Shadow Walks |h.p/h.g|

ch. 4

What do you mean she's gone?

"I - Merlin, Harry, there were so many times I wanted to tell you... when you kept insisting that she was alive somewhere, and I - I - but I didn't know how you'd react, and I didn't - I'd already lost her; I didn't want to lose you too."

We started arguing.

I asked her if there was anything going on between the two of you.

I left her there.

The pain grasped Harry in two impersonal fists and twisted. It was too much. It was too much to handle, too much to grasp, too much to accept. If there was anything going on... Not then, not ever, Harry thought, and wondered when his eyes had grown damp.

I left her...

"You didn't want to - you - oh God," Harry rambled wildly, feeling dizzy and sick with dread and grief. Ron still sat on the sofa, elbows on knees, looking the perfect picture of utter misery.

"Harry, I'm sorry," Ron flinched over the inadequacy of the words. He moved as if to stand, and Harry backpedaled away from him as if he had some sort of contagion.

"It was Bellatrix, Ron, not you," he mumbled, feeling the need to absolve his friend a little, even as his heart contorted into painful knots. "It was Bellatrix who - who - who k- " He couldn't finish, and he felt his throat tightening, clenching with such tension that it could only be abated with a sob. He swallowed it noisily. Malfoy's words were jarring in his mind.

Do they haunt you...her eyes?

Yes, they do. Every single second of my life. No matter how much I try to pretend otherwise.

His throat was closing up again. Lost, bewildered, confused...

He suddenly latched onto his earlier train of thought. Not dead. Not in pain. Malfoy described her as lost, bewildered, confused...but not dead.

"Wouldn't Malfoy have wanted to taunt me with the gruesome details of what happened? But he didn't talk about her death - not about her death... he..." Harry trailed off, a seed of suspicion germinating in his mind.

"What're you on about, Harry?" Ron asked in confusion.

"And how would he know the details of the moment she disappeared?" he asked quickly. "How'd he know enough to mock you with? He wasn't there. He was in France - the entire Ministry practically verified his alibi. It helped him stay out of prison." He had begun pacing back and forth across the small living room, his arms locked behind his back, his eyes ablaze with green flame. "Who was there, Ron? Which Death Eaters attacked you?"

Ron looked at him with skeptical worry, his eyes clearly communicating that he did not want to talk about this any more, and he couldn't understand Harry's sudden reversal on the topic.

"They're all in Azkaban, Harry - or were killed during the fighting. But I guess Malfoy could have visited...talked to any one of them." Harry was frowning.

"I'm not sure he'd risk it. He was this close to going there himself, and he knows it." Harry held up his thumb and forefinger with only a tiny fraction of space between them. "He's hung onto his family's money, so people in high places still listen to him, but I think even they'd draw the line at association with convicted Death Eaters." He stopped and thought again for a moment. "But Bellatrix - Bellatrix Lestrange, now..."

"Harry, she's dead." Ron's voice was desperate and pleading now. "Remus killed her - completely vaporized her. Right after she killed Hermione..." The words tore from his throat as if they physically caused him pain. Harry turned his head so sharply as to nearly wrench his neck, and regarded Ron, the kinetic fury beginning to ebb from his bright eyes. His face was white to the lips.