"Harry! HE'S ALIVE." I turn around faster than anyone could imagine. I look to see the boy standing alive. Everyone stops fighting. Waiting for the next move on his part.

"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry says loudly, and in the total silence his voice carries like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me." Voldemort hisses.

"Potter doesn't mean that," he says, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"Nobody," Harry says simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good..."

"One of us?" jeers Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stare, like a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asks Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"

"Accidents!" screams Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, not a word is spoken. I clutch my wand ready to strike at any moment. Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," Harry says as they circled, and stare into each other's eyes, green into red. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—"

"But you did not!"

"—I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

"You dare—"

"Yes, I dare," says Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

Voldemort does not speak, but prowls in a circle, keeps him temporarily mesmerized and at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a final secret...

"Is it love again?" says Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore's favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter—and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?" The urge to run and protect the boy. But the way he moves. The way hundreds of others around us stay frozen keep me frozen.

"Just one thing," Harry says, and still they circle each other, wrapped in each other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.

"If it is not love that will save you this time," Voldemort says, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both," says Harry, and we see shock flit across the snakelike face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort begins to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humorless and insane, it echoes around the silent Hall.

"You think you know more magic than I do?" he says. "Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

"Oh, he dreamed of it," Harry says, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."

"You mean he was weak!" screams Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

"No, he was cleverer than you," Harry says, "a better wizard, a better man."

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did," Harry says, "but you were wrong." For the first time, the watching crowd stirs as the hundreds of people around the walls draw breath as one.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurls the words at Harry as though they would cause him unendurable pain. "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore's dead," Harry says calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."

"What childish dream is this?" says Voldemort, but still he does not strike, and his red eyes don't waver from Harry's.

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," Harry says. "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?" Voldemort does not answer. They continue to circle each other like wolves about to tear each other apart. "Snape's Patronus was a doe," Harry says, "the same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realized," he says as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"

"He desired her, that was all," sneers Voldemort, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him—"

Of course he told you that," Harry says, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape finished him!"

"It matters not!" shrieks Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt attention, but now lets out a cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love! Oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand! Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy—I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up. I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"

"Yeah, it did," says Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle..."

"What is this?"

Of all the things that Harry has said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this.

"It's your one last chance," Harry says, "it's all you've got left... I've seen what you'll be otherwise... Be a man... try... Try for some remorse..."

"You dare—?" says Voldemort again.

"Yes, I dare," Harry says, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle.... That wand still isn't working properly for you because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."

"He killed—"

"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"

"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort's voice shakes with malicious pleasure. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against its last master's wishes! Its power is mine!"

"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard... The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance...The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."

"Draco," I say softly looking around for him. In fear of what was going on. Fear for his life at the words.

"But what does it matter?" he says softly. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone... and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy..."

"But you're too late," says Harry. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took this wand from him."

Harry twitches the hawthorn wand, and the eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispers Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand." Above us the sun rises slowly. The wind blows slightly. All in all it would be a good day. But the tension in the air from the duel before us was a crushing reality no one could ignore.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!"

The moment the spells make contact it was like a canon blast. All of our eyes still on them as the green jet drops and the elder wand raises in the air. Voldemort falls backwards stiff as a board. The curse had rebounded on him. Killing him instantly. A moment freezes in time as all of us watch Harry step towards the body of the haunting evil.

As it dissolves I smile running happily towards him. "Harry!" I scream hugging him. After a roar of cheers other join us gripping the boy tightly. Cheering on the boy who lived.

As we celebrate the end of the battle we adjusts the great hall to accompany the amounts of people. I join the aurors in rounding up the death eaters to pull them into cuffs and other ways before packing them up to be carted to Azkaban.

"We're are the Malfoy's?" One of the men ask me.

"I haven't a clue," I say to them, "but if it's anything. They were fighting mostly on the side of against the Death Eaters." It was an attempt to see if the Aurors would let the men go.

"Hey Cultven!" Harry screams at me. I turn smiling at my group of friends.

"Come on you bloody fool!" Ron says playfully.

"Ronald!" Hermione squeals.

"I'm coming don't get your panties in a knot!" I scream. I rush off and join them as we march through the halls of Hogwarts. Reaching the old office of Dumbledore. We hear applause as we walk in. All of the old paintings of Headmasters and Headmistresses were applauding Harry and his defeat of Voldemort. The people in the portraits were jumping up and down as they applaud him. Cheering happily. Some crying softly. Most enjoying the happiness.

"And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!" Phineaus Nigellus says. I smirk softly at the statement.

"The thing that was hidden in the Snitch," he begins, "I dropped it in the forest. I don't know exactly where, but I'm not going to go looking for it again. Do you agree?"

"My dear boy, I do," Dumbledore says, while his fellow pictures looked confused and curious. "A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of you. Does anyone else know where it fell?"

"No one," Harry says, and Dumbledore nods his satisfaction.

"I'm going to keep Ignotus's present, though," Harry says, and Dumbledore beams.

"But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!"

"And then there's this."

Harry holds up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione look at it with a reverence that, while my look remains with a mixed expression.

"I don't want it," Harry says.

"What?" Ron says loudly. "Are you mental?"

"I know it's powerful," Harry says wearily. "But I was happier with mine. So..."

He rummages in  the pouch hung around his neck, and pulls out the two halves of holly still just connected by the finest thread of phoenix feather.

"It's worth a shot," I say to him.

He lays the broken wand upon the headmaster's desk, touches it with the very tip of the Elder Wand, and says, "Reparo." As his wand reseals, red sparks flew out of its end. He picks up the holly and phoenix wand. I smile softly. Seems to work.

"I'm putting the Elder Wand," he tells Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, "back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won't it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That'll be the end of it."

Dumbledore nods. They smiled at each other.

"Are you sure?" Ron asks. There is the faintest trace of longing in his voice as he looks at the Elder Wand.

"It's up to him," I say, "at the end of this all."

"I think Harry's right," Hermione says quietly.

"That wand's more trouble than it's worth," Harry says. "And quite honestly," he turns away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."

"Of course," I say to them, "now. We should go downstairs and join the others." They nod and we rejoin the celebrations. As we walk into the great hall I see Draco. I smile at him softly. A hint of feeling still there. Maybe one day we'll be together. Rekindle the romance that was once there. But for now we would stand apart. For now I needed to be there for my fallen peers.

-The End?-