hackthis_archive | defending your life

There are people who don’t drink. They don’t smoke or do drugs or have random sex or lie or cheat or steal or break the law.

I’m not that kind of person; I don’t know many people who are.

There are people who believe in good and bad, and black and white, and right and wrong, and truth and justice and all that other stuff. There are people who believe in love and trust and faith and other people.

I’m not that sort of person. I see gray and the things in between. I believe in loyalty, and I believe that one day we’re all going to die. What you do in the meanwhile is really up to you.

How much does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or only one?
For a week or for several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say ‘forever?’
-Pablo Neruda

It’s hard to fear that which has already come to pass, it takes some of the surprise out of it; and having already had one…two…several near-death experiences, Harry has no qualms about his mortality. *He* is going to die - how it happens is the only undetermined variable. Whether he falls by the hand of Voldemort or a Death-Eater or too many fried eggs, Harry Potter will die. He has a scar on his forehead and enough antidotes memorized to have that notion firmly engrained in his mind.

Death will come one day, some day.

Harry has dreamt of his own death a thousand times. Last breaths and gasps at the hands, the disembodied voice of the same man; and really, Voldemort has done Harry a favor, an enormous favor, because Harry’s not afraid to die anymore. Life is for living and death is the only constant. Harry takes solace in the idea that it will all end one day, when he becomes The Boy Who Died… well, then it will all be done with.

He harbors no illusions of Philosopher’s Stones and serums that will keep him forever young. Forever young does not equal eternal life and who wants to live forever anyway? What would really be the point in Harry living forever knowing that everyone around him was destined to die anyway? Forever is a concept, not an actually, and if Harry ever told someone he didn’t believe in ‘forever’ they would probably be astonished. But it would be the truth.

Nothing lasts *forever*.

The living child of parents long since dead, and Harry has had enough of living in the past, worshipping that which has long since gone. When Harry dies, it will be his time, of this he is certain, and he takes a sort of solace in it. All the expectations that will fall away, all the whispered voices and eyes studying his movements – gone. Death will bring a certain peace as long as it is his and his alone, because Harry has no issue with his own death, but the thought of losing someone else… that’s where the problems begin.

The nightmares start because Harry doesn’t fear his own death, but he fears the death of others. Of those he loves and cares for: Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and the twins, Ginny, Neville. On some level Harry even fears the death of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. He may hate them with a loathing unsurpassed by much – but they are still his family and they are his only blood ties to his parents. They are still *his* to do with as he wishes, and Harry fears not being able to protect those be loves. He fears watching everyone else die until he’s the only one left.

The Last One Standing.

More than Voldemort, more than being expelled from Hogwarts and going back to a Muggle life, Harry fears being alone – again.

It’s one thing to know he will die; it’s something else entirely to think about someone else’s death. But if Harry dies first, he doesn’t get left alone; and even if for some inexplicable reason he gets expelled, he will still have Ron and Hermione. He will still have Sirius. They will still love him, they will still live on. But if he stays, if he lives on in this world then war will come and death will come. Voldemort and his Death Eaters and rushed funerals and makeshift grave markers. Harry worries not about his death, but for those he might leave behind, those who might have to die for him, because of him, by his hand.

He knows that they will defeat Voldemort if he does not, and he takes a strange kind of relief in knowing that if he dies first – protecting them - he won’t have to watch them die.

Being first would mean not being last, sacrificing for the greater good. Dying a death Harry already expects would ensure the life of so many. And Harry would never be alone because everyone dies eventually. Harry knows that even The Boy Who Lived was never going to live forever.

All legends have to die first.