"What kind of place is this?" Breathing heavily from the pressure of apparating to the coast, she takes a long confused glance around.

To me it instantly feels like back then, like the end of my world. The last few inches ashore beneath us, after those cliffs, however, there's nothing but deep blue water until the gleaming horizon in the distance.
And yet I want this place to no longer be an end, much rather a beginning.

England's ocean is rough, as it has always been, but the mild wind that tries to carry us away seems worthy of summer. As far as the eye can see, it parts the tall grass behind us. And whenever it turns, it paints a different picture beneath the blue, cloudless sky.

The silence here is profound. With only the thundering sea hitting against the rocks below us and the creaking of seagulls above, it's almost perfect.

"Sure, keep quiet, don't explain anything," Harper eventually sighs. "As always …"

Shaking her head, she breaks away from me to take a quick look down the edge of the cliff herself, just to see how deep the sharp-edged precipice leads – until she staggers right back.

"Quite high, indeed," I say as I catch her.

"I was just surprised, that's all," she growls. "Where are we?" Before she wriggles away from me again, she adds, "And why, Tom?"

She's not interested in these questions. Not really. She's probably only that upset for one reason and I can hardly help but grin, even if it only makes matters worse and further annoys her.

"You're really mad at me because my graduation is a tiny tad better than –"

"Of course I am!" Her eyes widen and she does her best to ignore the wind, which, to make matters worse, is tossing her hair about in every direction. "And very much so! I wish we'd never met! Then you wouldn't have distracted me with all your … crazy … absurd …" She waves her hands, lost for words. "Foolish … and megalomaniac manipulations of fate!"

"Distracted?" I huff in mock-indignation. "Harper, I've always supported you!"

She catches her breath only to snort. "What? How dare you? You do believe that, don't you? You supported me? Without me, you wouldn't even have closed your eyes for but a minute throughout last year, you'd have nodded off in the library all the time due to blatant lack of sleep! So who was supporting whom, huh?"

"I've lived perfectly fine with just a few hours of sleep before you," I claim.

"You egomaniacal, arrogant, stubborn, incorrigible – oh!" She shakes her head, darkly intent. "You know what? You'll never see me again!"

And with that, she trudges off through the tall grass towards the countryside, wildly determined but obviously without any sort of plan.
There is nothing to be reached even an hour from here. The next few houses are an infinite distance away, but that doesn't change a thing about Harper's defection.

I know I should follow her immediately, but how she sets off into the great nowhere with a maximum of effort in her high heels and the flowing skirt of her uniform is simply a sight for the gods.

"Harp, come on, come!" I eventually call after her.

She doesn't look back, she doesn't even flinch.

"We're at the end of England! Where are you going?"

She still doesn't stop, but I can hear her clearly, even against the wind. "Just away from you, Tom Riddle!"

I sigh, then vanish in smoke and catch up with her.

"Forget about that!" she hisses and promptly flies away from me herself.

White smoke in my black fog, mixed with our unpleasantly identical trajectory, because I won't be letting myself fall behind.
At first we're only above the cliff, but soon we fly beyond it – with nothing but the open, dark ocean beneath us.

The longer, the faster, the more reckless and the more dangerously close we fly past the sharp rocks, the more her displeasure evaporates to give way for her bell-like laughter.

This day is a rollercoaster of emotions, just as our whole life has been so far. But it's ultimate freedom – her, me, magical wings, Icarus' ambitions …

And when I finally get a hold of her, our flightpaths diverge – just as our destinations always would in recent years – until we arrive beneath the cliffs at the entrance of the very cave that abruptly ended my childhood.

Amy and Dennis fell silent down here, but I'd finally realized that the darkness within could well be capable of destroying me.

"Right here … was the body," I say, somewhat lost in thought, glancing at the rocks to our feet as if the corpse was still there with its cracked skull and broken ribcage.

"Your first boggart?"

I nod. "I wasn't afraid of the body, though."

"No?" Harper guesses, "Rather of what has happened to that person?"

"Death," I confirm. "In all its grotesque ultimacy."

She gulps in dismay. "It's horrible, especially for an … well, for an orphan, I mean. With death being the reason for –"

"Your boggart was me."

This finding cuts unexpectedly deep, both for her and for me. I shift my gaze from the rocks and look her straight in the eye.

"I mean … a certain version of you," she finally responds evasively. "But … in principle, yes."

As humid, salty air keeps filling our lungs, the wind whistles past us, whispering legends of the sea relentlessly. I'd also heard whistling back then.

