Him

Him

His face seemed to age a dozen years or more as he thought back over the events of the previous few years. Things that he had never planned, had never even considered, had come to pass. Irreversible things. And every single time he picked a different scenario apart there was always one person right at the bottom of it:

Him.

Setting off a fatal chain reaction of problem after problem, events that gathered speed with every twist and turn. Like a rock tumbling down a cliff face, gaining speed, bringing down more rocks in its fall, growing into a gigantic avalanche of trouble. He had caused it all.

Like one domino after another, he had watched people fall, no longer able to cope. All the strongest people he knew had fallen, until he was the only one left standing.

Not that any of it mattered.

Harry was the only one who truly concerned the world. Concerned him. Harry was vital to the world in ways people would never know, in ways Harry would never know.

Now he was gone too.

Not in a physical sense - unlike many he had known, Harry was still physically tied to this plain of life. Mentally however, the young man was completely numb. He could tell a part of Harry had died just over a year ago in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, falling beyond the Veil with Sirius. Those vibrant green eyes had seemed so strangely vacant ever since. It had been a downhill slope from there. With his return no longer a secret, Voldemort had soon resumed his old killing sprees. Death after death hit Harry like blows of an axe, chipping pieces of him way until he was just a shell of the boy he used to be.

Tears welled up in those once twinkling blue eyes and flowed freely down his kindly aged face, trickling into his long silvery beard. He thought back to the happy, carefree boy that had entered his first year at Hogwarts six years ago, a boy so glad to be free from the Dursleys.

How things had changed. The Harry that could be seen now was no longer a boy; he had wisdom beyond his years; and when you looked into his eyes, you saw all the emotion and all the pain their depths held, pain that did not seem to fit eyes so young.

But surely that was to be expected.

How many people are put on Earth to do a job like Harry's: to kill or to be killed? It's not a pleasant choice. Few people find out about the meaning of their lives as early on as Harry did. Few make it their one solitary aim to achieve what they were put here to do. Whether it is to travel around the world, or go to the moon, most people have at least one other aim in life. Sometimes he wondered if the thought of avenging his friends was the only thing that kept Harry alive.

He had no doubt that Harry could do it; there was no question this particularly young man could do extraordinary things. Yet there was a difference between 'could' and 'would'. If it were just a matter of being able to, he himself would have destroyed Voldemort years ago, saving Harry from such torment and pain.

Nevertheless, the past was the past. He could only set his mind on the future. He knew what was to come, although he would never dare tell anyone, least of all Harry. He knew deep down. He had always known - ever since the very first time he had laid eyes on that tiny baby boy nestled in Lily Potter's arms - that this once little bundle of joy would be the one.

From that moment, he had known he would do anything - even putting himself through the ultimate sacrifice if necessary, perhaps even a fate worse than death - to keep Harry alive, to make sure he succeeded. Maybe it was fruitless. For all he knew, with his mission done, when it was all finally over, Harry might well kill himself anyway.

A shadow seemed to rise slowly up his aged face as he sat deep in thought. He knew that even if he did not sacrifice himself to save Harry, his time was near; he had dwelt on this plain for too long. It was time to move on.

He had given everything, just as he had known he would, to make Harry happy.

He might as well give that little bit more.