Father Figure

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He felt the wrist he was holding twitch for a moment, flexing against the pain before relaxing again, and then the hand went limp, drooping just enough to let the long, bony fingers gently brush his bloody knuckles. He watched this in morbid fascination, and then let his gaze flicker back to those blue eyes, which had at some point snapped open again without him noticing, so wide and wise and blue and still twinkling even in death, but he couldn't be dead, he couldn't be, he was still so... young? No, that wasn't it... needed, maybe. Yes. Needed.

It seemed wrong, somehow, to look at a man so intently, to stare right into his eyes as though you could see the color of his soul, and it was a little scary to know that while you were staring in such a personal way, searching and not finding but still looking just to be sure, there was no soul left to stare back, and this was a contest that you just couldn't win, and it was almost unnerving to know that if you didn't know that those eyes were already dead, then they could be watching you and you wouldn't even notice. But he had nerves of steel, so it was almost unnerving... but only almost.

He didn't think about that, though, couldn't even if he wanted to, which he didn't, because he wasn't philosophical like that, and he didn't want to think about frayed nerve endings or burnt limbs, about blood spilling and pooling, or spraying and crusting, or rushing and clotting, about dying or saving the world or being violently ill or all three. He kept staring and instinctively tightened his already bruising grip on the frail wrist, and tried to focus on the way those eyes were blue, a bright blue, like the sky, and were, in fact, the sky - a little cloudy, but still so blue.

And perhaps he could delude himself a little longer, because he had heard the slow, gurgling intake of that final breath, but he had not heard it released, and it had only been a few minutes (hours?) since those eyes had last blinked - screwed shut in the agony of being burnt alive - and he was sure he had read stories about Muggles living with just one half of their skulls, and if Muggles could do it then surely the greatest wizard of all time could manage. The wrist he was firmly attached to was creaking from the strain of his crushing grip and slick with the blood from his raw knuckles, but there was hope, because it was still so warm, like Cedric's had been...

... and then he knew it was done, because Cedric had still been warm, even after the cold hard ground of the cemetery had been abruptly acquainted with that handsome face, and not even the chill in his bones from the killing curse or the ice in his lungs from the eyes of a snake or the cold detachment he had felt for so long could make him forget the warmth of a fresh corpse. If Cedric was done and gone while still in the prime of his youth, then surely this age-ripened old man, tricky and wily and full of sweets and sparks though he may be, was no match for the warm tug of death.

His grip tightened again and the brittle bone began to bend inwards, giving way to the pressure, until it finally snapped, but that was alright so long as he didn't let go, because Madam Pomfrey could heal anything, she re-grew the bones in his arm his second year, this was nothing, and everything was nothing (which was quite suddenly everything), and he couldn't let go now, not yet. He was barely hanging on, holding on for the both of them, and if he let go now, he'd snap and lose it and never find his way back again - but wasn't that what he'd had coming all along?

Then, softly, "......Professor?"

And then nothing.

Nothing at all.

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