Chapter Text
Voldemort falls to the ground with a dull thud. He stares into his lifeless red eyes, numbly surprised at the simplicity of it.
He is not allowed to absorb the magnitude of what he has done. After a scant moment of silence, the screaming, cheering, crying, exhortations begin. The crowd surges forward, crushing him, desperate to touch the boy they have by turns venerated and vilified.
The two wands he holds shake in his hands. Ron and Hermione are on either side of him, grabbing him, shouting at him. He passes from hand to hand, hugged, kissed, cried on, praised.
It goes on for hours.
The sun rises blinding and bloody over the school which has always been a battlefield for him. He drowns in their joy and grief.
The bodies are taken away. Fifty dead. Remus and Tonks. Fred. Lavender. Colin. Snape, forgotten in the Shrieking Shack. Someone even moves Voldemort’s body. A body made from unicorn blood and snake venom, Peter Pettigrew’s hand and Lily Potter’s sacrifice.
Luna rambles a distraction, blibbering humdinger incarnate, and he slips away under his cloak. He sees Ginny crying on Mrs. Weasley’s shoulder, Neville and the blooded sword of Gryffindor, entertaining his new admirers. The Malfoys. Ron and Hermione.
The aftermath is more horrific in the daylight. The floors are smeared with blood and viscera. The grand marble staircase looks as though it has been clawed by some massive beast. It likely has. The walls have been gouged, portraits ripped and burned. Peeves can be heard singing irreverently in the distance.
He isn’t sure where he is going until he is across the trampled castle grounds, past Hagrid’s silent hut, under the trees where mere hours before dementors swarmed.
The path is no easier to tread by day, but he heedlessly stumbles down it. Through the dark trees, over their gnarled roots. The heart that beat so wildly as he walked to his death has now become still and quiet. He doesn’t note the passing of time, it has been moving in strange ways for months. Far too quickly, agonizingly slow.
He reaches Aragog’s clearing, where the Death Eaters gathered. Where he died. It stinks of tarry fire and burning flesh.
He kneels down, his eyes straining to see through his smudged and cracked lenses. He feels around the dirt. It is here. Somewhere.
There is a cut on his hand from when he took the snitch out of his pouch. He has cut himself again on that jagged shard of glass, all that remains of the mirror Sirius gave him. He has died, and yet that little cut still hurts.
His fingers brush against a cold, smooth stone. He picks it up, runs his thumb over the crack bisecting it. The Resurrection Stone.
He sits back on his heels, stares at it. Such a small thing.
“Does it hurt?”
“Dying? Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
He grips the stone in his hand.
“You lied.”
The funerals begin a week after he died.
No one knows he died. Narcissa Malfoy will say he only played dead, that the Dark Lord failed yet again for whatever inexplicable reason.
He doesn’t know where Voldemort’s body is. The Ministry took it. The Department of Mysteries, no doubt. But the others, he knows where they are. Those who fell in what the Daily Prophet is calling the Battle of Hogwarts are sent to their families. The Death Eaters are in Ministry custody, like their master. The house-elves and centaurs take care of their own. The acromantulas will drag off the rest.
The funerals pass in a blur. One after another. Lavender Brown. Colin Creevey. Students he didn’t know and never spoke to. A poorly attended memorial for Vincent Crabbe. Remus and Tonks, buried together. This is how he meets his godson. Graveside. Not even a month old and already an orphan.
Andromeda lets him hold the baby. It feels wrong that hands used to kill are allowed to do this. He doesn’t know why he is the godfather. He barely knew Remus Lupin, and knew Nymphadora Tonks even less.
Andromeda’s daughter, killed by her own sister. Her husband, dead. Her son-in-law, dead. All she has is Teddy, and Teddy has someone who loves him unconditionally. He isn’t needed. He has served his purpose.
Fred’s funeral. Late spring at the Burrow. All of his friends and family. He stands apart from the Weasleys, feeling detached as Fred’s body is lowered into the ground. He should be there too. In the ground, buried among the other dead.
It is harder to find a final resting place for Severus Snape. He isn’t going to be buried at Hogwarts. Godric’s Hollow is equally wrong. Maybe his mum has forgiven Snape, wherever their souls have gone, but he isn’t going to force the issue. He doubts Snape liked Cokeworth, but it is where his body ends up.
