Grindelwald's Burden (Books 1-7)

138. Shell Cotage

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Bill and Fleur's cottage stood alone on a cliff overlooking the sea, its walls embedded with shells and whitewashed. It was a lonely and beautiful place. Wherever Y/n went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, he could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature. He spent much of the next few days resting and recovering with Hermione by his side. Harry, Dean and Ron had taken the living room to give Y/n and Hermione a room to rest in, they had to share the smallest room with Luna who had a camp bed on opposite wall of their bed but neither of the three minded, they were all still tired from their times at Malfoy Manor. 

The night at Malfoy Manor had not been brought up again as Y/n and Hermione chose to put it behind them and look ahead now. Harry had finally decided to put the Horcruxes first again. Something that satisfied Y/n, it made their future look clearer and easier to plan.

Harry meanwhile, had been making excuses to escape the crowded cottage, craving the cliff-top view of open sky and wide, empty sea, and the feel of cold, salty wind on his face.

The enormity of his decision not to race Voldemort to the wand still scared Harry. He could not remember, ever before, choosing not to act. He was full of doubts, doubts that Ron could not help voicing whenever they were together.

"What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in time to get the wand?" "What if working out what the symbol meant made you 'worthy' to get the Hallows?" "Harry, if that really is the Elder Wand, how the hell are we supposed to finish off You-Know-Who?"

Harry had no answers. There were moments when he wondered whether it had been outright madness not to try to prevent Voldemort breaking open the tomb. He could not even explain satisfactorily why he had decided against it. Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

The odd thing was that Y/n and Hermione's support made him feel just as confused as Ron's doubts. Now forced to accept that the Elder Wand was real, Hermione maintained that it was an evil object, and that the way Voldemort had taken possession of it was repellent, not to be considered.

"You could never have done that, Harry." she said again and again. "You couldn't have broken into Dumbledore's grave."

Y/n was not pleased by the means it had been obtained either. "To desecrate ones final resting place...It is only for the lowest of the low."

But the idea of Dumbledore's corpse frightened Harry much less than the possibility that he might have misunderstood the living Dumbledore's intentions. He felt that he was still groping in the dark, he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. From time to time, anger at Dumbledore crashed over him again, powerful as the waves slamming themselves against the cliff beneath the cottage, anger that Dumbledore had not explained before he died.

"But is he dead?" said Ron, three days after they had arrived at the cottage. Harry had been staring out over the wall that separated the cottage garden from the cliff when Ron, Y/n and Hermione had found him. Y/n was standing by Harry rubbing his eyes with frustration as Ron and Hermione had begun to argue.

"Yes, he is, Ron, please don't start that again!"

"Look at the facts Hermione." said Ron, speaking across Y/n and Harry, who both gazed out at the horizon. "The silver doe. The sword. The eye Harry saw in the mirror..."