Archive of Our Own

"If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!" Ron was pale and swaying, yet his words were strong with will and strength. His grip on Harry's arm was even stronger.

"Lie down," Black said quietly. "You will damage that leg even more."

"Did you hear me?" Ron insisted, weak yet stubborn as anything. "You'll have to kill all three of us!"

A part of Harry that wasn't consumed by his own fury was agape in shock.

Later, Harry sits in his dorm and mulls it all over. He's had people die for him before, and despite the flicker of warmth at the fact Ron would die for him, he would never have that.

That wasn't how it was supposed to be, and it never would be.

Never.

It's two years later, and the battle they are fighting is greater, in the sense that the enemy is real and not a prison escapee sentenced so wrongly.

A strange curse promptly shoots towards Ron, and it's only by sheer luck that he manages to duck in time. It strikes another Death Eater instead, who begins giggling a little madly.

"Eurgh," Ron mutters, disgusted. "Bloody hell, I could've been like that?"

The cursed Death Eater is now trying to hug his bum. He is failing.

"Come on," Harry whispers. They find Ginny, and suddenly they're running, running, the Death Eaters at their heels. He shoves Ron unceremoniously into the Brain Room.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Ron cries, and directs a brain towards the Death Eaters getting ready to curse Ginny. Harry shakes his head to block out the screams.

"Neville, stay with Ginny! Ron, come on!"

It's a miracle the way they're avoiding the rapid fire of streaking lights and bold hexes—

He's falling.

Ron's falling too.

Somehow the floor has vanished under their feet and they're left bouncing on every tier and steep stone until he lands with a crash that knocks all the breath out of his body near the strange dias. Beside him, Ron groans, and together they clamber to their feet.

A strange figure's also falling from up above—Neville, Harry realises—and the Death Eaters cackle and titter whilst he and Ron stand back to back. Harry's gripping the prophecy so tight his knuckles are white.

Bellatrix Lestrange, Harry discovers, is anything but human, no less humane. Neville's screams will ring in his ears forever.

And then the Order come.

The battle is a blur. Jets and streams and bolts of flashing, bright light, dark curses and deadly hexes. Harry loses Ron in the thick of it, until Macnair's growling in his ear for the prophecy, pressing so tightly on Harry's windpipe he's sure he's going to die, he's going to die just like this—

"Stupefy!"

Ron.

Macnair rolls out the way as the spell singes Harry's clothes, it's so close. Harry gasps in a breath, and almost smiles at what he sees. Ron stands with his wand drawn, face concerningly pale and sweaty but defiant and ready.

"Ah, a little blood traitor," the man snarls. "I've been waiting for some good target practice."

Macnair fires first.

It's a flurry of spells from there. Wasting not a second to look around for help—because they're not getting any now—Harry and Ron duel Macnair.

"Relashio!"

Harry ducks and rolls, gripping the orb doubly tight. "Impedimenta!"

"Protego!" Macnair conjures the shield like it's nothing. "Give me the prophecy, Potter!"

"I'm alright, thanks!" he replies brightly.

Macnair audibly growls, "Cru—"

"Locomotor Mortis!" shouts Ron.

Macnair leapfrogs out the way, in time for Harry to shout, "Tarangatella! Expelliarmus!"

He dances away this time, to Harry's brief delight.

"Finite Incantatem!" No longer dancing, Macnair's gaze burns with fury; Harry can see that despite the mask. "So have it, Potter! Avada—!"

"Langlock!" Ron huffs out in a shaky breath—Harry can only hope he can get through this until the end—as his hex aims true. "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill me too."

It's two years later, and Harry's heart still warms.

"Ooo, the ickle little cub is all big and brave today," a voice says, sing-song.

Chills run up and down Harry's spine.

Bellatrix Lestrange leers at him with a mad, mad grin, her wasted beauty twisted into pure evil. She looses Macnair's tongue wandlessly.

"Let's let the kitties play then." She adds in a light voice, "Crucio."

They duck, and their battle begins again. Ron and Macnair. Harry and Bellatrix.

Harry and Ron move around each other with amateur fluidity; their DA practices aren't much compared to the years of experience Bellatrix and Macnair have. But no-one can help them here; Sirius is switching between helping Neville and Tonks, and the rest of the Order are too far away and engaged in their own battles.

Bellatrix is a twisting, deadly blur of madness. Cackles and taunts—"Baby, baby Ginny, where is she now?"—and Harry has to stop Ron losing focus on his own duel.

