The Potter Hour

Chapter 5: Here's to Mr. Baggins

Susan was especially vicious to the crew that night. Anyone who didn't obey her commands to perfection was hexed immediately. She had firmly given Mr. Potter orders not to continue on with his silly suicide business on the show that night, though she had the feeling that he would, of course, not adhere to it.

Harry, as usual as it was for him these days, stared blankly into space. He desperately wanted another shot of mead, but the only stash he had left was in his house, and he certainly refused to ask Ginny, whom he saw talking excitedly to Ron in the control room. She'd whine again: "No, Harry, I don't want you drinking anymore! It's tearing our marriage apart! It's ruining your body! You're hurting me!" Like he gave a...

Someone was sitting in the control room who did not normally sit there before: Hermione. Prior to this occasion she'd lost interest in the show and was trying to distance herself by joining the Programming department of Magical Airwaves. Once she had been interested, and had controlled it with the passion Susan Bones showed now. Like Susan, Hermione hoped the show would help her create a deeper bond with one of Voldemort's victims: Harry. Those wretched days spent trapped in Krallmower Tower, when all they had left was each other... Why, you'd expect a guy to show interest in a girl after he'd been trapped with her in an evil tower for days! But, no; when it was all over and done with she couldn't converse with Harry. He was either being cornered into interviews or hiding somewhere, taking a swig of mead before emerging with the smell of a liquor store.

So she went back to Ron and Harry ran off with Ginny, or rather Ginny ran off with Harry being dragged by the ears on hot, jagged pavement.

She looked up at Ron, whose hand was rested on her shoulder. He was attempting to tune out the rants of his sister, who, if Hermione's memory was correct (and it always was), was not much of a bright one to begin with. At times she could be easily manipulated. But somewhere in her late teens did she master that art - manipulation. She used her newly found talent for one thing, and one thing only: To get Harry. Harry would never come to her unless she forced him or manipulated him to. Aggressiveness was the key; though, hadn't Harry merely regarded her as Ron's little sister, aggressiveness wouldn't have been essential. She was pretty in her later teenaged years, something much acknowledged by several boys in Hogwarts. They all hated Harry because she was only truly interested in him.

Hermione sighed, and noticed Harry's unhappy scowl for the first time.

Ron felt Hermione's hand land on top of his. There would be no doubt that by doing this she could be able to tell exactly how nervous he was about tonight. Right at this moment Harry had the whole world's supply of mead flowing through his veins, and if he didn't continue on with suicide, the possibility of his getting up on the table and singing naked was not entirely out of the question.

"Ron," Ginny whined, tugging at his free arm, "you must do something about Harry's drinking. I can't stand it anymore! I know when you all got us together you said you couldn't do anything about his drinking, but it's driving me crazy! He won't listen to me!"

Ron's fingers dug into Hermione's shoulder. He excreted these words out of clenched teeth:

"And he won't listen to us, so you're pretty much screwed in this situation. You're the one who wanted to marry him and you knew all about his drinking problem then."

"But Ron..."

His hand ceased to dig. Instead it flew in the air.

"That's enough, Ginny! If you want him to stop drinking so bad maybe you should try the Imperius Curse on him and land yourself in Azkaban, that way we wouldn't have to listen to your failed conquests for Harry Potter domination!"

Ginny let go of Ron's arm. Little droplets of water were rushing to her eyes and were running down her cheek before she finally turned away in anger and walked off the set. Harry saw this. He wasn't upset. He wanted mead.

~

8:50. Ten minutes 'till show time. Everyone nervously watched the clock, and everyone who wasn't named Harry Potter always stared back to the one who was.

Susan hadn't said a thing after everything was prepared. Instead, she looked out the control room window with her arms clasped tightly below her chest, her pale face peering down at Harry with all the wrath of a lion.

8:55. Five minutes.

Hermione was now standing next to Ron. She had circulated the control room, checking out what the various crew members were doing. She hadn't given them any orders. Ron still stood there, thinking about Ginny and Harry.