“Are you calling me a coward?” Sirius roars.
“Why, yes, I suppose I am.”
Not that it matters much. Everything that was Severus Snape is gone. The funeral is for the living. Him, Ron, Hermione. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout. A few of his Slytherin students. That’s it.
He still has Draco Malfoy’s wand. No one has asked for it back.
June 18th. Two years to the day.
Grimmauld Place is a tomb. A beautiful, deadly tomb. He ghosts through its ancient halls. He endures Walburga's screeching. He avoids certain rooms.
He doesn't want to be around anyone, and he has nowhere he wants to go, so he stays. Cleaning gives him something to do, and recovering lost Black artifacts gives Kreacher something to do. They are busy.
The Death Eater Hermione accidentally let in, Corban Yaxley, is missing. The remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix know where the house is. This isn’t the same as being able to enter. As being welcome.
Safe as houses.
A letter from Hermione dangles from his hand. Now that the dead are buried and the guilty are in Azkaban, she and Ron have gone to Australia to find her parents.
In his other hand is Bellatrix Lestrange’s knife. He remembers her exultant expression, the silver knife’s flight across the room, Dobby’s hand in his, the little jerk he gave when the knife struck home.
Dobby dying in his arms. The last words on his lips.
Harry…Potter…
He wishes it hit him instead.
He lifts the knife, turns the silver blade in his hand. Kreacher has found it. Miss Bellatrix’s knife. Another relic.
There are no portraits of Sirius Black.
There is no funeral for Sirius Black.
He hasn’t left a body behind.
When he reminds Kreacher of what has happened to Sirius, the old house-elf cries. Cries for Sirius, who will never know how brave his younger brother was. Cries for the fall of the House of Black.
Now extinct in the male line.
He turns the knife again, watches its silver blade catch the light from the pristine chandelier.
Kreacher appears silently at his side.
“Master has more owls,” Kreacher grumbles, thrusting the letters at him.
The teeth Dobby punched out haven’t been regrown, but Kreacher's loincloth rag has been replaced by a clean black pillowcase with the Black family crest. They have more pillowcases than living relatives to use them.
“Thank you,” he says, taking his post. He doesn’t mind Kreacher’s attitude. There are a lot of owls.
One is from McGonagall. Dumbledore’s portrait wants to see him.
Another is from Hestia Jones. The Dursleys have been safely returned to Privet Drive.
He struggles for a moment with why he should care about either, then throws the letters into the fire to burn with the rest.
It is a simple deduction.
He is not innocent. He killed. He used Unforgivables.
He doesn’t know all of what Draco Malfoy has done. Madam Rosmerta under Imperius. Katie Bell and the cursed necklace. Ron and the poisoned mead. Dumbledore offering Malfoy salvation.
Malfoy only disarmed Dumbledore, who was going to die anyway. If he hadn’t, he would have never got the Elder Wand. Another oversight on Dumbledore’s part, to leave it so easily accessible in his tomb. More random chance deciding his fate.
If Malfoy hadn’t disarmed Dumbledore, if he hadn’t disarmed Malfoy, he would have stayed dead like he was supposed to. They would all be dead.
Draco Malfoy lied to Bellatrix. Narcissa Malfoy lied to Voldemort. He tells himself these acts are worth something.
He can’t stop Lucius Malfoy from going to Azkaban, and he doesn’t care to. Even he has played his role. Had Lucius Malfoy not been so careless with the diary, they may have never known about the horcruxes.
Pure coincidence. Sheer dumb luck.
He speaks at the posthumous trial for Severus Snape. Pensieve memories are reviewed.
Isn’t it fortunate how he was there for Snape’s death? Had the man ever planned to tell him what he had to do? Or had he expected Voldemort to kill him?
Surely he had.
He was no match for a wizard fifty years his senior, who even at sixteen was smarter, more talented, more magically powerful. Better.
Snape is dead so he can’t ask him.
The small, cracked stone weighs his pocket down. He holds onto it as he tells the Wizengamot, his friends, his professors, all those in audience, how Snape was in love with his mother.
“My Lord, let me go to the boy.”
