Nightmares (HP) (Drarry)

twenty six: i don't want to die

Luna Lovegood tells Hermione, Harry, and Draco about the future she has seen and read of. The horcrux hunt. How Harry and Voldemort's lives are connected by stolen blood. How one dies with the other. There are parts she does not state, but parts she would if one asked. (It does not make it any better, I fear. A lie of omission is still a lie, a secret not entirely meant to be kept is still a secret.)

"Do you want to hear how you're going to die?" Harry didn't. But, then again, it is not like anyone has ever cared about what he wanted before. She was right, when she called her scheme her Greater Good. Accurate. Because this situation reminds him eerily of Dumbledore. Reeks of it.

Why do you know so much and tell so little?

Harry doesn't forgive her. Doesn't think he ever will. She cursed him, and it is just as Dumbledore is to send him to his death, because he doesn't care for the reason. Let him be selfish, because hasn't he earned it? Let him value his life and want to keep it his own. He's earned it.

But Harry doesn't snap at Luna for this. He suspects she already knows, and does not blame him. Harry doesn't exclaim how angry he is, how his heart has learned to hate and always has room for more, how the scars on his hand will dimmen but always, always remain. 

He instead says, quietly, "I don't want to die." Instead, he repeats, louder, "I don't want to die!"

Because she told him they must destroy Voldemort's soul fragment to destroy Voldemort, and Harry, ever the target, has been cursed in more ways than one. His parents are dead, had died too soon, and however much that used to crush him, it is not as pressing as the fact that he does not want to join them.

"I don't want to die," he says, and it is the truth. Draco stares in wonder at his self-preservation, previously refusing to rear its head. Draco adores him for it, finds it more attractive than had he held back tears and asked only if it would hurt. (Harry was almost sorted into Slytherin for a reason.)

"I have a right to the future that I'm forced to fight for," Harry says, and it is the truth. 

"I don't want to die," is more than true, but "I want to live," fits better.

Luna says okay. "I don't want you to die, either. Let us work on preventing such."

And Hermione, bless her heart of grey, wants to protest. She sees the big picture, sees Voldemort's reign of terror and knows that if she had to die to stop it, she would. It Is Selfish To Live in that position, she thinks, and it's the truth. But Hermione wants to protest, and Hermione doesn't, because she understands that Harry has the right to selfishness. He has a right to life. 

"Let's figure out to make you dead but not dead," Luna says. Draco thinks she's never been more loony than she is right then.

He sees the desperation in Harry's eyes... and decides that he doesn't mind if he's loony, too.