Pinky Promise
Laughter filled his ears, music that made his head light. It had been hers, to begin with, but now it was his too, and he was surprised to find that his own laughter was beautiful to his ears.
"Je t'aime, mon petit voyeur."
Fingers intertwined, a messy ring on one, made artlessly from rosewood, brushing against splinter wounds on another.
"You won't ever let that go, will you, lovely."
Giggles tingled against his neck.
"Not even when we are old and grey. Not even after. Not even beyond. I promise."
"You promise?" He lifted his other hand to her, only his crooked pinky finger standing. She laughed again, remembering his tale of the practice accident that had made its tip always point diagonally.
Her own hand rose to meet the challenge, silver down sprouting as her nails yellowed to a copper hue.
"I promise." She said as her pinky hooked against him like two pices of twine weaved together.
"Not even beyond," He answered.
The world felt ephemeral and disjointed. His senses were expanded beyond human measure, but at the same time, they were as limited as they could be.
He felt like floating in numinous darkness that was incandescent in its purity. Death was not a new concept for him. He had been here before in this land of juxtaposing ends, of contradicting truths. And then his eyes opened, and he could see the punished restaurant he had been in minutes before with sharpened clarity.
Was he going to be denied the final rest again? Did his transgression against the natural order so many years ago damage something fundamental within him? Was the veil turned to stone in his presence?
No one was standing near him. A line of law enforcement members stood between his body and the rest of the dinners still capable of standing. He recognized Bonny's hair amongst them and he was glad at least his friend had managed to get here. He felt less alone in these final moments with one of his colleagues near.
The clouds moved, and a lance of starlight speared down, agleaming unto a shield of a silver purer than its own. His eyes were drawn to it instinctively. They've always been drawn to metallic glints. First, it had been his quidditch honed reactions, seeking the winning gold, and later the unalloyed silver of the strings that bound his heart.
Weak as he was -If he was honest, he'd say he was half petrified- it was a slog to turn to the magnetic sight. He did not want to turn, he did not want to see. For the first time in his life, he tried to avoid the attraction that made him find her always.
He could not close his eyes, much as he tried, he could not stop himself. He screamed, but he could not hear himself.
Metallic ringlets shone as mountain ridges on a sea of blood. A lone tear snuck down his face, no longer capable even of the creases that would denote his pain. His heart lay dead as his face was.
Lids fell shut, the image before overcoming.
He only could hope the cruel reaper would not jilt him again. He had a promise to keep.
Harry Potter died the 31st of October of 2007 clinging to the hand of his wife where she laid next to him, and since that day he had seen nothing but silver.
No silver would ever compare to the light that he had left behind. Everything laid in shades of grey. His whole being hungered for a life and a warmth that was denied to him, though, and his world turned to blotches of red when it did.
Everything was so different from how it had been when he had been alive. To how it had been so long ago. Everything but him.
Three hundred years could have passed or not, it was all the same to his heart of stone. He stood unchangeable like a mountain, frozen in time.
He had not moved a second past the agony of the moment his heart had stopped beating.
He walked under the taunting moon tonight, shadows that were malleable, but as eternal as him clinging to his form, masking him from the eyes of people that were not his own. He could not care for humans less. They were not her. They were nothing.
The ones that were like him were not his people either, they had ambitions, greed, lust. They clung to a glimmer of their former lives that had escaped him. He was not really like them. He was truly dead.
Even his creator was an unknown quantity. He was either destroyed or avoided him, which amounted to the same. He did not matter. The times where he had still felt hate for his change was long gone too.
The walls of the small town he haunted loomed from out of his disjointed thoughts. The hole his soul left behind trembled at the sight of it.
It had been longer than most times.
Neon lights fell upon his aberrant substance, fighting against his nature, but meshing in the end, hiding him as effectively as the moonshine.
Others of his kind loved the hunt, they felt a thrill that brought to life the dead parts of them that they could still remember, some revelled in the life that coursed momentarily through their accursed veins, some disguised themselves as the very prey they consumed, stealing shreds of faked humanity from their contrived interactions before they stole the humanity of them to feed the monster that laid beneath.
