Chapter Text
There was the unexpected matter of what to do with the body. The morticians had removed certain enchantments that would have prevented it from decaying, after they’d finished their examination (verdict: definitively dead, though altered so many times by various spells, rituals, and potions as to be barely human).
“Continuous stasis fields actually woven into the pattern of the tissues, unlike anything I’ve seen before! Preventing decay after death was just a side effect, really. This would have allowed him to rapidly regenerate wounds, to prevent disease and ageing, who knows what else—St. Mungo’s will kill for this report once we’ve finished the write-up, though I don’t know that any wizard alive could replicate it, truly incredible magic—”
Calchas Blume, the sole Unspeakable assigned to the autopsy team, cut off as he noticed the glares directed at him. “Well, anyway, we’re quite sure we’ve dispelled it now,” he finished with a nervous glance at Kingsley. “He’s already showing signs of decay—proceeding a bit more slowly than usual, mind, but he’ll be naught but bones soon enough.”
The signs of decay were apparent even to Harry. Subtle, but they were there: visible bloat in the neck, a slight greying of that pale white skin. To his relief, most of the body was covered by a set of black robes, rather more plain than anything the Dark Lord had worn in life, and air-freshening charms spared him the smell of death.
Someone had closed his eyes. Harry still remembered his last glimpse of them. He had never really understood what it meant for the light to fade from someone’s eyes until he watched it happen, the rage and pride and fear all gone, only flesh remaining. Now, with his eyes closed, Voldemort looked different. Not at peace, perhaps—that was beyond the ability of his monstrous features to express—but vulnerable, unthreatening. It was inconceivable that he ever could have looked like this in life. Had he ever slept? Had that malevolent presence ever rested for even a moment, dreamed simple and pleasant dreams?
“And it’s safe to handle the body, correct? No curses on those bones?” Kingsley asked.
Blume shook his head. “No postmortem curses detected. Shouldn’t be any trouble to dispose of him, in whatever way you choose.”
Kingsley hummed in thought. “Trouble is, I’m not sure what way that should be,” he said. “I suppose burning would be quickest—”
“No,” said Harry, speaking up for the first time. They all turned to look at him, Kingsley and the two representatives from the autopsy team, as Harry struggled to explain.
The thought of Voldemort’s body being burned brought to mind a vivid image of Quirrell, skin flaking and flesh turned to ash, his death allowing Voldemort’s spirit to flee back into obscurity. The solidity of this body, the undeniable lifelessness of it, comforted Harry. It was proof of his defeat. If they burned him, turning that effectless dead body to smoke, his essence could end up anywhere. That smoke might enter into Harry’s lungs, rise into the heavens forever out of reach, or linger in the air like a ghost, like a dark spirit clinging surreptitiously to life.
“I know he’s dead this time, really dead,” said Harry. “I believe it, because I did it myself. But if we burn him, if there’s no remains to prove it anymore, then it’s too much like before, isn’t it? He should be buried somewhere, with a gravestone, somewhere people can visit and see for themselves he’s truly gone.”
He left out saying it was really him who needed the reassurance of an intact corpse beneath a marker of stone, but from the look in Kingsley’s eyes it must have been obvious enough.
“All right,” the Minister said. “I’ll defer to you in this, Harry. But you and I will have to discuss a location for this burial.”
Several days later, they were no closer to settling the issue. Nobody wanted him in a wizard graveyard, sharing space with those he’d killed. It wasn’t clear where he would have gone, even had it been an option—as it turned out Voldemort had never really settled in any particular place, his attachment to Hogwarts the most persistent throughout his adult life of wandering; obviously he couldn’t be interred there, and nowhere else suggested itself.
Harry considered the graveyard in Little Hangleton. There was something fitting in how insulting Voldemort would have found it, but it seemed wrong to Harry too, the idea of laying down that inhuman body among the Muggle graves with their crosses, beside his father who surely deserved true rest after enduring murder and desecration at the hands of his son. In any case, Harry wasn’t sure he could bring himself to return there, and he knew for certain he would have to be present for the burial. The thought of his great foe being lowered into the earth without him there was inconceivable.
