“Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he still lives!”

“I live … while he lives? But I thought … I thought it was the other way round! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?”



- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pg 568 [British edition]



Alternate Ending



Hermione Granger ducked as the red light of a stunner flew over her head; at her back, her boyfriend of a year, Ron Weasley, twirled expertly out of the way as another spell - this one purple - was shot at him.



All around them, the defenders of Hogwarts faced off the Death Eaters in the second Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione scanned her surroundings; scattered throughout the grounds every magical being she knew - and more - were duelling Voldemort’s top supporters: the remaining Weasleys; Hagrid; Kingsley; all of Hogwarts’s teachers, ghosts, house elves and centaurs; Neville and Luna, were all there fighting their hardest. But, jumping out of the way of a full body bind curse, she couldn’t help but remember all of the ones who weren’t, but should have been there, fighting along side them.



Today marked the one year anniversary of the first Battle of Hogwarts, and of the strange disappearance of Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. Many of her dearest friends had lost their lives in that original fight - Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin and Tonks only to name a few. But the battle had not ended in the way any had expected. Harry had vanished a couple of hours into the fight; Neville later admitted to seeing him walking towards the Forbidden Forest, presumably to meet Lord Voldemort on his own, and he hadn’t been heard from since; nor had Lord Voldemort shown himself claiming victory over the Boy Who Lived. And so, the survivors had been left to ponder just what exactly had happened on their own.



And then, after nearly six months of peace, strange and all too familiar things started to happen: Muggles and Muggleborns were being murdered daily, people were mysteriously disappearing, nearly all of them linked to the Order in some way, and Dark Marks began appearing in the skies. The good side were back at square one, and this time, there was no one there to save them.



“Ron, watch out!” Hermione cried as the sickly green light of a Killing Curse was aimed at her boyfriend’s head. Seeing Ron turning around too slowly to face the deadly curse, Hermione took action. Grabbing a tight hold on his arm, she pulled him to the ground hard. Loosing her balance, his lanky and heavier body working against her smaller one, she stumbled, falling face down on top of him. “Oomph,” they both gasped together as the breath rushed out of them.



“Oh, sorry Ron,” she said. She placed the palms of her hands flat on the ground to push herself up, but he stopped her, pulling her closer to kiss her softly.



“Thank you,” he whispered, and he kissed her again, both of them for the moment forgetting they should be fighting.



“How sweet,” sneered a harsh voice directly behind them. Hermione rolled off Ron and they both turned up their faces to see their opponent. No one was there.



“Where are you?” demanded Ron, moving to stand up. “Show yourself, you coward!”



The air stirred, as if under the influence of a fierce wind, and there was a swish as a man appeared out of nothing. He was tall - but not as tall as Ron, and not as lanky in build - wearing a long black cloak which covered the top of his shoes; his hood was drawn up over his head and a shadow replaced where a face should have been. The invisibility cloak fell to the ground, for the moment forgotten.



“Do you not recognize me?” he teased. “Not surprising; after all, what use are friends, if not to get you where you need to be? I have never understood the faith he always put in others.” His voice sounded distant, as if he were talking to himself, or remembering some long ago dream. “No, I do not understand.



“Ah! He is fighting hard today,” said the Death Eater abruptly. “Too bad, really, that it will do him no good.”



“Who are you?” Hermione pressed. She raised to her feet and behind her, Ron did too, pointing their wands to where his heart should be.



“I am Lord Voldemort.”



“Impossible!” said Hermione.



“Harry beat you! Last year, in the forest, he beat you!” exclaimed Ron.



“Is that was you think?” Voldemort laughed derisively. “Young ones these days are so naïve! Do you really think some stupid school boy could kill me, the most powerful wizard of the age?!”



“Then why haven’t you shown yourself till now, huh?” said Ron. He trembled from head to toe. “He did it before; he could’ve again.”



“That is a valid question, Weasley, with a good answer; one that may come obviously to you were you to understand to their full extent, the events following my small … tryst with Mr. Potter one year ago.”



Lord Voldemort’s voice took on an air of smug superiority, as if he was hiding some dark secret he was anxious to tell. “Over the last twelve months I have gotten a good look into Potter’s mind - he’s weaker than you thought.”



“You bastard! What have you done with him?”



“I would appreciate it if you would not point your wand at me, Mr. Weasley. You are an insolent fool; I could take you down in a second! Crucio.”



