Chapter Text
[If I Could Become Light]
“What does it mean to be a Savior?”
Harry disliked the title The Boy Who Lived, and he disliked the title Savior just as much. Either way, they were labels people had pinned on him since before he understood anything—either when he knew nothing at all, or when they needed him to fulfill a prophesied mission of their own.
And yet, Harry could not truly cast those titles aside.
…
Two years after the war ended. After graduating from Hogwarts, Harry turned down the offer to become an Auror-in-training. The decision set off endless whispers among his Gryffindor friends, his teachers, and the wizarding press alike. Ron, who had wanted to become an Auror with him, asked a few tentative questions too—then fell silent after only a handful of words.
Ron and Hermione had been his closest friends for so long. After everything they had been through, they noticed something was wrong with him far quicker than anyone else. But Harry never spoke of it, and after two full years of his stubborn silence, they stopped asking. Instead, the two of them grew more protective, watching him closely whenever he showed the slightest odd behavior—as if afraid he might do something reckless the moment they looked away.
It was also during this period that his relationship with Ginny fell apart.
Harry and Ginny had broken up temporarily because of the war. So when the fighting ended and the smoke finally settled, Ginny tried again and again to mend what they had lost.
Faced with the burning intensity in her eyes, Harry finally chose to be honest, once and for all.
“Ginny, I can’t continue this relationship anymore. And I don’t want to hold you back. I’m sorry.”
The answer was swiftly met with a punch, angry tears, and days of icy silence.
“Aren’t you mad at me?” Harry asked Ron.
“A little. But not exactly the way you think,” Ron replied. “We’re all adults now. At least you were honest with her. It’s just that… well, everyone’s bound to wonder…”
“Why I ended things with Ginny?” Harry finished for him. “Because…”
“I don’t have the heart for romance right now. And if I stayed with her out of guilt toward your family, that’d be even worse. Letting Ginny be angry at me for a while is probably for the best.”
“She won’t stay mad forever,” Ron shook his head. “No matter what happens between you two, my family is still your family.”
…
Ginny really didn’t stay angry at Harry for long. About a month or two after the breakup, she was still awkward around him, but she no longer made snide remarks or avoided him.
Harry, however, withdrew further and further into himself. After graduation, refusing the Auror position became the final straw that pushed Hermione to corner him into a private conversation with her and Ron.
“Harry, I’m not trying to restrict your freedom to choose a career,” Hermione said. “I was just… surprised. Do you have any plans?”
“Plans…” Harry averted his eyes from her sharp gaze. “I just want to go somewhere, clear my head first.”
Money wasn’t a problem for him anymore. But even thinking about where that money came from made Harry want to slam shut his thoughts and fall asleep.
“But Teddy still needs me, so I won’t go far. And I promised Kreacher I’d help fix up Grimmauld Place…”
“And after that?” Hermione tilted her head.
“I’ll reconsider the Auror thing,” Harry replied obediently.
“So you want to take a year or two to calm down before going back to work, right?” Ron summarized, still chewing on a tart. “We were just worried you’d pack up and disappear somewhere, given how things are.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You’re a terrible actor,” Ron grumbled.
“In any case,” Hermione said gently, “if something’s wrong, tell us. You have us, you know. We didn’t follow you everywhere for years just to be decorative.”
“I know, Hermione. I promise.”
…
What does it mean to be a Savior?
What does it mean to be Harry Potter?
Having faced death twice and emerged victorious, Harry went from the exhilaration of it’s finally over to the bitter aftertaste of the postwar years. When the fervor and rage faded, what followed was a stillness steeped in loss. It once made him sob uncontrollably, then tormented him with endless nightmares, and finally settled into a nameless sense of dislocation.
The world was brushing off the ashes of yesterday and moving on. Yet there were many people like him, seemingly unable to step out of the mire of the past.
Thank-you letters addressed to Harry Potter piled up in one corner of the house. He gathered them all and carefully stored them in a drawer in his room. Number 12 Grimmauld Place was much cleaner now, but the lingering dampness and the way daylight never quite reached the windows still cast a gloomy, oppressive pall.
A full week had passed since he officially moved in. And yet, day after day, he accomplished nothing of note. He woke up, did a bit of housework, ate breakfast, then sprawled on the sofa reading until noon. He wore only oversized, faded clothes, as if he were still living through the Dursley years. Without the childhood humiliation, the loose clothes now made him feel less suffocated; his throat no longer tightened whenever he shifted beneath the blankets.
That morning, while trimming the garden, he encountered a snake.
