Harry picks at the food on his plate. He’s not hungry. Hasn’t been for a while. Not since just before the war ended. He knows how it must look to Mrs. Weasley, to the other Weasleys – like he’s ungrateful, or a picky eater – but he can’t really muster the ability to care about what they think.

“Harry, dear,” Mrs. Weasley says, and she gives him an indulgent smile. A smile that communicates that she’s nearly at the end of her patience with him. A smile that he’d gotten often, and for far less than this, from the Dursleys.

“Not hungry for shepherd’s pie tonight? Can I make you something else?”

She starts to rise from her chair, no doubt to make something more to Harry’s liking, but he shakes his head, stuffs a generous bite of the meat and vegetable dish into his mouth and chews, a little overzealously. He smiles around the bite of food, which, to him tastes like paper – he just hasn’t had much of an appetite these days – and she resumes her seat. He can tell that she’s not convinced, so he takes another bite, and another, and another until he’s eaten almost the entire dish. The food feels heavy in his stomach, like he’s swallowed a bowling ball.

He gets away with just a bite of dessert, drinking half of his pumpkin juice, and touching none of the spinach salad. He feels fuller than he’s been in a really long time, and with that feeling comes guilt.

He excuses himself, ignores Ginny’s hopeful look, and escapes up to his room, which used to belong to the twins. Living with the Weasleys isn’t the refuge that Harry had thought it would be. It does keep the wizarding press away from him – most of the time – and he isn’t pestered by hordes of fans, but the solitude that it offers him is almost too much. He’s surrounded by memories of death – of wizards and witches who’d died to protect him. Of those who’d sacrificed their lives so that he, and his generation, could live.

It’s not what Harry had expected. Not what he’d wanted. He wishes that when he’d met Dumbledore at the King’s Cross station, in the afterlife, the older wizard would have kept Harry there. That Voldemort could’ve been defeated in some other way. That he could have stayed dead. That he could be with his mother and father, with Lupin and Tonks, with Sirius. That he could’ve apologized to Snape for never trusting him, and to Dumbledore for always rushing headlong into everything that he did.

Harry pulls out the bottle of firewhiskey that he keeps hidden beneath one of the loose floorboards, almost laughs at how similar the gesture is to the days when he’d hidden food beneath the floorboards at the Dursleys’. Then, it had been a matter of self-preservation. Now, it was a matter of ridding himself of painful memories. Memories he wished would not resurface when the potent drink had worn off.

“Here’s to death,” Harry says, uncapping the bottle and brandishing it high in the air. It’s a quarter empty. He’ll need to purchase another soon. “And to the ghosts that haunt me, even in broad daylight.”

A movement in the mirror startles him, and he surges forward, drink sloshing dangerously in the bottle. There’s nothing there, just his own hated reflection – green, bloodshot eyes surrounded by wire-rim glasses, set in a pale, white face.  He shakes his head, and laughs at himself.

“Haven’t even taken a sip yet, Harry,” he says, smirking at his reflection. “Try not to get ahead of yourself, mate. There’s still plenty of time for ghosts in the mirror.”

He waves the bottle of firewhiskey in the air, nods to himself, and then takes a generous swig. The liquid burns a path down his throat, and he grimaces. It’s pungent, and Harry doesn’t like the taste, but he knows that his tongue and throat, the rest of him, will grow numb, and it won’t matter, because he won’t be able to taste, or feel it anymore after about the third or fourth swallow.

He chugs the firewhiskey, still regarding his reflection in the mirror. Thinks he sees dark, impossibly black eyes, looking back at him.

He drinks until there’s only a fourth of the bottle left. Carefully, with only a few false tries, he gets the stopper back in, because, though he wants to drink the rest of the bottle, he knows that he won’t be able to get a new bottle until after tomorrow. He won’t be able to survive another day with the Weasleys, another day with the memories – dead people staring at him with their fathomless eyes – without the drink.

