… And He Would be Nameless
Risto Chrete had never known Harry Potter. Never. He'd seen him, of course, for he'd been to every Quidditch game since his first year, and he'd obviously turned up for the Triwizard Tournament, and who could have forgotten when he'd defeated the Dark Lord for the second and third time in his first and fourth year respectively? But in the end he only knew of Harry Potter, and had never actually met Harry Potter.
And now he was risking his life for him. For the boy who lived. Chrete shook his head at the stupidity of this. Seventeen years old, and he was preparing to throw his life away for a celebrity. Every bit of survival instinct yelled at him to follow more than three quarters of the school out through the passageway to go save himself, to follow hot on the heels of the whole of Slytherin House and with a few of his fellow Ravenclaws as well. He wanted to be with his sister, for pity's sake, the girl just two years younger than him who he'd tried to keep safe this whole time, who he'd run out of the Room of Requirement from the D.A. to fetch in the dead of night back when Dumbledore's Army was only starting to grow.
He wanted to be with his family, his mother who had a horrible habit of worrying if he tripped and would be ripping her hair out right now when he was in danger, with his calm and quiet father from the Muggle world who would have asked what exactly he felt he could accomplish here against trained killers, with his elder brother and his wife and his tiny nephew, barely a year old, but he couldn't. For some reason he found himself routed to the spot on which he stood in the Great hall, unable to flee to safety, unable to follow the logic that had served him so well in Ravenclaw for nearly seven years.
Chrete pushed hair back out of his eyes and shook his head at his own stupidity. There wasn't even that little voice in the back of his mind that should have been telling him that it was his duty to stay to blame anything on. There was nothing at all, just some totally alien inability to move his feet, as though a bind had been cast upon his legs while he wasn't looking.
He watched his friend, Phep, fleeing with a few other seventh years. The two had been thick as thieves throughout the last four years at Hogwarts, and now even Phep was running to safety.
Stupid… Just stupid… He was going to die. Chrete knew that, and more than anything else, was bothered that it didn't bother him. He was going to be leaving this world, he was almost certain of that, fighting these trained killers, brutal butchers, armed with spells he'd never learned, and he wasn't any more concerned than if he were about to participate in a game of football back when he was younger to win the local division.
Certainly there was some anxiety, but it was just butterflies in his stomach, almost a forced anxiety, because he knew that he should be feeling it. There was a bit of pressure to succeed as well, but it still wasn't enough, wasn't the kind of full-fledged, sweaty-palmed terror that was natural, that he should have been experiencing.
Risto Chrete exhaled loudly and took out his wand, still marveling at his stupidity. The wand wasn't there. Swearing, Chrete stooped down and checked around his feet where, sure enough, he found the old wand lying at his feet, having fallen through the hole in his now thoroughly beaten-up robes. The Death Eaters who'd posed as teachers in the school had not been kind, and his left arm still ached from where it had been smashed and broken with a powerful spell, one that had rent this set of robes to the point where he'd been forced to remove that sleeve rather than let it dangle by a few loose threads.
Raising the wand up again, Chrete wondered who would remember him in a few hours, when he was dead and gone. There would be his family, certainly, his mother and father and brother and sister-in-law and blood-sister, and there would be Phep, but beyond him there would be few. Chrete had kept to himself for the better part of the past seven years, and most of the friends he'd met while he was younger had been half-blood like him or Muggle-borns, and were now either dead or in hiding.
There would be few to remember him, and for a while he might not even be identified. There might even be a few who are unidentified, Chrete mused to himself, staring at the sea of scarlet red, sapphire blue, and Morganite yellow. A few loners stood out among the Hufflepuff seventh years, though not many; more than half of that house's crop had been culled when Voldemort came to power and dictated events at the school and preached anti-Muggle-born gospel.
Ravenclaw and Gryffindor had both fared better than Hufflepuff, the house with the habit of picking up the most terrified muggle-borns when they came for their first year, but both houses had still suffered a culling of numbers larger than they would have preferred.
Sighing again, Chrete steadied himself and left the Great Hall, walking to the massive staircase that led out to the main entrance, but which also opened to a number of balconies. Several students were there, as well as a few members of the Order of the Phoenix who had deigned to show up.
"This is the end, mate, you know that, right?" someone was sniggering as he said it. He wore robes with the silver and green of Slytherin emblazed upon them, was clean, well-fed, and didn't look the least bit miffed by the impending doom he was proclaiming. "In about an hour or two, all of this," he swept his arms around him to illustrate the whole castle, "Will be rubble. My dad's gonna smash through this like it's nothing." He smirked all the more maddeningly at the prospect of all the people, all of those braver than Chrete, who would survive this and fight through the Battle of Hogwarts dying, and Chrete lost control for a moment.
He'd forgotten all about magic; the first eleven years of his life, when he'd gotten into rows out on the football pitch, he'd solved them without magic. He solved this one similarly, driving his left knee into the pompous bastard's groin, then whipping his right fist around in a devastating punch that missed the Slytherin's head and instead smashed against his neck.
Struggling to breath, the boy brought up his wand, trying to force his throat to form the appropriate incantations. With a kick born of practice every summer, Risto Chrete snapped the wand and the hand that held it, prompting the boy to fall over in pain, staring at where sharp bits of bone and wood sliced his skin.
"This may be the end for me, but it isn't the worst moment of my life." Chrete knew, suddenly, why he wasn't afraid. "If this is my final hour, so be it." He smiled. "My final hour will be my finest hour. Your dad and his mates are fighting for power and greed. I'm fighting for my sister and for my father and my mum and for everyone who can't fight for themselves."
"You're fighting a losing battle, idiot."
"At least I'm fighting, swine," Chrete breathed, and with that he left the useless young wizard to run off to safety, readying his wand and aiming it at the great doors that were sure to blast open in just a few moments. He nodded. Final Hour or Finest Hour, he was ready.
He may die, he may be blasted to pieces, he may excel in this field and be a stupendous hero. But that didn't really matter. In the end, he would be nameless.