With the Horcrux gone, Harry could no longer speak Parseltongue. Unsure whether the snake was venomous, he used a few spells to drive it away.
“Its eyes are a bit silvery—pretty rare,” Harry remarked.
The feeling was oddly reminiscent of someone he knew. Of course, the shade was still different.
…
During their repeated seventh year, Harry and Draco crossed paths from time to time. Harry had testified for Draco and his family at the trial—not out of concern, but because he was asked to, and because he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. Besides, he had only spoken the truth.
The court ruled that Draco’s charges did not stand, though he remained under supervision. He returned to Hogwarts to complete his education.
Plagued by cursed dreams, Harry often wandered the grounds at night beneath his Invisibility Cloak. That was how he knew where certain people would be at midnight—like Draco Malfoy sneaking into the Astronomy Tower.
It was only a momentary impulse. Seeing someone mired in the same kind of wounds, whether deeper or shallower, Harry would often sit somewhere nearby. As if they were gazing at the same sky—and if neither of them could escape the past just yet, then at least, for a moment, they could understand each other.
Or perhaps it was merely an extension of seven years of rivalry and obsession—who could say? These were nothing more than Harry’s idle thoughts.
Time after time, he would drift off to sleep knowing someone else was awake nearby. The nights then felt endlessly long, as though winter had arrived, unmoving in its icy hue.
And then, Draco Malfoy found the light.
…
Draco was about to be married—to the light of his life. Astoria. Harry knew her name. They had gotten engaged right after graduation, so it was likely they would marry within a year.
Just a passing breeze to his ears, Harry thought, trimming the bushes where the snake had once hidden.
She was a good woman—kind, gentle, a rare young lady with no prejudice against blood status. Perfectly suited to be a Malfoy daughter-in-law. Draco loved her, and changed because of her.
It was a good thing. After all, once graduation was over, aside from that news, Harry had heard nothing more about him.
Time continued to flow. Malfoy had managed to move on.
And Harry was still here.
As he stood there in a daze, he heard the flutter of wings. He looked up instinctively and saw feathers white as snow.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t an owl—it was a dove.
As it swooped down nearby, Harry held out his arm. The bird landed there at once, its small head bobbing comically.
“Seriously? Do you have any survival instincts at all?” Harry laughed. He raised a finger, and the dove pecked at it a few times. He then offered it a piece of crust from the sandwich resting on the garden table.
“If that snake were still here and you behaved like this, you’d have been eaten.”
Watching the dove nibble the bread, Harry suddenly remembered something Hermione had said once, though he couldn’t recall when.
“Doves aren’t very afraid of people because they were once domesticated to carry messages. Even after humans no longer needed them, that friendliness stayed in their blood.”
So that’s how it is?
You’re just like me.
Time forgets those who cannot keep pace with it.
Even someone like him had managed to move on.
The white feathers on the dove’s wings shimmered in the sunlight. Harry watched its every small movement, whispering softly:
“Just like light.”
…
Last week, Aunt Andromeda brought Teddy to visit Harry. The child clung to Harry the entire time, toddling unsteadily toward him, his curly hair constantly shifting colors. Teddy’s little fingers gripped Harry’s tightly, and when Harry held the boy in his arms and soothed him to sleep, the warmth of the child’s skin made Harry break down in tears.
Startled by him, Teddy stammered and clumsily wiped at Harry’s face, then ended up crying along with him, leaving Aunt Andromeda flustered. She went from comforting one child to comforting two, until Harry finally calmed down and gently coaxed Teddy back to sleep himself.
Seeing that Harry didn’t want to talk, she didn’t press him. Before leaving with Teddy, she only patted his shoulder lightly.
The weeks passed like this—dull and tasteless. Harry didn’t want to go out, but he also didn’t want to keep drifting in and out of sleep, day after day. He began pulling out children’s books that were meant for Teddy and reading them to pass the time. Then one day, he hastily wrote a children’s story of his own, based on the few scraps he remembered hearing when he was young.
It was about a dove searching for a place to build its nest.
Teddy seemed to enjoy listening to these little stories, even though Harry’s wording was clumsy at first. Gradually, he grew more experienced, until the white bird’s journey to find a nest stretched on—right up to the day Teddy put on his Hogwarts uniform.
Harry stood frozen on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, his eyelashes fluttering slightly, his view through the thick glass hazy, as if shrouded in mist.
Had it really been eleven years since the war ended?
So it had been that long.
And he had been breaking his promise for just as long—never once in all those years stepping into the Ministry of Magic. Only now did he realize that the looks Hermione and Ron had given him back then had been sorrow.
