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1. Once on the floor of a forest that’s out of bounds, surrounded by people who will laugh instead of cry.
It’s not how these things are supposed to go.
2. Once on a gorgeous, sunny day in April, because spring really isn’t his season.
He probably should’ve seen it coming. After all, he hadn’t exactly been taking care of himself.
Harry woke up ravenous the morning after The Battle. The hollowed-out, all-consuming kind of hunger that leaves you aching and furious, the kind that he hadn’t felt since their fifth month on the run when his body had finally given up on the hope for reasonable meals. But there’s food now, in victory, and everything can get better and be the way it should be.
But now, Harry eats, and he never gets full. He sits at the table in the Burrow and eats and eats until even Ron is looking at him sideways and there is a strange feeling in the back of his throat that it takes him too long to identify as nausea, but he’s still so hungry it hurts.
But maybe he’s wrong and he isn’t hungry at all. He’s cold. Yes, that’s it. But every blanket in the house doesn’t help, which of course they wouldn’t because it isn’t cold. It’s loneliness. But that isn’t right either because sleeping curled up with Ron and Hemrione every night still leaves him so, so empty.
Eventually, it’s better to just be cold, to be alone, to be hungry, because at least then there’s a reason for feeling like this.
So he’s in an empty Grimmauld Place, lying sprawled in front of a cold hearth and reveling in how floaty everything feels. And then he’s not. He’s lying on a different floor, one that only exists as much as he does, which is to say not very much at all. It’s a sensation that shouldn’t be familiar, but a lot of things in Harry’s life haven’t gone the way they should.
“Back so soon?” a voice says from somewhere above him, a voice that is definitely not Dumbledore’s.
He has just enough time, between hearing the words and lifting his eyes upwards, to speculate wildly about who might be waiting for him this time – his father, Sirius, Snape, Ignotus Peverell – before he’s looking into red eyes.
3. A second time from hunger, because knowing better doesn’t magically mean you get better. Even with magic.
Harry tries. Sincerely. He plans meals out with Neville and Luna, and he goes to the Burrow and does his best not to flinch when Molly drags him into a hug that should be warm and tsks about his boney frame. But the unfamiliar stretch of a full stomach makes him want to vomit, to choke on his fingers in a bathroom until he is hollow again. The sight of the Burrow’s kitchen, full of food and family and light, makes him want to writhe out of his skin.
He tries, and he dies anyway, but at least he’s a little less loopy for his troubles.
Harry’s alert enough to spring to his feet, slamming the other man against a white wall that wasn’t there a second before.
“Why the hell are you here?” he snarls into a face he’s surprised isn’t snake-like. The man is still unnaturally tall, enough so that Harry has to stretch to keep a hand fisted in his collar. His elbow pops, but Harry absolutely refuses to go up on his toes.
The man says something back, something that might be I should think that was obvious or the Boy Who Lived, dead again.
But Harry isn’t paying attention, because the back of his fingers that are pressed against Voldemort’s neck are suddenly warm – the gentle, tingly warmth of fresh laundry or summer or bluebell flames, something Harry hasn’t felt in so long he’d forgotten a body could feel anything but cold.
But, no, that’s not right, in part because he felt this just a few months ago – the last time he was here – and it made waking up to the empty chill again so much worse but also because he doesn’t just feel warm. He feels whole.
4. Once from splinching, which just seems like a tasteless joke from the cosmos. A split body for his split soul.
(He’d say he doesn’t deserve it, but given who his soul is aching for, he just might.)
It’s supposed to be a normal outing to Diagon. Harry doesn’t do wizarding London much anymore, doesn’t like the crowds and the thank yous and the stares, but Hermione insists that people just need to get used to him again, as if Harry’s an allergen the wizarding world needs to build up a tolerance for.
Generally, these trips end with awkward requests for autographs or photos or, sometimes, a screaming tirade from someone who lost a loved one in the war. They’re always shit. Somehow, this one manages to be worse.
It happens as they’re stepping out of Flourish and Blotts, Hermione and Ron laden down with even more volumes destined to join the rapidly growing library in their new apartment. There’s a man behind him, his grip like iron around Harry’s arm – and that is already strange. No one has grabbed him like that since the first chaotic days after the war, when the crowds would press in so tight he couldn’t breathe – and suddenly every fiber of Harry’s being is screaming to get out, get away, run.
