Nevermore
"You can do better than that!"
A flash of light and a moment trapped in time later, a brush with death and a cold memory of some things he hasn't quite forgotten, no matter how hard he's tried.
There's a tapping on the window, as if someone gently rapping, rapping on the window. An owl, with a letter, stands on the windowsill of the musty and barely used sitting room. The results, oh the results. With hands trembling much more than he'd ever admit, he slits open the envelope. A lot of E's, a couple of O's, a pitiful but thankfully lonesome D beside Divination, but he's made 9 OWLs, 9. More than Bellatrix's paltry 8.
They'll have to be proud of him now; they can't ignore nine OWLs, not when they'd thrown Bellatrix an amazing party for making eight. Of course, it won't be fun as he won't be allowed to invite any of his friends, and he isn't even quite sure why he cares whether they're proud of him or not, isn't he supposed to be ready to escape this hell?
Of course he's ready, but load of dungheaps they are, they are still his family, right?
He hears his name and feels something sharp at his back, as if he's fallen onto a bed of nails or a pit of vipers, but the second won't end, and the memories, for all their fighting to be forgotten before now, refuse to release and just let him fall into oblivion alone.
It's midnight, rather dreary and cold, and he sits at an old fire, feeling weak and weary in the middle of December, wondering what will happen to everyone now. Things have changed and warped and no longer seem real so much as caricatures of reality, things that don't happen anywhere but in the movies. People don't fight wars with wands and try to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them in reality, that's all Hollywood, or, at least, it used to be.
But the only concrete thing now is concrete itself and nothing can be depended on, except the monotony of the day and the hope and prayer that maybe something will change in this god-awful hole of existence tomorrow. He takes a swig of the drink, and vaguely remembers a child's promise that he wouldn't drink that nonsense. Of course, he'd just tasted his first firewhisky and nearly burned his throat to a cinder by drinking too much so that promise had never meant too much.
There's a burst of light and sound in front of him and he jumps, yelling, before he realizes that it's Fawkes, not the apocalypse. He reads the note and sends Fawkes back to give his answer.
It seems that things could get messy.
He lands in something remarkably bright for a lifeless void and sees different things littering the ground around him. A stuffed toy raven here, a dead spider there, a hint of obsession upon the air, mixing with a faint trace of fear and far too much longing. It looks as though he's seeing various people's obsessions, various people's phobias and desires, wants, needs, and losses.
He finds his own, all around him, in his memories and in his worries and in his boredom and in his love and, ultimately, in himself. Is this Purgatory or simply Hell? Or is it something else altogether?
The toy raven's wings flutter on a faint breeze that he can't feel, and he remembers a poem Remus read once, a few words that he thought he'd forgotten long ago. He certainly hadn't taken the time to read it himself, let alone learn it.
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over a many quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as if someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door…"
Nothing else will be remembered. But the toy raven sits in Purgatory with a man who spent his life being miserable instead of optimistic and slowly became his own phobia and so he sits still, waiting for something a little more than this, the way he'd spent his whole life.
It isn't half of what he expected it to be, and yet it's so much more than he could have imagined in his nightmares. And he doesn't even know what happened to Harry.
It's been forever and it's been three minutes since he felt remotely human, and now he knows what nevermore means, along with eternity and tomorrow, because tomorrow never comes and yesterday is always today just a second too late, and he can't remember anything anymore but a toy raven and a dead man's words, repeating into nevermore and tomorrow and yesterday and forever and today.
"Quoth the Raven, 'nevermore.'"