Last Call

When you look back on your life, the only thing that matters is: Did you spend it doing what you love? With the people you love? Were you happy? Did you make the most of this beautiful, terrifying, messed-up life? Did you let go of all the things that held you back? So you can hold on to what matters most?

Avada Kedavra was the type of spell that would take a person’s life without mercy, without a second thought. When any living being was hit by that green light that defied all laws of gravity and physics and the entire world of medicine, their entire body would shut down at once.

It was a quick death, painless though it shouldn’t be. No doctor, no surgeon, not even God himself could bring a person back once they were hit with that spell.

That was what Harry was going to have to face. Harry would need to face the impossible and know that even if he stood like a man, stood like his back straight and his conscious clear, it wouldn’t matter.

It wouldn’t matter; it didn’t matter.

Nobody got to choose their time to go, Harry wasn’t so arrogant to believe that he would have been an exception. It wasn’t even that Harry would die at only seventeen that hurt, children died every day in more unfair circumstances than Harry had ever faced, it was the where that bothered him the most.

A good death, a death that showed a person had lived a good life, was one that came when a person was surrounded by loved ones.

Harry had seen people die alone with no one except for a nurse to hold their hand. Harry had seen people die in hospital rooms that were overflowing with family members and friends.

If Harry could choose, that’s what he would want. Harry would want to have his mum with him, maybe even his little brother.

Instead, Harry would only have the memories of them to think of on the longest - the last - walk of his life. Within the next twenty minutes, that’s all he would leave behind for them: memories.

The castle was quiet as Harry made his way through the corridors that were as familiar to him as the ones in his mum’s hospital. It had been a memorize the layout of Hogwarts when he had been a first year, but he could remember how he told Ron about Seattle Grace Hospital and that if he could find his way to between an on-call room on the surgical floor to the cafeteria that they could find their way to breakfast.

Not that Harry hadn’t been scared the first time he hot lost in the hospital, but he had only been seven then so he thought it was rather easily forgiven…

Harry shuffled his feet along the shining floors and wished his socks didn’t have little sticky spots all over them so that he could slip around and maybe have a tiny bit of fun.

It was Harry’s second day of being in the hospital and he was bored and his arm hurt. The telly in his room had cartoons that he could watch as much as he wanted, but they weren’t enough to make his cast not itchy or his arm not hurt.

A girl in Harry’s class had broken her arm once and she had a pink cast that someone drew cats and smiley faces on to make it pretty. Harry’s cast was yellow, his favorite color, but there weren’t any cats or happy faces on it when he looked at it, only the memory of how much it hurt to have a broken arm.

Harry wanted cats on his cast and he wanted his arm to not hurt and he really wanted to slip around on his socks.

And juice. Harry wanted a juice and wondered if the really nice nurse who gave him a bear plushie for being so brave would let him have a juice. Uncle Vernon wasn’t there to tell her that Harry didn’t need any sugar, so maybe if he got back to his room quick then he could push the little red button and ask really nicely for a juice.

It sounded like a good plan to Harry, he just couldn’t seem to find his way back to his room. The corridor with the rooms for kids was painted blue and had silly cartoons all over it. It was really pretty and nice. Wherever Harry had ended up was white with no cartoons and no nurses with big smiles and stickers in their pockets.

Harry tried to use his best manners to ask a man in a white coat how to find his room, but the man didn’t see Harry and he started screaming and Harry just ran. Harry ran as fast as he could on socks that wouldn’t slip and his breathing was bad and everything was too loud.

There were a lot of doors and Harry heard someone else screaming and he didn’t cry because he wasn’t a baby, but he did open one of the doors so he could hide inside there from all the noise. The room was quiet and that was all Harry noticed before he sat down on the floor right in front of the door so he could hug his legs and wait for all the angry people to go away.

That was when Harry got to meet a superhero, a real one.

Harry had his face tucked in with his knees and his breathing was still too loud and he tried to make no noise at all so it would be very quiet, but someone started talking then.

“Now, you are just the youngest little doctor I have ever met.”

