Cadmus Peverell's fingers had trembled as he took the smooth stone, rounded from being battered by the river and turned jet black by a magic he couldn't explain, from Death's hands. They had trembled harder as he slipped it carefully into his pocket to use when he was away from Death himself. They were shaking the hardest of all now, as he sat alone in his empty house, so that he nearly dropped it as he turned it over and over in his hand.
His eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he thought of his love. Harmonia was beautiful and funny and sweet and he'd wanted to marry her. More than that, he'd wanted to be with her. He could have lived his whole life as a bachelor if it had meant he could still see her every day, see her and talk to her and sometimes, if he were lucky, kiss the back of her hand.
He had spent years, when they were young, trying to convince her to marry him, and finally, finally she had – only to be snatched away from him almost immediately after their engagement by a fever that had burned her away to nearly nothing before it took her from him. And now he would get her back. He had to get her back, because he needed her.
The third turn of the stone was almost impossible to manage because all of him was shaking, now, with anticipation and excitement and a little bit of fear. Because this had to work, and he didn't know what he would do if it didn't, not now that the idea had been planted in his head that he could have Harmonia back.
The three turns complete, he opened his eyes. And there she was.
"Cadmus?" Her voice sounded just the way he remembered it, before the fever had dried it to a rasp, and if it was a bit sad, he could put it down to the fact that she'd just been dead, just a few seconds ago, and obviously, that would be hard to shake off, the feeling of being dead.
"Harmonia!" he exclaimed, throat half-closed with overwhelming joy so that it came out as a raspy near-whisper, as though he were the one with the fever. She didn't look quite right, not like she was meant to, like something about her wasn't quite solid, but then, she'd just been dead, and he couldn't expect the stone to work so fast as all that, now could he?
He leapt forward toward her, pulling her into his arms like he'd wanted to do for all this time. It was only when she was in his arms that he realized, fully, that something wasn't right. She didn't hold him back. She just stood there, eyes staring blankly forward, as if he weren't there at all.
She looked plump, like she had when they were first falling in love, all of the curves she'd lost with the fever returned to her, and her skin was back to the warm color it was meant to be, but she didn't weigh enough. She might not even weigh as much as she had after the fever, when they buried the burned-out husk of her body with the skin stretched tight and grey over the bones.
Even without lifting her, he knew it. She was solid, but she wasn't whole. And she was icy cold, as if she were still dead, or as if a veil was covering her skin, keeping them apart even as they stood there together. He began to shake again, lowering his arms and pulling away from her as she stood stock still and let him release her without fighting to keep him near.
Now that he'd realized the truth, instead of pushing the details away with thoughts of how much better she looked than she had when she was ill, or of how long it might take to recover mentally from the shock of coming back to life, he noticed the way her eyes gazed emptily toward him, more like they had been when she was dying, out of her mind with fever, than like they'd been when she was healthy. They were still a beautiful, delicate grey, but they had none of the sparkle they used to have, full of wit and charm and laughter.
Standing here now, he noticed, too, that everything about her seemed muted and a little nondistinct, as if he were looking at her through something. His heart sank as quickly as it had flown when he opened his eyes to see her there. But what was wrong with him? He shouldn't be disappointed! He should be happy, still.
He should be more than happy. She was here. He forced himself to focus on that fact. It was not perfect, but it was better than the alternative. Anything was better than the alternative. He still had Harmonia, and that was what counted. Wasn't it?
He was pulling himself back together until she said eight words that froze his heart in his chest. "Oh, Cadmus, why did you bring me here?" For a moment, everything seemed to stop as the question sunk in, even the air in the room, and then he drew a breath in and everything began to hurt, inside him, like something was breaking.
"What do you mean Harmonia? I . . . I brought you back so we could be together." Her eyes seemed to register nothing, staying as flat and as dead as they'd been since he'd opened his own eyes. "I love you, Harmonia, you know that! I always have!" Surely, she had to react to that! She had to remember! But no. Her eyes stayed cold.
"But why did you bring me here, Cadmus? I'm dead. If I'd meant to be here, I'd be a ghost." Everything clicked into place, suddenly making an odd sort of sense, and Cadmus found himself laughing. Harmonia didn't laugh in return, but she did let him take her hand as he reached for it, though it still felt strange and unnatural to his touch.
"Harmonia, it's not like that! It's alright! My brothers and I – we defeated Death! Or, at least, we outsmarted him. We don't have to fear him anymore! He won't be back for you, not while I'm alive, and now we can be together!" She turned away from him, looking around at the room for the first time, and he found himself blushing. "I've been living by myself. But I can tidy it up! It can be a nice house, like I meant it to be when we built it!"
She looked back at him, eyes still vague and a little unfocused. "It can be nice for you. I don't belong here. It's much too . . . life. It hurts to look at it. It's too solid." Cadmus gaped at her. Nice for him? No! It would be nice for them! It was a place they could be together! A flash of anger ran through him and he dropped her cold hand again. Didn't she want to be together? Wasn't that enough for her?
"Don't you want to be with me?" he asked, too bluntly and too loudly, his anger taking over. "Don't you love me enough to want to stay?"
She looked at him as if she were confused, eyes still seeming distanced. "Why would I want to stay? We'll be together on the other side. I'm supposed to be on the other side."
He took a step back. "No!" he exclaimed, "No, you're not! You're supposed to be with me!" Did she really not love him enough to even pretend shewas happy to see him? Did she really not love him enough to stay here in the world with him, now that he had beaten Death for her? And if she didn't love him, had his whole life been built on a lie?
He could feel himself beginning to fall apart, but he couldn't do that right now. He couldn't fall to pieces when he'd just gotten his love back. He focused on the anger, hot and solid in his chest, because it might just be enough to hold him together.
"I'm supposed to be dead," she said again. And then, without thinking, he threw the stone at her, which was stupid, stupid, stupid, because if it had hit her, he would have felt guilty and when letting go actually made her vanish, he felt just as bad.
"Harmonia!" he called again, rushing across the room to grab the stone and spinning it three times.
She reappeared. "Why didn't you just let me go, Cadmus? Let me go. We can be together later. Togther there. The light is too bright here!" Now she sounded almost angry, too - almost, because there was still the distance there, like there was something between them, and he knew he had a choice. Hold on and prove to her that he could make it worth her staying, or let go and kill himself and give her what she wanted.
One half of him, the part that was still angry and that had always been stubborn, told him to hold on, tough it out, and prove to his cold, unfeeling, unfaithful fiancee that he loved her enough to make it work. The other half knew that it would break him, watching her like this, and told him to take a chance. Let go. Let her go. And then follow her, the real her, just like she'd asked.
For a moment, he couldn't make a decision. For a moment, he was suspended in limbo between the two options. And then a memory flitted across his mind, a memory of the night he'd put a ring on her finger to show they were engaged, and his own words, optimistic and naïve and joyful, echoed through his head.
"I'm going to give you everything, Harmonia. Everything you could ever want. Everything you could ever dream of." That was what he'd said. And he hadn't done it, because it had turned out that he couldn't, but now – now she was asking him for something again, and it was something he could give her.
He could let go. He could send her back to wherever you went after you died. And then he could follow after her. They could both have what they wanted. Yes. He felt scattered as he dropped the stone again, letting it fall to the floor and watching her disappear, like he had too much energy pent up inside, like he'd been struck by lightning, and then he got his bearings again and he pulled his wand out of his pocket and turned it on himself and sliced open his throat with a severing charm, falling down in a puddle of blood to land on top of the stone.