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‘I’ll see you after Death.’
Words that haunt the mind, soul, and heart. Words that make marriage vows seem insignificant, small. They seemed fickle, gentle, breakable, compared to those words.
They seemed like things that weren’t determined by the Stars, or the Fates. They were not alive, like the juxtaposition of those words spoken that day.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’
He can still remember the battlefield. Snow had begun to drift down from the dreary Winters sky, attempting to cover the bodies that had been emptied of the souls that had traversed to another Realm, shortly after their ferocious Death.
And yet, dead, Red- like blood, like rubies, like fire- eyes still stared on, encompassing him, whole and unforgiving, still his main focus, even after his enemy’s Death.
It didn’t make sense, the Dark Lord’s words.
But maybe, eventually, the Stars would tell him.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’
It was haunting, the way that, through Life, nothing seemed to settle, even after the War was over. He still felt left out, alone, as everyone celebrated and moved on. Yet he still lingered.
He didn’t know why.
Even as the joy radiated through the air, and everyone laughed, kissing each other under Mistletoe that may not even actually have been there, even then, those words took away his sense of self.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’
One sentence was enough to make the Hero everyone had been so reliant on crumble, wasting away to invisible dust. Enough to make melancholy shivers stretched down his meagre form in rivets of loneliness.
He does not talk, sing, or dance with the others. He does not think that he is left out, when he can feel it in his very bones. He does not try and take away the light of others, yet he does not shed any himself.
It was strange. He felt alienated from the world, the world he had been born in to.
As if that had any significance any more.
Even as the tides rose, and the stars twinkled in all their thousands of brilliance, even as lives were given, and lives were lost, and Magic began to blossom like it never had before.
Even as he kissed his girlfriend good morning, he still felt left out from the world.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’
That day, in the forest, void of any nature’s sounds, yet filled with the jeers and cries of the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord….. Back then, Voldemort had ordered his Death Eaters to leave them. To give the prophesied enemies privacy- they hadn’t ever gotten the chance to embrace it before. It was never just the two of them.
It was when they bowed, that Voldemort uttered those words. And then the only thing he could remember was the welcoming light of the Avada Kedavra curse, as Death’s Realm greeted him for the second time.
After the battle, after everything that they had done, the Victory only tasted bitter on his tongue.
Why was everything so null and void without Voldemort?
And thus, as he lay upon his Death bed, alone, even in company- for he had no friends left to mourn him, no family left to close his eyes when eternal sleep inevitably greeted him- he thought about those words one last time.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’
It wasn’t King’s Cross Station that he awoke to, nor did the white, pristine robes of Albus Dumbledore appear to carry a message he had long since supposed to have given.
However, it was there, in the arms of the Dark Lord, that Harry opened his eyes.
A single, immeasurable breath of cool, frigid, pure air, made Harry gasp for more. The freedom, the immense tornado of emotions that caved his very being, to the point where he felt as though he was about to explode, made him feel like he was finally, truly home.
Now, looking into Voldemort’s Red- like the blood that used to pump through his veins, like the rubies that the Goblins kept guard of oh-so voraciously, like the deepest, most darkest fiery pits of Hell, lighting their surroundings with eery, envious licks of carelessness- eyes, he could only allow the feelings of belonging bloom within his sensitive, overwhelmed heart to come forward.
And staying like that, the Chosen One and the Dark Lord, staring into each others eyes, one who’s hair that resembled a bird’s nest, and the other, of a wavy, silky chocolate that would make even the coldest of hearts melt, noses bumping ever-so-slightly as the wind whirled around them, was the most peaceful feeling Harry had ever felt.
‘I’ll see you after Death.’