As Harry slumped to the ground beside me, my mind started clouding over. I couldn't register anything that was happening; it was like everything I was hearing and seeing was happening behind stained glass. In the split second before I closed my eyes, I heard Voldemort let out a shriek of victory. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard, so unearthly and haunting that it froze my very soul and made my blood run cold. It was the last thing I heard before unconsciousness took over me.
To this day, that scream still lives within me. I wake up in the darkness to the sound, yet it's not the same. Rather than being one of triumph, it's filled with torture, despair, and agony. As I sit up, my entire body shaking uncontrollably, I realize its source - the lips from which that loathsome sound escapes are my very own.
When I came to, I was almost afraid to open my eyes. What would I see? What would a world in which evil prevailed over good look like? Would it still be the same as the nightmare I'd been living in for the past few weeks? I listened carefully, but heard not a single sound. The silence was oppressive and unfamiliar to me. Gingerly, I sat up slightly and looked around. It took me a few moments to get used to the darkness as I pulled myself off of the blood-stained grass.
The heavy stench of sweat and death hung thickly in the atmosphere. The air around me was deathly still, almost as if it were mourning for the bodies that scattered the ground. In the distance, I could see flashes of bright green, but other than that, it was like everything had ceased to exist. So this is Voldemort's world, I thought grimly to myself.
Crawling over to Harry's body, I laid my head on his chest and gritted my teeth. The pain I felt was too great to even allow tears to come to my eyes. "Harry," I whispered, as if saying his name would bring him back. "Harry...no..."
But he didn't open his eyes.
Struggling to my feet, I shakily leaned against a nearby tree and tried to recollect my senses. What would I do now? I had no where to go, no family to turn to. Everyone I had known was dead...everyone but...
"Ginny?" came a voice from behind me.
I spun around and saw to my utter shock Luna Lovegood standing behind me, her dirty blonde hair more straggly and tangled than ever, her pale blue eyes dull and lifeless. "Ginny?" she repeated, squinting through the haze to look at me.
I nodded and tried to say something. For some reason, words couldn't make their way past the lump that had grown in my throat, so I simply nodded instead.
"Ginny Weasley," she whispered, collapsing on the grass beside me. "There's nothing left."
I nodded again, even though my mind was too numb to even register what she was saying. She was talking, and I was nodding, and I couldn't stop. For a moment, I became a machine - no emotion, no warmth, just a programmed movement that continued to repeat itself.
At last, I was snapped out of my reverie by a loud clanking coming from Luna. I blinked and looked at her. She was ripping apart her butterbeer cap necklace. Each individual butterbeer cap she threw over her shoulder, and once they were all gone, she wrapped the string around her right index finger. "What are you doing?" I half-screeched. I don't know what it was that made me react so frantically. Perhaps it was the fact that by destroying her necklace, Luna was ripping away the only bit of solidity I had left.
She looked up. Her eyes were bugging out wildly from her head and she looked as though as if she'd lost her mind. "There's nothing left," she repeated.
I looked at her for what seemed like hours. She stared back, not saying a word. And then, I felt my mouth open and formulate the word, "Luna."
She nodded slowly.
"Luna, what do we do?" I choked out, a state of panic overwhelming me now that I was focused in on the reality around me. It all seemed so hopeless. Just Luna and I, sitting in the midst of the vast expanse of corpses. It was surreal.
"We have to get out of here," Luna replied. She was speaking in such low tones that I had to lean in closer to hear her. "We have to get out," she repeated, waving her arms wildly.
"But what about them?" I asked, gesturing at the dead bodies.
"We leave them," Luna replied, a distant tone beginning to creep into her voice. Her eyes no longer held a crazed look, but a spaced-out one. "They're dead to us."
I looked around in dismay. Although I didn't want to leave everyone behind, I knew it would be pointless to try to sort through the mass of people in search of a loved one. Instead, I clenched Harry's lifeless hand tightly. "I'm not leaving him," I said firmly.
Luna didn't seem to have heard what I said because her eyes remained unfocused. Nonetheless, she said, "Let's go."
The two of us then began to creep across the deserted battlefield with Harry's limp body hovering a foot above the ground just behind us. We weaved through the broken limbs and battered bodies, crawled through the disgusting, insect-infected mud, all the while making sure we weren't seen by any living creature. At last, we found a half-torn down shack that we were able to take cover in. Dumbledore soon arrived, battle-worn and nearly beaten, but still there to rescue us and bring us to a safer place. But I'll never forget the sound of my heart pounding in my ears or the sight of the corpses everywhere around me, all dressed in black cloaks, making it impossible for me to differentiate between any two of them. For that reason, the hour or two Luna and I spent crawling through the darkness will remain with me for the rest of my life.
And so ends my tale. Dumbledore was able to locate an area in the south of Australia that Voldemort was not aware of. The surviving members of the good side, including Luna and I, all moved there. Currently, we are still residing in the very same place. Day and night we pray that Voldemort will not discover us, and so far, our prayers have been answered.
As I write these last words, I hear a scream pierce the dead of the night. Without even turning around, I know it's Luna. Like me, she is visited by the past every night after she closes her eyes. The sound pierces my conscious mind and I have no choice but to temporarily submit to it. I let myself drown in it, let it travel to the very core of my heart and stop it for a split second. Then, as her shriek dies out, I bury my face in my hands wearily.
Will I ever be rid of all this? Will I ever be able to open my eyes in the morning after a nightmareless night? The answer to that is simple - never. Yet though life seems pointless, and though everything I once lived for is gone, I will never forget what Harry told me. "A hero never cries." If I ever have children, I will pass that message onto them because those four words were and always will be the truest I've ever heard.