Disclaimer - I do not own Harry Potter or the works of Joss Whedon. But you can't take the sky from me, and if I dare to dream a bit and share it with all of you, then I only hope that J.K. and Joss can forgive me for it.

Prologue: The Death of Harry Potter

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Since time began,
the dead alone know peace.
Life is but melting snow.

Final poem - Nandai (1786-1817)

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The final piece of Harry James Potter died on the fourteenth of August in 2001. It died silently, in the way these things tend to, without fanfare or dramatics. There were no tears and no rage, no exchange of fists or of spells or unkind words. When the last bit of him died there was hardly a blink to indicate it happened, and if anybody at the time noticed then they certainly didn't give any indication of it. Harry, for his part, deceived everybody perfectly that day; none of the people who saw him on the street, in the office or outside of his home suspected that any part of him was dead, let alone the final part. When he smiled there was no hint that behind his bright green eyes he had been reduced to a corpse, and when he kissed his lover Ginny goodbye and idly whispered to her that she tasted like strawberries (and she that he still tasted like mint and tea) she had no way of knowing that he was empty, that on the inside he was bones and dust and a gaping maw, and that he never planned to taste strawberries again. He had become a very good liar. After all, that's what heroes do; they lie. Or at least that's how Harry always felt about the matter.

But you and I know that he was dead inside. And so it should come as no surprise to us that he threw himself through the veil that evening. It came as a surprise to the rest of the world, though, and especially to Ginny, who hadn't realized yet that she would never taste mint again, that tea would never make her happy again, and that she would never be able to explain to others just why this was so. When she first got the news she denied it, and then she fought it, and then she locked herself in her (Harry's) room and screamed and cried and mourned and didn't emerge for days, because Harry was more than just her lover and her friend. He was a hero to her, to the whole world, and that's all she had ever asked him to be; his normal, wonderful, charming, heroic self.

Ron mourned in his own stoic way. There were a few tears and a great deal of firewhiskey and a brawl that got him kicked out of the Leaky Cauldron for good. And when he and Hermione ended their relationship two years later he honestly believed that it was his fault.

When Hermione heard the news her knees gave out from under her and she collapsed into the lounge chair in the flat she shared with Ron. She cried, too. But mostly she felt numb, because she couldn't understand why Harry would do such a thing. Years later, after she had become somewhat of a hero in her own right, she was filing away a report in her office on a case that had brought her a small measure of fame from the press. She had profiled, tracked, and arrested the man herself, if he could be called a man; he was a particularly twisted, murderous wizard responsible for the deaths of fifteen muggle children, and the first time she had stepped into a crime scene that was his handiwork she retched for what felt to her like hours. So did most of the other officers present that day, even though none of them were strangers to murder.

The press, of course, reported what was most convenient for it. Everybody praised her that day. But nobody listened, nobody understood, and nobody tried to. She sat down at her desk, cluttered with papers, empty of decoration except for a single framed picture of her, Ron, and Harry when they were still students, and then the flash of insight hit her and, with it, the rest of the tears she'd never been able to cry. She wept for the better part of the day over the things she had lost and the ways in which she had failed. Her aurors had never seen her so distraught, and nobody ever spoke of the incident again.

When Nevile Longbottom heard the news he spent half the evening drinking a 300 year old bottle of scotch. He then apparated to Little Hangleton (having visited it once before with Harry) and pissed on the grave of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Afterwards he waited around for another hour and then pissed on the grave of Tom Sr., just for good measure.

Draco Malfoy preferred brandy. But he drank too, when he heard that Harry Potter had died. It wasn't a victory toast. The years since the fall of Voldemort had granted him some semblance of wisdom and he recognized Harry for what he was; his better. So Draco Malfoy set aside his appointments for the evening and sat in his study, drinking to another fallen soldier.

Luna Lovegood heard the news over the Wizarding Wireless when she was in Norway. She politely excused herself from the company of Rolf Scamander, who had been vying for her affections for several weeks as they cataloged the breeding patterns of Crumple Horned Snorkacks for the newest edition of Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find Them. She travelled to Trondheim and purchased a portkey to the ministry in London. On arriving, she promptly snuck into to the Department of Mysteries, performed a fantastically complicated charm to unlock the door to the execution chamber, and hurled herself through the veil after him.

Which is why we shouldn't be surprised to find out that there was something on the other side.

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Author's Notes

Hello to all of you, and welcome to my first proper effort to write a fanfiction. The prologue that you just read was written after I'd spent the better part of an evening nursing a strong bottle of red wine while watching Firefly. The rest of the story started clicking into place the next morning, when I read over my drunken composition and realized that I might be on to something.

To stave off some of the inevitable questions, I should mention now that Luna, though she has followed Harry, will not show up in the story until at least after the first arc. The verse is a large place and the inner workings of the veil are unknown. Who knows where she'll end up?