The most promising idea was the Gaunt family tomb, but the place proved to be so heavily cursed that even a team of experts couldn’t manage to approach the entrance.
“Sorry, Harry,” said Bill, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It was a good thought, but with protections like these—they will have been reinforced every generation for centuries, with old magic known only to the family. Even if we spent years working on it, I doubt our best cursebreakers could manage to get inside. You need Gaunt blood, see, and with the last of them gone…”
Harry nodded. He wondered if it even would have been possible for Voldemort to enter—he’d used his father’s bone and Harry’s blood to resurrect, but nothing from his mother’s line. Was he truly a Gaunt anymore? Or did that even matter? He’d obviously still been a Parselmouth…
“Thanks for trying, anyway,” he told Bill. He knew none of his friends really understood his obsession with finding the right burial site for Voldemort, and they were all of them preoccupied by grief. He was relieved to find they supported him nonetheless. Being the one to defeat Voldemort twice had its privileges, and Harry was more grateful than ever for those he loved.
The failure at the Gaunt tomb meant they’d run out of options again. Harry had more meetings with Kingsley, and with a rotating cast of other Ministry officials, all of whom seemed eager to recommend themselves to Kingsley and the Hero of Hogwarts alike, but whose enthusiastic suggestions were mostly useless.
Various forms of cremation were repeatedly offered, despite Harry’s strenuous objections. Other suggestions were similarly unacceptable, for similar reasons. All lacked the certainty of burial; all threatened to let the body slip from Harry’s reach. To leave him in the forest somewhere—to have bits of Voldemort in the bellies of scavengers. To throw him into the ocean—to let him lurk forever in the depths. To simply vanish the body—in addition to being both technically difficult and profoundly taboo to perform on human remains—meant all of Harry’s fears distilled. The man who had gone to such lengths to tie his soul to earth could not be allowed to dissolve into everything.
He ought to be accounted for, and he ought to be contained.
Fortunately the others were willing to listen to Harry. In fact his voice seemed to carry the most authority in the matter of the burial. It was, Harry realised, as if he were the Dark Lord’s next of kin. The thought was as bizarre as it was obviously true: Tom Riddle had no living family. The remaining Death Eaters were trying their utmost to distance themselves from him. Harry’s was the natural voice to speak for him, not only as his killer but also, perhaps, as the one who had known him best.
He developed a probably-unhealthy habit of visiting the body before leaving the Ministry. They were keeping it in a secured room near the entrance of the Department of Mysteries, which Harry was nonetheless allowed to enter without question. It had been only a week since that first meeting, and already the discoloration had spread over Voldemort’s skin, his features blurred somehow or softened. He was protected here from worms and insects, but still his body was breaking, subject in the end to the same processes that governed all life, the mortal destiny he’d fought so hard against.
Harry didn’t know what compelled him to keep looking. Once surely ought to have been enough, with the assurance of experts that his enemy was merely a corpse now, to assuage any residual fears. And Harry didn’t think he was worried about it, really; he’d only had one nightmare since the battle, of the eyes in that greying face opening, bright bloodred and glowing—and that was pretty good considering all he’d been through. He left each visit deeply reassured, and didn’t dwell on it too much after, only the next time he’d find himself descending to the room again, like all that had bound him and Voldemort together could not be so easily untied.
“It’ll get better eventually, Harry,” Hermione said, when he confessed to her. “It’s perfectly normal to want to reassure yourself it’s done. I mean, think about it, your entire life has been dedicated to defeating Voldemort. It’ll take more than a few weeks for it to really sink in he’s gone.”
Harry hoped she was right.
