Harry's eyes, dazed from the sudden dim light from the hallway, could not quite make out the figure before him. It seemed a misshapen hulk, and for a moment seemed to embody several persons in one instance, several bodies all atop each other. Then, his eyes adjusted. It was a young woman, probably in her early twenties.

Her general appearance belied the calm compassion of her eyes. She clearly had a difficult life. Her clothing and hair spoke of hard times, but her mouth and chin of defiant exertion, of endless struggle against that which she faced. She would have been pretty had her face not expressed so much emotion, so much crushed life. It was etched into her forehead as much as those words were upon Harry's hand.

Harry gaped. He stared for a moment, a moment too long, in wonder at this strange apparition. She saw his look but did not seem to understand the oddness of her appearance, especially in this little apartment. Really, the appearance of either or both of the people would mean very little but for the circumstances. The circumstances meant all. And that is why his expression reflected more understanding of the oddity than hers.

She said nothing.

"Um..." his voice was hoarse from an awkwardness he had never known. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same."

"Excuse me?" he asked, slightly offended.

"For what?" she asked, her brisk voice sounded less expressive than her face seemed to show.

"This is my lot. Why have you entered my home?" Harry said with a thinly disguised agitation in his voice. The strength of his voice was growing, his familiarity aligning with the situation.

"Oh, is it?" she said simply.

"Yes! What do you want?" he felt a rush of pleasant emotions that he associated with anything different, anything distracting. He knew he hated this woman.

She smiled. "You ask many questions. I was just stopping by. They told me I should. They told me. You understand that, don't you?" she added with a worried tone.

"Err, yes. I understand," his voice spoke, edging toward anxious amusement. "Thanks for stopping by." His arm moved towards the doorjamb casually, but with force.

"You aren't going to ask me inside?" she asked, innocence flooding her words.

"I hadn't planned on it. They never told me to admit you, did they?"

"Well, I suppose not. They just told me to stop by."

"And you have. It was a pleasure to meet you. Give them my best. Goodbye," he rushed in.

"I will. Oh, but we haven't met yet, not formally. I'm Jan," Jan said.

Harry replied, "Nice to meet you Ms. Jan-"

"Just Jan."

"Right. Nice to meet you Jan. I'm -"

"You're Harry Potter. I know. They said so."

He stopped short. His throat seemed to dry like a desert. His bemused attitude disappeared and fearful anger took its place. He ran through his mind. Who would look for him? The Weasleys? No, they gave up years ago. Schoolmates? Balderdash, they were afraid of him, after the Lavender incident. She had wanted to talk about Ron. That had not gone well. The relatives of Death Eaters? Maybe, but they had all disappeared about when he had. They knew it was over. Yet, still, there were many who would look for him. You cannot avoid being the Chosen one completely.

He would have to move. He looked about him with a pang of regret. He had begun to feel comfortable enough here. He forgot about her presence. She reminded him.

"You are Harry Potter, right?"

"Errr...no. Sorry, you've got the wrong guy," he lied.

"Oh, no you are. I can see the scar. They said it would be there and it is. You're taller than they described, but it's definitely you," she said in an amused sort of way. "Why did you lie?"

He shook his head, "Please, just go."

"Oh, I've upset you. Please don't be upset. They just asked me to come by. I don't think they wanted to upset you."

"Just go." His voice was cold and firm. He looked at her and her at him. She nodded and left. He felt the wood tremble slightly as he felt it slide through his fingers, clicking closed smoothly. He bolted the door and set a locking spell upon it. The floor looked very inviting. He sat. The window looked darker than usual. His world seemed smaller. He fell asleep sitting there. He forgot about the strange girl in the morning.

* * *

Harry went about his life, such as it was. He had, of late, taken to working at a construction site in eastern London. The land had housed a very old building, centuries of history, until inspectors had proclaimed it unsuited for remaining erect and no society had approached it to preserve the history, the legacy of that structure.

It was an odd building, four stories built in such an unusual way that the demolitionists had taken months to determine how best to knock it down. All the usual support methods and layouts were tossed out the window when this building was made. It was as though it were held up by a force outside its own walls or any measure known to man. It was like magic. But, like anything of stone and flesh, it was brought low and crumpled. With a visual heave, it gave up the ghost and left a dust path a mile wide.

This was the new building, the one to replace the old. Harry liked the feel of steel beneath his fingers, the feel of aching joints and straining his body to the maximum. He liked the feeling of creation, just so long as he was a minor part in it and could not see the finished glory of something new and golden. He liked the half-skeletal being he entered, the rib cage he clanged upon. He felt as if they were developing a soul for it, creating the being's inmost self, first. He loved and hated that building.

The other workers did not know what to think of the disheveled, hard working man. He did good work, but largely avoided contact with any of them, when he could avoid it. He always refused to go out for a drink with the gang and ate lunch by himself, out on a girder fourteen stories above the ground. He had an ease on the heights like a man afraid of nothing. He completed every task put to him, no matter the personal pain or injury he sustained. He rarely sustained a lasting injury.

To Harry, life was as it had to be. Working kept the mind occupied. He enjoyed those moments, heavy equipment slung on his shoulder, walking the topmost heights, feeling the chill, liquid breeze freeze against his face more than any in his life. He felt at home. One day, she came by.

He liked to watch the people walking by the building as he ate lunch. Like ants or large dogs, depending on his height at the moment. He felt a kinship with them at moments of such a distance that he was incapable of up close. He never saw people he knew. They did not know what he did; he did not want them to know. But she came.

At first, it was like a dream, he thought he was seeing a person he had met in a vague dream world, not quite real. So, he did not trust his eyes and ignored her. But there she stood, all afternoon long, looking curiously up at him as he worked. He walked past her on his way home. She followed him, catching up quickly.

