Endings

There are times she feels almost normal; when the humidity frizzes her hair to its former wildness, when she sees tall, gawky redheads or pensive, bespectacled boys with raven hair. But those moments are fleeting. Her hair is quickly tamed; those individuals fade back into the endless crowd. Once again, she is alone. She blinks back the tears, swallows her longing, and goes back to her life, smiling at her parent's patients, hearing them comment on her beautiful teeth, and wasn't she lucky to have parents who cared about her enough to fix them? She never corrects them.

She's forgetting. Some part of her finds it funny that she, the best in her year, could be unable to remember simple spells. The rest of her has already accepted the inevitability.

She knows it's been too many years since her parents took her from what had become her passion, too many years since the "climate had become hostile" (as her parents put it) for people such as her, too many years since...

She can't say the names. To say them would mean accepting their fate.

* * *

He supposes he should consider himself lucky. He survived. He won.

Did you really? Better people than you sacrificed themselves for the cause.

He knows. He fought alongside them. And when the survivors crawled out from among the rubble and the corpses and...

He tries not to think about it much anymore. The firewhisky helps.

Somehow, his whole store of ingredients survived. He's glad; it gives him something to do.

He makes poisons, mostly.

***

She can't get in.

After all she did to get here, she can't remember how to get in.

So this is the end. I've lost it all.

Screaming and beating her fists on the wall, she sinks to the ground, sobbing.

***

He sees her as he leaves.

And so another one breaks.

He moves to walk past her, but something stops him. Maybe it's the curls she hadn't bothered to control, or the way her shoulders shake as she cries, or any number of things.

It can't be.

Her parents took her before it got too bad, but how...

He speaks her name.

***

She hears her name spoken in a voice she never expected to hear. She looks up.

The years have not been kind. His imposing profile and bearing still remain, but he has changed.

The eyes. He's lost something.

She notices his wand.

But not as much as I have.

***

He helps her up, and offers her his cloak.

She accepts, and he laughs bitterly over the title she uses.

I'm not a Professor anymore.

Professors teach, not send their charges out to fight for their lives.

Not that it matters anyway.

***

Without knowing why, she tells him where she wanted to go.

She notices the brief flash of pain on his face before he rebuffs her, telling her not to dwell on that which is already gone.

I want to.

I have to.

***

Reluctantly, he agrees.

It's not because I pity her.

She always was an insufferable know-it-all.

But it's not because I want to.

Is it?

Grabbing her wrist, they Apparate.

***

They reappear in a graveyard.

He lags behind as she walks from gravestone to gravestone.

Ron. Cut down by MacNair during the Final Battle.

Neville. Went mad in his seventh year. Hung himself not too long after being admitted to St. Mungo's.

Fred. Tortured and killed by Lucius while his twin watched.

George died in an "accidental" fall from Gryffindor Tower a week later.

Lupin. Stabbed with a knife made from Wormtail's silver hand.

Soon, she stops.

Harry. Killed Voldemort at the same time Voldemort killed him.

Having said his goodbyes long before, he turns away.

He hears her cry, and tries harder to block it out.

Soon, she stops, and turns to him.

She makes one request.

Never!

I...I can't.

It would make me nothing but a murderer.

I've attended too many funerals in the past years.

Why?

She looks at him, and he can see the pain in her eyes.

She's broken.

He raises his wand, and speaks two words.

As the green light illuminates her features, he can see her relief.

He sits on a nearby bench, and allows himself to cry.

After he is finished, he warms the frozen ground, summons a shovel, and begins to dig her grave.

As the hole grows larger, it starts to snow.