Author's Note: Please review! This is a repost, after editing parts I didn't like.
I'm Sorry, Child
By: ChoCedric
As Albus Dumbledore watches Harry fight Voldemort, his heart breaks into tiny pieces. It is Harry's seventh year, and they are on the grounds of Hogwarts. His nearest and dearest friends are beside him, along with the Order of the Phoenix and the rest of the student body. No one can get to the two fighters, for Voldemort erected a barrier that would keep them out of it.
As Harry dodges spell after spell and tries to counterattack with his own spells, Dumbledore feels sadness sweep over him as he realizes the child is tiring. He tried his best to teach the boy different spells over the past two years to defeat the most terrifying and evil wizard of all time, but he should've known all the training in the world could never match up to Voldemort's power. And after all, Harry is only seventeen.
Sweat is beading on Harry's brow, and Dumbledore longs to go over to him, to take the responsibility off his shoulders and fight Voldemort himself. But he knows what the prophecy says, and knows that Harry has to be the one to defeat him. But he has a sinking feeling that the seventeen-year-old won't be the winner.
When Voldemort finally Disarms him, Dumbledore feels like falling to his knees with grief. As he watches the child he's come to love as his own being tortured by Cruciatus for minutes on end, he feels his entire spirit fall. He knows what's going to happen next, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. I've heard people say I'm the most powerful wizard in the world, he thinks miserably. But it's not so.
After the torture is finally finished, Harry is so weak he cannot even stand. Voldemort towers over him, raising his wand and pointing it right at Harry's heart. Dumbledore knows the end has now come, and he feels his heart tear in two. The whole world is going to be ruled by evil now, and he knows how hopeless Harry feels. He can see the defeated look on the young child's face, and he so desperately wants to go and hug the boy, to tell him it's all right, that he tried his best.
He can only watch, feeling nauseated, as the Avada Kedavra hits the center of Harry's heart, and he goes limp and still. The battlefield is now filled with the cheers of the Death Eaters and the terrible cries and shrieks of grief from those on the light side. Voldemort dangles Harry's corpse in the air, proclaiming his victory. The boy's lifeless green eyes stare at everyone, and he doesn't move a muscle. Dumbledore knows with sickening certainty that the hope for the wizarding world is gone.
Voldemort then throws the body on the ground, and he, along with his Death Eaters, Disapparates away from the school. With the barrier now lifted, all Harry's supporters go running to his side, knowing they are too late. Dumbledore follows them, and with crippling sadness, he looks into the boy's face. "I'm sorry, child," he whispers as he touches his limp hand. He can see Ron and Hermione, the latter shaking with sobs and the former boiling with rage. "You weren't supposed to die!" Ron screams. "You were supposed to win!"
With the last bit of strength Dumbledore has left, he gives a speech about how Voldemort cannot ever win if they all remember Harry, but his heart isn't really in it. He feels as though Harry's defeat was his fault, and he knows he failed the boy. Such an innocent child, thrust into a world of pure evil and asked to do a task he simply could not fulfill. It's so unfair, he muses as he strokes Harry's black hair.
A few days later, his heart breaks anew as Harry's body is lowered into the ground. He is being buried in Godric's Hollow, with his parents. He can only hope now that James and Lily can give him all the love he deserves after the unhappy childhood he had. Dumbledore knows that that was his fault also, for he was the one who put him with the Dursleys. He takes a handful of dirt and tosses it on top of the coffin, a single tear falling down his wrinkled cheek. "I'm sorry, child," he whispers, just like he did at the end of the final battle. And wherever Harry is, he hopes he can hear him.