- I'm so sorry, Harry, so very sorry, I know we shouldn't have done that, but we did, I did, we have hoped and I'm sorry, and Harry, listen to me, please listen to me, I'm sorry…
The eyes were once green, like fresh spring grass. Amazing, how green can turn into steel and blood and serenity and screams at once. Green, like Avada Kedavra, but not sharp. Sharpness requires some life to remain in them, and the eyes are to never laugh again.
Eternity is such a short time, when your only chance to rest has been taken away before you were brought upon this world.
And the boy, no, never again a boy, the man standing in front of people he once called friends blanches. He loved them, once, when he still remembered how to feel. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, he still loved them.
He wouldn't know. From the ashes, the phoenix won't rise again, for to care was to be hurt, to burnt, to die small deaths all over again, without the final relief of black oblivion. He won't let himself care again, only to watch those he loved grow old, and die, even memories of them long forgotten by hundreds of generations.
- Sometimes, Hermione, sorry just isn't good enough.
Voice so soft and sad, and defeated, and the boy-man – or should he be called a God? Only He is truly immortal, after all. – leaves. The majestic castle opens her gates for him, her child, her protégé, her heir. She knows what he is going to do, she has always known.
She doesn't try to stop him. There is no need, because for once he is doing – oh the irony – the right thing to do.
His last gift.
A phoenix doesn't have to feel to start a burning.
The castle shuts her doors, reinforces windows, keeps her occupants inside when they scream and burn and a new legend is born that day – or is it a night? – a legend of a man who has forgotten how to love and yet could give others something he will never achieve, the greatest gift of all.