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He wanders the hallways, appearing when you least expect it.
It’s always a shock — the once-green eyes peering through once-whole glasses, perched on a once-tangible face. But his eyes were now a dull grey, his glasses perpetually cracked, his face — and body, for that matter — translucent and not fully real. Many hands have passed through his no-longer-rising chest.
He was a hero, they whisper in the halls. As if they’re afraid he’ll hear and…
And do what? He’s a ghost, after all, and ghosts can’t touch them.
All they can do is haunt the living, and remind them of the skeletons that collect dust in their closets.
Professor Neville Longbottom is one of those unlucky ones. He shrinks into himself when he floats by, beating a hasty retreat to the greenhouses afterwards. He always emerges with a face scrubbed raw, and eyes red and bloodshot.
He won’t tell anyone, but guilt eats away at him every time he catches a glimpse of that mop of hair. He’s here, he’s real, able to grow and love and be, but he’s still stuck, forever on the verge of adulthood, never to fully cross to the other side.
And he really does seem to be stuck. He doesn’t appear as often as the other ghosts do, but it’s often enough to notice the lapses in memory he can have.
A student saw one episode through a crack in a classroom door one day. She bit down on her fist to keep from making noise.
Headmistress McGonagall looked more human than the girl could ever remember seeing her — she seemed to be a second away from plunging her hand into the cool form of the ghost, led by some misguided attempt to physically comfort him. Professor Longbottom was there too, tears rolling down his young face.
“Mr. Potter —” McGonagall tried to say, but she was interrupted.
“No — how — how — he’s gone? It’s over?” Hands ran over his forehead, his scalp, digging into the skin and leaving marks. “But — he was right in front of me —”
“Mr. Potter, listen,” McGonagall said, voice soothing in a way the girl didn’t think was possible. “The war — it was ten years ago. It’s over, I promise you.”
“But — but —”
“Harry,” Professor Longbottom interjected. “I know it’s a lot to take in —”
“But why aren’t I older? I feel the same —”
“Merlin, Harry, you’ve been dead. You died.” Professor Longbottom looked broken as he said it, like he was ready to collapse onto the stone floor.
“Professor Longbottom!” McGonagall cried, appalled, but Professor Longbottom practically fled to the door — the door the girl stood behind.
She ran, barely noticing the blood dripping, red and warm, onto her entire fist. She didn’t hear the ghost’s reaction, but she felt his shock and grief radiate through the walls and the floors even after she stopped to catch her breath.
***
War heroes Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley always deliver a speech on the second of May.
It gets less and less effective each year — after all, ten years on, the youngest students were one years old when the war ended, and who could make them care about some ancient battle that they weren’t even around for?
But the effects linger everywhere in the castle — the old pictures where the rooms don’t quite match up the same, the plaques for the fallen in the entrance hall.
And, to those who are especially perceptive, they notice the gleam of sadness in Hermione and Ronald’s eyes as they stay trained on a distant corner of the Great Hall.
The ghost of the Boy-Who-Lived Harry Potter stands — floats — there silently, watching the two of them with that practiced melancholy all ghosts seem to possess. He doesn’t show every year, but you can generally tell if he did, even if you didn’t see him yourself — if he’s there, Hermione Granger will always cry at the end of the speech.
And once the end comes, everyone claps, even if they weren’t really listening. If they had listened, they’d know the exact reason why atrocities like that should never happen again.
***
A certain Hufflepuff first-year goes to look for Harry Potter’s ghost for the first time.
His hair is bright blue most of the time, much to the chagrin of his grandmother. He can’t blame her much — she grew up in a different time, with very different people, and those kinds of habits must be hard to shake.
It isn’t unheard of for students to seek out the ghosts of the castle. The Fat Friar is jovial and friendly, always willing to help lost or sad students. A Ravenclaw or two have been known to have tea with Rowena Ravenclaw, asking her various questions that only a thousand-year-old woman would know. Even the more empathetic ones will sit with Moaning Myrtle in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor, letting her rant on and on about Olive Hornby.
But nobody really wants to look for Harry Potter. He’s gone crazy in death, they say. Unbalanced.
