A/N: There's no getting around this; it's MCD and there's mostly angst here. I tried to end it on a hopeful note though.
"Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive."
and
"To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think...This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact."
Joanne Harris, Chocolat
There were shoes by the door. Old shoes, ratty shoes, trainers that had seen better days. The mud on them was still a little wet. It was probably going to stain the carpet. Harry couldn't remember the last time he hoovered, and he wasn't inclined to start now. He walked right past the shoes by the door and made a beeline for the coffee pot, the same way he did every morning.
Kingsley was leaning against the counter. There was a cup of coffee in his warm, dark hand, and in the other hand he held a paperback book. Harry could smell rich roast in the air, and the slightly earthy scent of toast. His windpipes tangled together like shoelaces, knotting in the middle.
"Morning," Kingsley whispered, glancing up with a smile.
"Hi," Harry said, voice cracking.
Kingsley cocked an eyebrow. "There's coffee."
Harry glanced over. Sure enough, the coffee pot was full. He'd been an advocate of downing a mug of hot, instant coffee before running out the door every morning, but Kingsley had changed that. He'd given Harry a cafetiere for Christmas and a bunch of different flavoured beans. Then he stayed over enough that Harry never had to actually use it himself; it was always full and hot and ready in the morning.
This morning Harry crossed the kitchen and poured himself a mug, drinking it slowly. He savoured every drop. Then he cornered Kingsley before he could go and get dressed and kissed the heaven out of him.
"That was the best damn coffee I've ever had," Harry said.
Kingsley slid a thumb under his eye tenderly; they both pretended not to see the dampness clinging to his skin.
"I'm glad," he said. "Let me put my book down."
"You okay?"
It wasn't the first time Ron had asked. Harry dearly hoped it would be the last, but he knew it wouldn't be. He looked up from his desk, squinting across piles of paperwork and opened files. Ron was at the other desk, passing a ball from one palm to the other. He was frowning. It was sympathetic and awkward on his face.
"Stop looking at me like that," Harry said.
"Right, mate." The ball paused. "How am I supposed to look at you?"
"Look at your paperwork instead. Sha—Roberts wants these done soon."
The sympathetic silence persisted. After a beat, Ron started passing the ball back and forth again, squeezing it lightly every third pass. It was rhythmic. It was annoying. It was just what he needed to ignore the tick of the clock on the wall.
"Roberts said you took a few days off last week," Ron said. "I'm glad. You haven't had a day off in a while."
Harry grunted, adding his signature scrawl to another dotted line. "Needed the afternoon."
"Yeah?" Ron sounded tentatively hopeful. "Go anywhere nice?"
Images flashed through his mind. Turning his back on a castle tower, high in the sky. A dark forest floor. Muddy shoes by the door. He shook his head, then shrugged.
"I just needed an afternoon off," he said. "I'm fine, Ron."
The clock ticked on and on. Ron squeezed the ball and put it down on his desk with a sigh.
"Right, mate," Ron said quietly.
They didn't go out much. Not anymore. Harry didn't like the way people looked at him; their eyes always seemed to find him in a crowd, picking him out of dozens of scarves and bags and messy-haired individuals. He hated their pitying stares. He hated the way some of them wandered over to offer words of sympathy and support.
Kingsley didn't like it either. It was no big secret what happened; it had been all over the papers by the same evening. There was no real way to get away from it, but neither of them liked it.
So they stayed inside.
Harry brought out all his board games and they played until he got tired of winning or losing. Kingsley kept the coffee pot full for him and read that paperback book from cover to cover. When Harry asked what happened in the end, he only put his finger to his lips and smiled. It made something in his chest clench, but he ignored it. If Kingsley didn't want him to know, he thought wildly, then he didn't want to know.
Cooking was hard. Harry didn't feel much like eating, and Kingsley was a notoriously picky eater. He scrunched up at pretty much everything Harry put in front of him. Eventually, he took over, cooking until his fingers were raw and Harry was full. sat across the table with a full glass of wine and watched Harry with a tender look in his eyes. The weight of that look made it hard to meet his gaze, but Harry always did.
"I'm worried," Hermione said.
She was standing at the front door of his flat, her knuckles pale against the strap of her bag. She looked like someone had filled her with liquid iron, and it had hardened overnight: impossible to move.
"You don't have to be." Harry shifted in the doorway, frowning. "I know I've been… weird, lately. But you don't have to worry. I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Hermione snapped. "Something awful happened, and now you won't talk to us. You're isolating yourself, you only come out of here to go to work, and you won't—!"
