A Silent Goodbye.
The day before returning to Hogwarts, Harry sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the unlit fireplace. His fingers idly traced the edges of his worn-out journal, the only thing he could trust to hold his scattered thoughts. The air in the room was heavy, thick with the kind of quiet that wrapped itself around Harry like a suffocating blanket. The house felt empty now—empty in a way that felt deeper than just the absence of the people he had spent the last year with.
Teeth was gone. Tom was gone.
And Harry… Harry was still here, as broken and silent as he had been before.
He didn’t know why he bothered with the routine anymore. The school year was approaching, and with it, the expectation of normalcy, of pretending. But he didn’t feel normal. Not in the slightest. Not after everything that had happened, everything he had seen and done. The only people who had ever seen the real him, the broken pieces of him, had walked away. Teeth, monstrous and monstrous in a way Harry could never explain, had been the only one who didn't judge, the only one who had just… accepted. And Tom—Tom, with all his darkness and quiet calculation—had understood. He saw Harry as someone more than the fragile boy the world expected him to be. Harry wasn’t alone with them. He wasn’t seen as weak or as a freak.
He wasn’t a trophy. He wasn’t a cold, emotionless shell. Not with them.
Now, it felt like they were the only ones who had ever truly known him. And they were gone. Tom, too, had left—slipping back into the shadows, to do whatever it was that a sixteen-year-old dark lord did, and Harry was left behind. Alone. Always alone.
“Does it even matter?” Harry murmured to himself, the words hanging in the air. His throat tightened. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing away the tears that threatened to spill. He hated feeling this way. Hated feeling so… small. So invisible. But it was easier this way. Easier than trying to be something he wasn’t, easier than wearing a mask that he had never known how to take off.
The silence was deafening.
A part of Harry wanted to just walk away, disappear, and leave it all behind. It would be easier than facing the world that didn’t understand him. It would be easier than pretending to be something he wasn’t—someone he never wanted to be.
But then, in the pit of his chest, something tugged painfully. A thought—one that always returned when the darkness of his mind tried to consume him.
What if he didn’t matter at all?
What if the only thing that kept him tethered to this world were memories of those who had left?
He shut his eyes tightly, breathing in and out slowly, but it didn’t help. He could feel the familiar ache gnawing at him—the pull of something dark and dangerous, promising release from all the noise, all the pain.
But then he thought of them.
Teeth—large, terrifying, and somehow comforting. Always there when Harry had felt like he was falling apart. And Tom—cold, calculating, but with a kind of understanding that Harry could never explain. The only people who had seen him as more than a label, more than a freak or a chosen one.
And for a moment, a fleeting moment, Harry found something he hadn’t expected. A little spark of warmth. A little bit of hope. Not much, but enough. Enough to make him fight through the darkness one more time.
He stood up, wiping his face and pushing away the swirling thoughts in his mind. The air in the room still felt heavy, but he refused to let it consume him. Not yet. Not today. He had done things in the past few months that he never thought possible, and though they didn’t seem like much, they meant something.
For a brief second, Harry considered the idea of writing to Tom or Teeth. Something that would anchor him, a small lifeline to the people who had once been his world. But the idea felt distant, unrealistic. They were gone, and he was stuck in the same place, a quiet ghost in a world that didn't care.
Harry sat down by the window, staring out at the dark sky. The moon was full, but it only illuminated the darkness that stretched before him.
It would be okay. It had to be.
He wasn’t sure who he was fooling. But maybe—just maybe—he could hold on long enough to figure it out.
Maybe.