A/N: This is an entry for the MNff March Contest. Plot bunny three~ A Prayer for the Dying. Forum Name~ Magical Maeve. House~ Ravenclaw.
Strange Meeting
The street felt vaguely familiar, despite the churning mists that hid its contents from view. All Harry could see was his hand in front of his face and the grey pavement beneath his slippered feet. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision of the claustrophobic vapour that clung to him, choking at his throat. Wondering, idly, why he was standing in a street, in the middle of the night, wearing only his slippers and –was this his dressing gown? His fingers rubbed at the fabric and felt the rough towelling of his tatty old bathrobe. How odd.
The mist continued to swirl but Harry realised that there was no wind, at least no wind he could feel. In fact, come to think of it, he couldn’t feel anything in this darkened atmosphere. There was no sound, apart from his own breathing, no wind, no smells, no nothing. All he had was his sight and even that was severely impaired by this annoying haze that grew ever thicker. Moving hesitantly forward he was pleased to see that the mist parted to let him through, as if hastening his progress to – where?
Harry gave a cry of surprise as he grazed his leg against something. Looking down he saw a rubbish bin that bore the legend of Westminster Borough Council. So this was London? But why was this hidden street so familiar and what was he doing in it when he should have been…but Harry couldn’t remember where he should have been. Come to think of it, he thought with a jolt of longing, he couldn’t remember anything that had happened recently with any clarity. If he really concentrated he could see some sort of a party, with lots of people in Hogwarts robes celebrating the end of exams. There was a gap in his memory and he then saw black-cloaked figures coming out of the darkness of his mind, wands drawn and pointing. But there the recollection ended and he could not fill in the gaps between that and his current situation.
Circumnavigating the bin he walked towards the thickness of a building and the mist again parted to allow him full view of the window of Pearse and Dowse, a rundown department store that was permanently on the verge of closing down. So, Harry thought, I’m outside St Mungo’s. His day was getting stranger and stranger. Perhaps he had been ill and had somehow managed to get out of the hospital without the healers spotting him. Of course! That was why he was wearing his dressing gown and slippers. Well then, all he had to do was announce his presence and the shop dummy would allow him in. He looked, with relief, at the nearest dummy who wore an ill-fitting wig in a strange plummy shade.
“Harry Potter, I think I’m a patient,” he announced clearly.
The dummy turned its loose head towards him and the wig slipped gently over one of its eyes giving it a rather comical appearance. It shook its head mournfully and the wig slipped back into place.
“You’re mistaken!” Harry said, panic rising. “I’m a patient, I must be. Why else would I be standing here in my bloody slippers? Let me in!”
Again the dummy shook its head and then nodded in the direction of the street. Harry turned to look but could see nothing.
“Please,” his voice dropped to a plaintive moan, “I have no idea what I am doing here. You have to let me in.”
He reached into the folds of his clothing for his wand and was further dismayed to find it wasn’t there. The dummy was once again a shop display and showed no signs of movement. Harry fought the urge to hammer at the glass and smash his way into the building. It would be useless; all he would find would be the dusty shop and a few plastic mannequins.
Reluctantly turning back into the street he wished he could feel something. A blast of icy wind that would make him huddle down into his robe would have been very welcome in this place devoid of any sentience. The mist parted again as he moved slowly forward down the street, one slipper hesitantly following the other in reluctant forward motion. The only plan he could think of was to try and make his way to Grimmauld Place. If he encountered any Muggles he knew he would look pretty stupid, but there was nothing else for it. At least there would be a friendly face there and a hot cup of tea.
Something pricked at Harry’s mind as he thought about Grimmauld Place, something unpleasant. The gap in his memory between Hogwarts and the black-cloaked men was no longer quite so expansive as the image of a face floated through his consciousness. Red hair flailing around white skin, a startled look from fear-brimmed eyes and a scream. He felt a crushing sense of disbelief as he remembered what had happened- how long ago? Harry found he had no idea.
He had been walking from Grimmauld Place to The Leaky Cauldron with Ginny Weasley. It had been a happy morning; full of plans and hurried chatter as they sketched out their day. His first week of freedom after finishing Hogwarts for good had been a strange mixture of relief and sadness. He was almost grieving for the loss of the school and his childhood but he was equally glad to be his own man and preparing to embark upon a career with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It would make a nice change to be issuing warnings instead of being on the receiving end of them. But they never made it as far as the grimy pub that would allow them access to Diagon Alley. The ambush had been swift; four Death-Eaters had swooped down from nowhere. Ginny had been wrenched from his arm and flung to the ground as one of the Death-Eaters flung the Avada Kedavra Curse at her. That had been the memory of her fearful face as it looked at him from around the black fabric that shrouded her. The next, and his last conscious memory, had been of the other three Death-Eaters drawing their wands at him as he in turn went for his.