Harry picked his head up then and had to scrub his eyes to see who was in the room with him. It was a bedroom, like Dudley’s but without any toys. There was a lady sitting on one of the beds and she was looking right at Harry.

She didn’t look mad that Harry was in her bedroom, she only looked at him with nice eyes. The lady was funny, but Harry didn’t feel like laughing.

“‘M but a doctor,” he said, sniffling some in the way that Aunt Petunia hated him to do. “My name’s Harry.”

“Harry?” The lady stood up from her bed and she was kind of short, but Harry didn’t say so. He was short too, that’s what kids at school said, by the lady had really long black braids that made meet seem taller. Or maybe it was her white coat she wore, that made her seem taller too.

“I think Harry’s a real nice name,” she said. “My name’s Miranda.”

“Hi, Miranda,” Harry said. He wiped his face with the green hospital gown he wore and then blinked up at her with teary eyes. “I’m lost.”

“Well it is your lucky day, Mister Harry, because I know every room in this hospital and I bet I know just where you belong,” she said. She bent down in front of Harry so they were looking right at each other. “Can I help you find your room? I bet your mommy and daddy are just as scared as you are right now.”

That made Harry’s lip start shaking because it wasn’t true, none of it.

“I’m not scared,” he said, trying his hardest to not cry or whine. “And I don’t have a mum or dad, they’re dead.”

“Oh, honey.” Miranda looked sad for a second, which wasn’t fair. Making other people sad didn’t mean Harry would feel happy.

“Is that how you hurt your arm?” Miranda asked him in a soft voice.

“No.” Harry shook his head and then tried to remember what he was supposed to say. His arm was just itchy and it hurt and he was so thirsty it was hard to remember.

“I think I was riding my bike and fell?” he said, not really sure if that was what he was supposed to say. Uncle Vernon would remind him when he came back from the hotel.

“Is that right?” Miranda looked at Harry for a long time and he looked at the tiny earrings in her ears instead of at her face. The earrings were pretty, they were t’s and that was what tiger started with.

“Why don’t you and I take a walk back to your room and you can tell me all about riding your bike,” Miranda offered. “I think a big and brave boy like you is usually pretty good at riding a bike.”

Harry grinned, happy that she said that. It wasn’t true, but it was very nice of her to say.

“I’ve never rode a bike before,” Harry said, feeling a little bit better when she helped him stand up. He let her go out the door first in case it was still noisy, but all the angry people were gone.

“Never ever?” Miranda asked him. She took Harry’s hand that wasn’t in the cast and that was really nice too, Harry liked when the nurse in his room held his hand.

“Nope.” Harry looked up at her while they started walking and decided she was actually pretty tall. “Are you a nurse?” he asked. “I really like nurses, one of them gave me a plushie.”

“I am not a nurse,” Miranda told him. “I am a surgeon.”

“Oh.” Harry sighed sadly. “That’s sad, maybe when you grow up you can be a nurse and then we can have juice.”

Miranda laughed then, it was a nice laugh, not mean.

“What if I told you that surgeons know where there’s juice and ice cream?” Miranda asked, making Harry really excited. Ice cream? Harry loved ice cream. They had some in tiny cups at school sometimes and those were the best days.

“Can - can we get some?” Harry asked, a little scared she might get mad that he asked.

“Hmm…” Miranda tapped her lips with one of her fingers and Harry wanted to try that but his fingers were busy in her hand and in a cast.

“What if I make you a deal?” Miranda asked Harry. They turned in a corner in a new part of the hospital and Harry shuffled closer to her when he could hear lots of people talking.

Miranda let Harry scoot closer to her and she didn’t seem upset with him so he moved even closer until he was right beside her and it was almost too hard to walk.

“I’ll take you to the super secret place that has juice and ice cream and even cheeseburgers if you tell me all about how you hurt your arm.” Miranda looked down at Harry and she looked very serious. “Is that a deal, Mister Harry?”

“Um…” Harry tried to think about what Uncle Vernon said about how he was never supposed to tell anyone what happened or else he would be in big trouble. It was hard to remember though because Harry really wanted ice cream.

