AN: This is a very short one-shot that is meant to improve my writing style, specifically the inner-monologue, rather than the actual content, which I am not too happy with. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could make suggestions on how to improve the style. I know that my sentences tend to be much too long. I hope that I've managed to avoid that particular pit-fall here.
This is also my first attempt at writing a fic of my own, so any advice in general would be greatly appreciated.
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When All Hope Seems Lost
This was it.
As Harry Potter stood in front of his trunk in his dorm room at Hogwarts, he couldn’t help but marvel at how quickly time had passed. Dumbledore’s funeral had been that morning and now, here he was, finished packing and with nothing left to do but wait for the train to take him back to King’s Cross and the Dursley’s for what would be the last time.
From there Harry’s thoughts turned, as they had again and again ever since that dreadful night atop the Astronomy Tower, to what lay ahead of him. Namely, the positively daunting task of finding and destroying the rest of Voldemort’s horcruxes. All without dying in the process. To say he was intimidated would have been like saying that Mt. Everest was big or that Hitler wasn’t nice. Luckily for him, Ron and Hermione had promised to support him all the way and to stick by him and help him on his struggle in-spite of the seemingly insurmountable odds.
This, while making his load seem somewhat lighter, also added a whole new spectrum of worries to his already over burdened and over worried mind. Obviously Harry was grateful for their friendship and support, however, if they became even more involved in the war than they already were and actually followed him into danger, the chances that they would manage to survive this war were so greatly reduced that it wasn’t something he wished to contemplate. Although, if he decided to leave them behind and head out on his own, they would likely come looking for him and, chances were, that with Hermione’s astounding ability to solve almost any problem, they would end up finding him fairly quickly.
And then there was Ginny. He had been quite surprised at how easily she had accepted his telling her that their relationship had to end. She had accepted it so quickly and easily in fact, that he was somewhat hurt that she didn’t seem to care all that much. He even started to consider that, perhaps, Ginny didn’t care for him as much as he cared for her or even as much as Ron and Hermione cared for him. After all, they had insisted on coming with him so strongly that he knew there was nothing he could do to stop them. Somehow, he didn’t have the same feeling when it came to Ginny.
Rather than contemplate these thoughts further, he turned back to the most important of his problems. The horcruxes. Honestly, he had no idea how Dumbledore expected him to find them. At the cave, for example, Dumbledore had somehow felt the magic in his surroundings and followed it to the hidden entrance. This was something that Harry had had no idea was even possible. Then, once they were inside the cave, it had been the same thing with finding the boat that would help them cross the lake. And then again with the inferi, it had been Dumbledore, weakened and half-dead from ingesting the potion surrounding the horcrux, that had conjured the fire that had protected them long enough to escape.
Now that he thought about it, the only reason he had survived any of his scrapes with Voldemort or his Death Eaters had been because of outside help. In his first year it had been Dumbledore who ultimately saved him from Quirell. In his second year Fawkes had brought him the Sorting Hat and Gryffindor’s sword as well as poking out the basilisk’s eyes. In his third year it had been Dumbledore who had the idea to go back in time. If that hadn’t happened the dementors would have most certainly sucked out his, Hermione’s, and Sirius’ souls. In his fourth year he had done fairly well. He had managed to escape from Voldemort all on his own - albeit with more than a fair amount of dumb luck - and return to Hogwarts. However, once there, he had simply let himself be led away from Dumbledore and the rest of the teachers by Barty Crouch Jr. Admittedly he had been impersonating Prof. Moody, whom Harry was supposed to have been able to trust, but the fact remained that if Dumbledore hadn’t come bursting through that door at the last second, Harry would’ve been dead. His fifth year had been even worse. He had actually run into danger! How much dumber could he have been?! Rushing off to save Sirius without having even a half-formed plan or checking whether or not Snape managed to contact Sirius was worse than dumb.
Simply put, Harry didn’t stand even half a chance of finding and destroying Voldemort’s horcruxes, much less killing the actual man – if he could even be called that anymore.
Shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it, Harry pulled out his wand and used it to float his trunk down the stars into the common room below. He would simply have to become better. Stronger. More capable. He would have to be able to rescue his own ass next time, because there wouldn’t be anyone to do it for him. As impossible as it seemed to him at the time, he knew that he would at least have to try.
As he stood in the common room at the foot of the stairs, watching Ron and Hermione converse silently in a corner, so caught up in their own little world that they had failed to notice him, he knew that for them he would not only try but succeed, as well. For with their help, the help of his friends, anything was possible.
His hope had been restored.