Harry burst through the floo into Luna's flat, already speaking before the flare of the flames had even died down.

"Luna, what-"

He stopped short, taking in the complete, eerie silence encompassing his surroundings.

Luna wasn't in her usual seat in her atypical-like office, with bits and bobs of anything and everything spread out across it in a chaos organized only to her specific needs as she flittered through the papers that were strewn across her desk so thoroughly that the wood below it was hardly even visible.

But no, none of those things were now true.

Her office didn't look anything like itself. It didn't look like a loveable, whirlwind-like disaster that so well suited its owner in its mirror of her self.

There was no clutter. There was no mess. All of her items were organized on a towering bookshelf to the left, and her unsuitably large desk was clear of everything except a single, closed book with a note resting atop it.

He felt a swell of unease rise within him, and he swallowed audibly, slowly approaching the items.

His hands began to tremble, and he could hear his heartbeat through the blood pulsing in his ears with the way the quiet was coating his surroundings like a layer of fresh snow.

He swallowed again, convulsively, around the lump settling heavy in his throat, and he reached a shaking hand out to gently grasp the slip of paper.

He lifted it off the book, and, with a simultaneous sense of denying dread and loving care, he realized that the thick tome that'd been underneath the note was titled, 'Fantastical Beings and Where They May Find You' by Luna Lovegood.

Then his eyes drifted down to the note as if it was a magnet and his gaze was an entrapped metal.

Harry,

I had hoped you wouldn't come, as hurtful as it may be to say, but I suppose it'd been silly of me to think you'd do otherwise.

I'll be joining the Fistlewhisps in the sky, and by the air I'll always be with you.

Take heed to my letter, and take heart to my words.

Aloneness is a state of mind as much as it is being, and prepare well for your journey - as well as if it was your longest and last.

All my love, forever and always,

Luna.

Harry let out a wet gasp as a droplet splashed against the bottom letters of the slip, smearing the dried ink into a swirl of black, and he quickly pulled the note away from himself, not wanting to further ruin the delicate loops of the words scrawled across it.

He shakily set it back down atop the book - Luna's book - and backed a couple of stumbling steps away.

Without another thought, he whirled around on his heel and raced from the room, slamming the door to it open without a care in his single minded search as he tore down the hall towards Luna's bedroom.

He grabbed the handle to her door, but, as suddenly as his resoluteness had come, it left him, and he hesitated.

His grip on the knob was sweaty and unfirm, palm feeling as if it'd slip right off the smooth surface as soon as he attempted to twist the handle.

He swallowed convulsively, feeling jittery and sick deep inside his stomach, eyes burning with another onset of tears that he rapidly blinked away.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, clenching his teeth, and steeled himself.

When he finally turned the knob, it was with a gentle, soft movement, only the quietest sound of the hinges squeaking signifying his entrance.

He stepped forward with the motion, footsteps soft on the fluffy, seafoam green carpet that made up Luna's room's floor, and he let his hand slip silently off the handle as he went past it.

Unlike her office, her room was as it had always been. There was clutter, and there was everything that made it up - from nubbed down quills of the most strangely shaped and colored feathers to chairs and cushions that never matched one another in their fabric, pattern, or wood. To the portraits of people that were strangers to them both in life and to the jars and cups precariously filed and filled with whatever vast array of materials had caught her interests. To the shimmering, speckled lights that lined her ceiling like so many stars in the night sky and to the papers and posters pinned and spread across whatever remaining surfaces that were available.

And then to Luna, who lay peacefully on her cot beneath her covers, delicate fingers placidly interlaced in her lap, hair fanned out around her head in a gentle halo, and eyes closed in what looked to be naught but a peaceful slumber.

"Luna," Harry choked out, stumbling forwards as his voice cracked on the hardly there whisper.

She didn't respond; she didn't move.

"Luna," Harry repeated, tone barely stronger than the time before but more clearly desperate. He reached her side and collapsed onto his knees, the heavy thunks dulled by the soft carpet but still seeming to echo in his ears.