Breathe, in a place that keeps its secrets – let out into the world what it created in you …

For a moment there, Harper and I just glance at each other in complete silence. As though we were searching in each other, unexpectedly touched. Spray and mighty waves crash against the washed-out stone – and suddenly I know that all of this is completely beside the point.

"Harper, I meant what I said back in Hogsmeade." I take a step towards her and add, "We'll never compete with each other again. I strive to be a version of myself that you want in your life. Forever."

She'd rather remain silent, I can see that – still she says, "But that's exactly what I have to think about after today …"

I give her an indecisive smile. "What do you mean?" I can't understand a word she's saying, but I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before gently pulling her closer to lift her chin. "There's nothing left to think about. We were already certain a year ago …"

All her rage is finally washed away by the wind, imploding in dull lethargy when she looks up. "So you meant it? In the Room of Requirement, on my birthday – when you agreed to undo the rituals?"

"Why do you even ask? We've been together day and night ever since, I truly can't sleep without you … Everyone knows you're sacred to me." I can't help but show her a little confusion. "And despite that, you think I didn't mean it?"

"I'm not wearing a ring, am I," she retorts matter-of-factly, her words louder in my head than the ocean's echo roaring in the cave entrance as she breaks away from me. "Plans that aren't followed by actions are smoke and mirrors, because the only thing that truly matters is what we do – at least where I come from."

Perplexed, I watch her stepping into the darkness of the cave.

"Well, where I come from, nobody actually ever planned that much," I all but say.

She sighs without stopping. She lets her hand wander along the cold walls as she goes on further into the cave. "Your plans seem like it now and then, yes …"

I'd like to protest, but she already continues, "You've once said you wished to marry me, Tom. On the train. On our way to Little Hangleton. Remember?" She gives me an almost bitter smile over her shoulder, just briefly so. "I want you, Harper," she quotes me, following the darkness deeper inside with nothing but the lit tip of her wand. "All of you. Your head, your heart. So highly official that not a soul will ever dare doubt it again. Those were your words." She pauses to eventually say, "I believed you. And a day later you snuck away before the first rays of light and told me I had to stop expecting anything good in you." She turns back to me abruptly again, staring straight at me when I stop as well. "And you said I should have given you that bloody salt shaker instead of my virginity …"

I can see her heart sink all over again at the mere memory, like it did outside the chapel in Little Hangleton during that Easter twilight.

"Back then you claimed," I almost hush, "that you had no regrets …"

"Where does this path lead?" she asks, deliberately ignoring what I just said to gesture further into the darkness.

A little taken aback, I tell her, "Into a cave complex. The heart of it resembles an underground hall surrounded by water."

"You didn't just stay at the entrance then, did you?"

"No."

"You went into the cave, like it was your first chamber of secrets …"

"We might say that, yeah." I nod as I look past her into the black corridor, until I finally send a few sparks of green light that way. "Can you feel the magic in the air?"

"Dark magic," she quietly specifies. "Yes. Very much so …"

I shrug my shoulders. "The place was fascinating to me as a child."

"Scary, dark, cold." Wearily she tilts her head. "I bet it was …"

"Harp, I just thought you might like it, too …" It's on the tip of my tongue to add another thought – but she's already doing it herself, as though she could read me anyway.

"Because I also like you?" She tries to take in a deep breath, but she seems to struggle with that. "Do you suddenly feel that eerie trepidation as well?" she asks in raw surprise. "Such a … lack of hope! And all that rage?"

"No more as bad as after I was here for the first time."

Anxiously she checks for the the day light still shimmering back at the entrance, then she lets her gaze move into the darkness of the cave again. She seems so desperate and lost all of a sudden that I simply can't avoid her doubts with pretty words any longer.

"Harper, why are you rethinking a decision we already took last year?"

She lets out a harsh breath, shaking her head in silence, as if she couldn't even say another word without bursting into tears.

So I say it out loud for her, even though it shakes the core of my soul up. "You doubt me. Us …"

She sniffs, quite caught in a way. She wants to wave it off, but it's by no means convincing.

"Since when?" I ask, trying not to be too pushy, but she doesn't answer anyway. "Harper, don't you do that …" All of a sudden I feel it, too. Her breathlessness. I'm literally suffocating, but she couldn't ever tell.

She's the first and only constant in my life that I've ever truly hoped for and appreciate. The first and only constant that I wish to keep – at all cost.

"Hold on, don't let go," I hear myself say, strangely numb already. "Not now, after everything we've already been through."

Reluctantly she shrugs. "I want to hold on, Tom …" But again, it doesn't sound like it.

