A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry Challenge, Astronomy Assignment #5 – write about somebody making a sacrifice.
Walking to His Grave
He walks to his grave.
If he forgets the reason, and the fear that grips him, it's an exhilarating feeling. He'll soon be free. Free of the war. Free of all the things he's lost, all the things he may still lose. He'll be free of duties and expectations and the prophecy and title that have dictated his life since he is one year old.
But the truth is he can't forget all that at all. So it's not a giddiness that envelops him, but a crushing sense of failure. It's not enough though to make him stop, to make him turn away – because he can't. There's no time for that and he has to trust that the goal he's fallen short of will be succeeded by somebody else. Ron or Hermione who've known the goal all year. Neville he'd told on the way. Anyone they may spread the word to when they realise what's happened, what he's done –
But it's the same issue for them: time. There isn't enough of it to make a plan like there'd been plans for the other six. Five they'd planned themselves. One had been Dumbledore's plan and here he is, enacting it. And the one left… He had only hope for it now, hope and trust in his friends, in the people he is leaving behind.
He wonders if this is how Dumbledore had felt as he'd crawled to his death last year.
It's probably about right. Wanting to hope, wanting to trust, wanting to be confident things will all work out but holding on to that fear nonetheless. But that isn't all there is to that fear. There's the fact that he's barely lived, he's barely been an adult of the Wizarding world and all but one day of that has been spent on the run. Maybe a part of him is selfishly afraid as well. Afraid of never getting to enjoy life without Voldermort in the background.
So the exhilaration, the giddiness of feeling free, is swamped under all of that: the duty, the necessity, the fear – and all he faces to lose as he keeps on walking to his grave. But he has to walk. He has to go. If he doesn't there'll be another horcrux waiting to drag Voldermort back alive and it'll be because he was too coward to die and take that shred of soul along for the ride…
And what better time than to embrace the olive branch with blood on it that's offered. He doesn't think Voldermort will honour what he's declared but he's protecting the others nonetheless. It's the reason he's walking to his grave now instead of an hour later, when they're at the other end of the grace period and he's said his goodbyes and made plans… Or maybe that's just because he knows his friends will try to make him change his mind and he's scared. And he's scared he might listen to them because he's scared.
So there are no farewells, no plans. There is only hope and trust and fear, and underneath it all, so deep he can't feel it now and he probably won't at all, there's a relief of finally getting to be free.