Natural Reaction

Natural Reaction.

They've taken away my wand and I am powerless against them all. I know exactly what they plan to do with me, that particular fact hasn't been a secret for many years. I will never join them. They know this and they will kill me.

They tied my hands behind me even though they know I'm totally defenceless and outnumbered, a sadistic nod towards humiliation, I suppose.

They're taking me to their leader, a cliché which would have made me smile had the circumstances been different. I know what I am to face and I'm not scared. I'm not scared of the man who killed my parents. I've faced him before and felt the sheer power radiating off him. I've faced him before and survived. I've faced him before and this time I will die.

I had been captured on a routine mission, nothing particularly important. God knows how they knew where to find me, I suspect a spy. Snape can't be the only person playing both sides in this war. I know how important my capture is to both sides, and they certainly haven't wasted any time in letting everybody know where I am. I wonder how everyone has taken it.

My two cloaked guards stop in front of a door and push it open. Another push and I stumble into the chamber. The room is massive and they're all there to watch me breathe my last. All his little minions have turned out for this. I'm obscurely flattered. I pass those loyal followers he broke out of Azkaban and those too clever to have been caught. I pass spies, informers and former classmates. I pass him, flanked as always by his own henchmen, standing like bodyguards beside him. He smiles in triumph a I stumble past him to the front of the room to where the instrument of my death sits and waits like an old, contented spider.

I am not scared of him, but I am scared of dying. A natural reaction for a twenty year-old, I think. I had so many other things I wanted to do. I want to fly one last time, feel the fluttering wings of the Snitch as it struggles in my hand. I want to have sex, see the world, learn to play a musical instrument, eat sushi and find the last three Chocolate Frog cards that have been eluding me for almost ten years. I want to stand on top of tall buildings and scream with the pleasure of just being alive. I want to have a family, kiss my best friend's sister and win the war.

But now I know I won't.

Life never works out the way you plan, does it?

He rises from his chair, drawing out his wand. I understand why they follow him so blindly when I see him like this. Maybe in another world I did. Another world where I turned my back on my friends and helped to destroy them all and everything my parents believed in.

He looks at me.

"It doesn't have to be this way."

"Go to hell."

"Avada Kedavra."

~*~

Harry watched the lifeless body of Draco Malfoy fall to the ground under Dumbledore's wand, suddenly struck by the terrifying truth. He looked up at the faces of his friends and colleagues. Ron and Hermione, standing beside him looked relieved that it was all over. Sirius was smiling next to Remus Lupin and Hagrid. Professor Snape was the only one there who looked sickened.

Harry looked at him staring at the corpse of his old student and finally understood the truth...