"Somewhere in between who I used to be, and who I'll be tomorrow when the champagne blows my mind. Thrills don't come for free, the price you pay for dreams, in a sea of strangers, I can't find me anymore" - Life of the Party, All Time Low
The sun is coming up: The pure, colourless vastness of the sky stretches over us, indifferent to us and our suffering. I sit up in my bunk, shaking away eerily vivid dreams of young Dumbledore and his friend and take a deep breath of clean air. Harry is sitting in the tent entrance, illuminated by the rising sun: Simply to be alive to watch the sun rise over the snowy hillside ought to be the greatest treasure on earth, yet we cannot appreciate it. Our senses have been spiked by the calamity of losing our wands
Without realizing it, I am digging my fingers into my arms as if I'm trying to resist physical pain. I've spilled my own blood more times than I can count; I've lost all the bones in my right leg once; this journey has given me scars to my chest and my shoulder to join those on my hand and forehead, but never until this moment have I felt myself to be so fatally wounded, vulnerable, and naked, as though the best part of my magical power has been torn from me. I know exactly what Hermione would say if I expressed any of this: The wand is only as good as the witch or wizard. But she is wrong, our case is different. She has not felt our wands spin like the needle of a compass and shoot golden flames at our enemy. She had never seen our wands join together, bound by our connection. We have lost the protection of the triplet cores, and only now that it is gone do I realize how much we had been counting on it.
I pull the pieces of the broken wand from my pocket and without looking at them, tuck them away in Hagrid's pouch around my neck, now so full of broken and useless things that it will not take anymore. I hand brushes the phoenix locket as I tuck the moleskin into my jumper, and for a moment I have to fight the temptation to take it off and throw it away. Mysterious, unhelpful, useless, like everything else Dumbledore had left behind -
And my fury for Dumbledore breaks over me like lava, scorching my inside, wiping out every other feeling. Out of sheer desperation we had talked ourselves into believing that Godric's Hollow held answers, convinced ourselves that we were supposed to go back, that it was all part of some secret path laid out for us by Dumbledore; but there is no map, not plan. Dumbledore had left us to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed of terrors, alone and unaided: Nothing is explained nothing is given freely, we have no sword, and now, Harry and I have no wands. And I had dropped the photograph of the thief, and it will now be so easy for Voldemort to find out who he is...Voldemort has all the information now.
Infuriated, I join Harry by the tent entrance, hoping that the rising sun can inspire some sense of hope or confidence within me.
"Harry? Haylee?"
Hermione looks frightened that Harry might curse her with her own wand. Her face streaked with tears, she crouches down beside us, two cups of tea trembling in her hands and a third levitating beside her, and something bulky under her arm.
"Thanks," I say, taking one of the cups.
"Do you mind if I talk to you?"
"No," Harry says, though I know it is only because he does not want to hurt her feelings.
"You wanted to know who that man in the picture was," she says, "who the man in Haylee's locket is. Well...I've got the book."
Timidly, she pushes it into my lap, a pristine copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
"Where -- how--?"
"It was in Bathilda's sitting room, just lying there...This note was sticking out of the top of it."
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The Potter Twins and the Deathly Hallows {7}
FanfictionTHE FAULT IS NOT IN THE STARS, BUT IN OURSELVES. Darkness has descended upon the wizarding world, and Harry and Haylee Potter are the only ones who can bring back the light. However, faced with the seemingly impossible task of finding and destroyin...
