The wind died down, almost as quickly as it had arisen and left behind a deafening silence that permeated the entire forest. Barren branches strewn carelessly across the woodland landscape lay torn and splintered, orphaned by their once lofty dwelling place in the sky. Fragments of nature’s debris littered the earthly windswept floor as smatterings of soil and dust clung to every piece of its ragged terrain.
Harry rose slowly to his feet.
“Nobody move!” he yelled at Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, having caught sight of them coming towards him out the corner of his eye.
They stopped immediately in their tracks, standing perfectly still. All of them listened ” for what they weren’t entirely sure. Harry too stood frozen. He scanned the area, and they held their collective breaths. There was no trace of the Dark Lord. The stillness in the air broke with the rustling of a nearby bush and the four of them practically jumped out of their skins. Harry sharply took aim at its overgrown branches. His heart pounded in his chest and he waited in anticipation for the denizen within the bush to reveal itself. Could it be Voldemort? Harry wondered. Could the Dark Lord have survived, yet again? Or was this perhaps, pondered Harry, some clever ruse put into place by Voldemort to distract him? Harry’s mind strayed and visions of being stalked by the Dark Lord crept into his now paranoid thoughts. He cast his eyes on the surrounding trees and looked for anything even remotely suspicious; his wand remained poised upon the bush. A twig snapped from somewhere underneath it. Harry quickly fixed his green eyes upon it once more. He steadied himself and watched as a furry, gray rabbit sprang out innocently into the open. Briskly, it wiggled its tiny, pink nose up at him and casually hopped away. Harry exhaled. He smiled sheepishly at his friends, lowered his wand and finally let down his guard.
And that’s when he heard it.
“Harrrryyy…”
A faint whisper really, nothing more.
“Harrrryyy…”
It called to Harry from somewhere on the wind. The sound of it grew, weaving in and about, like a thousand echoes all around him. The others heard it too. It rose in volume, escalating at one point before suddenly diminishing, only to return again swelling in Harry’s ears. It didn’t take long for any of them to recognize it, for it was unmistakable. The voice of Lord Voldemort rang out around them and Harry, purely on instinct, tightened the grip on his wand. He looked around, almost as if he were searching for a Golden Snitch. Except now, thought Harry, his feet were planted firmly on the ground and what he sought, he knew, was much more elusive.
“Haven’t you ever wondered Harry…” he felt Voldemort’s voice sweep over him, “why you didn’t die that night in Godric’s Hollow?”
Of course I have, thought Harry. It was a question that still haunted him like none other, even now; even after all that Harry had learned about his mother’s sacrifice and the prophecy.
“Or why it is that you possess some of my powers?” the Dark Lord’s voice continued to ebb and flow.
Harry stood in place. He tried anxiously to piece it all together; his wand ” as always ” at the ready, even if right now he hadn’t a clue exactly where or at what to point it.
“Harry…think,” the Dark Lord’s silky voice mocked in Harry’s ear, so closely in fact, that he could have sworn he actually felt Voldemort’s breath on his neck; the likes of which sent a slight shiver down the middle of Harry’s back.
“Why is it that you haven’t yet been able to erase the last remaining fragments of my soul from existence?” Lord Voldemort asked.
Simple, thought Harry. He had obviously missed a Horcrux, just as the Dark Lord had said.
“Exactly,” he heard Voldemort reply, as though he had quite clearly read Harry’s mind. “But not just any Horcrux, Harry,” added the Dark Lord with pleasure, “you missed the most important one of all...you.”
Voldemort’s words lingered in the air for a moment. They resounded sharply in Harry's head and he tried desperately to make sense of what was being said. His breath ” having grown shallow and uneven ” seemed to drag his thoughts downward like a lead balloon into what Harry was certain had to be the absolute deepest, darkest hole that he had ever known.
“No…” the word caught slightly in the back of Harry’s throat. It stumbled out of his mouth in the smallest of voices; weak, yet somehow overflowing with an enormous amount of sorrow.
This was the reason, thought Harry, why he survived. It was the same reason that he and Voldemort shared so many powers ” because somewhere deep, down inside of Harry laid the remaining one-seventh of the Dark Lord’s soul. Harry wanted to run and hide; to be anyone or anything other than what he was at that very moment.
He heard the familiar rustling of leaves from behind and Harry was sure that the same gust of wind that had carried Lord Voldemort away had returned this time for him. The cold, high-pitched shriek of the Dark Lord’s laughter filled the air. It rose and then fell as unpredictably as the wind on which it was carried, reminding Harry of the chaos that he was sure now lay within.
And then, everything fell silent again.
“Oh, I don’t like this,” noted Ron, his voice quavering with unease. “I don’t like this one bit. Harry, c’mon let’s get out of here!”
