Chapter 3
Lavender Brown
“This is what you need to do, Lavender.” Harry says once time stops moving around them. “You have to let go. You have to let me take over for you.”
Lavender glares defiantly at him; she may have been interested in frills and tea leaves when he knew her, but she was Sorted into Gryffindor for a reason.
“No. This is my life, not yours. I’m not letting you live my life for me.”
“I won’t be living your life,” he replies quietly. “I’ll be dying your death. Let me do this, Lav. This isn’t something you need to experience. Please.”
“I’m going to die?” she asks, and it’s quiet and sad and hopeless; her voice is small the way it never was when they were alive. Something bitter creeps up Harry’s throat when he answers.
“Yes. You’re going to die, and it’s an awful death. This is what I’m meant to do, Lavender. I’m meant to die for people. I’m meant to die for you. Please let me do this for you.”
Lavender presses her lips together, like she’s fighting back a sob. She looks up at him, her eyes glittering with tears, her chin trembling.
“I don’t want to die.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll do it for you. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“You always believed that, didn’t you?” she sighs. “You always thought you had to sacrifice yourself for everyone else. You’re still doing it.”
“I was raised to die for everyone. I did die for everyone, and I’m still doing it.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Don’t you think you’ve sacrificed enough? You literally die for people; I can’t ask you to do that for me.”
This isn’t the girl he met when he was eleven. This isn’t the girl who dated Ron. She is far more insightful than he’s ever given her credit for, and he’s a bit surprised.
She must see something in his expression, because she smiles sadly, her eyes dark. “This past year has changed me, Harry. It’s changed everyone. I’m not the girl you used to know. I’ve been through far too much to be the same innocent little girl that climbed onto the Hogwarts Express years ago.”
He swallows. “I think I’m getting that. It never occurred to me that other people have suffered just as much as I have. Some have suffered more.”
“No one has suffered more than you, Harry. No one else dies for people, you know? You’ve suffered enough already. I won’t let you do this for me. I know that it’s what you’re supposed to do, but I won’t let you do it.”
“Lavender -” Harry begins, but she cuts him off.
“No, Harry. I’m not letting you die for me. You’ve already died for everyone else. Besides, I’ve been having other people do things for me all my life. This is something I need to do for myself. And I’ll see you on the other side, right?”
“Yes. I’ll be waiting.”
It’s strange, watching her die again. He’s never had someone refuse his offer to die for them. It’s strange to not be the one dying, and he feels like he owes it to her to not look away. He’s not taking her death for her, so he watches her fall, watches Greyback leap. No one else is watching, not really, so he will. When she finally stops moving, Harry pulls her from her body, guiding her towards the fog of the in-between.
The fog clears, and Harry looks around himself. Lavender’s in-between looks remarkably like the boys’ dorm in Gryffindor tower. The only difference he can see is in the posters on the walls; rather than boasting Manchester United, these posters have boy-bands inked onto them.
“Is this what the girls’ dorm looks like? I expected it to be frillier.”
Lavender looks almost offended. “Frills have been out of fashion for years, Harry. But yes. This is the Gryffindor girls’ dorm. Or, this is what it used to look like, before Snape and the Carrows took over. Before the world collapsed.”
There’s something in her voice that makes Harry turn his head to look at her. Her face is etched with sorrow. It’s hard for him to reconcile the expression with the ones that crossed her face so long ago.
“When I said people have been doing everything for me for my entire life, I wasn’t kidding. Parvati helped me keep my grades up. Ron got me popularity when we dated in sixth year. My parents gave me anything and everything I asked for. I never had to lift a finger.
“And then Dumbledore died, and I was fighting for my life.” She laughs bitterly. “You don’t know what the Carrows had us do, Harry. It was awful. I hated it. The Cruciatus hurts, you know. But it hurts more to cast it. And I did, Harry. I cast that awful curse because I didn’t want to die. I let the Carrows back me into a corner. It was dark there, and cold.
“I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hated myself for letting them make me hurt people.
“I hurt children . They were just kids, and I hurt them because I didn’t want to die. What kind of person does that make me?” She pauses briefly, but continues speaking, as though she doesn’t expect an answer.
“I learned to hate having my choices made for me. And then you came along, telling me it was time to die. Don’t you see, Harry? I needed to do something for myself for once. I needed to do something for someone else.”
He can’t think of anything to say to that. Lavender has grown a lot since he last spoke to her. He has never really spoken to her though; they only ever spoke of superficial things back before he went hunting for Horcruxes.
“I’m sorry I never took the time to get to know you better. You’re more human than I ever realized.”
She smiles sadly at him. “Missed opportunities, huh? I seem to have collected quite a lot of them in my life. Now, which direction are we heading?”
Colin Creevey
“Colin,” Harry greets the boy. “You should have stayed in the castle.”
“Maybe,” Colin replies noncommittally. “Maybe not. We Gryffindors have a knack for getting into trouble. You would know that better than anyone, though.” he adds slyly.
Harry cracks a smile. “You’re a cheeky brat, Colin. I’ve missed you.”
Colin looks confused. Harry supposes that he would; after all, it has been less than twenty minutes since Colin last saw him. For Harry, though, it feels like an eternity has passed. Maybe it has. Time loses its meaning in the in-between, and it stops completely in death.
“You’ve only got a few moments left.” Harry informs the sixteen-year-old.
“I’ve only got a few - I’m going to die tonight?”
Harry nods.