He wipes his burning mouth with the back of his hand. Watches the black eyes smolder with anger, and tries not to laugh at the absurdity of it.

His stomach is on fire, and his head is spinning, and he knows that he’s got to wait this out, that, soon, the fiery liquid will make him numb. He should lie down, but the black eyes, staring at him from the mirror, won’t let him. They hold him there, and Harry thinks that they want something from him, but for the life of him, he can’t figure out what it is. What could those black eyes possibly want from the living dead?

“Ain’t othing’ here for you,” Harry says, pointing at the black eyes. “Nothin’ at all to see.” He sways on his feet, sits heavily on the bed, but the black eyes keep him from sagging down. Keep him from sleeping.

Harry giggles, stifles the sound beneath his hand, nearly smothers himself, and gasps for air. He hiccoughs, and waggles his finger at the eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, leaning forward, peering into the black eyes. “You’re thinking that I’m all washed up, that…that I’m,” he hiccoughs, “a…a has been.”

Harry sighs, runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up all over the place, which is nothing new. He thinks that he sees the black eyes roll, and he laughs so hard that he doubles over, because he can’t quite catch his breath, and there’s a stitch in his side. And those eyes remind him of Snape.

Snape’s dead, though. Harry’s responsible, and he almost reaches for the bottle of firewhiskey to get rid of those accusing eyes, the memory of Snape, broken, bleeding even in death, but the eyes stop him. He can almost see himself in those eyes.

He’s impossibly small. Thin as a rail. Body hunched over like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looks sickly, and Harry wonders if maybe this isn’t what he looks like to the Weasleys. If those long, drawn out sighs and those sidelong glances that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Ron and Ginny are always casting him, have more to do with this than with what’s happened in the war.

“I’m not, you know,” Harry tells the eyes, points his finger at them. “I’m not.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s arguing about anymore, wonders if maybe the eyes do. If they can tell him what’s going on, if they can explain away the emptiness that’s still clawing at Harry’s gut in spite of it being filled with firewhiskey.

He stares into the black eyes, and feels dizzy. Thinks that maybe he’s had a little too much firewhiskey, or maybe too little, but as he reaches for the bottle, the black eyes dart in its direction, and his hand, shaking, stills. His heart pounds, feels like it’s going to come right out of his chest, and he almost wants it to – wants those cold, black eyes that spit fire at him, to pull his heart out, release him from his misery.

It hurts. The dark eyes mock him, and Harry grasps the neck of the bottle in fingers that are slick with sweat.

It’s green, Slytherin’s most prominent color. Would make a fitting end for him, should he wind up overdosing on the contents of the bottle.

Harry’s heard about Muggles dying from alcohol poisoning, wonders if wizards can die from it as well. Wants to see whether or not they can.

He smiles crookedly at his reflection, at the black eyes. Uncorks the bottle, brings it up to his lips, but doesn’t drink. It’s almost a challenge now.

The black eyes sparkle, remind Harry of Dumbledore – of the way the elderly wizard had been knocked right off of his feet when he’d been hit with the killing curse, how he’d been thrown into the air with the force of it, and how he’d died, his blue eyes dull in death. The sparkle flares, and Harry takes a sip of the firewhiskey.

It’s a relatively small sip. This time it doesn’t burn his mouth, he can’t even feel it slide down his throat. It tastes like Mrs. Weasley’s shepherd’s pie had – like paper.

He takes another sip. This one is much bigger – it’s more like a gulp. The black eyes roar with flame, and Harry brings the bottle to his lips once more and drinks, wondering how the black eyes will react, what they’ll do if he drinks the rest of it.

The bottle slips from his fingers before he can make good on his plans, and Harry watches, dumbfounded, as the bottle bounces on the floorboards. He’s sluggish and uncoordinated in his response, nearly tips the bottle over himself when he reaches for it.

