Here Lies Dobby
Memories consumed him, swirling around in his head. He rolled over, as if the movement would somehow rest his mind, but it did nothing.
Frustrated, Harry threw aside his covers and sat up. Moonlight seeped in through the slits in the window, falling across the bed in stark white stripes. His eyes briefly swept over his wife's sleeping face. It looked so peaceful.
He slipped onto the floor and went over to the window, pulling the shades aside. He gazed out at the still night. Black as silence. Black as emptiness. Black as death.
This was not where he needed to be. Whirling on the spot, he Disapparated. Seconds later, he landed on hard, cool earth. He looked around for a moment to find his bearings, and then he started walking.
Pebbles crunched underneath his feet as he made his way determinedly to a small mound of earth between two bushes. He sat down among the garden, his head spinning with emotions and memories. He saw the silver knife jutting out from the chest of a small elf. He felt the horror rising in his own chest. And he heard the dying elf's quivering voice, whispering a name, his own name. . . .
Harry shivered and turned toward the grave that he had dug years previously. He read the words on the gravestone that he had roughly carved with a wand that was not his: Here lies Dobby, a free elf. He knew that he had chosen the right words to etch onto the smooth surface of the sea-beaten rock. Dobby had loved his freedom.
Dobby. The name was like a fresh stab at the old wounds from his death. Harry remembered Dobby—such an eager, loving elf. So good. So brave. He did not deserve to be here, lying underground in a sad little hole.
But unlike the elf, Harry was alive, he was here, breathing. He inhaled deeply, sucking in the salty air. He listened to the sea hissing fiercely as it crashed against rock. It seems such an angry being, he thought, watching the churning waters. Such anger should not exist.
He stared at the sleek surface broken by a long streak that sparkled with the light of the moon. The rest, untouched by moonlight, was as dark as his memories of the elf's death. In the blackness of night, it was impossible to discern the color of the glistening water. It could easily be a great sea of blood.
He shuddered, feeling a cold that no one else standing outside would have been able to feel. So many lives had been lost in the war. But they did not die for nothing, he reminded himself. Each soul had been a sacrifice so that future generations could live in peace. Everyone who had died in the war—be it wizard, Muggle, elf, goblin, or any other sort of creature—was a martyr.
He glanced at the elf's grave one last time. Then he disappeared from the scene, leaving no trace that he had been there but a soft disturbance in the night air and a single tear on the ground.
A/n: Though he is only a character in a book, I do miss Dobby greatly.