"You can't love me, Harry."
"Why not?"
"Harry, your main concern has to be the Dark Lord. You can't waste your time on--"
"I don't think it's a waste of time."
"Anything that distracts from defeating the Dark Lord is a waste of your time."
"Remus has Tonks. Ron has Hermione. Why shouldn't I be able to have what everyone else does?"
"Heroes have to sacrifice. Heroes put the world first. Heroes are doomed from the moment they're born and you're a hero."
"I never asked to be."
"So... what? So you'll just sit back and enjoy the fucking show? Staring at the ceiling wondering 'what if' and wishing it was all different doesn't help a damned thing, Harry, you should know that. You do it often enough and yet you're still here, aren't you?"
"Merlin, you're such a..."
"Insensitive prat? Stupid bastard? Harsh realist?"
"All of the above."
"Harry, you're going to go down in history for this no matter what you do. D'you want to be remembered as the one who saved the world or the one that doomed it?"
"I don't give a flying fuck about history."
"Well you better start or you're going to fuck up the future!"
"... I don't think I can be what you want me to."
"Kings have to be stronger than normal people. They can't give in to sob stories about why Farmer Joe doesn't have his taxes in on time or whatever. He has to be able to send people to the gallows. He has to have a heart of stone. You're not a king, Harry, but you're still a leader. You need to be tough."
"So that's why. You don't want me to love you because I'm supposed to have a "heart of stone"? That's the daftest thing I've ever heard."
"Harry, you're going to have to kill people. There can be no room in your heart for love."
"The only one I have to kill is Voldemort."
"Oh, Harry, grow up! You've never been in a battle, I have! It's kill or be killed out there, and if you die, so does the rest of the world."
"I never wanted to be a hero."
"But you are."
"I don't believe this is only about what you think my responsibility to the world is."
"Changing the subject again, are we? Fine. You really want to know? I don't want to spend my last years in the Dark Lord's prison because of a weak moment when I was twenty."
"Like one little kiss could do that."
"It could."
"Right."
"Harry, you always have to be on guard. The world is your responsibility."
"I want my own life. What right do you have to put that kind of load on me?"
"There are thousands of people out there who just want to live their own lives. What right do you have to take that away from them?"
"That is sick, twisted logic."
"It's still logic."
Harry sighed and flopped down onto the couch. A few minutes of silence passed.
"Oh, and Harry?"
"Mmm?"
"No pressure."
That night Draco gave in to temptation.
Not wanting to wake the others, they placed a silencing charm on the room.
They never heard it coming.
The screams of their dying friends, spells and curses sizzling through the air. Neither knew about the attack until the Death Eaters burst into the bedroom. Harry was killed before he had a chance to find his wand (by a lower-ranking goon who ended up getting killed himself not too long afterward). Draco was captured and brought back to the Dark Lord's stronghold. Because of his father (and his father's connections) he was not killed, but rather sent to the torture chambers until he "repented his sins". He killed himself five years later, using his own blood to write his suicide note - if you could call it that. Two words scrawled on the rough stone floor. No one, not even his father, knew what to make of them.
My Hero.