Disclaimer

All persons and places belong to J.K. Rowling, I only own the plot. This is non-commercial.

The story starts near the end of „Harry Potter and the Half-Blood-Prince", it is set then to allow some minor changes.

Contains spoilers to all books (including HBP) and (eventually) the following pairings: HP-DM, HG-SB, RW-LL, RL-NT, GW-NL.

There will be slash/yaoi (male-male pairing), so please don't read it, if this offends you.

This is my first fanfic. I'm not sure, how to rate it, so I make it an M, just to be secure.

Please excuse all mistakes, I'm sure, I make, because English is my second language.

AND: Please review!

THE END OF THE WAR

1 Unexpected

Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, sat silent and solitary near the white marble tomb of his headmaster and mentor Albus Dumbledore, who was killed a few days ago and buried earlier that same day. Though being famous, a celebrity, the black-haired wizard with emerald eyes and the tell-tale scar, shaped as a lightning bolt, was just a lonely boy, deep in thought, at that moment. He pondered with fate, which again and again took the ones he dearly loved away from him and even worse let him watch these horrible events.

And he did not only watch them once, when they actually happened. No, he was never able to get these dreadful pictures out of his mind. He relived all those painful moments again and again.

First there were his parents, who were killed by Lord Voldemort, the worst dark wizard of the century, when Harry was only one year old. He had never known the way his parents died until in his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the dementors made him relive his worst memories. And since that time he could hear his parents die, trying to protect Harry from the dark Lord. And protect him they did.

'Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!'

'Stand aside, you silly girl … stand aside, now …'

'Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead –' (1)

Harry laughed bitterly as he remembered his mother's last words. With her own sacrifice Lily Potter had left her son protected against the killing curse Voldemort had thrown on him. The protection of his mother let the curse backfire and the dark wizard was nearly killed. Never before had anyone ever survived the "Avada Kedavra" curse. And then, in the night of Halloween 1981 there were all of a sudden two wizards, who lived after it. That the Dark Lord had survived was unknown to most of the wizarding community, though, because Voldemort was stripped from his body and nearly everyone had believed him dead and gone. And therefore Harry was famous and called the Boy-Who-Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world (and the muggle world as well).

"Boy-Who-Lived, hah, Boy-Who-Lived-to-see-Everyone-Die, more likely" Harry murmured, "I can't stand this crap any longer, damned." With this the boy sighed and fell silent again.

But as Lord Voldemort, or Tom Marvolo Riddle, which was his real name ('Tom after his father, Marvolo after his Grandfather'), had strived for being immortal, he had taken many precautions to bodily death. He had parts of his soul transformed into Horcruxes, which prevented, that the last part, which was still left in his body, could die. These Horcruxes worked as tag lines and held the soul part back in this world and averted it from going to the netherworld, even if it left the body. And so he, too, lived after the attempt to murder Harry. Barely though, but still alive he spent years in hiding in Albania, waiting for his followers, known as Death Eaters to find him and restore him to his body. And long he had to wait. More than twelve years of peace for the wizarding world before one day Wormtail also known as Peter Pettigrew searched and found him and helped him to return to his body another year later.

Harry had witnessed this himself as well as another murder of someone he liked, Cedric Diggory, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Pettigrew killed him on Voldemort's order ('Kill the spare!' (2) still echoed through Harry's mind) and Harry felt immensely guilty because he blamed himself that Cedric was there in the first place. His late mentor Albus Dumbledore was one of only very few people to believe Harry, when he told that Voldemort was back. Most people chose to deny the possibility and preferred to believe, that Harry was only an attention seeking boy, who made the whole story up.

Another year later though, the truth could no longer be denied, when the Minister of Magic himself saw Lord Voldemort. This again was one of the worst days in Harry's short life. The day he lost the only parent figure he had ever known, Sirius Black, his godfather, his father's best friend; Sirius, who had been twelve years in Azkaban, the wizard prison, although he was innocent. He had had no opportunity to prove his innocence, because Peter Pettigrew, who was an unregistered Animagus, had betrayed Harry's parents and Sirius, then turned into his Animagus form (a rat) and vanished. Sirius was found at the crime scene and sent to prison without a trial.

He broke out of Azkaban twelve years later to protect his godson from Pettigrew. This was the reason, why Wormtail at last flew to seek Voldemort. Sirius had to live in hiding, which was so very difficult for him, as he was a man of action. And so it came as no surprise that he did not hesitate to come to Harry's rescue that one day in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic, where Harry and his friends were fighting against some Death Eaters, who wanted to get hold of a prophecy about Harry and Lord Voldemort. Sirius was duelling his own cousin Bellatrix Lestrange, one of Voldemort's most loyal followers, when he was thrown through The Veil by a curse. And again Harry had lost someone he really cared for.