She cut herself off, her gaze flicking down to Harry's hand. He whipped it away and scowled, edging the door further shut. He was suddenly desperately afraid that she could see the muddy shoes on the mat.
"Harry," she began, tremulously.
"Everything's fine," he said, and slammed the door shut in her face.
Harry woke with a start when the blankets lifted away. They were tucked around him again within seconds, but it was long enough to let the chill in. Kingsley fit against his back perfectly, holding him close. The sofa wasn't big enough for both of them, but somehow they fit anyway.
"I didn't hear you come in."
Kingsley hummed, low and a little raspy. "I was trying not to wake you up."
"You're quiet," Harry said, and if his voice cracked like glass, neither of them mentioned it out loud. "You're so quiet now."
Kingsley pressed a cold kiss to the back of his neck. "Go back to sleep."
Letters kept coming. They came through the door and they came by owl. Harry cut off the Floo connection and ignored the post no matter how high the pile got, but eventually one caught his eye. It was an invitation for Dean and Seamus's wedding, bright gold ink on a stark black background. Fireworks glittered on the envelope. Harry flipped the invitation over and saw that it was for three weeks away.
"You should go," Kingsley said, putting his hands on Harry's waist from behind.
Harry didn't even have to think about it. He turned and kissed Kingsley, tucking his head under his chin.
"No," Harry said. "There's no space for a plus one."
It came to a head not long after. Harry was sitting on the edge of the bed, twisting the ring over and over on his finger. He kept thinking about the wedding. Dean and Seamus's wedding. They probably had rings like this. Rings that looked like this, at least.
In another world, this could have been an engagement ring. Harry might've worn it on a different finger.
"You're not sleeping."
The bed dipped, sending Harry into Kingsley's side. He was cold. Cold in a way he'd never been when he was alive. Harry blinked, fumbling the ring, and found himself alone in the bedroom, the mattress firm and unyielding.
He wasn't sleeping. He didn't need Kingsley to point it out to him. It wasn't on purpose. It's just that every time he lay down, the bed felt vast at his side, like the sheer drop of a sandbank, leading down into the dark ocean. He got this sick feeling in his stomach that Hermione told him was grief, and he ripped himself out of the cold, lonely bed before he could fall into that awful, lonely place.
"I can't sleep," Harry said. "Not in here. Not in that bed."
"I know," Kingsley said.
He was there again, leaning against the bedroom wall. Too far away. The ring fit so perfectly on Harry's finger, and it hurt to wear it, but he couldn't take it off alone.
"It's too big," he said. "The bed, I mean. It feels like I'm sleeping outside, on the ground, with nothing around me. It feels like there aren't any walls."
It felt like there was nobody there to hold him and keep him safe. Because there wasn't. And the truth was, there never had been, not when he was younger, and not even when he was older. This little slice of life he had with Kingsley was only that; a slice, a sliver of what most people got. It was tiny and probably unimportant to other people. Just a few weeks of sweetness, spanning one month of an old year and half a month of a new one.
But somehow, in those few weeks of loving Kingsley and letting him share his bed, Harry had gotten used to it. He'd let himself fall in love with the way Kingsley held him, those all-encompassing arms sweeping him up and keeping him close.
Harry licked his dry lips. "I don't know what to do."
Kingsley moved so quietly these days. He slipped across the room like a dream and knelt in front of him, moving to cup his face. Harry stared at his eyes and wished they were as bright and lovely as he remembered.
Kingsley's hand was cold against Harry's cheek. "You know what you have to do. Take the ring back to the woods and lose it there."
"Don't you think," Harry said, with a shuddering breath that only sent more tears spinning down his cheeks. "Don't you think you could be happy here?"
Kingsley didn't even have to think about it.
"No," he said, though he said it gently. "How could I be happy when you're so sad? How could I be happy being here when being here only hurts you?"
And it slid into place, like a key in a lock. Everything Kingsley had done to pretend that he was alive was to keep Harry happy, but it wasn't going to work. It was only hurting them. It would never be fair that Kingsley couldn't finish his book, or eat the same food that he loved to eat when he was alive, or drink the coffee that filled the coffee pot. It would never be fair that he was gone, and it wasn't fair to pretend like he was still here.
"Harry," Kingsley said, and the warmth in his voice was just enough to combat the whispery quality. "Harry."
Harry didn't think, even now, that he could say goodbye. But he could say Kingsley's name right back while he said Harry's.
The ring came right off and landed on the floor with a soft thud. Harry followed it down; there was nothing to hold him up anymore.
