"NOOOOOO!" screamed Ron and Hermione, bruising their fists as they banged desperately against the barrier.

Everyone watched the scene in horror, the white light floating above Harry's lifeless body. However, white wasn't the only color, just the dominant one. There were also golden streaks inside, which represented his magic, and a red sphere of light in the center that was growing rapidly in midair. Few knew it but this was Harry's cancer, growing rapidly from the spell Harry had cast.

The blue light shot back into Voldemort's chest, pulling the white light, Harry's life energy, along with it. Finally all light had disappeared and all was silent with shock, confusion, and anticipation.

Voldemort held out his hand, palm up and looked at it curiously. A flame burst up from it and he smiled triumphantly. It then turned to ice, a frozen sculpture of flames, which he hurled at the ground, shattering it into pieces. He began cackling maniacally. His servants all stepped toward him in awe, collapsing to their knees in a semi circle before their master, with Harry's body lying crumpled near his feet. They began bowing and hailing him.

Voldemort turned his gaze to the ceiling and raised both his arms. As the students could see by looking at the enchanted ceiling, the sky outside instantly became covered in dark clouds and rain began pouring down. They could hear the loud crashing of thunder as lightning streaked the sky, as if announcing the ultimate return of the Dark Lord.

Several of the students with parents out there in masks, most of whom were in Slytherin, looked excitedly triumphant, glad they had obviously picked the winning side. They cast looks of malice at Draco Malfoy, whose eyes kept flickering between the dead body of Harry, Voldemort, and his father, trembling with shock. The other students, however, looked either terrified at the sight before them or had looks of anger at the first death of what they knew would be many more. These students got their wands in hand, determined that if they would soon die, they would not go down without a fight. They would fight back as Harry had done.

The professors fell silent, looks of defeat plaguing the faces of all but two. Snape and Dumbledore were silently praying that the plan had worked.

Suddenly, Voldemort's triumphant laughter ceased abruptly, along with the lightning and thunder. Everything seemed to freeze. "What?" he sputtered. He began coughing up blood into his hand. He stared in horror at the pool of blood in his palm. Sweat began pouring off his face. His servants had stopped their groveling and stared at their master. Voldemort fell to the ground.

"Help me," he croaked to his followers reaching a hand out to them, but they all just backed away in horror, not wanting to be inflicted with whatever was happening to their master.

"You'll all burn in hell," he hissed. He began to scream in anguish, clawing at his chest. Abruptly, the screaming stopped and Voldemort's body went slack. The barriers all disappeared along with the cage surrounding Malfoy. There was a flash of light above Voldemort's body, and somehow, everyone knew he was gone.

"ACCIO WANDS," Dumbledore bellowed and each of the professors' wands were returned to their owner. Many of the Death Eaters frantically Portkeyed away, abandoning the ones who didn't have Portkeys. With the help of the elder members of the student body, the rest of the Death Eaters were quickly rounded up, disarmed, and taken down to the dungeons by professors. Other professors were desperately trying to control the rest of the frantic body of students, leading many to the Owlery. The older students were sent on errands to owl certain people and to comfort the younger children. Dumbledore removed Voldemort's body.

Meanwhile, as soon as the wards went down, Ron and Hermione raced over to Harry. Ron grabbed Harry's shoulder and flipped him over so he was lying on his back. His eyes and mouth were closed. His expression was peaceful despite the blood that was still on his cheek and at the corner of his mouth.

"No Harry, no. Don't be dead," Hermione chanted, smoothing back his hair as usual, but instead of a warm forehead, Hermione's hand brushed cold skin. She pressed her head against his chest, but there was no movement to comfort her. She couldn't stand the lack of the rising and falling and ripped her head away, bursting into sobs.

Ron began shaking Harry's shoulders as he had done many mornings before.

"Harry WAKE UP!" he screamed, tears pouring down his face. "Harry STOP IT!"

A hand rested gently on his shoulder.

"Mr. Weasley, listen to me, Harry isn't going to wake up anymore. I'm sorry," Snape said gently. Ron hit his hand away.

"NO! That's a lie! He's just fainted like he did before. He's just sick, but he'll be fine. He just has trouble waking up on his own!" he shouted through tears. Hermione was crying hysterically next to him. She had once again rested her head on Harry's chest, just wanting to be close to him. She cried desperately into his shirt.

"Hermione?"

Hermione looked up. Through her tears, she could see Eloise standing there, crying with little hiccups and quick breaths.

"What if he believed him? What if Harry died thinking that Ron and I didn't care? That we just wanted him for the fame?" Hermione asked desperately through her heart-wrenching sobs.

Eloise kneeled down next to Hermione. "I promise you that he didn't believe that. Even when the whole world was against him, he always knew he had you two."

"How—how can you be sure?" she hiccuped through her sobs.

