The prompt was: I've always kinda wanted an AU where Harry isn't the hero, where he's not the one who ends Voldemort once and for all but Ginny or Draco (I don't know how this would happen, but yeah... yeah.) or Mcgonnagal or even a centaur or an acromantula or just... someone/thing other than Harry?

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Harry stared at Dumbledore, before a smile crept up his face. He quickly quashed it, no need for the headmaster to get suspicious, after all.

"I can tell my friends then?" he repeated, letting the relief seep out of his words. "Thanks, Professor. Keeping secrets is such a burden alone."

The old man smiled indulgently. Harry didn't spare him a bit of thought. He raced through the hallways and sighed with relief when he saw his friends were still awake.

"Hermione, I need your help," he announced.

Ron looked up and Hermione closed her book – more like a tome, really – and gave him their full attention.

Quickly, with halting phrases and words tumbling over each other that would have made explanations indecipherable if they didn't know him so well, he told them about the horcruxes.

Their expressions were revolted but their faces were determined.

"There's a spell we could try," Hermione said. "Something about purifying souls. It might not be a good thing to try it on Harry though. He's a living receptacle of…"

She went off on tangents and Harry turned to Ron.

As expected, his redheaded friend frowned inwardly. "We could try Bill or Charley. I mean, if what Hermione says is right and that the Horcrux might be more easily damaged than humans, so it would have to have a lot protections. I mean, I would do that if I had one, as well as surround it with a lot of curses. Aside from fiendfyre, the only fire I know that's more destructive would be dragon fire."

Like clockwork, both his friends raced off. Hermione to check some facts in the Library and Ron to write to his siblings. It was a good thing that Bill was reassigned in Gringotts, Britain, but Charley was in Romania. That was a long way for an owl to fly.

"You'll be alright, Harry," Ron patted him as the owls flew off. "We're with you. And if all else fails, Hermione can always do fiendfyre on Voldemort."

Harry knew Hermione was brilliant and a bit scary, but when did she master that? He shut his gaping jaw with a click.

"She what?" he asked weakly.

Ron shrugged. "Okay, so with everything so tense and all that, and you're in detention every other week or something, so she got….determined. And she asked the house-elves where she could practice spell-work without disturbing anybody. I dunno mate. She just came up to me suddenly, smelling something awfully burned and announced she could already control fiendfyre."

Hermione really was terrifying. Terrifyingly brilliant and he was so lucky she was on his side.

"Okay," Harry gulped. "Wow. What about you? Anything you want to spring on me? Did you somehow manage to become an animagi while I was buried in detention with Umbridge?"

Ron smirked. "Well, mate. I managed to make my chess pieces dance the waltz. The queen only bears two turns though before she bludgeons the next one to death with her chair."

Harry was surprised into a laugh.

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In the end, the silence in the Great Hall was deafening. Very much so.

After all, it wasn't Harry who killed Voldemort, though he did help in thinking like the Dark Lord and finding out where he would hide it next. Bill had sent them curse-breaking books and some notes. Charley had told them of one Dragon Reserve still in Britain that no one knew about, because all the keepers were dead. The only dragon left was an intelligent thing that helped burn horcruxes upon request and some careful offerings of cows.

Still, at the end of it, the one to fire the last curse wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived, famous Chosen One and subject of a prophecy. Neither was it the sixth son of a Pureblood Family that descended from the time of Merlin, even if they were rather poor. The one to kill Voldemort was Hermione Granger.

She casted the fiendfyre and, even through the ensuing screams of fear and terror, killed the Dark Lord.

There really was a reason why it was called cursed fire.

"Bloody hell," Ron cursed, a bit exhausted at having to maneuver the Dark Lord into firing range and keeping the runes powered, so there were no casualties from Hermione's spell.

"Bloody buggering…" Harry trailed off, just as exhausted.

And then people started to celebrate, though they gave Hermione a wide berth.

The three of them were an island of their own, somehow separated from the screams of laughter and the hysterical sobs of reunited relatives.

"I need a vacation," Hermione told them, eyes jumping around. Harry understood how she felt. Being surrounded after a year spent running and being hunted was uncomfortable.

"Bahamas?" Harry volunteered.

Ron shrugged. "There's a vacation resort in Egypt," he told them.

"My parents first," Hermione argued.

They staggered off, arms around each other with smiles on their faces. People still avoided them.

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