In the end, they hadn't been enough. They'd fought bitterly until the very end, against the unending waves of fanatics. Harry had been one of the few left standing when he'd finally taken down Voldemort; by the time the two faced off amidst bodies lying artlessly on the ground, he hadn't been able to bring himself to care. There was nothing left to save—why bother winning the war if there was no one left to win it for? All that kept him going was ingrained instinct—Harry had been anticipating this battle for years. He almost felt guilty for hoping, rather vaguely, that he wouldn't come out of it alive.
By the time he'd hit the grand old age of four, Tom knew his brother was a little strange. The caretakers always regarded the two with suspicious eyes and forced smiles. "Touched in the head," the girls would mutter amongst themselves, thinking neither would hear. But Harry did hear, and Tom could see his shoulders hike up with every whisper and every derisive glance.
So he'd cast it. The sharp jab of his wand combined with the stilted syllables ripped from his lungs produced the eerie green light so similar to his own eyes. Maybe Harry would face condemnation from the very few peers he had left to witness—but he didn't care. By coincidence, it seemed, his foe had cast the very same spell. The two identical bolts of light didn't meet in a nightmarishly real reproduction of his duel in his fourth year, but instead bypassed each other with centimeters to spare. Harry just couldn't find it within him to move using the desperate boost of adrenaline that had flooded his body. And so it ended.
Sometimes Harry dreamed of another life. Snippets of an existence he'd known and forgotten, had and lost, would come to him in his sleep and he would watch, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, of the life of a tormented young boy. He almost felt sorry for him, and would have if not for their similarities—the boy looked like Harry, and sometimes like Tom. Instead, he felt a sort of desperate yearning to speak to him, to yell and rave at the boy to open his eyes. Perhaps he was going mad.
In the murky darkness, Harry opened his eyes. Endless black stretched above and around him. Perhaps he could see, or perhaps not. His soul-deep weariness pervaded his entire being. Had he won? Evidently not, if his surroundings were any indicator. Hopefully he hadn't died alone and had taken the vindictive Dark Lord with him. Had he won? Evidently not, if his surroundings were any indicator. Hopefully he hadn't died alone, and had taken the vindictive Dark Lord with him.