...
Harry and his brain considered the problem.
Azkaban had stood invincible for centuries, relying upon the impossibility of evading the Dementors' gaze. So if Harry found
Harry's brain suggested that an obvious way to stop the Dementors from seeing Bellatrix was to make her stop existing, i.e., kill her.
Harry congratulated his brain on thinking outside the box and told it to continue searching.
Harry considered this. Bellatrix might not survive in her debilitated state.
It was another good outside-the-box idea, but Harry told his brain to keep thinking of...
A frown moved over Harry's face. He'd heard something about that, somewhere.
Harry focused as hard as he could, but he couldn't remember, it was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't remember; so he told his subconscious to go on trying to recollect it, and refocused his attention on the other half of the problem.
The Headmaster had been repeatedly exposed to a Dementor from a few steps away, over and over throughout a whole day, and had come out of it looking merely tired. How had the Headmaster done that? Could Harry do it too?
It could just be some random genetic thing, in which case Harry was screwed. But assuming the problem
Then the obvious answer was that Dumbledore wasn't afraid of death.
Dumbledore
That avenue was closed to Harry.
And then Harry thought of the flip side, the obvious inverse question:
Harry meant to destroy Death, to end it if he could. He meant to live forever, if he could; he had hope of it, the thought of Death brought him no sense of despair or inevitability. He was not blindly attached to his own life; indeed it had taken an effort
Was it Harry, all along, who'd been rationalizing? Who was secretly so afraid of death that it was twisting his own thoughts, as Harry had accused Dumbledore?
Harry considered this, preventing himself from flinching away. It felt uncomfortable, but...
But...
But uncomfortable thoughts weren't always
And that was when Harry realized.
Harry asked his dark side what it thought of death.
And Harry's Patronus wavered, dimmed, almost went out upon the instant, for that desperate, sobbing, screaming terror, an unutterable fear that would do anything not to die, throw everything aside not to die, that couldn't think straight or feel straight in the presence of that absolute horror, that couldn't look into the abyss of nonexistence any more than it could have stared straight into the Sun, a blind terrified thing that only wanted to find a dark corner and hide and not have to think about it any more -
The silver figure had darkened to moonlight, was flickering like a failing candle -