Moment of Truth

By Cybra

A/N:  The first of the two endings.  Enjoy!

Disclaimer:  Sorry to shatter all your delusions, but I do not own Harry Potter.  The honor is reserved for the talented J.K. Rowling.

Pyrrhic Victory

Spells and talons collided with their intended targets.  A pair of owls, locked together by their talons, fell to the ground, hitting with a thud.  A pair of wizards collapsed to the ground.

"Harry!" Ron Weasley shouted, racing toward his fallen friend.

Professor Severus Snape ordered, "Weasley, get back here!"

Hesitating, Ron flicked his eyes from Snape to Harry Potter's limp body.  Slowly, unwillingly, he returned to his position.

He looked over at Professor Minerva McGonagall who in turn turned to Professor Albus Dumbledore.  "Albus?"

"Wait," the wizened wizard ordered, his voice soft.

Neither side moved, hoping that the duelist they had supported would rise.  The Dark Lord's forces fidgeted uncertainly.  Because of his abilities at chess, Ron could easily see what the problem was.  Voldemort was the strongest of their number and the only one who could match Dumbledore's power.  If Voldemort did not rise, Dumbledore's forces would crush them, no matter how few his forces were.

Neither wizard rose from his place on the ground.

Ron looked to Dumbledore for the signal to attack.  They would have to strike now while the other side was in shock in order to gain further advantage.  But their forces were in shock, too.  Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, his and Hermione Granger's best friend, had just died.

Hermione sniffled beside him, and Ron instinctively reached out to rub her shoulder.  What he wanted to do was take her in his arms so they could cry out their loss together, but at the moment, the oncoming battle was too important.

Memories of good times spent with Harry mixed in with those less than pleasant times in Ron's mind.  The times they fought had always stung, though he'd always tried to make it seem like he didn't care.  When they made up afterwards and returned to normal, it always made Ron feel like all was right with the world.  And the days when they simply hung around the castle with Hermione, supposedly doing their assignments, had been bliss.

Now those days were over.

"Harry…" Hermione whimpered from beside him.

As Ron reached out to take her in his arms, Dumbledore's signal caught the corner of his eye.  Hermione must've seen it, too, because she suddenly took a deep breath and began to advance with the rest of their army.  He noticed the troops part around Harry's body so it wouldn't get trampled, but no one took such care with Voldemort's corpse.

The final battle had begun.

@~^~~

The battle was relatively short compared to most other battles.  Though it felt like an eternity to Hermione, the battle ended within an hour of its beginning.  Without their leader and most powerful wizard Voldemort, the dark forces were crushed relatively easily.

Those Deatheaters taken prisoner would be carted off to Azkaban prison, though what Dumbledore's forces would do with the other dark creatures was anybody's guess.  The Dementors would have to be kept somewhere where there was no one to feed off of.  Giants were hard to contain due to their size and strength.  No one knew what to do with even half of the remaining dark creatures.

Hermione slowly walked beside Ron, both of their faces pale in anticipation to what they would see.

Harry's lifeless body lay where it had fallen, untouched by friend or foe.  The body of his opponent lay several feet away, trampled and nearly unrecognizable.

The Muggle-born witch collapsed to her knees beside her fallen friend, weeping.  She felt more than saw Ron kneel beside her, his arm wrapping protectively around her.  She leaned into his embrace, burying her face in his shoulder.

Turning her head to gaze at the body through tear-blurred eyes, she looked at the friend who had cheated death so many times.  Some irrational part of her thought that the Boy Who Lived would live forever.

"How could he have survived Voldemort so many times…beat him…and still die?" she sobbed, turning back to Ron's shoulder for comfort.

Tears fell onto the back of her head, and she knew that Ron was crying as well.

How could Harry leave them now after they'd been through so much together?

Her grief temporarily switched to the anger stage as she beat a fist weakly against Ron's chest and she wailed, "Damn you, Harry Potter!  Why the hell did you let yourself get killed?!"

She felt Ron rock her back and forth as she vented her anger and her sorrow.

@~^~~

Dumbledore looked down at the two owl bodies locked together in death.  How fitting that Harry's owl Hedwig should die just as he had: fighting.  And it perfectly symbolized the relationship that Harry and Voldemort had.

He remembered his own words from not too many years ago:

"When one dies, the other will die as well."

He had never hated being right so much as right now.

Vaguely, he heard the swish of feathers as Fawkes came to land beside him and the cries of joy and sorrow from the wizards, creatures who had joined their side, and even a few Muggles.  The war had ended for real this time; Voldemort would not be coming back.  However, their victory had come at great cost.

Hermione's wail of anger and grief reached his ears: "Damn you, Harry Potter!  Why the hell did you let yourself get killed?!"

The old wizard closed his eyes, letting his own tears escape.  Every step of the way, he had led the boy to this final battle.  On some level, he had hoped that Professor Sibyll Trelawney's prediction had been wrong (as usual) and Harry would win and go on to live the normal life in obscurity that Harry had once told his friends that he wanted.  Unfortunately, Trelawney's prediction held true.

McGonagall's voice broke him from his reverie, saying what was on his mind.  "I had hoped that Sibyll would be wrong like she normally is…"

"Apparently Harry was not so lucky," the aged wizard told the Transfigurations professor.

"He…he hadn't even graduated…"  The witch swallowed.  "He was supposed to graduate next month…with the others…"

Pulled into the war before graduation, Harry and his classmates hadn't even been completely trained before heading out into the field.  Dumbledore swallowed.  Graduation this year would not be the happy ceremony that it usually was.

McGonagall's quiet sobs pulled the headmaster from his thoughts.  He turned to her and wrapped her in an embrace.  She leaned into his comforting arms, crying into his shoulder.

The time for talking would come later, but now there was nothing to be said.