“Do you promise to not tell anyone?” Harry asked her. He didn’t want to lie because telling lies would get him in trouble, but he didn’t want to not get ice cream either.

“Who am I not supposed to tell?” Miranda asked. She stopped at a big desk and Harry sighed because there wasn’t going to be ice cream or juice at that desk, only lots of people who jumped up when they saw her.

“My aunt or uncle AND you can’t tell my cousin, Dudley,” Harry told her.

Miranda looked down at Harry again and she even bent over so their faces were close again. Harry liked that because he liked her eyes, they were a pretty brown, like her skin. Harry wished his skin was green, like his eyes, but that would probably be freaky and make people not like him even more.

“Harry, I promise that I, Doctor Miranda Warby, the most honest doctor ever—”

Harry giggled, Miranda was silly. Miranda winked at him and that was silly too.

“— will not tell your aunt or uncle OR your cousin, Dudley, what you tell me,” she said. “So why don’t you think about that deal and what flavor of ice cream you want while I get some paperwork real quick.”

Harry nodded quickly and then started thinking about different flavors of ice cream. Vanilla was what they always had at school, but Dudley had chocolate ice cream and strawberry ice cream and another ice cream that had cookies in it that Harry always wanted to try.

There were so many different kinds of ice cream! How was Harry supposed to pick just one?

Harry tried to think about which one would be most important to try while Miranda told one of the people at the desk to get her a chart. Harry thought she asked for his chart, but he didn’t know what a chart was and he was busy deciding that chocolate would be the ice cream he would most want to try.

“I think we should get chocolate ice cream,” Harry told Miranda when she had a bunch of papers in her hand and started leading him in a new direction. His hand was still in one of her hands and he started swinging it because he was just really excited for ice cream.

“Chocolate ice cream is the best one,” Miranda said, which was just what Harry guessed at. She looked at the paper on top of her little stack and smiled again. “And you, Mister Harry Potter, have no known food allergies.”

“Michael is allergic to peanuts so we can’t have peanut butter for a snack,” Harry told her, wanting to show her that he was smart and knew things about allergies. “If we have peanut butter in our classroom then he could die!”

“I love peanut butter,” Miranda said, whispering it like a secret. “I like to dip my chocolate in it.”

It was kind of like they were friends and Harry told her so.

“We are absolutely friends,” Miranda said. They were in a new corridor and Harry didn’t even care about the loud voices because Miranda had his hand and they were going to get ice cream.

“Really?” Harry was more excited about that than he was the ice cream. “You’re my first ever friend! Do you like plushies? I have one that’s a bear, except he’s blue and bears aren’t supposed to be blue…”

Harry told Miranda all about the plushie he had while she took him to a cafeteria where they ordered two chocolate ice creams and Miranda got juice and a cheeseburger, just for Harry! Harry made sure to tell her thank you a lot of times so she knew he wasn’t ungrateful and then they sat down at a little table by big giant windows so Harry could swing his legs and use his one good hand to scoop up some ice cream.

Oh.

It was really, really, good!

Miranda ate her ice cream too, only half of it though and she told Harry that he could have her other half. Even if Harry’s arm hurt and the yellow cast didn’t have any cats drawn on it, it was still the best day ever!

“Don’t forget that you promised to tell me how you hurt your arm,” Miranda reminded Harry when he finished his ice cream and moved on to hers. “I bet it’s a real good story.”

“Wellll…” Harry’s legs quit swinging and he frowned at his spoon. Miranda’s reminder made his stomach hurt, only for a second. “It wasn’t really a bike, only Dudley has a bike and he couldn’t bring it because we had to fly in an airplane to get here. Aunt Petunia said that Dudley didn’t get to bring too much stuff since I had to come with them.”

“Oh?” Miranda folded her hands together and set her chin on them so she could listen to Harry’s story. “Are you here for a vacation?”

