A Flaw in the Plan

Flaw in the Plan

Harry was cursing to himself under the Invisibility Cloak. A horcrux! He was Voldemort's last bloody horcrux. It all finally made sense now: Voldemort's thoughts intruding on his own, his strange ability to speak Parseltongue, that curious scar...

He was a horcrux! And the worst part was that Dumbledore must have suspected as much from the very beginning. The one person in the world who had truly cared for him - or so Harry had believed - had planned the sacrificial death of The Boy Who Lived all along. If the old headmaster had had an ounce of Gryffindor courage in him, thought Harry bitterly, he would have killed Harry himself long ago, stabbed the Dark Lord's final horcrux mercifully through the heart with a basilisk fang before Harry knew what was happening. But Professor Dumbledore did not want to get innocent blood on his own hands; he preferred to hover in the background, planning and scheming, blue eyes twinkling, manipulating people with murmured half-truths until they did precisely what he wanted. Even if that meant going willingly to their deaths.

There had been moments this past year when Harry had doubted that the late headmaster had a plan at all. Perhaps Dumbledore had just been an old man who was losing his grip, as the Ministry seemed to believe. But tonight Harry finally saw that the headmaster had indeed had a brilliant and ruthless plan all along: Harry was meant to die. He was meant to walk up to Voldemort and say: "Please kill me. I am here to die." And then, in a moment of magnificent irony that only Dumbledore could have devised, the Dark Lord would kill his own horcrux.

And then the game would be nearly over; Voldemort would almost be reduced to a mortal man, and someone - perhaps Neville, perhaps Ron or Hermione - would kill the Dark Lord and his serpent, and the war would be over. Gryffindor would win the game, yet again. The ultimate snitch of victory would be caught, right under the Dark Lord's nose.

The snitch. Harry remembered that he still had the blasted thing in a pouch around his neck. His last gift from Dumbledore. Harry pulled it out and stared at the little ball, which glowed faintly in the darkness of the forest.

I open at the close.

Oh, bloody perfect. Even the snitch had been bewitched by Dumbledore into predicting Harry's death and doom. The snitch fluttered hopefully in his hand now, as if waiting for Harry to say something heroic and noble.

"Waiting for me to die, are you?" Harry glared at the snitch. "Ready for the close of the game? Well, I'm not." He flung the little golden ball into the forest with all his might, and it vanished between the shadowy trees. "I don't like rigged games." A sudden sob tore itself from his throat. Dumbledore had never cared about him! Dumbledore had wanted him dead all along. The lying, conniving bastard!

Harry could sense, at the edge of his consciousness, that a few dementors were beginning to circle above him, but he paid them no heed. He was too angry to be depressed right now, and the dementors could apparently sense that too, for they fluttered quietly away as Harry stomped through the forest.

He was Voldemort's hocrux! Well, that changed everything!

Two figures stepped out of the shadows of the trees ahead of Harry now: Yaxley and Dolohov, their wands lit.

"I think I heard something," came Yaxley's rough voice. "Could be Potter, or it could be one of the bloody monsters that roam through the forest at night." He sounded a little nervous.

"There are acromantulas in here, and werewolves." Dolohov's voice was shaking with fear.

Harry decided to put them out of their misery. He flung the invisibility cloak aside. "It's me. Harry Potter. Bring me to the Dark Lord; I believe he is expecting me." To his own slight surprise, his voice sounded calm and even. Harry knew what he had to do now. So very, very obvious... Dumbledore had never thought of this, had he? Harry's heart fluttered a little in his chest in anticipation.