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 Then it was withdrawn.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.

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Silence again.	\|	The fact of his own survival burned inside him, a talisman against them, as though his father’s stag kept guardian in his heart.

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