Originally Posted: May. 21st, 2006
Length/Rating: 349 words, PG-13, Gen
Pairing/Warnings: none
Summary: In the real world, everyone dies.
“HARRY POTTER” and other related entities are trademark and copyright JK Rowling, her publisher Bloomsbury, and, to some extent, Warner Bros. All rights reserved. No copyright infringement is intended nor implied.
In the real world, everyone dies.
It’s only in stories that they get out just in the nick of time. That the heroes live to fight another day. That evil is vanquished and light restored. In stories…
He wandered in between the pages, pen in hand. Touching here and there in swift kind strokes to save those he could. A flickering ghost, nothing more than shadows, he walked the halls of Hogwarts. Small things, little things. A letter that she meant to send, the intonation of a name, the subtle sense of something wrong that moved them from the path of chaos. He never touched the mains, their paths were set in deep jagged marks he could not change. Sometimes he could soften, gentle the blows that plot and prose rained down, but never enough.
So he saved those he could. Bit parts, bit players, the people-shaped shadows that wandered the halls, briefly mentioned in passing. They sharpened as he looked at them, spun up from nothing into people full of life, and love, and history uniquely vibrant in a way they had never been before. Not that it showed, the words were same, if anyone noticed the faceless crowd was no longer faceless they never said.
It’s why he hadn’t realized before, what he did in passing. Flying through the pages, twining through the story, oblivious as it pulled life from his silent step. As the pages turned they grew brighter, stronger, and still he never would have known. Until the war.
They had been nameless, faceless, shadows in a war of light and darkness. They were born to die and fell as they had been written. To wand, and fang, and dementor’s kiss, and all the evils that the page was heir to.
And when they died he felt it.
In the real world everybody dies, but he wouldn’t let it happen here. Not again.
A shadow flickers through the halls of Hogwarts and somehow the darkness isn’t quite as deep. Somehow the light isn’t quite as bright. Somehow everything’s a little less real. In stories…
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