"Trust me, even the blind could see that he thought the world of you two."

Hermione looked into her eyes and saw that she spoke the truth and that she loved Harry just as much as Hermione and Ron had. Harry and Neville had really been the only people who had talked to her and befriended her. Harry had done more than he could have ever known in asking Eloise to the ball and defending her against the cruelty of the other girls who thought themselves better than her. Hermione wrapped her arms around Eloise and began to cry into her shoulder. Eloise did the same.

"No no no no no…" Hermione heard being quietly chanted behind her. She knew immediately who it was.

"Come here, Ginny," she said quietly, motioning for her to come to her and Eloise, but Ginny could only stand there shaking her head in disbelief looking at the boy she had loved since they had met, the boy who had saved her life in her first year. As if in a trance, she kneeled down, still shaking her head, whispering "No" through her tears, and just sat there staring at Harry's face. She gently wiped away some blood away from the corner of his mouth with her thumb. Hermione scooted over and began rubbing Ginny's back and rested her head on Eloise's shaking shoulder.

Neville had gone into shock and two seventh year Slytherins helped him to the hospital wing. Students from every house ran over to comfort Draco Malfoy, who was sitting with his hands wrapped around his knees and trembling. Justin Finch-Fletchley from Hufflepuff and a Muggleborn sixth year girl from Gryffindor, who had both been called Mudbloods by Malfoy more times than they could count, helped him to follow Neville.

All these students acted on their own volition, not because of a teacher's request, but because in the last hour stupid house rivalries had been laid aside. They were all in this together.

After Professor McGonagall had finished helping wrap up the Death Eaters, she simply sat on the floor. She should have been the one to go comfort poor Ron Weasley. She should have helped to comfort the screaming, wailing, shaking students. But she couldn't. She could only sit there thinking that she had failed. She was the head of Harry's house, the one who was supposed to look after him. Yet, he had protected her along with the rest of the school. She had been in the same room as him and hadn't been able to protect him.

Harry Potter: the innocent boy with the heart of gold, always unappreciated by everyone. Even she was guilty of that on occasion. She had felt such pride in his accomplishments and such sympathy when he was down. She couldn't forget the horror on his face when she told him he had to take a date to the ball the year before. In that way, he was just a normal vulnerable boy. She had secretly wished she could have comforted him, helped him get ready, helped him pick out his dress robes. Maybe she should have offered, maybe then he would have known that somebody cared.

Ron was fighting with Professor Snape.

"No, he's NOT DEAD. He's sleeping, I just need to get some water to splash on him or Madam Pomfrey can give him some potions and…and he'll be FINE! Don't you see? He's not dead! He can't be dead!"

"Ron."

Ron looked up and saw Fred and George through his own blurry eyes, wet with angry, confused tears. What he saw was something astounding. Fred and George had tears dripping down their faces. Fred was biting his bottom lip and George's chin wobbled a bit as he tried to suppress the tears. He had never seen Fred or George cry before, at least not since they were about four. Ron knew they wouldn't cry unless it was something serious.

"He can't be dead. He's just unconscious or something. He can't be dead," Ron insisted to them. Fred pulled Ron into a hug.

"Ron, you have to let go. Harry's gone. I'm so sorry."

"But he can't!"

"I know, but he is. He's gone."

Ron ripped away.

"NO!" He raced over to Harry and grabbed his limp hand, holding the cold skin against his own flushed cheek. "Harry wake up, please! Please! Please!" he begged, rocking back and forth. Fred and George silently sat down on either side of him, tears dripping down their cheeks. Finally, he realized that Harry wasn't going to respond. He would have given anything in the world just to hear Harry mumble for him to go away, but he would never hear that annoyed murmuring again. He laid down Harry's hand reluctantly and turned to George, burying his face in his shoulder before breaking down in body-racking sobs. Fred scooted over and George put his arm around his twin's shoulder. Fred began rubbing Ron's back as Hermione was doing for Ginny, and they all sat and cried together for Harry, while Voldemort's body lay a ways away, forgotten.

Minutes later, one of the doors burst open. Sirius looked panicked and frantically looked around. His eyes settled on Harry's limp form, surrounded by his sobbing friends.

"NOOOO!"

A few professors tried to stop him to calm him down, but Sirius pushed passed all of them. He raced desperately up to Harry's body, pure terror on his face. Hermione and Eloise pulled Ginny back from Harry, hugging her to them as Sirius approached, looking wild and unpredictable.

The man dropped to his knees next to the boy he considered his son and cupped his godson's face in his hands. "No, Harry, NO! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!" He turned wildly, his eyes darting from one professor to the other. "Somebody get help! He needs a healer! Get Madam Pomfrey!" he screamed hysterically.

"Sirius," Dumbledore said softly, resting a hand on his shoulder, "he's gone."