Hermione watched on in horror as Ron writhed helplessly on the ground, his screams ripping a large tear through her heart. After only a minute, but which seemed like days, years … Voldemort lifted the curse. His hood completely masked his face, but Hermione knew that if she could, she would see sick amusement in his red eyes.



“You see,” he continued, pacing in slow circles around them, “when young Harry came to meet me in the Forbidden Forest that day, and I cast Avada Kedavra at him, something strange occurred, something that I think even Dumbledore would not have expected.



“Nearly eighteen years ago, I went to Godric’s Hollow with the intent of killing the Potters and securing myself to an immortal life. But, having already torn it apart so many times before, my soul had become extremely unstable - it was useless, weak. Lily Potter had already cast her own life between myself and her son as a shield, and when I cast the Killing Curse at the infant Potter it rebounded upon me, and a fragment of my soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself on to the only living soul left in that collapsing building.”



Ron’s mouth opened and closed rhythmically, making no sound. Hermione, terrified by the conclusion forming in her mind gasped “no!” loudly as her hands flew to her open mouth.



“I see you understand.” Lord Voldemort turned his venomous glare on her. “He always said you were the brightest witch of your age.”



“What are you getting at?” demanded Ron. “What does it mean?” He turned to looked questioningly at Hermione.



Her voice quivering as she fully grasped this new information, she said, “It means, Ron, that there’s still another Horcrux out there besides the snake - one that Voldemort never intended to make. Ron, Harry was a Horcrux!



“Of course, assuming that he’s still alive,” she directed at Voldemort and ignoring Ron’s incredulous stare. Voldemort nodded. “And you used the Killing Curse on him in the forest. So that part of your soul that was in him, that’s … gone now?”



“Ah, see that is where things become complicated, Miss Granger. Dumbledore believed that if I killed Harry, I would be destroying the Horcrux inside of him, and Harry’s soul would be pure and solely his own again. But the Killing Curse rebounded upon me again much like it did that night in Godric’s Hollow. People died for Harry last year, and like when Lily Potter did the same, it protected him, and therefore also, the part of me inside of him. My body was once again destroyed and the remainder of my soul was left with no choice but to act in order to save itself: it entered Harry’s body when it could not find its’ own, and rejoined with the piece still inside of him.



“And now, Harry’s body has protected me all this year. This whole thing couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d planned it myself. After all, who would kill Harry Potter, when no one knew the truth and everyone believes him to be their saviour?”



In one quick movement the Dark Lord lowered his hood. What Ron and Hermione saw next was more terrible than they had ever imagined. The man standing before them was one they’d never thought they would see again, but he definitly did not look like Lord Voldemort: on his face were familiar round-rimmed glasses and his black shaggy hair, which stood up in all directions, lay messily on his head, only partly covering a jagged, faded pink lightning bolt scar on his forehead. The eyes though were wrong - they were not the emerald green that was expected, but a terrifying bright red.



“No, Harry!”



“HARRY!”



“Unlike a few years ago,” continued Voldemort, using Harry’s mouth through which to speak, “in the Ministry of Magic, love was not enough to save him this time. With twice the amount of my soul within him, he was too weak to fight me off and has not succeeded even to this day.



“Would you like to talk to him?” he asked. “He has been getting quite anxious to talk to the two of you. I wouldn’t want to come in between such friends. ”



Then, Voldemort stopped speaking, and the red eyes flashed to green; but, however much they looked like Harry’s eyes on the surface, they were not the same beneath the surface, because hidden deep within them resided a sadness and hopelessness that had never been present before.



“Harry?” asked Hermione. “Harry, if you can hear me, say something. We are so sorry.”



Nobody spoke for what seemed a very long time. Hermione’s eyes filled with tears as she watched her best friend - brother, almost - struggle for control. And then, as if he were just testing it out after a long time of disuse, Harry’s voice, and not that of Lord Voldemort, whispered, “Ron … Her-mione …?”



Beside her, his wand arm limp and pointing to the ground, looking as if he had just swallowed a rather large and disgusting slug, Ron started crying too. “It’s us, mate.”



Harry just looked slowly from Ron to Hermione sadly. “I can’t fight him, he’s too strong. Kill me, please, just kill me!” he begged.



“Oh, Harry. No, Harry, you can fight him, I know you can.”