Just as she was about to catch him, he turned. "What do you want?"

She was caught off guard by his sudden statement. It was not really a question. He didn't want to know anything. He wanted to be left alone. The look of shock and hurt on her face softened something within him. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just not in the mood for anything today."

Her nod was barely perceptible. He looked at her a second then turned to walk away. He walked four paces onward and as he had somehow expected, felt her come along side him. He glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes, then sighed and stopped. In a tired tone he asked, "What is it?"

She brightened. "Oh nothing much. They just said I should see you again. They said it had been long enough and that you would hopefully not be too angry. You aren't too angry, are you?"

"No."

"I'm glad. They said you wouldn't be. And now I -"

"How did you find me?" he asked, quizzical.

"How did I what?"

"How did you find me? I moved. I changed jobs. I'm on another side of town." he said evenly, waving his arm around in a light arc.

"Oh, that! It was easy! No, I didn't follow you," she said quickly at the look on his face, "They knew, of course. They always do. They are awfully fond of you, I think, though they don't say so. They don't say a lot, you know, just what needs to be said. That one told me that, very smart. It made a lot of sense."

"Wait, wait, wait. Could you clarify for me? Who are 'they?' Do I know 'them?' How do you? What has this got to do with me? With you? Who are you, really?" this string of questions fell from him, although he had never meant it to. He wanted to walk away and forget her, but somehow he could not. There was something odd and familiar about her that he couldn't quite pinpoint.

"What do you believe happens to you when you die?" she asked, straight-faced and suddenly very serious.

Harry noticed how very alone the two of them were. They had walked several blocks without seeing them pass. They had entered a quiet square, bereft of traffic or passersby. The light evening fog settling on the city only served to unnerve him a little more. "What?" he asked, though he had heard the question clearly.

"Where does the soul go? What becomes of that person?" she asked with no hesitancy and a growing forcefulness, approaching earnestness.

Harry paused and looked at her; her eyes reflected the floating mist to his left that curled and frothed like a wave. He felt a shudder run through him, though it might have been the wind.

"Err...well, I suppose they go on...to some place...well...where they are together, away from us, of course..." he rambled, recalling thinly the words a ghost had once told him about death. He didn't know what to believe. The closest he had ever come to seeing the dead were through a mirror and an after-image produced by a spell. You could not bring back the dead. Death was an end here, "the start of the next great adventure..." someone had told him.

She looked at him with pity. "You have lost someone dear, haven't you? And not just one, I can tell. I am sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry about?" he asked, relieved to feel that rise in anger.

"Nothing, nothing. I just want you to know I...I understand." She said it in such a calm, soft manner that Harry grumpily had to accept her sincerity.

"Forget it."

"I have lost people too. I think people who die leave something of themselves in everyone they knew. That way, in the end of time, everyone will be together in that last person to ever live." she said with sadness in her voice, but strength and conviction.

"I don't think that's how it works."

"But you don't know, not for sure. You haven't died, so you can't know," she said, her voice rising for the first time, desperation licking at the edges of her consciousness.

"Alright, alright," he said, "I don't know. No one really knows. Not as such. It's all just guesses and conjecture. But I'd like to think that I will see them. Don't you? A collective soul seems a dismal proposition to me."

"Dismal? No...it has a sad beauty to it, like death."

"What about those who have no one to leave their soul with? What of the forgotten dead? What of those who lose their souls while on earth? Who forget all that they knew and dismiss it as nonsense? What of their souls? Where do they dwell?" Harry said with a touch of bitterness that started to choke up his throat.

"Well," she said in a voice without conviction, without pre-thought, "I suppose those souls, once abandoned, stay with those that knew them with it, and whatever new soul they take up, follows them on their new path. That would make the most sense to me."

Harry said nothing. The pain had returned; he felt it, that emptiness, that sense of nothing. That cold. Cold? That darkness that was all consuming. Huh? Where did the world go? Harry could see very little. The streetlights were extinguished; the clouded sky prevented much less light than usual, but something deeper was setting in. He could feel it. Then, he knew.

Turning, he looked down an alleyway and saw them. Glancing to his side, he saw her looking at him, fear in her eyes, panic. "What is it? Why is it so dark? Where am I? We're so alone here. What is going on?" He shushed her and turned back toward the alley. "Stay still."

With a whip, he had his wand in hand and arched it over toward the figures coming. It had been a long time. The swirling cloaks of darkness floated ever closer, the rasping breaths came in audible over the near emptiness of the audible plane. He was angry, but he needed to feel happiness. He could not, he knew. He had to try.

"Expecto Patronum," he said in command, thinking desperately, searching for happiness. Nothing happened. He felt the figure next to him step away in some trepidation. Apparently his change in attitude and direction scared her more than the change in light. His anxiousness showed in his voice when he again said, "Expecto Patronum." Again, nothing happened.

"Harry..." the voice at his side said. It was not scared, it was pleading.

Harry's mind whirred, running along all his old sources of happiness when conjuring, the feeling of flight, the faces of friends (just calling on old demons of pain), and on. He had nothing and he knew it. What made him happy? Nothing, one voice said. You have nothing and are nothing. Nothing? Another said. Balderdash. You have a friend just there. She wants to be, at least, if you let her. He liked the sound of this latter. He clung to that thought. A friend, un-judging, unknowing of all he had had and lost.

His heart lightened. "Expecto Patronum," he whispered, a charging stag erupted. It looked at him, as if happy to see him once more; it had been years. He urged it, and it leapt forward, taking out the several Dementors mere yards away. The world lightened, and the cold dissipated. The stag raised its head toward him. It vanished.

Jan looked at him. He looked back. They said nothing