Where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at

last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s

welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to

life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a

Wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done

in Godric’s Hollow would be finished. Neither would live, neither could survive.

He felt his heart pounding fiercely 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. How many would there be time for, as he rose and

walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?

Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding

inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to

happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had

Always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to

Try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the

thing itself: dying.

If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had left number four,

Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix feather wand had saved him! If he

could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened!

Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved . . . He

envied even his parents’ deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction

Would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made

An effort to control them, although no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were

All empty.

Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware

Of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he

was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone . . . or at least, he would be

Gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely

Dry, but so were his eyes.

Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger

plan: Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never

Questioned his own assumption that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that his

Life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes.

Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had

continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life! How

Neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy

Who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity,

But another blow against Voldemort.

And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 610