That collection of stories of his—Hermione had once asked him to publish it at the same time as her own debut book. The modest royalties from it became his livelihood, while the white dove in his tale had spent more than nine years still unable to finish its endless journey.
Harry held Teddy dazedly, stroking the boy’s hair, then watched that small figure slowly fade from view as he boarded the Hogwarts Express.
“Harry,” Hermione called. “Your hair’s long again. Want to cut it?”
Harry didn’t answer. Ron, standing beside her, shrugged and sighed. Helpless, Hermione stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulders, and smiled.
“If you don’t want to cut it, then I’ll braid it for you.”
…
The press seemed to have grown tired of waiting for Harry Potter to return. The questions surrounding him gradually disappeared from the pages of the Daily Prophet, and Harry was truly grateful that no one dared break into where he lived.
The dove from years ago landed on Harry’s hand again this month. It had built a nest on the eaves near his bedroom window. Each time it flew off, it would be gone for a long while, but it always returned to the same spot—sometimes even at the same time each month.
Harry fed it a few pieces of soft bread again. After stuffing itself full, it tucked its head into its body, carefully preened its feathers, and fell asleep.
“You really do live an easy life,” Harry sighed. “You fly away whenever you want, come back once you’re satisfied, never worry about getting lost—and you even manage to find someone who feeds you for free.”
He stroked the feathers on its head. They were fluffy now, no longer as smooth as before. Sometimes it even brought back bits of trash to its nest, and Harry had to replace them with branches.
“You’re old now,” Harry murmured.
“I suppose I am too. My godson started school this year.”
The dove cooed a few times as if replying to him, making Harry chuckle.
“You don’t like being called old, do you? Fair enough.”
“You know what? I saw someone familiar today. He was with a little boy, about two or three years old, telling him that in eight years, he’d be able to board that train.”
“He looked very happy.”
Harry carried on a one-sided conversation with the old dove, answering himself, trying to ease the strange emptiness spreading through his chest.
“Tell me—after all this time, why is it that I only need to hear a single sentence to know it was him?”
…
Fairy tales will forever remain fairy tales.
In Harry’s story, that dove could keep flying for eleven long years, its journey to find a nest stretching on endlessly.
But this morning, when Harry woke from his restless dreams, the dove by the windowsill had fallen asleep forever, in a gentle dream.
Hermione said that its average lifespan was only three to seven years, and that it had lived longer only because Harry had cared for it. But Harry had never kept it in a cage—it still flew freely beneath the open sky. That was why it hadn’t lived to fifteen, let alone twenty, like some birds kept indoors.
Harry quietly put on his old coat and lifted its limp body with both hands. Like that, he walked slowly to an old courtyard somewhere near Diagon Alley.
Beyond this place, the world bustled with noise; here, only faint echoes of everyday sounds could be heard. A flock of doves often gathered here—at least, that’s how Harry remembered it.
He laid the white bird on his lap and sat motionless on the stone bench, like a statue. By the time he opened his eyes again, the sun was already close to setting. Hunger protested with a sharp ache in his stomach, but to Harry it felt no more than a needle prick in the skin.
“Dad, if we buy flowers, will Mum feel happier and get better?” a young voice asked somewhere in the distance.
“She will be very happy, Scorpius,” the man replied.
Harry knew whose voice that was. But he didn’t turn around, not like he had on the platform. He only let himself feel the soft white feathers bristling beneath his fingers, while his eyes saw nothing but snowy white.
“Mister, are you okay?” the childish voice sounded again, buzzing in Harry’s ears. He wanted to move, but his entire body was stiff and weak.
“…Potter?”
He didn’t respond to his own name. Right now, he didn’t want to hear it. His hand kept gently stroking the bird’s wing, until even his fingers went numb.
“Potter!”
Like a night so cold it pierced the heart, he was back in the Astronomy Tower of that year.
Only today, neither moon nor stars held any light.
…
Harry wished he did not have to open his eyes again.
Light was beautiful, but sometimes it was too blinding, too harsh. The white of the ceiling irritated him, yet no complaint could make its way out of his throat.
He had to be at St. Mungo’s.
After hearing the doctors’ instructions and being allowed to leave—since he was merely exhausted—Harry finally managed to stumble back home in a daze. Strangely, there were traces of magic right outside his gate. When he sluggishly dispelled the charm, a small box appeared, accompanied by a letter.
“The ashes of a dove.”
The neat handwriting, together with the memory of the previous afternoon, told Harry at once who the sender was.