8:58. Two minutes.

And everyone was nervous except Harry, who had a scowl on his face, even at 8:59:50.

And Susan Bones held a clammy palm in the air and counted down to one from ten.

Then it was time to go on the air. The music played, and then it stopped, and then Susan gave Harry the signal to start, while contrasting sharply with the black equipment behind her...

And thus, this is how the evening went:

"Good evening enquiring wizard and witches. Welcome to The Potter Hour. It has come to my attention that there is a large possibility that many of you viewing this program tonight are viewing it for the first time, or at least the first time in a long while. Why is that? Some silly business about a suicide threat I made last night? Theoretically you're not supposed to hear about it anymore. I was ordered specifically not to retract my suicide threat, and that I should make an apology to all of you for making such a spectacle of myself on the air. I should have been ashamed to worry my concerned followers that I, 'the Boy Who Lived,' would kill himself live on television, disregarding all that I had done for the wizard community of Great Britain, and possibly the world, just because his show was going off the air.

"You would believe that, wouldn't you? You all romanticize the life of a hero, you have him swooping down on his white horse, or broomstick if you will, selflessly saving the innocents from the Will of Evil, overlooking his own life and his own safety for that of the public. Then, if he's still living, the public makes him their darling. They don't leave him alone - not that this knightly savior of the world wanted his good deeds to be overlooked by his adoring public, who will faithfully write books glamorously recounting the events of his valiant deeds in the fight against Evil. All the while he willingly stays in the spotlight, if only because his public requests it of him.

"But the truth is we never lived so glamorously. We got hurt, we got injured. Heck, sometimes we even died, other times we were so close to death we could feel its hands slowly reaching down into our bodies to add our souls to its collection of the dead. We lived in a world where everything and everyone was after us. Normal lives never fit into our life long equation because we were being chased by people looking for a repeat world saving performance or wanted to kill us or bring us down just because of what we stood for and what we did. We lost loved ones along the way, but no one ever gave a damn about them because they weren't out there saving the world single-handedly like we, the heroes, were.

"And then we, the heroes, would sit up in our rooms at night and contemplate things, contemplate our lives, contemplate why they were so damn hard to live, contemplate why everyone wanted us, a bunch of nobodies who couldn't do shit because we were too young or too short or too little or too whatever, to be responsible for their own well being, contemplate why every bad thing that could ever happen to a person happened to us... Just contemplating why. Why us? Why now? Why did my parents have to die? Why did I have to live? Why did I have to be number one on Voldemort's Most Wanted list? Why was I, at age eleven, a celebrity, when all I wanted to be was live a normal, peaceful life without fear that I'd be locked up in a room with no food just because I started to walk funny? Why couldn't I live a normal life in school? Why did everybody look at me the moment I breezed into the place? Why was everything I did scrutinized? Why was I always the first one to get hurt? Why was I the one expected to save the world when I was only an underage wizard? Why did everything happen to me?

"None of you can answer that question, of course. No, you'd rather have me as your glamorous superhero, the one who has to go on living for the sake of the public even if he doesn't think life's worth living anymore... So I'll stay alive, for your sake. I'll sit at home without a job with the sham marriage I was forced into because my wench of a wife couldn't fathom falling in love with anyone else and couldn't fathom my not liking her that way. I'll sit here and watch my two best friends get happily married and have children and invest in their own careers and not give a damn about their friend because he's an ungrateful drunk. And I'll waste away the days on booze and self pity because my life's been a damn hard one. But you wouldn't understand that. You couldn't possibly understand that. I'm your hero. I'm your savior. I'm supposed to be happy that I rescued you from a great enemy. You never guess that maybe I was just trying to save my own ass or relieve myself from stress.

"So I'll give you some closure. I am going to die heroically. Just for you. On live TV, two weeks from now.

"That was for you, Frodo Baggins. Good night."

And with that, Harry passed out.

The show went to a commercial break.

And Susan Bones blew up (not literally, though).