Chapter Text
Harry’s converse were almost worn through, soft as anything, but they still weren’t totally silent as she walked through the forest. It was strange, to her, that she still had this impact on the space around her.
She’d given up. She was giving up. For all intents and purposes, Harry was already dead. So why did the world continue to treat her as a living body?
She retrieved the snitch from her pocket. Despite having been resting so close to her skin, her fingers ached against the icy cold metal. That seemed more appropriate- at least this was treating her as the walking corpse she was. She held it to her parted lips.
“I am about to die.”
Her breath misted the shiny shell of the snitch and she watched her distorted reflection ripple for a moment before it cracked open to reveal the stone nestled inside. She turned it between her shaking fingers; let her breath rest heavy in her lungs for a long moment, eyes closed.
Leaves crunched to her right: her eyes snapped open, head whipping round. Sirius’ grinning face looked back at her from between the trees. She felt an irrepressible wave of grief roll up her throat. It felt too big to swallow, uncontainable, but by the time the feeling had reached the back of her throat it emerged as little more than a whimper.
“Hello pup.” he said softly. He looked younger, somehow. His face hadn’t changed- the same lines as before- but there was a lightness to him now that she’d never seen in him in life. The circles under his eyes had faded and, when he looked at her, the love in his eyes wasn’t soured with grief.
“Sirius,” his name left her lips without her permission, mostly air. There was a special kind of ache to all of this: a life she should have got and didn’t. A world he worked so hard for and never got to see.
“Jesus,” a voice said behind her. “You’d think the girls never seen a dead bloke before.”
She whipped her head round, facing Fred where he stood between- between- Christ. Her parents. Her dad had dark, messy hair and kind eyes. She had his nose and the curl in his hair; she’d heard that she had his sense of humour and that, when she lied, she tipped her head the way he did.
Her mum was almost like looking in a mirror. Harry knew she looked wilder, somehow. Sharper and less cared for, but the building blocks were the same. The red hair, green eyes and freckles. The beaming smile. All of the love that Harry could see written across her face.
God, they were so young. It hadn’t ever really registered before but they were barely out of school.
“Hi,” she said, mostly at a loss for what else she could do. “I’ve missed you.”
It was true. It also wasn’t. She had missed her parents every day of her life. She had wished- desperately- for just one person who would love her as Mr and Mrs Weasley loved their children.
But she hadn’t ever know these two people stood in front of her. James and Lily Potter were strangers to her and, yes, she had mourned her parents but she hadn’t ever mourned them. Not like Sirius and Remus had.
Now that she looked at them though, she didn’t think that the distinction mattered as much as she’d thought.
“Oh my darling girl,” her Mum said, tears in her eyes. “You have been so brave. I am so sorry that you’ve had to be so brave.”
Lily Potter nee Evans was just as beautiful as everyone had told her. Under the full weight of her regard, Harry felt as though she might crumble. More importantly, she was insightful in a way no one else ever had been. In a way no one else could be.
“We’re so proud of you Harry. You are our daughter and there has not and will not be a moment where we are disappointed by anything you do. We’re with you. We stand by you.” Her Dad said.
“Always have.” Fred added and she looked at him now, younger still than her parents. A boy she’d grown up with, cold and pale on the floor of the castle.
“I- I am so sorry that I couldn’t stop this. I am so, so sorry that you had to die. All of you.”
“None of that now,” Sirius cut in, still smiling: still serene. “We all made our choices, don’t deny us that.”
She nodded, throat feeling thick and achy, like trying to swallow dice. She pressed her finger absently to her stomach, the words just beneath her skin.
“Do you think they’ll be angry with me?” she asked, hating how vulnerable she sounded.
“Maybe,” her Mum said, lifting a shoulder. “Would that change anything?”
“No.”
“Then it’s best not to dwell. It will only upset you.”
The clearing drew nearer and the ghosts of those she’d loved and lost pressed closer around her. Her heart thumped in her chest, a dull two toned beat that reminded her painfully of how few breaths remained in her lungs.
“Will it hurt?” she asked, very quietly.
“Dying?” Sirius stood just behind her, so close she’d be able to feel the warmth of him if these shades gave off any heat. “It’s quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
“Stay with me,” She begged.
“Until the very end,” someone behind her promised but the stone was already slipping from her fingers, their voices disappearing like smoke on the wind.
