Hedwig knew, of course, that they weren't returning to Hogwarts. It was too late to go back to school. Dumbledore…he could not take care of them anymore. There was business to take care of. Still, despite Harry's long explanations of the Horcruxes, she felt she was going back home. It was odd for her, to be sitting in Harry's bedroom at Privet Drive, knowing she was never going back to Hogwarts. But if they could find Voldemort, if they could destroy all the Horcruxes, then Harry might have a chance to be safe. They might have a chance to stop worrying. She might never have to sing him to sleep again.

He was rummaging with his stuff again, like he did every summer, usually hastily. This time, though, there was a great deal being left behind. He was sorting things from his trunk into things he'd need and things he wouldn't. She was sitting on the desk watching him, in owl form, but not really being very helpful.

"I don't suppose I'll need school robes anymore," he muttered, putting them in the "to stay" pile absentmindedly. "The Dursleys will probably burn them. But it doesn't matter – we're not going back there."

Hedwig felt a jolt in her stomach. Harry didn't know how much it pained her not to return there, mostly because Harry didn't know how much of a home it was for her. The Dursleys were still downstairs, and she knew it was best not to change. But she didn't care anymore. Soon someone would be coming for him, and she wouldn't have the chance to speak to him for hours. She stepped out of her cage and changed, sitting next to him on the floor.

"We don't know that we'll never go back there," she mused, staring at a badge intermittently flashing "POTTER STINKS." "One day we could return. For old time's sake or something. If you ever have kids, they'll probably go there."

"If I live long enough to have kids," he replied, staring absently at his pile of left-behind possessions. Everything he owned was somewhere in this room, and it wasn't very much. "I'm not really that concerned about the distant future right now, Hedwig. There might not be time for that."

She frowned. "No."

"No?" He looked at her quizzically.

"No, I won't allow it. I'm not going to let you go through the rest of your life thinking your days are numbered."

"But they are, Hedwig, it's not as if I'm going to just –"

"Stop." She shut her eyes. "Just stop."

He put one arm around her waist casually. There was no nervousness in his touch now – not since he had gone out with Ginny. Any static between them had long since faded. Hedwig sometimes wondered if he even thought of her that way anymore. She hoped for his sake that he didn't, although she couldn't be quite so sure about herself.

"Fine," he said weakly. "Then yeah, maybe someday we'll go back. You and me and my kids."

She nodded. "And Ginny, don't forget her," she said, keeping her voice steady.

"You think Ginny and I'll be together, then?" he asked, looking up at his wall.

"I do, Harry, yeah. You fit together."

He smiled slightly at this, then it quickly faded. He was thinking again about death, about not having the chance to have kids with Ginny.

"Look, Harry. Everything is going to be fine. If you don't honestly believe it, at least try to think that way for my sake. At least try to think that you're a normal wizard, coming of age, who is going to have a long and fruitful life. Everything will go fine tonight, everything will be all right. Promise me that, Harry." She shivered slightly. "Don't live like you're dying."

He looked at her then. They didn't often look at each other, really. They were used to holding each other, and moving together, but they were always too distracted. Now he was actually looking at her, and his green eyes were so close to her amber ones. She had never really believed that you could see wisdom in a person's eyes, but looking at his, remembering how they looked when he was eleven, she thought he was wise. She could see it, or at least she felt she could. He was a young man. He was her boy. He was the best choice she had ever made.

"For you," he said. "I promise."

There was a commotion downstairs; it was time for the Dursleys to leave. It was time for everything. She changed and hopped back in her cage, but not before nipping him on his hand with her beak. He smiled and laughed just slightly, carefree like he used to be.

There was a lot of commotion in a flurry that night, and Hedwig could not keep track of it. The plans had changed, and that worried her. Now there was Polyjuice potion involved, and decoys. And as usual, Harry was making a fit about people putting themselves on the line for him. As usual, he didn't realize the extent to which he was loved. The only thing Hedwig was really worried about was whether she'd get to stay with him; to her immense relief, everyone had a false Hedwig with them, and she was going with Harry. She was just the slightest bit offended that anyone could be fooled by a cheap stuffed imitation of her, but there wasn't time to dwell on it.