“So are you here to take me to Heaven? Afterwards?”
“Yes and no,” Harry replies. “I’m here to die for you. And then we will go to your afterlife.”
“Do you know how I die?”
“No, but I know that Neville and Oliver will carry you back to the Great Hall.”
Colin swallows. “And there’s nothing I can do to prevent my death?”
“No.” he replies honestly. “At least, if there is a way, I don’t know of it. Even soul-containers aren’t a guarantee. It’s best to let everything run its course, Colin.”
“I don’t… You said you were here to die for me?”
“Yes. I die for you, so that you don’t have to endure it. And then I will join you in the in-between.”
“The in-between?”
“A fog between life and death. It’s where you will wait, while your body dies.”
“Okay. Okay.” Colin tells himself. He nods firmly, draws himself up, so that his shoulders are straight, his jaw set. “I’m ready.”
Harry looks him in the eye. “No one is ever ready to die, Colin, not even the people who kill themselves. It’s okay that you’re not ready.”
“I’m scared,” Colin admits.
“I was, too. Fear is natural; we’re all afraid of what we don’t know.”
“You’re never afraid,” Colin denies.
“I was always afraid,” Harry counters. “But I was also a Gryffindor; we are the brave ones. We’re afraid of everything, but we face it head-on. We don’t show the others our fear. It is the only thing that reminds us of our humanity.”
Colin considers Harry’s words for a moment. He turns and walks toward the white fog that’s begun creeping towards them. He reaches its edge, and turns to face Harry as it wraps around his ankles.
“Will Dennis be alright? Without me?”
“Eventually.”
That seems to be good enough for Colin, for he raises his hand in farewell. Harry raises his in return, and then the fog swallows them both.
Harry drops into Colin’s body, and lets it carry him to its death.
The fog swallows him again, and when Harry opens his eyes, he finds Colin waiting patiently for him.
“Did it hurt?”
Harry almost smiles, thinking of something Sirius told him long ago. “It was like falling asleep. Killing Curse,” he clarifies when Colin looks at him in question.
“I’m glad it didn’t hurt. I don’t like pain, and especially not after this last year. They targeted me; Muggle-born, you know?”
“It’s dangerous being a Muggle-born in this world,” Harry agrees. “Hermione always said it came with a lot of baggage, a sort of heaviness, a knowledge that you’d never quite fit in.”
“That’s right. I always forget that Hermione is like me. Muggle-born, I mean. She just seems so comfortable here, and she knows so much about this world that you overlook her birth.”
“I don’t think you overlook it. It’s just that you and I - everyone who grew up in the Muggle world - don’t really think about things like blood. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things because this world has magic, you know? But the others, the Pure-bloods? For some of them, blood is the only thing they see.
“There’s a difference between us and them, Colin. We’ve grown up in a world where prejudice has been fought for decades. We grew up in a world that’s finally realized that people are people. They haven’t. For Pure-bloods, the prejudice is ingrained, almost. No one’s really been fighting it, and so it continues to fester.
“Eventually,” he concludes, “it turns into war.”
Colin looks at him consideringly. “I never thought of that. To me, the wizarding world was always the same as the rest of the world, just with magic added in. But that’s not true at all, is it? They’re completely different, aren’t they? The people are different, the culture is different, even the food is different, sometimes.”
“You’re getting it,” Harry agrees. “There is the Muggle World and the Wizarding World, and they are two seperate worlds. We do them and their people a disservice when we think of them as one and the same, when we think of them as extensions of each other.”
“Is that why they dislike Muggle-borns? Because we think that we are still in the world we were born into?”
“It’s certainly part of it.”
“How did you come to these conclusions?”
Harry smiles faintly. “I think I get to know people pretty well while escort them to the After. They tell me things. I talk to them, like I’m doing now, with you, and they talk back. I’ve learned a few things, here and there.”
“Ah. That makes sense, I suppose. Thank you for bringing me here, for helping.”
“You’re welcome, Colin. I’ll see you again soon.”
Draco Malfoy
“Potter.”
“Malfoy. Welcome to the in-between.”
“So I’m dead?”
“As a doornail.”
“Did I die in my sleep?”
“You did. It was one of the more peaceful deaths I’ve experienced.”
“That you’ve experienced? How many deaths have you experienced?”
“All of them. Or, I will experience them all eventually. Hazard of being Master of Death, unfortunately.”
“Master of Death? Potter that’s just a fairy-tale.”
“I thought so, too. And here I am, mastering death. I’ve gotten quite good at dying, you see. It comes naturally.”
Malfoy sneers in disdain. “How very like you to make uncouth jokes about death, of all things.”
Harry sighs tiredly. “Malfoy. Joking about the countless deaths I have experienced - that I have yet to experience - makes it bearable. I’m sorry you can’t appreciate my sense of humor. Luckily, you won’t have to put up with me for long. I’m just here to drop you off in your After.”
“Well, take me there; I don’t want to spend any more time with you than is absolutely necessary.”
“Very well, Malfoy.”
Harry leads Draco through the fog, to the elegant Manor of his After. Narcissa and Lucius are waiting for their son at the gates, and Draco approaches them. Harry stops several yards away from the gate, eyes the peacocks warily - they have attempted to attack him before - and exchanges a respectful nod with Narcissa.
“By the way, Draco,” Harry shouts over his shoulder as he walks away, “I forgive you for being an ungrateful prick.”
He only turns back around after he’s seen the look of indignation cross Malfoy’s face.