Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Someone else who's very rich, does. And speaking of rich, I'm not making any money by posting this story.
A/N: Originally (and hastily) written on 6/21/07. My mom brought back a newspaper from Florida, and the paper was holding a contest for fans of the Harry Potter series to write the way they thought Book 7 would end, in their own words. This was my entry. It didn't win, unfortunately. :( Please let me know what you think by reviewing!
Rated K+ for death.
Voldemort was dead.
For so long, Harry had longed for that statement to be true. He had always assumed that the reality of it would elude him somehow, as it had been with Sirius's death, and with Dumbledore's. But the truth of the matter was all too real, for Voldemort's death had come only at the price of many lives. Harry gazed up at the great castle of Hogwarts, the place where his journey had begun—and ended. He kept his eyes fixed on the North Tower, willing himself not to look down. The bodies lying around him were unbearable to look at.
There was a crushing silence in the air that felt as if it would suffocate him at any moment. Smoke drifted on the breeze, clarifying the horrors of the previous hour. Had it really been only an hour? It was as though time had ceased to exist.
Hagrid, weeping silently, stood near Hermione's body. Her eyes stared into space, devoid of their spark of life. Ron was next to her, his face taut, running his hands through her hair without seeming to realize what he was doing.
Malfoy remained next to his mother's corpse. With his ashen face and the dark circles under his unblinking eyes, he wasn't far from resembling a corpse himself. His right hand massaged his left forearm, and Harry knew why: the Dark Mark, once branded indelibly into his skin, was gone.
Voldemort was dead. But there would be others like him, other wizards who would sacrifice peace for power. And Harry vowed, as he stared at the misery around him, that when he became an Auror, he would do everything in his power to ensure that this would never happen to anyone else—that no other boy would become like Harry Potter.
* The End *