"You've never stopped believing that I could be better than I think I am." Melancholy in my voice, urgency even … It's so atypical it makes her look up in awe now. "Even faced with the fact that I wanted to tear my soul apart and while I was involved in a revolution, you stood by me. Without hesitation. Grindelwald showed you the darkest visions of me and yet you believed I would do better." She gulps, I can see it. "You survived snake bites and sang Echidna songs. You were there when my father and I buried the last one of the House of Gaunt. You refused soup in Nurmengard only to protect my mortal soul with blue fire. And during your exam, if only you hadn't been so adorably patient with that snappy Mandragora – which I cursed with a silent Imperius by the way – you would've also had a flawless –"

"You cheated?" Her eyes grow wide with bewilderment.

"Way too much has happened throughout the last few years, but that's what you choose to be surprised by?"

She bites her lips as she lowers her gaze to the rough stone ground below us. She pauses for a moment, then leaves me standing there, with but the words, "I need to go back into the light."

Never in all my life I followed anyone, but I do follow her. Again and again. And how could I not? She's the only means to ground me, like an anchor … But how much must that weigh her down? How much pressure does it create in her?

I catch up and say, "Harper, I –"

"I'm sure the insides of that cave are fascinating," she interrupts me, "but this place makes me feel like I'm drowning with the weight of the world, I'm sorry …"

"This place?" I ask and wait for her to look at me. "Or me?"

Quite out of breath, she stops and forces herself to give me a sad smile.

"Harper, darling – we don't have to be here, let's just –"

"No, it's fine," she claims, pulling me along, back to the cave entrance, where she literally catches her breath with utmost relief. "This is better already … How come the waves of black magic in this place don't touch you at all? I almost went crazy in there, and we've not even been inside completely …"

"I think," I begin, already deciding not to sugarcoat it, "that's because you're likely feeling the remnants of my own magic."

"What?" She frowns. "What do you mean by that?"

"Not important."

"Oh, no," she quickly protests, "it is important, Tom! What's in that cave? What did you do as a child?"

"Nothing, nothing conscious, I –"

"Necromancy?" she inquires almost reproachfully.

"Not with a plan," I sigh in the face of her vehement concern, "although the pale water in there would be ideal for experiments with the dead –"

"Don't you ever accept any boundaries?" she asks under her breath. "Not even after Samhain? You say that like it's nothing –"

"I was just thinking out loud," I groan, "like I always have, Harper, since when do you assume the worst of me?"

"Since you constantly lie!" she snaps. "So be honest for a change – what happened here?"

"Dumbledore …"

She gives me a challenging glare. "What about him?"

"During our duel today he said that my Bombarda reminded him of a controlled Obscurus. He asked where I learned it."

She nods for me to go on.

"It was here. I tried it here as a child, intuitively …" When she doesn't reply a thing, I add, "Magic is energy, it's as unique and closely connected to us as a fingerprint – and it doesn't fade. Once released into the world, its effect is irrevocable. Every Accio has its consequences, every Lumos needs a Nox to be balanced – and even explosions seem to sustain themselves, even in a cave, deep down in cold stone …"

"You mean …" Incredulously she shakes her head … "What I feel here, in the air, the closer we get to the core of the cave, this … this restlessness, the despair, that anger, aggression … These are all remnants? Of your magic?"

"It sticks to this place, I think. A bit like a curse, charged with everything that was going on with me back then."

The goose bumps running down her arms don't reassure me that much, and yet I've rarely ever been as transparent as I am now.

Lost in thought, she murmurs, "A controlled Obscurus …" She gulps. "Suppressed magic is dangerous. This was like an outlet, wasn't it?"

"I've been quite close to the sun, I guess."

"Like Icarus? How did you know what to do to keep from burning?"

"Just before he got arrested, Grindelwald claimed I'd met him earlier than I thought until now. I've been trying to recall it ever since, but he must've helped me somehow."

"Helped you? How?" The very idea of a helping Grindelwald is visibly repugnant to her.

And yet him and I, we do have similarities.

"I can't tell, Harper. All I know is that, despite being confronted with Death at the cave entrance, I felt much better when we left. Mentally, spiritually …"

"But the darkness from back then is still lingering here," she remarks. "And you wanted to come back to it …"

"Maybe to show you that it doesn't have to be a part of me –"

"Tom," she interrupts me, desperately massaging her temples, "I can't go on like this, don't you get that?" She literally shudders once I stare at her. "Can we please go back up to the cliffs?"

"Take my arm," I all but say. Not a moment later, we arrive at our starting point in the middle of the grass.

She takes a quick breath, closing her eyes, then, as my hands cup her pretty face, the first tear runs down her cheek.

"We need to talk," she quietly says. "And you have to be honest …"