Unprepared

//Apathy falls in the ocean//

At night, when sleep failed to claim him, he would lie awake and dream about the day. He always imagined it would be the end of seventh year, in some fitting location that changed with each passing night. Great Hall. Hogsmeade. The Forbidden Forest. Those were the reoccurring ones, the expected ones. London was too, but only when he was feeling especially morose.

Each night, a different number would die, usually depending on his mood. Twenty or thirty if he was feeling overly optimistic, countless muggles and an equally alarming number of wizards when he thought to indulge in his idea of realism.

The faces would change - Draco, following his father's footsteps, was a usual participant. Dean and Seamus, Hedwig, Ginny, Neville, the Patil twins, Lavender were all frequent victims. Fred and George Weasley mysteriously appeared out of no-where and died on occasion. Several slytherins, Pansy Parkinson and Crabbe and Goyle also appeared in his more thoughtful imaginings, rallying behind their parents, and appearing dead with all the others. Sometimes Voldemort won. Sometimes he lost. Sometimes they all lost.

Harry would make an effort to smile at the specific victims the next day, excepting the Slytherins. He was preparing for the real thing, or so he told himself.

It wasn't the end of seventh year when it came, nor was it predictable or gallant or right. Everything that happened was wrong - the day was wrong, the moment was wrong, the feeling was wrong.

No one was prepared.

//at least we went down fighting//

March 1st 1997 - Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. The game was just beginning, even though they had been playing for at least an hour - the Birthday boy of Gryffindor had yet to let the quaffle through any of the hoops yet, but each time had been an exceptionally close call. Unfortunately Gryffindor had yet to score as well. The snitch was nowhere to be seen, and the rain poured down, no end in sight. Draco Malfoy, atop his Cleansweep 7, was livid. Harry wished that Hermione had taught him a defogging charm for his glasses - he had to wipe his warm breath from his glasses every ten minutes.

He was busy looking for the snitch when he felt it - a sinking feeling, much like the feeling he had felt when the Dementors had wandered out onto the pitch back in third year. It felt as if someone were right behind him, sneaking up on him. He looked up, and was about to turn around and indulge his inane suspicions when he heard a disbelieving cry from right in front of him.

Madame Hooch, who had been referring the game, sat frozen atop her broom, mouth agape and yellow eyes focused intently upon the horizon. Harry blinked, and suddenly the woman was in action - wand griped tightly in one hand, eyes blazing, riding furiously past him.

His eyes followed her movement, and he saw silent words matched with a flick of her wand before her cry was echoed across the entire stadium.

"Albus! The children! Get the out of the stands! Everyone out of the stands now! Back to the Castle!"

A dark movement from above and beyond her caught his gaze, and he looked up to see a quickly moving fluttering black mass appearing over the forest, devouring the clearing sky. The rain had stopped - this was no benign cloud, no matter how fervently he wished it. The real clouds were quickly, almost fearfully retreating to the opposite horizon. A great, warm, foul smelling wind slowly blew his spectacles clear as the temperature equalized. Screams, high pitched and frightened clashed with low purposeful voices grasping for the wards, attempting to erect new ones, throwing up defenses around the still packed stands.

The dark shape looming came apart at the seems - no longer was it one mass, but many. Light caught fleetingly on fluttering robes, and forms - human forms - began to take varying shapes. Masks became visible beneath hoods, save for one form that seemed to loom higher above the rest.

A hand grabbed at Harry's arm, spinning him into alertness. Silver eyes berated him, and instinctually Harry's hand closed around his wand.

"Potter get the fuck out of here!" an angry, condescending voice berated him, "They are after you, you moron, get moving!"

Harry thrust himself into action, following Draco's orders, disbelieving eyes never leaving the green clad form. The green of the slytherin robes seemed to expand around the boy and thin into mist before Harry realized that the colour was the wrong shade. Draco slumped forward, then plummeted downwards, robes fighting uselessly against the winds. His childhood nemesis reminded him strangely of discarded parchment in the way his body seemed to unfold as it fell.

Harry turned and flew, his eyes immediately strained with tears, wishing he could have at least watched his friend hit the ground. Suddenly that's what the corpse had become - Draco Malfoy, last friend of Harry James Potter.

First casualty of The Final Battle.

Harry held back his tears, knowing that Malfoy would have. They were a luxury, an expense he could no longer afford. Right now he had to forget that a boy that should have been on the other side had just taken a killing curse meant for him. He had to get back to the Castle.

In reality he got as far as the end of the pitch before his broom began to shake beneath him.

He fell into what would had been a spectacular Wronski Feint had he not hit the ground. Quickly he recovered, picking himself up off his broken broom as a mess of Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs ran screaming past him. Pain and injuries suddenly became new luxuries as he pulled out a large splinter of wood that had impaled his spare hand.

