AN- Almost at the end, and finally one put in Harry's point of view. Hope you guys enjoy, and I'll try and reply to all of your reviews. Happy reading
Disclaimer- If I owned it, would I be writing on here? No, don't answer that, of course I would be. But still, JK doesn't write on here…at least, I doubt she writes on here, and I would write fanfiction about my own story if the story were my own. As it is, the story isn't my own, so therefore I don't own it. Don't sue.
Harry sighed heavily and tried to take a deep breath before he flung himself back into the fight to attack again. Dueling wasn't just saying spells and pointing your wand; it actually involved a lot of dodging and running, and in the mud it was a bit uncomfortable.
Pushing the stiffness in his limbs and the pulsing that came from a burn on his arm aside, he shouted another curse out towards Lestrange, determined not to let her get away again.
She'd gotten away with too much already.
When the curse hit her bones and stopped her heart, she sunk into the mud. And Harry felt a pang as he turned away from her lifeless eyes to face the final battle once again. He knew that it needed to be done, that she would just escape again and hurt more people the way she'd hurt him, but he never liked taking a life, even if that person had taken someone else's. He didn't kill because he wanted to, or because he enjoyed it; he killed because it had to be done.
Nearby, Hermione was going all-out against a Death Eater with a familiar voice that Harry couldn't connect to a name. It didn't matter anyways. They'd take his mask off after Hermione killed him.
Ron smiled thinly at him as he bound some of the younger Death Eaters. His hair was stiff with blood and dirt, the circles under his eyes made his face seem bruised, and he had a large and deep cut that was still sullenly oozing blood on his right shoulder. Looking at him, Harry wondered what was supposedly so noble about war anyway.
"Doing alright, Harry?" Ron asked, joining him as he surveyed the field. He wouldn't fight unless he had to, and he didn't plan to fight unless it was Voldemort. He was already exhausted, and didn't know how he was supposed to face the most powerful dark lord the wizarding world had ever seen when he felt like he could even stand up straight anymore.
Ron seemed to already know this, because he began defending Harry from any spells while Harry tried to catch his breath and take a sip of water from the hipflask Moody had given to him just before his death.
After he'd wiped his mouth, Harry began firing spells again. "I'll be fine. Go help Hermione, she's taking on four."
"Now that's hardly fair." Ron replied, gratefully taking the offered hipflask from Harry and quickly taking a drink.
"I know, they've almost got her surrounded." Harry replied. He knew Hermione could handle herself, but it didn't stop him from worrying.
Ron smiled dryly, eyeing the duel that was taking place several feet in front of them. "I meant, that's hardly fair on them. See, she already has one of them down, and two of them injured."
Of course she did. She was Hermione.
Standing off to the side, helping those injured and those in tight spots, Harry waited for his real enemy to show up, determined to end the fighting before even more people got hurt.
He didn't have to wait very long, in the grand scheme of things. The battle had been going on for nearly two hours when Voldemort showed up, dark and intimidating. The fighting around him stopped, and he didn't kill or look anywhere but ahead of himself.
Straight at Harry. Harry stared straight back, refusing to flinch at the dark red eyes that were shining back at him.
As they began to fight, the battle around them slowly ceased. The spells, hexes, curses and charms being thrown around were powerful, dangerous, and often unknown. A half-an-hour into the duel, everyone on the field had stopped and moved to give the two wizards room.
Neither side wanted to start the massive fighting again, the Order because they didn't like killing and the Death Eaters because somewhere, deep inside, most of them knew that after this, there was a good chance they could end up in Azkaban, and if they were careful about how many they killed, then they might get off just a little bit easier.
Harry was losing badly, and he knew it. His left arm could barely move, his shields weren't holding, and his scar was burning so badly that he could no longer see anything more than fuzzy outlines, which is what he would've seen anyway, because his glasses had been broken and disregarded some time ago.
The only thing that kept him standing and fighting at this point was Voldemort's taunts. Jibes about his parents, his godfather, his muggle family, his mentor, and his surrogate family were enough to keep him going. The hate he was feeling at that moment towards the thing that was once Tom Riddle burned more than even his scar.
"-And after I win," Voldemort continued, pausing to shout another spell before finishing his sentence. "I'm going to take this castle apart brick-by-brick, along with everyone in it."
