‘It means… living beyond death. Living after death.’
But they were not living, thought Harry: they were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ mouldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in whiping them off, or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snowing hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heat still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and so close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.
