Apparating was like opening a door.
Not at first, of course. He could barely manage it for years. He’d thrown up more often than he could count, been splinched, and once (to the bafflement of everyone in St. Mungo’s) ended up with a pair of horns.
But now it was simple, easy, just like opening a door.
The door opened, and he was in his house. The door closed, and he was at work.
In the beginning, even when he could apparate, he would still walk or fly from place to place. Using magic was too difficult. Walking felt natural. Flying was joyful.
The door opened, and he was with his wife. The door closed, and he was trading curses with the worst people in the world.
Over time, he apparated more and more. His kids laughed at him, called him lazy for not bothering to walk down the street to the store. Once, he’d joined a pick up game of quidditch and fell off his broom to the . The shame felt worse than the bruises. The youngest seeker in years could barely stay in the sky.
The door opened, and he was laughing at a birthday party. The door closed, and he was visiting Ginny in a hospital.
Walking became difficult, painful. It was hard just to move. Magic, at least, would get him from place to place.
The door opened, and he was alone in the dark.
The door closed, and he was in a cemetery.
“Hi Ginny,” he said, fidgeting with his empty hands. “Sorry I didn’t bring flowers.”
He reached down and took a wilting bouquet from a holder in front of her gravestone. He drew his wand from his pocket and made to vanish them, but he couldn’t remember the spell. The words, the motions… They were all lost somewhere behind him, somewhere in the dark behind his eyes. He put the flowers back. Let the groundskeepers take care of them.
He knelt down beside the black granite stone. Up close, it didn’t seem so small, so lost in the green field, so far away.
“The kids are staying at school over Christmas. Like I did. They asked to come back, but I wanted them to have fun. Better than banging around the house for a month. Better than having them…”
He trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence out loud, not wanting to say Better than having them try to cheer me up.
Instead, he said “I wanted them to have fun.” He swore for repeating himself. He’d started swearing at himself more and more often for smaller and smaller mistakes.
A door opened somewhere beside him.
He was behind a tree before he knew it, marveling at how fast his legs could move him when they wanted to. His auror skills were returning, becoming reflexes again. Keep hidden, keep sheltered, keep quiet.
He peered out from behind the trunk. A figure appeared out of the mist. It was a pale woman with flowing blonde hair. She was in all black lace, from her neck to her shoes. She held an umbrella above her head, spinning it as she walked. It made Harry think she might have been a vampire, but then he looked more closely.
The umbrella was bright yellow with pink swirls. No self-respecting vampire would carry that. And the woman’s earrings were also absurd: long strings of blue and white beads waved like hands as she came closer. No self-respecting witch would wear those.
Well, one would.
“Why are you hiding behind a tree, Harry?” Luna said, he’d forgotten how strange and musical her voice was.
He put his wand away.
“Sorry,” he said. “Force of habit. As an auror, you never know who’s coming.”
If she disbelieved him, she didn’t say so.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
He’d also forgotten how calmly and evenly she said things. You could never tell her real feelings from her voice. She might say “Please pass the bread” with the same tone as she would say “I love you.”
Not that she ever would.
Luna bent down to place a single, yellow rose in front of Ginny’s gravestone. Before rising, however, she made a complicated series of hand gestures. Same old Luna. His mouth hurt, and he realized he was smiling.
“Amor tempus transcendit,” she said.
“Hm? Oh, the inscription.” He looked down at the stone where the phrase was carved beneath Ginny’s name. “Ron suggested it.”
“’Love transcends time,’” she said. “I didn’t think Ron knew Latin.”
Harry chuckled. “I’m pretty sure Hermione made him suggest it.”
She nodded seriously, staring at him. “How are you doing, Harry?”
“I’m good!” he said, too loudly, too quickly. He cleared his throat. “As good as can be expected.”
That stare continued. “Harry, why were you hiding behind that tree?”
He started to stammer out the same excuse: that dark wizards were always after him, that he couldn’t let his guard down…. But somehow the excuses had fallen away into the darkness behind him.
“I thought you might be the one.”
A flush spread up Luna’s pale neck.
“The one?”
“The one who cursed her.”
A look of genuine shock appeared on her face. “She was murdered? The newspaper said—”
“The newspaper’s right,” he said, cutting her off. “Maybe. Curses are unpredictable things. Sometimes they have side-effects. Maybe she just got sick. Maybe someone cursed her out of revenge for something I did. Or maybe someone cursed me and…”
He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say Or maybe I brought it home to Ginny, who wasn’t as strong as me.
Instead, he said “How are you? I hear you’re living amongst the muggles.”
She frowned at his tone. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Muggles are more perceptive than you’d think. They know when things are a lie. I’ve been helping them in secret to uncover conspiracies. Guiding them towards the truth.”
Harry felt a knot in his stomach. “The truth? You don’t mean you’re trying to expose the magical world, are you?”
She let out a tiny, tinkling laugh. “No, of course not. I mean smaller conspiracies: the moon landing, free energy, the Earth being round. That kind of thing.”
He opened his mouth to argue with her but closed it. There was no persuading her about some things. In school, he always found that maddening about her. Now, so many years later, he wondered why he’d cared enough to argue.
“How are you, Harry? For real.”
“Not great,” he said, shrugging.
The words “not” and “great” barely encompassed what he’d been through. Months of helplessly holding Ginny’s hand, watching her fade away. Months more of blank insanity. He’d chased down every dark wizard, every death eater, every disgruntled witch or wizard he’d ever crossed paths with, nearly killing several in his desperation to find a culprit. He’d spent countless hours on hands and knees in the Forbidden Forest, raking through the mud for the Resurrection Stone, which he’d carelessly thrown aside in a moment of rank stupidity.
Only now was he starting to come out of it. Only since she’d appeared from out of the gloom.
Luna placed a hand on his cheek, her fingernails tracing warm lines on his skin.
“It’ll get better,” she said, her voice, her touch, making it so.
He stepped back from her, alarmed, sinking back into the comfortable dark. She rubbed the hand she’d touched to his cheek as if it had been stung.
“What about you?” he said. “How are you doing? I always assumed you’d marry Neville. Have a bunch of kids.”
She shook her head. “It didn’t work out. No husband. No kids. I never found anyone else.”
“You will,” he said. “Tons of people would love to be with you.”
“Maybe, but after you, how could anyone compare?”
She turned away from him without another word. He watched her back as she disappeared into the fog, still twirling that absurd umbrella. He felt that sensation of a door again as she apparated away.
He couldn’t tell if the door was opening or closing.
