older by the professors more times than not, he receives owls from the
Ministry. Everything is quite convivial, "just checking in," "just saying hello," just this and just that, and the bottom line is, it is quite apparent that no one outside of Hogwarts – and even some inside – can see him as merely a boy. Well, with the exception of Molly Weasley, bless her, someone that Harry appreciates so much now, even though for years her hovering drove him a bit batty. Harry wants to find his seventeen year old side, he desperately does. He was sorely tempted to reply to Lisa Turpin and take up her invitation to firewhiskey, but he was nervous that if he got drunk, he'd start spilling out details on things he does not want to talk about. And he's never really been riproaring drunk—what if he became a braggart? Some kind of intoxicated Gilderoy Lockheart? What if he talked about his parents? What if he did that awful thing where you sing and tell
everyone that you love them? He does the things that make him happy: hang with his friends and his girlfriend, and pours himself into Quidditch. The rest will come, in time he hopes.
Personality-wise, Harry is reacting, post-war, the same way he did after Sirius's death: a bit numb, determined, a little empty. Resigned to his fate. He sometimes has a bit of trouble believing he was the raging twat that he was back after Cedric's death, that fifth year at Hogwarts. How did he muster all of that rage at nothing and everything? Here, he should be angry: he's a kid! Dumbledore was right, he's had more on him that any child should, and his classmates are snogging and pulling and getting piss drunk and not getting notes from Shacklebot keeping him abreast of the reforms in the Auror office and not having tea with McGonagall weekly because she's using it as an excuse to check in on how he is doing and don't have people staring and whispering and leaving gifts like
the brand new Firebolt and candies and sweets (possibly poisoned,
Romilda) and not flirting with him in front of his girlfriend and making her annoyed because he's now a demi-god and not having everyone look to you as if you have the secret of life or whatever because you don't you don't know what do to with all of the wisdom Dumbledore shoved in you and being the master of death and all of that hooey doesn't make you a good person or a noble person
and maybe you wish you didn't feel like you had to be! Where is the anger now? Where is the outrage, hell, where is the arrogance? The foolhearty energy that allows him to bulldoze ahead? Isn't this the right time to have all of that inside of him, driving him like a freight train? Why is he so bloody tired?
The solution is to just make things different. Get off his arse and make things normal. But why must everything be a damn battle all the time? Why can't something come easy for once? Like – just being himself?
The most important thing to Harry is trust: it's not "who can you trust." It's how much can you trust a person. In his universe, there are only two true confidants: Hermione and Ron. But his experience in the war showed him that more people are trustworthy – they'll stand for you and with you. And on that vein, if Harry can fight this ennui that has settled down like a fog, he'd like to get to know a lot of the students who were there. These people who trusted him. It's hard, sorting out those students who admire him to a point where it feels like a sick obligation, where he stops being Harry and is one of those idiotic
nicknames, and those who believed in him without the burden. Can Harry Potter simply have – friends again? Buddies, chaps, pals. Not "students" in DA, not co-combatants in an battle. But people he could drink firewhiskey around and feel – well, not safe, but relatively comfortable.
Dumbledore said to pity the living: maybe that's what this all is, Harry's own self-pity for this life, A.V. After Voldemort. It was all supposed to go back to normal – magically, pun a bit intended. Perhaps normalcy requires the same action that fighting evil does. Maybe he should bribe Lisa for that firewhiskey and take it, Hermione, and Ron into the Room of
Requirement and start, right away, with getting over this funk of his. Because if he's going to get
bollocked and sing drunk songs, he can trust the two of them not to hold it over him for a decade. It's an option.
One thing that has been haunting him are nightmares. Not the linked to Voldemort ones, but nightmares that all is not well.
Evil will return. He'll need to fight again and leave and –
And worse. That something else will come, an unknown evil that isn't related to Voldemort, some new dark wizard, and he won't be able to fix it. But everyone will look to him, The Chosen One, to do it. No one really understands the connection between he and Voldemort – and they never will, he's not talking, and neither are the few people who know the whole story. But he's afraid of disappointing everyone. Of being the reason why untold people suffer.
