Behind the Lines
Part seven: Gryffindor Red
I'm a Gryffindor, my brother is a Gryffindor, my sister is a Gryffindor, my father was a Gryffindor, my grandfather was a Gryffindor. It's what defines me and guides me, the traits I show for it. I'm brave, headstrong, and I believe that there are things worth dying for.
My family is deeply involved in the fight against Voldemort. Every day, there are more deaths and more destruction, and I've already seen my father die at a Death Eater's hands. I'm already so deeply enmeshed in this that I don't even remember why I feel so strongly against it. I fight because it's in my blood and because it's as much a part of me as my hand. I fight because, frankly, I wouldn't be able to stand not fighting.
It seems like such a terrible thing to do, even worse than being evil; not fighting. At least the Death Eaters have strength in their convictions, enough that they're willing to fight for them. But someone who doesn't fight, someone who hangs back and thinks that they can just ride on other people's achievements, that look up to a hero and call him wonderful while relying on them and sleeping soundly in their beds, thinking that they aren't needed. It's to avoid being someone like that that I fight.
It's so typical of a Gryffindor, they say. We just jump out in a glorious charge, screaming our war song and selling our lives dearly, anything to take another bad guy with us. We're the heroes, and we stain the ground red with blood when we take them down with us.
We stain the ground Gryffindor red.
And we're all heroes; it's the defining trait of a Gryffindor. But I want to be more than a hero. I want to be a legend. Because heroes get remembered, sure, but legends… Legends never die.
If I have to go down to the Death Eaters, if they kill me, I'd like it to take more than one, you know. Because no one will remember if you don't leave anything but a body to commemorate that someone fought here, something huge happened at this site. But they'll remember if you leave a body and a few other cloaked bodies and a story of a man who fought like hell and died like a hero, ready to stain the ground with blood the color of the life he forged for himself. They'll remember if it took 5 or 6 Death Eaters to kill me, and that's what I want.
I want to stain the ground Gryffindor red when they kill me, then they'll have to say that no matter how much of a blood traitor I may be, they're glad they don't have to face me again. They'll have to remember that it's a defining trait of Gryffindors: We don't go down without a fight.
Because heroes and legends are made by fighting and blood and red and if it takes a kamikaze blast, a divine wind, to cement me into legend-dom, then that's what I'll do.
I'll stain the ground Gryffindor red.