"Your pal Voldemort too chicken to come out?" Harry gasps, rolling and ducking in time to miss a bright red hex.

Bellatrix's face contorts. "How dare you disrespect the Dark Lord, you filthy—"

"You sound a lot like a wrinkly old vulture I know," Harry quirks an eyebrow. "Walburga, isn't it?"

Bellatrix snarls, incandescent with fury. A flash of green light flies past Harry, and he dives to avoid it.

And then he hears a triumphant crowing.

And it isn't from Ron.

"HARRY!" Someone yells—it sounds like Sirius. Is it Sirius? Does it even matter? "Shit—"

His mind seems to have gone strangely blank, filled with a dull buzzing as the world drags on around him.

"Oh, my dearie little cousin! How long it's been! Crucio!"

Ron's just lying there. Ron's just lying there and the world is so very quiet—

"Someone get Macnair!"

Suddenly he's by Ron's side, and Ron's face is too pale and his eyes are too blank and—

He's not breathing.

Harry grabs his friend, his best bloody friend who's fought and laughed and snuck around with him, and shakes him by the shoulders.

Ron flops like something lifeless.

Something dead.

No. Not again, please not again.

"Ron? Ron—come on, please—" Harry pleads, voice cracking, and he doesn't even care if someone curses him in the back and takes the prophecy—they can have it as long as he has Ron.

His world is crumbling, its falling apart and ripping at the sinews of his heart because Ron can't be...he just can't...

"Please please please PLEASE—RON—!" Harry's hugging Ron to him now—too limp and too pliant—and where there should be a strong, steady heartbeat there is nothing but surely, surely it's a trick, it's a lie—

"RON!" Harry screams with all his tattered heart. "WAKE UP, GET UP—RON, PLEASE—!"

But with all his begging and pleading and crying, Ron won't wake up. And the knowledge that his best friend is gone is sinking into him like a leaden weight, despair drowning him in hopeless, bottomless waters—

And Bellatrix Lestrange's laughter pierces through him like Greek fire. Harry is alight and ablaze — angrier than Voldemort ever has been in his visions — and the feeling is running through him like righteous poison.

He is done. He is done being the saviour, the golden boy - it has cost him his bestest friend and his truest lifeline - and Harry is suddenly, so so done.

This war dares to demand more of him, making him give before he realises he has another thing to lose. And this war is being waged because of one megalomaniac, power-hungry monster. He has lost everything because of Tom Riddle and his faithful servant.

His Crucio works.

He feels the corruption of the Dark Arts the moment the red light strikes Bellatrix Lestrange. It burns through him like basilisk venom, but oh, if it'll kill him in the same way then what does it matter?

Ron and Sirius are dead—let him die too.

Of course, it doesn't kill him. It leaves Bellatrix panting from her screams, him shaking with the thrill of barely exacted vengeance and terror, because he'll never be the same again and he knows that now.

He will never be what he was before Ron and Sirius, but Dumbledore sure fucking tries. All those stupid words of compassion—Harry blows up the Floo in his office, and there's a great big tear down Armando Dippet's portrait.

When he stumbles into the hospital wing, Madam Pomprey heals his collarbone. Apparently it was broken.

How could she not see his heart is too?

Harry returns to Privet Drive a ghost. The Order threaten the Dursleys, but really, the threats aren't necessary. This is the first year where his summer starvation is a collaborative effort between the Dursleys' usually restrictive methods, and Harry's own lack of will to eat. His junkyard bedroom becomes his lair.

His evening with Dumbledore is laced with lies. Smiles that strain too much at his skin. Words that scratch too much at his throat. It ends with him back at the Dursleys, the downturn of his aunt's lips almost mistakable for concern. It's love long lost anyway, so what does he care?

Grief is already wearing him down. His eyes are darker, chips of green, and less like his mother's than they ever have been. The intensity contrasts so oddly with the dark circles underneath his eyes and the pale skin all around. He barely looks like himself, Harry thinks, and yet it is him all the same.

His replies to Hermione's and Mrs Weasley's letters are as dull and lifeless as Ron and Sirius are; with the way he is, Harry might as well be dead. Only he can feel how alive he is. His heart beats and his blood runs and his lungs breathe and he can only ever torture himself alive as he asks himself why Ron and Sirius can't be so.

The answer is simple, of course.

They're dead.

