The dementors weren't here anymore.
They had become like the Lethifold, something that wandered the dark outskirts of Wizarding society, killing a wizard or a Muggle here and there, but working alone. They no longer guarded Azkaban, nor did they serve the Dark Lord any longer, for the Dark Lord was no more.
Harry Potter had killed him.
Harry sat in a corner of his cell with his knees drawn up to his chest. The dementors weren't here anymore, and now, the prisoners of Azkaban were more alone than they had ever been.
"Harry!"
Harry Potter closed his eyes in the pitch darkness and listened to the voices in his memory.
"Harry! Where are you?" Hermione's voice. Harry could see her through the patchy darkness, standing back to back with Ron. She had her wand out, and there was a terrible light of battle in her eyes that really didn't belong there. She and Ron were trying to fight their way free of a group of Death Eaters and look for Harry, all at the same time.
"Here I am, Hermione!" Harry called, but she couldn't hear him over the sound of the Leaky Cauldron exploding. Hogsmeade was on fire. Death Eaters, Dumbledore's Army, witches and wizards Harry didn't even know; all were fighting in the ruined streets that night, in what would turn out to be the final battle of the war against Lord Voldemort.
The dementors weren't here anymore. Harry tried to cling to that for reassurance, tried to pretend that Ron and Hermione would somehow find a way to get him out of here... but he knew that after the crime he had committed, no one in the wizarding world could ever set him free.
"There he is!" Neville whispered loudly, pointing across the open square. There, in the fallen doorway of Honeydukes, stood Lord Voldemort.
Harry needed no warning. His scar was burning as if it were a Dark Mark. He shook his head sharply, trying to ignore it and concentrate. He and Neville had agreed that they would find Voldemort together and stop him, no matter what the cost.
Harry took a deep breath. "All right," he started, "now here's what-"
Voldemort looked across the street and saw them, standing together in the shadows of the ruined alley. A slow, cruel smile curved his mouth and lighted his serpentine eyes above his slitted nose.
"You first, Longbottom," he said coldly, raising his wand. "Avada Kedavra."
Harry stared in horror, seeing Cedric instead of Neville standing next to him for that one frozen moment. Neville's cry of "Expelliarmus!" came an instant too late.
As Harry watched his dear friend slump to the ground beside him, his world seemed to explode into darkness.
"NEVILLE!"
Harry realized there were tears on his face. And why shouldn't there be, he thought angrily. Neville had no reason to die. And it was my fault he did.
A long time ago, at Hogwarts, Mad-Eye Moody had been teaching the students about the Unforgivable Curses. Now, sitting in the darkness, Harry remembered what he had said about what it took to cast the Killing Curse.
"You have to will the victim to die, really will it," Mad-Eye had told them, though Harry could not now remember his exact words. "If all of you in this classroom were to point your wands at me, right now, and say the words, I doubt I would get so much as a nosebleed." Only it hadn't really been Mad-Eye Moody who said that... but Harry didn't have the energy now to try and recall who it had been.
Harry would never be able to cast this spell again. All the hatred in his soul, everything dark and awful that he had carried with him all his life, was enough - just barely enough - to bring about the death of one man. But that one time was enough to end both the danger to the wizarding world, and Harry's chance to live in it.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" Harry roared at the top of his lungs.
Voldemort fell down dead. Harry Potter fell down living, but unable to think or move.
Harry shivered, huddling in his corner. Not the trial again, he thought uselessly. How many times have I already lived through that day?
The battle was over. After Hermione and Ron had found Harry lying in the burned street across from Honeydukes, after Harry finally came back to himself under the worried eyes of a very disheveled Poppy Pomfrey, whose own left arm was in a sling, he told Ron and Hermione what had happened, and how Neville and Voldemort had died.
Harry's friends had wanted him to keep it a secret, but Harry shook his head. "You don't want me to be like Voldemort, do you?"
So the Ministry of Magic put Harry Potter on trial. It was a long and terrible debate, during which hundreds of wizards and witches rose to have their say on both sides. In the end, it had been decided that the laws of the wizarding world must prevail, no matter what.
"That is what an Unforgivable Curse means," the Minister of Magic had said heavily. "It means that Harry Potter, the hero who saved our world, must be sentenced to a lifetime at Azkaban Prison, in solitary confinement, for his crime of saving all our lives." Even Rita Skeeter had taken that news article seriously.
Hermione had cried when they took Harry away, clinging to his neck until she forced herself to let go so Harry wouldn't be dragged out of her arms. Ron cried too, but his tears made no sound.
The dementors weren't here anymore.
But does that really matter, Harry thought, curled into a ball in the corner of his dark cell. I've got enough grief to lose my own sanity, all by myself.
-THE END-