AN: TRIGGER WARNING for character death and suicide. Please do not read it if it will upset you. I was in the mood to write something angsty. AU set after the final battle. I don't own Harry Potter.
It wasn't supposed to end this way
I remember how it felt when things went from fairytale to nightmare in an instant, how one moment we were dancing, shielded from the building horrors of reality, reveling in this moment of stolen joy and thankful to still have each other, and then there were lights, green and red and yellow, and I was kicking off my shoes and grabbing the bag I'd packed in case of an emergency (but not today, it wasn't supposed to be today, never today) and running.
I remember my lungs burning and the rawness at the back of my throat as I gasp in the cold air over and over and over again (and yet it's never enough), and the sound of twigs breaking beneath my feet, and the warring thoughts that I should be quiet, but also that there is no time to be quiet, and that they have found us anyway, and that quiet does not matter anymore.
I remember hearing shouts but not listening to them, hearing the sounds but not understanding the words, as though they were in another language, that surreal feeling like you've landed in another country and everyone you ask for directions responds in a foreign tongue, the feeling of seeing your name on a "wanted" poster and knowing but not understanding that it is you to whom the poster refers.
I remember the chandelier at Malfoy Manor, the feel of the knife piercing my skin, the fact I counted 167 crystals before I couldn't remember how to count anymore, and the cold, that bone-shattering cold, which might have been tolerable if it hadn't been so starkly contrasted with the burning, with each trickle of blood that left my body and seared its way down my skin. I think the chandelier fell.
I remember the feeling of living in a movie, like yours is the hand pushing open the door while the audience screams "don't do it!", like you are Pandora having just realized too late what you loosed on the world, and hope is a weak and fragile thing, and you don't quite know what to do with it, but you know it is all you have left.
Mostly, I remember running. Running and running and running. It seems we've always been running, and it wasn't all bad. Children run all the time and laugh as they do so. But one eventually gets tired of running.
The marathon is over now(finally it is over, mercifully it is over), and we sprinted to the finish line and now we can stop. But when running is all you know, what do you do when they tell you you're done?
Harry's suicide note said as much. They weren't going to let me read it, the people in charge, the supposed "adults" who sat around while the world burned, but Professor McGonagall vouched for me and Ron. I didn't watch as they removed his body from the base of the Astronomy Tower, the same place he saw Dumbledore fall just one year ago (gods, it feels like longer), and laid it to rest away from the other bodies. I don't know if they did that out of respect or fear or something else, and it doesn't really matter, because I don't have a voice to stop them anyway, and all Ron can say is "It wasn't supposed to end this way" over and over and over as we cling to each other like our embrace is that fragile hope from Pandora's box.
I hope he's at peace. He doesn't have to run anymore.