Disclaimer: This story is based on the characters and world created by JK Rowling. Anything you do not recognise is my own creation. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

– CHAPTER TWENTY –

King's Cross Again

The first sign that I exist is the pain.

It is not the searing pain of the Cruciatus Curse, or the hollow pain of losing a loved one: it is something more profound. It is as though the pain is part of my normal faculties: the heart pumps blood around the body, the lungs facilitate breathing and the skin throbs with relentless waves of prickly pain. I am not debilitated by it, but it makes certain that I am aware that it is there.

Doing my utmost to ignore the agony of being, I reach out with my senses. I lie on some surface; it is neither hot nor cold, but precisely the temperature of my own skin. It is difficult to know when my own body ends and when the surface begins. With an effort, I open my eyes.

I am alone in a bright mist, cloudy vapour that resembles the contents of a Pensieve, neither liquid nor gas. I know at once where I am; it is a place I have visited only once before: King's Cross, the entrance to the land of the dead.

I want to smile. My brain sends its signal down to my cheek muscles, but they do not comply. It is as though they have lost the ability to do so. No matter. I have done it. Soon I will be reunited with my darling Luna.

I stand up and the volume of pain from my burning skin is dialled up. But I am no stranger to pain. I grit my teeth and bear it. A noise pierces the misty nothingness: something is flailing and flapping and struggling. Each sound stabs me like a knife and fills me with shame. I think I know what it is, but I do not want to see it. I suddenly feel exposed in my nakedness. I wish I were clothed.

Nothing happens.

I look around expecting, any minute, for robes to appear. Instead, my surroundings invent themselves as I look upon them. I am once more in the wide, open platform hall of King's Cross, stood underneath the domed glass ceiling.

The source of the noise, the thing that I want to avoid, the thing that fills me with cold dread, lies on the ground. It is not stuffed under a seat, but is before me in clear view: a small, naked child, its skin raw and rough, a lightning-shaped scar visible on its forehead. I am filled with utter revulsion. The pain in my skin dies. There is nothing to distract me from the horror of the thing that writhes before me. I try to back away, but my legs do not obey my instruction. I try to look away, but my neck stays still.

'Harry.'

A voice, so familiar to me, and yet unlike it had ever been in life, comes out of the nothingness. The mist shifts and Luna, naked as I am, walks towards me. She comes to a stop some distance from me and my mangled soul.

I take her in hungrily. She is exactly as I remember her: those beautiful, wide eyes and that long, blonde hair. And yet … something is off. She is not smiling. Quite the opposite. There is a weighty sadness about her that I never saw in life.

'Harry,' she repeats, 'what have you done?'

I try to go to her, to embrace her, to kiss every inch of her skin, but my legs remain rigid.

'I've come for you, my love,' I whisper.

'Come for me?' she says. Her voice has lost the dreamy, sing-song quality it once had.

'I promised I'd never abandon you,' I say imploringly, 'in sickness or in health. We're bonded forever, you and me –'

'For life,' corrects Luna, 'we're bonded for life, Harry.'

Hearing her say my name sends tingles down my spine; but it is not the warm thrill that I felt in life, it is more of an arctic chill. She casts her gaze down at the thrashing child and we both watch it for long minutes.

'You shouldn't have died,' I say, my voice quivering, 'y – you shouldn't have left me …'

I realise that I sound like a petulant child, but the words that have been nesting in my heart since that cruel night spill out of me.

'It was my time to go.'

'Who says it was your time to go? Just because some – some interfering bastard's plan went wrong, doesn't mean you have to pay the price!'

'Don't call him that,' says Luna. Her voice is quiet but shakes with anger.

'You're going to defend him?' I say, with disbelief.

'He was my best friend – my only friend – and he was trying to do what's best for us.'

'For us?' I whisper. That monstrous, envious creature within me rears its head. 'Did you love him?'

'Yes.'

I am suddenly unable to breathe. My deepest fear has been confirmed. But … it does not make sense! If she loved Sayer, why would she marry me? Why not tell him how she felt and run away with him?

'I – I don't believe it,' I say finally.

'Is it so hard to believe? He was always there for me, always looked out for me, never wavered even for a minute. What do you call that?'

'I've always been there for you!'

To my utter astonishment, tears begin to form in her eyes. 'No, Harry,' she says, barely above a whisper, 'I was second choice.' It is as though she has punched me in the stomach. 'And I've finally made my peace with that. We helped each other, you see: I helped you deal with losing Ginny and you helped me continue to deal with losing my mother. But we weren't dealing with it at all.'

'It wasn't like that!'

'It was and, deep in your heart, you know it. But Will … he wanted us to confront our demons. He wanted what's best for me. I love him like you loved Hermione. And you killed him, just like you tried to kill her.'

The space between the writhing creature and Luna becomes Hermione, who is sobbing and shouting words that I cannot hear. But I do not need to hear them; they ring in my memory:

'You promised me, Harry! You promised me you wouldn't hurt anyone!'

My own form appears out of nothingness and yells inarticulately. The look of utter rage and frenzy in my face as I strike her down resembles the many targets I have brought to justice over the years. The Sectumsempra curse I use carves deep gashes in her chest and I leave my most loyal friend to die in the middle of the desert.

'Did she – did she die?' I say hoarsely.

