Title: ...Goodbye
Author: Wobble
Rating: PG
Warnings: Major character deaths, slash (non-explicit), and ghosts (which may be a problem if you are scared of ghost...?), non-canon
Pairing(s): Draco/Harry, Dean/Seamus
Summary: It's always hard to say goodbye.
Goodbye simplicity.
His eyes are almost lifeless, as he looks out the window. He's seen the passing fields before - many times actually, he almost has them memorized. But to him, almost is not enough. He wants to memorize the very smell of the train, the very light that is streaming in the window. He never wants to step off that train, to let the harsh world touch him ever again. Because it is that harsh world that has tainted him.
Seamus pulls his eyes away from the window and lets them rest on the seat - the empty seat across from him. The empty seat where that boy had once smiled at him, telling him how much he enjoyed being his friend - once, nine months before, that boy had put his hand on Seamus' and smiled, because he knew.
Empty eyes. Empty soul. Life had been so simple then.
Goodbye light.
He shifts his weight from one side of his body to the other, as he lies lengthwise on the seat. He groans angrily, as the train bounces and slams his pained shoulder into the back of the seat. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, letting himself drift into that world of darkness where he only feels the stinging pain in his shoulder and the stinging regret of ... of...
He reopens his eyes and sees the pale knees of her. She is sitting across from him, a book in her lap, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, and the flesh around her eyes puffy and red. She shifts to the side a bit, staring at him in the eye.
"Do you even -"
"Hermione."
She shakes her head and looks to the window. The shade is closed though, to keep them from seeing the outside. They cannot bear to see it, those pastures that ... he ... had once looked at, looked at in the brightest light, as if... as if...
"This was his entire life, Ron," Hermione whispers.
Only darkness then. The light has faded.
Goodbye conformity.
Seamus flips open the leather-bound book out of boredom. The first page is blank, with only a name scrawled at the top. Seamus' eyes drop away from it, unable to read the words to himself, because he can only think of what once was.
The page turns.
His own face smiles out at him - the heavy-lidded eyes and the freckles that are sprinkled across his nose and cheekbones. He smiles a little, remembering what he had been thinking when ... when... His smile fades.
With each turn of the page, he remembers what he had once had, what had been lost, and what he was leaving. His eyes finally rested on the last page, a dark one, one of night, with a castle illuminated in the darkness.
Strange to leave hope. Strange to leave happiness. Strange to leave the place where he fell to the ground, noiseless and lifeless and never to stand again. Strange to leave all that one knows behind to gain something that is scary, blurry, and dark...
Goodbye devotion.
The door to the compartment slides open and there he is -
Tall. Lanky. His black robes too big on his frame now, but there had been a time when they had fit. His blonde hair falls around his ears. His steely eyes scan the compartment. His eyelashes flutter for a moment.
One step. Without looking, he slides the door shut again.
Hermione's eyes are glued on him.
He slowly looks from one side of the compartment to the other, before his eyes twitch the tiniest amount, and slowly, he slides to the ground, as if he is turning to liquid, as if his knees cannot hold him up anymore. He sits on the floor, legs folded around him. Salt tablet tears stream down his face, as he looks from the girl to the boy.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I am so sorry."
And Ron just reaches out - his shoulder throbs with pain - and puts his hand on the boy's thin shoulder.
"It's alright."
He had once been so devoted. But what does one do when there is nothing left to be devoted to? Can one still be so devoted?
Goodbye eternity.
Seamus never thought it would come - the war. And then, he never thought he would end up fighting. He never thought he would see him fall, see him fall to the ground and not move. And Seamus never thought he would see one man laugh over another man's death.
But he did that day. He saw it over and over again.
And after that day, he saw those men laugh over and over again in his head - heard their laughter in the night. The taunting of death. The deaths of boys - not even men. Seventeen-year-old boys, some older, some younger, falling to the ground, lifeless - and laughter, ringing through the air like church bells.
Seamus played with a loose string on the edge of his tee shirt. He twisted it around his fingers, like a wedding band, over and over, repeating, never ending, on and on for eternity.
He knew he would stay at Hogwarts for seven years. But to an eleven year old, seven years is an eternity. But an eternity passes so quickly sometimes.
Seamus thought that he would always have that boy, always have him with him. Seamus thought he would always be able to make his life worthwhile. He thought his life would be an eternity and he thought that he would spend eternity with that boy.
But how long is an eternity? What if an eternity is only 17 years?
Goodbye comfort.
