FALLEN WARRIOR

He looked at Mrs. Tonks, wanting to apologize for the state of fear in which
he left her and for which eh felt so terribly responsible, but no words occurred
to him that did not seem hollow and insincere.Simply
to be alive to watch the sun rise over the sparkling snowy hillside ought to
have been the greatest treasure on earth, yet he could not appreciate it: His
senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his wand.These connections
are complex. An initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience,
the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand."


Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet
of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets
of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to
survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms. Along the
way, he was to dispose of Voldemort's remaining links to life, so that when
at last he flung himself across Voldemort's path, and did not raise a wand to
defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been
done in Godric's Hollow would be finished: Neither would live, neither could
survive.
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his
dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it
would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there
be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into
the grounds and into the forest?
Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum
pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought
that it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the
thing itself: His will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of
death. Yet it did not occur to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. Itwas over, he knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.
If he could only have died on that summer's night when he had left number
four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had
saved him! If he could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not
have known it had happened! Or if he could have launched himself in front of
a wand to save someone he loved. . . . He envied even his parents' deaths now.
This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind
of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control
them, although no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were all empty.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more
aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated
what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be
gone . . . or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep,
and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.
Dumbledore's betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a
bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now.
He had never questioned that his own assumption: that Dumbledore wanted
him alive. Now h saw that his life span had always been determined by how
long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of
destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip away at the
bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life! How neat, how elegant,
not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had
already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not me a calamity,
but another blow against Voldemort.
And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would
keep going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble
to get to know him, hadn't he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that
Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was
in his power to stop it. The images of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks lying dead in
the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind's eye, and for a moment he
could hardly breathe: Death was impatient. . . .



I had proven,
as a very young man, that power was my weakness and my temptation. It
is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are
those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust
upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own
surprise that they wear it well.