After the numerous people who asked for the sequel to Darkness in Light. Here it is! I hope you enjoy.
Love, Keta
Whispers in the Dead of Night
Upon a pale ashen face, thin lips are bitten in between small, reassuring smiles as Harry leads his children through the masses of worrywart parents and ecstatic children, and he, keeping a prayer for their safety in the back of his mind, gestures for the youngest, his darling little Lilyann to hop up on the train platform. There are no tender heartfelt goodbyes uttered as he leaves them to their fate because they had already talked, and he refuses to draw attention to his immortal youth, especially at the train to Hogwarts.
There are so many familiar faces; ones that make his heart break because he cannot be among them, and he finds himself sorting through the ones that he might think about talking to after the children are gone. He catches the eye of Draco Malfoy who nods and bows just slight as he walks through the crowd of both his beloved's Death Eaters and the patronizing light; no one else notices him, for which he is thankful, and when he emerges to the muggle side of the barrier, for a moment, he wonders where his aunt and uncle are before remembering that he is not a child and that nostalgia is a whimsical tempter. He decides then as he walks out of the station to talk a peek at the neighborhood he'd once thought of as conformity hell.
All lawns are perfectly manicured, not a dandelion in sight, and every hedge is cut down to perfect little rectangles, so perfect in fact that you'd think them to be some kind of realistic-looking plastic. Many of them have little flowerbeds with bushes and flowers that are slowly going dormant, and most of them have high privacy fences in the back to keep as much as possible secret from nosy neighbors. Two story houses line the sides of Privet Drive, a sharp contrast to the one story majority on Wisteria Lane, but despite its unremarkable exterior, he still finds himself walking down the familiar path to stand in front of Number Four.
It's quiet inside, but Harry can sense the older of his two childhood tormentors inside. He smiles, remembering the day that Voldemort broke in to take him away from the miserable muggles, but that smile fades when he remembers that he's alone. There's no one to greet him the moment he wakes up anymore, not even his children now they're going to school. "Damnnit, what am I going to do now."
"You shouldn't be so sad all of the time, Master."
Harry doesn't even bother to look behind him to figure out who's standing in his room; only one person calls him 'master', and the view from his balcony is so much more interesting than the horseman's attempts to make him feel better. "Shouldn't you be out killing people?"
"Not if you're going to stand here and mope."
Harry turns around and frowns at the reaper, green eyes glinting with dark fire. "Then help me… Help me bring him back."
Death sighs, a soft melancholic sound that the raven had made himself too many times to count, and he raises a bony hand to press against his missing heart. "I would if I could, but you know how these things work… His horcruxes are gone… There's nothing to tie him to this world. I cannot bring him back, not without a sacrifice…"
"What kind of sacrifice?"
Harry walks down the muggle sidewalk, his eyes trained on the people who walk on the other side, unconsciously creating a bubble around him by the humans who know him as a threat in their subconscious. He scans the crowd with prejudiced eyes in an attempt to find an unwanted, unneeded individual in the scheme of life that had a decent enough body for him to steal. He walks the streets well into the evening when at last he sees a man sitting alone outside of a diner.
He's a beggar, a homeless man in ratty clothes that looks up at Harry without fear, only acceptance. The raven knows that he must possess this brunette's body to bring back his Tom, and so, in the quiet of the late hour, Harry steals the man away and sacrifices his life under the harvest moon.
Halloween passes by in quiet happiness, and when the snow first falls as the Hogwarts Train pulls into the station, Harry walks alone onto the platform and waits by himself for his children to come bounding down the stairs. Lilyann comes down the stairs with another girl, joining her twin brothers who do not realize that their father is standing just beyond the mass of people, so it's the girl who turns around to see him and makes her brothers walk away from their friends. She skips through the crowd and rushes in to hug the raven, temporarily stealing the breath from him. "Lilyann," he whispers into her red hair. "I have missed you… And there's someone at home that would like to meet you all for the first time." This last part he says aloud to the other two, gaining curious looks from them.
"Who?" Viridius asks, completely lost.
But, Hadrian sees the completely lovestruck look on his father's face and frowns, knowing of the immortal's number one desire. "What'd you do?"
"Your father's back… And this time…" Harry's smile grows dark and sadistic. "This time, there'll be no meddling old fools to take him away from me."
