The Lonliness of Eternity.
I do not know what I am. I never have.
I have wandered for so long that I have forgotten what it means to stop. To stand still. To let time settle around me like dust.
But in this moment, there is no forward, no backward. No duty, no expectation. Only silence.
I sit in the garden at the end of the hallway, where the flowers bloom without needing the sun, where the air is still and heavy with the scent of something I cannot name. It should be peaceful. It should be beautiful. But it is neither.
It is empty.
I watch the world breathe around me. A vine curls around my wrist, bright and new. It lingers for a moment before it withers, blackening, crumbling into nothing.
Like all things.
Like me.
I should not be here. Or perhaps I should. I no longer know the difference.
I close my eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I listen. Not to Death, not to the whispers of magic, not to the hum of existence itself—just to the silence within me.
It is deafening.
I do not remember when I last laughed. I do not remember what it feels like to want, not in the way humans do, not in the way that aches and burns. Once, I longed for things—a family, a future, a life beyond war. But longing is a human thing, and I am no longer human.
I wonder if I was ever meant to be.
The cathedral stretches behind me, vast and eternal, carved from something older than stone, older than time itself. It is mine. A home, if I chose to call it that.
But a house is not a home.
And I have no home.
I exhale, and the world shifts.
The garden dims. The cathedral’s walls groan. My body—if it can even be called that anymore—flickers at the edges. I am not stable. I have not been for a long time.
I open my eyes.
And I see him.
The boy stands a few feet away, watching me with a quiet intensity I know too well. He is small, drowning in a secondhand jumper, his hair a mess of untamed black. He cannot be older than eleven. His face is sharper than I remember, thinner, his green eyes wide with something that could be fear, could be recognition.
It is me.
The first me. The real me.
I do not speak. Neither does he.
But I know what he is thinking.
"What happened to us?"
I cannot answer.
I want to tell him that we survived. That everything was worth it. That we made it through the war, through the suffering, through the loneliness that settled in our bones like rot.
But I cannot lie to myself.
So instead, I watch as his small hands curl into fists. He takes a step closer, bare feet soundless against the cold stone. His gaze does not waver. There is something in it that makes my chest ache.
"You forgot me."
I swallow. The words should not hurt. And yet, they do.
Because he is right.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being him. I let him fade, piece by piece, until all that was left was this—this god, this being, this thing that does not belong anywhere.
I think of Ron’s laughter. Of Hermione’s stubbornness. Of Hogwarts, of butterbeer, of the warmth of Gryffindor Tower in the middle of winter.
Memories, nothing more. Echoes of a life that no longer fits.
The boy—I—stares at me. His lower lip trembles, just slightly, just enough.
And then, in the smallest of voices, he whispers—
"Don’t forget me."
And then he is gone.
The silence rushes back in, thick and suffocating. My breath is unsteady. My hands shake. I press them against my face, but they are not hands. Not really.
I am not human.
Not anymore.
And the worst part?
I do not know if I even want to be.