Had he escaped? Was this why he was wandering around London? But why was he wearing night clothes? Surely he should still be wearing what he had been wearing earlier. Had it been earlier though? Suddenly it felt like a lifetime ago. Something that had happened in another time and place.
He wasn’t expecting to walk into anything so when his face and body connected with something unseen, but undeniably solid, he stepped back in surprise. There was nothing there but as he tentatively stuck out his hand he felt the end of his world. There would be no Grimmauld Place and no St Mungo’s for him today… or perhaps any day.
“Harry.”
The sound of his name, carried on the swirling mist, broke the unnatural silence and he turned swiftly. The heavy haze began to dissipate, drawing backwards to allow him a clear view of the face that had so recently been plaguing his memory.
“Ginny,” he said, relief tripping across his words. “Thank goodness you’re all right! I was beginning to think I was going mad, this is all so weird.”
She smiled a very enigmatic smile. Funny, Harry thought, Ginny never used to smile like that. Her smile was wide and free with a barrage of laughter behind it. This smile was the smile of a woman, a woman who knew something profound and was just biding her time before imparting her knowledge.
“Ginny?” he repeated her name with trepidation.
“Harry, please don’t be afraid.” Her voice was watery, as if something had diluted it and made it just a shade of what it once was.
“Ginny, what’s happening to us?” There was urgency in his tone now. The panic he had fought before was back and this time would not be battened down.
“I have something to tell you.” She moved closer to him and he could see her in greater detail. Tiredness pulled at her mouth and her eyes were no longer a bright shade but a pale imitation of what they had been. The hair was dulled and her skin was translucent in its whiteness. If Harry really concentrated he thought, unbelievably, that he could almost see through her.
With a hard feeling in his throat Harry knew why they were in this world between worlds. He knew why the dummy had not allowed him in to St Mungo’s. St Mungo’s was for the living, not the dead. After all the fear and pain of cheating death at the hands of Voldemort it was almost a relief to finally taste it. And really, it wasn’t so bad. Ginny was here, even if she was a little bit transparent. He held out a hand to her but she shook her head sadly.
“No, Harry. It’s against the rules.”
“What rules!” he shouted. “Where the hell are we? Is this Heaven?”
Her laugh was abrasive and he found he didn’t like it. Gone was the boisterous sense of fun and in its place was a rough rasp that made him shudder.
“No, this is the world between worlds. I hung around, even though they wanted me to hurry up and join them.”
“Join them? Who’s them?” Harry still hadn’t had an answer to his first question but he didn’t want to hear that laugh again so didn’t repeat it.
“Oh, just family members. Bill was there; he looked particularly sad to see me. Gran was there and great uncle Francis… he even had his owl, Cooper, with him. Cooper was Errol’s father, so that was nice.”
Harry tried to ignore the banalities and focus on the bigger picture. If Ginny had seen her relatives then surely… he glanced around him quickly, searching the darkness for the familiar and yet unknown faces of his dearest dreams. Would they come to meet him? Was this why Dumbledore had told him death wasn’t the end? Harry felt a rush of elation as he contemplated finally meeting his mother and father. After so long he would feel his mother’s comforting arms around him and feel his touch of his father’s pride. What would they talk about? What could he possibly say that would bridge the gap of those seventeen lost years?
“I hung around to see if you would come,” she said, interrupting his longing. “I wasn’t sure, you see. I knew I was dead but I hadn’t seen you fall. They said I was taking a risk that I might not be able to continue on if I waited. They said you might take too long to arrive and then we would both be lost to them.” The sense of self-sacrifice in Ginny’s eyes was clear to see and Harry felt disconcerted by it.
“Why are you being so matter-of-fact about this?” Harry asked, his mind still full of his mum and dad… and Sirius. He felt his chest was about to explode with a deep sense of yearning. He wasn’t thinking logically. How could he when he was surrounded by so much that was illogical? He was even managing to ignore the strangeness that emanated from Ginny, blinded by the hope of seeing his loved ones again.
“You have to accept, Harry. If you don’t accept you can’t move on to the next world. Imagine being stuck between worlds for ever.” The half-Ginny shuddered and looked at him with horror. “But you’re here now so we can move on, can’t we?”
“I… erm…I think so,” Harry said. “But where are my mum and dad?”
Ginny looked at him carefully and then looked around her. She frowned at this inconsistency. Her family had been waiting for her as soon as she had opened her eyes to this world and yet there was no sign of Lily or James Potter. Her hands clenched and unclenched, nails digging into her tissue-paper palms. Ginny’s agitation grew as she realised she could have made a mistake in waiting for him.
“But I was so sure…” she began. “I died… There were four of them. You must have died with me.”