Carrying the box, Harry walked into the back garden, the place where he had first met that dove. He carefully dug a shallow patch of earth, then buried the box deep beneath the blooming lily bush.
All living beings—whether of the sky or the sea—return to the earth in death.
One day, he too would be like it, sleeping an eternal sleep beneath a sunlit windowsill. Leisurely, uneventful—yet an indulgence far too extravagant for someone bearing his name.
“Sleep well, sleep well, little dove.”
A lifetime spent as a companion of the wind and the vast, empty heights. At the end, falling with thinning feathers, sinking into a deep sleep in Death’s embrace.
It had been a rather good life, hadn’t it?
…
Hermione and Ron’s youngest daughter had grown up; today was her first day at school. Naturally, Harry accompanied his two closest friends to see her off. Compared to Teddy or Hugo, she was like a miniature version of her mother—her temperament alone was enough to put people at ease.
Nineteen years had passed since the war ended. Whenever Harry became aware of time, he always returned to this place—Platform Nine and Three-Quarters—where everything had begun for him, and where he had once stood between life and death.
Before boarding, Rose looked up at Harry with a bright smile and asked, “Uncle Harry, last time you told us about the part where the little dove flew to a waterfall. I want to hear more—when does the dove finally find its home?”
Harry blinked, his voice catching. “When all of you have grown up.”
“Oh, that’s such a long time,” Rose shook her head.
Just as Harry was about to say something more, he spotted a familiar head of platinum-blond hair ahead. Beside him was a woman with beautifully curled chestnut hair, holding a little boy—a mirror image of his father in appearance, but with a gentle expression inherited from his mother.
All the words Harry wanted to say turned into silent syllables.
Inside this bustling station, could one really hear the beating of wings? Or had his hearing simply grown dull?
Before Harry could turn away, a pair of gray-blue eyes looked straight toward him. In the awkward air between them, Harry gave a slight nod and turned aside, avoiding whatever emotions might surface on the other man’s face.
He quietly smoothed Rose’s unruly red hair, a smile that never quite reached his eyes.
“Come on, little flower. Uncle will keep writing the story of that dove.”
Those wings would keep flying—until the day Harry could no longer hold a pen.
…
Astoria Malfoy passed away two years later, in the summer of 2019.
Harry learned of it only through a newspaper article, accompanied by a blurred photograph of a gaunt Draco Malfoy.
The bouquet that the innocent little boy had once wanted to give his mother could never cure something like a blood curse. Harry remembered a spring afternoon ten years ago, and how the wind outside had sounded like someone sighing.
Time had always been this cruel.
Harry quietly stepped into the garden where the little dove was buried, picked a few white lilies, carefully wrapped them in silver paper, and sent them to where they needed to go.
…
When I look at the gray dawn sky this morning, I wish I could become light.
To go everywhere, to find meaning in my existence itself. To illuminate someone—perhaps even myself. Sunlight by day, lamplight with moon and stars by night. So that I can tell myself that I will not be alone.
…
The next time Harry saw Draco Malfoy was four years later.
The years kept slipping by in numbers Harry could never quite grasp. He was merely walking along a road evenly lit by streetlamps, until that familiar tone called out a familiar name.
“Potter.”
This time, Harry turned around. Draco was much thinner than Harry remembered—though his memories had grown hazy, despite his age not yet being so advanced. He even had a beard, something Harry himself did not—Hermione and Ginny always shaved him clean whenever they visited during the week, then inevitably felt the urge to braid his hair.
“Malfoy,” Harry replied. When no one spoke for a moment, he awkwardly added, “It’s been a long time.”
“You still remember how many years it’s been?” Draco raised an eyebrow. Without waiting for an answer, he gave a self-mocking smile and sat down on a stone bench by the road.
“How’s your son?” Harry asked.
Draco sighed. “He’s doing… all right. The boy doesn’t seem to be treated very well at school, because of some unfounded rumors.”
“Oh, that’s my area of expertise,” Harry muttered, vaguely recalling the helplessness of his fifth year at Hogwarts.
Draco, of course, knew exactly what Harry meant. He pressed his lips together in silence—he himself had once been part of that cruelty.
“I’m quite surprised that Saint Potter, after all these years, hasn’t bothered to appear before the masses to receive their worship.”
“Is that so?” Harry replied flatly.
“Tch.” Draco clicked his tongue. “You’ve changed. You’re not the same person anymore.”
“You’ve changed too—not the same person either,” Harry shot back.
The road that evening was unusually quiet. Harry thought that trading barbs like this wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Your dove?”
“I buried it.”
