He let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "This sounds almost pathetic, doesn't it? How completely stuck I still am on a girl I knew for barely six months, literally twenty-something years ago. Which is entirely my own damn fault, actually." He looked at Daphne, a wry, pained expression on his face.
"Did you know I originally learned Occlumency, perfected it, just to make absolutely sure I wouldn't forget a single second of my time with her? How pathetic is that? So now, I can't even have the simple luxury of time dulling the memories, of naturally forgetting her and trying to move on."
"I actually thought about getting myself Obliviated once, just wiping her from my memory completely so I could finally move on. But then I thought to myself, 'Maybe it's for the best this way. I mean, even if I do somehow meet someone new, someone amazing… There's no way they're going to live as long as me, given my whole… Master of Death… longevity issue, right?' So what's the point?"
He seemed to almost be talking to himself now, lost in his own bleak thoughts. Daphne kept quiet, just listening, her heart aching for her friend as he inadvertently laid bare the depth of his long-held pain and loneliness.
"So…" Daphne finally asked softly, breaking the heavy silence. "What's the plan then, Harry?"
"The plan?" Harry repeated, his gaze snapping back to hers, sharp and intense. "The plan, Daphne, is to keep myself busy enough, buried deep enough in my work and my projects, to not constantly register the sheer, crushing misery of my situation until I'm eventually, inevitably, offed by something or someone. Or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first."
He stared right into Daphne's eyes, and she could see, with chilling clarity, how utterly serious he was.
That was actually his plan. To spend the rest of his quasi-immortal, unnaturally long life just… waiting for the end, distracting himself from his own existence.
It was such a sad, bleak life for someone so powerful, so brilliant, and the worst part was that Daphne didn't have the first clue what to say to make it better.
Harry was in such an extremely unique, almost unprecedented position. There was probably no one else left on the entire planet who could truly relate to his specific burdens.
Maybe the Flamels could have, once, but even then, they had always had each other to spend eternity with. And now, it was back to eternity for them, wasn't it?
Thanks to Harry, who had, in a move that baffled everyone, actually gifted them a brand new Philosopher's Stone he'd created himself.
Another thing that barely anyone knew about, and absolutely no one knew why he had spent ten years on that incredibly complex side project, only to immediately give the Stone away, destroy all his notes, and then systematically Obliviate the intricate knowledge of its creation from his own head.
It was just… weird. Especially considering how many other groundbreaking projects Harry had worked on over the years mostly revolutionary potions and medicines most of which he freely released to the public after they were perfected.
"...I suppose we have gotten rather off topic," Daphne said finally, her voice a little awkward, trying to steer the conversation back to less depressing waters.
Harry managed a small, tired smile at that. "I suppose we have," he agreed. "You were asking me about the Veil of Death, and why I was snooping around it."
Daphne nodded, relieved to get away from the grim subject of her friend's apparent plan for eternal lonely distraction.
"Hmmm," Harry mused, leaning back again, seeming more willing to talk about this now. "Well, I was trying to figure out why someone would go to the trouble of creating a doorway that apparently just… kills you. Or sends you somewhere you can't return from, same difference really. It didn't really make much sense in my head, especially when, as I said, you can just kill yourself with much easier, more direct means if that's your goal. So, I started checking out the runic arrays carved into the archway, trying to puzzle together what they actually meant, what their combined function was."
Daphne frowned. That was famously impossible. "But no one has ever been able to figure out what those runes mean, Harry. They aren't in any recorded language. They share some superficial similarities with a few ancient Latin or Norse runes, maybe, but nothing concrete."
"Well, I didn't try to translate them like a language," Harry explained, a familiar spark of intellectual excitement entering his eyes. "I copied every single rune I could find on the archway, every swirl, every line. Then I started comparing them, not by shape, but by how they felt magically, how they seemed to manipulate and channel ambient magic. I compared them to all known types of runes Norse, Egyptian, Goblin-runes, Atlantean scripts, you name it focusing on the intent behind the way they shaped magic."
"After that, I analyzed how they reacted and interacted while they were arranged in specific arrays on the Veil itself. Took me a few weeks of intense cross-referencing and theoretical modeling, but I think I have a pretty well-founded understanding now of what the original creator was actually trying to do with the Veil. And I think I have a damned good idea why he was trying to do it."
Daphne rolled her eyes internally. She recognized that look. The prat was deliberately trying to bait her into asking more questions, drawing out the reveal like some dramatic storyteller.
"Harry," she said, letting some of her impatience creep back into her voice, "just tell me what you found out already."