He registered the nearby forms of Madame Pompfry, Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick, and he turned in the direction he had flown in from. Death Eaters flew downwards, towards him, towards students still escaping from the pitch, throwing down their masks like owls dropping morning copies of the Daily Prophet.

A small girl, a first year Hufflepuff, nameless in her innocence fell past him, screaming a still anonymous death eater flew towards her, wand reaching out towards the girl. Harry pushed her aside, shouted out Avada Kedarva and turned, knowing that the man was dead.

The unknown child lay burned and blistered beside him, bright blue eyes searching the sky above, one dead hand flung out towards him. His first killing curse issued for the sake of a girl already dead.

Harry felt something hot graze past him, stinging his shoulder momentarily before he forgot how to feel. He wondered if it had been the same spell that had felled the girl beside him. Lifting his wand he screamed out a curse he wasn't sure he knew in the direction that the spell had come from, but didn't bother to check if it had hit before he threw another automatic spell at an airborne black form that whizzed past.

His eyes automatically sought out another target and he screamed out another curse, then once again found a new victim among his attackers. He forgot about the castle, about retreat, and was only remotely aware of his professors who had stood to fight beside him. He couldn't see the battle, couldn't feel the battle. Everything around him moved so fast that it all became one, black-green shimmering blur. The screams and curses melted into a terrifyingly constant symphony of war. His skin crawled steadily in the rhythm of magic and cold and adrenaline. The moment stretched on, merged with other moments and rebelled against definition. It was an hour, it was a day, a second, a year, a blink of the eye, a decade, and it was nothing. Felt like nothing.

//at the bottom of the ocean

this scenery fails calm//

A shrill, disbelieving cry broke through the wall of mundane sound and Harry cried back, trying to reassure himself that it was not all beginning again, that some allotted amount of death had past, that it was almost over, that he could wake up. He looked over to see Professor McGonagall, her back to the thinned out fliers, her eyes wide with anger as she faced the castle.

Harry turned, knowing that his life was already over. A wall of black robed figures marched towards them from the building, slowly plowing over the mismatched quilt of appendages and the occasional whole corpse. Harry nearly dropped his wand in shock, exhaustion, frustration, horror and anger as the death eaters approached, trapping the bulk of the students. A good portion of the first and second years kept running out of sheer desperation and crashed into the moving wall of black like a wave against solid rock. A few rebounded and began running in the opposite direction, only to be felled by a curse. A few fell and were crushed. Some were caught in midair, and soon the sharp crack of bone reached Harry's ears, while small bodies were thrown down like rag dolls. The approaching horde sneered and growled, dried blood cracking over the fluctuating faces and robes. Harry wondered absently about the certain fate of the students that had chosen not to attend the Quidditch Match.

A sudden wave of desperate anger overtook Harry as he began throwing more curses right and left, ignoring the ache that seemed to spread throughout his body and the pure exhaustion that seeped through his skin. Why did it have to be today? Why couldn't they have had just one more day? Everything was wrong, so wrong, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. He was supposed to graduate, attempt to grow up, make it past 17. Everything had been ok before, anything was better than this, it wasn't suppose to end like this.

They hadn't even finished the game.

//up till now been riding fine

but the curving walls leave me behind//

All at once it seemed like half the students were beside him, in front of him, beneath him. Students turned soldiers stopped and stood, wands flinging left and right with a variety of curses ranging from the helpless to the hopeless. A slytherin beater appeared out of nowhere and began accosting the nearby death eaters with his bat. Had Harry been able to speak above a whisper he might have laughed at the almost comical desperation. A white and red dog - probably a student who doubled as an illegal animagus - began tearing at the black robes and pale hands. The students had become an army, the only army, and were fighting not to defend the castle, or to avenge their friends, or for the side of the light, but to survive.

A red headed girl rushed out, her wand held high, her voice screeching out desperately thrown together Latin. Too close, she was too close to the battle. A boy - older and taller, but equally red, ran out in front of her, mirrored Harry's actions with the Hufflepuff girl that had occurred ages before. But this girl wasn't dead; she was crawling on top of a fallen death eater, pummeling him with all her might, while her brother shoved the stick of his broom through a dark black-stained-red robe. Harry remembered those faces from before, from happier days - laughter and class and worry and love and friendship.

//do you remember the days?

did you forget those days?

what would the oddsmakers say?

would the oddsmakers say?//

All of a sudden the faces around him acquired names, personalities, histories. No one was a stranger in this battle - each face held memories, distinct and separate, identities undeniable. Ginny was collapsed on top of the now dead death eater, not from a curse, but from pure exhaustion. Ron was pulling his broom out of the dead man's stomach while Alicia and Katie flanked him, swatting the Death Eaters into Chaos. Harry wondered if he had been the only person in the game who had bothered to bring his wand to the game. Then he wondered if the three people in front of him were the only people left of the Gryffindor team.