His vision blurred as hot tears flooded his eyes and streaked down his already damp cheeks, and he raised a trembling, unsteady hand, extending his arm out to place his palm over both of hers.

Her skin was only cool, not yet cold, but there was a stiffness to it that belied reality.

A sob tore through Harry's throat, and he bowed his head low, his hand clenching onto hers as if the hold could keep her tethered to him.

His head rested against the edge of her mattress, the soft surface letting him sink into it like he was into his roiling, screaming emotions. The room darkened around him without his notice as his magic flowed out and around him in a swirling maelstrom of pain and hurt and grief, the fairy lights dimming along the ceiling as if synchronizing with his sudden and harsh flood of intense, agonized mourning. It lashed out around him like an angry, helpless and hurt being, making his hair whip about him as if subjected to a storm.

Not a single item of Luna's was moved even a hair out of place.

.

Harry couldn't say how long he stayed there, clutching onto Luna like a lifeline despite how sickening the irony of the comparison was, his heart wrenching - the agony going deeper until it felt as though his very soul was being shredded apart.

He only knew that, once he came about, head pulsing, eyes red rimmed, and his tears soaked into the mattress and his collar, Luna lay as perfectly still and tranquil as she'd been when he'd first saw her.

.

From there, everything happened quickly, with Harry as a blank observer of the proceedings, feeling hollow and far more empty than he'd ever felt before.

Luna had apparently already set up her will reading for later that same afternoon, and he'd attended it on his own. Unsurprisingly, no others were listed to be present at the reading that were currently available to be there. He suspected the notation was in reference to Neville, who'd also grown close to Luna over the most recent years but was, as he'd mentioned, still away.

Luna had left Harry with almost everything: her house full of her belongings as well as her small, personal vault in Gringotts that he had no doubt was filled with a plethora of items from all genres and dreams.

He'd been dully shocked to find out that she wanted to be cremated, but he accepted it as it was. She'd left a note at the end of her will - read by her goblin account manager - that bluntly stated that she would not be having a funeral, either. Harry couldn't help but think that it was at least somewhat because of him - seeing as to how her ticket was rushing him to prepare soon to be ready to leave - even knowing how conceited it may be to say.

He didn't argue with any matter except for keeping a small portion of her ashes, once again well aware of his own selfishness but unable to let it go - let her go.

It didn't matter that he'd known this end was coming - and that it was coming soon.

He only realized now that somewhere deep inside him, he'd held an utterly reprehensible hope that her fate wouldn't come to pass. That, by some utterly unbelievable, impossible miracle, she'd overcome the malady that spared none of its victims. That she would live.

It was a laughable hope - even more so considering how extensively he'd studied the topic himself. He'd all but buried himself in books whenever he could work up the energy to do so, tearing through the materials of the Black Library just as much as those from the regularly supplied magical ones in the district, searching for everything and anything medically related that may have some miniscule chance at having correlation to her disease.

He'd found nothing, and, yet, he still somehow had held that vain belief.

He would scoff at himself if he still had the emotional elasticity to do anything other than robotically move through the motions at the moment.

For him to think that fate - after all the manipulations, deceit, and pitfalls it had him suffer through - would let him have this own thing truly go his way.

What did it matter if Luna was the closest thing to family that he had left? What did it matter that he was far closer to her and could relate to her far more than he could with the only other two people he still was on speaking terms with? What did it matter that, before Luna had been diagnosed, she and he had had plans to leave England behind - together? What did it matter if Harry thought of Luna as actual family despite there being no blood relation or union between them?

It seemed that nothing really mattered at all.

.

It was inside his messenger sack that he placed the vial of her essence he'd been given after her final wish was processed through.

He placed it next to the original copy of her first and final book - inside of which was stored her last message to him - all of which he'd placed inside - with as much care as he'd been able to with his fingers still minutely trembling as they were - his pack.

He planned to make a necklace upon which to hold a pendant with her ashes.

So that he could always hold a piece of her close to his heart.

Maybe, one day, he'd have the strength to find the Fistlewhisps she'd mentioned to set her free among them in the sky.

He didn't see that day coming anytime soon.