Suddenly they were in Hagrid's sidecar (not a very dignified choice) and flying off into the night. She tried to believe what she'd told Harry about everything being all right, but her every instinct was telling her that something bad was coming. She would try to protect Harry in any way could. She would make sure that the something bad wasn't coming for him.

The premonition only grew stronger until the world burst into chaos. Someone had tipped off Voldemort. Death Eaters were streaking through the sky and attacking each of the fake Potters, throwing curses wildly. Hedwig could do nothing; trapped in her cage, without magic, she was useless and lost in a flurry of motion. Suddenly there were so few of them, trying to fend off what seemed like an unmovable force of Death Eaters.

In the commotion, the motorbike flipped upside down, and Hedwig was slipping. The cage was falling, and trapped within it she would not be able to fly to safety. She saw Harry slipping away from her, and was possessed with a great, swarming panic. She could not lose him like this. But just as she lost hope, his hand reached downward and grabbed her cage, barely and with the tips of his fingers, and she was safe, fine, settled again in his right-side-up lap. There was such relief on his face in that instant, to see her, his closest companion, safe. And she looked into his eyes again, and her heart slowed, and she thought, See? Everything is going to be all right.

Then there was a flash of green light, and the darkness became complete.

When Harry heard that Alastor Moody had fallen on his behalf, he was angry. He was upset and mournful and hit with indescribable guilt. But there was a deeper feeling, a deeper pain, that he did not acknowledge that night. He had set the sidecar on fire, and watched it fall to the earth burning, but he had not let it find him in the pits of his stomach. So he drank his firewhiskey and let the burning in his throat drown the call of the louder melancholy he knew he would have to feel someday.

In fact, he did not feel it until the very end. After he had intended to die, after he had given up hoping against her wishes. He had seen her, when he spun the stone. There was his father, and his mother, Sirius, Lupin…but there was another. Off behind them, gleaming whiter than in life, he had seen her, perched in a tree. More of an owl than a witch. And though she had told him not to give in to death, she had looked at him, as if to say that everything was going to be all right.

But that had not been when he felt it. It was after. It was when there was death everywhere, laid out on mats in the Great Hall, that it began. Strong and in his stomach, it began. The compounded grief, and at its center, the very thing he had been trying not to feel since just before his seventeenth birthday. He excused himself from the company of his friends, wandered past the bodies without thinking. He headed slowly upstairs, mechanically, wandering freely into a classroom he only ever seen two people use. And there was no one inside now.

When he entered the room, he was struck by the silence. He remembered sitting, and talking, and being scolded and scolding, and checking the map, and staring out the window. He remembered so many times he had cried. He did not think it would overtake him here, but the grief that had been swelling in his stomach consumed his whole body. And though there was no one there to tell him it would be all right, and he was sure that it would not be all right, he crumbled. Harry lay on the floor, alone, and without anyone to hold him, he cried. He sobbed, finally releasing the storm. He cried for Dobby, who had never asked for anything. He cried for Moody, whom he had never really known. He cried for Lupin, he cried for Tonks, he cried for the child who would never know his parents. He cried for Fred, as if for his own brother. But most of all, he cried for the one who should have been with him, who should held him up and stroked his hair. He cried for the girl who had known him longer than he'd known her, who had always been there in seemingly endless summers. He cried for the witch who was really more of an owl. Alone in what had once been their room, he said goodbye to her, in that wordless way they had developed. He said goodbye with what had once felt like a pulse between two people, but was now only a shudder.

Harry kept his final promise. He did marry Ginny, and they did have kids, and he never again lived like he was dying. No one ever knew about her, and he never cried for her again. He did not think she would have wanted that.

Though Harry was never again plagued by serious nightmares, they did not vanish altogether from his life. Occasionally, when his sons or his daughter were stricken by the normal childhood bad dreams, he would comfort them. He knew how frightening and helpless he had felt in his dreams, and he would rock them back and forth and hold their hands until they fell asleep. If they cried, he would tell them that everything would be all right. And though he could not tell you where he picked up the habit, he would sing softly a tune he had learned years ago, gently coaxing them and cooing "I my loved ones' watch am keeping, All through the night."