Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters.

Chapter Eight

The End … Of Everything

Harry woke up from the weirdest dream he ever had to chaos. It seemed like a major fight was in the process, though he was pleased to see that it looked like his side had the upper hand. He looked to his left and saw Neville stabbing Nagini with a basilisk fang, and Luna was at his side, covering Neville's back, and doing a good job of it judging by the pile of Death Eaters around her. Harry then looked to his right and noticed that Voldemort was just starting to get up himself, obviously he was knocked out by the killing curse too and the Order and other light side fighters were taking advantage of that fact.

Then he heard Ron's yell from behind him, it seemed to be more out of frustration than pain but still Harry didn't like the sound of it when he turned around, he saw Ron fighting two Death Eaters at once but not seeming to care about them at all. No, it looked like he was trying to get somewhere. And that's when he saw it; his beautiful girlfriend was fighting with the evil hag. He got up and ran towards her, not sure what he was going to do but knew that he had to get to her. He saw the curse as if it was moving in slow motion and he saw the look of shock and acceptance (as if she was almost welcoming the curse to hit her) in Ginny's eyes, before he stepped in front of it taking it squarely in the chest.

He felt ever second of pain as the curse worked through his chest and kept going until it continued on its way straight to Ginny. He fell to his knees as he grabbed his chest, feeling like there was a hole where the curse had hit him, but there was nothing. However, he ceased to care about his pain as he heard Ginny's body hit the ground and he turned, feeling more pained at seeing her on the ground, than anything else he has ever felt.

"Ginny!" Harry cried, forcing himself to move towards her, his body didn't seem to want to do it but it didn't have a choice. The first thing he noticed, with a sigh of relief, was she was still breathing. However, the hole that was now in his heart told him that this was bad. Not to mention he could hear the mad cackle of Bellatrix as she gloated to a distraught Mrs. Weasley, but it was the last thing she would ever do. Mrs. Weasley, who had already lost two of her sons and her daughter was now in critical condition, used all her formidable silks to finally kill the evil witch.

Harry would have been content to stay by Ginny for the rest of his life, just holding her, but when Voldemort had witnessed the death of his best lieutenant and notice that he was in fact losing this battle he let out a scream and surged of power that seemed to shock everyone. Taking all the strength he had left, Harry stood up to face the monster again, for the last time. He kept eye contact with the monster (he could even see fear in Voldemort's eyes as he walked towards him) and everyone else seemed to stop what they were doing to watch them.

"It looks like it's just you and me now," Harry said holding out the wand he stole from Draco Malfoy and had been using for the last few months.

Voldemort eyes quickly changed from their slightly frighten look to his normal bone chilling glare as he said. "Are you sure you want that Harry? There are plenty more people here willing to die for you … you can let me take care of them first."

"You won't be hurting anyone else," Harry said, his arm still hurt from where the last curse went through him, but his pain didn't matter.

"Come Harry … you know you can't face me without a shield," Voldemort smirked. "Perhaps your friend or the werewolf would be a good start."

"I won't let you hurt anyone else!" Harry repeated, starting to get really angry (though the pain seemed to have numbed some, so maybe that's a good thing).

"I can see how well that worked out for you last time," Voldemort taunted looking in the direction Ginny laid. "How does it feel knowing you couldn't even save the little girl? Can't even take a curse… leave it to Bella to think of a new form of torture …" he laughed as he watched Harry's face contorted in pain.

"Just stop your meaningless prattle already," Harry said his eyes smoldering. "Just let me give you your one chance of survival so you can refuse it and I can kill you already. Because mark my words Riddle, one way or the other … today you're going to die."

"One chance," Voldemort laughed but his eyes were as cold as ever. "And what is that?"

"Remorse," Harry said watching Voldemort's every movement waiting for an attack. "Repent for all the things you've done."

"Repent," Voldemort laughed hard (and everyone watching seemed to find Harry's request just as shocking as Voldemort did). "There is nothing I've done to repent for," he added with a smirk and a second later fired the killing curse at Harry. Harry, expecting this the moment that he first walked towards Voldemort, was able to shout out Expelliarmus just in time for the spells to meet and bounced off each other causing Voldemort to be hit by his own killing curse.

The area was only quiet for a few seconds until a loud cheered broke it and most the people seem to want to hug him, though in the background there were still sounds of fighting as the Death Eaters tried to flee and some of the Aurors or Order members tried to chase them down. But Harry didn't care about either of these things; all he cared about was getting back to where Ginny was. He didn't realize how weak he was until he had to try to make his way through the crowd of people, but then, without him even realizing it, Ron was by his side helping him.

"You did it," Ron said sounding relieved but there was a lot of grief in his voice, this wasn't the outcome either boy expected.

