When they got there Voldemort moved a dead troll out of his way.
When everyone saw him they froze.
"Neville, who's that Hagrid's carrying? Neville who is it?!" Ginny asked.
"Harry Potter, is dead!" Voldemort said.
"No! No!" she said running.
But Arthur pulled her back.
"Silent!" Voldemort yelled with the wand in his hand.
"Harry Potter, is dead. And now it's the time to declare yourself.
Come forward and join us... or die!" he said.
"Draco! Draco." Lucius said waving his hand.
"Draco. Come." Narcissa said.
He started to walk over to him and then Voldemort put his hands around him.
"Well done, Draco. Well done!"
Narcissa gently pushed him over a bit.
Then Neville came.
"Well I must say I hoped for better." Voldemort said.
People started laughing.
"And who might be young man?"
"Neville Longbottom." he said.
Bellatrix laughed.
"Well I'm sure we'll find a place for you Neville."
"I'd like to say something." he said.
"Well, Neville, I'm sure we'd all be fascinated to hear what you have to say."
"It doesn't matter that Harry's gone." he started.
"Stand down Neville." Seamus said.
"People die every day! So is Fred, Remus, Sirius, Lilly, James, Tonks. Yeah, we lost Harry tonight. All of them.
They didn't die in vain. But he's still with us. In here." he said with a hand on his heart.
Then he looked at Voldemort.
"Because you're wrong! Harry's heart did beat for us. For all of us! It's not over!" he said with the sword in his hand.
Then Harry jumped off Hagrid and took out his wand.
"Confringo!" Harry said.
Then ran. Everyone laughed a little to Ron, Hermione and Tracey.
"Come on! All stay in the castle. We have to kill the snake!" he said.
So they split up and looked for the snake. Harry tried to keep Voldemort busy.
"Hey, you were right... when you told Professor Snape that wand was failing you. It was always fail..." Harry said.
Then was hit in the face by Voldemort.
"I killed Snape!" he said.
"Yeah, but what if the wand never belonged to Snape?
What if its allegiance has always been with someone else? Oh, come on, Tom... Let's finish it the way we started."
Then Harry grabbed his face.
"Together!"
Then they started to fall on the ground. When they stood up Harry saw Voldemort feeling something and smirked.
Then the people were all standing there quietly. Everyone had been close.
The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other.
"I don't want anyone else to help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."
He looked specifically at Tracey.
Voldemort hissed.
"Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "This isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"
"Nobody," said Harry simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good. . . ."
"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"
"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save us? Me doing the same thing for Tracey?" asked Harry.
They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's.
"Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"
"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but they two.
"Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and snivelled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"
"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red.
"You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people - "
"But you did not!"
" - I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"
"You dare -"
"Yes, I dare," said Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"
Voldemort did not speak, but prowled in a circle, and Harry knew that he kept him temporarily mesmerized at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a final secret. . . .
"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like and old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter - and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"
"Just one thing," said Harry, and still they circled each other, wrapped in each other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.
"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"
"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snakelike face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humourless and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.
"You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"
"Oh he dreamed of it," said Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."
"You mean he was weak!" screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"
"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry, "a better wizard, a better man."
"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"
"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."
For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the walls drew breath as one.
"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as though they would cause him unendurable pain.
"His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"
"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."
"What childish dream is this?" said Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and his red eyes did not waver from Harry's.
"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's. Dumbledore's from the moment you starting hunting down me and Tracey's mother. And you never realised it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"
Voldemort did not answer. They continued to circle each other like wolves about to tear each other apart.
"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as our mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realised," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"
"He desired her, that was all," sneered Voldemort, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him - "
"Of course he told you that," said Harry, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape finished him!"
"It matters not!" shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt attention, but now let out a cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path!"
"Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy - I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it; I understood the truth before you caught up. I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"
"Yeah, it did." said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you think what you've done... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle. . . ."
"What is this?"
Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had socked Voldemort like this. Harry saw is pupils contract to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.
"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left. . . . I've seen what you'll be otherwise. . . . Be a man. . . try. . . Try for some remorse. . . ."
"You dare - ?" said Voldemort again.
"Yes, I dare," said Harry, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle."
Voldemort's hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds away.
"That wand still isn't working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."
"He killed - "
"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die, undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"
"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort's voice shook with malicious pleasure. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against the last master's wishes! Its power is mine!"
"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard . . . The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance . . ."
Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.
"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."
Blank shock showed in Voldemort's face for a moment, but then it was gone.
"But what does it matter?" he said softly. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone . . . and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy . . ."
"But you're too late," said Harry. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took his wand from him."
Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.
"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does . . . I am the true master of the Elder Wand."
A red-glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand:
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead centre of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided.
Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last.
And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward.
Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing.
Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell.
One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the tumult broke around Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air.
The fierce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and the first to reach him were Tracey, Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him.
Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, not tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last –
The sun rose steadily over Hogwarts, and the Great Hall blazed with life and light. Harry was an indispensible part of the mingled outpourings of jubilation and mourning, of grief and celebration.
They wanted him there with them, their leader and symbol, their savoir and their guide, and that he had not slept, that he craved the company of only a few of them, seemed to occur to no one. He must speak to the bereaved, clasp their hands, witness their tears, receive their thanks, hear the news now creeping in from every quarter as the morning drew on; that the Imperiused up and down the country had come back to themselves, that Death Eaters were fleeing or else being captured, that the innocent of Azkaban were being released at that very moment, and that Kingsley Shacklebolt had been named temporary Minister of Magic.
They moved Voldemort's body and laid it in a chamber off the Hall, away form the bodies of Fred, Tonks, Remus, Sirius, James, Lilly, Colin Creevey, and fifty others who had died fighting him.
McGonagall had replaced the House tables, not nobody was sitting according to House anymore: All were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts and parents, people were throwing food into his laughing mouth.
After a while, exhausted and drained, Harry found himself sitting on a bench beside Tracey.
She looked at him and smiled. Then grabbed his hand and shut her eyes tightly. Then gave him some of her energy.
A few seconds later she smiled and he smiled back.
"Thanks." he said.
"You deserve it. Now why don't we go find Ron and Hermione. Then go to Dumbledore's office where it's quiet?" she said.
He nodded and then they looked for their friends.
When they found them they went to Dumbledore's office.