It was a strange day today. I've just spent the whole day reading "The Catcher in the Rye". It's so hot here I had the curtains closed, otherwise my room turns into a sauna. And outside, in the glaring sun, there was a parade of all kinds of military planes and helicopters, because it's the 21st of July, and that's the national day for Belgium. Plus, our old king abdicated and his son was made king. So it was a whole thing on television, and my mother was watching all day downstairs, with the parade outside in the sky.

But I just sat in my room with the curtains drawn, and I heard all the sounds and all the fuss outside and downstairs, and I just read the whole book at once. It was nice. It's really an easy book to read. It doesn't really go anywhere, and I felt in the mood to just stumble around along with Holden Caulfield.

It was just one of those days where you feel completely detached from the world outside. Because you're in a completely different mood, different world. A weird day, but I liked it.

And now I'll shut up and give you the story.

Important: I ignored the Horcruxes in this short story.

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Ginny, the bastard had taken Ginny.

He had known something like that could happen; he'd even broken up with her because of it. It had been a heartbreaking choice. But Dumbledore's death had pushed him to make that choice. He had felt a weight crush onto his shoulders, the weight of the responsibilities he had not realized he had before. Without Dumbledore to take things in hands, he understood he had to do it. And that's how he'd found the strength to separate himself from the short-lived, brand-new joy he'd experienced with his best friend's sister.

The decision had been for nothing though, and the anger and frustration roared like a monster in his stomach. It was an entirely different kind of monster than the one he'd experienced before, like when he'd witnessed Ginny snogging with someone other than himself. If that first monster had been something like Aragog, the monster now was something like a crossing between a giant Blast-Ended Skrewt (both male and female variant in one), and a Hungarian Horntail in a very, very bad mood.

The strange thing was that the anger suddenly disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later, and then flow away again. He wasn't sure why. Was it fear? Or was it the certainty that he would get Ginny back? His sense of responsibility, of knowing the task ahead that made him feel calm?

Harry Potter, the chosen one, the boy who lived, was staring out the window of the dormitory as he turned all those thoughts over in his head. His trunk lay open by his bedside. It was even more messy than usual. It was as if the trunk had been murdered, its bowels hung half out of its stomach, spread over the floor and bed.

He was alone, because no one knew where he was. He had slipped away from his guard, though it hadn't been easy.

Since Ginny had disappeared, the ministry had ordered a guard to surround him at all times. They were afraid he would go look for Ginny himself (which was exactly what he was planning, they knew him too well). Surprisingly, Mcgonagall, now headmistress, had agreed. Even Ron and Hermione.

Harry had felt particularly angry about that. Ron and Hermione had argued that it was clearly a trap, that Harry was the last person who should go and save her, but Ron was her brother and Hermione her friend. How could they? How could they trust the ministry of magic to go against Voldemort? They'd barely just recognized his existence? Harry knew they'd never be able to bring Ginny home. If he didn't go, she would never be seen again. It was slightly arrogant of him to think so, but it was true.

It had taken every ounce of cleverness and agility for Harry to slip away from his guards under his cloak. Luckily, Mad Eye Moody hadn't been one of them, or the escape would have failed.

The young adolescent clenched his teeth. He had to be patient. It was nearly impossible to keep the monster in check whenever it surfaced through the strange calm, but he had to wait.

Soon they would find out he was gone and look for him. They would assume he had left the castle or was trying to. They would not look in the dormitory, not at first.

He was so sure that they wouldn't look in the dormitory that when the door did open, his heart nearly jumped out of his chest. Instinctively he reached for his wand, but it wasn't there. It had been taken from him by the guard. An extra measure to make sure he would not escape. For who would be crazy enough to go fight he-who-must-not-be-named without a wand?

"Ron!" Harry exclaimed. He had least expected to find him here.

"Relax, Harry." His friend told him when he saw Harry's fists at the ready. "I didn't come to stop you. If you insist on being completely nutters, at least take this with you." He reached in his pocket and offered Harry his wand.

"How did you get it?"

"Hermione got it."

Harry nodded. That made more sense. But he hesitated to take it.

"I'm not tricking you." Ron assured him, sounding a little hurt.

"Then why the turnaround? Why are you helping me escape now?"

"Because you're going to do it anyway!" Ron raised his voice. He seemed irritated. "Clearly, trying to hold you back is only going to reduce your chances of surviving. And they're slimmer than a girl on Fred and George's dangerously effective slimming potion already."

Harry was silent. He felt guilty for bringing such trouble to his friends. But his sense of duty, and his Skrewt/Horntail monster overruled that guilt by far.

He knew that the confrontation with Voldemort must come sooner or later. Why not now? The Dark Lord seemed in a hurry to get it over with too.

"But you're not going alone." Hermione had just slipped through the door of the boy's dormitory. Harry wasn't surprised. If Ron had found him, it was a piece of cake for her. Suddenly, his idea to hide in here didn't seem so brilliant anymore.