He doesn't want to think about it. He fears it. But he hasn't told anyone. Hermione will fret, Ron will be bewildered, and Ginny will just look at him and he'll want to cry, and he doesn't ever want to do that again. It makes him have trouble sleeping alone, so he doesn't: either Ginny sneaks into his dorm room or he to hers under the invisibility cloak. He suspects she knows it's more than merely wanting her close; this is so that he can
rest. But generally, as much as he can, he just tries to ignore it. He just hopes it will go away in time. Harry needs time to get back to Harry again. He hopes that's all he needs.
Relationships:
Ron: Ron is still the person he would miss most in his life; he has never appreciated Ron's good humor and ability to lighten a situation more. He leans a bit on Ron too much lately to be the one to crack a joke. Truth be told, he is a touch mystified by Ron lately – Ron Weasley, Ladies' Man. No, not that Ron is, I mean, if Harry were a bird, he'd find Ron quite fit, he supposes. But Harry can't understand why Ron just won't ask Hermione out already! He puts the blame on Ron: Ron is a bit of a git with girls. Maybe Ron needs to stop being a git with girls, and that will help him get with Hermione? But on the other hand, doesn't he run the risk that he'll have lost his chance with Hermione if he's snogging up the place?
Harry is nervous to mention any of this because Ron can toss back that Harry's great experience with women is with Cho – lovely – and Ron's own sister, who has more experience than the boys put together, which is a touch shameful. Not only that, but Ron is tolerant of Harry and Ginny, but he doesn't like to push it far at all. So he keeps his mouth shut unless directly, specifically asked and mentally pounds his head against the desk. Snogging Lin Moon. For Merlin's sake, Ron. Though. Good on you, chap.
Hermione: It is quite possible that Harry has given Hermione a heart attack or two over this year with his newfound dedication to his studies. Not that he has become Hermione: procrastination is still his best and most trusted academic partner. But he doesn't lean on her as much to give him the answers, though he does not hesitate to ask her to check over his assignment. He has a newfound appreciation for Hermione: being mature and responsible is exhausting. And he's still not half as diligent as she is, how does she do it and not get so knackered she can't see straight? He is under the impression that no one needs the firewhiskey like he does as much as she does, which is probably why they should get ossified together.
He blamed Ron 80%, Hermione 20% for the two of them not going together yet. If she bloody fancies him,then why doesn't she suck it up and just tell him? Harry might say this, but he's afraid that she'll unleash a batch of canaries at him, too. He's
about this close to locking them both in Hagrid's hut and not letting them come out until they sort it out.
Ginny: He loves her. Isn't that enough? If he had one wish, it would be to make her in his form so that they could graduate together and move to London and get married and have babies and be a family and live happily ever after.
But how can they do any of this until Harry starts to really share with her, confess how he feels under his skin. He feels like he's on borrowed time a bit here: how long can the fact that he loves her be enough before she asks for more from him, of him? Of
him. If Harry wants to reach out more, maybe he needs to start with himself. Trust Ginny more – and perhaps expand his inner circle by one more.
Not until she forces him to deal with that, though…
Luna: Luna is his escape. Ron is always a lark, Ginny is firewhiskey herself, but to be with Luna is to be on a completely different planet. The nicest, dreamiest, albeit bizarre, planet. She's the one who understands his reserve the best. Nobody gets being alone and on your own more than her, and she's made him feel better since the start of term by making him
feel like – he might not be a normal seventeen year old right now, but maybe normal isn't the same thing for everyone.
Not that Harry can tolerate Luna's idea of normal for himself. No offense, mate.
Neville: Harry went through a tiny phase where he was jealous of Neville for being the Unchosen One, but that evaporated. He knows Neville's life has been challenging to put it lightly. But Neville is, in Harry's eyes, the truest Gryffindor. Neville is kind and good-hearted as well as courageous, and Harry admires that a lot. Funny: Neville is blossoming, and Harry feels like he's retreated a bit. Funny not ha ha. But funny nonetheless.
Quidditch: If his house does not win, he will be so devastated, he will bunk off class for a whole week. No, he's not kidding. Yes, he's been almost Woodian about this. Harry wants this and only this: a season where he does not get injured and gets to play every match and they win the Cup. Can this ever happen, honestly? Can it?
Please?Slytherin: Show him one decent Slytherin and he'll show you a couch that can solve for world peace.
