Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
A Dream - Edgar Allen Poe
The endless corridors stretched on before him, but not straight like before. They twisted, curved, wound their selves around him like ropes around a prisoner. He walked, moving forward, his footsteps silent on the blank white floor. He waited for the door to come into sight; because it always did.
But it was different.
Not one door, but ten, twenty, a thousand marble polished doors suddenly appeared before him, beside him. They were as plain as his dreams, after taking the Dreamless Sleep Potion. As plain as the dull sky, now everyone was gone. He twisted around, contemplating for no more than a second before reaching out for a door. Any door, it didn't matter. A door was an opening, an entrance. An escape.
Harry twisted the doorknob and pulled. The door opened, swung away and vanished. His hand fell to his side as he gazed at the great expanse of blankness before him. Blank as the corridors he walked at night. Blank as his mind had become.
He turned around. Grasped another doorknob and pulled. Blank.
Turned around, clutched another. And another. And another. The doors vanished one by one, and the landscape melded together like liquid metal.
No.
He jerked away from the doors, whirled around in a frantic moment. The corridor was gone, replaced by doors, all white, all blank as parchment, like at the beginning of detention, when he was assigned the words to write. A strangled snarl emerged, and he stumbled wildly forward, banging open doors, clutching the doorknobs until they vanished, leaving him with nothing but air.
His mind was no longer blank, but the scene of a war. Crashes of sound, banging, shouting, roaring, chaos.
Flashes of red, green, black, overlapping, scratching at his eyes like a ravenous vulture. Screaming winds and screeching calls and pleas and cries for help that no one would answer.
"No!" he screamed, and grappled along the smooth wall for support. The round cold feel of metal, another doorknob. It would be blankness. He wanted blankness. He wanted to blend, meld in like everything around him, become nothing. He jerked the door open.
It was not blankness.
The room was shrouded in shadow, causing the light at the center of the room to stand out, stark white splashed across black. Illuminated under the light, was an arch. Harry's breath caught. A thin material, hung from the structure, fluttering from an invisible wind. However thin, Harry couldn't see through the fabric, couldn't see through to the other side of the arch.
Harry walked towards the veil. His hands reached out, stroking empty air. Too far, still too far. He pulled his feet closer. The veil had stilled, waiting for him. Another step, another stone off his chest.
So close, so close.
Whispers, light as a cloud, brushing him tenderly, lovingly.
One more step, then another. Until he was right before the arch, and the veil had started moving again, urging him to reach out, he was so close…
"Harry! Harry, NO!"
The boy barely turned, barely glimpsed the sight of Dumbledore, of Snape, Remus, Ron and Hermione.
A hand reached forward, as if to hold the veil in his hands and never let go. And as his fingers slid through it, and as the footsteps behind grew louder, quicker, he took a step forward and fell, letting the air embrace him and letting the veil take him as its own.
Harry laughed. He might have cried, but he wasn't really sure. A hand reached out, pulling him in tenderly, welcoming him home. He felt no fear, just weary happiness.
After all, death is but the next great adventure.