Seeing she was a lost cause, he turned to Ron, pleading desperately. “Ron … you’re my best friend. Do it for me, please!”



“Harry, I - I d-don’t think …”



“He killed Ginny!” he cried out suddenly. “He made me watch as he killed the girl I love, by my own hand! She didn’t even know the truth; she thought that it was me the whole time, that I had gone bad or something! Please, Ron … Hermione, if you were ever my friends, you would just end it now!”



And then he was gone, and Voldemort’s red eyes appeared again. When he spoke, his voice was cold and murderous once more. He spoke to Harry inside his mind, and somehow, Hermione knew that there was no hope left. What seven years of constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for the next time he would face off his worst enemy failed to do, a year of being possessed by what remained of that enemy’s soul did: Harry Potter had given up. What Voldemort said next sent a cold wave of déjà vu over both of them, to memories of a dark atrium, Professor Dumbledore watching over, and the same voice saying the same words, “You are a fool Harry Potter, and you will lose, everything.”



“Harry, you can't believe him!” Hermione shrieked. “You’re strong, stronger than anyone else I know!”



Voldemort laughed and aimed his wand at Hermione. “Crucio.” He flicked his wand lazily and Hermione fell to the charred grass of the battlefield. It was pain a hundred times worst than imaginable; she felt as if her bones were snapping, like someone had opened her up and pulled out her insides. She screamed and thrashed and flailed on the ground. She vaguely saw, as if she were looking through a long tunnel, Ron dropping to his knees beside her. He was shouting something, his voice frantic, but Hermione couldn’t understand the words. And then the pain stopped and Voldemort was talking.



“Do you really think you can save her; save either of you?” Voldemort snarled, his gaze focused on Ron, and Hermione realized with dawning horror that Ron had tried to attack him. He raised his wand high, and said the dreaded words, “Avada Kedavra.”



Hermione watched, helpless, as Ron slumped to ground, and she sobbed harder than she ever had a need to before. Warm salty tears made tracks down her cheeks for sweet, thick, loyal Ron, who she’d loved with her whole heart, now dead. She wept despairingly for Harry, whose innocence and life had been taken before it had a chance to start. And she cried and cried for all of the cruelty in the world, the evil that had infested their lives and taken so many people’s chance at a now impossible and out of reach future. And when the bright green light of Voldemort’s curse engulfed her too, she didn’t fight it, just felt relief, and also guilty of that release, that at least she wouldn’t be alive to see the outcome of the fight today. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the blood red eyes on the face of her best friend, who was suffering a fate worst than death; and she was powerless to stop it. The world - Wizarding and Muggle - as they knew it was over, and the dead … the ones who had died fighting these past years, they were the lucky ones.



* * *



The battle was gearing down now. For the first time in over an hour, Lord Voldemort chanced a glance at the fights around him; the Hogwarts’s defenders had been heavily outnumbered from the beginning and only a few were still standing. He watched in pleasure as a cackling Bellatrix Lestrange tortured the Longbottom boy before killing him; as Macnair and Nott simultaneously brought down a couple of redheads who were probably related to the Weasley boy laying at his feet. The Carrow siblings were battling three to two against Professors Sprout, Flitwick, and Slughorn, and nearly a dozen Death Eaters shot a stream of stunners at the half-giant gamekeeper all together, felling him too.



He looked back to the castle now: its walls and towers were crumbled in ruins and nearly all the windows were shattered; it looked on the verge of giving out completely, but with a bit of fixing it could be magnificent once more. It will make a grand headquarters, he mused.



By now, the rest of the battle was over - the school grounds was littered with bodies. His faithful Death Eaters were stowing their wands away and congratulating themselves on a job well done. He could feel Potter in the back of his mind fighting, pushing to get control over his own body, but Voldemort shoved him away again impatiently; he didn’t want anything to spoil his victory today.



His pet snake was slithering through the grass to join him and he hissed to it in the language of his forefathers. “Welcome to our new home, Nagini.”



Above, the sun hid behind the brewing storm clouds as the heavens wept in mourning, and he pulled his hood up against the coming rain. Picking up the boy’s invisibility cloak from the now wet grass and stepping over the lifeless forms of Granger and Weasley, his long black cloak swishing behind him, Lord Voldemort once again passed through the tall oak doors of Hogwarts Castle.





THE END