Apparating was like opening a door.
Not at first, of course. He could barely manage it for years. He'd thrown up more often than he could count, been splinched, and once (to the bafflement of everyone in St. Mungo's) ended up with a pair of horns.
But now it was simple, easy. Turn and go through.
The door opened, and he was in his house. The door closed, and he was at work.
In the beginning, even when he could apparate, he would still walk or fly from place to place. Using magic was too difficult. Walking felt natural. Flying was joyful.
The door opened, and he was with his wife. The door closed, and he was trading curses with the worst people in the world.
Over time, he apparated more and more. His kids laughed at him, called him lazy for not bothering to walk down the street to the store. Once, he'd joined a pick up game of quidditch and fell off his broom to the ground. The shame felt worse than the bruises. The youngest seeker in years could barely stay in the sky.
The door opened, and he was laughing at a birthday party. The door closed, and he was visiting Ginny in a hospital.
Walking became difficult, painful. It was hard just to move. Magic, at least, would get him from place to place.
The door opened, and he was alone in the dark.
The door closed, and he was in a cemetery.
"Hi Ginny," he said, fidgeting with his empty hands. "Sorry I didn't bring flowers."
He reached down and took a wilting bouquet from a holder in front of her gravestone. He drew his wand from his pocket and made to vanish them, but he couldn't remember the spell. The words, the motions… They were all lost somewhere behind him, somewhere in the dark behind his eyes. He put the flowers back. Let the groundskeepers take care of them.
He knelt down beside the black granite stone. Up close, it didn't seem so small, so lost in the green field, so far away.
"Lily is staying with friends for Christmas. She asked to be with me at Hogwarts, but I wanted her to have fun. The boys are off at their jobs. It's better than having them…"
He trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence out loud, not wanting to say Better than having them try to stop me.
Instead, he said "I wanted them to have fun." He swore for the insipidness of what he'd said. He'd started swearing at himself more and more often for smaller and smaller mistakes.
A door opened somewhere beside him.
He was behind a tree before he knew it, marveling at how fast his legs could move him when they wanted to. His auror skills were returning, becoming reflexes again. Keep hidden, keep sheltered, keep quiet.
Don't kill. Not yet.
He peered out from behind the trunk. A figure appeared out of the mist. It was a pale woman with flowing blonde hair. She was in all black lace, from her neck to her shoes. She held an umbrella above her head, spinning it as she walked. It made Harry think she might have been a vampire, but then he looked more closely.
The umbrella was bright yellow with pink swirls. No self-respecting vampire would carry that. And the woman's earrings were also absurd: long strings of blue and white beads waved like hands as she came closer. No self-respecting witch would wear those.
Well, one would.
"Why are you hiding behind a tree, Harry?" Luna said. He'd forgotten how strange and musical her voice was.
He put his wand away.
"Sorry," he said. "Force of habit. As an auror, you never know who's coming."
If she disbelieved him, she didn't say so.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she said.
He'd also forgotten how calmly and evenly she said things. You could never tell her real feelings from her voice. She might say "Please pass the bread" with the same tone as she would say "I love you."
He shook that thought out of his head. Why had he thought that? He was right next to his dead wife's grave!
Luna bent down to place a single, yellow rose in front of Ginny's gravestone. Before rising, however, she made a complicated series of hand gestures. Same old Luna. His mouth hurt, and he realized he was smiling.
"Amor tempus transcendit," she said.
"Hm? Oh, the inscription." He looked down at the stone where the phrase was carved beneath Ginny's name. "Ron suggested it."
"'Love transcends time,'" she said. "I didn't think Ron knew Latin."
Harry chuckled. "I'm pretty sure Hermione translated."
She nodded seriously, staring at him. "How are you doing, Harry?"
"I'm good!" he said, too loudly, too quickly. He cleared his throat. "As good as can be expected."
That stare continued. "Harry, why were you hiding behind that tree?"
He started to stammer out the same excuse: that dark wizards were always after him, that he couldn't let his guard down…. But somehow the excuses had fallen away into the darkness behind him.
"I thought you might be the one."
A flush spread up Luna's pale neck.
"The one?"
"The one who killed her."
A look of genuine shock appeared on her face. "She was murdered? The newspaper said—"
"Forget I said that" he said, cutting her off. "I'm just upset."
He couldn't say it. He couldn't say "I'm the reason she's dead. I brought the curse home that killed her."
Instead, he said "How are you? Where have you been? I haven't seen you since Lily's name party."
"Here and there. I have a little house of my own just outside Glasgow."
Harry stared. "That's an all-muggle city, isn't it?"
She frowned at his tone. "You disapprove?"
"No! I just think it must be tiring. You know, keeping to the Statute of Secrecy all by yourself."
She smiled. "You should try it, some day. Just put your wand away for a day or two. See what life is like."
The idea made his stomach clench. Magic was part of who he was. It was like asking him to keep his eyes closed for a week.
He opened his mouth to argue with her but closed it. There was no persuading her about some things. In school, he always found that maddening about her. Now, so many years later, he wondered why he'd cared enough to argue.
Then he remembered once, as a child, he'd tried to do just that: keep his eyes closed. When he was eight, Aunt Petunia made a trifle. She wasn't good at the recipe yet. It looked like a pile of wet mush, but the family ate it anyway. They'd even let Harry have a small spoonful. He'd nibbled at it but found the taste repellant. Then he'd looked up and watched Dudley gorging himself on it, his mouth smeared with whipped cream and berries.
Nausea welled up inside him. He'd excused himself and had to spend the next three hours in his cupboard under the stairs before it went away. Worse, every time he looked at Dudley, he felt the nausea again.
And Dudley was everywhere. He resolved to keep his eyes closed forever and spent the next few days with his eyes closed as long as he could. First, he bumped into everything. After a while, though, he got a sense of where the walls were. He could make it through the day with only having his eyes open here and there.
Eventually, he gave up, but he had a new appreciation for sight. He also found he didn't bump into things in the dark as much as he used to. He'd grown a dark-adapted eye.
"How are you, Harry? For real."
"Not great," he said, shrugging.
The words "not" and "great" barely encompassed what he'd been through. Months of helplessly holding Ginny's hand, watching her fade away. Months more of futile searching for her killer. His hours on hands and knees in the Forbidden Forest, raking through the mud for the Resurrection Stone, which he'd carelessly thrown aside in a moment of rank stupidity. His learning the killing curse.
He'd been in a strange madness since then, plotting, thinking in circles, preparing for revenge. Only now was he starting to come out of it. Only since she'd appeared from out of the gloom.
Luna placed a hand on his cheek, her fingernails tracing warm lines on his skin.
"It'll get better," she said, her voice, her touch, making it so.
He stepped back from her, alarmed, sinking back into the comfortable shadow of the tree. She rubbed the hand she'd touched to his cheek as if it had been stung.
"What about you?" he said. "How are you doing? I always assumed you'd marry Neville."
She shook her head. "It didn't work out. I never found anyone else."
"You will," he said. "Tons of people would love to be with you."
"Maybe, but after you, how could anyone compare?"
She turned away from him without another word. He watched her back as she disappeared into the fog, still twirling that absurd umbrella. He felt that sensation of a door again as she apparated away.
He couldn't tell if the door was opening or closing.