Author's Note: I do not, and sadly never will, own Harry Potter.
Written for the All About You Challenge. Prompt: Beyond the veil.
Harry had always wondered what happened when you died.
It was a natural byproduct of what had occurred when he was a baby, he supposed. Death had touched him-had marked him for its own with a lightning bolt etched into his forehead-and then passed him by. He couldn't help but wonder when Death would realise its mistake. Before he'd known what really happened to Lily and James Potter, he had sometimes laid awake in his cupboard, watching the moon filter in through the cracks, and pleaded with something bigger than himself to let them come back. To trade his life for theirs.
"I know it's not a fair trade," he had whispered, holding his breath at the creak in the stairs above him. "But please..."
Nobody had ever answered his half-formed prayers, however, and perhaps that was for the best, he'd thought when he learnt of You Know Who. A man who wanted to cheat Death. But had it really worked? A revenant supping silver blood and damning himself with every drop was a piss poor substitute for eternal life. The half-snake creature Voldemort had resurrected into wasn't much better.
But what was he?
An effigy, really. The Boy Who Lived, propped up on prophecy and half-truths, a gilded child of legend. Merlin himself would come down to bless him (a rumour he had literally heard his first week at Hogwarts).
Big words for a half-starved boy wearing his cousin's too big, much-mended pants under his new school robes.
Sirius knew who he was. Harry thought anyway. He wasn't entirely sure. The man had slipped and called him James more than once, but he couldn't help it, could he? He was sick-the dementors had broken him-it wasn't his fault.
It wasn't his fault, but Harry's throat still burned and his eyes still stung when Sirius tousled his hair and called him his dead father.
When Sirius fell through the veil at the Department of Mysteries, Harry knew it was his fault. No matter what Dumbledore said, or his friends, or even Snape surprisingly enough (it felt wrong when the man wasn't cursing at him, it felt wrong when his professor's eyes almost looked gentle)-
He knew.
Harry had always wondered what it felt like to die.
He'd never wondered what it meant to be forced to live.