Disclaimer: Check first chapter for full disclaimer and other warnings.

Additional Warning: Depending on your perception, this chapter may be emotionally charged and/or contain crude descriptions.

Chapter 2 – Be Thou My Shepherd
posted October 1st, 2005

The young man looked at the sky in annoyance. Heavy rain again. He gathered his goats in the makeshift cave and prepared it for the upcoming downpour. After an hour, the sun made a tentative appearance and the man smiled before limping outside.

He drank from a nearby puddle of clear water on a rock, and filled his gourd as well. After inspecting the surroundings, he called his faithful animals and exited the place. None of these caves belonged to him, but all of them were his. He had spent such a long time walking through these hills that he considered that place his home, and his goats his friends. In the years he had spent guarding his herd, not one animal had disappeared or been attacked by a wild creature.

And he had seen nobody.

The Scottish Highlands were one of the most barren countrysides concerning human implantations, but it suited him admirably. He still remembered when it had all started, ten years ago. Strangely, he didn't have any memories from before, but his instincts, honed by living so close to Nature itself, told him that they weren't pleasant and best left untouched. He was sure that his limp and bad eyesight were linked to these. Strangely, he had another set of memories from before his days as a shepherd. Memories of hundreds of young children on the head of whom he was sitting. It wasn't anymore interesting than the other memories and he refrained from exploring them as well.

After walking a few miles with the herd behind him, he put his mantle on a somewhat dry stone and lied down on it, basking in the late afternoon sun. His goats were nice enough not to get into unattainable locations, and clever enough not to go too far away. Or so he thought. It had never crossed his mind that the animals were like that because of him.

Closing his eyes, he remembered the Beginning, as he called it. He had found himself in a strange office with people talking about strange things. They had then put him in the care of a large man but he had fled after only two days, while the large man was playing with a large egg. He had then spent two weeks walking northward through the uneven countryside, surviving by eating autumn fruits and drinking river water, and generally avoiding people. And he had stumbled on a goat shepherd. The old man, named Comnhall, tried to push him away, but relented when Harry kept approaching him.

The two of them had passed their days serenely, taking care of the goats and selling the occasional one to feed themselves. As he didn't even know what his name was, the old man had called him Deòiridh, which meant pilgrim.

Three years after their first encounter, Comnhall had fallen badly and the young Deòiridh had to haul him all the way back to Oban to find someone to help him. He found someone, right, but the person told him that the man was dead, and that he'd better leave with his goats or he would be fined. That had been his last contact with civilization.

Since he didn't want to dwell where his friend had died, he took the herd that was now his, and headed even more to the north. Since his subsequent arrival in the northern part of the country, his only contact among men had been with the farmers and the other shepherds. They started by being wary of him but soon noticed his famished state and tried to help him.

The keyword here was "tried." The man, who had been a young teenager at the time, had accepted food but never slept under a roof. Despite this, he displayed an iron health and a surprising strength. Soon realizing that he never lost a goat, the established shepherds and farmers started to give him more animals to take care of, and he always returned with well-fed and healthy goats, sometimes even with a new foal.

The man opened his eyes and, noticing that it was already dark, he looked at the evening sky intently. Seeing that there was no chance of being rained upon again, he fell asleep on his rock, and his goats did the same around him.

It was peaceful. It was his life.

At the same time...

Ginny Weasley was fighting for her life.

Never before, in her training as an Auror, had she thought that the Death Eaters would bring the fight under her own windows. In her own home. She had seen her father die first, hit by a vengeful curse uttered in a contemptuous voice she knew well, and had retaliated by killing Percy herself.

It was a distressing situation, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. It was war.

Since the beginning of the second war with Voldemort, the Auror curriculum had been sped up from three to one year, and they had the licence to kill enemies. Enemies killed couldn't be revived. Enemies killed didn't bring long and costly trials and couldn't escape any prison in the event their fortune failed to corrupt the judges – like it had been the case when Fudge was still around. The second point was moot, however, the wizarding world having lost its prison to Voldemort.

The Dark Lord had even made the island his centre of command.

Ginny had already lost two of her brothers, three if you counted the now-deceased Percy, and his father was as good as dead, blood pooling around his crushed skull. A couple of years before, Charlie had been lost with the dragon he had been riding into the battle to retake Azkaban, and George had heroically blasted himself when he was surrounded with a swarm of Death Eaters, taking most of them out with him. Since then, Fred hadn't been the same, and he was now attacking the intruders with no care about his own safety.