"Tell you what," Ron says with a wicked grin. "One day, we'll get Umbridge up here and just tip her off the balcony. Send Filch and her bloody Inquisitorial Squad after her and do everyone a favour."

Harry laughs loudly, freely, leaning against the parapet. "Right. And how'd you plan on getting them up here?"

"Oh, we'll just use you as bait. Go round shouting about Fudge being an idiot, lure them up here, and then off they go!"

"And what if they take me with them?"

Ron shrugs at the horizon, grin widening. "Well... can't let your stash of treacle tarts go to waste, can I?"

"Oi!"

Ron takes for the stairs and Harry runs after him, the echoes of their wild laughter chasing them down the staircase.

"What are you doing here?"

Harry turns away from the Astronomy Tower balcony, to face one Draco Malfoy. Pale as a ghost, skin stretched over his face, grey eyes black and dull.

It's March 1st. Ron should be seventeen today. But he is not— he is eternally stuck at sixteen, an age that will stick to him as he withers six feet under. He will be sixteen as a corpse, and one day the length of his decay will outgo the life he has lived. It nearly has done for his parents.

Harry doesn't tell Malfoy that, of course.

"I could ask you the same," he says instead.

Mlafoy tries to sneer—it looks similar to Harry's lost smiles so he doesn't comment on it—before walking to a parapet near but far enough away. There is a defeatist slump in his shoulders that makes Atlas' burden light as a feather.

Harry closes his eyes and leans forwards slightly. The winds ruffles his hair and kisses the single tear drying on his cheek.

"Plan on jumping off then, Potter?"

He already knows Malfoy is looking. He already knows there is more to that question than a taunt.

"Not today," Harry says quietly, and the wind spins around him. Not today and not tomorrow. Not until Voldemort is dead and the world is at peace and he has been drained dry of all he can give.

He turns his head slightly to see Malfoy nod, and search beyond the horizon. "Not today then," he mutters. There is nothing scathing to say. In this moment, they are almost themselves.

Two boys, on opposing sides and yet far more the same, stand side by side but far apart, and breathe. The wind howls in mourning.

Harry wonders if time will slow if he falls.

He is not Dumbledore's man.

He is his parent's son, he is Sirius' godson, he is Ron's best friend.

He is all of what remains of them.

He is not Dumbledore's man.

On the first anniversary of Sirius' and Ron's deaths, Harry heads to the seventh floor, and asks the Room of Requirement to fill with breakable things.

His grief comes out in a scream, an explosion of magic.

With all the things shattering around him, it's a wonder Harry can hear his heart do the same.

Dumbledore is dead.

The Death Eaters have run, the world is dark, and Dumbledore is dead.

Harry can't help but be envious.

The hunt for the Horcruxes is full of empty silences and silent victories, constantly thinking—nearly wishing—for death but avoiding it as best as they can.

When Harry almost drowns in the cold, cold lake, he sees a red-haired boy grin at him in the darkness. He shouldn't see anything at all; his eyes are closed and he's drowning and would it really be so bad to die? But then the boy clasps a hand around his shoulder and looks at him.

"Open your eyes, mate. You can do it. I'll be there."

And Harry opens his eyes, and there is no one. He fights to the surface of the frozen lake, and still, there is no one.

It's funny how many pieces your heart can break into.

He doesn't tell Hermione about it. They Apparate hand in hand, the silence between them the size of a ginger freckled boy that died too soon, and the life he should be living.

Harry hears Hermione scream. In the dark dungeon of Malfoy Manor, he begs for forgiveness.

Ron doesn't reply.

"I'll go with you," Hermione sobs.

They both know she can't.

"Kill the snake. Kill the snake and then it'll just be him." They have given up far too much for this war to not end today.

Hermione's shaking her head in that familiar adamant way that almost conjures a smile, as though she has some logical argument to set the world to rights again.

But all she says is, "I can't lose you too, Harry. You're my best friend. You're all I have."

She's choking on grief already; Harry can hear it. He hasn't even died yet.

"I'm sorry," and he walks towards her and embraces his best friend, one of his few reasons for living until now. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he murmurs, over and over, because there's nothing more he can say.

After a moment—not finally, never finally, Harry would have this hug last a million years if he could— Hermione steps away and wipes her tears away.

"When you see him...tell him I...tell him I miss him. Tell him I love him."

Harry closes his eyes. He's always known, really. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger have been perfect for each other since the start, but one is dead and one is living and the only thing that can be borne from that is heartache and pain. Harry knows that well enough.

