Alexandra Dursley {Golden Trio}

Chapter 152 - The Hanging Weight

Have a tiny bit of ✨clarity✨:)

Al thought she was going to be sick. She couldn't have lost him...he couldn't be dead...Merlin, this was all her fault! "Al!" Ron's tear-stained face shouted, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I-I...the sword..." she began, not sure if she could string a sentence together. Harry was dead. There was a gnawing feeling in her chest. She thought her heart was going to explode and implode and disintegrate all at once.

"You brought the sword?" Ron asked, "That bear was yours?" Al nodded. There was silence in the forest. "What in Merlin's name are we going to do now?" he whispered.

Al paused. What were they going to do? "No one can know," she whispered, "Only-only Hermione. If you see Order members you have to lie. Say you got separated."

"You think we can keep something like this a secret?" Ron said, not looking at Harry's body.

"We have to, Ron!" Al cried, "What would happen if the world found out about this? To them it means You-Know-Who's won!"

"What d'you mean 'to them'?" he shouted, scaring Al a little bit, "Of course it means he's won! Harry was the only one who can stop him you bloody idiot! And you've gone and bloody killed him!" Ron was shaking with anger, which only made Al shake even more too. "Take his pouch," Ron said, holding something out to her.

"Wh-what?" she asked.

"You're his next of kin, only you can open it." With shaking hands, Al took it. Inside was Harry's wand, but broken in two, a letter to Sirius, but from who Al didn't know, a shard of glass, and the snitch that Scrimgeour had given Harry all those months ago. It seemed like years.

"I-I'll take the snitch...and the letter," Al said, "I don't know what this is-" she waved the glass, "-but it might be important, so you keep hold of it. Bury him with his wand."

"Bury him-?" Ron began.

"Just do it!" Al shouted, but the forest remained silent.

"What was that white stuff?" Ron said.

"I don't know," Al told him. She felt the pear drop vibrate in her pocket. "I need to go," she said, "Good luck with the horcruxes." And then there was a tug at her navel and Al landed in Snape's office, back in the warm of Hogwarts.

"Well?" Snape asked expectantly, staring at her. It was too much. Al burst into tears, her breaths not enough to support her, not enough to stop her feeling dizzy. Tears poured down her face and neck, and she was too hot, tearing off all her layers and throwing them to the floor in anger. And then she fell on top of them, sobbing so hard she thought she was going to be sick. "Miss Dursley!" Snape said, outraged, and he knelt down next to her and shook her. "You will tell me what has happened this instant!"

"H-Harry...!" Al gasped, her emotions pouring out of her like a rushing river. It can't have happened...it can't!

"Potter?" Snape asked, his fingers digging into her shoulders. "What about him? Did he get the sword?" Al cried even harder into her hands, and Snape released her, standing up and sweeping round to Dumbledore's portrait. She didn't hear what they were saying, she just cried and cried into exhaustion. And then she could cry no more.

"Dursley," Snape said quietly when she was done, "Please recount to me what has happened." He sounded very stiff - as if he was being forced to say it. Al couldn't say anything, she just tried to catch her breath. Snape sighed and flicked his wand, before pulling Al roughly into a leather armchair. But it was fairly gentle for Snape - Al didn't even think he'd leave a bruise.

A mug of tea was thrust in front of her, which she took and sipped steadily. A wave of numbness washed over her, and Al suspected there was a calming draught in it. She looked up and saw Snape stood looking out his window. "Harry's dead," she said, her voice completely broken.

"What?" Snape asked, whipping round and striding over to her. "What did you just say?"

"Harry's dead," Al repeated. "He drowned." This was not entirely true - the locket had strangled him. But Snape couldn't know about the locket.

"Did I not specifically say..." Snape began, but trailed off, looking over his shoulder to where Dumbledore's portrait was. He sighed and sat down in the other chair he'd conjured. "Tell me about...what this means. To you."

Al was very confused, but then she realised this was his way of attempting to be a concerned teacher. She stared at the floor while she explained herself. "I've always fought for Harry," she croaked, "And now...now I don't know what to do...for years - since we were kids - all I've done is try to protect him...and I've-I've failed. I don't know what to do."

"I know," Snape said, sounding oddly sincere. "When you lose the thing you fight for, you begin to question the point of fighting in the first place." There was a pause. "You have to fight for something new."

"What?" Al asked, looking up at him, her voice a hoarse whisper. He twitched slightly, and Al thought it could be a shrug. "Like Hogwarts?"

The corners of Snape's mouth twitched, less than a millimetre. "Like Hogwarts," he said with a nod. He stood and went back down to his desk, shuffling some parchment round while Al drained her tea. "I would get some sleep," Snape said, "Take some of that dreamless sleep potion you keep handing out willy-nilly."

*****

When Al woke up at mid-afternoon the next day, she didn't get up. She stayed in bed, thinking about everything that had happened, and playing around with the snitch she'd taken from Harry's corpse, and wondering what Ron and Hermione were doing now. And then, several things fell into place at once, and it was quite overwhelming for her.

The first, was the white light. Harry's body had died, but that was only the vessel for which the bit of Voldemort resided. Which meant that when he'd died, the bit of soul no longer had a vessel, and had passed onto her.

And inherit the burden from All Hallow's Eve.

That's what the prophecy had meant! She had taken in the bit of soul that Voldemort had left with Harry that Halloween night in nineteen-eighty-one.

The third thing was what Dumbledore had said in his will. Trust and love. She had to trust Snape, and the notebook served as a reminder of how to correctly use her soul magic. She'd trusted Snape last night, and Harry was gone. But Al was alive.

The last thing, was the heavy weight Al had felt in her chest the day that Dumbledore had died. She understood what it was now. Responsibility. Not just for the students of Hogwarts, but for the whole wizarding world. She had to be the one to defeat Voldemort.

It hung there now, that dreaded feeling of responsibility, of holding everyone else's lives in her hands. Holding its place in her like the guilt and loss she felt for Harry, and the dread of having to sacrifice herself for the good of others.