The room was dim, the only light given off by the dozen candles placed at precise angles to each other, each burning one of four specially-selected herbs. The herbs had magical properties, one and all, and their pleasing, pungent scent helped repel the miasma of sickness that hung from the very walls. There was a hush among the people waiting in the room, a quiet expectancy.
The room was dim—to normal vision. If you had eyes that could see beyond the mundane, Muggle realm, you would have to shield them for fear of being blinded by the sheer amount of magical energy permeating the room, centered around an elderly man in an enormous bed. Warming spells, spells to soften the linens and pillows, and above all, spells that preserved life and health—all of them making an intricate latticework of magic carved by a sure, careful hand. But the spells were failing, now, particularly the preserving spells. The man in the bed was dying.
Though shriveled with age, if you knew what to look for, you would be able to see that the man had been powerfully built in his prime, athletic, stocky, muscular. What hair that was left on his spotted scalp was silver, but one or two red hairs remained among his eyebrows. Freckles made a crescent across his cheeks and nose.
The man had been handsome, once. Even if you couldn't see it in his face, the photographs proved that. Dozens, hundreds of them crowded the room, hanging from the walls, resting atop dressers and desks and tables, the same two men appearing in all of them. Energetic, lively youths laughed and waved and soared on broomsticks. Older, more solemn, more mature men dressed in formal robes stood with their hands clasped while friends and family looked on in tearful joy. Men edging toward middle age held toddlers in their arms and tickled the children into hysterical giggles. Two elderly men sat quietly and smiled, a lifetime of love in their eyes.
It wouldn't be long now.
The man in the bed stirred; those gathered around him stiffened in apprehension. The man's eyes, his intensely blue eyes, opened. They seemed fixed on the ceiling, though there was nothing there that anyone else could see.
A slow smile played across the man's lips. He murmured a single word.
"Harry……"
And then he sank back onto his pillows and sighed his last breath.
Two elderly women stirred. One of them, her hair a bushy mass behind her head, felt briefly at the man's wrist, then at his neck. She turned to the others behind her and nodded. The other, whose face was not unlike the dead man's, reached over and gently closed the eyes still staring at the ceiling.
Later, when the body had been taken away and the others had departed, when it was just the two of them sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, Hermione Granger Krum turned to her sister-in-soul and asked, "Do you think he really was here?"
Ginevra Longbottom glanced at her with tear-reddened eyes. She was silent for a long time. Then, she replied, "He thought so, anyway. I guess it doesn't matter, does it?"
Hermione took a sip of coffee. "No," she said quietly, "no, I guess it doesn't."