And then came the pain that he had experienced through Crucio. Absently he heard somebody screaming, and realized that it was himself. Slowly, he let himself fall down, and didn't bother to get back up. It hurt too badly.
At this point, he was pretty sure he was making a high whistling sound, because he just didn't have enough air to scream. Everything was slowly fading to black, and Harry let himself keep falling until something startled him out of his painful daze.
"Harry, listen to me. Harry, hold on! You have to hold on, just a little bit more, just a little bit longer. You just have to get up one more time. Please-" Crying. Hermione was crying.
"Mate, come on. We're still here, we still need you here! It isn't over yet, we need you to stay alive. Harry…hold on, just stand up!" Ron…but Ron never cried! His pride wouldn't let him cry in front of anything.
Apparently this was a special occasion.
The hate he felt right then towards the creature that had killed his parents and so many others paled in comparison to the love he felt for his best friends. His family, his hope, his support, his…life.
And the darkness he had been falling into was quickly replaced by light. Hate alone wasn't enough to keep him going.
But love was.
Harry screamed as his entire life flashed before his eyes. Voldemort screamed as his head seemed to be turning inside-out, the same white light that was pouring off of Harry shooting through Voldemort's eyes.
As Harry's scar suddenly stopped hurting, fading into irritated but unmarked skin, Voldemort ran out of pieces of his soul. As Voldemort died, the last horcrux faded.
Everyone was silent for the moment. The quiet that fell onto the once-loud battlefield suddenly seemed deafening, and no one wanted to break it and face what was coming.
That didn't stop Hermione and Ron from running towards Harry. Ron knelt beside his injured best friend, and Hermione gently lifted his head and rested it on her legs, trying to make him just a little more comfortable.
As soon as they moved, everyone else did. Death Eaters tried to apperate, Aurors hurried to make arrests, Order members began to regroup and gather the injured, and Hogsmeade civilians caught in the crossfire of the battle began to mourn those lost or look for loved ones that couldn't be found.
Hermione, Ron, and Harry didn't move from their area in the middle of that muddy, trampled, bloodstained field for a long time. They just rested there, healing and taking comfort in each other.
Later that night, when all three of them were in the hospital beds they were always given, they finally began to actually talk. For the first several hours following the battle all they had said was, "It's finally over," "It's going to be okay now," and "Don't leave." The response had been unvoiced because the answer was obvious. Harry was there, so Hermione and Ron weren't going anywhere.
"So…what do we do now?" Ron asked, voicing the question that all of them had been wondering at one point or another. They had spent such a long time fighting that now it didn't seem like there was much else left. "Are we going after those Death Eaters?" Both Hermione and Ron turned to Harry, looking for an answer. Harry didn't reply right away, but both waited until finally he said,
"No. I think we let the aurors handle them. That's what they're paid for, after all. Why don't we stay here for a while?"
"Stay here?" Hermione asked. "And do what?"
"Help rebuild. Just relax for a while, and maybe afterwards take a vacation." All three lit up at the idea of a warm, sunny beach. "And then," Harry continued, sighing as he thought about what he had left to do in his life. "well, then we go on with our lives."
He noticed, though, that he'd said `we'. With the three of them, it was always `we', because everything was done together. It wasn't that they couldn't be without each other, or that they'd never spend a day apart, but just that all three would leave their lives and homes in a heartbeat to help each other.
After all, life mattered, but love was so much more important.
HEY, YOU! YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU! DON'T YOU DARE WRITE THIS FIC OFF AS OVER, CAUSE THE FAT LADY, (a.k.a. Padfoot_puppyeyes) HASN'T SUNG NOTHING YET! IT'S NOT OVER PEOPLE! THERE'S AN EPIOLOUGE! SO DO YOU AND ME A FAVOR, AND PRESS THAT LITTLE BUTTON YOU SEE TOWARDS THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. IT SAYS REVIEW. YOU READ THAT! REVIEW! THE MORE TIMES PEOPLE PUSH IT AFTER WRITING STUFF IN THAT FUNNY LITTLE BOX YOU SEE JUST TO THE LEFT OF IT, THE QUICKER THE EARLIER MENTIONED FAT LADY POSTS THE FINAL CHAPTER! FAT LADY OUT-
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