So, when Harry sped into the corridor, ready to take on his archenemy in their second final confrontation that evening, what he saw stopped him in his tracks. The image never left him as long as he lived: Voldemort, standing in the centre of a room strewn with blood (mostly avian, but Harry didn't know that), holding the fragments of his last Horcrux aloft with a Green Lantern's beam, and glaring down with impotent, murderous hatred at the mortally wounded girl lying on the floor in front of him.
"Luna!" Harry cried involuntarily.
Voldemort whirled around, releasing the beam in his surprise and sending the diadem fragments clattering to the ground. "You!" he exclaimed. "Miserable child, don't you know how to stay dead?"
"He doesn't look very alive to me," Luna murmured. "But maybe it's the light."
Harry was in no mood to discuss the details of his temporary regalvanisation. He sped to his Leaguemate's side, and knelt beside her just as he had with Ginny – and, just as with Ginny, the first words out of his mouth were, "What happened?"
"We won, Harry," said Luna simply. "You knew we would; that's how the world works. The right always wins, if it's willing to pay the cost."
"But how?" Harry pressed. "Why? What happened?"
Luna paused a moment to cough (sending a few droplets of blood spattering onto Harry's costume), and then, in between breaths that were growing ragged, explained. "The last Horcrux… was Ravenclaw's diadem. I'd seen it… when I moved the Cabinet for Draco, but… I thought I must have been imagining it. But then… Professor Dumbledore said that the last Horcrux… was in Albania; I remembered… what Dad had said about Helena Ravenclaw probably… ending up in Illyria, and it all… fit together." She looked up at Voldemort. "You brought it here, didn't you? When you… came to ask for the job."
She paused, but Voldemort said nothing, so she continued. "Emerald said… that we had no weapons. But she forgot… something that Professor Snape had said. Don't you remember? That… first meeting in the Headmaster's office: I asked… whether my ring could destroy a Horcrux, and… he said that my will wasn't… destructive enough. So… if someone whose will was… destructive enough used it, then…" The end of her sentence was broken off by another spasm of coughing, but her meaning was clear.
"You tricked me?" Voldemort demanded, incredulous. "You lied? No-one lies to Lord Voldemort!"
"Oh, come off it, Tom," said Harry impatiently. "She's a Green Lantern; she's had the wisest people in the galaxy teach her how to control her mind. Your Legilimency didn't have a chance, you should have known that."
Voldemort didn't seem to have any answer for that, and Luna continued. "I went to… the Headmaster's office, and… took your map, Harry; then I… came here, got everything… together, and watched for him. I… knew he'd come; that's why he… was here. When he came, I… made him want to kill me, then took… all his weapons away; then I… told the ring to go to him, and he did… the rest." She smiled. "It worked… pretty well, I think."
"I don't," said Harry firmly. "Why couldn't you just tell the Room that you needed a basilisk fang? Wouldn't it have made one for you?"
He thought he saw Luna shake her head, but it was hard to be sure; her whole body was trembling now with loss of blood, and her face was almost as pale as his own. "I tried," she breathed. "Can't make… poison… that way."
"Then why didn't you go find something?" said Harry. "You had the ring, didn't you? You could have gone to the Gold Coast and found some oti-whatever, like Emerald said."
Luna looked up at him, and, for the first time in his life, he saw shock in her eyes. "Leave… the castle?" she whispered. "You mean… let him find… the diadem missing? Do you know… how angry… he'd be? He'd kill… anyone he… happened to see." She closed her eyes, as though the pain of that idea hurt more than her wound, and shook her head – Harry was sure of it, this time. "No, it had… to be this way. I didn't want… it to be, but… there are worse ways… to die."
Harry remembered the last time he'd heard a Green Lantern voice that sentiment, and bit his lip. Yes, there were worse ways to die; compared to Abin Sur and the girl in front of him, he'd picked a pretty rotten one himself. Maybe that was why he had insisted on coming back: he hadn't wanted immortality, but he had wanted to blot out the embarrassment of having Voldemort play him for a fool.
But was that really much better, he wondered? To cheat death, to undo the past: they were equally cowards' goals, equally attempts to evade the immutable nature of things. A true hero didn't run from his failures; he faced them, confessed to them, and then went on, trusting that, if he kept himself focused on the right, even those failures would somehow become sources of strength and glory. As Luna had said, that was how the world worked.
All these thoughts passed through his mind in a fraction of a second; the next moment, he dismissed them as trivial. The bravest person he'd ever known was lying crumpled on the floor with perhaps a minute to live; this was no time to spend brooding over his own bad choices.
He reached out a hand, and stroked Luna's hair gently. (It didn't seem quite appropriate, but his experience as a comforter of dying girls was limited, and it was the only thing he could think of to do.) "It's too bad you never made it to Earth-2, Luna," he whispered. "You're just about the only thing the Society needs to make it complete."
Luna didn't seem to hear. Her head was turned toward the Room of Requirement door (which hadn't yet vanished, for some reason), and, as Harry watched, she raised her hand, fingers curled, as though to charge the ring that no longer rested on her finger.
"In brightest… day," she whispered. "In… blackest night…"
Harry didn't know whether to laugh or cry – not that he could have cried anyway, in his condition. He settled for smiling shakily and whispering back, "No evil shall escape my sight."
"Good," said Luna.
Then, with a long, rattling breath, her spirit departed, and the body that had been Luna Lovegood's sank softly to the floor.
