Chapter Text
Harry Potter was used to running.
Until his legs burned and shook and his chest was ready to burst with the frenzied beat of his heart, each gasp for air like molten fire down his lungs.
People usually ran to stay fit, to unwind, to avoid being late. They did not know the gnawing fear of an enemy's breath down their necks, that blind desperation to outrun death, to push past the stabbing pain in their side, the agony that crawled up the spine, to the skull, reverberating in every bone each time their foot hit the ground.
Harry knew.
Running was a constant in his life, was a need with the likes of food, or sleep, or air.
The sky above was filled with dark, angry clouds. It rained buckets, the air thick with the scent of mud. The downpour blanketed the world, blurred its edges to a rundown mass of drenched-grey and sodden-green. Harry could hardly see the slick, slippery ground under his battered trainers. Rainwater struck his flesh, ice-cold and merciless. It sluiced down his matted hair, to his neck, plastered the shirt to his body like a second skin.
He could hear the Death Eaters in the distance, hollering like a pack of hounds, wild and blood-crazed and hungry.
They had been so careful, he and Hermione, in all their long, terrible months hunting Horcruxes. They had lived like shadows, scared silent and starved, ghosts of themselves since Ron left, but careful, always, with what little remained of themselves. Harry had listened to Hermione cry herself to sleep, and let the sound echo through the empty halls of his own chest. He had lain in bed and listened to the radio rattle the names of the dead, wondering, when will it stop. They held on, in spite of it all, made hard and ruthless by life on the road, and careful, careful.
He did not hear the Cutting Hex over the thrumming rain, saw a flash of red, then agony exploded over his back, knocked the air from his lungs. The strength of it hit him sharp and jarring. For one awful moment, Harry’s sight greyed, lurched. His mouth filled with the red, coppery tang of blood.
"DID THAT HURT, BABY POTTER?!"
His heart was loud, so loud in his ears, rushing, drowning him, nothing existed beyond the bright, tearing burn of his back, and –
He did not fall.
Harry locked his knees, pushed past the nauseating spin of his head. Kept going. He ran, fast, faster, because to stop would be to die, and everything in him revolted against the idea. His breath came raw and ragged and everything hurt, lungs and muscle and his broken, open back, and it did not matter. If he were to die today, he would die fighting.
His face slick with sweat and tears and rain, he. Ran.
A Crucio hissed past his ear and he threw himself to a side, pace faltering. He fired a Stunner over his shoulder, arms pin-wheeling for balance. The wand fit the curve of his palm like an extension of his hand.
He scanned ahead for Hermione, but had long since lost the wavering shape of her. It was the middle of the day, but the world had been swallowed under heavy rain. Panting, Harry shook droplets from his eyes.
Stonehenge detached itself from the greyness of the sky, great hulking shapes beyond the sheets of water and –
There.
Hermione pelted toward the stones, body bent against the wind. Harry veered after her, heart kicking his ribs, his split back screaming. Behind him, Death Eaters whooped, and Hermione
Slipped.
She skidded on a patch of damp grass and swayed, tipped forward. Harry watched, heart in his throat. She fell on one knee, pushed up again. She had almost made it. Almost. Come on, Hermione, faster.
Harry had to get her out of here. He had to. It was him the Death Eaters wanted, him who Voldemort could use. Hermione they would kill on the spot, and Harry. Could not.
Green coloured the rain. Harry's blood froze in his veins. He heard himself yell a warning, one continuous scream, and Hermione jumped aside. The Killing Curse missed her by an inch, brushed past her shoulder. Another spell wheezed beside Harry, a deep violet hiss. It caught Hermione in the legs, and she went flying. She crashed against a bluestone, arms raised in protection. She heaved herself back to her feet, trembling, her back pressed against the bluestone for support. An easy target.
Harry put on a burst of speed. He ran so fast his feet barely touched the ground. A firework of curses rained around him, bright spells streaming sparks. Almost there, almost, he could see Hermione through the rain, her dark eyes feverish against the stretched, livid skin of her face. He stumbled, righted himself. Hermione's wand-arm rose, shaking.
Come on 'Mione, come on come on come one.
Her complexion turned ashen. She swayed on her feet.
Shit.
Harry skidded to a stop, turned, conjured a shield. He caught hexes with the crackle of angry magic, his every nerve strained. His head swam. Two iron bars constricted his lungs; he could not get enough air.
Bellatrix Lestrange laughed, high-pitched and maniacal, and Harry’s guts twisted. He bared his teeth. Planted his feet.
"Run,” he said, brokenly. He did not dare turn around. As he had thought, the Death Eaters no longer cast Unforgivables now he was in the line of fire. He cleared his throat. “Hermione, go. Disapparate."
