The Dead Don't Rest

AN: So I was tired of everyone bringing Severus back. Yes, I know, I don't think that he should have died, he deserved life, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. But sometimes I wish that people would flip to the other side of the coin and have everything to happy in the afterlife, bringing Harry there immediately and not having weird time delays or instantaneous relationships.

So, plagued by a migraine that I can't seem to shake, I am going to try and not make too much of a mess of this.

I also wanted to write something deep. I feel like I haven't written anything deep in a while, if ever I have, so I want to start here.

I actually kind of stole the beginning for a different story I had in which they both came back as ghosts... I never really finished that, so I decided to use it here. This beginning is based on Green Day's When September Ends, so yeah.

So this chapter is probably quite a bit shorter than the others will be, but it felt good to stop here. This will not be too terribly depressing, promise. It doesn't go into suicide a lot, even though it plays a prominent role, if that makes sense...

Oh! WARNINGS: suicide, character death, eventual slash, bad puns... (If you look hard enough), and Snarry. Lots of good, delicious Snarry.

~Kiro
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Harry sat calmly on the battlements, watching the rain as it pattered down on the landscape. The sky was dark, a grey twilight as the long day finally ended.

He could feel the grief, sitting there in his chest as he watched the solemn-sweet scene. It was always there nowadays, it seemed, as if it had become a permanent part of him over these days of war and since.

It was odd, this feeling of grief. It wasn't the bone-deep sorrow that had come with the funerals at the beginning of the summer. Nor was it something that left him wrung dry hanging from a bedpost, clinging for dear life, such as during the first days after the Final Battle. This was a new pain, a dull, throbbing ache. It clung to his chest, bogging down his insides as if he were a wet towel, left in a pile to mildew and rot in this heavy grief.

The summer was over, now, and the repairs had been finished over a week ago. Today was the first day of the new school year. Students new and old would soon be walking the halls, sharing happy times and low times, sorrow and sadness, anxiousness and excitement. Young bodies, some newly scarred, some just healing, walking these stone halls. The welcoming feast was likely happening somewhere below now, but Harry couldn't force himself to join in the celebration.

It would take nothing less than a miracle to pry him from these damp battlements. He wasn't to finish his schooling, or at least at the moment he couldn't work up the motivation. He had no job, no future, really. There would never be a future for him. He had never thought past Voldemort's fall, much less past school and this cloying depression that clawed at his chest in the aftermath. He had nothing to do, nothing that he could work up the energy for.

So many had died. Remus, that tired spark of dedication, Sirius, that blazing flame of playfulness, Tonks and her humor, Fred and his trickster ways. Colin Creevy was gone, his camera never to flash again in Harry's face, but he couldn't be happy about that freedom, not without that tiny light of a boy. Dumbledore, the one person that Harry felt he could trust to know what was happening and what to do, was gone. Even Snape was gone, his bitter memories dead and buried along with his sallow face.

All the losses, all the lights that would no longer grace the planet, felt like droplets of dew clinging to his lungs, each one adding upon another until he felt as if he was drowning in numbed grief.

He would never again have the chance at happy school days that these kids did. He would not be able to live a second chance at Hogwarts, not like these children who sat in the Great Hall below. All that Harry wanted to do was sleep, lay down and close his eyes and never have to open them again. He would be lost in the lands of dreams, free from reality and allowed to do as he pleased. But he couldn't even do that, not with the nightmares that plagued his existence since the Final Battle. He couldn't even have fulfillment after the end of things, Voldemort had made sure of that.

As he looked out at the rain and the sky, darkening into full night, Harry thought he might just do that, try to fall asleep forevermore. He might just go to sleep on this rooftop, these stones at the crown of a tower, and sleep forever. He need not wake until this cold month ended.

~

It was hours before Harry moved from his position. Shivering, he wrapped his arms closer to his chest and shifted his gaze from the newly risen moon. He swung his stiff legs back and forth to return feeling to them, wincing as they began to burn.

Well, he thought, it was now or never, was it not? He dug into his pocket, bringing out a folded note and a thick packet of letters tied with twine. He placed the heavily charmed packet on the stone beside him, then retrieved his wand and tapped the folded note thrice. As he lifted his wand it rose to float above his head, folding itself into a neat airplane which glided in lazy circles about a foot above him. Satisfied, he turned his eyes once more to the horizon.

It really was beautiful out. And it would go on just as well without him.

With one last deep breath that, he noted with disappointment, was no different than any of the others before it, he tucked his feet beneath him. Another breath and he stood, stumbling sideways at the unsteady feeling of his legs. Steadying himself, he cast his eyes once more to the stars, seeking.

There, Orion, and Sirius, the Dog Star, beside it within Canis Major. Harry tried not to think about the pun there. On the opposite side of the sky stood Regulus. Between them, he saw Draco, and there was Andromeda. So many of them, really. So far away and yet so close.

He dragged in another long, deep breath that he savored. It tasted of freedom and home.

Harry stepped calmly off the tower.