For the most famous wizard of his generation – if nothis era – Harry Potter's youth was spent in totalobscurity. As well as total misery. Things would have been totally different had he been raised by James and Lily Potter, two courageous, intelligent, loving individuals who would have raised their son in a healthy, happy, adoring home. But, their son was marked before his birth by a prophecy told by Professor Trelawny to Albus Dumbledore, overheard by Severus Snape and told to Voldemort, that Harry Potter would be the one to defeat the Dark Lord. This set in motion the chain of events that haunted Harry for almost his entire life to date. The Dark Lord slaughtered his parents – first his father, then his mother – and went after the infant Harry, but his mother's act of pure love, refusing to leave her son and dying for him, bound both Harry and Voldemort with a powerful, ancient magic that inextricably linked the two. Outwardly, Harry was left with a magical scar in the shape of a lightening bolt. However, his survival of the Avada Kedavra curse did two things unknown to anyone (except the wise Dumbledore, whose hypothesis on the matter proved correct): a piece of Voldemort's soul was shoved into Harry, creating a Horcrux, and Harry had a window into the evil wizard's mind.
But baby Harry, now orphaned and canonized as The Boy Who Lived as well as the one who seemingly defeated Voldemort, wasn't aware of any of this, naturally. Deciding it was safer for Harry, both for him physically and for him emotionally, Dumbledore had Harry fostered by his mother's nasty muggle sister, Petunia, her horrible rageaholic husband Vernon, and their piggish in appearance and in manner son Dudley. To say Harry was miserable was an understatement. It sucked.
It is of note, though, that unlike many wizards who live with Muggles, Harry did not feel that "otherness" that sometimes happen, that feeling like he had an exciting and happy destiny. He was different: the Dursleys made that abundantly clear. So when his hair grew back too fast or he made some odd, odd things happen, he didn't ever have that hope that he would be vindicated as "special." His childhood was a dreary, plodding thing that he thought would hopefully lead to an adulthood that would be just a bit less terrible (though he had never thought that far. The Dursleys were like human dementors).
Hogwarts was, in essense, the gateway to another life. Hope, in school form. He made best friends so close they felt like parts of him, a second family in the Weasleys – actually, Harry would argue, a first family in the Weasleys. Mentors, in the form of Lupin and McGonagall and the unparalleled Dumbledore. Self-confidence and bravery and kindness and
leadership.
But this did not come the moment he got off of the train at the school or when he was sorted into Gryffindor (and thankfully NOT Slytherin – where would his life had gone had he been placed in there?). The first year, he faced evil when Quirrell was possessed by Lord Voldemort. To defeat him, Harry had to team with Ron and Hermione, where he learned, truly, that
he was not alone. And that the turmoil that surrounded his parents' death did not end with their lives. Harry didn't fully anticipate Voldemort being a presence that would linger for the rest of his time at Hogwarts. He acknowledged that there was evil and that perhaps he had a larger destiny – but who could have anticipated how much? Not him. Harry was still chuffed over making the Quidditch team as a first year, of new friendships – of a place to belong.
His second year, Harry faced a more challenging obstacle in the reopening of the Chamber of Secrets. Again: Voldemort. Again: the aid of his friends, though Hermione's petrification meant that she was absent. He didn't realize how much he had begun to
think of he, Ron, and her as a unit until she was forced away from them. In saving Ginny from death and facing the Basilisk, he had to pull upon his own courage – and the courage of being a Gryffindor and Dumbledore's man, through and through – to survive.
By his third year, Harry had accepted the fact that he was, in essence, alone. He was still developing this "family of choice" with friends as dear to him as blood. But he met a man who would become a mentor – Remus Lupin, a former schoolmate of his parents and their dear friend. But still. Not blood. Then, his blood returned – his godfather, Sirius Black, escaped from Azkaban. Believing Black at first to be the ravenous murderer, the one responsible for his parents' deaths, he loathed this man more than words. Then, surprisingly, it was revealed that Sirius was innocent of these charges, though he was not exonerated and had to go on the run to avoid capture. It was like the cruelest prank ever, even worse than
the Mirror of Erised's image of his whole, reunited family: that was illusion, Sirius was real. A real family, now gone.
