Hands, softer than he had been expecting, touched Harry’s face, and felt his heart. He could hear the woman’s fast breathing, her pounding of life against his ribs.
“Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle?”
The whisper was barely audible, her lips were an inch from his ear, her head bent so low that her long hair shielded his face from the onlookers.
“Yes,” he breathed back.
He felt the hand on his chest contract: her nails pierced him. Then it was withdrawn. She had sat up.
“He is dead!” Narcissa Malfoy called to the watchers.
And now they shouted, now they yelled in triumph and stamped their feet, and through his eyelids, Harry saw bursts of red and silver light shoot into the air in celebration.
Still feigning death on the ground, he understood. Narcissa knew that the only way she would be permitted to enter Hogwarts, and find her son, was as part of the conquering army. She no longer cared whether Voldemort won.
“You see?” screeched Voldemort over the tumult. “Harry Potter is dead by my hand, and no man alive can threaten me now! Watch! Crucio!”
Harry had been expecting it, knew his body would not be allowed to remain unsullied upon the forest floor; it must be subjected to humiliation to prove Voldemort’s victory. He was lifted into the air, and it took all his determination to remain limp, yet the pain he expected did not come. He was thrown once, twice, three times into the air. His glasses flew off and he felt his wand slide a little beneath his robes, but he kept himself floppy and lifeless, and when he fell no ground for the last time, the clearing echoed with jeers and shrieks of laughter.
“Now,” said Voldemort, “we go to the castle, and show them what has become of their hero. Who shall drag the body? No—Wait—”
There was a fresh outbreak of laughter, and after a few moments Harry felt the ground trembling beneath him.
“You carry him,” Voldemort said. “He will be nice and visible in your arms, will he not? Pick up your little friend, Hagrid. And the glasses—put on the glasses—he must be recognizable—”
Someone slammed Harry’s glasses back onto his face with deliberate force, but the enormous hands that lifted him into the air were exceedingly gentle. Harry could feel Hagrid’s arms trembling with the force of his heaving sobs; great tears splashed down upon him as Hagrid cradled Harry in his arms, and Harry did not dare, by movement or word, to intimate to Hagrid that all was not, yet, lost.
“Move,” said Voldemort, and Hagrid stumbled forward, forcing his way through the close-growing trees, back through the forest.
Branches caught at Harry’s hair and robes, but he lay quiescent, his mouth lolling open, his eyes shut, and in the darkness, while the Death Eaters croed all around them, and while Hagrid sobbed blindly, nobody looked to see whether a pulse beat in the exposed neck of Harry Potter…
The two giants crashed along behind the Death Eaters; Harry could hear trees creaking and falling as they passed; they made so much din that birds toes shrieking into the sky, and even the jeers of the Death Eaters were drowned. The victorious procession marched on toward the open ground, and after a while Harry could tell, by the lightening of the darkness through his closed eyelids, that the trees were beginning to thin.
“BANE!”
Hagrid’s unexpected bellow nearly forced Harry’s eyes open. “Happy now, are yeh, that yeh didn’t fight, yeh cowardly bunch o’ nags? Are yeh happy Harry Potter’s—d-dead…?”
Hagrid could not continue, but broke down in fresh tears. Harry wondered how many centaurs were watching their procession pass; he dared not open his eyes to look. Some of the Death Eaters called insults at the centaurs as they left them behind. A little later, Harry sensed, by a freshening of the air, that they had reached the edge of the forest.
“Stop.”
Harry thought that Hagrid must have been forced to obey Voldemort’s command, because he lurched a little. And now a chill settled over them where they sood, and Harry heard the rasping breath of the Dementors that patrolled the other trees. They would not affect him now.
The fact of his own survival burned inside him, a talisman against them, as though his father’s stag kept guardian in his heart.
Someone passed close by Harry, and he knew that it was Voldemort himself because he spoke a moment later, his voice magically magnified so that it swelled through the ground, crashing upon Harry’s eardrums.
“Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone.
“The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together.”
There was silence in the grounds and from the castle. Voldemort was so close to him that Harry did not dare open his eyes again.
“Come,” said Voldemort, and Harry heard him move ahead, and Hagrid was forced to follow. Now Harry opened his eyes a fraction, and saw Voldemort striding in front them, wearing the great snake Nagini around his shoulders, now free of her enchanted cage. But Harry had no possibility of extracting the wand concealed under his robes without being noticed by the Death Eaters, who marched on the either side of them through the slowly lightening darkness…
“Harry,” sobbed Hagrid. “Oh, Harry… Harry…”
Harry shut his eyes tight again. He knew that they were approaching the castle and strained his ears to distinguish, above the gleeful voices of the Death Eaters and their tramping footsteps, signs of life from those within.
“Stop.”
The Death Eaters came to a halt; Harry heard them spreading out in a line facing the open front doors of the school. He could see, even though his closed lids, the teddish glow that meant light streamed upon him from the entrance hall. He waited. Any moment, the people for whom he had tried to die would see him, lying apparently dead, in Hagrid’s arms.
“NO!”
The scream was the more terrible because he had never expected or dreamed that Professor McGonagall could make such a sound. He heard another women laughing nearby, and knew that Bellatrix gloried in McGonagall’s despair. He squinted again for a single second and saw the open doorway filling with people, as the survivors of the battle came out onto the front steps to face their vanquishers and see the truth of Harry’s death for themselves. He saw Voldemort standing a little in front of him, stroking Nagini’s head with a single white finger. He closed his eyes again.
“No!”
“No!”
“Harry! HARRY!”
Ron’s, Hermione’s, and Ginny’s voices were worse than McGonagall’s; Harry wanted nothing more than to call back, yet he made himself lie silent, and their cries acted like a trigger; the crowd of survivors took up the cause, screaming and yelling abuse at the Death Eathers, until—
“SILENCE!” cried Voldemort, and there was a bang and a flash of bright light, and silence was forced upn them all. “It is over! Set him down, Hagrid, at my feet, where he belongs!”
Harry felt himself lowered onto the grass.
“You see?” said Voldemort, and Harry felt him striding backward and forward right beside the place where he lay. “Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!”
“He beat you!” yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the defenders of Hogwarts were shouting and screaming again until a second, more powerful bang extinguished their voices once more.
“He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds,” said Voldemort, and there was a relish in his voice for the lie, “killed while trying to save himself—”