Angels never die [2]

Harry Potter has stopped pretending he's okay.

Sixth year begins with a castle full of laughter, gossip, new romances-
and Harry, moving through it like a ghost wearing his own skin.

Everyone tells him time will heal him.
Everyone tells him to move forward.
But how do you move forward when the only person who ever made the world feel warm is buried beneath it?

Harry doesn't break down.
He doesn't cry.
He just... fades.

Quietly.
Slowly.
A little more every day.

Classes feel hollow. Quidditch feels pointless. The nights stretch longer, darker, colder.
And sometimes, when Harry walks the castle corridors alone, he wonders if the world would even notice if he simply didn't wake up one morning.

But Hogwarts notices.

The portraits whisper.
Candles flicker when he enters a room.
Doors open before he touches them.
His name echoes when no one is near.
And his dreams-
Merlin, his dreams-
are filled with soft footsteps, starlight hair, and a voice he should never be able to hear again.

Harry tells himself it's grief.
He tells himself he's imagining it all.
He tells himself the dead don't find their way back.

But magic this old, this desperate, this familiar...

Magic like this only rises for one reason:

It's trying to return what was taken.

And Harry, shattered and hopeless as he is, feels it deep in his bones-

He is not as alone as the world wants him to believe.