September 2nd, 1997

September 2^nd, 1997

With the echo of a hundred cracks, the War is over.

It sounds like New Year's Eve or Bonfire Day- hundreds of people celebrating- but really it is the sound of a hundred cowards fleeing, a hundred Death Eaters trying to escape the recent memory of watching the defeat of their Master, a hundred hate-filled villains running from a boy of seventeen with deep green eyes and murder in his heart.

Only five Death Eaters stay and try to break through the magical barrier surrounding and protecting Potter and the pile of ashes. They want vengeance. You are tempted to walk over and kill them. But you do not because at that moment all of the remaining Death Eaters- including you yourself- fall to the ground as vicious pain rakes through your left arms. The Mark of Power rips itself from your bodies. Your shout of pain tears through the alley. Before the echoes of that scream die, the mark shimmers, turns to smoke and dissipates.

The War is over.

Sixteen years ago, the Mark faded. Now it is gone.

The War is over.

The five Death Eaters Disapparate, shocked. You spit upon the ground where they stood before shakily rising to your feet, feeling strangely hallow and alone. Now, amongst the rubble, there is only you and the children: the former Death Eater and the Heroes. How you abhor those labels and the fact that you will forever be the enemy and they the saviours. You stood in front of the Dark Lord hundreds of times and were found worthy enough to live. Potter barely survived six encounters even with help- including the shield you had erected to keep out the people that intended harm to those inside it.

You grip your now-hollow arm and try to believe it is over.

You look at your surroundings, at Diagon Alley: a culmination of the destruction brought about by the Death Eater attack two weeks ago and stray spells, hexes, and curses that Potter and the Dark Lord threw about today.

Madam Malkin's sign hangs by a single wire in front of the rubble that was once her shop. Olivander's shop, hit by a stay curse, is in flames. Floreen Fortesque's cannot be distinguished from the apothacary that once stood beside it. Even Gringotts is almost decimated, having been one of the prime targets in the first attack. The only pure thing on this field is the Gringotts staircase that shines with Old Magic.

On those stairs rests Ginevra Weasley and a dirty, bloodied Harry Potter. The sight makes your lip curl in disgust.

He is so like his parents: self-centred and conceited. He came because he thought he had to. He came because he could. You want to strangle him for his bravery. Didn't he remember what happened last time he decided to handle things on his own?

But he does remember. You know he must because his words echo in your head: My parents gave their lives. Sirius gave his life. Neville and Dumbledore and Hagrid gave their lives. I haven't given enough. The boy came here to die. The girl came here to keep him alive.

You pass through the shield you created, leaving it intact as you do; you remember what happened when the Longbottoms thought they were safe.

On the other side you have a clear view of the boy. Blood trickles down his left cheek. Good, you think, he needs to know more real pain- you stop yourself from finishing that thought. The Dark Lord is gone. The boy does not need to know pain to survive. Now you're glad to see him in pain merely because it pleases you.

The boy stares at the ground, his wand loosely held in his left hand. You cannot see his eyes but you can see the way he shakes. The girl beside him shakes too, tears dripping off her chin as her left hand grips his right.

You remember getting your list of students who had received Os. You knew before you opened the parchment that his name would be on it. You knew because while others might have taken your scorn and given up, Potter took it and fought back against it. You hated the boy- oh how you hated him- but even you had to admit he had spirit.

He grew up under the focused hatred of his relatives. From that he learned that in order to survive he must never submit to other people. He learned to hate back and use that hatred to spite people. He learned from their hatred, and when he came to Hogwarts, he learned from yours.

From what you know of the Dursleys, you would have liked them; they abhorred James Potter and his son. It makes you smile to remember the way he grew up so disliked and tormented, climbing trees to escape dogs. Yet it was Dursleys's deaths that galvanized Harry into action, that led him to this final battle.

You wonder if your death would have meant anything to Potter. Probably not.

