for @drarrymicrofic prompt: reflection
“Sweetheart,” she says. She looks really young. She looks like she’s just barely out of Hogwarts. Harry supposes, like a stone in his stomach, like the Stone in his hand, that she was just barely out of Hogwarts. Her hand is reaching out, the pine needles covering the forest floor just visible through it. “My darling boy.”
Harry swallows, stomach bile at the back of his throat. He swallows again. His dad is there, standing just behind her. The eerie lights of the forest reflect back across his glasses, obscuring his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, a bit mournful. Harry’s almost glad. He somehow can’t imagine James saying anything except those awful words, his last– take Harry and go–
“Does it hurt?” The question falls out of his mouth, a plea, laid at the feet of the altar of all those people that loved him. “Dying?”
Sirius shakes his head. “Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
Remus’ shade looks at him, a frown pinching at his brow. Harry feels sick, so sick. Once, when he was small, he had a fever so high he felt like he was floating. He presses his hand to his forehead, and his eyes fill with tears– it should be his mum doing that. It should be, and she’s right there, and–
“Sweetheart,” she says. “My darling boy.”
Harry startles, suddenly. He takes a step back. Looks at his dad, who looks back, mournful. He decides to try something.
Sirius’ mouth wobbles, a little bit. His eyes flash, greyer than they ever were when he was alive. Harry had forgotten how deep-set they were, the rounds of his eyeballs protruding out, almost grotesquely.
“Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
He goes, alone, to face Voldemort. It’s always just been Voldemort and Harry, in the end. In the last moments, Harry’s thoughts turn not to Ginny, but to Malfoy. The cedar-sweat-terror smell of him; his too hot body pressed against Harry’s back on the broom, close enough for Harry to feel his pulse; the frantic, darting look in his eyes as Harry had left him, crumpled on the stones of the seventh floor corridor. Harry, in this brief second before death, can’t stop thinking about Malfoy’s heaving chest— so real, so human, so alive.
The green light shoots towards him, and he wonders why he ever wanted the Stone at all.
