Hero
Disclaimer: No, not mine, couldn't handle them if they were, though I wouldn't mind the money. JK Rowling, as I'm sure you all know, is in charge of these characters.
Summary: Either must die at the hands of the other. Harry is clearly destined for greatness of one kind or another. A drabbley one-shot first post.
In the end, killing Voldemort was perhaps the least heroic thing I'd ever done.
Either must die at the hands of the other. It seems fairly airtight as prophecies go. I would be the one to face him down in the final moment of the battle. I would walk out across the field as smoke drifted past me. We'd duke it out, two titans of magic, firing spells until one of them hit. Him and me. Equals. It was all very cinematic in my head. Like all the best laid plans, that particular scenario never came to pass. I would have lost anyway had it done so. I know that now, and in a way I knew that even then. Fear was always an overriding emotion when I though about that Final Battle.
Oh, I was trained of course. Members of the Order of the Phoenix, instructors from other lands, Dumbledore himself much of the time- they all came to me to impart their wisdom. I wasn't a bad student. You don't produce a patronus at the age of fourteen without some raw talent. I could have become an Auror eventually. I definitely reached above the average level for a seventh year Hogwarts student. But nothing I did could compare to the talent of even the seventeen year old Tom Riddle, one of the most promising students ever to pass through the school. I could have bested Hermione in a duel, but Lord Voldemort himself? I doubt I could have taken Professor McGonagall.
In the end, the battle went down rather differently than I imagined. It took place on the grounds of Hogwarts, as a part of me always felt it should. There were hordes of witches and wizards, the occasional Dark Creature, and yes there was smoke. Smoke and Blood and Bodies galore. It was dreadful and gritty and confusing and not at all magnificent, as I always believed war would be.
The only thing missing was me. I would have gone out, I tell myself that everyday, I told myself that as I stood safe in the warded classroom within the castle, watching my friends battle ultimate evil, but Dumbledore made me promise. That platitude has answered many accusations over the years. My friends bled and died outside in the cold and the smoke, and when every Deatheater had been killed or subdued, when most of the Light had been as well, Dumbledore called me out. It was he who did most of the fighting against Voldemort, tag teaming with the rest of the Order and much of the Hogwarts faculty. Voldemort was good, I doubt there could have been a man or woman to stand against him one on one, but no-one can be everywhere at once. In almost all cases, quantity will overcome quality in a head on battle. Ultimately he was stripped of much of his magic, his wand taken, and his body pinned physically to the ground by at least three people. I walked across the now secured battlefield and Dumbledore handed me a sword, dirtied with the blood of who knows who or how many, his hands shaking with fatigue, and didn't look in my eyes as he silently bade me to end it.
In the end, it was not the shouted curse that took Voldemort out, I might not have had the magic in me to wrest Voldemort's life from his body. It was not the faint crackle and swoosh of a nice clean Avada Kedavra. It was the swing of the sword and the sickly sound of flesh and bone rending, the dull thunk of a head hitting the ground and the retching sound of me vomiting.
Those who were not at the battle tried to tell me I was a hero. Those who were tried to tell me I did the only thing I could, that I was too valuable to risk in open war. But I see the disappointment, disillusionment and faint disgust in their eyes, and I turn away.