Today he stood watching the body for longer than usual. He’d passed no one on the way in, but evidently the wards had been adjusted to let him enter. He looked down at the man whose unending hunger for power had swallowed Harry’s entire life and simply stared, cataloguing every detail. The unnatural length of his limbs, the smooth and bestial face. Those spider-leg fingers stiff and open, grasping at nothing. What had become of his wand?
His eyes wandered back to his face, his neck. The skin looked bruised, a mottled grey-and-red overtaking the throat. The eyelids sagged, as if the structures beneath had begun to collapse. What did the eyes look like now? Were they still the same vivid red?
The strangest thing of all was that Harry too had once been dead. He’d only been absent for an instant, or so it seemed, but if he hadn’t chosen to come back to the world of the living this is what what would have become of him: a lifeless, swollen thing, no more than meat, so little to mark that this had once been the home of Harry Potter’s spirit. In Harry’s imagination his friends gathered around him, crying, distraught. They’d have buried him in Godric’s Hollow, surely.
But of course if he hadn’t come back, in all likelihood there would have been no such funeral. Voldemort may have been rendered mortal by Harry’s sacrifice, but he was still a formidable combat wizard, and it had taken his own rebounding curse to destroy him in the end. If Harry hadn’t been there to finish him, it was possible they would not have won. His body may have remained with Voldemort, and he doubted the Dark Lord would have given him a proper burial.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
Harry started. He hadn’t heard the door open, so absorbed was he in his thoughts.
“Never another wizard like him,” continued Unspeakable Blume, coming to stand beside him. They both gazed down at the body. “It’s a privilege to see him up close like this, isn’t it? A privilege not many had in life.”
Perhaps sensing Harry’s annoyance, Blume continued. “Now don’t get me wrong, we’re well rid of him. I don’t think he was well cut out for leadership. But you must admit there was none other with his power or intellect. Something more than human, wasn’t he?”
Harry stared down at the mottled throat and sunken eyelids. The traces of death could look only unnatural on he who had once been so violently, relentlessly alive. And yet—“No,” Harry said. “He was human at the end, despite his best efforts. Just as human as I am.”
Of course, there were other bodies left by the war. In the weeks following the Battle of Hogwarts Harry thought of little but corpses and funerals. It was difficult to imagine a time when there would be no more services to attend. Even happy things reminded him of death: he couldn’t hold little Teddy Lupin without recalling how unfair it was for Remus’s richly-deserved happiness to be cut so brutally short, and how very young Tonks had been, not so much older than his own mother. Improbably, Teddy was a cheerful baby; Harry held him through his parents’ funeral once his own speech was over, trying not to wake the sleeping child as his body shook with silent sobs. As soon as he handed him back to Andromeda he missed the weight and warmth of the infant in his arms.
He kept expecting to grow numb, but the procession of the dead was relentless in the pain it evoked. He attended services even for people he hadn’t known very well, though he turned down offers to speak when there were others far better suited to it. His impassioned argument for burying Snape beside Dumbledore at Hogwarts was denied by the newly restored Board of Governors, some of whose children still remembered the horrors of the previous school year under Snape’s leadership. He instead secured a site in a small graveyard in Cokeworth, not far from the professor’s childhood home on Spinner’s End. Harry attempted to reach out to Draco Malfoy and other Slytherins who might have remembered Snape fondly, but none of them wrote back, either preoccupied with their own family tragedies or too nervous to face Harry. In the end he was accompanied only by Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all of whom he knew were only there because he’d asked them to be. None of them had any kind words to offer about Snape, but that was all right. Their silent support meant everything to Harry, that they would make time to be here with him when there was already so much mourning.
They’d buried Fred shortly after the battle, but waited longer to hold a proper memorial service, to allow all the attendees time to bury their own dead. Harry and Hermione were splitting their time between the Burrow and Grimmauld Place, more comfortable surrounded by Weasleys but also wishing to give the family time alone with each other in the wake of their loss. Hermione was making preparations to retrieve her parents, and Harry—well, soon enough Harry would have to figure out what his life looked like without Voldemort. For now, he was grateful for her company; often enough the two of them slept in the drawing room just as they’d done during the war.
