Harry would normally have tried to persuade

Harry would normally have tried to persuade Hagrid out of this idea at once; the prospect of a second giant taking up residence in the Forest, possibly even wilder and more brutal than Grawp, was positively alarming, but somehow Harry could not muster the energy necessary to argue the point. He was starting to wish he was alone again, and with the idea of hastening his departure he took several large gulps of his dandelion juice, half-emptying his glass.

‘Ev'ryone knows yeh've bin tellin’ the truth now, Harry’ said Hagrid softly and unexpectedly. He was watching Harry closely. ‘Tha's gotta be better, hasn’ it?’

Harry shrugged.

‘Look ...’ Hagrid leaned towards him across the table, ‘I knew Sirius longer ‘n yeh did ... he died in battle, an tha's the way he'd've wanted ter go—’

‘He didn't want to go at all!’ said Harry angrily.

Hagrid bowed his great shaggy head.

‘Nah, I don’ reckon he did,’ he said quietly. ‘But still, Harry ... he was never one ter sit aroun’ at home an’ let other people do the fightin'. He couldn've lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help—’

Harry leapt up.

‘I've got to go and visit Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing,’ he said mechanically.

‘Oh,’ said Hagrid, looking rather upset. ‘Oh ... all righ’ then, Harry ... take care o’ yerself then, an’ drop back in if yeh've got a mo ...’

‘Yeah ... right ...’

Harry crossed to the door as fast as he could and pulled it open; he was out in the sunshine again before Hagrid had finished saying goodbye, and walking away across the lawn. Once again, people called out to him as he passed. He closed his eyes for a few moments, wishing they would all vanish, that he could open his eyes and find himself alone in the grounds ...

A few days ago, before his exams had finished and he had seen the vision Voldemort had planted in his mind, he would have given almost anything for the wizarding world to know he had been telling the truth, for them to believe that Voldemort was back, and to know that he was neither a liar nor mad. Now, however ...

He walked a short way around the lake, sat down on its bank, sheltered from the gaze of passers-by behind a tangle of shrubs, and stared out over the gleaming water, thinking ...

Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he had felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world. He was—he had always been—a marked man. It was just that he had never really understood what that meant ...

And yet sitting here on the edge of the lake, with the terrible weight of grief dragging at him, with the loss of Sirius so raw and fresh inside, he could not muster any great sense of fear. It was sunny, and the grounds around him were full of laughing people, and even though he felt as distant from them as though he belonged to a different race, it was still very hard to believe as he sat here that his life must include, or end in, murder ...