More faces appeared: Professor Sinstra's disembodied head flew hard into his shin. Ravenclaw boy who had been in his Care of Magical Creatures class fell dead at his feet. A fellow Gryffindor that had once lent him a quill flew past him, perhaps alive, perhaps not. Crabbe's bulky form, perhaps inspired by his dead friend Draco, charged into the now scattered wall death eaters, while Goyle shouted out more curses than anyone would have thought he knew. Harry threw a curse towards a death eater who had been heading towards Pansy Parkinson, who to her credit was literally clawing out the eyes of another death eater.

He began to recognize a few of the black robed men and women too. Harry saw the dead body of Bellatrix Lestrange roll off of a dark haired Slytherin who got up and kicked the corpse hard in the stomach. Out of the side of his eye he caught a glimpse of McNair dueling with an older looking Hufflepuff. And barreling straight towards him was Pettigrew, wand outstretched, thin lips stumbling over smooth Latin.

Harry quickly disarmed the man with a whispered spell, and in desperation, his parent's secret-keeper flung himself at him, hands struggling for a hold on his throat. Instinctually Harry raised his wand, but Wormtail had established a firm grip on Harry's throat, and the boy couldn't manage to breath, let alone speak. In a sudden desperate move inspired equally by Pansy Parkinson and Ron Weasley, Harry stabbed his wand upwards, into and through the eye socket of the man who had betrayed his father. The hands about his neck fell lax in surprise, and then the man shuddered as the wood slid into and through his brain. The death eater's stocky form fell, dead weight upon Harry's chest.

Quickly Harry recovered and rolled the dead body off of him, then straddled the body in an attempt to pull his only weapon out of his enemy's eye. A sudden scream, too familiar, too close, stilled his hand, and he looked up, praying that he was mistaken.

Hermione, her last scream sounding much like her first must have, stood among a sea of bodies, somehow managing to look divine in her last moments. The sun had somehow survived the clouds, and shined down upon her, turning tangled brown hair to gold, sallow cheeks to pure paleness. Her hands, covered in someone's blood, reached out towards that light, as her scream died within her throat. She blinked, as if being spoken to, and fell to her knees, then off of the broom she had been impaled upon.

The light seemed to darken as a death eater stood triumphant where Harry's friend had fallen, but he too fell as a bat from behind beat him down into the sea of bodies. Ron stood above him, white face drenched as red as his robes and hair. Another body - that of Neville Longbottom - flew into him, and a green light overcame them both.

Harry looked down at the mangled face of someone who had caused two of his best friends to die, and exchanged a post mortem smile with the man. Had Harry not been here the battle would have waited, or been over years ago. It wouldn't have been at Hogwarts, the most illogical place to host a battle, it would have been in a place prepared for such atrocity. It was because of him that his friends lay in a heap, that his childhood enemy had fallen dead from his broom, that Professor Sinistra was scattered in a dozen different pieces across the bloodied grass. He was no better than the man he had just killed.

No matter - it was all over now.

//We're drinking on jet streams

through to

ideas won't happen

laid out on benches

through to

sink for this reason//

"Harry!" a shout echoed within his ears, and he looked up to see a strange woman, black hair falling across equally black robed shoulders, running towards him, sharp eyes desperate, hoping, resigned. Arms tightened around him, pushed him down, then stiffened as a sharp, small cry escaped the woman's lips.

Harry pulled himself up into a sitting position, the dying woman lying gasping across his lap. Her look became stern, and the tears finally fell from Harry's eyes as he recognized Professor McGonagall. She was dying because of him, for him, and Harry wondered if this was how his mother had looked at him when she had been killed. His head of house, fulfilling her duties to the last breath, saw the despair taking hold within him and grabbed onto his shoulder with a weak hand.

"Fight it!" she commanded before the life faded from her eyes. Harry looked up, looking for some way to fulfill the woman's dying wish. He couldn't fight anything inside of himself, not yet, perhaps not ever, but he could fight this battle. He had to fight this battle, if only to lay credit to this woman's memory, this woman who by all rights had earned the title of 'mother'. She had given her life for him, and in doing so given him a chance at life.

Lucius Malfoy stood across the battlefield, untouchable, watching them, wand raised, pointed at him and his professor, but no words issuing forth from his mouth. Harry's eyes met a pair of depressingly familiar silver, and he understood. Understood what he had to do, understood that Malfoy understood that. Understood how alike they were, understood that no curse would be issued from the man's mouth.

