Harry Potter

Harry Potter: The Boy Who Broke:

"I am sorry, Harry, it is the only way. Only you can defeat him. I would not ask such a thing of you if there was any other way we could do this, I would gladly swap places with you if I could, but alas, I do not command the power for such a task. Possibly in my youth I may have done, but no, not even then.

"This is your destiny, Harry, your destiny. You must do this. I am truly sorry it has come to this."

The twenty-one year old Harry Potter just stared blankly back at his former headmaster as he calmly sentenced him to death. His mind was working a mile a minute and he was starting to feel dizzy. He could feel his legs shake beneath him. He took a deep breath before he spoke.

"Are you sure there is no other way?" His words came out no more than a whisper.

" I am sure, Harry."

Harry sighed deeply and put his head in his hands, making his messy raven hair even messier. He felt a single tear form in his eye and slowly fall down the side of his face. He swiped at it angrily and brushed it away. No, I'm not going to cry now he told himself. I can't cry, I need to be strong. I didn't cry when Bill died, or Remus, or Severus, or Neville, or... or Ron... or Hermione...

The thoughts of Ron and Hermione nearly made him totally lose control and break down, but he slowly mastered himself.

Harry was used to bottling up his emotions to stay strong , but it was getting harder and harder for him, now than ever.

As he struggled to control his emotions he felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. He clung to it as if his life depended on it.

"You do not have to do this until you are ready, Harry."

Harry let out a hollow laugh.

"When will I ever be ready to face this?"

"You will know when the time is right."

"The time will never be right, and if it ever is it'll be a hundred years from now!"

Harry suddenly felt very angry with the old man standing behind him.

"How can you make me do such a thing Albus? Are you aware that I actually have feelings, or am I just an important weapon in the war to you? You may not care about me, but there are people who do. How can I just leave them behind? Did you even give them a second thought? I'm not leaving them, I can't, I won't.

"I can't leave Lily to grow up without her father. I know how that feels and I'm not going to put her through it. How could I? I couldn't. I just can't leave her to grow up without me.

"Did you even think about Lily? Or Ginny? How do you think she's going to feel when I tell her that I've been sentenced to death by a man I thought of as my dearest friend? How do you think she's going to feel, Albus? I'm everything to her, Albus. I don't know what she'd do if I died; it would destroy her. I can't do that to her, I just can't."

"Harry, think of everyone who has died so far. Do you wish for it to continue? Do you wish for more innocent lives to be destroyed, for more innocent blood to be spilled? You have the power to stop it all Harry, to end it all. Think of how many lives you would be saving Harry. Your death would not be in vain, you would be saving the world, your death would be of the noblest kind. Do you really think that your life is more important than the rest of the world? "

Harry snorted and pushed away the old time-worn hand resting on his shoulder. Standing up her turned around to look his former headmaster in the eye.

"Do you really think I care about how I die? Do you think I'm saying all this to save my own skin? No Albus, you're wrong.

"I care about my life, of course I do, and of course I don't want to die, but I could get over that quite easily with the knowledge that I would be saving lives.

"No, I am finding this hard to accept because if I do this then Lily is going to grow up without her father, she'll never know her dad, me.

"If I do this I'll never be able to be with Ginny again. I've loved her since I was fourteen; she's loved me since she was eleven, we were meant to be together forever, that's my destiny, to be with Ginny forever, not this saving the world shit.

"If I do this I have to leave Ginny to bring up Lily by herself. I'll never be able to be with them again, we'll never be a family.

"If I do this I'll be destroying my family.

"I've always wanted a real family, Albus, ever since I was old enough to realise what one was, and now that I've got one, a real one, it's about to be ripped apart, because I have to go save the world for the last time.

"Since I was eleven I've been saving the world and fighting evil one way or another, and I always dreamed of a time when I could live in peace, with my family and friends. But that's never going to happen now is it? Because YOU have decided that I must die to save the world, regardless of how I feel. Did you even stop to think that I may not want to save everyone, that some things are more important to me?"

"Harry, you would be saving millions, even billions of people by doing this."

Harry let out a frustated growl and started pacing around the office. He couldn't believe how ignorant Albus was being. After a while he stopped and turned back to him.

"Don't you get it, Albus? I don't care about them anymore, I don't give a shit what happens to them, they're not my responsibility anymore.

"There's only two people in this world in this world I care about now, and that's Ginny and Lily, my family, everyone else that I cared about is either dead or has betrayed me.

"Don't you see, Albus? I care about them more than every other human being on this planet, and if it was a choice between saving them or the world, I'd choose them, and as that practically is the choice laid before me, I choose them.

"For ten years I've been saving the world. Ten years. I didn't have a real childhood because I was too busy saving the world, and now you want me to do it again, for the last time. Well I'm not going to. I'm sick of it. I'm not going to destroy my family.

"I'm no longer the hero. It's no longer my responsibility. Find someone else to save the world, because I'm not going to. Some things are more important to me than saving stranger's lives, like my family. I'm sorry, Albus, but I just can't do it. I'm already to blame for destroying my friend's lives. I'm not going to do the same to my family."

With that Harry Potter Apparated out of the underground bunker that served as an office and a second later appeared in Greenfields, a small village near Bristol he lived on the outskirts of, in a cottage with his family.

He half-walked, half-stumbled up the road to his home, his emotions threatening to take him over. He was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and didn't have the faintest clue how he had managed to apparate from London to Greenfields without splinching himself.

As he struggled to control his emotions, he saw a shadowy figure emerge in front of him, walking quickly towards him.

With energy he didn't know he had he whipped out his wand and cast a magical shield around himself and walked cautiously towards the dark figure. As it got closer it quickened it's pace. Taking a deep breath, Harry stopped walking and held his wand steady in his right hand, ready to duel.

As the figure walked in to the light of the road, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Disabling the magical shield from around himself, he walked towards the now identified figure without a thought for caution. However, this was a big mistake.

Before he knew what was happening, Harry had been hit by the Jelly Legs hex. Not even bothering to resist it, he collapsed to the ground and waited for the curse to be withdrawn. When it was, he stood up quickly and brushed himself off. As he finished brushing himself off, he became aware that the person who had hexed him was standing directly in front of him, not even a foot away from his nose.

"Where the hell have you been, Harry! I thought you said you'd only be an hour? It's been two and a half bloody hours! Where were you? Couldn't you have owled? Has something happened? You shouldn't worry me you know, it's scary, and.. and.."

Coming up closer to Harry, Ginny Weasley gasped as she looked in her husband's eyes. She had never seen such a look in them before.

A pain was in them, a deep pain, deeper than the soul, a pain made up of long years of guilt and grief, a pain he had never let out, a pain he had kept bottled up inside under lock and key for as long as he could remember, a pain he had kept inside to protect others, this pain was now threatening to break free and destroy the man she loved. It broke her heart to see him like this.

Ginny rested her forehead on her husband's, and looked into his eyes. It was easier to look into his eyes now then it was when they were kids, because they were the same height now.

"What happened tonight Harry?" she whispered.

Getting no response from him except a slow shake of the head, she sighed and, after kissing him softly on the cheek, she took his hand in hers and led her husband home to be with his family, the only people he cared for more than the world and everything in it.