Eternity

He sat with his back to the wall, thinking. Loneliness provides large scope for thinking about losses incurred in life. And unwillingly, his thoughts turned to her. The strawberry blonde hair, the rosebud lips, the apples in her cheeks and the nose, a small, pretty , nose.

"Thinking of me?"

He looked up, startled. She stood there, looking as she had always done, not a day over 18.

"Lena?"

He stopped, images of her funeral hitting him with an almost physical force. "You can't be. You… you're …"

"Dead?" She laughed. The tinkling laughter resounding in the empty room. "Yes, I am."

He moved forward to touch her and she smiled sadly. "You can't touch me, Sir. I don't exist."

"So, then, what are you?"

She slid down to sit next to him. "A figment of your imagination, a creation of your mind or maybe, just, a memory. You decide."

He tries to keep his hand over hers in the space between them but feels only the cold, hard surface of the floor. "You're not real." He sighs.

"Who says so? I'm real here." She places a ghostly hand over his heart. "I live here."

"Life would have been so different if you hadn't died."

"Why? What would have changed? Would we not have fought? Or do you think we would have married and had children? Do you think we were ever like that?"

"No, but you'd never have let Wormtail be Secret Keeper. I remember, you never did like him. Something about him being sneaky."

She smiles a bitter-sweet smile. "Would you really have listened to me? Its all destined, Sir. You can't change it. Or maybe you can. Who knows? But no Time Turner can undo some things."

"If I could, I'd never let you die, or Prongs or Lily. And Harry wouldn't have grown up with them and Wormtail wouldn't have escaped and Moony would never have been alone all these years."

"You don't need to mourn me. I'm glad I went the way I did. I'd have hated being a tottering old lady. It wouldn't have suited me."

"And you think it would suit me?"

"You? You'd look distinguished, a proper aristocrat."

"And you would look nice as a grandmother, with a bonnet."

"That's just wishful thinking, Sir. You know better than me, that had things been different, you would have been the same non committal bastard you always were and I'd have married someone else and had an affair with you on the side."

"Do you really think so?"

She looks up at him and smiles sadly. "Sir, those tears are too precious to waste on what we didn't have. We were never perfect. We suited because we were so flawed."

He closes his eyes. "I sometimes wish none of this had happened. That we'd actually had a chance to live."

"Like in that song, 'Nothing to kill or die for'?"

He opens his eyes. "But then I'd have to imagine there's no heaven, and then, what would there be to look forward to?"

She gets up. "An eternity. You could look forward to an eternity with me. We never made up in life, but I think we'll do better in death. I'll wait for you. Take your time." She leans towards him, her lips ghosting over his; not touching, but he feels her smile. "Look after Harry. I'm so sorry I never got to know him. And there's no hurry. I'll be waiting. Forever."

When he falls through the Veil, those words are what he remembers. He grieves for those left behind, but he remembers, and lets darkness envelope him.