A Valediction

The young woman in the ragged robes danced.

Harry watched, in fascination, as she danced upon the lawn, the old, mellow stone of the castle her backdrop. She soared and swooped, she waltzed with an invisible partner, she spun, she stilled. Great cubes of granular material, ashy, lay upon the sward, and at intervals, she danced into and through them, causing the ash to become fairy-dust, causing the glittering motes to explode and take flight and to become small fireworks, sparkling. At the last, as a recorder's note died away, she spun again, and vanished, herself, in a shower of powdered silver.

When she reappeared, glowing, her rags put aside, the onlookers rose, cheering and applauding, as she and the small ensemble of musicians in the trees above, with theorbo, rebec, recorder, and lute, gathered to take their bows. Harry rose, also, and as he did, saw suddenly in the corner of his eye a tweedy sleeve, in gun-check. Gratefully, happily, he gripped it, feeling the strength and the security of the strong, unwearied arm beneath. 'Albus,' he breathed. 'It has been too long - and you in Muggle mufti.' They clasped hands: two old men, now, their hands corded, wrinkled, spotted with age: hands almost indistinguishable in age, in old strength, in power, and in having guided Hogwarts and the Wizarding World steadily over many years.

Dumbledore smiled, and threw an arm around Harry's shoulders. 'My dear boy,' he said, eyes ablaze with mirth, 'what better time for me to come and find you than now, when the students have danced the Dance of the Stages of Life? I was never able, in my day, to get interpretive dance past the Governors, no matter how many times I put it up to them, but the students of Hogwarts have always found their own way to make things happen, even without official sanction. But come, Harry, and walk with me a while.'

The man who had defeated Grindelwald and the man who had defeated Voldemort paced slowly along beneath ancient trees, arm in arm, two of the greatest of Hogwarts's headmasters in their respective times. 'So, my boy. You have been well, I trust - though missing your partner, no doubt.'

'Well enough, Albus. And you?'

'Not a care in this world - or in any other,' Dumbledore chortled. 'But tell me, Harry. The Dance of Life. What thought you of it?'

'At my age, Albus, I'm not certain I should have an opinion. Not that that ever caused you to hesitate.' They exchanged mischievous grins. 'But it seems to me very true. If you run at a great block of ash, you may get through it - it's like taking the barrier at a run to reach Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. But only by dancing through it can you turn the ash to silver and fire, spark and glitter. Took you long enough to teach me that,' Harry smiled.

'You were a stubborn youth,' said Albus, with a smile of his own. 'And the shower of silver at the end?'

'You once called death the "next great adventure" - if, you said, one had the right perspective.'

'So I did. So it is.'

Harry was silent a moment, as they paced through the susurrating leaves that carpeted the walk in the alley of great trees. They were coming to its end now, and where the path emerged from the interlaced and overarching boughs, the light was dazzling. 'Well, it's certainly nothing to be afraid of, is it.'

'Is it, Harry? Only you can answer that.'

'Then I shall answer it. It is not.'

Albus beamed, his eyes twinkling like the whole vault of starry night. 'You, my dear boy, would never have made a Hogwarts house-ghost.'

'No. When it's time to move on, well, it's time to move on, isn't it? I couldn't have stayed in Gryffindor Tower forever, I had to leave, as a student, so that I could come back to Hogwarts as my home, as master and headmaster. And, well, so on.'

'Precisely, dear boy,' Albus said. They were very near the end of the walk, now. 'Tell me, Harry. What of the dead who have gone on before? Do you believe them to watch over the living, still?'

Harry shot him a very stern, and very amused, look. 'Do I believe in "the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting"? Funnily enough, Albus, I do. There has never been a time I've not felt that, somehow, my parents, and then Sirius, and all those I have known and lost, were not somehow still near, watching and loving me.

'That, I think, is what kept me going. And in the end, after all, I had a very good life. We had a very good life, in fact, he and I both, after such a rocky start. A good, long innings - almost too long, really, but good. I don't regret an instant of it.'

Albus smiled. He did that a great deal, even more now than formerly. 'Ah. Very well, Harry. Very well, indeed, I may say.' They were at the mouth of the tree-alley now, and Albus stepped aside. 'Go on, then, dear boy: you first.'

They stepped out from the coolth and leaf-filtered play of light and shadow and into a clear and perfect day. The greensward stretched away from them forever, crowded with a 'fair field of folk', beneath a limitless sky. He recognised very quickly the figures in the nearest group, disposed as if to picnic on the lawn. Hagrid heaving himself to his feet and carelessly causing nearby crockery to roll about : Hagrid, beaming and waving as if hailing a ship, whilst Minerva McGonagall spared Harry a tight smile even as she rescued the tea service from Hagrid's upheavals. Dean and Seamus, Neville and Luna, Justin and Blaise, grinning at him. Sirius, hale and languidly elegant as in the days before Azkaban, loosely holding Remus - a Remus in the flush of health, unscarred; and even, hovering on the margins of the group, with a quizzical eyebrow raised in what was for once self-deprecation, Severus Snape. Two witches seated side by side, the auburn-haired one with her husband sprawled beside her, his untameable dark poll in her lap, the younger, brown-haired one leaning into her own, lanky, red-headed husband, her lap being occupied by a huge and ancient tome: his parents, and Hermione and Ron. A mass of merry red-heads, Weasleys all, rising to greet him ... and then his vision was wholly eclipsed by a slim and hurtling figure, youthful, ageless, crowned with hair of silver-gilt, tearing towards him like a seeker after a snitch: and Harry found himself, after far too long, with his arms - arms newly young again, and strong, the arms, once more, of the youth he had been - he found his arms once again, and at last, full of a warm and loving mass of Draco Malfoy.

Albus stood chuckling beside them as they broke their kiss. 'Yes,' he said, 'you had a good life, you and Draco. But, d'you know, my dear boys? I rather think you'll enjoy this life even more.'