“Do you think you’ll stay here?” asked Hermione one such night, as they both lay awake.
“No,” Harry said. He’d tried to imagine it, each day he spent here: could he remain in this house, grow old in it? Surely the memories, of hiding and secrecy and resentment, would fade in time. Yet every time Harry thought he’d convinced himself it could work, they’d return to the Burrow and it was like a great weight coming off his shoulders. “I feel a bit bad about it—I mean, I know Sirius meant for me to have it, only—”
“Don’t,” Hermione said firmly. “He’d want you to be happy, Harry, you must know that.”
“I do,” he agreed. “It’s not just the bad memories, you know. They’ll fade, and there are good ones too. It’s—it’s looking out the window and staring straight into another building. It’s watching people walk by on the pavement and knowing they can’t see me. Being surrounded by people, and being hidden away at the same time. I think I’d like to live out in the country. Somewhere you can see the horizon, somewhere quiet.”
“Then you should do it,” Hermione said. “God knows you deserve some peace and quiet.”
“What about you? Where will you go?”
“I quite like the city, actually,” she said. “Though I’d prefer something rather more modern than this.”
“Don’t let Walburga hear you say that.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I suppose it depends on what Ron wants, as well.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I haven’t really factored Ginny into this, have I?”
“She likes the countryside, too. And Harry, we’re young. Don’t forget our lives are really just starting. You and Ginny have time to plan your life together. There’s no reason you shouldn’t do what would make you happy now.”
“Yeah. It just—doesn’t feel like that, you know? I don’t feel young. I feel—” his voice caught.
“I know,” Hermione said, her hand finding his in the dark. “I know, Harry, but it will get better. It’s got to.”
The Burrow was packed not long after they arrived, nearly as crowded as it had been at Bill and Fleur’s wedding.
Where the burial had been a solemn and private affair, the memorial service was just the opposite: there were snacks and cake and floating lanterns, and a harp playing itself in the corner. “After all, he would have wanted us all to—to be happy,” said Mrs. Weasley, though she immediately collapsed into sobs.
Many of their schoolmates were there, including people he hadn’t seen since the battle or even before. Neville was there, and so were Dean, Seamus, Parvati, all the Gryffindors from Fred and George’s year, and some students he’d hardly even known. Harry was pulled into a series of tight embraces, each seeming to express both sympathy and a sort of shared, silent awe: we survived. Lee Jordan had dark circles under his eyes and looked little better than he had at the burial; he and Angelina Johnson headed off in search of George, who had been keeping to himself off to the side of the gathering.
“How is he?” Hermione asked Ron softly, glancing over at the only remaining Weasley twin. He was smiling slightly, looking over the crowd, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
Ron shrugged. “No worse today than he has been,” he said. “I think all this might actually be helping him. Mum, though…”
There was no need to ask how Ron was; the three of them had spent enough time together to know. “Come on,” said Ron, throwing an arm each around Harry and Hermione. “Ginny’s outside, it’s a bit quieter out there.” He led them out into the garden, which was dotted with small tables for guests to gather. Its centre was dominated by a larger table covered in Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes products and various framed photographs of Fred. The most prominent among them showed him arm in arm with George; the latter whispered something in his ear which caused Fred to double over in laughter, his eyes still shining as he straightened back up again to beam at the camera. Harry felt tears in his own eyes as he watched the photograph play on a loop. It still seemed unbelievable that he would never, ever hear Fred laugh again.
“When does it get better?” Ron asked in a small voice, seeming to mirror Harry’s thoughts.
“It doesn’t, really,” Harry said. “Not completely. You just sort of… go on anyway.”
Ron squeezed his shoulder in return.
“Harry!”
