Finally, the truth. Harry's job was to welcome death at the hands of his greatest enemy. Neither would live, neither could survive.

He felt his heart pounding 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. Life was over, Harry knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.

Slowly, very slowly, Harry sat up.

Dumbledore's betrayal meant everything. There had always been a larger plan: Harry had simply been too foolish to see it. He realized that now. He had always assumed that Dumbledore wanted him to live, but he was wrong. To Dumbledore, his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate the Horcruxes. He had been manipulated for the greater good

Dumbledore had known that Harry would persevere, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end. He knew this because he had taken trouble to get to know Harry, hadn't he? Dumbledore had proved himself a more strategic game player than Ron had ever been during a game of chess. Dumbledore knew that Harry would never let anyone die if he had the power to stop it.

There would be no good-byes and no explanations for Ron and Hermione, of that Harry was certain. This was a journey they would not take together.

He did not look back as he closed the office door. He could not.

As descended through the castle, Harry pulled the invisibility cloak over his head. He hoped that he would be noticed. That somebody would stop him from doing what must be done. But the Cloak was perfect and he reached door without hindrance.

Hagrid's hut was nested in darkness. On this night, unlike so many before it, there were no lights, no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door. All those visits to Hagrid, the rock cakes, and his great big face, and Ron vomiting slugs, saving Norbert...

Harry moved towards the edge of the forest.

Then, as he stood staring into the dark trees that held so many memories, he paused. Harry was trembling as hard as any tree in the forbidden forest had ever trembled in the wind. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious. He could not make himself go on, yet he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, and it was time to leave the air...

The Snitch. I open at the close.

Breathing fast and hard, Harry fumbled in his pocket. He couldn't find it. Had it slipped through a hole in his pocket? Wait. Harry's fingers grasped the cool metal as he pulled the gold ball into the dark night's air.

As he kissed the metal of the snitch, Harry whispered the fated words, "I am about to die."

The metal shell fell open, crumbling under Harry's fingertips leaving a coal-black stone in its place.

And again Harry understood without having to think. It was the Hallows. The cloak, the stone, and the wand. Death wanted them brought together.

Harry continued on, traveling deeper and deeper into the dark forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that finding him would bring the end.

He had traveled mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead. Harry knew the clearing had been the place where Hagrid's monstrous Aragog had lived. All that was left of the spider's home were tangles of cobwebs drifting in the night's chill. Harry looked at the clearing, assessing it.

Death Eaters were bathed in the glow of a fire situated in the middle of the clearing. Some of them were masked and hooded; others proudly displayed their faces. Harry saw a defeated and frightened Lucius Malfoy and his wife Narcissa, whose eyes were sunken and full of trepidation.

Every eye was fixed upon the thing that used to be Tom Riddle, who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand.

Voldemort looked up.

"I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. "I expected him to come"

None of the Death Eater's dared to speak. They were as scared as Harry. Harry's hands were sweating as he reluctantly pulled off his invisibility cloak.

"I was, it seems... mistaken," said Voldemort.

"You weren't."

Harry spoke with all the force he could muster. He would not show his fear. At that moment, nobody mattered but Voldemort and Harry. The world was just the two of them.

"Harry Potter," Voldemort said softly. "The Boy Who Lived."

Nobody moved. They were waiting. Harry thought suddenly of Ginny, and her blazing eyes, and the feel of her soft lips moving against his own. Voldemort raised his wand. Harry looked into the red eyes, begging Voldemort to cast the spell, quickly, before he betrayed his fear.

Harry saw the mouth move and a familiar flash of green light, then everything was gone.

Harry became conscious of the fact that he was lying naked on the ground. What had he done last night? Memories came rushing through his cranium. The cloak. The forest. The snitch. Voldemort. The wand. Dying. Little details like that.

As if by some hidden cue, Harry heard a slow ominous noise through the gloom: footsteps. He quickly sat up. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him, inexplicably wearing midnight blue robes.

For the first time, Harry wished he were clothed.

Dumbledore's long beard, the twinkle behind piercing eyes: Everything was exactly as it had always been. And yet...

"You're dead," stated Harry.

"Am I?" came the reply.

They looked at each other, the old man beaming.

"Explain yourself," said Harry, never one to mince his words.

"But you already know," said Dumbledore, twiddling his thumbs in the way that had always secretly annoyed Harry.

"You planned for Snape to kill you." It was accusing, but it seemed that Dumbledore was planning to ignore Harry's tone.

"I admit that was my intention," intoned Dumbledore, "but it did not work as I intended, did it?"

"Nothing worked out as you intended," spat Harry.

The old man just stared at him, smiling in his manner that proclaimed that Dumbledore was not going to share his knowledge.