“No, it’s for Dudley’s birthday,” Harry explained. “He wanted to go to Disney World and see Mickey Mouse, he’s there with Aunt Petunia now but Uncle Vernon can’t go since I’m stuck in here. We were gonna go to a new hotel where Disney World is after we rode another plane and I was going to try and watch cartoons while nobody else was there.”

“You don’t want to go with them to meet Mickey Mouse?” Miranda asked, really sad for Harry it sounded like. “How come?”

“I do…” Harry pushed the ice cream away because his stomach hurt again. “I can’t go though. I was supposed to stay with our neighbor, except she has some sort of crazy cat lady sickness.”

That was what Aunt Petunia said. Miranda was a doctor so she would probably know exactly what Harry meant.

Miranda nodded, “I see. So you came here with your aunt and uncle and cousin so that he could go to Disney World and meet Mickey Mouse. Then something happened to your arm?”

“Yeah…” Harry shrugged his shoulders up and looked at his yellow cast. It did still hurt, but it was better after ice cream. He peeked up at Miranda just to see if she was mad, she wasn’t, so he thought she really wouldn’t tell anyone he told her.

“We went to get on our new plane and the man at the airport said it was cancelled,” Harry said, saying it slowly so he got all the truth it. “Uncle Vernon was pretty mad about that and he grabbed my arm, like this.” Harry grabbed his cast where Uncle Vernon had grabbed him, but he didn’t yank hard on it because the doctor and nurses said he had to be careful with it.

“It hurt pretty bad,” Harry said bravely. It hurt terrible that whole day. “The man at the hotel said that it looked like it needed looked at so Aunt Petunia said they had to take me to the hospital even though I’m ruining everything.”

“Hm.” Miranda went quiet and Harry was scared to look at her then because maybe the whole thing was a trick to see if he’d tell or not and he was going to get in trouble. Miranda was frowning when Harry risked one little peek at her, but she smiled when she saw Harry looking.

“You know, Mickey Mouse is busy right now, but I bet if we get you back to your room then I know a real life princess who will come meet you,” Miranda told Harry.

“Really?” Harry breathed, his eyes going wide. “A pretty princess?”

“The prettiest one in all the land,” Miranda promised. “And you know what she has for all the good boys and girls?”

Harry smiled big because Miranda seemed to think that he was a good boy and maybe she would tell the princess that. “What?”

“Coloring books.”

Harry didn’t know how Miranda knew that, but he loved to color.

“Will she have markers?” Harry asked. He showed Miranda his yellow cast. “I wanna ask if one of the nurses will draw a cat for me. They’re really nice. I wish you were a nurse.”

Miranda huffed and then looked around before she leaned across the table to tell Harry another thing that sounded like a secret.

“I, Harry Potter, am not a nurse,” she told him. “I am a surgeon and surgeons happen to do very important life-saving work, just like nurses do.”

Harry thought about that for a second.

“So you’re like a superhero?” Harry whispered, sharing the secret.

Miranda smiled and her eyes crinkled up. “Exactly like that.”

“But can you draw a cat?”

Miranda could draw a cat. She drew lots and lots of funny cats on Harry’s cast and she visited him in his hospital room lots of times. Harry had to stay extra long because people in fancy clothes kept showing up to ask him about his aunt and his uncle. They especially liked hearing about Harry’s arm and his bedroom under the stairs he shared with the spiders.

Harry didn’t like talking about it. He did like when it was all finally over and the doctor’s said he could leave the hospital though. That was the best part because Miranda told Harry that - even if he wasn’t always good, even if he was scared - he could live with her and never ever go back to his aunt and uncle’s house.

It would be nice if Harry was seven again and could hold Mum’s hand and think that everything would be okay because she said so. Harry’s mum was one of the most respected surgeons at her hospital and people believed anything she told them.

If Mum was with Harry and told him that it would be okay, that there was a Heaven after life on Earth and that surely sacrificing his life for others would grant him entrance to it, then he would believe her.

Mum believed in Heaven and Harry believed in Mum. She had never lied to him, not even when the truth was hard. Knowing that he would have to leave her behind, after everything they went through together in the last ten years, was the worst part of the long walk through the castle, step-by-step approaching his death.

