Death Rattle

If Dorcas hadn't left—not if she were still here, he's full to bursting without her here, but if she hadn't come and then gone (like flighty petal, smirking on the gust)—but if Dorcas hadn't left, everything would be on the cusp, wouldn't it? These are the days when Tom is still gorgeous, the women at his back and comrades all falling together raptly in the late nights, and he would feel a home nested within his Hogwarts if only he could muster it to matter. His nose is sharp angles, and death is crumbling to stardust, and it is not enough to outlast her if he's gaping, and oh, Tom gapes, like craters in the war.

Something is trembling, something bigger than bodies and blacker than even Tom, and he's always been the darkest, dazzled by cobwebs in the corners. Something is rattling him round and round, and his grandeur and loyalists pale in it, and Dorcas has always been so still, her hands steadying his over Potions cauldrons and knowing where to go. Tom—he just shakes over the basin, flushed green and heaving, underneath all of the gone.