There were rumours of a way to bring the dead back to life.
Harry knew better. But that didn't stop him from following the rumours halfway around the world. He boarded a plane and then another, and he didn't bother to brush his hair or eat more than a quick sandwich in the airport bathroom. He didn't want to eat it, but he didn't want to pass out before he got there either. He looked at himself in the mirror and wanted to break it, crack the image into a thousand pieces, watch them spray across the squeaky tile.
And when he found a woman with a fake stone and a smile that was all cracked teeth, he almost snapped. He didn't kill her. But he raged and spat and swore and used magic until the room shook like a box of nails. He didn't look at the woman's terrified face on his way home. He took the afternoon off and went back home, and the flat was cold. It was always cold these days.
It hit him, then, as he was standing in his front room in a pair of ratty trainers. Maybe a woman with a fake stone couldn't bring the dead back to life. But Harry didn't need a fake stone. He knew where the real one was.
Harry took the following afternoon off, and walked into the same forest he'd died in, looking for a way to bring back the dead. When he dragged himself back home hours later, muddy and exhausted, the flat was still cold, but there was a ring on his finger, and Kingsley was there.
"Put this somewhere," Harry said.
Hermione was white-faced. She'd been sitting on the edge of Ron's desk, presumably talking about him. But now she came towards him with careful steps, and took the Resurrection Stone with a hushed sort of horror. She cradled it carefully in her palm. Harry felt something rush through him the moment it was gone. He thought it might have been relief.
"Harry," Ron said weakly. "You…"
"I know," he said. "It was stupid. I know that. Just… take it. Take it and do something with it and don't tell me what you do. Don't tell me where you put it. And don't ever let me touch the fucking thing again."
Ron pulled him into a hug. It was warm. And the warmth spread through him bit by bit; his breath caught and he almost stopped breathing. He didn't realize how cold he was until Ron touched him. The tears came then, quiet and slow, and he squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn't see the way Hermione's eyes filled with tears too, the way she covered her mouth to stop any noise from coming out. Ron put both arms around him and hugged him in this all-encompassing way, and Harry's legs gave out a little.
But it was alright. Ron caught him and lowered him to the floor, and Hermione followed them down, both of them holding him up.
The muddy shoes were still by the door.
He was staying with Hermione and Ron for a few days. That was their idea, and he hadn't protested. Should probably have done it sooner. They were waiting downstairs; both of them wanted to come upstairs with him, but he asked them not to. This bit, he had to do alone. He ducked into the bedroom and skirted around the edge of the bed, picking things up and putting them down again.
He didn't know what to pack. Clothes, probably, but he could always borrow some of Ron's. It seemed impossible to make a choice. It seemed impossible to decide that something was important enough to pick up and put inside a bag.
In the end, he filled a duffel with a bunch of arguably unimportant rubbish, some underpants, and two pairs of socks. His toothbrush. The shampoo that Kingsley said smelled nice, once, and so he'd kept buying it. Everything felt exhausting, but he did it. He brushed his fingers gingerly against Kingsley's pillow, tucked neatly on top of the duvet. It was cool, but not cold. He left it there.
On his way out of the bedroom, he passed the coffee table and saw the paperback book sitting there, the one Kingsley hadn't finished. It was something about a village and a chocolate-maker. It sounded like the sort of thing Kingsley liked and the kind of thing Harry would like to listen to him talk about. Hermione had probably read it.
Kingsley would never get to finish it now. He'd never read the end.
Harry picked it up and put it inside the bag. Tears rose up and got swept away again. Maybe Kingsley couldn't read it, but Harry could. Maybe. One day. If not tonight, then one day.
The muddy shoes were still by the door.
Harry swallowed hard, looking at them. They were ratty, old, and they had seen better days. The mud had dried. It would probably flake off if he shook them. There were still pine needles stuck to the soles, but those could be washed off.
He could still remember each step into the Forbidden Forest on that afternoon off. He could still feel the cold bite of wind into his skin as he traced a path he hadn't known he still remembered. He remembered the little thud he heard when the toe of this left trainer collided with something small and hard. The ring. He remembered picking it up and staggering home, holding it close, and shucking off his shoes the moment he got inside.
Harry picked the shoes up gingerly and dumped them in the rubbish bin, shutting the lid. He brushed a bit of dried mud off his hands and picked up his duffel, turning off the lights. Then he went outside and locked the door, and went downstairs to his friends.
With some things, it was best to simply start anew.
[Word Count: 2,868]