Afterlife in the Library
Tag line: After the Battle of Hogwarts, a new ghost takes up residence in the destroyed library.
Setting: Post Battle of Hogwarts, AU
Warnings: Past character death (non-canon)
A/N: The idea for this fic started with a single spoken line and blossomed into a complete, if short, story. I've never written a story from this point of view before, so bear with me. The formatting is meant to reflect the rhythm of how I hear it in my head when I read it to myself.
He finds her in the library.
Typical Gryffindor. Fighting for what she loves most. Dying for what she loves most.
Books.
Not her friends.
Not even Perfect Potter.
Books.
And like the stubborn Gryffindor she is, she doesn't even die properly.
He watches her lovingly lift an ancient leather-bound tome from the rubble, and wonders how she can hold it when he can walk right through her.
He faintly recalls Professor Binns writing the names and dates of goblin rebellions on the blackboard, the stick of white chalk floating in midair, surrounded by ghostly fingers.
She always was a fast learner.
"They don't love you," he tells her.
She ignores his taunt, but pointedly walks through him.
It makes him feel strange.
He doesn't remember the last time he ate. He lost his appetite long before the war was over.
He doesn't miss it.
He thinks she lives in the library.
He finds a small wizard's tent in the one undamaged corner of the Restricted Section.
He wonders what she does in there, but does not dare venture inside. She had a mean right hook in third year.
He wonders how it would feel to be punched by a ghost, but not enough to risk her eternal wrath.
Her friends come to visit her.
They look on in equal parts awe and sadness at the enormity of the task she has undertaken.
When they offer to help, she thanks them, but declines their offers. There is so much damage and there are so few able-bodied survivors. They are needed elsewhere.
She has all the time in the world.
She carefully maneuvers a book pinned beneath a pile of wreckage.
Not carefully enough.
The wreckage shifts and the book goes flying, landing at his feet with a dull thud.
He picks up the book and hands it to her.
She looks at him the way he imagines she would look at a tricky Arithmancy problem.
He backs away slowly.
He spots another book beneath an overturned chair. He adds it to the towering stack of Charms texts.
She continues to stare.
He attempts a friendly smile.
The corner of her mouth turns upwards, slightly.
He decides he likes helping.
The piles of books are bigger, and the piles of wreckage are smaller.
"You don't have to stay here," she tells him.
He doesn't want to leave.
She talks to him, now.
She tells him about her family. They are all muggles.
He wonders whether anyone thought to inform them that she is dead.
She describes automobiles, aeroplanes, computers, traffic lights, telephones, and buildings so tall they touch the clouds.
He admits he's never actually seen a helicopter.
He asks whether muggles have Dark Lords and if Darth Vader is one of them.
She tries not to laugh.
He finally asks what he has been wondering since he first found her: how did she die?
"Draco," she says, her face a mask of disbelief, "I'm not dead. You are."