Black shapes moved through the thick curtain of rain, but no sound came from behind him, no crack of Disapparition. Harry could feel Hermione behind him still, and for the first time since he had started to run, cold, heart-stopping panic seized him.
They were coming and she was not moving.
Head snapping around, Harry found her through the rain, through the distance between them.
"NOW!" he roared.
Despair tainted her features, but finally, finally, the words seemed to pierce through her exhausted daze, a primal part of her brain reacting to the order. Her eyes fluttered close. She Disapparated in a whirl of magic, there and gone, Slytherin's locket shining at her throat.
Harry would not be following her. He no longer had the strength. Already, his shield weakened under the onslaught of dark spells. Already, the strength waned from his arms. He gave a grim smile.
It was fine. Hermione was safe.
Breathing hard, he waited until he could see each of the Death Eaters' faces. He broke the Protego , threw an overpowered Blasting Curse in the same motion, and spun on his heels.
He ran to Stonehenge in the confusion, keeping low to the ground, ignoring the cries and shouted orders behind him. He crossed the two circles of stone unhindered. Cracks rent the air. Death Eaters snapped into existence, in front of him and to the sides, death-white masks jarring in the watery greyness, and Harry skidded to a stop. Trapped.
He backed to the middle of the circles, head swivelling from side to side. The Death Eaters followed, smug and sedate, sure of their success. Harry walked until his calves bucked against a hard surface. He swayed on the spot, light-headed. Blood sluiced down his back in thick ropes. His limbs buzzed, heavy and weak. He clutched his wand in a tight grip.
“Give up, boy,” a Death Eater told him, his voice low and rumbling. “Make things easier for yourself.”
Harry cast a glance over his shoulder. He stood in the middle of Stonehenge, backed against a fallen monolith. He clambered on top of it without thinking, his back screaming in protest. It offered a vantage point if nothing else. His right hand tightened, white-knuckled around his wand, and the closest Death Eater took a half-step back.
"Throw down your wand," said the same man. “It’s over. It’s done. Yield, Potter, so we won’t bring you too damaged to the Dark Lord.”
Harry smiled a bloody smile.
A sense of calm had enveloped him. Not resignation, or even defeat. He felt detached from himself. His body was a stranger to him, a shell whose hurts were foreign and far-away.
He would die soon, and Harry found himself at peace with the thought. He had done his best. He had given everything. He had loved and suffered for it, and it had been his choice . To be here today. To die, so a friend might live. Harry stood alone, bruised and battered and bloodied, and one resolve pulsed through him, strong and steady as the earth beneath his feet.
He thought about his parents. About Sirius. About Hedwig, and Moody, and Dumbledore, and he gathered himself in a tight coil. Magic pooled beneath his skin, bottled lightning crackling at his fingertips.
"Stun him! " someone shouted, voice pitched with fear.
With perfect synchronisation, the Death Eaters took aim. Their mouths moved without sound. Wandtips glowed a bloody red.
Time
slowed.
Harry watched as curses flew in slow motion, jets of red crawling through the air like flies caught in amber. The relentless pounding of the rain hung suspended in mid-air. Streaks of water glittered, crystalline, like a million fragments of the world. Harry listened to the thready pulse of his heart, and found he could not move.
Was it a trick of his dying mind, he wondered. Adrenaline-drugged brain stretching his last moments, letting him live an eternity in-between two heartbeats.
The world caught fire.
A white, blinding flare came crawling from Death Eaters' feet. It spread inward like a wildfire, outpaced the static spells. Runes, Harry saw. Intricate, interlocked runes, circling and twisting, odd arches and deep curves. They scored the earth, swift and silent, and swept toward him.
Harry watched, stolid, stunned, as they reached his stone. As they weaved upon its surface. As they reached for his skin.
He felt that first touch on himself like the pain of rebirth. It touched him with all the tenderness of defibrillation on an arrhythmic heart. It wove down to his bones, to the very core of him, and it broke him. And it made him anew.
His mouth opened in a silent scream.
He burned. He burned. He burned.
He knew in a dim, distant way, that the air warped with the heat of him. Rainwater curdled to mist. On their knees, the Death Eaters cried in agony, their flesh seared with light, aglow with a thousand thousand runes. A wild, ancient thing opened one eye and loosed a deep and terrible roar.
Time stopped.
Something snapped. Tore itself open. Harry's heart missed a beat. He felt himself tip forward and start to fall, and, sobbing with relief, he let the dark take him.
Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived, disappeared on January 3rd, 1998, to the great despair of the Wizarding community.
Long afterwards, rain fell over Stonehenge, washing the bodies of some of the most feared Death Eaters of the Second War.