'Come on, you can do better than that!' (3) He could still hear Sirius yelling before he got hit squarely on the chest by a jet of red light out of Bellatrix' wand. And then Harry saw his godfather disappear through the Veil before his inner eye.

And now, only one year later the old and wise headmaster, who had always been like a grandfather to Harry, was also dead. Dumbledore, 'The Only One He Ever Feared' (4) was dead, murdered by no-one else but Severus Snape, the Half-Blood Prince, as he named himself. Killed by the double agent, whom Dumbledore had believed to be trustworthy. Snape the former Death Eater (former, haha), now a spy for the light.

"How very wrong and fatal of the old man to give this person a second chance", Harry thought. "And leave me here, barely prepared to do what I have to do. Damned prophecy!" He could not help but recall the whole wretched thing in his mind:

'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies … and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not … and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives … the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies …' (5)

So, Harry was the Chosen-One. He had to kill Voldemort or die trying. And he still had not a clue, how to do it. First he had to find the remaining Horcruxes.

"The Horcruxes, these gruesome things… How could a person be so vile? So, murdering a human causes one's soul to rip into pieces. That is bad enough," Harry thought, "but putting parts of one's own soul into containers afterwards is so abhorrent", he was unable to understand, that even Tom Riddle had gone to these length. "Unbelievably direful."

Thinking of the Horcruxes… That was the first task at hand now for Harry. Dumbledore had spent all of the recent year to supply him with all information available about Horcruxes and Tom Riddle's past. Harry had been able to watch scenes of Riddle's childhood and time at school as well as a few later events from out of Dumbledore's memory in a Pensive. This way they had figured out, some of the Horcruxes Voldemort had made. Bad enough though Voldemort had felt the urge to have his soul split in seven parts. Anyone else before, who had tried to gain immortality by the means of a Horcrux, had only put half his soul into it and kept at least half of it for himself. Voldemort in contrast to them was even more evil. He had only one seventh of his soul left and put six seventh in six different containers.

Luckily the Boy-Who-Lived had already destroyed Tom's diary in the chamber of secrets four years ago. And the deceased headmaster had managed to delete the ring, which had belonged to Riddle's dead mother. Those left four more Horcruxes for Harry to find and destroy. One was supposed to be Nagini, the dark Lord's giant pet snake. This one would have to wait. Harry believed, he needed to kill the snake immediately before fighting Voldemort himself. That was, because the snake was always near her master and also no-one knew, whether Riddle would notice, when the last Horcrux was destroyed. It seemed though, that he had not noticed by now, that he was already two short.

One other item, which was likely to be a Horcrux, was the locket, which had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of the famous founders of Hogwarts. The locket Harry and his mentor had thought they had found in the cave, the day Dumbledore had died. The one, R.A.B., this wretched person, had taken and now no-one knew of its whereabouts. Then there was the cup Helga Hufflepuff, another of Hogwarts founders, had once owned. These two were the first for Harry to find and destroy.

And then there had to be one more. They had presumed, Riddle would have tried to get hold of another object, which had belonged to one of Hogwarts' founders in former times. Dumbledore had believed to be the only owner of such an item left. He had the sword of Godric Gryffindor in his office. But he had also been sure, that Tom Riddle never had the opportunity to gain access to it with intent to turn it into one of his Horcruxes. Harry was not as sure as his mentor was. There was the possibility, that he had done this while Prof. Dippet had still been headmaster of Hogwarts. There also was the eventuality that another object of Gryffindor's former property existed. Or an artefact of Rowenna Ravenclaw, the fourth founder, could have outlasted the centuries, who would know?

And what about the sorting hat? Had Dumbledore forgotten about it? Harry reckoned, the hat had once mentioned, that it had belonged to Godric Gryffindor as well as the sword. Be it as it may, Tom Riddle had had a very strong connection to Hogwarts. For him it was the first place, he ever called home, as it was for Harry, too. Strange as it was, both orphans felt this connection to their school. And this was the only clue the Boy-Who-Lived had to the last Horcrux. He was sure it must have a connection to Hogwarts.

But for now, it would make more sense, to try and figure out, who R.A.B. could be or more likely had been. Harry pulled the message R.A.B. had left with the fake locket out of his pocket and re-read it:

'To the Dark Lord

I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more.

