DIES ILLA
by Cuthalion

1. Hogwarts

Sometimes the silence is loud enough to be a constant droning in his ears. He walks up the steps to the dormitory, expecting to see the comforting chaos of books, clothing and parchment rolls beside the opened trunk; he abandoned everything only a few minutes ago. It was a sudden fit of panic, stifling heat, running through his entire body, followed by icy coldness that made him shiver and his teeth chatter… it was frightening, it was a sign of life, and he bolted up from his bed and fled from the tower, nearly losing his balance on the stairs, running through the endless corridors until the haze enfolded him again and made the thundering of his heartbeat slow down to the usual, numb, slow rhythm.

Silence.

The trunk is closed. He opens the latches and stares down at neatly folded pullovers, breeches and cloaks; books are wrapped in pieces of soft cloth instead of being stuffed wherever there is any space left. Dobby might have done this… no, Dobby most certainly did this, and Harry feels the first real emotion for days, a quick, blazing gratitude that he isn't forced to see the big, lamp-like eyes right now, that clownesque face, screaming grief with big tears, trembling lips and a squeaking voice. He isn’t forced to face the open, unchecked sorrow he isn’t yet willing to allow himself.

The noise in his ears grows louder. Something flares in his mind, a memory he doesn’t fully recognize, and for a dizzying moment his nostrils are filled with the strong, sharp scent of saltwater.

Salt?

The ocean?

It is gone before he is able to understand where it came from, and he closes his eyes in painful exhaustion. Breakfast. Breakfast first, with all those staring eyes that are quickly downcast when he turns his head, staring eyes in pale faces, hushed murmurs, rising when he enters the Hall and dying slowly when he sits down, shielded by the familiar, comforting figures of Ron and Hermione. Breakfast first.

And then the funeral.


2. The Burrow

Being with the whole clan of the Weasleys again is like falling in a huge basket full of soft towels. Molly eyes him from head to toe, sings the “You are much too thin for your age� litany as usual and cooks all his favorite meals. If he doesn’t help himself a second or third time with her shepherd’s pie and her carrot casserole with mincemeat, she bravely ignores it… and she’s up to her ears in the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding anyway.

The Burrow is bursting at the seams. One day after Harry’s arrival, Tonks and Remus Apparate right in the middle of the goose pen, greeted by the angry flapping and vicious hissing of half a dozen surprised birds. Perhaps they are simply shocked by the color of Tonks' hair, Harry thinks with a dry, little chuckle. It’s a bright, merry pink, glossy and longer than he remembers it; nothing is left of the gray, miserable mouse she has been in the last few months. A shy, unbelieving joy radiates from her like warmth from a fire, Harry is ashamed that he isn’t able to be happy for her… and for Remus.

He tries to avoid being alone with Remus, of course… he fears those wise, calm, knowing eyes that make him feel like translucent glass. As the days pass, his game of hide and seek is like an odd little dance: when Remus enters a room, Harry finds a terribly important reason to leave at once through the opposite door. And after the first week he seems to see knowing eyes in all those familiar faces – Molly, Ron, Hermione, even Bill.

Not Ginny though… she keeps away from him with the silent effortlessness of someone who is used to every nook and cranny of this maze-like house. He knows she is there… he hears her quiet voice and sometimes even her laughter behind closed doors, and once he enters a chamber where Fleur is standing on a low stool, surrounded by every single woman of the household and clad in a white cloud of silk and laces; she is breathtakingly beautiful, like a princess stepped out of an ancient fairy tale. But the memory how he fell for her less than two years ago holds no power whatsoever… all he remembers when he leaves the house a few minutes later are impervious eyes in a clear, sun-speckled face and a mane of fiery hair, tamed to a thick braid.

Only three days to go before the wedding. The green lawns behind The Burrow have turned into an improvised campsite; all kinds of rather weird looking tents have been erected to take in the many Weasley relatives. Fleur’s family has accepted the decision of her daughter to marry in the house of her future husband with a certain resignation and dignity, and their tent is the ultimate sensation for everybody. Harry overhears several giggling cousins of Ron who have made it past the entrance of the seemingly simple structure of mauve-colored canvas and silver tent poles; they talk in hushed tones of a fashionable park with marble fountains, singing statues and elegantly pruned boxwood hedges, and of a French country estate in the center of it. “Cheverny Castle,� one of the girls says with honest awe, “it looks like Cheverny Castle!� And Harry feels a vague dismay at his own lack of interest. Only months ago – a lifetime ago – he would have rushed to see the wonders they describe with his own eyes. Now all he wants is to get away from the hustle and bustle he would in different times have welcomed with open arms. Half an hour later, he has crossed the field behind The Burrow and is once again surrounded by silence.

Silence.

The sun has sunk closer to the horizon, and Stoatshead Hill is a dark silhouette against the deep golden sky. Harry follows the path to Ottery St. Catchpole with his eyes, but he doesn’t want to walk too far away. It is important for him to return in time for Molly Weasley’s delicious dinner; this evening she has promised to assist her future daughter-in-law with the making of a Boeuf Bourguignon, and the kitchen has been filled for hours with the delicious smells of roasting meat, herbs, garlic and red wine. And as long as he sits down at the table, together with them, as long as he manages to smile and talk and laugh at Fred’s jokes and George’s newest nasty prank, no one will ask questions - the questions he can see in their quiet, concerned faces, in their darkened eyes.

He walks on between fields of wheat and rye; the blades are rolling with the cool evening breeze like the waves of a green ocean. The wind seems to carry a faint, cold aroma of salt – again - and he stops right in the middle of the movement, taking a deep breath. That’s ridiculous. He shakes his head and continues his solitary amble. Directly ahead he sees a small grove of oak trees and young beeches where the road makes a bend and vanishes between neatly planted rows of beet.

