How can you mend a broken heart?

Chapter 1 - The darkest apartment

Harry Potter slammed his apartment door open and threw his keys into a bowl on a black wooden table that stood on his right side by the door. The apartment was nothing special and Ron had asked him on several occasions why he would not buy a better place since he had so much money. Every time, Harry would say that he did not like the thought of having a big apartment or house for himself. He would simply feel far too lonely. Lonelier than he actually was.

The walls were black, they had originally been lime green, but Harry had since the war figured that his new favourite colour was black. That decision would later dominate his small apartment. Mrs Weasley had of course not reacted the best way to his colour decision. She had one day while Harry was at work decorated the whole apartment with knitted flowers simply to brighten up things a bit for him.

A black leather sofa was placed in the middle of the room with a couple of newspapers around it because Harry had been too lazy to throw them away when he had read them. Other than the newspapers on the couch, his apartment was pretty much immaculate.

With a loud thud, Harry sat down and slouched on the couch, going over the newest of the old newspapers seeing as he had no other interesting things to do. Well, except for having a social life, but the sofa was of course more tempting at the time.

It had been about four years since the war and Harry Potter had seen his therapist for a little more than a year. He did not mind the therapist, he just never liked the idea of needing help to sort out his feelings, he almost felt mentally unstable.

The therapist was a lovely old woman who always kept a bowl of biscuits on her desk for her patients. She was so lovely that Harry had trusted her and told her things that had troubled him for the past years.

She was, of course, the person he saw the most of, although he loved his friends, he always felt like a third wheel. Moreover, he could not bear to see the Weasleys more than necessary because he still felt as if he was the one who killed Fred.

Over the course of the last four years, Harry had been in a few romantic relationships in the hope that he could love again. However, the only thing the relationships had left him with was, however, loneliness and jealousy from Ginny's part.

Sometimes he wondered if he was suitable for romantic relationships. Something he probably was not.

Harry got up from the sofa, walked towards the kitchen and gathered eggs, milk and flour, and cooked four pancakes, which he ate while watching the blue sky outside his kitchen window. His thoughts wandered and he felt an emptiness in his heart, his only thoughts were how he very much felt like crying.

It was the 31st of July and even if it was his birthday, he had no one to spend the day with, he did, of course, have the Weasleys and his friends, but it just felt far too awkward. Loneliness was his worst enemy and he had lived with it for the past years, for far too long.

He felt a slight tingle in his stomach that distracted him from his thoughts, followed by a crack from the distance, which Harry assumed was someone apparating to his front door.

The sound of the door handle of the black apartment door turning and the door opening later answered his assumptions.

For a moment, Harry just stood by his kitchen table nibbling on his pancake, but as the person did not make a sound when entering, he grew suspicious, grabbed his wand, and walked over to the living room.

"Hello?" Harry said, cautiously walking out of the kitchen.

Still, no sound came from the living room; in fact, there was no sound of even a breath from the living room. The living room was empty, yet the door was open and his thoughts immediately fled to the conclusion that a person was still with him in his apartment, hiding.