Plutonian Shore

Get lost. Go. Take off. Leave.

Disappear.

Vanish.

No.

Hide?

Yes.

The words chased each other around my head.

Five years....

Has it really been that long?

But it was only yesterday that we were sitting 'round the table discussing our future. Hopes, dreams. Laughing while the sunshine drifted in through smudged and dusty windows. Books open, displaying archaic symbols and ancient texts. Prophecy.

Wasn't it?

It was a different world then. All are hopes were invested. We knew we would win. What other outcome could there be? Really, to think that Voldemort would rule!

An absurd notion, if anyone would have said so. They would look to me, the shining one, and say: "Look, there! Isn't that... Why I remember! And to think!"

They would look to my mentor. "A great man, a great man," they would say.

Greatness is gone now. Dead.

My friends, whom I thought I would never be separated from, each fallen and each gone.

One lost in the mind. One lost to time.

The man I had hoped to have life with, the man whom I would have called "Father" if fate hadn't been so cruel, was captured. Tormented.

And the gentle man who introduced me into my new life? He just disappeared one summer, never to be seen again.

Absence is supposed to make the heart grow stronger. Funny, it only made mine harder.

But, I digress....

What would American television shows say about this? Aaaah. This is not a pity party.

People don't stop, stare, and point at me anymore. I am hardly the child I was. I am hardly the man I am.

My hair is long, shaggy. Scars layer on top of scars. Souvenirs of a long battle hard fought. But I still have my mother's eyes.

Some still pause when they see those.

I live in the shadows now. Light is a rare thing these days. The sky never clears; the fog never lifts. The stench of smoke and char and magic fill the air.

The U.K. was the first to fall, of course. People were stunned. The great man had been wrong? Of course he was! He put all his hope in a child newly trained! Bit foolish of him, really. What had he expected to happen? To see the enemy falling at my feet pleading for his life to be spared? Foolish, foolish, foolish man.

Bitterness won't do me any good. I should count myself lucky.

Bah.

I scuttle along the grimy walls of what remains of Knockturn Alley, clutching his treasure. In my other hand, I grip my wand, and hope feverishly another day of un-disclosure has remained. Wouldn't do to be ratted out now.

Would he still be there? Or, would he have finally forgotten me, forgotten this horrid place and wandered off somewhere alone?

He is there, waiting. He looks up, eyes glinting like a feral cat, a white-pale ghost flickering in the darkness. He jumps.

Attacks, kissing.

Mouths open, moans.

Wand drops, forgotten.

Hands move, pleasure.

Eyes connect, reassure.

Are we the last two left?

"Where have you been?" he breathes into me.

I raise my hand to his face. "I thought I was being followed. Had to backtrack a bit."

"Did you get it?" He asks in a quavering voice.

"Of course." Of course; anything for you, Darling. I would never dare call you this out loud.

I hold it out and he snatches the bottle away, pouring it down his throat as he limps away, swaying, groaning in ecstasy.

The old tears threaten to surface again. His beloved Head of House would throw a fit-to put it mildly-to see him like this.

How did it come to this? He is the only connection I have to what once been, the only shred of comfort in a maze of madness.

Where has the real world gone? This is only a facsimile, a nightmare. It has to be.

FIN.