They don’t notice at first. Sure, they’re a little more tired, but that’s to be expected, right? They’re so busy, constantly moving, acting, doing, no wonder they feel like a candle burnt from both ends sometimes.
And they do burn. Like bright, brilliant candles, incandescent, their flames to high, too hot, consuming the oil faster than they should.
Too late they realize. Too late they understand.
Hermione was never one for fiction, so she never made the connection to a book she never read. And much of it didn’t even come out until it was already far too late. The stories of the Elder days, of Beren and Luthien, who held the Silmaril and burned bright. But too quick, too fast, the oil of their lives burning out in the Silmaril’s light.
The Silmarilli were not designed for mortal hands. They enhanced the Flame at the heart of every being, and this is no great trouble for elves, who are more creatures of fea than hroa, bound to Arda, whose lives are intended to endure unending.
Ah, but mortals, those whose fires burn so bright, yet whose oil is so limited! In the light of the Silmarilli they shine like stars, and burn like oil upon the blazing sun.
Too late they realize, while their hroar are yet young, too young, their fëar all wrung out by the Doom the Silmaril has laid upon them, curse and blessing both.
Hermione is the first to fade, pen slipping from ink stained fingers. She has hugged Rose, and kissed baby Hugo, the last of her strength having gone to him. Books scatter across the desk, passages circled and torn out; the titles, “Histories of Middle Earth”, “Lost Tales”, “The Silmarillion”, accusing; reminders of her folly, of assuming no wisdom could be found in fantasy when she had at eleven come to live within story.
“I love you all”, the letter says, words scribed quickly for time runs short, “and I’m sorry. The stone… Har-“ But there it ends, in smudged ink and fallen quill, amber hair strewn across the desk, ageless features in repose. She might be asleep, but for the lack of breath.
Her husband holds her, and mourns, feels the tugging on his fëa, and knows. “Bill,” he begs his brother, life running out in emerald flames, “take Rose and Hugo. Don’t let them near that stone of Harry’s. There’s always a price. ‘Mione figured it out but… s’too late for us.”
Red hair lies beside amber, hands clasped. They still feel warm, like cooling embers, the Silmaril’s fatal heat still burning.
Ginny gives the children to her mother. Harry watches her return, lithe form and light steps, all fire and light, life far beyond the fatal Light. “I wish,” he says dully, “I’d never found it.”
She settles beside him, face youthful, eyes ancient. “You couldn’t have known. And it DID save us.”
“And now it takes its price. Our lives. And - the children saw it! Touched it!”
She grips his hand, weaker than she should be, her hroa reflecting the fea. But her gaze is calm, and her speech reassuring. “Bill read Hermione’s notes. She thinks the children will be all right, so long as they are kept from it from now on.” She looks away, and her shoulders fall, allowing her weariness to show. “You’ll have to return it. I… I don’t think I can come with you.”
“I know,” he answers, and waits until she sleeps, her weary fea departing for Eru’s halls.
He returns to the beachhead, to the sandy dunes where long ago a child found a stone that shone with Light from the untainted Sun and untarnished Moon. There he stops, uncertain. For who is to say the sea will not return the cursed gem to the sands, to be found by another child so unwary?
“Dost thou intend to cast it into the sea,” a voice asks, and it is like music beyond music, more mighty than the waves crashing upon the shore, and Harry weeps at its beauty. “Or wilt thou keep it?”
Harry turns to the speaker, a tall man; with fine features worn by grief and the salt of tears and sea; hair like a raven’s wing woven into a simple tail; his dress was simple, yet refined; he carried a harp upon his back and a sword at his hip; and his left hand was wrapped in bandages, the visible skin raw and flayed, as though he had but recently reached into the flames and held a coal. “I have kept it long enough,” Harry says bitterly, “and it has saved me and my world and all I love, and it has cost me the same. It came from the sea, and I came to return it. But what if someone else finds it?”
The man meets Harry’s eyes, and in the silver irises he sees sparks of the Light held in the stone. “Better that it was not found. Better it remained whence I cast it, long ago. But if Ulmo has seen fit to cast it upon the shore, then most assuredly he will do so again. For the Great Enemy has ever striven against his chains, and if the Silmarilli are begun to be found, then the time must approach when he will be free.
“But thou needst not fear for some unwitting innocent, that they may stumble upon it as once thou did. For I will guard the stone now, though it despise me yet, until such time as it is needed.” So saying, he took from his belt a leather pouch and offered it to Harry. “Lay it here, child, for I dare not touch it.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then my Doom and Oath still lay upon me. But I would not slay thee, though thy life nears its utter end; for the Silmaril has taken all thou art, and I need but wait. So make thy choice child, but know this: an oath most fell I swore long ago, and by that am compelled to protect the stone. I will keep it safe.”
“It will kill you.”
“Perhaps. It hath no love for me. Yet I am not as thee, so perhaps not. And if it should, well, so ironic a doom is still better than what I am deserving of.” And, somehow, Harry knew this was so.
He laid the stone in the pouch, and the stranger closed it swiftly, as though to merely glimpse the light was pain beyond imagining. Then the stranger took his harp and sung a song of elder days, of good and evil, of brilliant gems and fell gods, and of nobility beyond all measure. The music seemed to take on a life of its own and Harry let the notes draw him away, taking him whence the Music came.
Thus did Harry Potter, Hero to all Wizardkind, Wielder of the Silmaril, die.