Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

"Beneath the stain of time

the feeling disappears.

You are someone else

I am still right here."

- Nine Inch Nails, "Hurt"

"Harry?" Her voice held an odd note of timidity as her fingers - nails bitten and ragged - began to restlessly pleat the edge of the blanket. She rose slowly; her body too tired to be graceful, and moved to stand beside him. The figure in the bed watched silently, not bothering to switch on the lamp beside him.

Harry stood in the window, lit by a full moon that cast silvery lights into his night-black hair, turning him gray before his time. He looked too old and too young all at once. The pale light sought out the shadows beneath green eyes, and made pale skin thin and translucent. He looked fragile and broken. She said his name again, reaching to touch his shoulder.

He looked at her after a too-long moment. The green eyes - sometimes so fierce and clear - were glazed, lost, and frightened. "He's coming, Hermione. I can feel him. He's so close. It hurts . . ."

Tears stung her eyes and she looked back toward the bed. Ron watched with an odd mix of pity and wariness, and his expression filled her with fear. She turned back to Harry, dragging a hand across suddenly tearing eyes. "Oh Harry, he's not. It's over Harry, he's dead. You won. Don't you remember? It's done. YOU'RE done."

He stared out the window and finally nodded slowly. "I remember." A slow smile spread over his face and she shuddered. He gave no sign of noticing. "Avada Kedavra. So much time wasted learning it, and never a chance to use it. Dead by a muggle gun. Poetic justice, I suppose - but I wish I could have used it. I wonder what it feels like when they die." The smile faded and he looked a broken boy again - the strange ferocity dropping away like a mask, his voice becoming soft and small. "I'm so cold, Hermione, and I don't remember where I'm supposed to be. I miss Ron. Where is Ron? Why can't I remember? Why don't I know what I'm supposed to be?"

She spoke soothingly. "He's here, Harry. Come to bed - he's waiting for us."

He smiled slightly and let her shuffle him toward the bed. Ron opened his arms as they crawled in, one long arm stretching to pillow both of their heads. "Go to sleep, mate. You remember what sleep is, right? It's that thing where you close your eyes and dream of Quidditch." They'd long ago given up keeping separate beds, separate lives, separate loves. The three of them fit together, and felt incomplete when one was missing.

Harry pushed his back against Hermione, wrapping both hands around Ron's freckled bicep and throwing one leg over his. "I dream in red and green. But I remember. I remember here. I remember that he's not coming - that he's gone. This is where I'm supposed to be."

Ron's voice was quiet and sad. "Where did you go, Harry?"

"Outside. I don't remember why. Things to do." Ron watched the green eyes close and looked at Hermione. She was crying silently, arms around Harry like a vice. She prayed beneath her breath, and Hermione didn't believe in God.

He slid himself from the bed carefully, arm sliding from Harry's now-slack hands, and walked to the window. The full moon cast shadows around the magical skull that hung, smoky and menacing, in the air. A matching mark - an unwanted relic of the war and what had been forced on him - was dark and burning on his arm. He gripped the wand he hadn't even realized he'd taken from the nightstand and looked to the sleeping boy - man now, they all were - in the bed.

Her voice was pained and desperate. "Ron . . . he'll come back. This will pass. Please . . ."

"The others will feel it. They'll know. We can't hide it anymore. It should be us. He wouldn't want us to let this go on."

"Not tonight. I need more time to research. Please Ron, let me fix him."

"There is no fixing this Hermione. You should know that. He's a little further gone each day."

A choked off sob escaped her throat. "If Dumbledore were here-"

He cut in bitterly. "If the old man were alive, he'd have done it already. He knew, Hermione. He knew what the cost would be. And he did it anyway." He heard the sounds of distant apparition and not-so-distant footsteps. "Let him go Hermione. They're coming."

She shook as she cried. "I can't do this Ron. I can kill, and I can fight, and I can always do what has to be done. But I can't do this."

He steeled his nerves, ignoring the nausea building and the sorrow that threatened to bring him to his knees. "I can." Long legs reached the bed in three steps. She felt frail in his arms as he picked her up and moved her aside.

She murmured that she was sorry over and over as Harry stirred in his sleep. Tears ran unashamedly down his cheeks. "I'm sorry we weren't enough to make it right, Harry. Thank you for my life, and for being there for the best and worst times of it." He raised his wand. "I love you, Harry."

Green eyes opened and a poisoned smile stretched too-red lips. Red light seemed to glow from familiar - yet alien - eyes. "Love you too, Ron." Hermione's broken sobbing filled the room as Ministry hands knocked fiercely at the thick door. The two stared at each other, and to Ron the other boy suddenly seemed a coiled snake.

"Avada Kedavra!"