“Well, yes,” Harry agreed. “I must be dead or I wouldn’t be here.”
He felt the horrifying chill of reasoning spread throughout his body. He was dead, of that there was no doubt, so perhaps his mum and dad weren’t going to come for him. Perhaps Harry would be alone in death as he had been in life, with no family to love or watch over him. The thought filled him with despair as he realised that death could be as lonely as life — even lonelier because here he wouldn’t have Ron or Hermione. The thought of his two close friends made him smile involuntarily and Ginny looked at him with a strange expression on her face.
“You’re smiling,” she said, stating the obvious. “How can you smile without knowing that your family are here for you?”
“I was thinking of Ron and Hermione,” he said in a small voice. “I was thinking that they made my life what it was and without them I probably would never have known love. I think I will miss them more than life itself.”
Suddenly Harry didn’t want to be dead. He didn’t want to exchange his real friends for dead parents. None of this felt right and he didn’t know why. Ginny was so sure that what was happening was correct and she was happy to make the next step but Harry was reluctant.
“You’ll see them again,” Ginny said. Her head kept tweaking backwards, as if she was searching for someone.
Harry felt his hand jerk forward and he looked at it in alarm. He had had enough shocks and surprises for one day; his limbs having a life of their own was something he really didn’t need. Warmth spread through his fingers and into his arm. Given the complete lack of sensation in this world the pleasurable feeling was doubled and he felt he didn’t want it to end.
“What’s happening?” he breathed, as his fingers grew pink and bloated with life.
“Oh,” Ginny looked afraid as she watched his hand fill with life. “Oh, Harry.”
Harry looked at her and realised she was crying, but no tears fell from her eyes and no sobs escaped her lips. Was this truly death, he thought, a complete lack of any sensation or reaction? Was the next stage of life filled with only thoughts and no physical feelings? Harry wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
From above them he could hear the wind whistle through the air. No, not the wind. It was a whispering voice, a rapid-fire repetition of words that, though he couldn’t make out their meaning, were comforting.
“Someone is saying a prayer,” Ginny said in wonder. “It’s a prayer for the dying. Oh, Harry I’m so sorry… you’re not dead at all.” Her pale eyes flickered at him like candles guttering in a soft breeze. “You have to make a choice.”
He looked at her with puzzlement on his face.
“A choice? Why should a prayer offer me a choice?”
“It’s a special prayer, Harry. Only someone that truly loves you can say it, otherwise you wouldn’t hear it. That’s why your hand is like that, whoever it is is holding your hand in the other place.”
“What do I do?” he said, the voice continued to pull at his soul as he stood facing his dead friend.
“What do you want to do?” Ginny asked.
“I don’t know.” Harry felt the weight of the choice press heavy on his whole being. “If I’m not dead that’s why mum and dad aren’t here. If I let go then they will come, won’t they?”
Ginny nodded and the whispering voice became louder, more insistent. “They will come, Harry. They will help you to make the transition.”
“But I don’t have to go?” He looked to her for guidance.
“I don’t think so,” she said, with a hint of guile in her voice. Ginny had always loved Harry with a fervour that sometimes was unwarranted. If there was the chance that she could keep him with her in death then she would take it.
Death does strange things to a person. In life Ginny would have rather died herself than allowed Harry to die. Death, to a living person, was usually the ultimate sacrifice and something to be avoided at all costs. But now that she was there Ginny felt strangely released. Harry was clearly not in the same state of blissfulness that she was. She did not feel the lack of sensation, she did not miss the wetness of tears on her cheek and she did not miss the irritation of a strong wind or a harsh rain on her face. So she couldn’t understand why Harry was wavering between physical struggle and emotional purity. What could he want to hold on to that body for?
She looked at him now and wondered what he would look like when she no longer had eyes to see him with. Would his soul be in as much disarray as his messy hair? Would she still be able to sense his smile and feel his teasing? Her body was fading. Soon she would be left with the bare essence of her soul and the thought no longer frightened her in the way it would have done when she was alive. She wished, with all that was left of her heart, that she could show him the freedom that he would have. In the blinking of an eye she had understood all the things that theologians and philosophers spend their lives debating and ruminating about. Death gave her that truth and the ability to fully understand it. She wanted to touch him and convey that to him but she realised, with a slight pang of regret that she could not. Her diaphanous hands would pass through him and he would shudder at her touch. The living always did.
“I don’t know what to do, Ginny,” Harry said desperately. He knew that the time for decision-making was growing short and he needed to jump, either into his new life or back into the old one. The insistent ringing of the prayer continued to reverberate in his ears as he struggled with his decision. If is mum and dad came for him would they be as ephemeral as the images he had seen in the Mirror of Erised? Would their voices ring in the same way as the voice that was now ringing through this world did?
