#hm!!!!!!

The realization hits her like a knife to the chest, causing the blood in her veins to freeze over. She can’t control the strangled cry that emits from her collapsing chest.

“We can.” Harry reiterates with a firmer voice, but she can tell he’s barely keeping it together— it’s evident in the tremble running under his words.

She knows that the repetition of the phrase is his way of breaking the news, because he can’t find the heart to say it aloud directly— it’d feel too real. It’s his way of begging her not to push the subject further, or he might completely shatter. They don’t have the luxury of time on their side; they can’t mourn properly right now, given the circumstances. The best she can do is simply oblige and push forward.

Harry had made a plan for this years ago and had walked his girlfriend through it many times. She always joked about how paranoid he was, but as much as he hated dwelling on it, he had a looming suspicion it would come in handy one day.

He’d built a safe house of sorts in a secluded area, which took after their regular apartment and included an arsenal of supplies that could wait out an apocalypse. He’d guarded it with warding against both angels and demons, courtesy of a spell made of his own devising. He’d cloaked and concealed it with magic, as an extra layer of protection. They just had to make it to the portal he’d created in the city.

Harry had the power to summon and close it whenever, so he’d willed it into existence the second he sensed what was coming. He’d opened it far enough from their flat to avoid detection, but close enough to reach during an emergency. The route obviously takes longer on foot, but it’s not impossible. If he or Y/N were to use their magic in any way, they’d be tracked down in seconds. His car and motorcycle are easy targets to follow. It’s stealthier this way, especially at night when they can camouflage into the shadows.

Once they arrive, he can seal the shelter from the inside by completing the last line of spell glyphs with his blood, right across the entrance door that’s identical to the one in their real home. The place should hold them for a while.

“Make this worth it.”

Onyx and Nimbus’ last message rings inside Harry’s head, incapacitating his senses and giving him vertigo as he charges forward blindly, confiding in Y/N to guide them to their destination.

He’d heard their final words right before he felt their life forces be torn from his own; the bond of a hellhound to a demon, being severed permanently by what can only be one thing. The only way to cut such a profound tie.

Death's unique type of pain was also familiar to him, from his first interaction with it seven centuries ago. First it’s sharp and searing hot, overwhelming your whole being, then it drops to an invasive numb cold, like being boiled and then plunged into ice water. Then comes a feathery, lightheaded ache at the base of the skull, as if your very soul is detaching from where your mind is anchored to your body, and then it feels like you’re floating away, being carried off by a swift draft. Then nothing. Just a vast emptiness, so hollow and desolate it’s suffocating.

From his experience, he’s found no other form of pain that could possibly feel that deep and condemning. The sensation is one of kind, and therefore undeniable.