Harry paused outside the Great Hall and looked through the room that looked worse than any ER did after a mass casualty. There were bodies lined in rows, black tags. The red were on the platform where the head table should be, being treated by anyone capable of working.

Harry itched to be up there, to help heal the injured. Harry wasn’t a professional, not by any means, but he had been studying and he knew he could help. It was a desire to help though, and he had a much more important role waiting for him to fulfill.

The worst part of the scene in the Great Hall, always the worst part, were the families and friends. They cried and screamed, wondered why it happened to them, to their family.

Harry asked his mum once, after watching Cedric Diggory die in a graveyard, why?

Why did good people die?

Mum said she was still trying to figure that one out and she would tell Harry when she had an answer for him.

Harry kept himself hidden as he walked out of the castle, out on the war-torn grounds. There was something especially painful about the lawns being so destroyed, about war taking something that had been beautiful and made for children and demolished it.

Nobody was going to be the same again. Not a single survivor would forget what they saw, what they experienced; their scars would remain for a lifetime.

It all felt so unfair that Harry wanted to scream about it. Harry wanted to scream and curse and throw things… instead he walked.

Harry walked across the grounds and focused on his breathing, keeping it even enough that his heart would slow itself out of the tachycardia he had been experiencing since leaving the pensieve.

It wouldn’t do any good to die too soon, Harry had a destiny to fulfill.

Harry was proud of himself for not crying when he reached the forest. It wouldn’t have made him any less of a man for crying, for being scared, but he had a duty to fulfill before he followed the path destiny laid out for him.

Harry had been eleven, excited and nervous to leave for Hogwarts. One of the professors, Professor McGonagall, had explained the school of magic to Mum and Dad and they said that if it was Harry wanted, then he could go.

It sounded exciting, learning how to control the odd bursts of magic that nobody could explain before then, but Harry suddenly found that leaving his parents was the hardest thing ever.

“What if - if Tuck needs me?” Harry asked his mum, delaying having to get on the train. Harry had already said his goodbyes to his stepdad and brother, he just suddenly thought maybe he needed to say them again.

“Tuck will be fine until you come home,” Mum said, calm and patient and in control even with all the craziness that surrounded them. There were birds hooting and kids screaming and Harry wished he was home.

Home as in home, not Mum’s hospital that was just as noisy as the platform was. Harry grew up in the hospital, coloring in on-call rooms, playing hide and seek on the OR floor when Mum got fed up with an intern and put them on Harry-duty. It changed some when Mum and Tucker got married, then Harry spent more time at home.

The hospital was great, but home was better. Even if Harry didn’t really know if Tucker actually liked him or pretended to because he loved Harry’s mum.

Harry stuck his lip out at his mum and looked at his cool trunk that was full of magic books and wizard cloaks. Then he looked back at his mum. Then he sighed.

“I don’t want to go,” Harry admitted. He couldn’t quite look his mum in the eye as he confessed to his biggest worry. “What if - what if I don’t get to come back?”

What if Mum didn’t want him back?

What if Tucker didn’t?

What if they had Little Tuck and didn’t need Harry anymore?

“Harry James Potter-Warby.” Mum put her hands on her knees and bent down so that she could make Harry look her in the eyes. They were her very serious eyes, the ones she made when Harry had a nightmare or he had done something wrong and had to face up to it.

“You will come back,” Mum said, no-nonsense. “You will go and you will learn about magic, baby. You will take this beautiful gift that your mom and dad gave you and you will turn it into something so amazing that I can’t even wrap my mind around it. And when you’re finished? You’ll come home. You will come home to your family and we will be right where you left us. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mum,” Harry said quietly. He sniffled and touched his pocket where the phone Tucker bought him was. “And I - I can call you? Anytime?”

“You better call me all the time, Mister,” Mum said. “I mean it, if anything happens or you just want to talk to me, you call me. Got it?”

Harry nodded and then quickly threw his arms around her so he could give her as big of a hug as he could.

“Got it.”