"Yeah," Harry forced himself to say, he wasn't feeling the relief that he always thought he would have at this point. He then knelt beside Ginny taking her hand, Mrs. Weasley on the other side weeping, and that's where he stayed for the next hours. Neville, Luna and their Gryffindor friend seem to be keeping everyone away from him and the Weasleys.

O

The next four days Ginny was unconscious in a room in St. Mango, and Harry never once left her side. Ron was there a lot too and the other Weasleys would visit periodically (though at least once a day). They didn't seem to know how to deal with their grief over Fred and Charlie and what was wrong with Ginny. Harry was given a stern talking to when he hesitantly walked into Ginny's room the first day to find Mrs. Weasley in hysteric. She had taken his hesitation for fear that she would blame him for Ginny (or her sons) and she wasn't about to let him get away with that. Not to mention the fact that he had sacrificed himself like that … Harry even cried when he heard how painful it was on her to watch him die like that, knowing it would have been worst for Ginny and Ron.

The next day the Healer (the best in the field with curse like this in fact) told them what had happened to Ginny and what her future was likely to be like from now on. Apparently, the curse that Bellatrix sent at Ginny was specially designed to go after the person they were targeting (that's why it was able to go through Harry like that). The concept for this spell was brought up by the Auror department a few years ago so that they could use this in a hostage situation in a public area and not have to worry about hitting innocent bystanders. However, the spell that Bellatrix used was a lot more deadly, the Healer told Harry that if he hadn't stood in front of that curse, she would have been a lot worse off, a fact that only help Harry a little knowing that she was still affected greatly by this, and she would never be the same.

Still, Harry never once left her side as she lay unconscious in her bed, and he was the first person she saw when she woke up on the fifth day after she got there. Harry smiled as he looked into her eyes for the first time, at the same time he felt a ping of pain in his heart. The eyes that were looking back at him weren't the ones that he had fallen in love with, they were filled with fear and confusion, and he knew that she didn't know who he was or why she was in the room at all.

"Gin relax … it's okay, you're safe here," Harry said reassuringly and reached a hand out to put it on her shoulder. Ginny didn't seem to be able to respond to that, but she did relax under his grasp, looking at him peacefully.

The next few weeks Harry stayed by her side as much as possible, this time Mrs. Weasley was there a lot more, as well as Ron. Ginny seemed to be doing better the longer that she was awake, even managing to speak some after a few days. She would sometimes be able to have a normal conversation though mostly she just enjoyed watching everyone else talk. The next stage she seemed to be a lot more agitated, sometimes it would come on slowly and others it was sudden, seeming to be affected by not being able to remember something and that would start her off and she would often throw a tantrum. The last stage she seemed to be almost catatonic, she would just stare off into space, though it was rough on him, Harry still refused to leave her side, even when she told him he didn't have to be there all the time (she was in her lucid stage at the time).

And then they found out that she was pregnant. The Healer had told him when all of the Weasleys brothers along with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were there. Now Harry hadn't felt much since the end of the war except pain, worry and guilt, but at that moment he was feeling more than a little fear when he met the six pairs of angry eyes. Harry wasn't sure how to feel about this, a part of him felt a sense of joy as he remembered the faces of the children, he once dreamed about but thought he lost, but still he was worried how this was going to affect Ginny. This worry was only made worse when the Healer admitted that even he didn't know (seeing as he's never dealt with something quite like Ginny's case).

Then, when he walked out of the hospital room and not even Ron or Mrs. Weasley would look at him and it looked like Bill, Percy and George were contemplating bodily harm he was worried that he might have lost his family. The one that seemed to have adopted him seven years ago and he cared about more the anything else and he wasn't sure he could handle it if he lost them. However, two weeks after this Ron gave his little speech and everything got better after that (it really was amazing how quickly things turned around).

Still, it really was hell watching Ginny going through all that, some of the time not even realizing what was going on and other where she was so scared that something was going to go wrong that she panicked (she was afraid of how the baby was going to turn out after all this). And then, two weeks early, Elizabeth Ginevra Potter (they had decided to name their daughter after Harry's grandmother long before Ginny was curse) was born and she was happy and healthy, and though things weren't fixed, it still felt like things could get better.

A/N: I'm not really sure how much worst this war was than it was in the books. I imagine that since it lasted almost a year longer (the final battle was March 19, 1999) there would be more casualties than in the books, and the only characters that I know I spared was Remus and Tonks.

This is the end of this fic; hope you enjoyed it. I know the ending of this fic is a little depressing, but this is just the back story to my other fic, Different Worlds so if you want to know more about what happens to Harry and Ginny, there will be more in that, especially in chapter 14 and 15, however, that fic is about Ron and Hermione so that's what most of the story is about.