"I love you, 'Mione. And I'm sorry." He knows she knows its not the love she has for Ron. But it's love that will bolster her, for a little while.

Harry turns, and tries to forget the sound of Hermione's heart breaking.

He is Harry Potter. He is 17 years old, and he is walking to his death. There is a boy waiting for him on the other side.

And there is nothing more to say.

In the Forbidden Forest, the stone is deathly cold in his grasp. Death surrounds him in the form of his mother, father, godfather, trusted professor... and best friend.

Ronald Weasley stands there, sixteen again—only a year older than him—with a sad sort of grin on his face that just doesn't suit him.

"You've gotten old, mate."

Harry's laugh echoes sharply and quietly in the clearing. It's been so long and yet barely two years since he's heard that voice. His heart aches for more.

"I'm so sorry."

"Nah." And his bloody best friend shakes his head with all the certainty in the world. "You remember what I said, don't you? During that chess game? It's you that has to go on. Not me, not Hermione. You."

Harry laughs again, and the bitterness burns within him. He doesn't know why he's laughing. The last time Ron echoed words already said, he died. But it's not like that's at risk anymore.

"You'll be alright, mate. I've always been here. I'll still be here."

It's a wonder that even after two years, Harry still expects some reassuring clap on the shoulder to come. It doesn't, of course. They can't touch him and he can't feel them. But instead he sniffs, nods, and turns to his godfather. He lets the childish question fall from his lips without shame.

He lets Death convince him to die.

The Resurrection Stone burns in his pocket, the silence of the dead he loved bolstering every step. To throw it away would feel like he's leaving them behind.

Always, he's faced Voldemort alone. Always, he's survived.

It's nice knowing he won't be alone when he sleeps, at last.

The War is won, but much is lost. The Resurrection Stone is available for a day, so everyone has the chance to say the goodbyes they could never say.

Gregory Goyle comes for Vincent Crabbe. They were much likes brothers, apparently. He lumbers out of the room, head bowed, and heads straight for Harry.

"Does it hurt?" He looks crippled with loss.

Harry thinks for a moment, before replying, "Quicker and easier than falling asleep." The words are meant to reassure. Several days later, Gregory Goyle will discover just how quickly one can fall asleep.

There are some people no one comes for. Inevitable, of course, but it hurts him to see it. For the young Hufflepuff muggle-born, whose family had already been killed in a Death Eater raid, whilst she'd hid, and made her way to Hogwarts. For Remus, among his friends again, whilst his barely grown son wonders where his father is.

It hurts, but it's his time to meet the dead a penultimate time, and Harry knows that'll hurt more.

They stand together as the Golden Trio again, though perhaps more gold-plated; not as wholly golden as the Wizarding World thinks they are. Hell, they're not even whole. Ronald Weasley is still dead, standing before them as everything a phantom should be. Only he will never haunt them with his presence.

"Bloody hell. You've both really gotten old."

Hermione laughs for the first time in years, only it's more of a dry, cackling sob.

"Ron—"

Tears are streaming down her face, and Ron looks like he wishes he could wipe them away.

"'Mione—"

"I love you, Ron," she sobs out. "So, so much."

Ron reached out as though to hold her and Hermione moves... only her hands slip through his. She lets out a choked wail.

"You know you can't," Ron begins sadly. "You've got to live. Go off with SPEW and become the first Minister for Magic and tell all the idiots that haven't read 'Hogwarts: A History' that you can't apparate inside the castle.

"It's not SPEW." Even sobbing, she can't quite help it.

Ron gives her a fond smile. "Live, 'Mione. Please."

And then he turns to Harry.

"Did it hurt?"

It's definitely an odd question for a dead person to ask, but they both know the answer.

"No."

Hermione sniffles. Ron gives them a grin that looks too much like a goodbye.

"Get into some fun for me, yeah?"

Their best friend fades away for the last time, leaving only two. Hermione weeps on her knees. Harry can't even breathe.

He travels, after the war. He doesn't want to say in Britain; there's too much loss there. Britain has started to feel suffocating, and Harry is restless and he needs to breathe.

So he travels. He testifies for Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, and watches them walk to their caged freedom. He gives Hermione a hug, Mrs Weasley a kiss on the cheek, and Ginny an apology.

He wishes them all the best because that's all he can do for them now, and he travels.

He's always wanted to travel. For a brief period of time as a child, he'd wanted to be a pilot. And then he'd found out people with glasses couldn't be pilots, and so he'd let his cupboard-induced daydreams take him on adventures instead.