Ginny stepped out of a shadow at the far end of the garden and threw her arms around him; Harry embraced her one-armed without letting go of Ron. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she murmured into his neck. For only a second Harry felt his body relax as he breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.
She greeted Hermione as she pulled back, and then grabbed Harry’s hand and led them all to a table in the shade of an old oak tree. “I’ve just been hiding out here. I know everyone means well, I’m glad they’re here obviously, but it’s all a bit much.” She turned to Ron. “Has Mum got a hold of herself yet?”
“No, still the same when I left. She’s been going back and forth all day,” he explained to Harry and Hermione. “She’ll try to talk to people, then have to go upstairs and cry for a bit, then come back down…”
“Well there’s no shame in crying, she’s a grieving mother!” said Hermione.
“That’s what I said, but she feels like she’ll ruin the mood by being sad in front of everyone.”
“Maybe we ought to bring her up some tea or something,” said Hermione, glancing back at the house.
“Later,” Ron said. “For now, you two just breathe in the fresh air and enjoy being out of miserable old Grimmauld Place.”
Harry was. He was watching white clouds drift by behind the tree-tops in the orchard, thinking of summer Quidditch games played among them in another lifetime. He wasn’t quite managing to be happy, despite what Fred might have wanted, but everything felt more okay out here, with the sound of softly rustling leaves and the cooing of hens in the background, a clear line of sight straight to the top of the sky.
“We talked about playing a game tonight,” Ginny said, following his gaze. “Dunno if it’ll happen, though, depends on what the mood’s like. You’ll stay the night, won’t you?”
“I can’t,” said Harry, grimacing. “Got another meeting with Kingsley right after.”
“To talk about the body? You still haven’t decided on anything?”
“Maybe the Ministry should just keep it at this point,” said Ron. “Or can’t they, you know, put him up in a museum?”
“It’s been suggested, believe me. But he’s already decaying, and they’d have to try to reverse it to make it fit for display, which is the last thing I want. Keeping him like a mummy for people to gawk at…”
“I still think he ought to be turned into hippogriff feed,” said Ron.
“It’d make the hippogriffs sick,” Ginny pointed out.
“Harry… I don’t like that you’re taking all this responsibility on yourself,” said Hermione. “Your part in this should be done.” From the looks on the others’ faces, they agreed with her.
“I know you don’t understand,” Harry said. “But look, it’s like—it’s the last bit of closure I need, all right? Once he’s buried, then I can start to move on.”
Hermione looked a bit doubtful, but she nodded.
“Well,” said Ron after a moment. “I haven’t actually eaten, so I’ll have to brave the crowd again. Anyone else?”
“I’ll come,” said Harry, who more than anything felt he needed a drink. “Want anything, Ginny?”
She shook her head. “Don’t think I could. Oh, but if you see Luna, she’s welcome out here with us.”
“Got it.” The two of them headed back towards the house, weaving through the crowd that had started to spill outside. They stopped briefly to say hello to Bill and Fleur, whom Harry had missed earlier. Bill must have been hurting as much as any of them, but he looked stoic as ever, his scarred face set in an expression of grim determination.
They passed other faces, familiar and not. A man Harry thought he might have seen at the wedding was holding a baby, and he abruptly missed Teddy.
They continued toward the back of the kitchen where the food and drinks were laid out. Harry had finally managed to locate a large bottle of firewhiskey and was pouring himself a glass when he heard Luna’s voice carry from somewhere behind him.
“Yes, people are already starting to come back,” she was saying. “The Fawcetts just moved back in, they were in hiding in France, you know. And Ben Bowman died, of course, but his wife’s still around. She’s always been very nice to me.”
“Oh yes, I remember meeting her years ago,” Arthur Weasley’s voice replied. “And the Flamel house—still empty?”
“Yes,” Luna said. “It’s sad, really, it’s a lovely home, but of course they died there, and they lived a very long time. People are strange about that sort of thing.”
