"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."

-Leonardo da Vinci

.

.

[in its wake came an age of silence

yet with each fond remembrance

we knew

those encountered were not forgotten]

.

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No matter where he ran, people followed.

They flocked to him for different reasons- followers, believers, worshippers, or enemies, bounty hunters, cynics- but they always seemed to find him in the end, showering him in either affection or hatred.

It had been like that since the beginning; when he called for soldiers to pick up their arms and fight, when he hid in the dark, gloomy Grimmauld Place to figure out battle plans. It had happened even before the war had truly started, when it was still brewing under thinly veiled unease, when he was still bright eyed and people looked at him more in awe then in fear.

He didn't quite care. Not anymore.

They called him a liar, a freak, someone who wanted them all to bow down at his feet. Skeptics they were, and as he lashed out at them with a fiery tongue, they hissed at him in response and upped their lies, spreading them far and wide until no one trusted him. Believed him.

But they still followed him, no matter where he went, no matter how crazy they called him. His friends put their lives on the line, his followers, his worshippers they were, they went when he beckoned and called because he still had their faith.

He was their hero, even when he didn't want to be, because that is what they had been told. Even before he had ever met them, when all of them were told his stories at bedtime when they were children, or when hushed words of his continued survival rushed through the grapevine, they knew he was their hero. He had to be. He was.

And when death followed him wherever he went, well, that was just a given wasn't it? He was hero, a survivor- he was. Not them.

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The first ones to fall were his parents, when he was only a year old. They weren't the start of the war, nor were they the end. They were unimportant except for the hero they conceived. Maybe their deaths brought peace for a decade- no one really knew what had happened- but they weren't great. Special. Important. They were heroes, but they weren't. They were any other family in war.

(But they were his first two casualties, the people whispered.)

His third was his Defense teacher, little hero, eleven years old, being strangled to death by his professor. No one knows what happened here either, whispers spread through the school when children saw him and his friends being dragged to the hospital wing, information passing from mouth to mouth as they tried to hear whatever was being said by the professors. Their professor was dead, they knew, because of the hero. The hero killed him.

He killed him.

(Was it any surprise they feared him when the war started?)

His fourth wasn't a casualty. He wasn't dead, but he should have been, for it would have been far nicer.

Memory loss, they said, everyday it rewinds like a clock; "Hello, who are you?". He doesn't remember his own name, they murmur, don't get on the hero's bad side. No one knows what happened, one second the school was shutting down and people were petrified or killed, and then the next he comes up with a half-dead girl, a pale boy, an amnesiac professor, a sword and a bloody diary, and no one questioned it when it was announced the school would open in the fall.

(That would make too much sense wouldn't it?)

His casualties fifth, sixth, and seventh were not dead either, but later they would be.

(Of course they would, following Potter, everyone ends up dead.)

He nearly died his third year, from falling off his broom, and most people wished he did, because death was always lurking around the corner with him. Later that year there were words about Sirius Black at Hogwarts, Professor Lupin was a werewolf, and Snape was almost dead- and they weren't even surprised.

His eighth casualty was a student, someone loved, someone they could hope to beat the hero out.

He wasn't the hero, he was nice, a Hufflepuff, a true student. Normal. He didn't hang around under invisibility cloaks or sneak around serial killers, killing a professor and ruining the life of another. He wasn't stupid. He didn't think he was invincible. He was loved.

His death ruined it for the rest.

(Don't hang around Potter, they mutter, you'll end up dead or worse.)

No one knows his ninth, his tenth, eleventh or twelfth. He's running a Defense group one second and battling Death Eaters the next. He calls you, the students, cowards for not fighting, but fighting isn't what you do. You're not Potter. You're not the hero. You're not someone who can kill, who can fight, who can forgive past grievances simply because you need allies.

You're human. You're afraid. You've been told praises of him since you were children, and then you meet him, and you see his too big robes and hand me down clothes, and you cringe. He's not what you expected.

You're not sure what you expected.

But you know that death follows him everywhere, and you're not sure you want to walk in his shadow.

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PART 2.

disclaimers are in first chapter.

prompt: da vinci quote up there.

prompt: type-o week day one (using the prompts) beginning -or- death