May 3, 1998
It is sunrise and Harry has won a war, but he doesn't feel victorious.
He watches the gleam of morning light on marble and tries to feel something other than empty.
The air feels heavy and tastes like burnt magic and rotting despair. He swallows hard, once, twice. He can't get the taste of blood from his throat. It's been hours, it's been years. He wonders when he grew accustomed to the taste. He wonders if he ever will.
A little way behind him, Ron and Hermione wait. A twitch of his fingers, a turn of his head and they will come to stand beside him. He refuses to move. He has asked to do this alone.
In front of him, close enough that his breath stirs the silver hair, an old, misguided man and his shattered final home. Behind him, the living, the dead and a broken world waiting to praise him. Them. In his hand, the Elder Wand, blood-stained, battle scarred, powerful and poisonous. Harry thinks he knows how it feels.
He knows what he should do. Knows what they expect him to do. Knows that they expect him to once again do what they cannot, by placing the most seductively powerful wand in history into the tomb of his dead mentor and seal it safely away. In 70 years or so, they expect him to die again, unchallenged, letting the power of the wand die with him.
Harry thinks of trains and consequences and whether it will be worth it. How can it possibly be worth it?
He thinks of the newly dead, staring at a ceiling that's forgotten how to reflect the sky. Thinks of the all the rows of bodies, soon to be falling to pieces in the ground. Warriors becoming worm food. He thinks of all those dead, empty eyes and the beloved faces they once would've known. Feels the weight of the dead on his shoulders, their eyes on his spine, their thoughts in his head.
Harry thinks of blue eyes twinkling and white robes against his skin. Thinks of mist and perfect silence and the small, fragile, hideous remains of a soul that had never known love. Thinks of death, and love, all tangled up in lies.
He wonders where the rest of the dead went when they died. If they got on a train to take that journey he wasn't yet allowed to make. If his train will still be waiting, 70 years down the road.
He thinks of the lives the dead sacrificed, and the death the living sacrificed.
It has to be worth it.
He thinks of a world, waiting to be rebuilt. A world needing something, anything, to rally behind, now everything to fight for, and against, has been torn down. He thinks of this new world born into this new day, free from war at last. He wonders how it will survive itself. So hopeful, so fragile. So desperate, so afraid.
He thinks and thinks, and knows what he has to do. For a moment, he feels a flicker of…something. Like the twitching of a snake in his belly. For a moment, he wonders if this is the victory.
When it passes, he feels even hollower than before.
Harry clenches his fist, grits his teeth, summons the last of his courage- and puts the Elder Wand in the pocket of his ragged jeans. He steps back. His fingers seem to tingle, as though already itching to have that power back in their grasp. He draws out his own familiar phoenix and holly wand, repaired just hours before, with Dumbledore's face gazing down upon him. For the first time, it feels alien in his hand.
Hermione and Ron step forward, their presence beside him as reassuring as the light from the slowly rising sun. Their mouths are grim, their gazes determined and Harry briefly wonders how he ever thought he could've made them stay behind, when they would so clearly damn themselves to stay by his side.
He murmurs "On three?" but Hermione darts forward, snatching a twig up from the ground. With a small smile, she transfigures it into a copy of the Elder Wand, and places it between Dumbledore's folded hands.
Joining Harry and Ron again, she nods, "On three."
Together, they repair Dumbledore's tomb, shards flying back together and cracks sealing until the marble gleams as brightly as it did on the day the Phoenix sang.
Together, they turn and walk back toward the castle, where their new world waits to greet them.