That was the rule - call your mother.

Every time Harry had been in the Hospital Wing, he called her and Madam Pomfrey had to explain in detail what happened and how Harry was being treated.

When Harry was accused of being the Heir of Slytherin in his second year, it was Professor McGonagall who had to get a tongue lashing from Miranda Bailey.

In Harry’s third year it was Professor Dumbledore who had to talk to Mum about Sirius Black. Then Professor Dumbledore again when Harry had been entered in the tournament.

Tucker had been the one to scream at Professor Dumbledore so loudly over the phone in Harry’s fifth year that Harry suddenly realized maybe he did like Harry after all.

Harry’s phone calls home had been the only thing to keep him sane through so much turmoil that it took no thought for him to reach for his phone then.

Mum might be at work, she might be shocked at what all Harry needed to tell her, but the rule was that Harry called his mother when he needed to.

And Harry had never needed her as much as he did then.

Harry tried his mum’s cell first and didn’t blink much when she didn’t answer. It wasn’t unusual for get to not answer, it meant she was in surgery.

Interrupting a surgery with a call was allowed when it was an emergency; Harry assumed that his current situation would constitute as an emergency, though he hoped that Mum had a competent assist to take over for her.

Harry’s voice didn’t shake or tremble when he connected with the charge nurse over the OR’s. He politely asked to be connected to Miranda Bailey and stated it was her son and, yes, it was an emergency. No, it couldn’t wait.

It was selfish; there was a life on a table in his mum’s hands, but Harry needed her for just a few minutes.

The last few minutes.

It didn’t take long to be connected, Harry could talk to his mum then find Voldemort before ur battle reignited at the school. Any delay was worth it when Harry heard the voice of your one person he trusted above all.

“Hey, baby. You’re on speaker.”

That was code for: there’s an OR full of muggles, don’t break the law.

Harry swallowed and chose his words very carefully.

“What - who is assisting you?” Harry asked.

“I have Doctor Grey assisting me in removing a diseased liver,” Mum said, her words slow and precise.

“The older one or younger one?” Harry checked. Mum respected the surgical skill of the older one, she thought the younger Doctor Grey had a way to go.

Personally, Harry thought the younger one was prettier and nicer and had been incredibly kind when she realized Harry had once tried to flirt with her. Sure, there had been an age gap between them, but Harry had been mourning his godfather and needed something to distract himself with.

Tucker and Harry had to have ‘a talk’ about women that summer and it had been rather humiliating to realize that Lexie had told his mum that her nearly-sixteen year old son had flirted with her. Mum told Harry at least he had good taste, but to not flirt with her ‘grown ass interns’.

“It is Doctor Meredith Grey,” Mum said. “If I need to step away, say so.”

“You need to step away,” Harry told her as he himself stepped further in the forest.

Mum didn’t hesitate, she never did. Harry heard her tell Meredith to take over and then there was a soft click when the call went off speakerphone.

“I’m here, honey,” Mum said. “What’s going on?”

Harry took a deep breath then tried to find the easiest summary he could. Mum had been left in the dark on so much because Harry couldn’t bear to add more stress to her life, but he didn’t have long and he needed her one more time for the hardest challenge he had ever faced.

“The wizard that killed my parents is here, Mum,” Harry said, blinking quickly. “He’s here and if I don’t go face him then he’s going to kill a lot of people. He’s already killed a lot of people… and I have to, I have to. If I don’t go face him then he can’t be stopped.”

Harry wanted to save lives, he just thought he would do it much differently.

Mum sucked in a breath and Harry knew she heard what he didn’t say. Harry had to face him and Harry had to die.

“No.” Mum didn’t yell, she never yelled at Harry, she didn’t need to. Mum had a rather commanding voice when she wanted to have it and Harry recognized the order - he wished he didn’t have to disobey.

“You listen to me and you listen good, Harry. You under no circumstances are to do anything as insane as going to face that man, do you understand me? No circumstances, Harry.”

“You know I have to,” Harry said thickly as his throat became clogged with emotion. “Mum, you know I have to. Hundreds of people die if I don’t.”