“Ron!” snapped Hermione and she pressed her finger to her lips.
“What!” Ron replied incredulously. “Do you seriously think that we should just stand here and wait for that bloody wind to come back? Because I’m tellin’ yeh, I don’t know what’s creepier, that wind or this eerie silence!”
“Harry, what’s happening?” Hermione asked. She ignored Ron's words.
Harry turned to answer, but found that his mouth had gone dry. He just stood there in silence…and waited.
Suddenly, Harry’s scar exploded and he felt as though he was struck from behind; the force knocked him to his knees. Blinded by excruciating pain, Harry grasped his forehead. His wand slipped out of his hand and fell to the ground a few feet away. Harry felt the Dark Lord wrap himself tightly around his insides and fuse with the young wizard as he took possession of him; a seemingly indestructible bond that Harry knew this time was permanent. The pain was beyond anything Harry had ever felt in his life, and he knew that he no longer wanted to escape. He wanted to die.
Harry felt his eyes bulge as Voldemort settled in behind them and attempted to focus. Lifting Harry’s own fingers, the Dark Lord mechanically wiggled them about as though he were merely trying on a new set of skin.
“Harry?”
He heard the faint sound of Ginny’s voice as she called out to him; mindful of the fact that he had never heard her sound as frightened for him as she did now. Harry saw her start in hard towards him, with Ron and Hermione in tow. They hobbled from the hits they had taken earlier. Harry watched in horror as the Dark Lord raised the hand closest to them and waved it maliciously at his friends. Harry tried desperately to exert some level of control over himself. He resisted, finding that the urge to follow through was too great, and before he knew it, his hand cast a shockwave that sent a ripple though the three of them. They flew several feet backwards onto the ground.
Harry screamed and Voldemort, laughing at the boy’s feeble attempt to control his own actions, lowered Harry’s hand again.
It does no good to resist, Harry,” he heard the Dark Lord say in his mind, and it will be much less painful, once you accept it.”
“Never!” Harry roared and he struggled to withstand the pain he felt. He would never accept this.
Harry tried to get to his feet.
Trust me…it is not as bad as it seems, Voldemort soothed. Once you submit to my will, I promise you the pain will subside.
Harry tried repeatedly to cast off the Dark Lord’s influence upon him. He stumbled and fell to the ground again. The pain pounded relentlessly against every corner of his brain. It traveled mercilessly down every nerve ending in his body. Harry’s muscles seized and he felt a rather strange sensation take over his mind. It was as though he were being pulled towards a specific choice, not of his own making. Harry’s mind relaxed and with it the agonizing pain. His soul was starting to surrender and he didn’t even feel much like he cared.
That’s it, Harry, reinforced the Dark Lord. Relax.
Harry felt his arms go limp.
Good, replied Voldemort as he too felt the boy’s lack of resistance. Now, isn’t that much better? The Dark Lord squealed with delight.
And it was, thought Harry, in a strange sort of way for he no longer felt the blinding pain or the urgent need to resist.
With your notoriety and my methods no one will dare stop me, Lord Voldemort hissed with pleasure inside Harry’s mind. The Wizarding world will once again bow to me.
“But there will be resistance,” Harry vaguely heard himself say and a flash of familiar faces drifted past his subconscious.
Lupin. Tonks. Moody. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Mr. & Mrs. Weasley. The faces of those who had fought so long and so hard against the Dark Lord flooded Harry’s mind, one after the other.
Not to worry, reassured Voldemort. Once I have split your soul ” as I have my own ” nothing they do will matter.
The words bobbed around in Harry’s mind like a cork on the open sea. He tried desperately to focus upon what Voldemort had just said but Harry felt drugged and his thoughts lagged behind. He knew that Voldemort had just said something ” something that had made a part of Harry somewhere deep down inside sit up and take notice…but what? And why was it suddenly so hard to think?
‘Once I have split your soul ” as I have my own,’ Harry summoned from the deep recesses of his mind. That was what the Dark Lord had said, recalled Harry with certainty and suddenly it all rushed back. Lord Voldemort was planning to do to Harry what he had done to himself. He was going to sever Harry’s soul.
“No!” shouted Harry. The thick fog over his mind lifted and the agonizing pain returned.
This has to end now, he thought. The blinding pain seared upon his scar.
You can’t win, Harry, he heard the Dark Lord say from somewhere deep in his thoughts. You won’t! Voldemort added with conviction.
Unable to move very far, Harry writhed in pain. He felt as though he were going to be quite sick. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny ” having crept slowly back towards him from where they were thrown ” eyed Harry with grave concern. Harry was sure that to them he must have looked as though he were losing his mind and wondered if in fact he actually was.