“Savior,” the man gasps against his ear, so close Harry can smell him, like mulberries and rum and rot, though that last one might just be his instincts communicating danger and wrong any way they can.
“Can I, um, help you?” Harry asks, because he’s an idiot. He twists a bit, trying to get a clear look at the guy, but all it does is bring him closer to the other man.
“Help me?” the man asks, eyes wide with surprise. “You’ve already helped me so much. You’ve saved us.” His face relaxes, stretching into a wide, blissful smile. “And I can return the favor. I’ll keep you safe. Always.”
Harry’s brain stutters, refusing to parse the full meaning of what he’s hearing. But whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good. Before he can open his mouth to tell the man off or call for help or something, he feels the telltale crush of side-along pressing in, and he does the only thing he can think of. He throws himself against it, trying to shove away from the hand around his arm and the other grasping at his waist and squeeze through the pressing darkness.
For one glorious moment, he’s through. There’s space and light and Hermione looking back at him from a few feet away, face slack with horror. And then everything is pain, the other half of him wrenching away through space.
He comes to on his back this time, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of Kings Cross and the repulsed face of Tom Riddle.
“You’re a mess,” he says disapprovingly, and it’s weird to be dead and hanging out with his fated enemy, but it’s even weirder to see Voldemort wrinkle his nose.
“You don’t look so good yourself,” Harry lies. Death looks good on Tom. No skull-like face or slit pupils, though he’s kept the red eyes. Or is he stuck with them? Do you get to choose?
Harry came through in parts, if all the blood in the white space is anything to go by, but he’s whole now, and that’s what matters. (Completely whole, peace singing under his skin.) Harry drags himself out of the red pool and over to the nearest bench, wishing the blood off him. It slips away like oil off feathers.
Tom doesn’t follow, standing stiffly next to the pool of blood like there isn’t a spot next to Harry on the bench that’s literally made for sitting and waiting. He probably doesn’t want it to look like Harry’s leading. What’s that like, to still care so goddamn much about such stupid things, even dead and with no one around but Harry, who can’t possibly think less of him?
Harry rolls his eyes and swings his – delightfully attached – legs up onto the bench. Let Voldemort posture. Given that Harry’s dead and Tom can’t kill him more, he might go for a well-deserved nap.
“Not running back off to your lovely little life, boy?” Tom snarls, when it becomes clear Harry’s settling in.
Harry lolls his head to the side to take the other man in. The way his full lips disappear into a cruel sneer, tension etching harsh lines into his face. He used to think Tom’s anger was ugly, but that was before he spent years watching snake-monster Voldemort hiss and scream. Now he just looks like a man in the midst of feeling something strongly.
“Well, when I left, there was an obsessed psycho trying to kidnap me. I think I’ll play dead for a bit, thanks.” The obsessive psycho next to him is at least familiar.
“Winning not all it’s cracked up to be?” Tom mocks, but Harry’s too tired for this.
“Living’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he says to the dead man, who looks furious and shocked and intrigued and amused all at once, so many feelings pulling him in different directions that his face seems to freeze in place instead. How did Harry ever think Voldemort didn’t understand emotion? The man feels everything, feels it with his whole body, twisting his face and coiling his magic and tearing apart the world with the force of it.
5. Once while cleaning out the attic at Grimmauld Place, which seems fair, actually.
The house has been trying to kill him for years, the two of them locked in a slow war of attrition waged with feather dusters and cursed artifacts, trap doors and banishing spells. Harry will probably win, in the end, but Grimmauld still manages to land a lucky punch now and then.
He’s long since decided not to think about what it says about him, that he could live anywhere but stays in a building that has it out for him. It’s probably related to the Dark Lord waiting for him on the platform, full of disparaging comments about death and Harry’s improper handling of dark objects and how someone who was so hard to kill could be so bad at staying alive. If Harry wades through all the sarcasm, he actually comes away with some useful suggestions for his next go at the attic.
He doesn’t have the excuse of avoiding a deranged fan this time. He stays anyway. It’s nice, particularly once Tom shuts up.
6. Once in Auror training, which is how other people find out about his whole “unkillable Master of Death” thing. Luckily it’s just Ron and Robards and Seamus Finnegan of all people, and no one is particularly interested in spreading the news.