It’s just a symptom. When you have the rest of eternity laid out in front of you, eleven years suddenly seems like a startlingly short time. His consciousness hasn’t fully settled, McGonagall says. He should remain undisturbed to let him recalibrate.
Teddy doesn’t particularly want to listen to that.
Teddy finds him sitting on the ground, staring out at the Forbidden Forest. It’s avoided even more than before, now — though ghost stories are pretty ineffectual, the rumors of curses have spread throughout the entire school.
“I heard that if you go into the forbidden forest, Harry Potter’s ghost will curse you for going into his territory!”
“But I thought he was one of the good guys… why would he curse anyone?”
“Well… everyone knows that you go all weird when you die. That’s probably what happened.”
Teddy doesn’t believe them. He can’t imagine the boy his grandmother and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron told him about turning around and hurting anyone, not when he died to save everyone.
So he approaches Harry Potter without an ounce of fear, and sits down cross-legged on the grass next to him.
Harry’s hands are twitching, trying to curl around something that isn’t there anymore. He looks up at Teddy’s presence, and Teddy sees his eyes.
Who knew the dead could have eyes that are so alive.
He can see the pain, the grief, the suffering. But worst of all, he can see the resignation — Harry Potter knew he would die that night, and yet he still chose to walk there.
But all those disappear as Harry studies him. His dead-alive eyes rove over his small form, taking in the hair, the robes.
“…Tonks?” His voice is quiet, mournful. It’s easy to sound that way when, to you, people who have been in the ground for years still feel deceivingly warm.
“Yes and no,” Teddy says. “I’m Teddy Lupin. Tonks was my mum.”
Harry just stares, and Teddy has a fleeting moment where he worries he’s overwhelmed the ghost when he sees a spark of recognition in his eyes.
“…Teddy.” He blinks, squints, wipes his cracked glasses on his see-through shirt. “But… you’re a baby?” He doesn’t sound very sure of himself.
“It’s been a while since then. I don’t remember anything. But my Grandma Andy said you’re my godfather, so I wanted to meet you.”
Harry looks back at his twitching hands. “… I remember. I think. Remus came by…” He frowns, and he seems to be a million miles away. “Remus died. He’s in the Great Hall… I think I’m meant to go somewhere…”
He stands, his feet floating a few inches off the ground. He seems ready to walk off, but Teddy gets up and holds his hands out. “You don’t need to go anywhere! It all happened a long time ago. That’s why I’m older, see?”
Harry drops his head into his hands. He grips his own face hard enough to bruise — if ghosts can bruise, anyway. “I’m confused… why is everything so muddled? What day is it?”
“It’s September twentieth, two thousand and nine,” Teddy supplies. “That’s eleven years, isn’t it?”
Harry’s grip loosens a little. “September, two thousand and nine,” he says, breathy and mantra-like. “September, two thousand and nine. Eleven years later.”
Teddy doesn’t say anything, just lets him ground himself in the present. By the time he’s done, his hands are no longer shaking and his eyes are a lot clearer than before.
“Teddy,” he finally says again. His face is unbearably sad, filled with longing. Sure, they may be sat next to each other, but death is a chasm that neither can cross.
“Teddy, I’m so, so sorry.” Ghostly tears fall but never hit the ground.
“It’s okay,” Teddy says. “It’s nice to meet you, at least. Do you wanna hear about Hogwarts?”
Harry blinks, a little thrown off by the abrupt change in subject, but nods, giving the tiniest smile. “That would be nice.”
***
Teddy can mainly be found talking to the Boy-Who-Lived’s ghost on the outside of the Quidditch pitch, the only one known to do so.
At least, until Neville, summoning that bravery he once felt during the Battle, goes looking for his fallen friend.
They chat about anything and everything, only occasionally interrupted by Harry’s memory lapses. Still, it’s a far cry from how he was before — maybe Neville should invite Hermione and Ron over to talk with him. Merlin knows they’d all benefit from it.
As he leaves for the castle, hearing Harry’s cheerful ‘see you later’ come from behind him, Neville smiles. He hasn’t felt this free and untethered in a long while.
***