One shot, thought Harry. If they could just get one shot at Voldemort this whole thing would finally be over.
“Ron!” Harry shouted in excruciating pain to his best friend. “Finish it!”
“Harry…no,” Ron replied and stared at him in utter disbelief at what he was being asked to do. “I can’t kill you.” He paused, considering, “I don’t think I could if I wanted to.” His expression was both pained and apologetic at once.
“Hermione…please!” Harry begged. He hoped that she would be the one to follow through.
“No, Harry listen to me…Ron’s right!” yelled Hermione. “None of us are equipped to handle an Unforgivable curse, much less invoke the sheer malice that we would need to do it. It’s not in our nature. There has to be another way!” she added and the distraught look upon her face told Harry that she was desperately trying to think of some spell or charm that she had read about in one of her many books.
Shamefully, Harry’s eyes drifted towards Ginny, who stood before him with a pleading look upon her face as if to say please, don’t even ask. Harry dropped his eyes to the ground and heard the low, evil cackle of the Dark Lord’s laughter resound again in his head.
You see, Harry? Whispered Voldemort. No one will dare touch me. There will be some ” like your friends ” who can’t and others that simply won’t, for fear of harming you. Your body is the perfect fortress for my soul.”
The Dark Lord’s words washed over Harry and he found himself painfully aware of what the future was indeed going to hold for him; a life ” if he could even call it that ” full of hatred, malice, and death.
“…for neither can live while the other survives…”
The words of the Lost Prophecy echoed in Harry’s ears, knowing now its true meaning. He and Lord Voldemort were one in the same and for Harry’s body to live, meant that his soul had to die.
Harry closed his eyes, swallowed hard and felt desperation settle in the pit of his stomach. What am I suppose to do now? thought Harry, for he knew that the Dark Lord was right. No one, not even Harry’s closest friends, could help him now. Harry felt trapped, reduced to nothing more than an unwilling participant in his own body. He would be forced to do the Dark Lord’s bidding. Eternity, it seemed, was no longer a distant reality for Harry. It was his here and now; his present and future.
So, that’s it? Harry heard a defiant little voice rise up from somewhere within, you’re just giving up, then? He knew he didn’t want to, but Harry didn’t know what else to do. Some ‘chosen one’ you turned out to be, berated the little voice. Harry felt the heat of anger rise up into his chest. This isn’t my fault! Harry retorted silently to himself. He hadn’t asked for this to happen…for any of it. All that he had ever wanted was to be like everyone else; to grow up in his own home, surrounded by his own parents, and live a relatively normal wizard’s life...whatever the hell that meant, thought Harry. Normal was a word that had never described him. He became different the very moment that the Dark Lord struck his parents down and then tried to do the same to him.
A steady stream of familiar sights flashed before Harry’s eyes; similar he couldn’t help but think to the way his cousin Dudley described the Muggle movies he had often enjoyed at the local cinema. It was one of the many things Harry had never been allowed to do growing up. But he always imagined the film spinning on its reel, projecting a series of wonderfully fascinating pictures up onto a giant white screen; much the same way, thought Harry, as the pictures now in his head…except there was nothing wonderful about them. The visions of Harry’s life reeled through his mind: the endless parade of insults he endured at the hands of his Uncle Vernon…the gaping stares at the scar on his forehead…the constant whispering behind his back…the rattling, foul stench of a Dementor’s kiss…and Cedric’s death. That last one still haunted him, as did the survivor’s guilt he’d felt afterwards.
And that wasn’t all. Next, came the flash of Voldemort’s rebirth…detention with that awful woman, Umbridge…and Sirius’ death. He had thought that he was going to the Ministry of Magic that night to save his godfather; an act that now in Harry’s mind had only managed to cement Sirius’ fate. Harry felt the burden of guilt rest heavily upon his shoulders and it angered him to think how stupid he was to allow the Dark Lord to use him like that. The reel in his mind continued to spin: being possessed by Voldemort in the Atrium…the Lost Prophecy…and finally, Dumbledore’s murder. Harry swelled with anger, incensed by the injustice of it all. He was outraged that the one person responsible for all of it was about to use him to continue the reign of terror. Only if you let him, that defiant little voice spoke up inside of Harry again.
Harry knew that he couldn’t allow Voldemort to use him like that again. He couldn’t do that to himself, but perhaps more importantly, he couldn’t do it to his friends, or any of the others for that matter, who had either given their lives or spent them trying to stop the spread of the Dark Lord’s ways.