“It’s only natural,” Arthur said. “But it’s a shame for the house to stay empty, it’d be good to have some new blood in this stretch of Devon. A young family, maybe… I still remember when Molly and I moved out here, it was love at first sight.”
Drink in hand, Harry followed the sound of their voices. Arthur turned to him as he approached.
He looked tired, sort of dazed, yet managed to give Harry a small but sincere smile. “Harry! I’m very glad you’re here,” he said, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “Fred would have wanted the whole family.”
His throat suddenly tight, Harry simply nodded.
“Well,” Mr. Weasley continued, “I ought to go check on Molly. Do try your best to enjoy yourselves, you two. Good to see you again, Luna.”
“You too, Mr. Weasley.” He headed off.
“Hello, Harry,” said Luna. “How’s your soul faring?”
Harry, who had just taken a large sip of firewhiskey, barely managed to avoid spitting it out again. “My what?”
“Your soul,” she repeated in her placid way. “I thought you might be feeling a bit unbalanced, now that Voldemort’s gone.”
Harry stared at her. There was no way Luna knew anything about the Horcruxes, right? He couldn’t see how she could have pieced the truth together from what little he’d said publicly, not without completely uncharacteristic knowledge of the Dark Arts.
“I—why would you think that?”
Luna shrugged. “You’ve just seemed a bit different, ever since the battle. I suppose coming back from the dead will do that to a person.”
Harry glanced around. There were enough people talking around them that it was unlikely anyone had heard Luna, or taken her seriously if they did, but all the same…
“Let’s go outside,” he said. “Ginny wanted to see you.”
“All right.” She followed him back to the garden.
“I don’t know how you know these things,” he said half under his breath.
“It’s not so hard if you pay attention,” she replied.
They stopped in front of the photographs so Luna could look at them. “Oh look, this is a nice one, it’s from a DA meeting.” She pointed out a smaller picture Harry hadn’t noticed, of an unusually serious Fred performing the wand motion for the Patronus charm. Just at the end, a silver gleam of light began to shine from his wand-tip, Fred wearing a slight smile, the serene happiness of a memory that could endure any darkness.
“Oh, Merlin, Colin must’ve taken that one,” Harry realised aloud. Of course, he’d specifically told Colin not to record their illegal meetings, but he had to admit in retrospect it was nice to have physical proof of them, those moments of light in such a miserable year. And proof that Colin himself had existed, had developed quite an eye for composition before his life too had been snuffed out.
Before his thoughts could spiral further, they stepped away from the photographs and continued toward their friends.
“It’s fitting to honour him this way, don’t you think?” Luna said, gesturing at the rather forced cheerfulness of the gathering. “Of course it’s sad when someone dies, but we should celebrate their life as well, especially when you consider no one’s really gone forever.”
“I can think of someone who’d better be,” Harry muttered. He half expected her to make some uncanny statement to the contrary, and was only somewhat relieved when she merely smiled in reply.
He managed to put the discomfort out of his mind easily enough. The subject changed once they rejoined the others, with Luna soon launching into an explanation of some new cryptozoological finding to an amused Ron and Ginny while Hermione struggled not to interject. It was all disorientingly normal; they might all be back at Hogwarts, sitting together at the library or chatting in the corridor between classes. Harry sipped his firewhiskey, allowing the buzz of the alcohol and comforting presence of his friends to calm his thoughts
This was it, he thought; this could be the rest of his life if he let it. The only challenge would be allowing himself to believe everything was all right.
That is, once he took care of the last obstacle in his way.
“First order of business,” said Kingsley. “We’ve concluded our search of Malfoy Manor. We now believe we’ve confiscated everything belonging to Voldemort. Most of it remains in the Ministry’s keeping for either further study or quarantine; as you can imagine, many of these items are very Dark. However, it was decided that this should go to you.”
He produced a familiar wand and handed it to Harry.