“You have to choose, Harry, and soon. I will have to go. I can feel them coming back for me and this time there can be no hesitation. This time I will have no choice.” Ginny looked at him and he realised, with a feeling of distaste, that her eyes had almost gone and her hair had taken on an unravelled appearance. Was the manifestation of real people something that only the living saw? he wondered with bemusement.
“Will I be able to see you at all?” he asked.
“No,” she said and now even her voice was faint. Everything that had ever been Ginny was being sapped slowly away by the ever-encroaching afterlife. “Everything you know will change. I can only see you now because I chose to wait for you. Once we pass beyond the bounds at the end of this world then you will have no need to see me. There will be no need to feel or touch. It will all be a part of who you are. I will be as much a part of you as you are of me. All is interchangeable.”
Harry wasn’t sure about this. He quite liked the idea of being one thing, divisible from the rest of the universe. If you were everything and knew everything, then what was there to discover? And all the while the incessant chanting continued. Harry had the feeling that even if it took him forever to make his mind up then the chanting would remain. He could hover between life and death indefinitely and the person saying the prayer would never cease in their vigil.
But who was it? It sounded female and he thought of Molly, with her protective attitude and her love for him that was as unconditional as a mother’s. But Molly would have other things on her mind. He cast a rueful glance at Ginny as he thought this. First Bill and now Ginny— the grief would be inconceivable.
A keening note entered the prayer, a high-pitched plea for him to return. Declarations of love and promises of a new life.
Ginny glared at him with sudden defiance. Her time was over and the owl that fluttered to her shoulder reminded Harry of this fact.
“Cooper?” he asked.
Ginny looked at him and understood what he was seeing. She could no longer see the owl but she knew it formed part of her shoulder. Her shoulder was the owl’s wing and the owl was her. Ginny let out a gasp of understanding as she watched her pale limbs begin to dissolve.
“It has to be now,” she said hoarsely, with a voice that would not last much longer. “Please, Harry.”
The air was charged with a deeper energy than either of them had ever experienced before as her words circled him, waiting, hungry for a response.
“I love you.”
The words drowned out Ginny’s plea and crashed into Harry’s consciousness. It was Hermione. He looked at his hand and for a moment the vision of her fingers entwined with his fluttered before him. How could that be possible? Hermione was his friend, how could she love him?
He looked up and felt fear. He never expected the sight of his mother to incite fear within him but as her sharp eyes appraised him he felt real, paralysing fear. If he could see his mother then the decision had been taken for him. He was dead and Hermione’s prayer had failed, ; he was dead and he would lose everything he could have experienced. His mother’s mouth moved and, without words, he heard her speak.
“Go back, child.” Her face was a mixture of sorrow and regret. “We do not want you, not yet. You have a life to be lived and now is not the time for you to come to us. Take Hermione’s gift and reward her well. That prayer is only bestowed upon those that truly deserve. Please, my darling, go back. I will be with you, but not now, not under these circumstances. And your father loves you with all his soul, never forget that.”
“Mum.” the word was little more than a cough and was lost beneath the prayer that still rang out.
“I love you, Harry. You were my baby and the light of my life. Your life has made my death worthwhile. I thought it would be a long time before I could tell you that but fortune has smiled upon me and I have the chance to tell you now. Remember me, Harry, but not with the sadness you are accustomed to. Think of me and smile, think of your father and smile…. For the briefest of times we were perfectly happy with you. Remember that.”
“I love you too, Mum.” The words were a whisper, snatched away by the apparition that was his mother and tucked away greedily into the place that her soul occupied.
“Go back, Harry, and remember, my love is always with you. I’ll be waiting for you, with your father, when the time is right.”
The energy that had filled the space around him with such force sparkled brightly, causing showers of iridescent dust to flare and then it died with little fight.
“I love you.”
The words echoed again and they were not the words of a phantom, they were the words of a flesh and blood person. Harry glanced around him. His mother was gone and so was Ginny. He felt sadness that he had not said goodbye to Ginny, but, as he thought that, the brush of a goodbye touched his ears and he reciprocated the sentiment with a murmur of sadness.
It was time to return. He closed his eyes and tired to connect with the voice that was his lifeline to the old world. He wanted to respond to the entreaties to wake up, to come round, and to be back amongst the living. He wanted to say, yes, he loved her too. He wanted to…
And with a smooth opening of his eyes he felt brightness and a world of sensations batter his body in one fell swoop. She was there, hair hanging limply over her huddled shoulders as she continued to repeat the prayer, her eyes closed tightly against her fear for him. And he realised what he wanted the most…
“For goodness’ sake Hermione,” he said, from between dry lips. “Stop going on about it. I’m back, aren’t I?”
Her eyes snapped open and with a look of intense joy she welcomed him back to his own world. The prayer had worked.