A Veil Over His Eyes

A Veil Over His Eyes

By Dimgwrthien

After the War, it was obvious it took a toll on everyone.

There had been death, you remember. And there had been the survivors. You were all famed for it, asked to repeat the story of the battle. Sometimes you want to say you were never there just so that you don’t have to remember. Remembering things was never easy to anyone.

You pretend you were too young to be there, and it’s easy for you to change your age.

He had always told you that you were too young and he was too old. It never made a difference to you, no matter what he said. You always said you were old enough, but now you wish you were really too young.

Maybe you were.

You change to what you always were: a young woman, self-confident, questioning, bright. It’s a world of difference from what you were, even though you never really changed. You’ve come to accept that it’s only a small change, hiding certain parts of your personality. The young child with the large eyes is only a disguise.

He had taken the largest toll from the war. He lost everything, everyone, in those years.

Except you.

But he lost himself. The one who always said he was too old never realized that he would be the one leaving you.

Though he never really left you.

You run a hand through his hair, feeling the soft strands between your fingers like cobwebs of ages past. His skin is cool to the touch, not of death, but from the cold air surrounding you. There must still be dementors around somewhere that hadn’t left with the war.

Harry’s gone. Hermione and Ron suffered the most from that. Ginny, too, though no one ever seemed to realize it. Ron and Hermione were the closest ones in their minds, just because no one could take the time in war to see what was going on in their own lives.

He died with the war. Not really, you tell yourself. He died soon after. A few days. Still, it’s like you traded your favorite thing in the world for Voldemort’s body to be buried.

You can’t have Harry back, but at least you have the man in his arms. He’s still… breathing. He has a pulse. Though he hasn’t been alive in years.

You sometimes wonder how much he suffered after Harry died. He didn’t say anything, but you didn’t see him for days after it. It was as though he dropped off the face of the Earth and only just returned after leaving part of himself with Harry. You wonder if he died a bit, too, when Sirius and Dumbledore died. Maybe he did.

You could never read his face. He trained himself early in life, and trained himself good. There’s always a veil over his eyes and it only thickened with each death. Sometimes his eyes did seem darker. Maybe the veil was more than psychological.

Since the war ended and he returned to your arms so that you could cradle him once more, he seemed dizzy as though with a constant fever. He rarely spoke, eating less, living even less. His functions with working were still the same, though you knew he had nothing to do. No job, no more Order, nothing. Occasionally, if you crept into a room he was in without being heard (which was very rare), you could just stand in the doorway and watch him. He took to setting himself up so that his face was always covered in some way. Sometimes a newspaper or book would be set out in front of him as though he never wanted anyone to catch him staring at random. He did good at it too, as it seemed you were the only one to ever figure it out.

When you did make a noise, it was only after leaving the room and returning with louder noises. You always gave him time to regain his composure, to look up and give you the faintest trace of a smile that could have been a frown and ask how you passed the day or night and if you would like anything.

You only responded that you loved him and held him close for another night.

Then there was the Wolfsbane.

It was easy to see he hated it. His expression had always been that of disgust, but it’s moved on. It takes a while, but you managed to understand the potion and make it. You were always good at potions with Snape breathing down your neck, wanting to find something wrong just because you were - are - related to Sirius.

Every night leading up to that one night you both learned to hate, you gave him the potion. He never drank it right there. The veil behind his eyes darkened a bit and you wondered what he thought. Maybe he remembered Severus. Maybe he considered going a night without it, just out of spite. Or maybe he wanted the pain.

The potion had been made to numb pain, though bodies can get used to it. He was slowly doing so, the transformations starting to take more of a toll on him.

The night before, right before the moon hit, you tried to test something. The potion had been strengthened with a second dose added. It had obviously not worked, you thought as your hands found their way to his cheek and rubbed it with a thumb.

Blood stained everyone’s hands since the war ended. You had all killed, or at least hurt, someone. You never even learned the name of the Death Eater you killed. In fact, you had not even tried to kill them. It had been a pure accident. Did the world expect you to be able to not kill someone when they’re aiming a wand at you and yelling out two words? Did they expect you to remain still and accept your fate?

His blood seeped over your hands and you found yourself examining it with interest for a moment or two. It was a deep scarlet color, watery and warm. All of the red liquid was coming from a gash in his cheek that you could easily heal. Maybe you could….

Magic knit’s the cut together, stopping the flow of blood. Your hands are still wet, along with your wand that took on a red tinge from the bloody handprint.

It shocks you when his hand moved slightly to your arm, covering I for a moment, too little energy behind it to keep it up. Another bloody handprint is on your arm.

There’s no point to washing it. It’s only a reflection of what was really there, invisible to everyone but you.

Maybe he could see it too, like you could see the veil over his eyes. He knew what it was like to have blood on your hands, both ways.

Maybe there’s a veil behind your eyes, too. Maybe in the morning, you’d ask him.

Maybe in the morning, it would all be better and everything would have been a dream.