Of course, Harry doesn’t know that right away. He comes to on the there-but-not-there floor of his whited out Kings Cross – now far more familiar than the real station – and for a moment, he just lies there in absolute silence. He knows Tom is there because there is something warm pressed against his side that he’s pretty sure is Tom’s knee, but he doesn’t bother to roll away, both because he’s tired from running laps all morning and because this feels right. He has no idea what he’ll go back to – if there will be yelling or accusations or fear or consequences–but he knows it will be loud and cold, and he just wants to take a moment to be where he should be. Just before he fades away, Harry swears he feels fingers card through his hair.
7. On his third mission as a newly-minted Auror, in part because it’s a dangerous job but mostly because Harry’s an idiot who doesn’t follow protocol.
The idea that someone who survived a battle with a dozen fully-grown wizards at fifteen could be taken out by a fucking tripwire is laughable, but maybe this whole immortality lark is getting to him, making him careless.
One second, he’s stepping into a moldy-smelling room in Knockturn Alley, and the next, the world explodes and he’s staring at the brilliant mists of death. (Home.)
It’s not the gentle waking he’s grown accustomed to.
There are three things worth noticing, once the room stops exploding. The first is the heavy weight on this chest, crushing the air out of him like an anvil. The second is that there are hands around his throat, preventing him from replacing said air and pressing down ‘til his pulse echoes loudly in his ears. The third is a pair of vivid red eyes glaring down at him, flashing with feral, cornered rage. Harry should probably be worried, given that the last time he saw that look was before this man sent an avada at him for the last time, but mostly, he’s distracted by the strange realization that he has a pulse here.
“What are you playing at?” Tom hisses. It’s almost parseltongue, almost that language they used to share. Would Harry still be able to understand it here?
“Being an Auror?” It’s hard to sound fresh when you’re choking, but Harry gives it his best shot. He gets backhanded for his trouble, his head snapping to the side.
“You killed me!” the other man roars. “You destroyed me, and you think you can come here and curl up in my lap and act like-”
“I didn’t want to!” Harry screams up at him, because this is entirely unfair. It’s unfair that he killed a man when he was eleven and another when he was seventeen and that that was somehow good. It’s unfair that he doesn’t know how to be calm and safe and happy and that he only feels alive when he’s dead. “I didn’t want to. Dumbledore showed– You were like me. Just a boy once, just scared. But I wanted to live. You wanted to live forever, but I just wanted to live and for my friends to live, and you just couldn't leave it alone!”
Harry wants to throw something or slam a door. Fading into mist is much less satisfying, but it’s what he’s got.
8. Once on purpose.
Or, well, not on purpose. That might count as ‘greeting death as an old friend’ and get him stuck on the other side. But with full presence of mind.
There’s a hostage situation, and no one can get inside to help the kid, so Robbards calls him in.
“I know I’m asking a lot,” the older man says, “but I don’t want to risk losing this one.”
“I don’t mind.” And Harry really doesn’t. It’s been nearly two years since he last saw Tom, and it’s getting harder and harder to eat a full meal.
Tom doesn't mention what they said last time or all the time in between. Harry isn’t sure he even noticed the gap – he has no idea how time works here. He just sits on the floor next to Harry, back leaning against one of the benches, and talks about the Ministry. He details the departments and who seems to hold power and who really holds power and who should hold power and potential tweaks to make it all run more smoothly and the problems with interfacing with a Muggle government that can reorganize at the drop of a hat. Some of his information is out of date – legislation passed or people arrested – but Harry lets him talk because it makes sense in a way Hermione’s frazzled rants never do. Also, it sounds like a novel when he puts it like that. And his voice is fucking gorgeous.
At some point, Tom’s fingers find their way into Harry’s hair and guide his head down until it’s resting on the other man’s lap, and now Harry’s staring up at the gentle rise and fall of Tom’s chest, at the gleam in his eyes when he makes a particularly cutting remark about someone Harry hasn’t bothered to tell him is dead. He pictures how they must look – Harry’s mess of curls spilled across Tom’s thigh, Tom’s long fingers tracing his jaw. Intimate. Harry’s too dead to care.
9. Half a dozen more times on the job.
“Who knew all you needed to do was outsource killing me to a vampire?” Harry quips, grinning and much too pleased with himself when Tom growls and fists a hand in his hair, yanking his head to the side to take a closer look at the bite marks on his neck.
“Did they turn you? Are you immortal?” he asks, his voice feverish. For a moment, Harry almost believes Tom’s worried about him. A warmth blooms in his chest that has nothing to do with his ragged soul.
