Harry wasn’t sure about what he felt, considering. He had fought in this war since his first year in Hogwarts; he had felt the burden of it since his fourth. Looking back on it, he now wasn’t sure if he’d been fighting for a cause. After all these years, having lost so many, he was more familiar with the concept of fighting to survive, and perhaps to prepare himself for the day he could end it all by facing off with Voldemort. Sometimes he worked with a team, and he did everything to ensure their survival, but had he actually stood on the battlefield and felt driven by self-righteous passion? That this was a fight about good triumphing over evil?
He was surprised to realize that it hadn’t been like that for him. His motivations certainly hadn’t been driven by selfishness, but “fighting for the side of good” seemed so abstract to him now, having lived the realities of war. The last eight years of his life had been about getting the guy next to him—on the battlefield—home, preferably alive, or making sure that Ron got to spend the next Christmas with his family, or having Tonks and Remus live so they could raise a family in peace, or getting Hermione back alive so that maybe they could have their happily ever after, dark fairy-tale though it might be. All these things meant something to him. These things were comprehensible and real. In the face of all that, “fighting for the side of good” seemed nothing more than Ministry propaganda.
Harry realized then that the soldiers he’d sent off weren’t looking to him because they saw him as the Boy Who Lived. They looked at him and saw a bloke who understood exactly what they were fighting for. He wasn’t like Dumbledore who was a symbol of wisdom, goodness, and strength. That image, however gloriously inspiring, was inaccessible and distant, almost divine; like Merlin and Morgana. At any rate, he didn’t want to be like that. He wanted these soldiers to look at him and see a man who fought with them on the battlefield; someone they could call to for help and expect to pull them up by the hand, physically, should they happen to fall, or find themselves hanging off a cliff, or buried under rubble. He wanted them to see a bloke who had reasons for living, reasons that weren’t so far from theirs.
Those men who shook his hand weren’t just telling him to defeat Voldemort. They were telling him to get through it alive, because if he survived it, then maybe they would, too.
- Chapter 36: Purpose, Forever Knight, by DeliverMeFromEve