He took me aside that day…And told me that he was leaving. He was leaving and he might not be coming back. Ever.
And then he told me the worst of it. He wasn't just leaving. He was leaving me.
And I tried to understand. I tried to be unselfish and think of all the people he could save and all the things he needed to do and all the weight that was on his shoulders. But all I could think about was that he'd never hold me in his arms again. He'd never kiss my lips again.
In saving everyone, he would kill me.
I sat on the edge of my bed. I'd just taken half a bottle of aspirin. It would help to dull the pain and thin my blood. I was beginning to feel its effects already though. I was crying. Hard. My face felt hot and my eyes were sore and red and as I wept my mind felt softly enveloped in a cottony pressure that meant the drug was taking its effect.
I told myself I would survive it. I told myself a hundred times.
But I'd loved Harry…I loved him before I even knew him. And then once I did know him it never stopped, it only grew. I tried to leave it behind. I forced it into some deep compartment of my heart and locked it away. But every time I saw him the lid would rattle and the chains would loosen. And then finally…Finally he was with me. Finally we were together and all the dreams and fantasies became this solid true reality. And for a fleeting second it was perfection. It was crystalline.
That was before he shattered me.
I couldn't blame him.
I just couldn't live without him.
I took off my clothes, slowly slipping out of them, silently and neatly folding them. I swayed, dizzy for a moment, and held onto my dresser for support. The air in my room cold on my naked skin I walked to the door to be sure it was locked tight. I'd told the others that I felt ill and they left to go to Diagon Alley to run errands without me.
I drew the curtains over my windows so that the clear sunlight that poured in was stifled. My room was now dim- lighted now only by the dozens of flickering candles I'd placed around the bed.
I sat on the bed and slid across my comforter to the middle. I pulled the covers up over my legs and sat up, my naked torso still exposed in the cool air. I reached over to my bedside table where my wand and the half-empty bottle of aspirin sat, along with a neatly folded sheet of parchment. I slid the tiny sheet of metal off the table's edge between my fingers and then held it up before my eyes. I slipped off the flimsy cardboard sheath that covered the blade of the razor and then placed the cardboard back on the table gently, my fingers slightly shaking.
I loved them. Mum, Dad, Charlie, Bill, Percy, George, Fred, Ron…But I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't live with only my family forever. I needed a companion. I needed to build my own life. And a life without Harry was a life hollow. Nobody would ever take his place. And there wasn't any point to mine without him in it.
Even if he did come back life would never be the same. Because he left me. And my heart would never forget how easily he let me slip away.
So this was it. I drew a deep breath and then laid back against the pillows. I held up my left arm. Clenched in my right hand's fingers I pressed the sharp edge of the razor against the tangle of bluish veins in my pale wrist. I pressed hard. It paused there for a moment. The corner of the blade pushed in deep and a droplet of blood blossomed up, a perfect sphere of crimson on white. Then I slashed toward myself in a vicious stroke. Tears sprang in my eyes as the pain of exposed flesh and torn tissue seared through my arm. Blood poured out and over, cascading down. I transferred the razor into my weak bleeding hand and repeated the violent slash on my right wrist. My mind felt hazy from the aspirin and now the blood that was spilling rapidly from my veins. I pulled the blankets up over my body and curled under them. The blood soaked my sheets and through to the mattress. I imagined it seeping through the mattress even, to the floor, through the floorboards, through the house, the foundations, into the earth and my eyelids felt very heavy. My body ached as my heartbeat slowed and the blood pumping through my veins became less and less. This was dying. I wonder what it felt like for Sirius. For Dumbledore. For Harry's parents.
Harry.
I tried to clench my eyes shut but the muscles in my face had grown too weak. I realized then I could scarcely move at all. Breathing was becoming difficult, and my mind was beginning to fade. I could see Harry in my mind. I could see his green eyes filled with tears as he looked at me and told me that he couldn't love me anymore.
A single tear trickled down my face, and as I tried to whisper his name the breath escaped instead in a shudder. My eyes closed.
It was dark.
Harry.
It was dark.