Which is how he knows something else is going on.
“Already immortal,” he says, just to see Tom snarl. “And not a vampire. They drained me all the way.” There’s only one thing Tom would be so worried about. It’s always himself.
“What happens to you when I really die?” he asks, overly casual. Tom stills and drops his hand from his neck, but Harry grabs it before he can move away.
“I don’t know,” he says, voice perfectly flat. Neutral, emotionless. True in meaning and false in tone.
“What do you mean? Don’t you just go,” Harry waves his free hand vaguely – the spirit fingers might be a bit tasteless. “I don’t know, where you usually hang out? On?” Like Dumbledore, but that’s better left unsaid.
“No,” Tom says. “No, I’m always here. Until you go.”
10. Once while visiting Hogwarts.
He’s out of practice with the moving stairs. It’s the kind of thing even a first year would bounce back from (probably quite literally). But his magic seems to have decided death isn’t something he needs protecting from, so he lands the way a muggle would after a seven-story fall. His last thought before he hits the stones is that he’s glad he’d been walking in an abandoned part of the castle. He’d like at least one generation of students to leave Hogwarts untraumatized.
“At least try to die cleanly,” Tom says. If anyone else were making that face Harry would say they looked queasy.
“No,” he replies, because fucking Voldemort doesn’t get to be squeamish.
11. Once by total, stupid accident.
Slipping in the shower, and he’s pretty sure this is how he would’ve died if there’d never been a prophecy and he’d grown up with parents and petty problems and so much love. Just a normal life with a normal death.
“Merlin and fucking Morgana, I’m sick of this damn station,” he moans, dropping his head back hard onto the tile. The floor goes oddly squishy under his skull, sparing him the potential concussion.
“Fool.”
Harry looks up – and up, and up, Merlin, why does the man have to be so tall? – to see Tom looming over him, all pressed dark robes and well-shined shoes tapping right next to Harry’s ear. So it’s going to be one of those days. “If you hate it so much, change it.”
“Change it?”
“Yes,” Tom says, hissing the s, “It’s your mind. Change it.”
Oh. Well, that does make sense, when you put it like that.
Harry scrambles to his feet to buy some time, trying to think of somewhere he wants to be, but every place he’s ever been seems to have fallen right out of his head, and all he can think of is somewhere comfy to sit that's not those same fucking benches. An overstuffed couch materializes behind him, and he grabs Tom’s arm to drag them both down onto it. If he’s going to be dead, he’s at least going to be cozy. Tom allows it, but shoves him off when Harry tries to rest his shower-damp hair on his shoulder.
“I don’t know, is there somewhere you want to go?”
The words fall out without him really thinking about it, and then he feels like a total ass. Which is stupid. He should never feel bad for anything he does to Voldemort. But the man’s been stuck in Kings Cross for fifteen years in an endless layover. That’s gotta suck.
Tom is watching him, dark eyes guarded. The silence stretches, tense instead of comfortable, and Harry’s just starting to think about heading back to his shower when Tom speaks.
“Brighton,” he says. Harry waits for an explanation, but nothing else comes. Tom’s face is blank, watching the water drip down Harry’s neck without comment.
He closes his eyes, thinking Brighton as loudly as he can, but when he looks it’s still the same old arched roof.
“Oh. I guess I have to know the place. I’ve never been to the beach,” he says with a shrug.
“I see.” It’s suspicious how not disappointed Tom sounds. Like maybe this mattered.
Harry closes his eyes again, and this time it’s as easy as breathing even though he hasn’t seen the room in twenty years. It’s flawless, from the carved mantels to the gentle green light, but Harry barely sees the Slytherin common room materializing around them, too distracted by the sudden, unbridled joy in Tom’s eyes.
12. Once when he’s thirty-six, in a car accident of all things. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would be so proud.
When he opens his eyes, he’s lying on sand, and Tom isn’t looking at him. He’s busy staring out at the waves. Harry pads across the warm sand on bare feet to lean against the other man.
“How?” Tom breathes, and Harry decides he likes surprising him in ways that don’t involve murdering parts of his soul.
“I went to see it, after you asked.” It’d been crowded and loud, with crying children and happy families and ice cream truck jingles, but it’s beautiful like this, just them and the wide beach and the sea.