The silvery haze of memory seeping from his eyes, ears, mouth, nose.
“Take it…take it…”
Snape seizing his robes, pulling him close.
“Look at me…”
He grips the stone tighter as he answers question after invasive question, things only he knows now that the other major players are dead.
Things only he knows.
What he knows is this: Snape didn’t care about him. Snape hadn’t even cared that his mother cared about him. He was merely a symbol to Snape, as he is to so many others.
“You have used me. I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter.”
The idea of Dumbledore having anything to do with his raising, other than leaving him with people incapable of treating him with a shred of decency, is absurd. It’s a joke. He sometimes laughs about it. No one else finds it funny.
And it is clear to him, however anyone else chooses to interpret it, that Snape’s words only convey how much of a waste of time it all was. Snape wasn’t upset that he was going to die. He didn’t care at all. Even in the end, he had no value as an individual to Snape.
He is a weapon against the Dark Lord. He is Lily Potter’s son. He is a pair of eyes.
He shudders and feels the stone between his fingers. He can turn it over, get the answers he wants. The answers he wants to hear.
You’ve been so brave.
We are so proud of you.
Quicker and easier than falling asleep.
Look at me.
It is the dog days of summer. Late July, the heliacal rising of Sirius, when the Dog Star breaks through dawn with the sun.
He wakes early on his eighteenth birthday just to see it.
One year, to the day.
Hedwig is another unrecovered corpse. His first friend. Some muggle probably found her broken body and tossed it in a bin.
He loves that fucking owl. He loves her.
An empty perch stands in his room. He can pretend she is out hunting. She’ll return with a dead and bloody mouse, or a frog sticking out of her beak. She will exchange it for owl treats and nibble on his hair. She will nip his fingers when he is being stupid, harass his friends when they’re being stupid.
She will always know where to find him.
Seven years ago, a giant man gives him his first birthday present. She is beautiful, strong, proud. She doesn’t know what it means to be the owl of the Boy Who Lived. She doesn’t know she will die for him.
“We’re leaving soon,” he promises. “And then you’ll be able to fly again.”
She dies in her cage.
Dear Padfoot
The handwriting is unfamiliar, though he has seen it before. They make their g’s the same.
The letter comes with a torn photograph. Snape tore it, tore his mum out and left him and his dad behind. Just like he wanted.
We were so sorry you couldn’t come, but the Order’s got to come first
His stomach twists. He puts the letter away again.
He feels like a graverobber, standing in the center of his dead godfather’s room, pawing through his histories.
A half-empty pack of muggle cigarettes lays abandoned on the bedside table. He didn’t know Sirius smoked. Now he does.
The cigarettes are over two years old. He lights one anyway.
He sits in the kitchen of the Burrow, surrounded by people he knows, people he cares about. Ron and Hermione are here, holding onto each other. Ginny is next to him, holding onto his arm.
Percy and a young muggleborn woman who spent the war in Azkaban. Bill and Fleur. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Charlie and his dragons.
George sits alone, staring at nothing.
This is his birthday. Eighteen years. A cake. A dead owl.
He never expected to make it, and now that it is here he has no idea what to do.
This reminds him of the time after Sirius’ death.
He has never been allowed to mourn. Back on the train, back to the Dursleys, back to a room filled with rubbish.
Impenetrable silence.
He goes back further, to the weeks after Cedric’s death. He goes back again, Quirrell’s death. And again, his parents’ deaths.
Abandoned on a porch, in a station, in a graveyard.
“Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away.”
Sirius was shut away.
The cost of freedom is death. He knows that now.
Hermione returns the portrait of Phineas Nigellus. The frame is empty.
A wet kiss on the cheek from Ginny, a cake from Mrs. Weasley.
“He’s not your son."
“He’s as good as! Who else has he got?”
“He’s got me!”
“Yes. The thing is, it’s been rather difficult for you to look after him while you’ve been locked up in Azkaban, hasn’t it?”
He wipes his cheek.
After the cake is cut, and he has eaten what he can, Ron suggests they go flying.
Flying.
The Firebolt is gone. The knife is melted. The mirror is broken.
But George is standing, and Ginny is tugging on his arm, and Bill is holding a snitch, and it’s the only thing he has ever been good at.
He flies.