It wasn't how he imagined it. The stories circulating about what death felt like were highly sensationalized and very different from the true sensation. There was no darkening of his vision as though a curtain was draping itself on his life force, but rather a general distortion and blur, much the same as falling asleep. It was as if the shapes in the world around him were blending and merging together to form one indistinguishable figure.
The truth of death's finality was expressed most poignantly in it's own singular thought. I am going to die. Even as he accepted and believed this outcome the past few weeks blazed across the haze of his surroundings almost as though he was watching a very fast paced and out of focus slideshow.
He could see her last smile fade in the same manner as his godfather's, falling from her face with her laughter still ringing the air. He could see his children forcibly disapparating from their home. It had all happened just as fast and unimaginably real as this death induced reincarnation. Trying to force his final thoughts to be of a happier nature he firmly dismissed these flashes as a side effect of his own incantations.
It was merely the effects of the spell playing on the innate qualities of the Impermeable Death potion he had taken. Rationalizing the necessity of using two magical methods of killing, Harry found the final thought he wished to die with. Ginny's touch.
It has always calmed him and assuaged his nerves. After Dumbledore's death it had brought him from the brink of delirium safely back to reality. Knowing that he would never feel the warmth of her skin, pulling him to safety, caressing him in love almost broke his peaceful reminisence. However, he held on to the almost tangible feeling of a palm held firmly over his heart.
He had felt her hand there so often before, a constant reminder that someone knew him and was capable of loving him for being more than the Savior of the Wizarding World. More often than he had realized it had pulled him from the same place he had been since the war. Now the absence seemed deadly.
Harry's thoughts were drifting now while he lost focus and slipped from life's firm grasp. He was floating back to that forsaken war. The time in his life when he had known so much fleeting happiness, grief, and anger. It was the only time in his life anyone but Ginny had reached out and touched his heart, firmly grounding his senses.
I must be close to death now, Harry thought almost sarcastically, I'm imagining Narcissa Malfoy touching my chest. However, the firmer Harry's belief that he had indeed reached a level of hallucination the stronger the strain on his chest seemed to become. He could feel the same searching hand creep over his skin in search of his heartbeat. It seemed the hand was ragged from age or something else and almost desperate to find a pulse, possibly in search of another query to which Harry had no answer this time.
When he felt his eyelid pulled open this time, it was not to see Narcissa Malfoys slender and aged face, but rather Draco Malfoy's pointed and unexpected visage traipsed through Harry's vision. And the question of life was not so much a question nor did it regard another person.
Harry heard a simple statement issued from Malfoy's lips before the cliché curtain finally made an appearance. "You will not die on me Potter."