Harry watches as Tom toes out of his shoes and steps carefully into the surf, digging into the sand to stand against the undertow. So much has changed between all his different variations, but the feet are exactly the same – pale, with delicate blue veins and slender ankles – and it’s a stupid, stupid thing to get hung up on, but for the first time, Harry gets it, that Tom and Voldemort are one person, always will be and always have been. Then, a wave slams Harry from behind, dragging him down and spinning him about like a washing machine, and when he finally staggers up again, it’s to Tom laughing – a real laugh, all warm amusement and gentle mockery, eyes gleaming as he drags a disheveled, spluttering Harry to shore – and Harry remembers he doesn't really care.
They wade and laugh, and it’s hours later, sprawled next to the mess of what was meant to be a sandcastle, that Tom tells Harry about a family that took him from the orphanage but didn’t keep him and hope and one glorious day on Brighton Beach.
13. Once for too long.
They’re out with Aurors who don’t know about Harry’s quirk, and Harry comes to with Robards shouting himself hoarse about how hard it is to cover up the fact that he came back to life after being visibly, provably dead for six hours.
It’s completely worth it.
14. Once for a full day.
Tom’s angry when he arrives. He paces like a caged predator, which, really, is exactly what he is: animal rage and violence trapped in human skin and trapped in Harry’s head, immortal in all the wrong ways. It’s a bit heavy-handed in its irony.
They’re standing at the edge of a pool, the ancient spires of Angkor Wat reflected in its shining surface. Tom had mentioned wanting to see it, but he’d never made it, too busy twisting his soul and ruining lives back home. And so Harry had gone and brought it to him.
He’d bring the man the world, here in the beyond where he can’t ruin it. Safe little slices that they can explore together.
Of course, that’s not the version of it Tom wants.
Tom doesn’t even glance at the world wonder, ancient stones and secrets under masses of twisting roots. He only has eyes for Harry, eyes burning as he snarls nasty things about how Harry’s useless and bad at his job and wasting his life, and Harry really should just leave. He shouldn’t listen to this shit.
But he stays. He never was any good at knowing when to quit.
He stays and spits truth back in the ways that will hurt most, and he is the first one to take a swing. There are no wands here, no civilized distance and green and red flashes. Just two men who never grew out of being orphan boys who had to fight for every scrap they had, all quick dodges and heavy punches, and something in Harry sings when his fist connects, proof that he can hold his own, that he can have an impact on this impossible man, even if Tom’s next punch leaves him hunched over and dry heaving.
After, in the silence, he doesn’t leave, because he knows he keeps dying like it’s nothing, and he’s being careless with the only thing Tom wants.
Tom has one of his wrists in a loose grip – whether to stop him from swinging or to stop him from pulling away, Harry has no idea, but it’s keeping his soul warm either way. Harry lifts his other hand to Tom’s chin, dragging his thumb through the trickle of blood dripping from his split lip. For once, Tom’s hair is a twin of Harry’s own, disheveled from their scuffle, and something silly and sentimental in Harry aches for the sand and the sea and a Tom who’s hair is a mess from wind and salt water instead.
Harry doesn’t want them both alive and the horror show that would’ve brought, but he doesn’t want them both dead and stepping into the void of that unknown. But he doesn’t want this either. He wishes them to the Room of Requirement, to its endless, winding alleys of lost objects and potential and its hidden couches and shadows and its endless places to hide, and he spends the day hiding from this impossible mess they’ve made.
15. On the day Ron dies.
Harry tries to be there, tries to dive in front of the curse, but he’s just not fast enough. Not enough.
He’s staring at Ron’s unmoving face, still quirked in a wry grin, and thinking how much he looks like Fred when the second curse hits him. Tom doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask. Wouldn’t care, probably. He just holds Harry until he’s strong enough to go back and hold Hermione.
“What’s it like? Dying?” she asks after the funeral, all bloodless skin and bloodshot eyes. Harry doesn’t know what to tell her. Doesn’t know how to explain the not-a-train-station he’s spent so much time in and what’s beyond and how he still doesn’t know.
“You’ll see him again. He’ll be waiting,” he says instead, because he thinks it might be true. It should be true.
16. Once by his own hand. Only once.
It’s been thirty-two months since he’s seen Tom. Months filled with burnt toast and Hogwarts letters and cutting gum out of long red hair and generally trying to hold the Granger-Weasleys together. Months of smiling widely when Teddy’s home and trembling under piles of blankets when he’s alone. Months of being painstakingly careful at work because he doesn’t think Hermione or Molly could take it if something happened.
