Anonymity

All but forgotten phrases of nearly forgotten languages flew from his tongue. The powerful magic he was calling forth buzzed in the air, pricking him inside and out. He had come so far. He refused to falter, even as the unnatural devil glided closer still, past the discarded yew and phoenix feather combination (rent useless by a well-cast Diffindo) to confront him. Harry Potter. Tom Riddle's chosen equal.

This moment - this, which would be their final meeting - had been centuries in coming. For epic battles, as well as epic heroes and epic villains, are never chance occurrences. This concatenation had been initiated by Destiny. By her will, in the end, one must win and one must lose. And Harry knew he would not be the one who lost.

Destiny kind of owed him.

The killing curse, Harry had discovered the previous year, held no power over Voldemort. The self-proclaimed Dark Lord was apparently above such a common death. He demanded something more.

And Harry, doing his best to oblige, had passed the months following that unpleasant revelation with his nose in so many books he'd thought his head would explode. In fact, he suspected it would have had Hermione and Ron not stepped in, divided the material Harry had found between them (Hermione's share significantly larger) and set to work.

The trio had torn through every text they had thought might help, filching a decent number from Restricted Section, but hadn't come across much success until the Christmas holiday. On first day of break, Ron and Harry the only occupants of the boys' dormitory, the latter had awoken to an early gift - half a dozen books, neatly piled upon his bedside table. The fragile stack had contained instructions on hexes and curses that had made Harry's flesh crawl.

Gladly he had handed the books over to Hermione. She'd dashed off, in keeping with herself, to study them in full, leaving Ron and Harry to fumble about with the other resources they had gathered.

A few long hours later - Harry and Ron's efforts frustratingly lacking substantive results - Hermione had rushed back through the entrance portal, her face flush with excitement. There had been one curse common to all the ancient texts.

"And Harry," she had said with a dark optimism, "I think it might work."

Of course, any spell with that power would be far too dangerous to just bandy about the castle. Harry had confined his practice to the Room of Requirement, incanting in the magically cushioned space.

The spell, according to Hermione, was powerful enough that he would not need a wand for practice. Without something to channel through, when the spell was cast correctly it would not be nearly as destructive or dangerous. If Harry's pronunciation were as it should be, instead of an incantation of immeasurable force, he would get a harmless shower of sparks.

So, with a grim determination, he had practiced. It had taken him weeks to learn the proper emphasis of the foreign sounds and still more to push himself into the correct frame of mind, but finally - finally - he had cast an encouragingly large burst of glittering light.

He could only hope spelling with his wand would be no different...

The last syllable was choked from his throat and it was all Harry could do to keep a grip on his wand, it was vibrating so fiercely. A brief beam erupted from it and hit Voldemort squarely in his black robed chest.

The Boy Who Lived stumbled back, a filthy mudblood flanking his right, two blood traitors to his left, and watched as the light which his wand had shot shone forth from every crevice of the Dark Lord's body. Those eyes, once red, were now a blinding white.

The power was such that the frail mortality of his body could not withstand it and his all but immortal soul could not transcend it. With a piercing shriek and a brilliant, burning light, Voldemort was no more.

"Hermione," he speaks. She would prefer that he didn't - speak, that is. He has made this day one of his brooding days.

Hermione never wants to hear what he wants to say on these days.

The pause he took swallows far too many seconds for it to be a simple pause. It seems she has gotten her wish and he has changed his mind. She should feel relieved. But instead her stomach clenches with a sick compulsion.

"Harry?" she prods and damns herself for caring.

He jerks his gaze back from the invisible demons who steal it. This - her asking him to speak, on this day - surprises him; he knows she does not want to hear what he needs to say.

"When I die-" he begins, but she rips the conversation from him with a scoff.

"Harry Potter, don't you dare start on like that again. If-" she cuts herself off abruptly.

"You're not going to die."

He smiles hollowly, but gives a bit, "If I die fighting Voldemort..." He sucks in another breath.

"I don't want to be immortalized."

Pfft. "Harry," she begins exasperatedly, "If you die - and you won't, by the way - but if, I don't see how that can be avoided. You've been in the history books for sixteen years! Do you want them to just," Hermione sputters, face red with exertion, "just write you out?"

"No," he treads carefully. "I-" He sighs. "Just don't tell anyone where you bury me, alright?"

Glancing up from his hands, which occupy themselves fiddling with his cloak, he continues, "Just put me, I don't know, somewhere no one would think to look." What could be a mischievous smile defrosts his eyes. "Sink me to the bottom of the lake and let the Giant Squid figure me out."

She almost smiles because he almost smiled, but abruptly remembers their conversation topic and stills her quirking lips.

Yet she cannot resist further lightening his mood. Harrumphing, she sticks her hands to her hips, "And what about the Giant Squid? Sitting down there, minding his own business only to have you come round and smack him on the head. Now you don't suppose he would enjoy that, do you?"

"No," he answers quickly, but a type of humor remains in his voice, "I don't suppose he would."

There was no funeral for those who surrendered their lives that day. A memorial service, certainly, but not a single body was carried from that battleground.

Ronald Weasley - who was safely ensconced in the folds of thin, hospital wing sheets at the time of the Encounter - claimed that it had ended nearer to how Harry would have wanted it to end than any of them had dared hope. He said that Hermione and Ginny and Neville and Dean and Parvati and Hermione and...well, he would have said, had he been able to continue through the strangling sobs, that they would never have begrudged Harry this end. They had been proud to fight beside him.

Albus Dumbledore stated, in the speech following the presentation of the Orders of Merlin, First Class, that every person who had died to make victory possible possessed their own place in history. Especially Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived - The Boy Who Died. For what they, these children, had sacrificed, the world, both wizarding and Muggle, owed them more than could possibly be expressed. For their deaths, there was but one appropriate form of appreciation: They - he - would be remembered. Always.

To be remembered - something Harry Potter had never asked for, never wanted. But, going as he did, Ron believed such simple remembrance wouldn't irk his best friend as it might have otherwise.

For in death Harry found what he had gone half his life in search of.

He found his anonymity in the ash.