Carefully, Harry eyed his wand. It was only a few feet away, and allowing his eyes to drift upward he looked at Ginny. She stood just on the other side of it; the wand lay directly between them. Ginny locked eyes with him, and Harry noticed that the look in hers now mirrored his own, almost as if they had reached the very same conclusion at the exact same time. Her eyes softened a bit and Harry saw reflected back at him a lifetime of love that he’d never have the opportunity to know firsthand. His heart melted and tenderly, he mouthed the words I love you.
Silently, Harry called forth his wand from the ground. It landed firmly in his grip. The bitter anger inside of him subsided and Harry found that another force ” a more powerful one ” was beginning to emerge. A series of other pictures flashed through his memory, almost as though someone had switched the reel on the projector in his head: the squashed birthday cake that Hagrid gave him the first time they met…the joy of leaving the Dursley's behind…and meeting Ron on the Hogwarts Express. Harry had always felt blessed that it was Ron he ended up sharing a compartment with that fateful day. It had, quite literally, led him to the most solid friendship he had ever known. Then, came the rush of riding a broom for the very first time and making friends with Hermione. That was perhaps, thought Harry, the smartest thing he’d ever done. Her intelligence and her loyalty had gotten them out of so many messes, but it was her unwavering friendship that he treasured most.
Next, was the Burrow…freeing Dobby from the Malfoy’s…winning the House Cup…and being asked to live with Sirius. These were followed by memories of saving his godfather by the edge of the lake…the DA…kissing Ginny.
The warmth of these memories washed over Harry and left behind a subtle reassurance that filled up his insides. Harry knew what he was feeling. Dumbledore had mentioned it to him on numerous occasions. It was the power of love; the power that the Dark Lord knew not. It was Harry’s greatest strength, and it was prompting him to make the most profound sacrifice of all.
Harry looked down at the wand in his hand. He could feel Voldemort’s soul struggle inside of him as the Dark Lord resisted and tried to regain control. Harry found that the anger he’d felt inside was not nearly as strong as the love that consumed him now. He would not allow Voldemort to go on hurting the ones he loved, thought Harry, and the sacrifice to ensure their safety suddenly, in his eyes, seemed well worth the price.
Harry raised his wand and closing his eyes, felt a sense of peace wash over him. Selflessly, he turned the wand inward and bellowed "Avada Kedavra!"
Harry felt his back arch and a blinding whirlwind of light burst forth from his chest. It knocked him again to his knees. He heard Voldemort let out a horrifyingly vile and grisly scream that shook the entire forest. Harry fought to keep his eyelids open against the force emanating from his own body and watched as the Dark Lord’s spirit thrashed about violently in a cyclone of light. The radiant beam in Harry's chest tugged at Voldemort, who tried dreadfully to resist the slaughter of the remaining remnants of his soul.
Harry’s body shook uncontrollably. He gasped for air and a white noise buzzed in his ears. The forest around Harry faded, and the sounds surrounding him drifted away. In the white light radiating from his body, Harry saw the pale outline of three faces emerge. Two of them hovered together off to one side; a man and a woman. Harry would have recognized them anywhere. The woman’s brilliant green eyes were exactly like his and the man’s black, unruly hair was reminiscent of Harry’s own. His mum and dad lingered above him with compassion in their eyes. They spoke to Harry and assured him that the worst was almost over.
Harry’s eyes drifted to the third face. His godfather, Sirius, peered down at him. His ragged appearance and tired face seemed much younger now, more vibrant than Harry had ever recalled seeing him. Sirius, too, spoke and urged Harry onward. Between the three faces, tumbled Voldemort’s soul. It twisted and turned, churning madly about. The piercing shriek of the Dark Lord’s screams resonated sharply in Harry’s ears and at last Voldemort’s soul shattered. Bursting apart, it cast a million tiny points of dismal light that then fizzled out and dissolved before ever reaching the ground.
Harry’s body flew violently backwards and struck the forest’s hard, dirt floor. The light radiating from his chest disappeared and his wand ” gently rolling out of his cold, limp hand ” landed next to him on the ground.
“Harry!” Ron heard Ginny cry as the three them hastily made their way towards him.
“Harry, please…wake up!” she sobbed and Ron watched as his sister flung herself down next to Harry on the ground. “Can you hear me?” Ginny asked, her voice breaking. She was waiting for an answer, thought Ron that she somehow already knew she would never receive.
Stunned and completely numb from head to toe, Ron stared at Hermione who gently rested her hand upon Ginny’s shoulder. It paused there as if to say it’s too late. No longer able to bear the awful truth, Ron felt Hermione turn and fall into the comfort of his own arms. He welcomed her without hesitation and watched as Ginny wept over Harry’s lifeless body.
The boy who lived…was no more.
Footnotes:
“…for neither can live while the other survives…” **Page 841, The Order of the Phoenix
“The boy who lived…” **Page 17, The Sorcerer’s Stone