But he’s slipping up again, and he knows it’s on purpose. He knows he’ll keep doing it as long as he’s in the field because he just doesn’t want to be alive. Not when it’s so empty and distant and hollow, like there’s something gnawing at his chest but also like there’s nothing there to eat, and the solution is just on the other side of an avada.
He breaks after thirty-two months, and when he jumps, he wonders if this will count as welcoming death. On the way down, he’s surprised to find he doesn’t care.
He opens his eyes to Tom.
He’d had thoughts of taking them to the Palatine Hill or Takht-e Soleyman or one of the dozen other places Tom said were worth seeing and Harry went to alone. They end up at Hogwarts, because that’s always where this ends. Tom is sitting on the staff table, staring up at the ceiling so the enchanted stars glimmer in his dark eyes, and Harry’s pretty sure his heart stops right then. He’s pretty sure he’d die all over again if he could. It’s a long walk across the Great Hall, and Harry holds his breath for every step of it, will keep these movements in his joints forever, even when they creak with age and walking is a distant memory.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he says when Tom’s hands are in his and his skin feels like home again. It comes out more final than he meant it to.
There are things people say when someone is leaving. Good luck or don’t go or why. Tom doesn’t say anything. He’s probably been waiting for this for a while. If it was Harry dead and Tom alive, Tom would never come visit, not for anything.
But he’s so warm and so impossible under candles and starlight, and his lips are surprisingly soft when Harry kisses them. At least, they’re soft until Tom digs his teeth into Harry’s bottom lip, and Harry almost laughs because of course their first kiss tastes like blood. Tom wraps his long legs around Harry, dragging him closer until the edge of the table digs into his hip bones, and that’s even better because it’s real and a little awkward and another detail he can keep.
He wakes up and hands in his resignation. It’s a lot harder to die as the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. If he finds himself wishing the position was still cursed, that’s his business.
17. Once at the end.
He dies in a comfortable bed at home, surrounded by people who will cry now and will laugh at his wake, reminiscing about small things. No one currently alive remembers the war, so the Boy Who Lived and the Chosen One and the Man Who Won are just old, dusty titles, and the loved ones he leaves behind talk not about how he rode dragons and slayed a Dark Lord but about how Great Uncle Harry introduced them to thestrals and hippogriffs and always gave the best Christmas presents and loved with his whole heart.
Harry leaves them because it is time, because he knows they will be fine without him, and because this world has run out of adventures.
He wakes lying on his back in the same old train station, and for a moment, it feels like no time has passed, that none of it happened and he’s just left his body on the forest floor. But he’s so aware of his body, of the total absence of pain and the easy way his wrists move when he rolls them. He’s sure he wouldn't notice that unless he’d truly lived with arthritis for the past thirty years. Youth was never wasted on him – he appreciated every time his body let him land hard from a spectacular dive or moved quickly enough to dodge a nasty curse – but it’s hard to fully appreciate without the contrast.
“Harry,” the wrong voice says above him, and he’s looking up into eyes that are a disappointing blue. It is very strange to look at Albus Dumbledore and think that he looks young. But he does, with his clear eyes and springy step and facial features not yet lost to a sea of wrinkles. Though maybe he’s decided to appear younger than when Harry knew him – Harry himself is hardly the old man he died as just now.
“Albus,” he greets, not bothering to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Albus probably won’t take it personally, and Harry doesn’t particularly care if he does.
“Once more, for old time’s sake?” Albus says, offering Harry a hand up. He takes it.
They sit on the platform bench and wait, watching the faint shimmer of steam in the distance chug steadily closer, and it’s amazing how little there is to say. He had so many questions for Dumbledore once.
On is a cherry-red steam engine, all childhood and wonder and beginnings, and when Harry stands to meet it, Albus finally speaks.
“I’m sorry you never got to have good times,” he says. “I didn’t have much with Gellert, but I had memories of those years.”
Harry thinks about standing across a battlefield from someone you’ve watched laugh unselfconsciously with their whole body, and betrayal, and what who you love says about you. He thinks of Brighton Beach. He’s not sure that would have been better.
“Will he be there? On the other side?” he asks, because that’s what matters now.
“I don’t know,” Albus says. Somehow, even after all the man’s lies and half truths, Harry believes him in this. “Why don’t you go find out?”
And Harry does.