---
She paused on the edge of the clearing, watching the restlessly shifting figures within from between the trees. Her breath was coming in quick, anxious pants as she watched the agitated fervour before her.
Her hands shook where they rested in front of her so she clenched them into tight fists, folding them at the base of her spine. Her wand was tucked into her sleeve but she wouldn’t reach for it, she knew.
She’d left her cloak back with the others, handed it to Neville and walked into the forest without looking back. All she had on her was the moleskin pouch slung around her neck: the broken halves of her holly wand and a photo of her, Hermione and Ron from two summers back curled together on a sofa a Grimauld place.
She had been carrying her whole life, slung from her shoulders, for months and now she felt startlingly light without it. She felt as though she could float right up to heaven. Nothing held her down anymore. Nothing to keep her here.
She stood, shaking, behind some overhanging branches that were all that stood between her and her fate. She could feel it now: the moist, anxious breath of death curling over the back of her neck. What would happen next was preordained: she could feel the backdraft as it rushed towards her like a freight train.
Voldemort stood in the centre of a raucous, shrieking, writhing mass of people. His face was pale: skin like melted wax over the net of bone and blood running just beneath the surface.
Back at the school, the day has been bright and clear but no dappled light streamed through the canopy here. It was dark. The ground was chilled and spongy beneath her feet. She wondered how long it would take for her body to cool in these conditions.
She stepped out from behind the trees.
When he saw her, something shifted behind Voldemort’s eyes. She watched as manic glee overtook him: skinless lips, gleaming red like a wound, peeled back to reveal too-sharp teeth.
Behind him, she could see Hagrid chained up beneath a tree, tears slicking a path down his grimy cheeks. She wished she could say something to him, before what was coming. She wished she could tell him that it would be okay, not to worry about her because she’d chosen this. She knew what would happen and this was how it had to be.
She wished she could tell him she was sorry. He had always been so kind to her.
She let her eyes move away from his still crying face: let them roam over Bellatrix, whose hands were twitching and flicking as she danced behind Voldemort, and the Malfoys, stood grim-faced and drawn -their hands folded carefully over their sons shoulders, keeping him close.
“Harry Potter.” he said, voice high and cold.
She had been running for so long and now this was it- the final moment. Her heart hammered so fast in her chest she could feel it through her whole body like it was trying to make up for the lifetime it wouldn’t get to carry her through.
“My Lord.” Her voice didn’t shake. She wouldn’t allow it to.
“Come to die?” He asked coyly.
She raised her chin and looked him right in the eyes. She would not die cowering in the mud. She would not die shamefaced and frightened.
He raised his arm and she could hear his robes rustle in the sudden silence of the clearing. His lips moved but she couldn’t hear the words over the ringing in her ears. A blinding green light hurtled towards her and all she could think was-
-‘i don’t want to die’
---
Something was wrong.
The curse collided with her, but instead of the painless death she had been promised she could feel her body begin to tear its self apart. She watched chunks of charred, blackened flesh peel off her arms and float upwards into the sky, catching on an unfelt breeze and swirling around her: faster and faster until she could hardly see the world around her.
She looked up with wide, frightened eyes to try and catch the eye of someone- anyone- but the clearing was gone. There was only darkness. There was only the swirling mass of what once had been her body.
She wanted to scream but she had no lungs. She wanted to cry but she had no eyes. She was nothing.
She could hear the quiet, intermittent sounds of women humming: the click clack of needles as they wove something together. Their voices rose and faded as one, humming a melody she’d never heard but that was as familiar as the streets of little whinging where she’d wandered- grass stained and half wild- as a child.
The agony was gone and now she was everything. She was everywhere. She had no form and she could feel herself stretching on as vast as time. She could not remember who she was. She could not remember who she had been. Pain and thoughts drifted past, distant and unfamiliar.
She would call it peace, but it wasn’t. Not quite. She wasn’t really conscious enough to feel peace.
A woman was weeping quietly, somewhere in the vastness of it all and Harry wanted to reach for her but she had no hands.
The click of the needles increased in speed; the humming reached a crescendo and she felt something snap like a rubber band and suddenly she was hurtling back together. Pieces of her regathering and reforming, faster and faster. She remembered pain. She remembered grief. She remembered the faces of all of the people she loved.
Suddenly she had lips again and she screamed.
And then it was over and she was stood in the middle of a ruined street with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her vision was spotted white: she swayed like a tree in a storm and then her legs gave and she knew no more.