Ruthless

EIGHT: Epilogue: Good Choices

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

-J.K. Rowling, the Chamber of Secrets

-O-O-

Harry should have known he could not escape his choices after Death.

He merely wondered why he was faced with a squalling infant and the Headmaster he killed.

Dumbledore looked grave, his face no less haggard in death than it had been in life. In the distance, he heard a train whistle.

"This was not what I planned."

The old man mused, as he knelt beside the infant. Harry saw the baby bore red eyes. Harry chose to remain silent in death, as he had often chosen in life.

Dumbledore straightened, holding the babe.

"But I suppose it turned out alright in the end. You, my boy, have one last choice to make."

Harry lifted a brow. He had rather thought Death was final. In fact, he was counting on it, as he had sent far too many people there now to worry about them coming back.

Dumbledore sighed, looking down at the child he held.

"You do not need to remain Dead, if you wish. I am bound to tell you this, for there can be no lies here. I would quite think the world is better off without you, however."

Harry chose not to agree, though he saw the merit in such a statement. Honestly, he thought he was better off without the world.

"It was not the Hallows that saved you as I had planned. Instead, it appears you lied to me long ago, when you claimed the Stone destroyed. It has rested within you this entire time, undoing the damage you wrought upon yourself, storing up its serum in your blood, running its magic through your own. I always wondered if it was sentient; if it could choose its owners. Nicholas rather thought it was a rather boring rock that tended to sweat immortality by accident. It has given you a reprieve from Death from the poison you spread through my school."

At that, Harry finally spoke.

"Nothing can stop the Killing Curse. Not even the Philosophers Stone."

Dumbledore smiled with grim amusement.

"I'm afraid, no matter how proficient you are at casting that curse, that you failed in your latest attempt."

Harry frowned.

"I made the choice to cast it. I do not fail."

Dumbledore laughed, a mocking sound that rang and echoed against the stone walls of an abandoned train station.

"What was it you told me, my boy? You always make good choices. Well, it appears that fact is true. Your magic simply would not make a bad choice even when your mind told it it was so. The curse instead killed this infant, this young Horcrux, that had secreted itself away within you for the last years of your life."

Harry paused, his mind racing, and evaluated that statement.

Indeed, the killing curse had been a bad idea. Why kill himself twice over? His body had been dying in a particularly bad way, of course. And he had wanted to be thorough.

Harry sighed, and met the narrowed blue eyes of the man in front of him. He might as well believe the man, though he didn't agree. He had said Death prevented lies.

Harry smiled and spoke.

"Life is always a good choice."

And the world around him dissolved with the sound of an oncoming train.