16th June, 2029
Harry was seventeen when he died. It was a young age, but it was older than anyone expected him to live up to given the circumstances of all that he went through.
Harry didn’t know what people thought when they were dying. He had wondered about it a lot, ever since he was a child. He thought about it more and more as he lost the many people he loved along the way: Sirius, Remus, Headmaster Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Fred, Dobby, Tonks, Cedric. His parents. His parents all the time. What were they thinking when they died? How did they feel?
It was strange to think that he felt as if he had died wrong. As if he was doing it in a peculiar, unordinary way. Maybe it was because he felt relieved. He had thrown himself in front of dementors, had Basilisk venom running through his veins, fell from a tower’s height from his broom to his demise, and all he had felt was terror, denial, incompletion. He had never felt as right as he did when he was in that irreversible grey area between life and death, that area where it was inevitable, where he knew there was no way he could survive.
He did not, for possibly the first time since he started his own army of children as old as he, think of anyone but himself. He did not think of all that he was leaving behind. He did not think of the world that would have surely fallen to darkness without him. He did not think of the war they would lose. He did not think of those he would leave. He did not think of his soulmates and greatest allies, Hermione and Ron, the only two who he could trust with such full surety. He did not think of the girl he was in love with, the future he was giving up with her, nor her future as well. He did not think of his friends. He did not think of his enemies either, not Voldemort or Bellatrix or Lucius or anyone who had crossed or betrayed him, who had set out to kill or control him. He did not think of those he could meet too, so unlike the times he stayed up dreaming of the moment the world will be safe enough for him to die so he could be reunited with those he longed for so much. He did not even think of his parents.
There was only him, and he was fulfilled.
It was so peaceful, death.
But he was the Boy who Lived, and how could one be the Boy who Lived if he didn’t conquer even that?
Harry is forty-eight now, going on forty-nine. He is a husband. He is a father of three children, just grown out of their teenage years. He is a wizarding hero. He saved the world.
Now the world doesn’t need saving. The world doesn’t need him.
Harry awakes to the sound of his wife screaming for Lily to wake him up. He squeezes his eyes shut as if this will expel reality and the chaos of home life from his mind, but he hears his daughter’s heavy footsteps thundering down the hallway not too long after.
“Dad!” Lily calls, loud enough that it would be unrealistic if Harry tries to continue to pretend he is asleep. “Dad, Mum’s calling for you. She wants you ready soon for when Teddy comes to visit.”
“Alright, I’ll be down,” he says tiredly, and Lily disappears not a moment after.
He wants to stretch his back, his legs, his arms. He feels so rustic now, like a porcelain antique. It’s almost laughable if he wasn’t the one feeling how badly age was affecting him. His reflexes were slow, and his mind, even slower. It pissed Ginny off a lot.
Harry wants to brush his teeth. He also wants to search for his slippers, because his feet have grown sensitive in the mornings now, for reasons he cannot place. He knows he has morning breath as well.
Most importantly, Harry wants to lay back in bed and continue to pretend to be asleep. As messed up as it sounds, dreams of death are more peaceful than the average dreamless slumber. Dreams of death are where his mind can be quietened. Dreams of death are a blessing to him.
But age affects everyone differently. And dried out marriages. And Ginny’s impatience has only doubled over the years.
He decides he does not want to test her tolerance. He decides he doesn’t want to fight this early in the morning. He decides he will just do whatever she asks of him without any comment, and hopefully she’ll let him go early and he can go ‘take a nap’ before his godson arrives.
Harry sits up, puts his feet to the ground and ignores how strikingly cold the floorboards feel, and then he stands, ignoring the wooziness that comes from how sleepy he is, and makes his way downstairs to where Ginny needs him.
Harry thinks, and he’ll never, ever say it to anyone, but he thinks that day when he was killed, he should’ve stayed dead. He really should’ve stayed dead.