She was a lithe platinum blonde with silver eyes, his height, and she felt fast, energetic, dynamic, like lightning in a bottle. He was trying to remember her appearance now that he was in a tent in the woods and there was nothing immediate for him to do. Her beautiful face had a special something to it that he tried to describe. She looked fresh, clean, like fresh snow or fruit fresh from the orchard with dew still condensed on it. Why did she always look clean? He saw her with mud on her face, sweaty and dirty after a Quidditch match, and she looked clean. No, clean isn’t the right word. She looked pure. Pure in a sense that there is no mask, there is no play, there is no deception, that her emotions play on her face in ways that make you see straight into her soul. When she would use the word “pure”, he understood it in that terrible blood purity sense where they look down on muggle-borns and half-bloods, but now he knew that this was not how she understood it, not really. She understood it in a spiritual and moral sense, where purity was something you had to actively strive for. In order to be pure, she thought she needed to be honest, truthful, brave, respectful, smart, a good witch, loving, and honour traditions, parents and family. She didn’t tell him all that; he deduced. It was also obvious that she just repeated all that pureblood nonsense from her parents and believed it because she loved them and they can do no wrong, and when she saw Voldemort for herself, it all broke down.
He remembered the tower. She ambushed them. Dumbledore had him under his cloak, and had him body-locked when she came, and she disarmed Dumbledore with a spell. She was fast. What happened then was nothing like he expected. She lowered her wand, apologized to Dumbledore for disarming him, but she couldn’t risk not being allowed to say this. She lowered herself to her knees, looked him in the eyes and begged.
“Please, Headmaster, save us. We are prisoners in our own home. Terrible creatures roam our house and I am afraid of being violated or murdered every single moment. Thugs and werewolves. We live in constant fear. My father was foolish to put his faith in the Dark Lord, who is cruel and cares for nobody but himself. He’s a shell of his former self now, and my mother is trying to keep us alive and protect me, but we have no control, no safety, no hope. Please; you’re the world’s greatest wizard. Voldemort fears you. Please come and save us, I’m begging you. I have nobody else to turn to. I would already have killed myself if not for the fact that he would torture and kill my poor parents then. I agreed to this in order to buy them a year of relative safety, but now it’s all over. They will know that I never intended to harm you. Please, Headmaster.”
It was the most heartbreaking thing he ever saw or heard. He never saw her in tears before, with that clean, pure face that told the truth. He could never imagine that powerful, aristocratic, dignified girl on her knees. And what she told was horrible, but not beyond his knowledge. He saw through Voldemort’s eyes, he saw what it’s like there. He just didn’t connect the dots and understand what it’s like for a pure, innocent girl to live there.
Dumbledore got her back to her feet. “Please stand up, my child. I am so sorry. I already feel honoured to have been allowed to meet one of your kind, but the second one… I did not think it possible.”
She looked puzzled, as puzzled as he himself felt under the cloak, and started to ask what he meant by that, but then the Death Eaters came, and the air of noble civility and purity was lost, replaced with the horrors that now live in her home. And then Snape came and Harry never got to know what Dumbledore meant by that. He had some idea. Dumbledore told him that his soul possessed the full power of that force that’s kept always locked in the Ministry – love, as a magical power. He seems to have thought Lyra to be the second such being he met. It’s incredible how stupid I am, Harry thought. I completely misinterpreted her, and it was right in my face. The feeling of cleanliness that persisted even under mud. She would smell clean like a forest after rain. The way she carried herself. And he thought she was evil because she loved her parents the way he loved his own, and she believed what they told her the way he would have believed his own. None of that was her fault, and when she could verify what they told her, it was already too late.
He covered for her. Said she had nothing to do with the Death Eaters coming to school. She just happened to be there in the tower and wanted to talk to the Headmaster, which happened to be true, if we ignore the fact that she disarmed him. What she did there was exactly what he would have done; he would have found the way to speak to the headmaster alone and ask for help. She never really did anything wrong, and he was a fool. He now knew why she was angry at him. There were monsters in her home and she had to live in a horror show, and he was dating other girls and looking at her as if she were an enemy. Of course she was furious. She felt betrayed. She felt alone in the dark with horrors approaching and he was judging her and thinking how to stop her because she’s the enemy.
It was so easy to fear her. She looked like a terrible weapon – fast, powerful, smart, with intelligence behind those silver eyes that missed nothing and cut like a knife. With beauty that intimidated him because he felt in its power. With Death Eater ideology that came out whenever she opened her mouth. He was always too intimidated with what he felt she could do, to stop and think, and see what she actually is, and what she wants.
When she laid her soul bare before Dumbledore, he understood that she merely loved her parents, and her purity wasn’t some noble affectation; it was what she actually is. She’s pure love, and Dumbledore saw it. It’s just that the parents she loved filled her head with their beliefs, and she believed them because she was a child and she knew no better. If he were born to her parents, he would have been her – or worse, because it would be wrong to presume that he would have been as good a person as her.
When he confessed to her after the funeral, it was as if a dark cloud was removed from her face, and a light illuminated her from within, just from knowing now that he loves her. That transformation was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. But he couldn’t think about that now, because there’s that last horcrux to find, and a final battle to win, and he looked at the wand in his hand.
Her wand. They had to pretend he disarmed her, but she gave it to him. It felt like she gave her entire life to him: her power, her protection, safety, everything, trusting him to save her. It felt like nothing else in the entire world, and when he took that wand and its energy took a taste of him… it didn’t oppose him, like other wands he took opposed him and made it hard to do magic. This one didn’t exactly recognize him as its owner, but as the person its owner loved since she was a child, and thought of with every spell. Using the wand felt like falling in love. His eyes filled with tears.
He needs to focus. Any more of this and he’s going to get really distracted. Let’s get this done with.