Dumbledore was being infuriating. Harry glared at him. After what felt like an eternity, and very well may have been, Harry decided on what to ask the man

"The Deathly Hallows," Harry questioned, glad to see that the words wiped the smile from his mentor's face.

"Ah, yes," Dumbledore said. He looked a little worried.

"Well?"

For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.

"Can you forgive me?" he said. "Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man."

"What?" asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore's tone, by the sudden tears in his eyes. Was this another game? Another cruel manipulation designed to make Harry do exactly as he planned? Or was Dumbledore truly sorry for his actions.

"The Hallows, the Hallows," murmured Dumbledore. "A desperate man's dream!"

"But they're real!"

"Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools," said Dumbledore. "And I was such a fool. But you know, don't you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know."

"What do I know?" Harry wasn't fool enough to believe that Dumbledore had no secrets from him. Dumbledore would always, alive or dead, have secrets.

"Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?"

"I'm not so sure anymore," said Harry quietly, but Dumbledore did not seem to hear him.

"True, I never killed if I could avoid it" Dumbledore seemed to be speaking to himself. "Yet I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry."

"Hallows," murmured Dumbledore, "not Horcruxes, not precisely."

"Grindelwald was looking for them too?" Harry sought the connection between the two men.

Dumbledore closed his eyes, as if in pain from the name, and nodded.

"It was the thing, above all, that drew us together," he said quietly. "Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He wanted to come to Godric's Hollow, as I am sure you have guessed, because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore the place the third brother had died."

"So it's true?" asked Harry, startled. Though he had heard the tale and collected the artifacts he had never really believed. "All of it? The Peverell brothers?"

"Were the three brothers of the tale," said Dumbledore, nodding. "Oh yes, I think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely road..." He paused for emphasis before he continued.

"The Cloak traveled down through the ages, father to son, right down to Ignotus's last living descendant, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of Godric's Hollow."

Dumbledore pointedly looked at Harry.

"Me?!" Why hadn't Dumbledore ever felt this was information worth sharing with Harry?

"The Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James showed it to me just a few days previously. I asked to borrow it. I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look... and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!"

His tone was not as bittersweet as Harry would have liked. He seemed almost pleased.

"I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory."

Dumbledore seemed to grow taller and darker as he spoke the words. Harry was suddenly afraid. It came to him that there was a reason Voldemort was scared of Dumbledore. Dumbledore was a much larger threat than Tom Riddle had ever been.

"Do not misunderstand me," the man said "I had a few scruples. I knew it would be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits for wizards."

Harry could no longer bring himself to believe the words that Dumbledore was saying. Greater good? What gave Dumbledore the right to decide what the greater good was?

"Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. Grindelwald and I, the glorious young leaders of the revolution."

"And at the heart of our schemes, the Deathly Hallows! How they fascinated him, how they fascinated both of us! The unbeatable wand, the weapon that would lead us to power! The Resurrection Stone"

"And the Cloak... somehow, we never discussed the Cloak much, Harry. Both of us could conceal ourselves well enough without the Cloak, the true magic of which, of course, is that it can be used to protect and shield others as well as its owner. But our interest in the Cloak was mainly that it completed the trio, for the legend said that the man who had united all three objects would then be truly master of death, which we took to mean 'invincible.'"

"Invincible masters of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore!"

Dumbledore gave a little gasp of excitement. It frightened Harry. Had Dumbledore always been this mad or had death perverted his memory?

Suddenly Dumbledore seemed to remember Harry in front of him. The air of darkness surrounding him seemed to vanish. In its place was Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, Harry's mentor.

"Where would you say that we are?" the old man asked.

"It looks," Harry said hesitantly, not sure how much information to share with Dumbledore, "like King's Cross station. Except a lot cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see."

"King's Cross station!" Dumbledore was chuckling. "Good gracious, really?"

"Well, where do you think we are?" asked Harry, defensively.

"My dear boy, I have no idea."

A sudden thought struck Harry. "I've got to go back, haven't I?"

"Don't we always," Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross you say? I think that you must choose a destination and... board a train."

Harry became aware of the signs flashing beside each of the platforms. They seemed to go on forever. For a minute he thought they were places. Some had innocuous names such as 'The Burrow', 'Little Wingham', 'Malfoy Manor', 'The Great Hall'. Others had names that Harry couldn't quite connect to places: 'The House Cup, 'The Diary'. Others still were names, 'Draco Malfoy', 'Charlie Weasley', 'Seamus Finnegan'.

As if by divination, Harry understood. They weren't places, or things, or even people. They were memories; his memories more specifically.

Harry had a choice. He had a chance. A chance to go back to a moment in his life and change the way that things would happen. All of the deaths, all of the pain. Fred, Tonks, Remus, Cedric. He had a chance to redo it all. He only needed to choose the right moment.