R.A.B.' (6)

Harry hoped that R.A.B. had indeed destroyed the real Horcrux, but he feared this had never happened. R.A.B. knew, he had had to die and that could mean he had never found the time to actually destroy the Slytherin-locket. When Voldemort wanted someone dead, he was no-one to hesitate long before in fact killing them. Only Dumbledore had lasted that long, but that was because Riddle had secretly feared the old and wise wizard. So he had at last sent another person to murder the headmaster.

The black-haired boy was shaken with grieve, thinking of Dumbledore's death. Silent tears came into his sad green eyes, before slowly starting to roll down his cheeks. Harry felt lost. He suffered from his losses as well as from the burden, put onto his shoulders. And above all he had to break up with Ginny to protect her and not present Voldemort another weak point. He was just a sixteen-year-old teenager and at this moment it was too much to bear for him, having to rid the world of Riddle after solving the riddle of the Horcruxes. He did not feel like a saviour. No, not at all.

Tears kept streaming from his emerald eyes and he did not know, for how long he had been sitting near Dumbledore's white tomb, when he suddenly heard a 'Pop', which was the typical sound of an apparition. As it was not possible to apparate on Hogwarts' grounds, the person must have landed just outside the gates. Harry grabbed his wand and hid behind the stone bench, he had been sitting on. He had stopped crying at once and was now watching the way from the gates to the main entrance.

And there he saw it, a body floating in mid-air, the body of a woman, a blond woman. "Strange" he thought, "how can she apparate, when she is unconscious? And who is she? Why is she floating?" Soon he saw the lower body parts of another person appear behind that woman's body and suddenly Harry understood. The person was levitating the unconscious form. That was not a very threatening sight and so Harry stuffed his wand back into the pocket of his robe and ran towards the two people to try and help them.

When he was less than five yards away from the floating blond witch, he suddenly saw, who the person levitating her was. And he understood at once, why she had looked vaguely familiar to him. He stood rooted to the spot and was too shocked by the sight in front of him to do anything but stare. It was as if he was petrified. How could he dare to come to Hogwarts?

Harry was pulled out of his stupor, when Draco Malfoy addressed him:

"Potter? Could you please help me? Potter? Harry? Please?"

"Malfoy? What are you doing here? And have you just begged me for help?"

"Please, Harry, I cannot hold her much longer, I really need your help. She needs to be brought to Madam Pomfrey. I'll explain later. Please?"

Harry saw, that the blond boy was bleeding himself and slightly tumbling with the effort of levitating his mother. So he acted as was needed and cast a levitating charm on Narcissa himself, so that Malfoy could release her and save the last bit of strength he had left to stagger beside them into the castle.

They reached the infirmary without interception, which was lucky for both the injured Malfoys because of their bad state. The medi-witch was shocked, when she saw Narcissa Black-Malfoy float into her infirmary, even more so, when Draco Malfoy collapsed just behind the door. She levitated both onto beds and began to medicate them, muttering to herself. Then she asked Harry, what had happened to them and why they were at Hogwarts. He couldn't answer her and told her, how he had met them. She asked him to fetch the headmistress and Harry, seeing that he would not get any explanations from Malfoy soon, went to retrieve Prof. McGonagall from her office.

The new headmistress was evidently equally shocked by what the Boy-Who-Lived told her. Harry remembered when he had last seen Malfoy and reminded Prof. McGonagall, that Malfoy had not wanted to murder Prof. Dumbledore. He had hesitated; he had clearly been black-mailed and was neither willing nor able to kill the headmaster. McGonagall thought the matter over and said: "Potter, do you believe it is possible, that they have been punished by You-know-who, because Malfoy didn't murder Albus?"

"That would fit to the black-mailing and they both look like they have been tortured and severely hurt."

"Well, we will have to wait for them to wake up to get an explanation. Potter would you please ask Prof. Slughorn to bring a vial of Veritaserum to the infirmary. We need to know the true story, once they are awake and well again."

"I'll do that." And so he went down to the dungeons and then accompanied Prof. Slughorn back, who brought the Veritaserum to the infirmary.

As both Malfoys were still unconscious, the headmistress sent Harry to bed and he headed to Gryffindor Tower, where he found, that everyone was already asleep.

Quotes:

(1) JKR PoA, p. 134

(2) JKR GoF, p. 533

(3) JKR OotP, p.710

(4) JKR OotP, p.712

(5) JKR OotP, p.741

(6) JKR HBP, p. 569