I.
Harry Potter becomes a murderer at eleven.
Oh, of course, this isn't what Professor Dumbledore tells him. Oh no; the headmaster calls him my boy in the hospital wing, eats earwax jellybeans with him, twinkles his eyes at him, and awards Gryffindor 60 points for Harry's bravery and courage.
Harry Potter burns a man to death with his bare hands, and Gryffindor wins the house cup for it.
Dumbledore had told him, later, that it was his mother's love that did this; Quirrel was impure, corrupted, and so he burned when he touched Harry, who was pure. Pure like love, pure like sacrifice, pure like death. Harry burned a man to death, and the fire cauterized the wounds so that his hands could remain blood-free.
(In that room, with a boy and a mirror and a dead man, Harry had smelled the boiled flesh and the cloying smoke, and watched a man's face shrivel and pucker into red-raw tissue. Harry had watched the skin burn away like sooty cloth and there were imprints left on the meat that used to be Quirrel's face, and his hands had remained clean. The man had screamed and wailed and burned, and Harry's hands had remained clean.)
Dumbledore might tell him that it was the strain of Voldemort's spirit leaving that killed Quirrel, but Harry knows. It was his hands, pale and stubby and calloused (from hours of weeding Petunia's garden), that charred skin and melted flesh and fat.
Harry Potter becomes a murderer at the tender age of eleven, and the Slytherins grumble while the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors cheer him on.
II.
Harry Potter makes his second kill at age twelve.
It's only a diary. Dumbledore congratulates him and Molly Weasley hugs him, sobbing, in thanks for saving her daughter, and Professor McGonagall looks at him with something like respect.
It's only a diary, only a horcrux. It deserved to die, Harry knows this, because otherwise Ginny would have died. It's only a diary, but Harry can't forget the sight of sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle writhing and shrieking (like Quirrel, burning again) and the ink that had spilled from the cover like blood.
(It's only a diary, but it housed a shred of a soul, a part of a person.)
Tom Riddle's death brings back Dumbledore, dispels the veil of fear that had covered the school, adds color to Ginny's cheeks. Tom Riddle was bad, and his death brought good to the world.
Harry killed him.
(In the chamber of secrets, Harry had stood there, in ankle-deep water that was turning pink from blood, next to the basilisk's carcass and Ginny Weasley's pale body. He stood there, with an ink-splattered diary in one of his hands, a basilisk fang in the other, and Fawkes was singing high above him. There was water and blood and muck on his robes, and his arm still ached from the bite and his hands were stained dark with ink-blood, and Fawkes kept singing.)
Harry completes his second murder, and this time the entire school looks at him gratefully. Even the Slytherins, to some extent.
III.
Harry's third casualty is Umbridge.
Casualty, not death.
She's a ghastly woman, make no mistake, and Harry is glad she's gone. Hogwarts is glad she's gone, she who uses blood quills on children and makes them carve their own flesh.
Technically, Hermione was the one who came up with the idea. She and Harry led her to the Forbidden Forest, into a herd of centaurs, and then Umbridge had done the rest of it herself. And she'd been carried off, to somewhere and had something done to her, and when she returned she was only a ghost of herself.
Harry had seen her, pale and quiet and wide-eyed in the hospital bed next to him. And Ron, his best mate, his first friend, had clucked his tongue and made clopping sounds and she'd shot up, white and shaking, and they'd all laughed at her.
Umbridge is a horrible person, so it doesn't matter what happens to her. Umbridge is a horrible person, so she deserves to be left to the mercy of a herd of blood-thirsty centaurs. Umbridge is a horrible person, so it doesn't matter if she lives or dies, and if the centaurs return a body, then good riddance. Umbridge is a horrible person, so if she dies then the world will celebrate.
Harry knows that's how the world works, and thinks on it no more.
IV.
Harry casts the torture curse at Bellatrix Lestrange.
Bellatrix, who killed Sirius. Bellatrix, who killed the only paternal figure Harry's ever had. Bellatrix, who tortured the Longbottoms into insanity and who knows how many others. Bellatrix, who's a known staunch supporter of Voldemort.
Harry yells crucio at her, and she screams and laughs at him and tells him that he needs to mean it.
Harry uses an unforgivable in front of multiple witnesses, and when Dumbledore takes him back to his office at Hogwarts, the headmaster says I understand and I know how you feel, Harry. And Harry, he screams and yells and throws the headmaster's possessions, all while Dumbledore looks at him sadly.
Harry casts a spell that would have landed him in Azkaban in any other circumstance, but he's the boy-who-lived and Bellatrix is a Voldemort supporter. Harry uses an unforgivable, and no one cares because they all know she deserved it.
Harry is too angry and heartbroken after Sirius's death to give a second thought about it.
V.
Harry watches Peter Pettigrew choke himself to death.
Peter is the one who betrayed his parents, is the reason why Harry's an orphan and had to spend the first eleven years of his life in a cupboard. Peter, whose life Harry saved and freed (accidentally). Peter, who tied Harry up to Tom Riddle Senior's gravestone and cut his arm open and sliced off his own hand and had brought back Voldemort in Harry's fourth year, even as he sobbed and cowered on the dirt next to the cauldron.
Peter, who held down Harry with his gifted silver hand, and tried to choke the life out of him, and Harry had reminded him of his life debt.
And then his own hand had turned against him, Voldemort's precaution against a cowardly weakling of a follower, and Harry had tried to pull it back, tugging and straining against the hard cold silver as Peter turned bluer and bluer.
Peter had died to his own hand, and Harry was the one who had turned the hand against him.
(Harry had stood there, looking down at Peter's oxygen-starved corpse. His face was blue and carved in an ugly gasp for air, and he had died struggling, and Harry could see the silver veins on the hand that crushed his windpipe. He had looked like a deflated prune, a wrinkly balloon, and this is what Harry saved him in third year for. And then there was no more time to look.)
Peter was a coward and a traitor and a turncoat who could never choose a side and stick with it, so he died, killed by his own indecision.
+1.
Voldemort falls as an empty husk, the elder wand held firmly in Harry's hand.
There's a moment of silence, and then Hogwarts explodes in noise. Everyone rushes forward like human wave, crowding up to the boy-who-lived, now the boy-who-saved-them-all-again, and they're trying to shake his hand, high-five him, clap him on the back, touch him.
The sun rises, and it casts a fuzzy golden glow on everyone and everything, and it feels like a new beginning.
It feels like hope.