The sons of the night were dangerous creatures. Thirsting desperately on anything that would make them feel a modicum of fire and blood.
Not him. His spark had extinguished the second time he had died. The lives of men were so enviable. Fugacious as leaves in autumn. Maybe his consciousness would go on the third try?
There had been wars, big events, things he mostly ignored, but the remnants of those violent days were visible in the heavy fortifications of the town's walls. Creatures with flesh of metal and thunder for blood, tirelessly whirling around, lights and artificial sensors watching endlessly.
He just strode past them. They could not see him. They were meant for the living.
Feeding was like all other things. A mechanical process. No thought went into it. A whiff of life would cross him, and he would steal it, biting down and drawing until he could see silver again.
Well, he thought as a golden red cow ran from one side of the road to the other, the first whiff of human life that crossed his path.
Cows did not tend to be far away from a farm though, and so he turned to follow in the wake of the animal
The farm was mostly automated, as they all were, tended by the same lifeless beings that guarded the wall; the livestock prancing around the different levels of artificial pasture that were available to them. It was ironic, but cows lived better than most humans did on the megalopolis, something that would have been unthinkable three hundred years before.
Had he been one of those that enjoyed the blood for more than sustenance, he would have bemoaned that cows were not appropriate for a vampires' diet. They would certainly have better quality than your average low-life.
There.
His thoughts were disrupted as a waft of vitality took to the air, calling to him, beckoning him indecently. He looked up, towards the middling floors of the pasturing structure, a couple of hundred meters up. There was a human there. There was a single, lonely human there, and it smelled like moonshine and heaven.
Getting up there was a trifling matter, for he moved unrestricted by the shackles of mortality. He was close enough to hear her now. A woman. His throat convulsed in anticipation, the perpetual dryness in his mouth becoming more pronounced.
A sturdy, dirty overall covered her willowy form, a cap holding all but a few rebel strands of hair covered, exposing her neck. What a long, lascivious neck. Like a marble column.
He opened his mouth. He would have salivated in need had he been able.
Her rosy hand caressed the foreleg of a bovine twice her height, the other one holding a strange, cylindrical probe that she carefully roved over the animal. The cow munched on the luminescent grass, completely at ease with its companion.
He was so close now.
The bovine rose its head, the miasma of his presence unnerving it, giant, round, brown eyes moved towards him, but they did not focus. The animal could not see him any better than any other one could while he walked in the space between the worl-
"Who are you? How did you get here?"
Immortal eyes moved towards the woman and froze to stone. The cow had knocked the cap of her head with its snout, and the radiance of a thousand suns sheered him.
He his veins throb, his heart beat. For a single moment he felt the air around him, around them, hold something vital for his life, something that he was suffocating for. He could not grasp it, he could not get enough of it. He was dying.
He breathed in, his body near crumbling at the effort. Her essence was fire and life made substance, and he had felt it before.
I could not be.
"Did you hear me? I demand you answer. How did you get here," the probe rose above her ears, prepared to strike.
"You can see me." He was surprised that his lips could even produce any words after so long.
"Great," She said, "Another psycho. Just great. I'm gonna kill Charlie, every single time I take his night shift this happens. Listen, mate, you can fuck right off or I can cave your head in with this here hand scanner. Your choice."
Harry did not move, stillness coming naturally to him. Nightwalkers were frozen in time. His eyes met hers.
He fell to his knees, his mouth opening and closing in unnatural normality. Those eyes. What lay behind them, within them.
"It's you," he whispered, a lone tear falling down his petrified face, leaving a trace of red.
A whisper reached his ears across the time.
"I promise."
"Not even beyond." he whispered back.
Her probe fell to the floor, her own constellation filled eyes widening, her face paling.
"Who are you? Where do you know me from? Where did- where did you hear those words?" her voice broke.
He smiled for the first time in nearly three centuries. Their promise had been mutual.
What was death, or even undeath, on the face of his stubborn veela.