Now, however, he can go anywhere. So he does.

He grows into using pseudonyms, because the name Harry Potter weighs too heavy. He knows perfectly well the Ministry are tracking him and he lets them. He doesn't care enough to stop them anymore. The names he goes by always have some link that make him traceable enough.

Ronald Jameson.

Bilius Evans.

Sirius Potts.

Roonil Wazlib causes a bit of a stir. Harry blames the faulty quill pen.

It's a routine, almost. Running and landing and staying and soon running again. There's the occasional use of Muggle transport— trains and buses and such, but it's Portkeys he grows into. Almost becomes addicted to, if such a thing were possible.

He'll take anything to fill the cold, withering hole inside him.

He spends his first Christmas away from Britain in Spui, Amsterdam. The recent tramlines keep the noise in his head at bay well enough, without the outside world seeming too loud.

Only a couple minutes before midnight however, when Harry is about to blow out the candle he lit with a match, he hears a familiar hoot. Errol, that old, formidable, possibly immortal owl is perched on the window to his rooms.

With a thick package.

It feels like he's wading through the thick sludge of memories as he approaches the old bird slowly. Errol plops the package in his hands before hopping to the corner of his rooms and falling asleep immediately.

The silence is loud as the clock ticks to midnight.

It seems like an age before Harry can move his fingers again, carefully unwrapping the paper in that meticulous way he's always done. He's learnt to value presents, after having so few in his life.

In the package, there is a Weasley sweater just for him, and a box of homemade treacle tarts and fudgecakes. And a piece of parchment, fluttering in the slight draught. How dare it pretend to be so light, when Harry knows perfectly well how heavy the words will weigh.

There are four sentences in the letter.

Make sure you're staying nice and warm, dear.

The laugh that escapes him is hollow and full of love for the mother he could've had, for the life he could be living now. Mrs Weasley will always be what Lily Potter should've been, the same way Ron would always be what he could have had. And that's part of why he left.

We'll always be here.

Mr Weasley's scrawl is one he's never seen, but not unfamiliar. It fits his perception of the man who has in a way been a father to him— with glasses lopsided just like James' really— if not for Sirius. It's warm and messy and just a little bit wild. The Burrow comes to mind; the closest place he'll have to call home where he is always welcome. That will always be there.

I miss you.

Hermione's neat scrawl has been disrupted with trembling and a fallen tear. So few words for the girl that used to write him pages worth of letters like they were homework assignments.

Merry Christmas, Harry.

Ginny's writing is steady, though the ellipsis of ink droplets at the end of the sentence tell Harry something else. A could-have-been, a maybe-one-day, a what-if. It's too late now anyway.

A tear falls and disappears into the red and green knitting of his newest Weasley jumper.

The Muggle clock dings quietly at midnight, and the silence mourns with him.

New Years in Amsterdam is beautiful in its chaos. You don't even need to pick it out; it's there in the warming foreign chatter, the thick fog of beer that turns the chilly winter winds warm and homely.

Harry is invisible amongst the hoards of people that have gathered on the Magere Brug to watch the New Years' fireworks. The coming year will only really mark another year of running from the void threatening to consume him, suffocate him. But in this moment, he is everything he's ever wanted to be. He is just Harry, he is just a boy forced to grow up too fast here to watch fireworks. This is the closest thing to normalcy he will get.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Harry Potter had stood beside his two best friends, a brown bush of hair tickling his neck and a red-head annoyingly taller. They'd watched the fireworks Flitwick had set off, experimental charms applied resulting in a glorious display that had left sparks of light in their eyes. They had looked up to the stars, and the vibrant darkness, and dreamed of living together.

Today he is alone.

One day, Harry receives a random package as he's packing to move from Cairo to Romania.

Fare well on your travels, Mr Potter. And take my gratitude with you.

Narcissa Malfoy née Black

His brief wondering as to why she's sending him a letter now comes quickly enough; it's exactly a year after her sentencing. Narcissa Malfoy was to have all her communications monitored, Malfoy Manor stripped of anything remotely "too magical", access to her funds restricted, and her wand limited to generally non-lethal spells for a year. Which is now up.

The sentence would have been less, but she'd refused to let her son fall further than her. A mother's love is a most powerful thing. Harry of all people knows that.

The letter is odd, and short, and kind. Which says everything, really.