When Draco didn’t say anything, Harry continued, “It spent its whole life flying. Landing like that isn’t so bad. When it slept, it liked to curl up against something, rather than drift aimlessly somewhere.”
“And you?” Draco asked.
“Me? What’s new about me?”
“Right. Actually, I misspoke earlier. Saint Potter hasn’t changed all that much.”
The man rose from the stone bench and looked up at the starry sky.
“Thank you—for the flowers,” he said.
“Thank you—for not letting me sleep on the ground,” Harry replied, facing him with a slight bow of his head.
“It’s late, Malfoy. Until we meet again.”
…
“I know you’re the author of that endlessly long children’s story.”
Harry didn’t know how much time had passed before he ran into Draco again, this time while buying sweets at Honeydukes.
“How do you know?” Harry asked.
“The daughter of Weasley and Granger has become friends with my son. She told Scorpius that Harry Potter wrote that story. And besides, the protagonist is a dove.”
“Oh.”
Irritated by Harry’s lukewarm reaction, Draco rolled his eyes and got straight to the point. “While I wouldn’t dare critique the literary work of Saint Potter, my son has been ‘researching’ one question for ages, so I’ll ask the author himself: why can this story go on for as long as twenty-three years?”
Harry stopped walking. He didn’t answer at once, his fingers tightening around the paper bag of sugar-scented sweets as he murmured,
“Because it knows how to love.”
“Knows how to love?” Draco frowned.
“That dove encounters a snowstorm—if you’ve ever read the early chapters—right after surviving a violent gale. But it falls straight into the eye of the blizzard, and so it comes to love the cold wind.”
“It wants to confess to the snowstorm, but the storm cannot sing as it does, and it cannot raise a wind of its own. So it doesn’t confess—it simply keeps flying with the storm. Even when the blizzard dissipates and becomes an ordinary spring breeze when spring arrives, it continues to fly alongside that wind. Because it once built its nest in the eye of the storm, and doves always return home. It will never stop flying, until the day it dies.”
Harry’s answer left Draco speechless.
“That ending doesn’t belong in a children’s story.”
“It’s a fairy tale,” Harry glanced at him. “You just never read Andersen’s fairy tales. A Muggle writer—so of course you wouldn’t.”
“I can’t believe you came up with a story about a bird falling in love with a storm.”
“Yeah,” the dark-haired man shrugged. “Even I didn’t think I’d end up writing a plot like that.”
“Scorpius is going to be disappointed,” Draco sighed. “Or he’ll analyze it in my ear for another day. But a storm that can love?”
“It can,” Harry said. “It loves spring—that’s why it dissolves into a spring breeze. Even if spring fades, it will never again become a snowstorm.”
Harry’s steps resumed, quickening along the gravel path.
“So the dove is bound to fall. It isn’t the wind—it can’t fly forever, no matter how much it wants to. At the very least… its life can still be considered worth living, don’t you think?”
Draco seemed to hear something hidden within Harry’s words. Seeing that, Harry lengthened his stride, then turned back and nodded to him.
“That’s enough for now. Don’t tell your son too much. When this story ends, won’t there be an answer? And by then, the children will all be old enough to understand it—and to decide for themselves the ending of that dove. And to define for themselves…
Whether that dove lived a life without regret.”
…
In the year Rose and Scorpius graduated, Draco found Harry lying beneath a tree on the school grounds, while the other parents were still talking with their children in the Entrance Hall. He walked over slowly and sat down beside him. On Harry’s lap lay a sheet of parchment and a quill, dense with lines of writing, and a question mark beside the two words: The End.
Had the white dove already fallen? Draco wondered, lifting his gaze to the sleeping face beside him. He had noticed before—this man’s breathing was so faint it sometimes gave the illusion that he had returned to somewhere far away.
Since that conversation, they had met countless times, and the long story had gradually drawn toward its conclusion.
But Draco didn’t want that little bird’s wings to break.
“Potter, why doesn’t the dove stop flying if it knows the storm doesn’t love it?”
“Because it’s instinct. And also because a dove, by nature, is a sacrificial being. It doesn’t seek its own happiness as much as the happiness of what it loves.”
“But Harry, before you wish for someone else’s happiness, you have to wish for your own.”
Draco murmured this, recalling the words his son had once whispered to him in the Great Hall.
“So surely, that snowstorm wants the dove that once nested in its eye to be happy.”
“Look, Harry—the wind has come back to lift the dove with broken wings again. So…”
His hand laced with Harry's frail, bony fingers.
One morning, when you open your eyes, it will surely be light.
End.