Ch08

And so the movie goes on…

Harry stood transfixed, watching as the last vestiges of what had once been Voldemort flaked off and drifted away on the wind. When the last ashy flake finally disappeared into the distance, his body seemed to deflate slowly lowering itself to the ground until Harry found himself sitting without actually remembering having done so. He just sat there for a few minutes, slumped forward, arms propped on knees, eyes closed, just breathing.

Breath in, breath out. Tired… God he was tired. Breath in, breath out. But he couldn't sleep, not yet. He had to see it. He had to see it all. Breath in, breath out. With a deep, weary breath, Harry opened his eyes and pushed himself up off the ground and started to walk. He walked slowly as he looked out at the destruction he had wrought. Hogwarts lay in ruins, so much of it reduced to rubble around his feet. If only Hogwarts was the only casualty, he thought bitterly to himself, but it's not just rubble I'm walking through, is it? No, he could see the dead scattered all around him.

Deatheaters, students, teachers, and friends. All those ideals they fought and died for. So much dust and smoke now. So many differences separated them all in life, but now they're all equal. All equally dead. Because of him. Because of bloody HARRY POTTER! Ron had told him once that no one had died for him, that everyone had their own reasons to fight, to put their lives on the line. Ron had been right, nobody died for him. They'd died because of him.

Harry was the warm little glow of light they'd all gathered 'round. His were the words they heeded, the orders they accepted. He'd tried to tell them; all he'd had was an edge, and a small one at that. He hadn't known what he was doing for the most part. Every decision he'd made was through conjecture, every action he took was improvised. No plan he'd ever made actually worked. And still they had flocked to him, making him their center, the banner they rallied around.

And look what my so-called leadership has brought them! Harry wept silently as he walked and took in the destruction around him. He wept openly, his tears making little runnels down cheeks encrusted with blood and filth. His aimless wandering eventually carried him inside the ruin that was once Hogwarts. There too, death and destruction bore silent testimony to his utter failure to keep anyone safe. How many owls will travel to mothers and fathers only to tell them their children are dead? What warmth will this victory give them as they lower their children into the ground?

Victory. The word was like acid in the back of his throat. The war may have ended in our favor, but this is no victory. "Pity the living," Dumbledore was right. It's the living that must carry on through the aftermath. With these bitter truths tearing through his heart, Harry stumbled on. Eventually he found himself at the back entrance of the Great Hall. He stopped in a shadowed nook just before the entrance and just… watched, drinking in the sight of the living like a man dying of thirst.