Harry wonders what freedom must feel like for her. If she feels it at all, that is.

It was bound to happen, really. Almost a year of peace—it was bound to end, the snapping jaws of his past were bound to come and nip at his ankles.

He'd simply never expected it in the form of a camera flash. But it sounds loud and bright like a malicious poltergeist, and he's up and running.

"You can't just disappear, Mr Potter! You're here to protect us! To save us! You owe us that!"

The crack of his Apparation isn't loud enough to drown out the reporter's last words. The dizzy roar in his ears is loud in the waiting silence of his rooms, and the churning in his stomach most certainly isn't to do with apparating.

He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, but somehow the words flash in the darkness, go in one ear and out the other and loop around to do so all over again. They're everywhere.

You owe us.

You owe us, you owe us, you owe us.

Hasn't he given enough?

His lunch tastes sour coming up.

A year into the new millennium, Harry is in a delicate little patisserie, contemplating the purchase of a treacle tart, when someone calls him.

"Potter?"

Harry turns and finds Draco Malfoy before him. Draco Malfoy, roaming the streets of Paris, looking like the ghost of that arrogant tosser that bought his place on a Quidditch Team and made 'Potter Stinks' badges. He looks... not broken, Harry thinks. More chipped away.

Harry is broken— irreparably broken— and he knows it. There is hope for Draco Malfoy though. The blond just needs to see it.

"Malfoy."

Somehow, he finds himself sitting across Malfoy in a Parisian café, sipping a coffee.

"What are you doing here then?" Words repeated, echoes of history. They've both made it to the other side of that day on the Astronomy Tower. It's a wavering comfort.

"I could ask you the same," Harry replies. He adds, on a hunch, "How's home?"

Malfoy shifts, primly wiping his fingers on a napkin.

"I wouldn't know."

Harry nods. It's odd how similar he and Malfoy really are, something they've managed to overlook over however so many years of animosity, blasé as it is now.

What are they now, but two people lost and alone and without a home?

"Perhaps you should go and find out."

Malfoy sends him a tired glare. "Why?"

"Find out whilst you've still got it."

It's a tired sort of look now, which Harry supposes he can see as an improvement.

"It won't always be there," Harry mutters, thinking of roaming Hogwarts with the sound of munching by his side, laughing in an obscenely orange room. How those weeks in fourth-year without Ron had made Hogwarts feel empty, and the Gryffindor dorms like a stranger. How he hasn't had a home since, because Sirius had died and Ron had died and the world feels so very cold without them.

Sometimes home's not a place, but a person. Ronald Weasley had been his.

Malfoy watches him, and in a moment that isn't vanity, Harry wonders what he must look like to the world. Tired, weary? Homesick?

"Not today, then?" he finally asks.

Harry looks away. "Not today," he mutters.

The rest of the hour is spent in silence, a string of endless seconds strung together with thoughts and memories. When they stand to leave, neither ask where the other intends to go. A good thing, most likely, seeing that even Harry doesn't know himself.

At the door of the café, Malfoy holds out a hand. "Goodbye, Potter."

It's the handshake Harry never accepted, only it's ending something that never had the chance to begin. And oddly, that's okay.

"Good luck, Malfoy."

A stiff shake and then it's just him and the world, and the treacle tart he's decided he'll definitely be buying.

Harry will never know that after three hours of drinking, pacing, and screaming, Draco Malfoy apparates to the doorstep of a sizeable London flat and knocks. Theodore Nott answers the door, and there is a moment of silence between the two Slytherins as they consider each other. And then there is a hug, one so crushingly tight neither of them can breathe, and yet it's the lightest Draco Malfoy has felt in years.

Meanwhile, Harry packs his bags for the next move, under the name Evan Weaslby.

It takes a near decade for Harry to work up the courage to walk back on British soil, under the name James Black. The moment he stumbles back, the very winds reach for him, already thick with memories and blood long shed. That only reaffirms his decision for this to be nothing but a visit. He has things to do.

Molly Weasley gives him a hug, the first he's received in so long he almost breaks down right there. Her hugs have always managed to unwind him in some way, make him feel like he's worthy of having something like a mother. She looks old and weary and tired but exactly how Harry remembers her, all at once. And what's more, she insists on feeding him until he bursts.

Ginny is beautiful. That's the first thought that enters Harry's mind the moment he sees her. She's radiant. She's gorgeous. She has another Pygmy Puff called Barnard now, and a fiancé.