“I do not give a damn about hundreds of people,” Mum said. Harry could hear the quiver in her voice, the one that knew what he knew - he had to do it. “I care about you, my son. That is who I care about.”

“I know,” Harry whispered. He did know. Mum loved him, she had loved him since the first day they met. She loved him more than anyone in the world did, and Harry loved her.

“It’s a long walk,” Harry said as a few stray tears broke free. Harry didn’t want to be crying when he made it to Voldemort, he didn’t want mocked by a megalomaniac for outdated ideals on masculinity, but he couldn’t stop himself from having feelings.

“Will you talk to me?” Harry asked. “Just - tell me about your surgery? Or - or about what Tuck’s doing?”

“I will not,” Mum said, and she was crying and Harry hated that. “I will not spend this time telling you about a surgery that you know the steps of as well as I do.”

Harry smiled faintly as he began walking. Mum was exaggerating, but he did have a basic idea of what needed done to remove a diseased liver.

“I will tell you that I want you to get your booty back to safety and I will acknowledge that you are a man, a man who I have raised to be brave and noble. And I regret all that, I should have raised you to be a coward.”

She didn’t mean that. Harry kept walking.

“Do you - do you think we’ll see each other again?” Harry asked, his one Big Question. There were a lot of little questions, but Big Questions were ones that Mum said no man on Earth could answer. Harry knew Mum didn’t have a definite answer, he just wanted to hear her opinion one more time.

“Baby…” Mum made a sound so broken that it made Harry’s breath hitch. “Baby, go back, please. Don’t do this to me.”

She knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t. If there were lives on the line - and there were - then Harry had to step up. That was what his mum would do and his parents had done before him.

Just because it hurt didn’t mean it was the wrong decision. And, truthfully, it wasn’t much of a decision. It was a destiny, a painful one.

“I’m not doing it to you, I’m doing it for you,” Harry said, staying quiet as he walked through the silent forest. “But I can’t do it if - if you think I won’t see you again one day.”

“You will,” Mum said. She must have breathed deeply and drew herself up tall, tall for her anyway. Harry recognized the shift in her then. She didn’t like it, but she wasn’t going to let Harry do it alone either.

“You will fight like hell, you will fight like the man that I know you are,” Mum ordered him. “And if - if… God, baby… if you can’t fight, if you can’t, then… then you pray, okay? Because that’s what I’m going to do. I am going to pray to God that he watches over my stubborn son who is doing what he thinks is best even though it is breaking his mother in half.”

Harry couldn’t fight, there was no purpose to it. There was a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of him and Harry would have to face his death to see Voldemort finished. One life for hundreds, thousands.

It was the most noble thing a person could do, saving a life.

“Will He listen?” Harry asked, a Big Question. Harry had attended church with his family since he was seven, he knew that Mum believed so fully in something that she had never seen - a belief that Harry wanted so desperately to share in. It should be easy, if magic was as real then surely God was as well.

But what God took a mother protecting her son? Took a boy who had been kind and good when he was only seventeen? It was cruel and made Harry wonder if life was all there was to experience in the world.

“God will listen to you because he loves you,” Mum said with so much conviction that it was hard to doubt. “God loves every single one of us, but I know He saves a special spot in his heart for brave and brilliant boys who - who always do what they think is the right thing.”

Harry was getting closer to where Voldemort - death - would be waiting. He knew it from the stillness of the forest, the eerie sense that all the creatures had fled, fled like any rational being should.

“I can’t hang up, but you’re going to cry and I hate that,” Harry breathed. “You have to hang up, Mum. I can’t - I don’t want to.”

Harry wanted to hear his mum’s voice once more, he wanted reassurance that he wasn’t alone and that there could be a life after death. Maybe Harry would see his parents, one day he would see his mum again.

Harry didn’t want the woman who raised him, who loved him, who cared for him more than anything to hear him be killed.

“I will not hang up on you,” Mum said, firm and unshakeable. “I will be right here. You - you put me in your pocket so that you have both hands to fight with. Do you understand, Harry?”

