Why are you here? Here of all places? Here of all times? Just plain here?
It is not like you were unaware of what coming here would mean. No, it was perfectly clear – quite possibly, clearer than anything ever has been in your entire life. And knowing so, you could have – should have – avoided coming here on this cold November night. But here you stand, plain as the snow that is starting to fall – too early to keep time with the frost that usually arrived in December and wore out its welcome by February. Were you a poet or a man of any creative sort, you would have assumed that the weather is reflecting your existence now. Where coldness came far too early and lasted for much too long.
You try your hardest to make no sound as you walk down the somehow familiar path that years of footsteps have trodden – as if to make your way forward clearer. You idly wonder how many people had come here to do what you had to, and if any one of them had lost something as precious as you had. Somehow, you highly doubt the latter.
You would have preferred to wander around in the darkness for a long time, searching for the white marble tomb endlessly, and hopefully, never finding it… for the sole reason of it never having existed in the first place. But you find your way all too quickly, and as the white looms ahead, this ridiculous hope, which you never admitted even to yourself – vanishes into the frost. It never leaves without a trace, though, but settles somewhere to bide its time, somewhere so deep in you that you would not notice its existence until the very moment when it is dashed again upon your next visit.
More to distract yourself from the sight in front of you than for any other reason, you wonder when that stubborn bit of hope and idiocy will finally give up. When will the constant wish to wake up and discover that all this has been nothing but a particularly bad dream will dissipate, and the fact that it is a nightmare you must live everyday sinks in at last? Live, only to relive the nightmare again and again.
As if of their own accord, you knees bend underneath you as you kneel on the chilly ground, not even sparing a wayward glance to the grave beside the one you are looking at. Your eyes travel the length of the marble as your hands reach to place the bouquet that you had hidden underneath your cloak during your journey here.
You suddenly realize how absurdly melodramatic you must look. A stranger in a dark cape on a cold night, laying flowers on the grave of a woman who was in no way related to him. Or at least, in no way that the world cared to name. Just as well – not many things were ever conventional about you, after all.
Your eyes sweep the surface of the gravestone that is so impossibly cold it can not possibly house such a fiery person – such a fiery spirit, as Dumbledore would have said. You suppose it was him that had carved the dramatic inscription on the marble, cutting the words so fine that they stand out even in the night… or maybe it is just you and your ever so keen observation.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
You wonder why Dumbledore had chosen that particular quote – as death was a bringer of destruction as far as you were concerned, or rather, had been concerned at a happier time. Now however, you know better. Because had death ever been an option over what you were doing now, at this grave, you would have chosen it without the slightest bit of hesitation. But then again, maybe that was the cruelty of death, to take away one’s reason for living.
But living you still are. Impossibly, astonishingly, inconceivably – but you are still alive. And your personal reasons have no say in the matter. Well, you had lived your entire life on the orders of others, and is it not perfectly fitting that you should die – or fail to, for that matter – on another’s wish as well? In any case, your breathing or lack thereof do not make a big difference to your health now. You doubt anything ever will.
But you know that there is one thing that needs to be done before you finally die completely. One thing that you will accomplish, no matter how absurd it seems. Even if accomplishing it will yet be the most painful thing you have ever done, including what you are doing now. But no matter what it takes… you will defeat death for her.