To you, his death would have been a cold kick in the heart. While you knew the Dark Lord too personally to believe any single person strong enough to battle with him, you also saw the way people reacted to Potter; he inspired Longbottom to learn curse work, inspired Aurors to join the Order, and when he stood in the midst of battle, people were inspired to fight and die beside him. With this boy, Albus Dumbledore could raise an army capable of defeating the Dark Lord. You will never like Potter and he will never like you, but you have always known that if anyone was to have a chance at destroying the Dark Lord, Potter had to live. And you also knew, right from the beginning, that you had to be the one to prepare him for his role in the war, the one of the survivor.

Albus was too soft. Minerva too. They loved the Potters and would have been ashamed to harm their son. The other professors would never understand or be able to convey the hatred that the Dark Lord represented. You were the only one that could make Potter really feel what he needed, keeping alive in him the only emotion that would let him use an Unforgivable Curse against an enemy: hate.

You walk across the rubble and destruction toward those shining stairs, toward the boy, toward the girl, toward the Heroes.

As you approach, Potter whispers, "No one else will die."

Your eyes are drawn to the pale face of the littlest Weasley. She does not nod or agree with Potter's stupid comment; her eyes remain vacantly focused on the ground even as her hand tightens around his.

In turn, you sweep your eyes over to the boy and find him staring back at you. A moment of undiluted hatred passes from you to him, only to be replaced by shock as you take in his appearance. Blood drips from his scar, snaking its way down his cheek. You hide your revulsion and keep yourself from taking a step back. Why he scares you in this moment, you do not know.

Then his shoulders slump and his eyes dull as he continues to stare at you, and suddenly where there used to be hatred there is nothing. He is empty.

"The Death Eaters fled. Will you find and kill them?" you ask.

In his gaze, life flickers but quickly dies. That was the same flicker that James Potter had in his eye when he tortured you, the spark of hatred, passion, and determination. To see it extinguished in this boy's eyes gratifies you.

Ginny Weasley's look, though, does not. She squares her shoulders and looks up from the ground to meet your gaze and you know that though the spirit of Harry Potter dims, that of Ginny Weasley does not. You hate her in that moment as you have only ever hated one other person, and you watch as these two children move closer to one another and you resist the urge to curse them both as memories of a similar couple overwhelms you.

As a Death Eater, you heard stories of the Potters. Lucius used to confide in you that the work of the Dark Lord would have been complete if it were not for Cleopatra- Lily Potter's codename. And even when Lily Potter became pregnant, she plagued Lucius and his work. Oh how you hate her and her husband even now- they and their precious, murdering friends. You hate them in death even more, for you know the boy who saved the world is theirs.

You call him Potter to remind yourself to hate him and when you speak that name, it is not a difficult task. You hate him for his importance in this war, for that damned prophecy, for being the Hero. You hate him for looking at you which those pathetically tired eyes. You almost want to reach out and strike him as he sits before you, desperate to die, because how dare he be the one to finally end this war and set you free from the Mark of Power.

"I won't kill anymore," he says. You want to strangle him for his arrogance, as though those escaped Death Eaters aren't his responsibility, as if his work is done because the Dark Lord is dead, as if he should be allowed to rest now that he has done one good deed.

"Then you will condemn others to death, for each person they kill will be your responsibility." You hate that you must convince him.

"No." It is Ginny Weasley, not Harry Potter, who utters this word and shakes her head.

"Yes," you spit back at them both, then focus in on Potter. "If they kill that Mudblood Granger or Ronald Weasley, you will have to live knowing you might have stopped it." You hate that he does not respond. You hate that you can't just walk away and leave him to die on this battlefield. You hate that he did what you thought was impossible: defeated the Dark Lord.

"I won't kill anymore." His eyes are filled with nothingness.

You hate even that nothingness which you helped to create. He obviously no longer feels responsible for the safety of anything or anyone, and it infuriates you because you still do; despite everything, you care about the other teachers at Hogwarts, you care for even your miserable students who do nothing but goad and irritate you. How can he escape when you are trapped into caring?

He feels his destiny is fulfilled, that he has no other reason to live. Well, what about you? You are a Death Eater and a spy. Without the war, what are you to do?

"I'm not going back. I won't ever go back to Hogwarts," he mumbles.

