Because I'm slightly twisted and thoroughly hooked, you get this.
Thanks to all those who review. Inspired by Dylan Thomas and JKR.
I disclaim.
The war is over.
They lost.
There is blood everywhere. Eight pints per person, eight people, Harry reaches for his muggle arithmetic and realises that there is no answer to this problem except: Too Much.
There's always been blood. It's one of the constants of his life. There was blood on his forehead when his parents were murdered. Blood on his arm when Cedric was killed. Blood on his hands when Sirius died. Blood on his soul when Dumbledore fell. Blood in his eyes when Hedwig's neck was broken. Blood on his gnawed lips when Hermione took the Killing Curse for him. Blood in his gut when Ron screamed out his warcry of Hogwarts Forever! and died avenging his mother's murder. Blood everywhere, red as her hair, red as her lips, when Ginny was Reducto'd into oblivion before him.
There wasn't enough of her remaining to bury but Luna helped him collect what was left nonetheless, her own lover's mind broken as his lover's body.
The next day, she smothered Neville in his sleep, unwilling to give Bellatrix a final victory over the Longbottoms. When her sobs shook her arms too hard for steadiness, Harry had carried her to a chair and rocked her softly into a hardwon rest. Then he went back and finished the job.
The Hogwarts students who died were buried in a garden of remembrance, but hastily and with less ceremony than they deserved. Yet Harry remembered every name, knew every name that had given their life for him, but some cut deeper than others. He remembered Ginny's words to him too, when the Battle for Hogwarts was only hours away, how they had hurt him then and hurt him far more now.
"You're the only one that can beat him, Harry." Her brown eyes were hard and hot, branding his skin. "If you die, we all do. So you have to let us do this. When the time comes, you have to let us die for you."
He had screamed at her then, begged her not to make him promise but she had stood, cold and stony as Hogwarts herself, until he had sworn on his parents' grave, on Sirius's honour, on her mother's soul, that he would let them die for him.
In the darkness he waits.
In the darkness he remembers.
Hannah Abbot, Susan Bones, Ernie MacMillan, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Filius Flitwick, Laura Madley, Hestia Jones, Romilda Vane, Grawp, Pomona Sprout, Katie Bell, Terry Boot, Padma Patil, Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown, Sturgis Podmore...
In the darkness he relives the final battle and watches his school fall, die for him, Hogwarts herself unable to keep them safe any longer. Unable to save even her ghosts.
...Peeves, Kenneth Towler, Vicky Frobisher, Patricia Stimpson, Wilhelmina Grubby-Plank, Orla Quirke, Zacharias Smith, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Lisa Turpin, Rose Zeller, Madam Hooch, Prof. Sinistra, Sybil Trelawney, Dobby, Winky, Ludo Bagman, Argus Filch, Amelia Bones, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Oliver Wood, Anthony Goldstein, Kevin Whitby, Sally-Anne Perks, Natalie McDonald, Morag MacDougal, Alicia Spinnet, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin, Amos Diggory, Emmeline Vance, Elphias Doge, Poppy Pomfrey, Hermione Granger, Rubeus Hagrid, Olympe Maxime, Dennis Creevy, Colin Creevy, Angelina Johnson, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Minerva McGonagall, Lee Johnson, Cho Chang, Alastor Moody, Ginny Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Bill Weasley and Ron Weasley. All dead.
Neville among those alive but tortured into insanity: Arabella Figg, Marietta Edgecombe, Mundungus Fletcher, Stan Shunpike, Mr Ollivander.
He remembers Luna kneeling with her lover's head in her lap, her wand trained on the dead body of Rodolphus Lestrange.
Nagini broken between Hagrid's gentle hands, her fangs latched hard, even in death, onto his arm.
Fred lying with his hand outstretched to George's cooling body, the stillest he had ever seen the twins.
Ron staring at the sky, eyes far too wide and innocent for death.
The pieces of Ginny scattered everywhere.
They were the names he knew but how many bodies went unrecognised no-one knew. Half the school was dead. Most of the faculty killed. Dumbledore's monument desecrated.
He remembered those Death Eaters he had killed himself. Lucius Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. McNair. Pettigrew.
Suddenly he realises he is sitting on the floor, sticky with blood, and that the tears are washing pink tracks down his cheeks.
They had saved Hogwarts but it was a pyrrhic victory. The school was safe but none of the staff were left to teach and few students were left to learn.
The Weasley family shattered that day. Bill, Fred, George, Ron, Ginny and Molly were all dead. Charlie found Percy dead later at the Burrow, killed defending a pregnant Penelope Clearwater-Weasley who had avenged herself on his murderer only to be killed herself.
Arthur had thanked Harry, when the tears stopped flowing too fast for words to be spoken, and had leaned on Charlie heavily enough for his only son to wince. He had aged fifty years in two days. The wizard fascinated by all things Muggle with a heart as big as Hogwarts' kitchen was gone. In his place was an old man, tired to death, his heart as thoroughly broken as his children's bodies.
A pillar of strength for Harry and Arthur, Charlie himself had lost the use of his right eye. Moody's ghost told him to take his own magical eye in its place. Now it span and whirled, its magical vision surely blurred by the tears.
Harry hadn't been able to speak but had stood dry-eyed and broken.
That was two weeks ago. Last night Charlie had told Harry that Arthur had slipped away in his sleep, unable to live with the deaths of his beloved wife and children. Over a bottle or three of Firewhisky, Harry had made Charlie swear not to do anything stupid or suicidal and get himself killed. He reminded him that Hagrid's last words before battle had been to ask him to look after Grawp, Fang and Norbert if he should fall. Only one of the three charges still lived but the oath stood. Charlie had promises to keep and a Weasley line to carry on.
Charlie had been too drunk to extract the same promise from Harry himself.
Now Tom Riddle was dying but it was too late. The Dark had won.
A Dark Lord no longer, Tom Riddle gazed up at his killer with hatred in his red eyes, the Sword of Gryffindor poking up through his ribs. "You will beg for death, boy-Heir of Gryffindor."
Harry had defied him in life for all of his life. He would not give him his improper title in death. "Only yours, Tom."
The spell he had learned so many years ago came back to him now. Strange that a Death Eater had taught him how to defeat Riddle.
With the utmost loathing, Harry pointed his wand at his worst enemy and said the fatal words, "Avada kedavra."
A dull thud marked the end of the Second Dark War and the death of the half-blood Lord with a whimper, not a bang.
The last of the horcruxes destroyed, Death finally took Tom Riddle.
His war finally over, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, went gentle into that good night and as his words had forked his lightning scar, he did not rage against the dying of the light.
Charlie did when he found the bodies.
When asked to comment he answered simply: "The war is over. We lost."