The boy stepped out into the courtyard, slabs of stone clacking against his heels like the clamor of bloodshed.
He pressed his lips together like they were the seal to his heart. He pressed them until they stung.
Boots clacking, lips ruptured, the boy walked through coils of smoke that parted for him, revealing the weeping and torn.
Dead eyes turned to him, raked his soul. Boring holes in their savior. Boring holes in their destroyer.
The boy saw he was hollow.
The cold stung his flesh like the gaze of the undead. His eyes burnt with the smoke of the victors.
He swept his burning gaze around. Bodies rigid with trauma. Corpses limp with the cruelty of fighters.
People. People limp with the cruelty of killers. Killers stood frozen, frozen with actions.
Yet the boy still clacked. Quiet. Buried in his words.
He tasted blood.
The coils still receded. Quietly, carefully, they parted for his stature.
With every stride, the coils stung his eyes as they revealed broken memories, with their debris still scattered. On people. Through people.
Blood trickled down his shirt, staining innocence. Filtered down his throat, choking valance.
Nothing was soft, nothing was warm. Spare the ripped skin. Spare the pooled blood.
But the boy only knew numb, only knew cold. Only knew the muted screams.
Then they keened. Shrill wails shredded the still silence. Guttural groans flooded his senses.
The fine hairs on his stinging back were raised in fear. The strong teeth in his bleeding jaw were gritted in horror. His stomach was clenched with the pain of realization.
His vision spun like the arc of his wand and his stride faltered. Faltered like a purpose, brandished since birth.
He felt the pain. Felt the torn and bloodied. The forsaken and the sacrificed. For him. For the…boy?
He felt them now. Raw emotions coursed through him. And they stung. They stung like open gouges, wet muscle and sinew left to be assaulted by the bitter cold.
He stung like them.
He reeled and staggered backwards, the streaks of warmth inching down his grimy cheeks as a reminder of who he had been.
Who had been.
They had been.
The sea of upturned faces started at him accusingly as he passed. The raw of the boy was tormented by their cold, unseeing gazes. Some he recognized, others were unrecognizable.
The pictures in his mind arose, and began to breathe.
He stopped by a familiar lump of flesh. And screamed. His screams ripped at the flesh of his throat. They snatched the breath from his lungs and stole the strength from his legs.
He fell.
He fell in agony. In misery. In the vicious sensation of helplessness.
Something else fell with him, and he knew he would never climb again without her. The bloodied red hair ravaged his thoughts and he gasped, chocked on his tears. With the last shred of sanity, he dug his nails into his forearms and clutched madly at himself. Clutched in the empty hope grasping her life.
The rain pelted down with no remorse. It mottled with the blood on the boy's forearms and smarted in the gashes of his arms. It cut its way through the maze of smoke. It revealed the hundreds of weeping loved ones, throwing themselves over the dead. Throwing themselves as if the rain even mattered anymore.
He threw himself over her frozen corpse and let the shivers rack his body.
He turned his blurry, unseeing gaze left, right, back, forwards. No matter how much he tried to huddle within his own hollow self, he couldn't escape the searing flashes of what used to be life. Nor the sharp stabs of grief when he saw what he had created.
He saw a pattern. No matter the gore that plastered their faces, nor their mutilated bodies, not even the screaming of their undead lovers, they were all lifeless. It was all they would ever be.
He took a sharp breath to fill his robbed lungs. He tasted the metallic blood, the bitter rain and his own terror.
He had fashioned this.
The boy couldn't live after they had died.
So he trembled with exhaustion and drew himself to his unsteady feet.
But when he tried to walk again, he wasn't a child.
So the man sagged at the knees and fell to his hands and knees in despair. His wet shirt clung to his icy skin and his wine dark lips and forearms pooled blood onto the cobblestone.
A faint smile graced his lips as he rolled back onto his knees. His hand plunged into his pockets and withdrew a white sliver.
The man slid his fingers over the surface of the basilisk fang and clutched it to his chest with such strength that his knuckles turned white and his fingers ached. He squeezed his eyes shut as memories came to life and tugged at his heart.
He swallowed again as he realised how much he had robbed. This was the all he had to give back.
So he drew himself up and positioned the glistening fang point over his stomach. His only expression was one of mere curiosity. The blood from his parted lips dribbled down and splattered the pure white.
So beautiful.
With one fluid movement, the fang was embedded in his abdomen. But the pain could never compare to what he felt in the next few seconds.
"Harry!" A horrified voice called.
Ron.
No one would ever forget Mr. Potter's scream.