Hermione could do nothing for Draco, who sat besides her shaking. There was only so much she could do for him, because there was nothing she could do for herself.
How can someone who is grieving comfort a boy who is grieving over the same person, just in a different way?
Ron's eyes were shut and fluttering occasionally. He was in darkness again, the darkness where he would slink when he felt to exhausted to keep going, when he thought of emerald eyes and black hair.
"I am sorry, Hermione," Draco whispered.
"I know you are."
"I wish that -"
"No. Don't."
Hermione turned her head. She did not want to hear his wishes - because she had already wished them too many times for them to come true.
She wanted to comfort him, but comfort was pointless. It changed nothing - like wishes and smoke. They just fade away in the darkness, unseen, unheeded. Gone.
Goodbye Dean.
Seamus pushes the leather-bound book into his bag and sat staring straight ahead.
Alone in the compartment, he thought of his best friend for the first time in weeks.
To watch that boy - Dean, that tall, handsome boy - fall to the ground, lifeless, was like watching himself die. Seamus had felt a piece of him fall away when he watched Dean fall. And for a while after, Seamus could barely focus or concentrate or function because a piece of him had died that day. A piece of him had fallen from him, fallen beside Dean and laid there beside him - like Seamus had wanted to, but couldn't.
Seamus still felt that piece of him missing. He could see the rawness of it on his skin. He could touch that pain within him. He could feel the edges of it pushing out - the rawness of that missing piece of him spread everyday, until he was completely infected and there was nothing he could do. It was almost as if he was surrounded by a gauzy linen - thousands and thousands and thousands of layers, like an Egyptian pharoah... it was swallowing him. He was moving in this hazy bubble and he didn't know what to call it or how to handle it.
He felt like falling himself, so he could fall beside his friend... his friend...
Seamus smiles. His friend. Yes, Dean had been his friend, was his friend, would always be his friend. Yet, so far beyond a friend, beyond a brother, beyond a boyfriend. Dean had been... Dean had been...
Dean.
Just Dean.
Seamus put his hand over his eyes, hiding his tears from his own self.
He never wanted to say goodbye. It spread the rawness too far across him. Like a bruising of the soul.
Goodbye Harry.
Draco wipes the moisture off his face with the red handkerchief that Hermione had pressed into his palm. He carefully folds it up, first into a triangle and then, into a square. Hermione's brown eyes follow his fingers fold the handkerchief over and over again. His fingers still after several moments and his steely eyes travel to Hermione's.
"Did you love him?" Draco whispers.
Hermione smiles. She nods.
"More than -"
Hermione shakes her head, unable to finish: no use in finding words that no one can say.
"Did you love him?" Hermione asks. Draco turns his head to stare across, at Ron's sleeping face.
"I suppose I did."
"Have you said goodbye?"
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because... because -"
Because Harry had been a part of him. Because it was his fault that Harry was gone. Because he had loved Harry. Because he could not bear to admit that, yes, Harry was gone, gone, gone forever and was never coming back, that Draco would never see him again, never rest his hands on his shoulders. Because Harry had fallen at the hands of the man who Draco had watched gain power, and Draco had done nothing to stop it and that tore him apart like nothing else.
"I loved him," Draco whispers. "I love him."
"I know."
Draco looks at the blinds on the window.
A part of him breaks away. He can feel it tearing from him - that piece of him that had belonged to Harry. That chunk of his heart that is tender and broken, scratched and bleeding. He feels it falling away and he can do nothing to stop it. He sits and he closes his eyes, and he imagines himself before then. Before he saw him fall to the ground. Before he stared into those blank emerald eyes. Before, when he couldn't find the words to tell Harry that he loved him. He wants before but he cannot have it - because before, he was whole. And now, he has a piece of himself missing, and it is killing him. He is not the boy he once was and he will never be that boy again.
And there in the darkened hallway was a flicker. A flicker, a glimmer, just a spot. And then again. Another glimmer. And for a moment, just for a moment, there were two sets of eyes - one set brown, one set green. And they smile through veils of thick tears and an eternity of emptiness, a room of concrete surrounding them as they try to connect with what they once were, what they should be. They stand silent and flickering, unable to move, but unable to leave. Unable to say what they want to say, yet unable to forget the words that slip easily through their minds. They glimmer and shine for only a moment, before fading away to the depths of the minds. They will soon be forgotten and their cherished little lives will fall away, never to be heard from again. But they can never leave. Because they cannot say goodbye.