This is a challenge fic for the 100 Hundred Times challenge by sick-atxxheart. Prompt #23: "Saved"
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Saving All But One
Harry leaned up against the rough bark of the tree. He cautiously pressed his hands up to his chest and gasped in pain. Gathering his courage, he looked down at the gaping slash in his chest, courtesy of Voldemort. His head swan in pain, and Harry reached one blood-covered hand up to his scar in a subconscious effort to relieve the agony he was in.
Harry slowly slid down into a sitting position and stared down at the blood seeping out of his wound and soaking into his clothes. He wasn't going to live through the hour. Harry knew it. He was dead, dying, practically gone from the world of the living already. Harry looked up at his surroundings and, for the first time, heard the screams and wails around him.
Harry watched as the death eaters milled around helplessly, cursing each other, sobbing at their own misfortune and ill-advised loyalties, and trying to rouse their fallen lord. They ignored Harry, lost in their own troubles and believing him to be near death. Eventually, they trickled away, off to hide and be gone from their world as their cause…and their master was dead.
Harry looked over at the broken body of Voldemort, his face prideful and outraged, even in death. Harry remembered the events of what was just a few moments ago, but which seemed a few eternities ago. He remembered talking with Dumbledore at the train station, waking up to find Narcissa Malfoy checking his pulse. He remembered jumping up right then and there to end it all.
Harry remembered Voldemort's anger at his seeming inability to die. He remembered the battle, with Voldemort telling to his death eaters to stay out of it, that he would have the pleasure of killing Harry as many times as he to by himself. Harry remembered fighting back; he remembered how Voldemort, now sure in the fact he could kill Harry, had spent more time trying to cause Harry to suffer than just trying to kill him.
Harry remembered the cutting hex that was leaving him dying here now, with his front slashed open from shoulder to hip. He remembered Voldemort's laughing eyes as he raised his wand to finish the job, and then Voldemort's brief moment of fear as he saw the spell rebounding towards him, sending him into the lifeless void which was death.
Now, Harry supposed he should be happy, shouldn't he? Yes, he was dying; but then again, considering all he'd been through, he had been cheating death of it's prize for years. Harry remembered all the looks of admiration and jealousy given to him throughout his life, but he also remembered the looks of pity. Harry wouldn't even pretend to think that a single person hadn't thought that he would die before this war was over; they'd only hoped that he would take Voldemort out before he did.
Harry knew deep down that while they'd all pitied him, they'd also just been glad that it wasn't them, that it wasn't their son or their grandson. Yes, Harry supposed he should still be happy, though. Hadn't this been what he'd been trying to do all along? Free the wizarding world? Defeat Voldemort? Save his loved ones? Keep anyone else from dying? Heck, he'd been so adamant in his cause to save others from suffering that a good few wizards and witches seemed to think he wanted to die to save them.
But as he lay there, Harry couldn't feel anything but numb pain. Nothing mattered except the agony that was slowly receding into senseless darkness. It was over, finally; and he couldn't even feel relieved. He did, however, have the ability to analyze all he'd done over the years. Some might call it his life flashing before his eyes…Harry called it confronting the lie that had been his life.
He couldn't' help but question himself now. Why? Why had he done all he'd done? Why had he saved this harsh, unforgiving world, these people who had forsaken him more times than he could count and wouldn't hesitate to do so again? He'd been through so much, but everyone had just expected him to be able to deal with it. He was the Boy-Who-Lived, after all.
No one had ever thought about the fact that he was the BOY-Who-Lived. Emphasis on BOY. He shouldn't have had anything to do with this war. All the parents who had held their own children back in fear for their safety had thrown him to the dogs. Harry still couldn't understand it himself; why? The wizarding world had never really held anything for him.
Dumbledore had constantly kept sending him back to the Dursley's every summer and had consistently ignored all the danger directed to Harry's life year after year. The professors, too, had ignored the constant endangerment of Harry's safety and sanity. He could have gone completely and totally insane, and they wouldn't have even noticed. Heck, he probably was certifiably insane to have gone back all those times and saved them more often than he could even attempt to keep track of.