"I'm glad you've come back," she tells him, and Harry swallows.

"I'm not staying."

"I know," she replies easily. "But I'm glad you came back."

And they talk of moving on.

When he sees Hermione, he lets the tears fall. He'd never thought of Hermione as beautiful in nothing more than a platonic way, and he never will. But she's grown and withered, he can see, and he's missed her.

Their hug lasts a hundred years, and Harry only wishes it could last a hundred more. He still ends up choking on her bushy hair, and the two second laugh about it brings a small spark to her eyes.

They're healing, and that's okay.

His last few visits will be the hardest, but they're the ones he has to do. First, it's to Dudley. His cousin has slimmed down and grown into himself. What's more, he's married a muggle-born, and his daughter Daisy Dursley is already showing signs of magic.

Conversation between them starts off awkward and stiff, but by the time the day is up, Harry's waving goodbye.

"See ya, Big D."

Dudley grins at him, hands over his daughter's ears.

Aunt Petunia, it turns out, lives alone. Uncle Vernon passed two years ago from a heart attack, and she sits in a normal house in a normal neighbourhood, alone. Even after all this time, she can't bring herself to love magic after all it's done against her, and so she can't bring herself to love her granddaughter.

The second she opens the door, it's: "What do you want?" But her tone isn't as unwelcome or harsh as she could make it.

Harry, with his hands in his pockets, says quietly, "Hello, Aunt Petunia."

And she lets him in.

It takes only fifteen minutes for Aunt Petunia to erupt into tears, shrieking and yelling at him. He lets her.

"You were supposed to die! You were supposed to die!"

"I'm sorry."

"You took my sister! All of you, and your magic—you took my sister from me!"

"I'm so sorry."

His aunt never had the chance to grieve, with another child suddenly forced upon her. She has bathed and burned in bitterness, withered in hatred, and it has ruined her. She has hated him, starved him, mistreated him, and yet Harry can't blame her. He can't forgive her, but he can't blame her.

So he lets her rage at him and wring out the last tears of her grief. And then he makes her a cup of tea, and they sit in silence until he leaves. Though her eyes may be bloodshot, and her face dry with tears, Harry thinks there's a lightness to her for the first time since Lily Evans first met magic.

He'll never know it takes another two months before Petunia visits her son, an old doll in her hands. But he heads first to a Muggle graveyard, and kneels before Vernon Dursley. Even so, his uncle is under him. Six feet under, to be precise.

The last conversation with his uncle comes to mind; the way their eyes met as they both wondered whether he'd rescue them. Whether he'd bother.

Sixteen years of hatred. Sixteen years of disgust. Sixteen years of love, wasted away into a rotten corpse, bitter and cold. Decayed dreams. There is so much they could've been, but Harry knows that that is always the way of life.

He is tired, that's the truth of it. Of this wondering and thinking and overthinking. Hatred is poisonous, grief is biting, love is exhausting. Forgiving is too great and forgetting is even greater. And Harry is so, so tired.

"I think I would have," he finally decides. "In the end."

Not that Vernon Dursley will ever know, but Harry lets his departure say the rest.

Fred's grave is quiet, and clearly loved. Mischief, is the inscription, written plain and bold for all the dead to see.

There is a space next to the grave Harry knows is reserved for George. He knows the inscription will read Managed. He knows the gravestone will be grey, as Fred's is. All there is left is for George to die.

Harry wonders if he's looking forward to it.

Snape's grave is next. Marked by a small stone. buried under a lonely willow tree that cries its leaves for him. It is peaceful, and quiet, and full of memories.

He kneels for Severus Snape, the man who wasted over half his life for a girl long dead, for a love never born.

"I won't say thank you," Harry begins, "because you were a git. You did a lot you didn't have to do, and you're a git. But..." Harry thinks of sweet Lily Evans, who saw something in a poorly dressed boy that had called her a witch and showed her magic. "...I hope you can be the person my mum knew now."

He deftly whips out his wand, conjuring flowers as he speaks.

"I'm not sure what use spring crocuses are in potions, but I remember purple hyacinths are medicinal. Good at relieving suffering."

After a moment, Harry finally stands to walk away. The little bouquet of three flutters in the breeze.

Dumbledore's grave has finally been moved to Godric's Hollow. Having a rotting corpse in a tomb on site of a school is kind of creepy, and it's a bit like coming home, for both of them.

He doesn't kneel before Dumbledore, the man that had manipulated every aspect of his life. That had condemned him to death, to sacrifice. That had raised him to see the worth in dying a martyr.