Harry understood that Miranda was going to love him clear to his last breath.

“I do,” Harry says. It was time, he knew he was too close. “I love you, Mum. I love you more than anything. And - and tell Tuck and Tucker too, okay? Tell them - tell them I loved them.”

“I will.” Mum was crying and that hurt. “You are my son, Harry. Mine. And I - I am so unbelievably proud of you.”

Harry knew she loved him, it was what he needed to hear then that even if he was hurting her in the worst possible way - she was still proud of him.

“Bye, Mum,” Harry whispered. He didn’t end the call, he only moved the phone to his shirt pocket. Harry could still hear his mother’s voice, it was what he focused on as he entered the clearing and found himself face to face with death.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

The death eaters made shocked sounds at Harry’s appearance, but Harry ignored them. They weren’t important, none of it was anymore.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

On Earth, Harry was just a boy. Maybe he would be something different in Heaven.

“Harry Potter,” Voldemort said, the sibilant hiss causing mum’s prayer to stutter for a moment. Only a moment, Mum wouldn’t falter when she knew Harry needed her… and she always knew.

“Give us this day, our daily bread… Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Harry stood straight, silent. He wasn’t there to beg and he wasn’t going to drag out his mother’s pain. Harry was there to end the suffering of others, hopefully save some lives.

One life for hundreds of others.

“The Boy-Who-Lived,” Voldemort hissed, his head tilted and wand raised like a curious child. “You’ve come to die.”

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver my son from evil.”

Voldemort raised his wand and Harry wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of closing his eyes, he would watch that green spell fly toward him and know that it was not painless, it only multiplied the pain of one good woman who had always done her best.

“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory…”

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Harry thought that would be the last words he heard, the last sound from a life that wasn’t long enough. It wasn’t. Just before the spell struck him in his chest, taking his life, Harry heard one last word from the person who loved him the best.

One broken, pained, word.

“Amen.”

It took Harry two hours after the death of Tom Riddle - who died as nothing more than a man - to get to Seattle.

Then it took Harry another forty-five minutes to get past MACUSA who hadn’t been pleased to have a foreign wizard ignore their apparation laws and checkpoints. Harry had wanted to blast them out of his way, fight them to get to his family, but that would have taken much longer than politely informing them that he just killed Voldemort and if they didn’t move out of his way then they would get to see how firsthand.

Mum would pop a cork if she heard Harry threaten officers of law like that, but she would threaten them all the same if they had stood between her and Harry or Tuck.

As soon as Harry was in the clear, he raced to Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. That was where Mum had been and where Harry knew she still would be.

The ER doors opened for Harry and he looked around briefly, searching for his mum. She wasn’t in there and someone asked if Harry needed help, but he pushed past them.

If Mum wasn’t in the ER, she wouldn’t be in the OR, she would be…

Harry bypassed the lifts, needing very much to run off the adrenaline before he went into shock. There was so much energy thrumming through him, he needed to see his mum and hug her… then he could crash.

The daycare for hospital staff was on the third floor, the same floor where Harry once spent over a week with a broken arm. There were a few familiar faces that made surprised greetings when they saw Harry running full speed to the daycare, someone told him to slow down.

Harry couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t stop. He just needed—

“Mum!” Harry opened the door to the daycare with a bang and saw the very woman he wanted.

Mum was sitting in a rocking chair with Harry’s brother in her lap, crying freely. Poor Tuck looked so confused that he actually began crying when he saw Harry.

“Harry?” Mum’s head snapped up from where she’d had her face hidden in the top of Tuck’s head. Harry’s heart ached when he saw her grief, the swollen eyes and freely spilling tears.

“Harry!” Mum quickly, but carefully, put Tuck down on the floor so that she and Harry could race each other to grab the other one in a tight embrace.

Harry held it together for a second, then Mum said his name again and he broke. The dam that he tried to build to get through it all burst and Harry was seven years old, hurt and needing his mother to make it better.

And, just as had happened ten years ago in that very hospital, she was there for him.