Then there was Sirius and Remus, the closest thing to family he'd had. They'd tried to protect him to an extent, but in the end, they had let Harry fall prey to Dumbledore's manipulations without a second thought. Then there was Ron and Hermione. They had always been more involved with each other than anything else, always ignoring him just when he really needed them only to bicker over useless things.
Hagrid, Dean, Cho, Seamus, Ginny, Fred, George, Tonks, the list of people who had in the end never cared enough to save him went on and on. Harry supposed that the only one ever to have loved him enough to really make an honest effort and try to save him had been Hedwig, his owl.
Now, don't get him wrong; Harry had no doubt that everyone else had loved him. They had just loved themselves and their own happiness more. In the end, Dumbledore had been right. It had been love which had killed Voldemort, but not Harry's love. NO. It was the world's own selfish love for themselves, which had pushed them into sending an innocent child to fight and die for them.
And Harry had known this all along, no matter how many times he had tried to tell himself that they really truly cared, when they asked him how he was every day. But they hadn't cared. All they would expect was a polite fine, and they would have gotten it. How would they have reacted, Harry wondered, had he actually told them how he was?
If he told them about the times he doubted his ability to save even himself, let alone them. Told them how he didn't even know if he was sane anymore. That sometimes he found it hard to tell the difference between his nightmares and his reality. If he told them how much it tore him apart to be constantly compared to his parents without even being told anything concrete about them. Told them how he didn't want to go to war, didn't want to save anyone, didn't want to kill anyone.
What if he told them how he constantly felt sad, depressed, exhausted, that he never felt good anymore, except for a few rare, fleeting moments? How sometimes he felt like all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry. If he told them how he wanted nothing more than to leave, run away, be normal, to leave them to clean up their own mess.
But he never told them. He never let them see the real Harry, the insecure, unhappy boy inside. He hid behind his brave Gryffindor persona. And so, he still questioned; why? Why had he saved the people who had shunned him, hurt him, lied to him, and, in the end, doomed him to die? Was it for the innocents, the people who hadn't been a part of planning his eventual death?
No, it hadn't been for them. Harry hated seeing innocent people suffer and die, but he didn't think he was noble enough to die for them. Harry knew that, eventually, the world would have found that they could defeat Voldemort instead of sending Harry to do it for them. Harry knew he was a coward, but so was the entire wizarding world. They had been cowardly enough to send a boy barely of age to die, to suffer, to murder for the good of everyone but him.
In the end, Harry guessed that the only reason he'd stuck around so long was because what else could he do? The only things that had ever made him feel even partially happy were here. Even if he'd left, he still would have been famous; and people still would have expected him to save them without any effort on their parts. In the end, Harry was just another victim of fate.
Harry looked up as a drop of water hit his forehead and saw that it had started to rain. He laughed as he watched the rein begin the futile effort of trying to wash away the blood that was exiting his body in a seemingly never-ending stream. It was a harsh, brittle laugh. No one even knew where he was.
How long would it be until they found his body? What would they say when they found him? They would accuse him of running away, of shirking his duty; Harry knew; and he also knew that no one would defend him. No one would care enough to. Would anyone even cry over the fact that he was dead? And when had this become his duty?
When had he stepped up and volunteered to save the wizarding world. When had he offered to be their scapegoat? He'd never wanted to do this. Harry knew that people would have expected him to be happy that he'd won, glad he'd saved them, or at least filled with joy that it was all over. But he wasn't. He didn't want to go on, and he didn't want it to finally end. Harry sighed as he felt his life finally reaching its end. He'd saved the wizarding world for the final time.
And yet, as he sat there, dying alone and in the rain and mud, Harry couldn't help but wish that he'd saved himself instead.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Just a short little thing I was inspired to write. I was in a bad mood when I wrote this, so it's really angsty and dark. I feel like I kill off Harry whenever I'm in a mad or something. Oh, well, I felt better after I wrote this, which, I guess, is why I write fanfiction in the first place. I'll try to stop killing him so often, though. Hope you liked it.