My first fic! Be nice, people. Read - and review, or I'll sic my demon legions on you.

If you don't know that I don't own Harry Potter, I have no idea what you're doing here. This is fanfic, after all.

I watch Voldemort - Tom - keeling over backwards, his hands splaying out, fingers grasping empty air, his face slack and surprised. There is no crash as he falls, just a soft whisper and muffled thud as if someone hit a pillow. I lower my wand slowly, the one that cast the expelliarmus. I should feel a sense of triumph now, I suppose, but...but even as the hall erupts in noise, people shrieking and screaming for joy, even as Ginny slams into me from one side, Hermione from the other, both weeping tears of happiness, even as Ron and Neville charge towards me, whooping and cheering...I feel nothing. Nothing at all. Just...nothing.

I have done it, I have achieved the impossible, I have fulfilled the prophecy, I have avenged my parents, Dumbledore, Sirius and Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Snape, and all the dead in the wars...and I feel nothing. Not the tiniest glimmer of triumph.

People are looking at me now, questioning, wondering, but I ignore them - I am busy. I search my soul, to find the answer, to find a feeling there.

Nothing.

Wait...there is something there...a feeling...a tiny, stabbing pain...of loss?

How can this be?

Why, now, in the hour of my victory, in the hour of the defeat of evil, as my foe's body lies before me slack-jawed and blank-eyed, why do I feel this sense of loss?

I delve deeper, ignoring the hands on my shoulders, ignoring the voices that now reach my ears as through a mist, as from a great distance.

I realise something.

From the earliest moments of my life, Tom's has been the guiding influence on me. Dumbledore's machinations, Draco's hatred, Ron and Hermione's friendship, Snape's hatred, Ginny's love...all these were dictated, exacerbated, decreased or otherwise affected by Tom and the danger he posed to the wizarding world.

My whole life has been directed towards this one moment - when I, fulfilling the prophecy, kill Tom. I do not know how to live a life free of his touch. I do not know how to exist without his presence in my mind. I do not know how to cope with problems other than escaping his lethal claws. I do not know how to comprehend a world in which there is no Tom.

Though I hate him, though I despise him, though he has caused me, caused many others, untold pain and suffering, though he is one of the darkest wizards ever to walk this earth...yet he is the one person I understand and know as well as I understand and know myself. How I know my own soul, I know his. How I know my own hopes and dreams, I know his. Like no other person can, not even Dumbledore, I understand and know every portion of Tom's soul.

And I cannot know him so without loving him. Though hating him, yet by my knowledge of him I love him. Truly, 'love thine enemy'. As a brother, as a partner, as myself, so I love him - even as I hate him as an enemy, as the murderer of my parents, as the cause of all the pain that has marked my life.

And he is dead.

I have killed him.

I fall to my knees, bringing my hands up to my welling eyes. For all that he was, for all that he had done, at the end of it all Tom was still human, still a soul like us all. With the love that I have newly found, I weep for the loss of his soul.

Only when I have wept and mourned his loss as I have not mourned any other in my life, do I feel the warmth of triumph and victory begin to seep through me. Slowly I stand, and raise a tear-streaked face to the rising sun.

My old life is over; my new life is dawning. With Tom's passing, with my tears and sorrow, with the rejoicing of those around me, I am reborn. My arm goes around Ginny's shoulders, and clasped together we bid farewell to the life that has ended, and clasped together we welcome the life that has begun.

Thoughts, people?