Getting to know Sirius over owl mail wasn't the same, and the next year, Harry was greatly preoccupied with the Triwizard Tournament, something he never wanted to enter in the first place. The conspiracy to get Harry into the tournament was part of a long plot to bring Voldemort back to life, and while Harry faced Ron's jealousy, the hatred of classmates thinking that his
ego had led him to rig entrance into the competition, the abject horror that was Rita Skeeter, and the awfulness of the Tournament itself (dragons? Seriously?), he found new aspects of himself. Resourcefulness, courage, love – in the form of his
blossoming crush on Cho Chang - compassion – saving Fleur's sister from the pond, while a bit daft, came from a noble place he hadn't fully realized before – and decency and fairness, shown in wanting to return the favor to Cedric Diggory and then in wanting them to tie in victory. Cedric's death at the hands of Voldemort was a terrifying, horrid thing that shook Harry terribly. It was one thing to deal with death in the abstract: his parents. But to see it live, face to face…
And then to be shunted, locked away with no contact with basically anyone, no news! To come face to face with a Dementor and instead of having people swarm over the horrifying news that a dementor was attacking a muggle, find himself to be a wizarding pariah, barely escaping grave repercussions? To have Dumbledore ignore him while Dolores Umbridge was persecuting not just Harry but everything good about his home of Hogwarts? He can still see that scar – "I must not tell lies," courtesy of her twisted mind. How was this fair, at all, at all! Harry's hormones ran right into the confusion of all of the awful things swirling around him, and Harry was often times unpleasant to be around. Egged on by Sirius, cooped up and living vicariously through Harry and his friends, he never seemed to shake this monster of anger riding on his back – especially since he was now
seeing into the resurrected Voldemort's mind. He was alienating Ron and scaring Hermione and the only person who ever challenged him, really, was Ginny. All of this – and a girlfriend, his first in Cho?
How did he not explode?
Because under all of his, Harry's decency and heart shone through – though it was something Voldemort exploited to lure him down to the Ministry to reveal the prophecy: that neither could live while the other survives. In the battle – caused by Harry's own
love-driven stupidity – Sirius died. It's surprising: after all of his anger and confusion, Sirius's death propelled him into a new maturity. He saw what brashness could do: he learned to temper it (though not without struggle – Harry still thinks with his heart, for good and ill, at times, leading him to lash out before thinking with his mind or his morality).
Dumbledore saw Harry's growth and in his sixth year, began to tutor Harry to prepare him for the final battle: destroying the Horcruxes and finally killing Voldemort, once and for all. Strangely, though, it had nothing to do with preparing for fights, hexes and charms. It was investigating Voldemort's life, his family, his pre-Hogwarts existence, his time at the school and after it, as he lost his humanity and became the soul-splintered monster that is the Dark Lord. It was frustrating, to say the least, to get something that felt like Professor Binns but with better AV materials instead of lessons in combat, but Harry saw in Tom Riddle the similarities between he and this one who grew to be the Dark Lord. And it was here, finally, that Harry understood the difference between he and Voldemort. That he could love, he felt love, he could even be in love – with Ginny, who he had cared for all year - and all that reaches out from it: compassion and mercy and forgiveness and kindness. Everything that feels weak to someone who fears it, but really fortifies a person who embraces love. Dumbledore's death at the end of his sixth year galvanized him: he had a mission to do, that he had to take on without fear. For better or worse, Harry had a destiny, and he chose to embrace it and complete it. Harry is impatient, Harry is impetuous, Harry is sometimes arrogant and lets his emotions run wild and drag the cart of himself behind. Sometimes, he wonders what would have happened had Dumbledore sat him down and explained everything, all at once, to him when he was eleven, all of it, opposed to doling it out like breadcrumbs.
But he knows now: he would have given in to all of his negative qualities. He could have been Voldemort. It is his history, what he experienced, the people he holds in his heart, the people that he has lost and grieved, all of them, all of them led him to be the boy – the man? – that could do the destiny foretold so many years ago.
But not alone. Never alone. Which is why his current quietness is so strange to him. Then again, if anyone thought that Harry grew up and became as wise as Dumbledore the moment he killed Voldemort, they'd forget that he is still seventeen and sorting himselfout. He is not the Boy Who Lived anymore.
He's just a boy, still.
NAME: Merry
E-MAIL / INSTANT MESSAGING: merriestberry
TIMEZONE: Eastern USA
PLAYED BY: Daniel Radcliffe