Ginny pushed him aside and avoided the Exploding curse herself. It made contact with the beam supporting the kitchen roof, and a dreadful sound started to come from upstairs. It wasn't Ginny's main preoccupation, though, as, while her brother had been aimed with an Exploding curse, she had been aimed with a Bone-Shattering one, and her right shoulder was broken in so many painful bits that she screamed.

Fred looked at her blankly, and she caught the meaning of his gaze. "No!" was all she could utter through her pain. He didn't listen, though. He had never listened to wisdom before. And he had been separated from his twin for too long. In an equally heroic gesture, Fred threw himself forward, and activated the device he and his twin had invented. It couldn't be thrown, as he fed on a person's magical energy, willingly given. It transformed all the good and happy memories of someone into a destructive effect. The suicidal weapon had initially been developed as a test product against Dementors, but George had used his version too early. And now Fred was using his too late. From the fifty attackers, six were already on the ground, downed by the Weasleys' fierce resistance and twelve fell to Fred's last resort attack. The remaining thirty-two recognized the signs of a suicide attack and Apparated out, leaving the house to crumble upon itself.

Yet another Light-oriented family victim of the Death Eaters.

A month later...

Dumbledore was still alive, but barely. The aged wizard, who wasn't Headmaster of anything since his school had been reduced to rubble, was organizing the resistance against Voldemort. There wasn't much to do, however. They had tried to attack the prison fortress directly, but it had been too well thought out, and nobody could get in, let alone fight.

The old man was moving on a magicked chair, his legs having been crippled by several kinds of bone-breaking curses. His traitorous Potion Master couldn't brew anymore Skele-Gro for him, or whatever potion he could think of, as he was doing exactly that for Voldemort. Snape had revealed his treachery mere seconds into Hogwarts' last battle by taking away McGonagall and Flitwick, surprising everyone.

Dumbledore looked at the battle-scarred man in front of him. If one thought that the late Moody had been scarred, Remus Lupin did break the records. Remus had endured as many battles as any other Light fighter and then more, but, thanks to his enhanced healing, his wounds always closed, leaving only a small scar. The problem was that he had so many of those that one couldn't even discern a clear patch of skin. There were wounds that couldn't be healed, though, even with his resilience. His right eye had been damaged by debris once, and it hadn't healed. The healers had exchanged it for Moody's magical one recently, and Remus was on the front of all battles, unyielding. And gaining more scars.

"We have to do something else, Albus." he said.

"I know, I know, Remus."

"I remember that you told us, once, just as the war picked up again, that if you had done something differently, a little thing, really, it wouldn't have happened."

The old man frowned, trying to remember. When he did, though, he looked at Remus with teary eyes. "I'm sorry, Remus. Really sorry."

"What was it?"

"It's Harry Potter. There had been a prophecy made about him, and I wanted to protect him until he could defeat Voldemort, but I placed him in the wrong kind of house."

Remus nodded, his eyes dry. It had been so long that he hadn't cried that he couldn't remember what it did. He had shed all he had when his friend Sirius had been cut into small pieces, all hung at different places on Azkaban's battlements. And it was still there. Remus had vowed not to cry again until he had avenged him.

"You told us that he disappeared, ten years ago, just the year Voldemort stole the Philosopher's Stone."

"Yes?"

"Have you ever tried to find him?"

Dumbledore looked at him. "It was no use. He was a muggle. He couldn't have vanquished Voldemort as a muggle, could he?"

"Could he? Muggles have killing machines we can't even imagine. They are certainly-"

The curtain around a nearby infirmary bed was thrown to the side by a red-haired witch, panting under the exertion caused by the simple gesture.

"Are you two speaking about who I think you are speaking about?" Ginny demanded, showing every inch of her mother's temper, despite said mother being currently depressed over the massive death toll exacted on her family. And having the head and arm bandaged didn't help Ginny either.

"Err..." started Remus. "Who do you think we are speaking about?"

"Harry."

It was a well-known joke in the circle of Ginny's friends that the girl had fallen in love with Harry Potter even before she was born. They didn't know the truth. The truth was that she actually fell in love with him. Not before she was born, but when she started to learn about him, and when she saw him, that one and only time, and when she was retold the last Sorting, and later, in the darkness of the night, she would think of him. The possessive tone in which she always said that forename was scary, and had prevented any prospective boyfriend to declare himself.

Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, we were speaking about Harry."

"Where is he?"

"We have had this conversation multiple times, Ginny. He disappeared, and-"

"-and is probably dead." she said, mimicking the old man's manners. "But you don't know it. You don't know it!" she exclaimed louder, although attentive listeners, or people who had an unnaturally enhanced hearing – like Remus Lupin – could perceive the desperate undertone in it.

"If only you allowed a search party..." she started.

"Ginny..." Dumbledore started, intending to deliver his usual speech. They had had that conversation so many times before, and he had always refused, at first arguing that it was useless, then, when the war started, his arguments shifted to more practical ones, as he couldn't spare any fighter to go on a wandering mission. However, they had almost no chance left. Voldemort had vamped the country from all fighters, relying on fear to force people under his banner. Even Hermione's research about resisting the Unforgivables had been proven useless by Snape's new inventions in mind-controlling potions.

He sighed. "Very well."

"If only you..." she started again, before registering the change in the man's usual arguments. "What did you say?"

"I said very well. You agree with this?" he asked Remus, who could only nod. Through his deceased father, Harry Potter was the last link to the Marauders, and if he was living, he would find him.

"Take Remus with you, then, and try to find him. You have a week, after which I expect Remus back." Albus said, before turning his charmed chair around and heading to his private quarters. Ginny and Remus looked at the man broken by the burden of command more surely by physical wounds, and then left, Apparating near the pile of rubble that had been a school for wizards. Now it looked every inch like the illusion the muggles had seen for centuries. A ruin.

The witch and the werewolf headed north, following a ten-year old trail.

Later...

Deòiridh looked at the sky, trying to interpret the meaning of what he was seeing. Usually, he could forecast weather with a 100 percent success chance, and other unrelated events with a reasonable probability. Today, however, the strange clouds were dancing in ways he had never seen before. He needed to see better. He needed to grasp the whole picture, not a single square of the sky.

He climbed up the nearest peak, his faithful goats following, and found himself on the sharp rock outcropping, his long black hair swept by the wind while his eyes searched the sky. Within minutes, the picture was getting clearer. He was starting to understand... It was obvious, now. It involved him, and...

"Harry!"

He looked down, annoyed. Who could interrupt his meditation? He stopped wondering when he saw them. An old man full of scars and a fiery-haired woman. She seemed wounded, while the man with her only displayed scars, but, by the sheer number of them, Harry suspected that he had been thrown in the thorn bushes repeatedly. Or worse.

"Harry!" said the woman again, and it woke something in his mind. Names. He didn't like names. The woman didn't let him say anything, though, and she climbed the last steps toward him.

"I've been waiting so long." she was saying, panting. "We saw you in the distance, with you hair and eyes..." she pushed his hair to the side and he didn't move, transfixed by her face. It stirred something in his mind. And now, it displayed so many emotions, for someone so young. Sorrow, fear, yet there was hope. Especially as she noticed the scar on his forehead.

The damn scar. The scar that had awoken him so many times in the past, shivering in fright or trembling in pain. He looked at the sky a last time and took his knife out. The faithful knife had been Comnhall's, and it was now serving him. He looked at his reflection in the blade and touched the scar tentatively under the gaze of the two persons there.

He touched and prodded. The sky was right!

In a swift move, he extended his arm outwards, the knife's blade toward him, and impaled the knife in his head.

His mind exploded. He had been in the middle of an explanation of his next devious scheme, and his mind exploded. Like that. His Occlumency powers couldn't do anything at all, as the invisible force reaming his numerous defences and memories came from the inside of his head. When that force cut through the link between his consciousness and his body, Voldemort slumped on the ground, unmoving.

The Death Eaters looked at each other, unmoving as well. Few dared to move before being told so. It could have helped, you know. It could have helped their cause to go to the fallen Dark Lord and use Legilimency or mind-restoring spells on him. It could have helped to do it immediately. That would have prevented the man's death.

