Still Young

by tearsofphoenix

Standard Disclaimer applies - it's all JKR's.

Many thanks to Whitehound, so much more than my wonderful editor.

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When his kid’s dreams – of a new start and of better days in a world of magic – were shattered, his youth had just begun, while his childhood had scarcely been enjoyed as it should have been, and perhaps this is why, from that moment, he went on acting like an older person, but being, always, even if without noticing it, still young.

And, like every youngster, he needed a mentor, an older wizard to teach him about life… everyone knew, when all was revealed, how badly his search for it ended, twice.

Still young when teaching, when his students were hiding something, or tried to cheat, he couldn't help feeling the same angst he felt when a student during his years of study, and retaliation – at least through words – was the first and only answer he knew.

Seeing how the most troublesome among them so often needed his help, he remembered always, with hurt, how in his youth he had been so often on the trail of another small group, hoping to open the eyes of a beloved girl about the dangers coming from the company that she was preferring more and more to his own. That's why, perhaps, at the end of many of their adventures he spoke his usual mocking sentences, without a word for their success or the happy outcome of their endeavours: he was blind to those achievements, in a sense.

But, for their sake, he was still young in front of his sacrifice, and he did it, as a last gift, with a brave heart and with all the innocence of a youth intact, no matter what had happened to him or what he had done during those years from his real adolescence to that very moment.

Life isn’t fair, and the fact that he was still so young didn’t matter, to her. Magic, and the care of at least one heart, sometimes can make a difference, though, as they did when an infant, harmless and unaware, was spared from death when everything seemed lost, for him.

And, so, his sacrifice was made, but his life wasn’t kept by Death. Death tried, because she is very possessive of her captives, but at last she surrendered to the incessant care and pleas of that caring heart.

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He was still so young.

She wouldn’t have thought this a few days ago, when, in all his stern persona, his face unreadable in front of the Dark Lord whom he was fooling for the umpteenth, and last, and most precious time, he showed by the harsh lines on his countenance the many signs left by every year of his life, until then. Youth was the last thing one would say of him, then.

But later, when after an execrable delay she had showed that someone who cared could exist, and therefore his body had been rescued and healed in the most unbelievable of ways; later on, when he slept, recovering, his features almost relaxed, she had looked at him better and seen, past the lines on his face, how young he indeed still was.

This was perhaps why, from that moment, it no longer seemed strange to consider his age, and his life, and all the years to come as something closer to her own and still blooming, rather than how it might seem at first sight.

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Life is unfair, often, and Death is possessive, but there are times when they, too, bow in front of a young love. And, after all, he had still been much too young, and he hadn’t had a chance, until then, to really feel the very essence of youth, in all the glory of its freedom and love.

That’s also perhaps why he was so awkward, so tender, like a teenager, when he proposed to her; but she loved it, and wouldn’t have changed a word nor a breath of that time.

He, on the other hand, who hadn't expected to survive the war, but who was now beginning to resume living again, he acknowledged her youth as a reminder of his own – as if, with her presence, his own time, that lost time when he was just of age, could return to him, and there could really be a new, fresh, growing life.

Perhaps he couldn’t have had it back again with a different, older love; perhaps without her he would have stayed dead, with neither chance nor wish to feel so young again. But there she was, and Life and Death smiled together, for once, while many witnesses, from both their kingdoms, joined in their satisfaction: there was still time, indeed, for the very end.