Sirius shook off Dumbledore's hand. "No!" he hissed. "He's not gone. He's going to be fine and come and live with me because we planned it and I made him a room and we're going to build a Quidditch pitch and he's going to be fine!" he screamed.

Dumbledore closed his eyes and took a deep breath, a few tears trickling down his cheeks and into his beard being the only signs of his true distress. When Sirius saw the tears, he knew the truth.

"Sirius," the headmaster said again, more softly, "he's gone."

"Nooo," he moaned, turning back to his lifeless godson. He frantically grabbed Harry's wrist and searched for a pulse. When he couldn't find one, he put his ear to the boy's mouth to listen for breath. None came.

"NO!" he cried, scooping Harry's body into his arms. Harry looked so peaceful, as if he were only sleeping. Sirius hugged his godson's body to him and began to hysterically cry. "No, Harry, no! I love you, remember? I love you," he said, his voice fading into a whisper. He rocked back and forth, hugging Harry to him, refusing to let go, kissing the boy's forehead and hair as he wept. "I love you."

When the twins finally realized that Ron had gone into shock, they carried their little brother to the Hospital Wing, the three girls following silently behind. All stared ahead, tears silently dripping down the faces of the few whose tears had not been yet spent.

They entered the wing to find a distressed Madam Pomfrey.

"Is that Ron? Oh the poor dear. Lay him down right here," she said quietly, lacking her usual authoritative tone. "You are all welcome to stay the night. It might be more peaceful than your dormitories."

She quickly got a bottle of potion from Neville's bedside. Neville was staring wordlessly at the ceiling, tears trickling down the sides of his face. He gave no indication that he had even realized that anyone else had entered the room. Madam Pomfrey gently brushed his tears away, just to have them be placed by new ones.

The medi-witch measured out the potion into some cups. She handed them to the twins, Ginny, and Hermione. She tried to hand one to Ron, but he didn't seem to notice. She turned to the others. "Drink that. It will help you calm down."

"We don't need this. Ron does, look at him," Fred said, looking worriedly at his brother.

Madam Pomfrey looked at him sadly. "Dear, you're on the verge of going into shock. You're shaking. You all are, even if you don't realize it."

Fred held out his hand and, true to the nurse's word, it was trembling uncontrollably. He numbly drank down his bit of the potion and the others followed suit. The potion definitely helped all of them feel better, less shaky and out of sorts. It was as if they had been on a spinning ride that had just stopped. Unfortunately, now that they could see the things more clearly, grief sank in even more.

Fred sat on the edge of an unoccupied bed, pulling Ginny onto his lap. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck, letting her tears soak his collar as she used to do when she was younger.

"I know nobody believes me. They think it was only a crush, but I really did love him," she whispered so quietly that only Fred heard her words. He hugged her closer as she began to sob.

"I know, Gin, I know," he whispered back.

Eloise walked over to the bed where Neville lay, climbing on and laying down next to him. Neville wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close next to him for comfort.

The nurse sat on the edge of his bed and put a comforting hand on Ron's shaking one.

"Here, dear, drink this up for me. It will calm you down a bit, all right love?" she said gently, holding the cup out toward him.

Ron looked up at her.

"He can't be dead."

Madam Pomfrey let out a sob before getting a weak control over her emotions. "I'm so sorry sweetie."

"He can't be dead," he whispered, seemingly looking through Madam Pomfrey "He can't leave me like this. He's my best friend. He can't be dead."

Hermione came over and kissed Ron on the forehead, her tears dripping down onto his face. Ron looked desperately into her eyes. "He can't be gone," he whispered desperately.

"Drink the potion, Ron," she said soothingly, in a high voice due to her constricted throat constricted with grief, "okay? Please."

Without even a nod, he slowly and shakily grasped the cup and, with Madam Pomfrey's help, brought it to his lips. He closed his eyes and drank down the potion, painfully reminding himself of Harry.

Calmness slowly washed over him. He stopped shaking and his wild thoughts ceased their spinning. The world came into focus around him and there was one thing he could not deny: Harry was not in it. The finality, the reality of the situation sank in like a weight, as if someone had filled his body with cement.

"NO!" he screamed, picking a beaker up off the nightstand and hurling it to the floor. He threw the next closest thing, his pillow, at the opposite wall with all the force he could.

Ron made to get out of the bed, intent on destroying everything in his path, but suddenly froze, staring at the bedpost. He reached out his fingers and touched the post softly and cautiously, as if it were a volatile animal. In a daze, he slowly traced his fingers across the letters that were carved there, "H.P." They were the initials that Harry had carved there while bored in the Hospital Wing just months before. It brought to mind pictures of Harry rolling his eyes behind Madam Pomfrey's back as she sentenced him to long periods of time confined to bed. Pictures of Harry telling him he'd make a great Healer. Pictures of Harry alive. And Ron suddenly realized that there were no more pictures going to be made about Harry.