Harry pulled himself up, his eyes never moving from those of his enemy's as he hurtled across the field, towards the silent man awaiting him. It took little effort to throw them both down, and little more to rip the man's throat out. It was a consensual death, after all. They had both lost, they had all lost, but Lucius was willing to accept his losses and move on.

"My son," he whispered hoarsely, the words somehow defying life and death both as the eldest Malfoy made efforts to follow the youngest and last generation of his family, searching for the boy, who even in betrayal was still his beloved son. For the second time that day, silver eyes faded with death.

Harry, still kneeling atop the now anonymous corpse, could not hear the curse thrown at him, but he could feel it, feel the familiar power, so much like his own, flying towards him, and out of pure instinct raised his bloodied, wandless hand.

"Avada Kedarva," he cried out, feeling his throat burn as he turned his head in the direction of the curse he had issued. Bright green exploded into red, and then a small, sliver of green light, his own green light, Lucius's green light, Professor McGonagall's green light, Hermione's green light, Draco's green light, flew straight and true in the direction he had ordered it.

There was no grand explosion; only a low bellow as the dark lord fell to his knees, then sank into the wet grass. The corpse did not turn to ash or disappear, but lay cold and dead like every other body on that godforsaken field. Harry felt a great disappointment well up within him that quickly turned to anger. His friends had suffered and died, for this? For this nothing? For just another corpse? Children who could have been happy, who could have made others happy, who would never know true love, nor experience their awkward first kiss, lay dead so that another corpse would lay beside them. Many teenagers would never complain about potions or divinations class again, many men and women never live to see children or grandchildren of their own. All of them would never even experience anything so trivial as the end of a bad Quidditch game ever again.

Enraged at the injustice, the stupidity, the selfishness of fate, Harry Potter, rose. He was the Boy Who Lived, and now, he supposed the Boy Who Had Lived Again, and also The Boy Who Lived Too Long. He ran towards the cause of it all, towards the one who now lay as dead and useless as the rest of them and he fell upon him, tore at him, threw his skeletal, scaled form down again and kicked him.

//If you see through these motives

you'll please report your progress

to the captain, our captain

so he can mark the atlas

never considered this a prize

but the curving walls leave me behind//

"I'm not done yet, you bastard! It's not over- Get up! You need to get up! Get up and kill me you son of a bitch!"

"Harry?" A startled sounding, familiar voice whispered. Harry looked up to see Ron, covered in more blood than before, hand outstretched. Harry blinked - Ron was dead, surely he must be going insane.

"Neville... he-" Ron supplied, then stopped, looking behind at Professor Sprout who was sobbing next to her star pupil's body. Ron shrugged, and somewhere within him Harry wondered if the calm boy was in shock, then wondered if he himself were in shock.

"Harry... look what I found!" Ron opened his hand pressed the contents into Harry's hand. Harry opened his hand in disbelief as an absurd gold ball fluttered its still perfect wings against Harry's palm.

"We won... Harry... you did it... we won."

//do you remember the days?

did you forget those days?

what would the oddsmakers say?

would the oddsmakers say?//

Harry threw down the snitch, angry at its perfection, at its simple, happy existence and grabbed for a discarded wand nearby - Voldemort's wand, his mind supplied. Ron's words registered within Harry's mind, and he pointed the wand at the still unruffled boy, angry at his presumption.

"What's wrong with you? We didn't bloody win, don't you get it? No one fucking won-"

He was suddenly grabbed from behind, and nearly panicked before soft black warmth wrapped itself around him. No one was attacking him, he reassured himself, and he allowed himself to be comforted by the familiar form.

"Shh... its alright now... don't fret..." a deep melodious voice said, and Harry closed his eyes momentarily as he felt a hand wet with blood rake through his hair. Cool lips brushed against where his scar had once been - it was gone now, had been gone since Voldemort fell.

Harry looked up as he felt Professor Snape's spare hand wrap around the hand that was holding Voldemort's wand, then felt his other hand being taken up and squeeze in between Snape's hand and the other half of the wand.

"Is it over?" he whispered, voice exhausted and full of grief. A sharp crack answered him as the twin of his wand was broken between their joined hands. He drew back slightly and looked down at the pieces of wood, so worthless and meaningless now, in the end.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, drawing him into the comforting darkness of black robes and he allowed the comfort, the relief, feeling soft, fine hair brush against his blood splattered cheek. Warm breath announced the whispered reply, and had Harry's eyes been open still he might have noticed how his precariously balanced glasses fogged up once again.

"It is now."

//We're drinking on jet streams

through to

ideas won't happen

laid out on benches

through to

sink for this reason//

END