Hermione went to the window and watched the last of the ministry aurors leave the school grounds in search for Harry. They disapparated once outside the school gates."We're ready to go." She announced as she turned back to them.

Finding Voldemort was the easiest part. He'd left a message where Ginny had disappeared, a sort of imprint. Only Harry had been able to see it. He'd told no one about it, and so Ron and Hermione were surprised when he told them to hold his arms in order to apparate there.

That was all Harry knew though: a sense of the place on which he could concentrate for the apparition, but he had no idea where it was or even what kind of place it was.

He hoped fervently as he felt the familiar feeling of being pushed through a narrow tube that they wouldn't end up in that old cemetery where Riddle Senior was buried. But knowing Voldemort, the place where they would go would be dark and gloomy anyway, whatever it was. Harry could not even picture Voldemort anywhere in the vicinity of sunlight.

What would even happen if Voldemort was touched by sunlight? Would he burn like a vampire? That would make his job much easier. But Harry wouldn't want it that way.

No, the monster in him was screaming, was raging, was clawing at his bowels and liver and stomach and everything in there. It wanted to kill the Dark Lord. It would only be satisfied if Harry could kill him himself.

The three friends landed on a patch of grass. For a second, Harry was sure it was that bloody cemetery again, but then he noticed there were no gravestones around.

It was just as empty, dark and isolated though. And nothing around them could tell him where they were. It didn't matter though. What mattered was where their enemies were.

For a long time, the three of them walked in utter silence under a moonless night sky. The sun had been setting at Hogwarts, but it had still been light. They had to be in another time-zone at least. That meant they had to be on the continent, somewhere in Europe. Had Voldemort run to Albania again?

They walked, their feet crushing the grass. It looked and smelled as if it was rotting. They kept looking at the ground, looking for any sign of Nagini maybe, sent as a spy. But they also looked all around them, in front, behind, expecting someone to jump from behind any tree, those shadowy shapes at the corners of their vision.

They became more and more anxious with every step. There was still no one n sight, nothing to hear. But they knew it was a trap, they had to be here somewhere.

There was no wind, there was no moon, there was no life. There didn't even seem to be any air. They felt like they were inhaling tar, and it was penetrating their bodies trough their lungs, infusing them with a sort of paranoia.

Harry had begun wondering whether there was some kind of dark spell at work, designed to make them feel like that. Maybe the plan was to let them walk around in circles in the dark until they lost their marbles, make easy targets of them. But that was too cowardly, even for Voldemort. It was more something for Wormtail and the Death Eaters.

But then suddenly, Harry felt like he walked through some kind of veil or curtain, and he was alone. Literally from one second to the next, Hermione and Ron, who had been right at his sides, slightly behind him, were gone. Harry practically saw them disappear from his field of vision.

He looked around frantically, even felt with his arms in the gloom, but there was not a single sign of them. That thing he'd walked through, that invisible veil, it had to have been a kind of wall or portal. He had no idea how it had worked, whether they'd been transported or just stopped. Or whether he had changed locations.

He walked back, to see if he could walk through that veil again, but of course, there was no way back. He'd expected as much.

Really, he had known from the very beginning, from the time that Dumbledore had told him of the prophecy that he was on his own. Ron and Hermione could only join him up to a certain point. At least, they'd given him his wand back. He just hoped they were all right. But knowing them, they were just as capable of taking care of themselves as he was. They had a very good chance against the Death Eaters.

Harry walked on. The silence was even heavier now. And soon, he had the sensation again of walking through a veil, and he was no longer alone on the grassy plains. Right in front of him, about five yards away, stood the very man he'd come to look for. If you could still call him a man.

At his feet lay a pool of colour, of flame. But even Ginny's hair looked dead and pale in the darkness of this place, wherever it was. Her black robes made her body almost invisible, and she seemed to have only a head.

Ginny looked almost identical to the time he'd found her deep in the bowels of Hogwarts, in the chamber of secrets. Yes, she was older, taller, less childish in build and in behaviour. But right then, the way she lay unconscious and lifeless on the ground, she looked exactly the same as then.

At that time, he'd worried whether she was still alive. Today, Harry knew she was. Even if it had been Voldemort's plan to kill her all along, he would still have waited for Harry to be present, just so he could make him watch.

The monster in him rose in fierce elegance, and the aggressiveness and calmness merged together to form one single emotion: determination. Harry looked up from Ginny, right into the slitted, evil eyes of his lifelong enemy.

"Harry Potter." Voldemort spoke very slowly, tasting every vowel with his hoarse voice. It sounded like he'd said that name a million times already. Harry knew he had. "And here we meet again."

"You didn't leave me much of a choice." Harry spat.

Voldemort cocked his head, a mixture of amusement, desire, and indignation on his white-grey face. He stepped over Ginny, and then slowly circled Harry.

