𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆

Chapter 12

Epilogue: The Tide

But if in some dream there was brightness
If in some memory, some sort of sign
And flesh be revived in the shadows
Blessed our bodies would lay so entwined

Once upon a time there was a land where every dream came true.

He woke up dreaming.

Nothing else could explain it: the wind on his face and the salt on his lips and the sweet, sweet sound of another's voice, cutting through the darkness like sunlight. His head throbbed with every beat of his heart, but the voice, at least, gave him something on which he could focus. The words blurred in his mind - desperate or pleading or fearful, he couldn't tell, couldn't make sense of them - but he reached out to the sound nonetheless and clung to it like hope.

Hope. It seemed a silly thing now, in this place between then and now. Too much had changed for there to be a future; how could the sunrise look the same? And he feared, more than anything, that he had been fooling himself all along. Plans and dreams for tomorrow - they were lies, all lies, silly things believed to remedy the fear and make the truth easier to swallow. Sweet as summer, their dreams

And now, when he tried to imagine the future, when he tried to remember his face, he could only see red eyes and green light and the glint of metal slicing through smooth flesh -

blood and tears and children dying, children fighting, children killing for the future, can we change the future -

He inhaled and could smell the ocean, but knew that it, too, was a lie. The dream was fading.

And so was he. The voice was drifting away, taking with it the fragile strain of hope that kept him tied to the world. Fight, the ghost hissed in his ear. The breath on his skin was hot and harsh and alive, achingly real, but he couldn't reach it, couldn't grasp it. Fight, the wind said, again and again.

There were some things worth fighting for. Justice. Equality. Love. And he knew this, and believed it with all his heart. But Harry had fought, and killed, and sacrificed, and he was tired now, and he didn't want to fight anymore.

We are not afraid of dying, he had said of his side in the war, and maybe it was true.

He let the dream go, and fell into the darkness.

~*~*~

And in that land, no one ever cried, for none there had ever heard of such a thing as 'sadness.' Their only tears were shed in joy.

Kingsley Shacklebolt had seen it all.

Years of being an Auror, coupled with his membership in the Order of the Phoenix, had taken him to places few wizards ever dared to go. He had fought Death Eaters when he was vastly outnumbered, had investigated grisly murders, and had seen what horrors could befall innocent people left in the wake of Lord Voldemort's wrath. Since the summer began and the war had nightmarishly escalated, he had had his fair share of injuries and, more hauntingly, had seen more faces of the dead than he could possibly count. He had lost friends. He had lost family. He had lost his faith in wizardkind.

But none of it prepared him for this.

He'd received Harry's Patronus - a quick, panicked plea of help - while he was in the midst of a rescue mission in Scotland. Anarchy had broken out in the streets of Edinburgh; wizards and witches, not even linked to the Death Eaters, were killing Muggles out of fear and desperation and for lack of resources. The chaos that had begun in the London area - the random attacks, the raging magical fires, the systematic dissembling of both the Muggle and Wizarding governments - had spread terror and uncertainty through the whole of Great Britain. The region's infrastructure was falling apart. While most of the Aurors and other Ministry employees were still trying to fight to maintain some order, they had been left to do so without a base and without any organization. Makeshift prisons had been set up, but guards were easily bribed, and as much violence occurred within the prison walls as on the streets.