Chapter Text
..Right, then. Harry swiped a hand down his face, leaning against the desk next to the Pensieve. So I have to die in order to kill Voldemort. Got it.
He'd known there was a pretty large possibility of his death happening during the war, yeah, but that was a little different from knowing it was required.
"It's my duty," he whispered to himself, turning to leave the headmaster's office, Cloak around his shoulders. "It's the only way." But it didn't stop him from wishing there were some other way - who wouldn't? Knowing that what little time he had left before Voldemort attacked the castle was also the time he had left alive at all...
He swallowed, letting his feet carry him invisibly through the castle corridors. There had already been such bloodshed, such destruction; pieces of the castle walls were missing, showing the landscape outside, and Harry had already glimpsed the bodies in the Great Hall from those who'd already fallen.
It's natural not to want to, he told himself, shivering. Even animals have self-preservation instincts. The reassurance wasn't much, though, against the awful dread squeezing his chest like a vise. Harry stopped at a spot with a particularly good view of the Forbidden Forest, considering the path into the depths where he knew his nemesis to be. He would be expected there, soon, wouldn't he?
But, Harry turned to look down the corridor, where the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy hung. There's still a little time. And maybe, just maybe, he thought, pacing back and forth before the empty section of wall, if the Room of Requirement still existed-
Maybe it would have something that could help him.
(Or the Fiendfyre would incinerate him, but that was a risk he was willing to take.)
The door that appeared was small, and unassuming, and Harry recognized it as the door to his cupboard under the stairs, from all those years ago. He grimaced, but he unlocked the deadbolts on the outside, all seven of them, one by one; the door opened on a pitch-black room that the light from the corridor only reached so far into, and bent double, Harry went in.
The door slammed shut behind him like his uncle had closed it, and Harry jumped, looking back, the Cloak falling off of him with the movement.
And when he turned back to look at the room-
Well. I guess there was something to help me.
Or rather, some one.
He blinked. Scratch that, several someones.
Actually - there were quite a lot of someones, as they continued to appear the longer he watched, all of them appearing quite bewildered and looking around, and uttering such phrases as "what the hell?" and "huh?" and "erm, how-" and "where-?", and so on.
And most of these someones, if Harry was not mistaken, looked very much like he himself.