They spent countless dusks on that nameless hillside.
Time stood still.
In the distance, the church bell would ring right on time each evening, its slow echoes drifting over every small hill, every little stream, every window glowing with orange light.
Ariana liked to lean on the windowsill and count whenever the bells rang.
She never made it to the tenth chime before something distracted her—a butterfly that had appeared from nowhere in the illusion, or a figure flashing past behind the window of some distant wooden cottage.
Albus sat in the old armchair behind her, a book open on his knees, but he never truly turned a page.
His gaze was always fixed on his sister's back, on the tips of her golden hair as the evening breeze gently lifted them.
At last, he spoke.
"Anna."
She did not turn back, only gave a soft "Mm."
A butterfly had landed on her fingertip, its wings opening and closing.
"I have to go."
When he said it, his voice was strangely calm, as if he were only stating a natural law, like the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.
Ariana's fingers stiffened.
Startled, the butterfly fluttered away and disappeared into the misty horizon.
She slowly turned around and looked at her brother in the armchair.
She made no dramatic movement.
Her eyes were still just as clear, only what they held had changed from the glow of dusk into a deep, quiet understanding.
"I know,"
she said.
"Mr. God said there are still living people waiting for the visiting guest—Brother Albus has to go back sooner or later."
Albus closed the book he had never turned a page of.
He wanted to stand, but found his legs as heavy as lead.
"I'm sorry, Anna."
At last, a crack appeared in his voice.
"I'm sorry. I have to—I have to leave you alone again."
He had owed her those words for a hundred years.
He had not been able to say them that summer in Godric's Hollow. He had not been able to say them before the gravestone at the funeral. He had not been able to say them on the countless nights afterward when he woke from nightmares.
Now, at last, he said them.
But Ariana shook her head.
She walked over from the windowsill, stepping barefoot across the carpet until she stood before his armchair.
She was not timid the way she had been at their reunion, nor did she cling to him as she had during the storm.
She simply stood there, standing very straight, like an adult who possessed all the courage in the world.
"It's different."
She paused, trying hard to find the right words.
Her lips moved several times. In the end, she gave up on trying to explain at length and only leaned forward, gently touching her forehead to Albus's.
Because she remembered the figure who had fought his way to her, from then on, even if three thousand little hills and eight hundred streams lay between them, Ariana would no longer choke back tears.
In that instant, the entire white void trembled softly.
The grass beneath their feet began spreading outward. Tender green shoots pierced through the mist with fine, rustling sounds of growth.
The crooked Gothic arches seemed to be straightened by an invisible hand. The black mist upon them peeled away inch by inch, transforming into white flowering vines that climbed the stone pillars and bloomed with little points of firefly light in the void.
The wind was no longer an empty wail. It carried warmth now, brushing over the grass and bringing the fragrance of daisies and green leaves.
Albus slowly opened his eyes.
Tears blurred his vision, but he saw her clearly—the pale blue eyes so close before him.
They were as clear as a cloudless October sky over Godric's Hollow, without a trace of shadow.
Albus looked at her.
Suddenly, he understood why Ariana had lingered.
She had stayed at the edge of the Hazy Dreamscape, alone and displaced.
All so that they would know: people like them, numb and dimmed by guilt, had never been cast aside.
Albus stood.
Tears flowed down his dried cheeks once more.
On one test paper, no matter how he answered, he would have received full marks—yet he had been absent.
On another, he had given such a poor answer.
What about that child Green?
Where was he?
The great battle in the Borderland had lasted so long. He had endured from night into dawn, and promised dusk.
Albus could not stay here any longer.
He knew two children who were not very good at speaking: his Ariana, and that sometimes foolish yet all the more sincere child.
He gazed into the distance, then bent down, wanting to embrace his sister one last time before he left.
But Ariana stepped back.
"Next time,"
she said softly, and at last, a barely noticeable trace of fear entered her voice,
"will you find me? Brother Albus?"
She lifted her head to look at him.
Her outline was fading too.
Her arms, shoulders, and waist-length golden hair were all being soaked in a gentle silver light, as if they were about to evaporate like dawn dew—yet ten thousand times warmer than dew.
"Always."
Albus stepped forward.
He knew that this was the final act of heroism in his absurd life.
His step was so firm that even the mist did not dare draw near.
—I want to.
Albus heard something sound deep within his heart.
"I want to live with you in some small town, Anna. To share endless dusks and unceasing bells."
And so, in the light of the earth, in the love of humanity, I see you.
His deepest fear had never been death.
It was that he had once hurt her so deeply.
But from now on, he would never look back again.
Because in the deepest part of his heart, in the corner no Legilimency could ever touch, there would always be a little patch of grass. On that grass stood a tall daisy, and beside the daisy stood a girl in a blue cotton dress.
She would always be there waiting for him.
Darkness was about to come again.
Outside the window, the sound of hail became exceptionally clear. In the dark, it seemed to find its rightful stage, striking more freely now: against the roof, against the windows, against the silence.
In the wooden cottage then, there was only one tiny intake of breath, so small it was like a kitten's sneeze.
The curtains had not been drawn.
The hail was still tapping against the window. But in the darkness, a cool little hand found his sleeve.
He put down the sword and gently embraced her.
All the thorns he had carried his entire life—the ambition of a young man, the misfired blaze, his mother's name on the gravestone, his brother's roar in the tavern, the countless midnight trials he had held against himself—
all of them, every last one, melted like snow in that moment.
They drifted down.
And were released.
"A part of you carries me."
Ariana seemed to murmur in her sleep.
Albus smiled and nodded through tear-blurred eyes.
Then he picked up the sword again.
He carried her with him, and she remembered him.
This was the ending.
She had waited for him for so long. He had searched for her for so long. At last, in a dusk that belonged to no time and no place, they completed a farewell that had arrived a century late.
And a reunion.