There’s a part of him that’s terrified of losing the remnant of the golden liquid. It would be such a waste to have it water the thirsty floorboards rather than his own thirsty gullet. His heart hammers thunderously, and he closes his eyes when he manages to finally catch the bottle and set it to rights without spilling any of its contents.

Harry places a hand over his heart, waits for it to slow down some before he sits up, slowly, because his head is spinning. He clutches the bottle to his chest, holds it close as he reaches for the stopper and replaces it. He puts the bottle on the nightstand, and holds his breath until the bottle stops wobbling.

“That was close,” Harry tells the eyes. They’re still there, in the mirror, watching him. They’re almost comforting, in a way. Make him feel like he’s not alone as he thinks he is.

“Thought I’d lost it,” Harry says conversationally. The eyes say nothing, they just stare at him. He wishes that they’d speak, but that doesn’t make sense, because eyes can’t speak.

“I think I might be drunk,” Harry says, and he hiccoughs, giggles and slaps a hand over his mouth, careful this time to not cover his nose.

Dying from alcohol poisoning is one thing, but accidentally smothering himself with his hand is quite a different matter. It would be most embarrassing. He thinks that maybe he might’ve said some of that aloud by the way that the black eyes seem to sparkle with humor.

He leans in close to the mirror, so that he’s nose-to-nose with himself. It feels like the black eyes can see into his soul. He wonders if his soul is as dark as those eyes. If maybe those eyes are a messenger sent from Hell. If they’ve been sent to take him down to Hades where he deserves to be after all that’s happened.

“I can’t make them stop,” Harry whispers. He begs the eyes to understand. Doesn’t want to have to explain.

He drops his eyes. “They just keep coming,” he confesses, and he looks up at the eyes, wondering if they’re mocking him.

They aren’t. They aren’t compassionate, but they are filled with understanding.

“I keep seeing them over and over again, and I can’t stop them. I can’t save them. I…” Harry takes a shuddering breath, wipes at his eyes, and blinks away the moisture gathering in them. The black eyes seem to be waiting, none too patiently, for him to continue.

“I can’t save them. They keep dying, over and over again, and I can’t make it stop,” Harry says. His chest feels tight and tears threaten, but he knows that the black eyes won’t tolerate tears.

“I want to die,” Harry whispers harshly. “Because…because…” he can’t find the right words, wishes that the black eyes would stop staring at him, stop waiting for him to say what has been haunting him for months.

“Then I won’t have to keep seeing them die,” Harry says, hoping that he makes sense, that the black eyes will understand what he means. “If I die,” Harry elaborates, “then maybe they can stop dying. You know?”

The black eyes grow even blacker, and that isn’t what Harry had been expecting.

“If I die,” he continues, hoping that the black eyes will stop questioning him. “Then everything will be made right. You see,” he says, voice pleading with the eyes. “I was supposed to die, not my mom, not my dad, not Cedric, or Sirius, or Fred, or Dumbledore, or Lupin, or Tonks, or, or Snape. It was supposed to be me,” Harry says, and he feels as though a weight has been lifted from him.

He reaches for the bottle of firewhiskey, because what he’s said makes sense, even the black eyes seem to be in agreement. His hand and eye coordination are off – it’s a good thing he’s not playing Quidditch right now – and he accidentally brushes the bottle off of the nightstand, sends it clattering to the floor.

The bottle rolls on the floor, but doesn’t break, much to Harry’s relief. Harry scrambles to his knees to find the bottle. He’s dizzy and it’s hard to get his hands moving in the right direction. His stomach clenches painfully, but he clamps his mouth shut the minute his stomach launches a rebellion, swallows the bitter liquid that burns his nostrils, back down, and begins his search for the bottle.

It’s disappeared beneath the wardrobe. His fingers catch on the sharp splinters of the wooden floor, drawing blood, but he ignores that, because he has to find the bottle. Has to end this once and for all. His death is the only thing that will make things right.