He still ponders the conversation of Ron’s cousins – obviously daughters from a wealthier branch of the family, for the one mentioning Cheverny Castle must have been in France, for a holiday perhaps. His memory produces barely more than the picture of a proud, white building in a school book… he has never left England, never seen Paris or the Castles at the Loire for real. There has never been…

“…what?�

The smell of salt water is suddenly everywhere, and he stands stock still, eyes wide open and bright with shock behind his glasses.

The thing is – years ago, two years before the letter came that changed his life, there actually was a holiday.

And he has forgotten it as if it never happened.


3. The Beach

The Dursleys had found no opportunity to push him off as usual; they had booked two rooms in a hotel in Brighton, and two days before they were about to drive to the shore in Uncle Vernon’s newest luxury car, Mrs. Figg took a can of green beans far beyond the expiration date without noticing it in time and used it for a pot roast with pork and potatoes. As a result she had to be taken to the nearest hospital… and thus Harry came to enjoy the very first holiday of his life.

Though… joy was surely something else. Aunt Petunia’s idea of a holiday by the sea was sitting in a chair in the hotel lobby and eyeing the new guests distrustfully, her long, fingers closed in a white-knuckled grip around the handbag in her lap. Uncle Vernon made short – very short – walks along the promenade and droned about the healthy sea air afterwards. The Dursleys ate huge lunches in the restaurant (while Harry had to stay in the hotel room, listlessly munching on a dry sandwich with leathery salami and a limp lettuce leaf), and in the evening they met in the TV-room (except Harry, of course) where Dudley filled the last remaining hollows in his gigantic stomach with salt-and-vinegar-crisps and coke.

Therefore it was more than understandable that Harry’s short excitement about the change of surroundings died a fast death. On the last day before the Dursleys drove home again, he finally got the chance to escape: parsnip soup, Yorkshire Pudding, roast beef and trifle had exhausted his relatives to an extent that they fell asleep all together in the early afternoon. Harry – who was barely able to believe his luck – sneaked out of the room and downstairs; he hurried through the lounge and stepped outside before anyone could hold him back.

And there was the sea.

Harry paid no heed to the garish promenade, the bright colors and shrill noise of games and amusements on every side. All he saw and heard was the slow, hissing breath of the gray tide and the wide, pale expanse of the beach before him. He felt the sand under the soles of his shoes, slowly trickling into his socks, but he didn’t mind. He reached the hard seam between water and land and continued his exploration barefoot. First he walked slowly, then his steps grew faster, and finally he ran, the hopelessly oversized, grubby gray sweatshirt billowing around the thin figure of a nine-year-old boy, the cheap glasses frame in front of his green eyes patched with a piece of plaster. He came to a stumbling halt, a slight, lonely silhouette amidst the emptiness of sky and sea, and the he screamed.

He screamed against the darkness and numbing fear in the closet under the stairs, against the mindless brutality of Dudley, the vicious tongue of his aunt and the clamorous contempt of his uncle. He screamed against the craven complicity of the children in school, not daring to stand up against his cousin to help him, and the careless indifference of the teachers who had already deprecated him as a lost cause long ago. He screamed against the pain and the rage, the nagging feeling of being different, against those strange, intangible abilities that made his problems even worse, against the bitter, very un-childlike certitude of not being able to escape, at least not for years.

He had returned to the hotel an hour later, and for a short, blissful span of time he had felt immune against their endless animosity. For the beast inside him – if it really was a beast at all – had raised its head and roared, and he had held onto the fragile peace of this short rebellion as long as he possibly could.


4. The Grove

He comes back to himself, blinking like an owl. His heartbeat is a loud thunder in his ears, and the silence – that protective, shielding silence – is gone. With terrible, breathless panic he understands that the returning remembrance has not only opened the door to the small, miserable boy he once was – it also has unlocked the cage where he has imprisoned other memories. Closer memories, dangerous and disturbing, and he starts to move again, frantically trying to escape the voices in his head.

“I know I did wrong oh please make it stop and I’ll never never again…�

“It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now.�

“Severus… please…�

Make it stop. Make it stop.

Make it stop.

He has no idea that he is running. He reaches the small grove, and the shadows of the treetops enfold him in their dim, green light. He stumbles forward, moss and low underbrush under his feet. Thin branches whip his face, and then he bursts into a small clearing and finds out that he is not alone.

She sits on the ground, her back against the trunk of an oak. Her thick, copper-red braid catches the filtered rays of the sun, and she turns her head in his direction, her face calm and without any surprise.

“Make it stop.�

The sound of his own voice makes him gasp. She doesn’t answer, but she meets his gaze, a gentle question in the pale silver of her eyes.

“The screams…� he stammers. “His screams.�

And mine.

He sinks down beside her, and without a word she takes his hand. He smells the faint flower scent of her shampoo and a hint of the roasting Boeuf Bourguignon in Molly’s kitchen, and he takes a deep, laborious breath.

Make it stop.

His oh-so-brave words come back to haunt him, his clever, gallant reasons for denial and wise resignation. He opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a thin, desperate squeak, and then he feels the first tears blur his sight, not the few tears of the funeral, hot and unwilling, but an overwhelming pain finally set free, fed by a source deep in his heart. Ginny opens her arms, and he sinks forward, blindly and without thinking.

His brow touches her shoulder, and he feels her arms around him. She rocks him gently, still not speaking, and finally he starts to weep.

FINIS

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For those who are not really into sacral music: Dies Illa is a phrase from the classical, latin text of the Requiem, and it means: Day of Tears.