It has come to my attention that my fanfiction contradicts cannon (apart from the deliberate changes I made):
Do you remember that scene I wrote (it was chapter two, I think) where ginny sees Fred's body for the first time, so it's a mistake, I thought that since she was outside when harry walked to the forest, then she must have not known yet, but I just reread the last chapters of DH, and you see her crying in the great hall, before harry goes to watch Snape's memories.
I might go back and fix this sometime, but at the moment, I'm just going to leave it, and continue the story.
Most of this chapter is strait from the book, but with a few changes, and added bits of my own.
Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Harry's POV
The air was filled with yells of shock, cheers, and screams on every side, of
"Harry!"
"HE'S ALIVE!"
-but they were stifled nearly at once,
The crowd was afraid.
Before I could face Voldemort, Snape staggered to his feet from where he had fallen, and stumbled towards me-
"Potter!?..."
"…how….?"
-he stuttered incoherently, his face white and displaying his shock openly.
I reluctantly drew my eyes away from Voldemort to meet Snape's wide-eyed gaze.
"it's ok sir,"
-I said, hastily,
"it's gone, I… I did it, I don't know how, but… but I'm alive."
He scrutinized me with his tunnel like eyes for a second, the emotions flickering in them so quickly, I barely saw them, fear, doubt, and then trust and relief. Then he gave me a sharp nod and turning around to face his former master once again,
"You better be right potter" he growled, as I stepped forward to stand by his side.
silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and I looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other, Snape following our lead.
"I don't want anyone else to try to help." I said loudly, and in the total silence my voice carried like a trumpet call.
"Even you Snape, stand down, It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."
Voldemort hissed. "Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"
"Nobody," I said simply.
Snape stepped back, but did not leave my side, he stood like a shadow behind me, like the silent protector he had always been.
"There are no more Horcruxes." I continued,
"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 taunt 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 me?" I asked.
we were still moving sideways, the two of us, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for me no face existed but Voldemort's.
"Accident, that Snape saved my life all those times? 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 the three of us, me, Voldemort and Snape.
"Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"
"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," I said as we circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red.
"You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Snape was right, 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. 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," I said.
"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 I knew that I kept him temporarily mesmerized and at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that I might indeed know a final secret. . . .
"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his expression jeering.
"Love is nothing! Your dear Severus loved your mother, but he couldn't prevent me from squishing the life out of her like the filthy Mudblood deserved…"
I felt Snape flinch and tense up, next to me, but I kept my eyes on Voldemort. "…So what will stop you from dying now when I strike?"- he asked, mockingly.
"Just one thing," I said, and still we 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," I said, and I 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; humorless 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," I said,
"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," I said,
"a better wizard, a better man."
"Albus Dumbledore is dead, because of me!"
"No, he is dead because he succumbed to his desires, and doomed himself, and then he chose to forfeit his life, and planed his death with Snape."
"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, what petty obstacles Severus and Dumbledore tried to put in my path! He died either way, and oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand!
Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Severus should be the true master of the wand!
But It does not matter, I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up, I defeated Severus three hours ago, and even if he is not dead, it will suffice*.
The Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"
"Yeah, it did," I said.
"You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done. . . . Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle. . . ."
"What is this?" Of all the things that I had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this.
I saw his pupils contact to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.
"It's your one last chance," I said,
"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," I said,
"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 I gripped Draco's very tightly.
The moment, I knew, was seconds away.
"That wand still isn't working properly for you because you defeated the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."
"He killed— "
"Aren't you listening? You said it yourself, killing, and defeating is not the same, and 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 its last master's wishes! It's 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… "
**"Potter, don't!" -warned Snape, reminding me of his presence, but I ignored him.
Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and I could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at my face.
"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."
Snape groaned quietly from behind me,
"Foolish boy, he'll kill him now"-he muttered.
Blank shock had showed in Voldemort's face for a moment after the revelation, 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," I said.
"You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took this wand from him." Snape gasped in surprise as I twitched the hawthorn wand, and I felt his eyes, and the eyes of everyone else in the Hall upon it.
"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" I whispered.
"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-gold 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 our faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur.
I heard the high voice shriek as he yelled his best hope to the heavens,
I did too, but I was a moment to late-
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
The scarlet beam of light was to late to meet the green,
but before the killing curse could reach me, a black blur rushed to meet it, and toppled when the curse hit true.
"NO!"
I stared in horror at the Snape's still form on the ground, surprising even myself with my anguish for the man.
"You are going to pay for that."- I spat at Voldemort, all my anger and grief spilling out.
"I think not, Potter." He said, delighted with what had happened no doubt.
I shouted again, pointing Draco's wand:
"Expelliarmus!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between us, at the dead center of the circle we had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided.
I saw Voldemort's green jet meet my 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 I, with the unerring skill of a Seeker,
caught the wand in my 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 I stood with two wands in my hands, staring down at my enemy's shell.
One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspend: and then the tumult broke around me 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 me, and the first to reach me were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around me, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened me.
Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and Flitwick and Spout, and I could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, nor tell whose hands were seizing me, pulling me, trying to hug some part of me, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last—
I forced them off me and pushed myself through the crowd, to where Snape's still form lay,
I snuck to my knees at his side,
"No, no… please no!" – and there, then I started sobbing, uncontrollably,
Crying for everyone I had lost, that nearly everyone that had ever cared for me, now even Snape, was gone.
I didn't even notice the silence that fell around me like a blanket, as the survivors acknowledged, for the first time, the great sacrifices that Snape and so many others had made. the deafeningly quiet grew, until the only sound that could be heard, was that of my despair piercing the morning air, like the light of the rising sun.
All is not lost, I didn't want snape to die for a reason, and that hasn't changed,
next chapter is from Snape's POV,
how you ask?
I guess you just have to wait and see!
*In the book, Voldemort never understood that you don't need to kill for the wand, but I changed that here, so that it would make sense in my fic,
Also, he chose to kill snape, rather than simply 'defeat' him, because, he just wanted to 'make a clean job out of it', as they say, and another reason for Voldemort to be rid of Snape, even if he was a extremely skilled and "loyal servant", is that I believe Voldemort felt threatened by Snape's abilities and intelligence, and didn't want anyone being more powerful than him.
**Snape knew that Draco was the master of the Elder Wand (though he didn't know that Harry had disarmed Draco becoming its new master, and that Draco wasn't its master anymore),
he knew that Draco had disarmed Dumbledore, and even when Voldemort was going to kill him, he preferred to die than to risk Voldemort killing\defeating Draco and mastering the wand.
p.s
Please, please review, I want to hear what you think, what you liked, didn't like, and what you would like to see happen next, I would love to hear your opinions and ideas, and I just might end up incorporating them into the story.