As it was, Voldemort's body was being completely separated from his consciousness, and had stopped moving completely. The Dark Lord started to lack oxygen, and that was a sure way toward death. You see, many years ago, Voldemort had split his soul in seven little fragments, insuring his immortality. Now that he had the Philosopher's Stone, though, Snape was able to brew the Elixir of Life for him, and he didn't need the Horcruxes anymore. Especially as each of them contained a bit of his soul and the corresponding bit of power. He had thus recuperated them, one after the other, and had recovered his normal body.

Having a normal and healthy body is interesting when someone has been deprived from sex for so long, and Voldemort had indulged in erotic games with most of his female followers, and even with a few males, one after the other or several at the same time. He had especially liked torture the prisoners with the many tools offered by Muggle technology. After all, wasn't he a half-blood? He had kept that under wraps, of course, because his most powerful and devoted followers had been the pureblood bigots.

However, now, followers were starting to panic. All of them, wherever they were, felt their Dark Mark starting to itch as the Dark Lord was drawing magic from them to stay alive. As his condition became more and more critical, more and more magic was stolen from the Marked followers. The war being in the open, all his followers were branded with his Mark, although it could be in strange places. Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott, the two Slytherins who became Healers while spying for Voldemort, crumbled into a heap, both grasping their midsection in pain. Future investigation would reveal that they had been Marked there, something which must have been particularly painful.

The magic leaving the Dark Lord followers became insufficient to keep him alive and no Death Eater could think clearly at that point, as their own life started to leave them as well. Screams raised in intensity in all Britain and in some other places in the world, before stopping abruptly.

In the place of where each Death Eater had been, there was now a dry corpse, the Dark Mark a vivid red on the parched body.

Deòiridh, or Harry since the woman seemed to think it was his name – and she was too beautiful to be contradicted – yanked the knife out of his head. To the other's surprise, his scar began to diminish, until only a faint outline remained. It hadn't even bled.

"It's finished." Harry said, and they glanced at each other in wonder before looking at him again. Harry focused on her face, and knew that he finally had reached the end of his pilgrimage, and Deòiridh ceased to be.

"Stay with me?" he asked.

Later...

Since all the Death Eaters were wiped out, the news took a while to reach the Resistance. They wondered why some of them died so mysteriously, but that was all for a whole day. When Remus told Dumbledore about it, the old man sent a reconnaissance mission in Azkaban, and they found the building devoid of any life. Any prisoner that hadn't joined with Voldemort had died, and the Dementors had been linked with the Dark Lord through some dark ritual just a few weeks before.

The news wasn't confirmed at first. It seemed that an air of uncertainty floated in the wizarding world of Britain. The wizards and witches were cautious, and they should be. The first time Harry Potter provoked the Dark Lord's temporary demise, they had feasted although said Dark Lord wasn't actually dead. Dumbledore went to inspect Azkaban by himself, and ran a few spells on Voldemort's dead body. When all revealed the same thing, he smiled.

It was his first true smile since ten years ago, and the people accompanying him cheered before transmitting the news all over Britain. While the witches and wizards feasted upon their new freedom, the old man retired in his quarters in the subterranean headquarters for the Resistance, mourning.

He grieved for the fallen, and for the living ones who will have to rebuild afterwards. And he now realized that it had taken ten years of hell for the wizarding world to be freed of Voldemort, just as it had taken ten years for Harry Potter to be freed of the hell caused by Dumbledore himself.

His heart crumbling under the guilt, he drew his wand and pointed it toward his own heart. He was about to utter a lethal spell when a sound made him turn around.

"What do you want?" he asked Remus, rather curtly.

The werewolf looked at him strangely. "It's no use, Albus. We need you."

"You don't understand. It's my fault... If I hadn't-"

"Shh... I know." Remus said, patting the man's shoulder gently. "That's why you have to help us rebuild."

They hugged, tears falling freely as they remembered their fallen friends.

After a few seconds, Dumbledore looked up suddenly. "What about Harry? Where is he? Is he-"

"Don't worry." answered Remus. "I'm sure Ginny takes good care of him."

The two of them then left the drab place and ascended the stairs toward the feast, while, at the same time, under the starry night of the Highlands, two persons were finally united.

The End...?

Is it the end, dear reader?
Are you also reviewer?
I hope so, so criticize,
Or, if you wish, eulogize.

Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews. It's never really the end, you know? Each character might get his additional story, and Harry and Ginny's life together might become quite interesting. I might write more chapters, but I'm not set on it. Yet.