Harry responded by stepping back a little and turning with Voldemort, effectively joining this macabre 'dance'.

"You had a choice, though." Voldemort hissed, straightening his head again. "And you decided to accept my invitation."

Harry felt something in his gut, though nothing had happened, an alarm went off in his head and he immediately raised his wand and aimed at his enemy's throat, careful to keep him in his sight. The dance continued. Voldemort looked undisturbed by the change.

"You could have refused. If anyone forced anyone, it was you who forced yourself. You and your need to save every single life. It makes you very predictable, Potter." He almost sang, but in a chillingly cold tone.

"Why Ginny?" Harry had to ask. Had Voldemort found out about his relationship with her? Or had he just chosen his victim at random? Maybe he'd chosen her because he's been able to posess her before. Maybe that made her more vulnerable in a way. He should have thought of that. He should have done more to keep her safe! He should have…he should…

His alarm in his head called him back to the present moment. He had not the leisure to think now. He had to stay focused, continue the dance. There would be no breaks for this ball.

"You still think you can get out alive, do you?" Voldemort chuckled slightly. It didn't sound cheery at all though. No sound he made could ever sound other than horribly cold and chilling to the bone. "Such arrogance."

"It's funny you should call me arrogant." Harry shot back.

Finally, Voldemort raised a wand. Not his own of course, for his own could not attack Harry's wand, a sister wand. But it was just as sleek and deadly as his had been. Now both weapons were drawn. And the dance continued. They had almost switched places…almost…and then...

Something grabbed Harry's ankle. Instinctively, he looked down, and at the same time, he felt his wand leave his hand, by Voldemort's disarming spell.

He had only a second to see it was Ginny's hand, before she practically climbed up his legs and pinned his arms at his sides, making his knees buckle in the process. Harry felt with disbelief the incredible strength with which she held him down. He could not move an inch, even if he hadn't been to shocked to struggle. He twisted his head around to try and reason with her, to yell at her to wake up or something, and saw with horror how her dead eyes turned pitch-black and her enflamed hair turned pale, then white and dirty, as if thousands of years old.

Now he knew. It wasn't Ginny holding him. It hadn't been Ginny from the start. Merlin only knew where the youngest Weasley was. But he could only feel relief. Because it meant that Ron and Hermione had a chance of finding her far away from here. Maybe she just lay hidden in a bush somewhere, frozen by a stunning spell. Maybe she was even still in Britain. He hoped she was still in Britain.

The fake Ginny holding him now looked like a mummy. Maybe Voldemort had dropped by some Egyptian tombs to recruit new inferi. It certainly was his kind of place; dark, threatening, suffocating places drenched in dark magic.

His wand lay about ten yards away, he could barely distinguish it in the dark. But it was hopeless to reach for it in any case. The rotting hands clutching his arms and shoulders made him feel like throwing up, and their vicelike grip was painful. The idea that he'd looked at this thing before, and seen Ginny's beauty was one of the most repulsive things he'd ever experienced.

"I was just thinking before that you wouldn't be such a coward!" He spat at Voldemort, who seemed to be very amused by the scene before him.

"Coward?" Voldemort cocked his head again. Nagini had appeared and had coiled herself around his body, her head now level with his, also watching the powerless Harry in the hands of the mummy inferi. "You walked into this trap more easily than I'd ever imagined. You trust your friends blindly, and that also makes you very predictable. You immediately assumed you had nothing to fear from that weak child, and you did not watch your back. You allowed yourself to be fooled."

Harry could only recognise Voldemort was right.

He could've kicked himself mentally for being so incredibly stupid and careless. He could've felt highly ashamed to have let down Dumbledore and so many others. But at that point, what was the point? For it dawned on him now. It dawned on Harry. He had always known that he'd survived by sheer luck. It dawned on him that tonight, his luck had simply run out.

Trelawney had been wrong. Harry couldn't be the one, the chosen one. It had to be Neville. Harry felt sure. Yes, it must be Neville. Neville!

"Are you ready, Harry Potter?" Voldemort hissed in parseltongue, a language understood by all three living creatures present.

No. Harry thought. How could one be ready for death? But this was the readiest he would ever get. He looked straight into Voldemorts black, cat-like eyes. They were full of desire and anticipation. The work of sixteen years was coming to an end for that man, that broken soul. It was strange to Harry to think that he had been at the centre of someone's thoughts for his entire life, the object of someone's obsession.

The thought that came after that was in the split second it took for the green curse to hit him. Just before the life was whipped out of him, Harry hoped that Ron, Hermione and Ginny would find a way out. But he had just not enough time in that split second to wish them a happy life too. Too bad.

I'm sorry for the depressing end. I was writing, and this just came out. I really don't feel like I decide what I write. Sometimes nothing comes out, and then things like these suddenly turn up. Blame my muse, or wherever it is that inspiration comes from :)