But he'd lived, hadn't he?

Finally, the right words come to him, as he places a hand upon the ice marble, and remembers the world beyond this where love exists.

"I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death."

He doesn't thank Dumbledore either. The Boy-Who-Lived was Dumbledore's man through and through. James Black is just a man.

Ron is last.

Harry's already trembling five feet near it, and in the end just bonelessly collapses before it, like a desperate man at prayer. The inscription makes him close his eyes, and kneel prostate so his forehead touches the cool grass.

Brother, Friend, Ginger.>

Oh, bloody hell, it reads.

And oh, bloody hell to it all. Bloody hell to the way Ron died, bloody hell to the way Harry is still living, bloody hell to the way that every time he reads that phrase, it is always, always in Ron's voice.

He's heard it too often in his dreams for him to forget it.

The years pass, and Harry travels. The Boy-Who-Lived gets lost in time and the scattered pages of history books. Rita Skeeter's unemployment helps his privacy immensely.

Girls are still odd things to Harry. And soon it becomes both girls and guys. He's been hit on by both quite a bit, and there's no denying the few drunk get-togethers he's had. But he doesn't make a habit of it, and relationships are a far cry to what's he's seeking. He can't find what he's seeking alive.

It's known that wizards tend to live longer than muggles, but the news of Arthur and Molly Weasley's passing sends him into shuddering sobs. He goes to their funerals, and thanks them for being the parents he never had. A rubber duck and his own poor attempt at knitting are set on their respective graves.

His Aunt Petunia is next, and Harry wonders if he and his aunt were cursed to watch the people they loved most leave. In the end, it's just him and Dudley's family that turn up. Harry sets a bouquet of white lilies and red petunia flowers, and hopes death has granted her the closure she never had.

Then there is Narcissa Malfoy's funeral, done according to ancient pureblood rites and ceremony. Draco Malfoy stands with Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini, and sends him a curt nod.

Harry lays a note on her casket: 'Fare well on your travels, Mrs Malfoy.' And then she is set alight to burn, her ashes heading for the stars and sinking in the soil where her namesakes dance.

"Bloody, flipping know-it-all," Ron grouses, slamming his 'Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1' textbook before Harry.

"What happened?" Harry listlessly asks, still trying to sharpen his quill just right. It's only a couple of weeks into first-year, but he fears he'll never get it right.

"I'll tell you what happened, mate," Ron begins, still clearly irate. "All I'm trying to do is get past bloody Hermione Granger, and then she shoves her great big bloody bush of hair right in my face! And then Snape—" and at this Harry looks up, to see Ron angrily waving a quill "—Snape thinks I'm off blowing raspberries at him or something, and now I've got a detention tomorrow!"

Harry shoots him a sympathetic glance.

"What's her hair got to be so big for anyway?" Ron continues. "Do you think if we poke a stick in it, we'd find an extra brain in there or something?"

Harry gives a small snigger and shakes his head, as Ron continues to rave on and on about the unfairness of life at eleven years old.

Death stands at his shoulder like the day it did in the clearing, and Harry knows it'll be his time soon. He's lived to 95, which is impressive, but it's enough now. His soul is tired, and his heart aches for a yearning that extends beyond this dimension.

Harry spends his last couple years with Hermione and Ginny and their children, now grown. There is still red in Ginny's silver hair, though it can only be seen when in sunlight. And Hermione's hair is always that intelligent bush of hair that he and Ron were so convinced hid an extra brain.

Ginny, ever the one for weird names, has given one son the middle name Donald. They should've known from Pigwidgeon that she shouldn't have been trusted for such a task. But her son is a good man, and does not look at Harry like a hero.

It is peaceful, but not the sort he's looking for.

Harry Potter was destined to die in a flash of green light. That's how his mother and father had fallen. It would be poetic, almost, for him to re-join them that way.

But it's only a gentle blindfold of darkness pulled over his eyes, the soft caress of his last breath leaving his body. And then he is dead.

Harry opens his eyes to what must be the place beyond the strange train station.

He holds his breath—although is that even possible if you're dead?—and turns.

Ronald Weasley stands before him, in all his 16 year old, ginger, freckled, goofy grinning glory.

"Bloody hell, mate."

That's all it takes.

Harry's heart cries out in joy and grief, and he collides with his best friend, his brother. Here is the peace he has been looking for.

Here is how it's supposed to be.