Hermione put a gentle hand on his cheek, turning his face toward hers. Their eyes met, both full of sorrow, hopelessness, anger, confusion and loneliness. "No," he said meekly, his face screwing up as the tears came. Hermione wrapped her arms around his neck, and Ron clung to the back of her robes, sobbing into each other's shoulders.

Madam Pomfrey cleaned up the broken glass with a flick of her wand and set Ron's pillow on the foot of his bed for when he'd need it. She went into her office, laid her head down on her desk and let her own tears spill.

All the while, Draco Malfoy lay in the bed nearest to the window, unnoticed, staring blankly out at the night sky.

Unfeeling. Strong. Apathetic. Snape had been perfecting that look for years, since he was a boy. That way, when bad things happened, he could convince the world that he didn't care. He could convince himself that he didn't care.

With the sea of faces in the Great Hall it was easy to play his role. He was able to be detached. He had even calmed the Weasley boy when his own head of house had been sitting on the floor staring off into space. He had never seen his respected coworker, his own professor when he had gone to school, with such discomposure. It would have been frightening, if Severus Snape could feel such an emotion in a time of crisis.

But when he had reached his chambers, there were no more judging faces. He was alone. And without the faces, he his comforting mask began to crumble despite his efforts to keep it up and he could no longer convince himself.

He vividly remembered Harry's body crumple to the floor after the life had been ripped out of it. He had been innocent, pure, so full of potential. He had been a fifteen-year-old boy for Merlin's sakes!

Snape grabbed a beaker and, with a cry of fury, hurled it against the wall where it shattered. He didn't even notice the purple liquid hissing as it dissolved the paint where it had hit. The glass shards on the floor caught his eye. He walked over and picked it up with in a strange daze. As he ran his finger over the smooth surface, he had a flashback to the time when he had pulled the shards of glass out of Harry's back, when his preconceived idea of the boy's life had been shattered just like the beaker.

When had he started caring for the young Gryffindor? And why? He had felt strangely protective of him ever since finding out about what his relatives had done to him. The foreign feeling had compelled him to check on the boy at his home after Voldemort's first attack. And at that moment when holding Harry's arm, helping put him up as an offering to the Dark Lord, suddenly their plan didn't matter anymore. Even getting rid of Voldemort didn't seem so important. What had been important was that Harry live. He had thought back to their conversation in the Hospital Wing that had seemed to have taken place centuries ago, but had really only been a few hours before, and remembered what Harry had brought up about not being at school the following year. At that moment under his Death Eater mask, the notion seemed so incredibly wrong. There seemed to be nothing more horrifying than that idea.

He had been so close! If he could have saved Harry, found the cure, then maybe, for once, there would be some meaning to everything. The idea didn't even make logical sense to Snape, but in some other way, it made all the sense in the world.

He dazedly looked over to all his notes he had written in hopes of curing Harry's cancer. With a snarl of hatred for the pieces of paper, he grabbed them and ripped them in two, throwing them to the ground. All the hope had been for nothing.

Why had he not realized before how wrong he had been? Harry wasn't like James Potter. He wasn't cruel or arrogant. He didn't mercilessly pick on others just for their house or whatever the elder Potter had found so offensive about Snape. No, Harry was just a boy who got wrapped up in some terrible twist of fate that he never deserved. Yet Snape had subjected him to over four years of torture solely because of a father the boy had never met. He felt nauseous as guilt overwhelmed him.

This was why he had spent his whole life trying to not care for anybody. His chest ached and his hands trembled. Everything just hurt so horribly.

"Dammit Albus!" he screamed at the empty room, "You were wrong! You're not supposed to be bloody wrong, but you were! It's not worth it! It's not worth this!" He grabbed a beaker of one of the sample potions he had been working on for his theory and threw it at another wall.

His thoughts spun around wildly, dancing between the classes in which he had terrorized Harry to Harry laying on the floor, covered in blood after being beaten and stabbed by his uncle to hearing the Weasley boy unintentionally revealing that Harry had defended him to his friends to all the other significant memories about the boy.

He sunk down to the floor, his back against a wall. He buried his face in his hands and did something that he hadn't done since childhood: he cried.

The tears felt foreign but at the same time, comforting, and once he started he couldn't stop. He cried for what seemed like centuries until he was devoid of tears. A sense of determination came over him. He knew what he had to do. He hadn't understood why Albus had told him what he had before leaving the hall, it had seen a useless type of mockery before, but now realized the reason.

Grabbing several pieces of parchment, he began to rack his brain, scribbling down his train of thoughts, all because of a decision he had come to while tears had flooded from his eyes:

'Maybe it is worth it."