Harry and the wand greeted each other with similar feelings of ambivalence. At the first touch there was an undeniable recognition; sparks fell from the tip, and Harry felt in his core the sort of compatibility he had never experienced with any but his own wand. At the same time, the wand had a distinct wariness about it, knowing he was the wizard who had given it so much trouble, knowing he’d slain its master. And for his part, Harry would never be able to forget that this was the weapon that killed his parents.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” Harry asked, overwhelmed by the bizarre mix of familiarity and revulsion.
Kingsley shrugged. “Anything you like,” he said. “Since you defeated him, by custom it ought to pass to you. But you’re certainly under no obligation to keep it. I would understand perfectly well if you preferred to destroy it instead.”
In spite of everything, Harry wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do that. The thought of the wand snapping was sickening, somehow, too much in the end like breaking his own. He put it into his robe pocket for now; he could decide what to do with it later.
“Next order of business?” he prompted.
Kingsley sighed.
“Look, Harry,” he said. “I know burying Voldemort is important to you. But it’s been nearly a month now and we’re no closer to finding a suitable site. It might be time to consider other options.”
“Other options?”
“Harry, I’ve been willing to indulge you because without you, there would be no body in the first place. None of us can ever thank you enough for that. But, I wonder… That is to say, defeating Voldemort has been your life’s goal far for too long, since you were far too young. While I understand your desire for a suitably conclusive ending, I wonder if achieving it would truly ease your fears.”
“It would,” Harry said coldly. He’d heard this from Hermione already, and didn’t need to hear it from Kingsley now. Neither of them could ever understand. “And you said you would defer to me.”
“I did,” the Minister agreed mildly. “But Harry, understand that I have other responsibilities. The Ministry cannot hold onto this corpse indefinitely. The rest of our world, too, must find a way to move on.”
“A little more time,” Harry tried.
Kingsley sighed again, but eventually nodded. “One more week. That’s the best I can offer you.”
It wasn’t until he was staring at the body again that he remembered the wand in his pocket.
“Right,” he said, drawing it out once more with a grimace. He still couldn’t decide whether it felt good or bad to hold it—and the pleasant feelings were far more disturbing. “I have something for you,” he told the corpse.
Slowly, tentatively, he lowered it down into the featureless black box which served as a makeshift coffin, toward that outstretched hand. As far as Harry knew there were no charms or protections in place to prevent him from doing this, but as he’d never attempted to touch the body he could not be certain.
But nothing happened, and so he gradually lowered his hand further until the wand touched the white flesh, and very carefully—trying not to come into direct contact with his skin—Harry settled it into the groove of his palm.
The fingers twitched.
Harry leapt back instantly, unable to suppress a cry of surprise. He waited, his own wand drawn, for any other sign of movement or danger—but there was nothing for first five seconds, then ten… thirty… Eventually he began to creep closer to the box again, ready to strike if anything should be amiss—
But all was still, exactly as it had been before. Was it, Harry wondered, merely an effect of the wand that had moved those apparently-lifeless fingers? Had it even happened at all? After a few very tense minutes of Harry watching, wand drawn, searching for even the slightest hint of movement, he was no longer confident he hadn’t simply imagined the whole thing.
But neither could he bring himself to leave, after witnessing such a premonition of his worst fear. He might have alerted someone at the Ministry, but after all he had not gotten permission to return the wand in the first place, and he didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardise his fast-dwindling claim on the body.
In the end he steeled himself—just a second, that’s all it would take—and placed his fingers beneath the jaw, just where the pulse would be if he were somehow living.
But the flesh was cool and dead as stone, in sharp contrast to Harry’s own rapidly beating heart. When he withdrew his hand the sweat from his fingers left a visible sheen upon the Dark Lord’s throat.
He left the room with his heart still pounding, his hands shaking, and rather than exit the Ministry he took the lift straight up to the post room where the owls were kept. Harry had a rather urgent inquiry to make about a certain house.