And, Afterwards, What?

notes: my first HP fic. Mild angst. New to the fandom. As if that weren't enough to put you off reading! *grimaces* ehehe.. if you review, I'll follow you around like a shameless grateful puppy. I adore reviews, they taste like happiness and forever…

It was as if the world had come to sharp focus, like when it was morning and he had just woke up and put on his glasses. But sadder, he thinks.

His eyes were drinking in everything, everything, like the flowers and the slant of afternoon sun and the lace pattern on dresses and the green seams on leaves the lines of his palms the whorls of his thumbs and and and--

--and how life looked like with Sirius not in it anymore.

Someday, Harry thinks, maybe I'll forget, and everything will be all right. The world would blur back to happiness, and he wouldn't see everything as intensely as he did now.

He wouldn't need glasses to see--

--but he won't, and he will, and he knows that too, just like he knew Sirius would not come back until after the war, until either he or Voldemort was dead. Until that. This is something that must be pushed away.

Even if, sometimes, he remembers this, and he can't breathe.

I'm waiting, Sirius. And he walks and walks and walks, too, so he is waiting and looking for him as well.

Like now.

To see all there was to see and what the world had to offer, because he might never see Sirius again, and vice-versa, and if he died at least he would drag with him a thousand images burned inside his eyelids (like snowflakes and the sky before morning and glimpses of a flaming star) more than enough for two people, with room for his parents as well.

They would share. Harry would like that.

I'm living through their lives and they lived without seeing mine, he thinks, a mantra on the way back, and he knew that sometimes it didn't make sense, but then sometimes everything didn't, really, at all. So it doesn't matter.

And suddenly he was standing at the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive, and there were tears fighting their way out from his eyelids and he's thinking, no, not here, listen to me for once. And they stop.

 There is only a hint left of them in his eyelashes.

His hand is on the doorknob, and the other is quivering at his side. He opens the door; climbs the stairs one dreary step at a time.

The place has changed; not the cupboard under the stairs, but the cramped room on the second floor. He is back to being lonely again, back to staring at the wall; only now it is not so dark.

Hedwig is gone, off dutifully delivering guarded replies to Ron's, Hermione's, Hagrid's, and Lupin's equally guarded letters of consolation.

Write back soon, Harry. Please, be careful. Hermione.

Harry, we'll come pick you up sometime next week. And, take care, all right? Ron.

Take care of yerself, all righ', Harry? An'  if you've been wanting summat.. Hagrid.

I'm sorry, Harry. Lupin.

I will, all right, I'm okay, it's all right, I'm all right I am I am I am—

I will be.

But not right now.

He was still watching with too clear vision. Glaringly. Painfully.

He took off his glasses.