This boy, this Hero, this son of your most vile tormentor, sits broken on shining steps. He killed the Dark Lord and now he thinks he can escape his magic. He thinks he can run away. He claims he will never return to Hogwarts, even though it is only the beginning of September of his seventh year.

"You will go back," you spit at him. He looks at his right hand- his wand hand that Ginny Weasley grips so fiercely- and you know what he sees. He sees invisible blood that is not his own.

"I'm a murderer. I will go to Azkaban for life and deserve my sentence." Yes, you want to shout at him, you should be in Azkaban. But you keep that thought inside, seething.

"Heroes don't go to Azkaban," you hiss at him, angry that he makes you say it.

"I'm not a hero."

"No. You aren't. You are nothing but a child who got lucky and lived while other, better people died," you say. He nods, agreeing, and satisfaction briefly courses through you. He is broken.

"Are you so spiteful that even now you can't stop harassing him?" whispered Ginny Weasley, her eyes locking onto yours.

"He will return to school."

"He did what you could not; he saved us all, and you want him to go back to school?" She shakes her head and looks back down at the ground. Your wand is pointed at her a moment later and you are running through the list of curses you could use. Neither one of them flinch at the threat.

"Do you hate me?" Potter asks, surprising you out of your angry thoughts.

"Yes," you say, because seventeen years of resentment do not disappear in the wake of even the greatest act of good. In fact, they intensify.

"Would my family hate me for what I've done?" he continues. Ginevra Weasley's head turns toward him, but he faces you and looks to you for an answer. Her eyes lower and look at their interlocked hands.

You don't know why he would ask you this. You despised his parents and their barbaric ways. You laughed with joy when you heard of the death of Sirius Black. You can't imagine empathising with Muggles like his aunt and uncle.

"For killing a murderer?" you ask.

"For killing a man." And you have nothing to say to that. You have never once looked upon the face of the Dark Lord and seen a man. You saw only power, embodied.

Potter's hands shake again. Then his arms start to quiver and then his whole body. You worry that he is crying, but he lifts his head and though his eyes are wet, no tears escape them. He looks over the ruins of Diagon Alley.

"Why aren't I dead?" he whispers. You almost want to tell him, to explain the way that you made the shield to protect him, to recount the way that Ginevra Weasley Apparated with her feet running and pushed him out of the way just in time. But then you would have to recount the way he used his own skills, dodged spells, and fired the Unforgivable, so you don't say a word. He doesn't deserve it.

"I thought killing him would make me feel more whole, would be the end," he says.

Unwilling you empathize with the boy, remembering that each time you killed a Muggle or a Mudblood, you thought you would feel more powerful, more self-righteous. You thought killing the Mudblood bastard who killed your parents would make you feel happy. Instead, you craved to kill more, to feel the rush of stealing the life out of another human. Then slowly it made you feel sick, overwhelmed.

You say nothing to him, the thought of empathizing with Potter making you feel ill, and he quivers on that step without a consoling thought to comfort him.

"There is one more thing to do," he says.

Potter takes his hand out of Ginevra Weasley's, lifts his wand with both hands- his left hand at the base and right hand over the tip- and in one swift movement, he slams it over his left knee, cracking it in two and letting it fall to the ground. He raises his right hand and a blue flame appears. With a single gesture, he throws the flame at the broken wand. As the flame consumes the wood, you think you hear a phoenix song but quickly assure yourself that cannot be possible.

"And now he is truly gone- all except for the pieces of himself that he left in me."

"In us," finishes Ginevra Weasley, taking his hand back in hers as her eyes remain on you.

You look back over at the ruins of Diagon Alley and wonder if anyone thought it would end this way. Wasn't Albus supposed to destroy the Dark Lord? Weren't there supposed to be rainbows and celebrations? Weren't there supposed to be flowers and joy? In place of those there is only a man who once bore the Dark Mark; a girl who the Dark Lord once possessed; and a boy who looks remarkably like Tom Riddle sitting on the edge of destruction, wanting none of the hero's welcome that awaits him, staring off at nothing as the invisible blood of a Dark Lord dries and stains his hands and soul.