Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Harry Potter in any way or anywhere.

A/N: I'm not going to lie and pretend this is the best story ever, but I think it's alright and pretty good for my first non-oneshot story. Also this story is inspired by brainthief's story 0800-RENT-A-HERO.


"Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!"

In one swift, fluid motion, Neville broke free of the Body-Bind Curse upon him; the flaming hat fell off him and he drew from its depths something silver, with a glittering, rubied handle - The slash of the silver blade could not be heard over the roar of the oncoming crowd or the sounds of the clashing giants or of the stampeding centaurs, and yet, it seemed to draw every eye. With a single stroke Neville sliced off the great snake's head, which spun high into the air, gleaming in the light flooding from the entrance hall, and Voldemort's mouth was open in a scream of fury that nobody could hear, and the snake's body thudded to the ground at his feet.


"Fight! Fight! Fight for my Master, defender of house-elves! Fight the Dark Lord, in the name of brave Regulus! Fight!"


"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"


Bellatrix laughed the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius had given as he toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly Harry knew what was going to happen before it did.

Molly's curse soared beneath Bellatrix's constricted arm and hit her squarely in the chest, directly over her heart.

Bellatrix's gloating smile froze, her eyes seemed to bulge: For the tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled, and the watching crowd roared, and Voldemort screamed.


"Protego!" roared Harry, and the Shield Charm expanded in the middle of the Hall, and Voldemort stared around for the source as Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak at last.

The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of: "Harry!" and "HE'S ALIVE!" were stifled at once. The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other.


"There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good..."

"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"

"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but they two. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"


"I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

Voldemort did not speak, but prowled in a circle, and Harry knew that he kept him temporarily mesmerized at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a final secret...

"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, through love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like and old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter, and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"

"Just one thing," said Harry, and still they circled each other, wrapped in each other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.

"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snakelike face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humorless and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.


"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, "I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."

"What childish dream is this?" said Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and his red eyes did not waver from Harry's.

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's. Dumbledore's from the moment you starting hunting down my mother. And you never realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"


"Yes, I dare," said Harry, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle."

Voldemort's hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds away.

"That wand still isn't working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."

"He killed..."

"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die, undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"

"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort's voice shook with malicious pleasure. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against the last master's wishes! Its power is mine!"

"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard... The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance..."

Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.

"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."

Blank shock showed in Voldemort's face for a moment, but then it was gone.

"But what does it matter?" he said softly. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone... and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy..."

"But you're too late," said Harry. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took his wand from him."

Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand."


"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!"

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell.


Later that night Harry found all three Deathly Hallows sitting atop his trunk.


Two years later…

It was May 2nd, 2000. Harry joined the Aurors office along with Ron, and Neville only two weeks after the battle, Harry and Ron both are senior Aurors, and after a year Neville left, and took up the Herbology post at Hogwarts when Prof. Sprout retired. Harry and Ginny got back together the night of the battle. Ginny joined The HolyHead Harpies as a Chaser. Harry and Ginny are now engaged and visit Harry's Godson Teddy at least once a week. Many other things happened as well but for now this is all we need to know.

Now at the moment Harry and Ginny are at Harry's house in Godric's Hollow after a particularly good match and are having a two person celebration. As it is they are sitting on the couch with celebratory butter beer in hand, each leaning against the other.

"I still can't believe that second goal." Harry chuckled as he looked at his wife-to-be proudly.

"I was pretty bloody amazing wasn't IT?" Ginny asked jokingly.

"Yeah, you alwa..." Harry was cut off by something very strange, across the room, a large bright blue hole into nothingness opened up. "You only got butterbeer right?." Harry says disbelievingly as he sets his bottle down and pulls out his holly wand.

"I wish that was it." Ginny said fearfully as she also pulls out her wand. Harry was about to walk over and investigate when suddenly there was a lurch and a strong wind filled the room and things began being sucked into the hole.

"What the bloody hell!" Harry and Ginny both exclaimed as a chair flew past his head, and he then quickly grabbed Ginny and pulled her behind the couch and tried to hold steady as the wind grew stronger.

"What is that thing?!" Harry yelled more than asked.

"How should I know?" Ginny yelled over the wind. "Do you think some left over Death Eaters are trying to get revenge?" She suddenly let out a scream as the couch moved and the wind lifted her up.

"GINNY!" Harry yelled as he grabbed her hand and held on the couch as the wind started to lift him up as well. Suddenly the couch started to move and the last thing Harry remembered before the pain hit was pulling Ginny close and holding on tight.


At the moment Harry's world was only two things, pain, pain like he had never felt before, a million times worse than than The Cruciatus Curse, as his very flesh was ripped away in strips, and holding on to Ginny as tightly as he could because somehow he knew, that if he let her go, something much worse than this would happen to her. Then suddenly there was a blinding light and Harry passed out, Ginny still held tight in his arms.


A/N: Hello! How was the first chapter? Great? Horrible? Let me know! By the way I was wondering, does anyone else like reading fics with the dark contrast option? 'Cause I do.