'No,' says Luna, 'Neville, the man you just tried to kill, saved her life. But you did kill many others, Harry – and you did it so casually and unnecessarily that it broke my heart …'

Hermione's dying form becomes Mundungus Fletcher, who darts this way and that, glancing over his shoulder in pure terror. Hooded and cloaked, a figure I know to be me walks towards him: the reconstruction has relieved me of my invisibility cloak. He dives into a pub and I kill one innocent bystander after another. Each one is like an arrow straight into my heart. Finally, I kill Mundungus in the most painful way imaginable …

The dead hags and Mundungus become Lazarus' henchman, all of them dead; Lazarus worse than dead … They transform into Narcissa, sprawled on the steps of Malfoy Manor, wide gashes across her wrists.

'She was a mother,' says Luna, her voice hard and cold, 'one of Teddy's last remaining relatives. You didn't need to kill her, she was just there.'

'P – Please,' I beg, 'no more.'

But the bright mist is unrelenting. Narcissa becomes a street full of Muggles. There is a crater in the centre and the bodies of uniformed Muggle policeman lie scattered amongst the wreckage of burning metal.

'All of them had families: mothers, wives, children. Some of them were people I grew up with.'

The scene of Walcott Square shifts and, in a whirl of colour, becomes the hallways of Grimmauld Place. Every now and again, Teddy runs in and stares hopefully at the door.

'You abandoned your godson,' says Luna.

'I – I visited him,' I say, clutching at this one last redeeming factor.

'You visited him once. And what pearls of wisdom did you lay on the innocent ears of a ten year old boy?'

'The ends justify the means, Teddy. Sometimes, when you're chasing after something that's right, you have to do things that are wrong.'

'I … didn't mean …'

'Is that how you'd have raised our children, Harry?' demands Luna. 'Would you have sat them on your lap and said: "breaking into loved ones' tombs is fine as long as you're doing it to create a Horcrux"?'

'That wasn't –'

Luna draws herself to her full height. 'You killed my best friend and created a Horcrux! What, ultimately, is the difference between you and Voldemort?'

'Love,' I rasp. 'Everything I did, I did for love!'

'No,' says Luna, suddenly calm, 'don't pretend you did it for me, or for love. You did it for yourself. The man I married would never be so … so cowardly. Look at what you've become.'

A magnificent mirror in an ornate gold frame rises from the ground and blocks Luna and the creature from view. It looks so much like the Mirror of Erised that I half expect to find my family staring back at me. But what I see is far, far worse. A skeletally thin man stands there; his ghostly white skin stretches over bone. He has hollowed cheeks and ruby red eyes. If it were not for the messy black hair and lightning bolt scar, I would have sworn it was not me.

Finally, I see what Luna sees; what Neville and William saw. The killings, kidnapping Alice, creating a Horcrux; they all mean one thing: I have become a Dark Lord.

I think of what my parents would say if they could see me now. Or Sirius, or Remus, or, worst of all, Dumbledore. Dumbledore, whose tomb I broke into, Dumbledore whose wand I stole and used to commit countless atrocities. They would never forgive me … and nor will Luna.

And then my heart bursts.

Searing, white hot pain such as I've never felt explodes out of my chest. My head feels as though it is being crushed. I long for death, to feel nothing, because that would be better than this agony. I am blind to my surroundings. There is only the destruction of every fibre of my being.

I am on the verge of slipping into the warm embrace of the darkness when it stops. The only evidence of what I have experienced is a scratchiness in my throat that signals I have been screaming.

I am lying in the foetal position, naked as the day I was born. I sit up and look once more in the mirror, dreading what I will find there. Brilliant green eyes stare back at me. I am still thin, but some colour has returned. I raise my hand to touch my face, hardly daring to believe it.

As the mirror begins sinking into the floor, I realise that I can no longer hear the sound of the struggling child. The gilded frame of the mirror disappears and I see that the child, the damaged remains of my Horcrux, has disappeared. I am whole again.

Luna walks towards me and is smiling; not the dreamy, far-away smile I am accustomed to, but a blazing smile that lights up her face and makes her look truly beautiful.

'Luna …' My voice is hoarse, barely audible.

Luna reaches down and touches my face. Her hand is warm and wonderful against my cheek and I lean into it. I close my eyes for a moment, taking it in, before looking up at her.

'I'm sorry,' I croak, 'I'm so sorry for everything.'

'You've been punished,' says Luna. Her voice is no longer harsh or cold, but full of love.

'Can you … ever forgive me?'

Luna effortlessly pulls me up to my feet. I long to hold her for eternity.

'Only if you can forgive me,' she whispers, gently stroking my face.

I cup her face with my hands and she looks deep into my eyes. 'You've done nothing to warrant forgiveness.'

She relaxes in my grip and twenty years of tension seeps out her. She is healed at last.

'You can't come back with me, can you?' I say. White smoke begins to surround us.

Luna's eyes never leave mine. 'You know the answer to that.'

I feel seventeen again as I ask, 'I've got to go back, haven't I?'

'You know the answer to that.'

The smoke thickens and the answer comes to me: deep down, I have known it all along. The unique set of circumstances that allowed me to return from here ten years ago no longer hold, nor would they ever appear again. Nothing anchors me to the land of the living. No spell can reawaken the dead, and I am now one of them.

I smile widely at my love and kiss her deeply one last time.

A scarlet steam engine materialises. Hand in hand, we disappear in to the white smoke in search of the next great adventure.