AN: To Harry, his parents' presence must have been a source of comfort as he approached his death, but it was likely excruciating for his parents. I think this perspective deserves exploring.

There was no awareness after the end. No consciousness. No stimuli. No cares or thoughts of anything at all. She had simply ceased to exist. And for over a decade and a half, save for a short interlude that she immediately forgot about as soon as it happened, she wasn't. And this was of no concern to her, because she did not know it to be so.

Then - abruptly - she was, again.

It was rather disorienting. So many sights and sounds and smells, overwhelming her mind for what felt like an eternity, but was likely only a fraction of a second. And then everything set into place, and she understood who she was, and where she was, and most importantly, why she was there.

Her son was about to die.

She stared at him, unable to speak, her eyes greedily drinking in his form - tracing and then retracing every line and contour of him in the vain hope that she might remember him once she returned to where she came from. He resembled his parents so very much, and yet, looked nothing like them at all.

Certainly, he had the messy hair and handsome, angular face of his father. And his eyes were the exact same shade of green that hers were. But, James' visage had never been so battered, torn and marked like this. Not in life anyways. And she was distinctly sure that her eyes had never possessed the quantity of sheer grief, and exhaustion, that his did now.

She thought back to something she had learned in biology class as a child, back before she knew she was a witch: the theory of Nature vs. Nurture. Looking at her son now, it was indisputable. For Harry had all of his parents' nature, but had clearly never been nurtured.

Yet, he stood tall and proud as he faced death, just as they had. She idly wondered if he did so in an effort to emulate them - dying an honorable death to protect those he loved. Would he still be doing this if they had simply been cut down, unknowingly, on the way home from the market? She hoped not. For having one's child die a martyr, even to save the entire world, would never - could never - compare to seeing them live on without suffering.

She would, of course, never get the answer to this question. But as he continued to walk through the forest, coming ever closer to his demise, she added this to the tally of ways she had failed her son, all the same.

They were nearly the same age now. But when he looked at her and spoke, he was unmistakably her child. And she, his mother.

"Does it hurt?"

She smiled at him then, and shook her head. It hadn't, really. And there was no pain in the nothingness that came after death anyways.

"You'll stay with me?"

And she nodded.

Tears were streaming down her face now, and she railed against the injustice of the world. She would stay with him, until the very end. She would suffer the heartbreaking agony of watching him die, just as he had been forced to do so with her.

It was of the bitterest stroke of good fortune that he had not asked about what came after. She shared a glance with James and saw that he understood too. For she would not be able to lie to her son, but she could not bear to tell him that he would not have his parents in death, as he had not had them in life. For he would cease to exist, just as they would the minute his magic stopped powering the resurrection stone.

And he would be alone, once more.

AN: Viewing this tiny exchange through the lens of there being no life after death is certainly not the only framing one could look at it through. Examining it through different backings would likely yield new meaning each time and I think it's well worth doing so.