The Battle of Hogwarts

Happily Ever After

The crowd remains as silent as death itself, with only the sounds of labored breathing filling the air. Two bodies lay at the center of the large circle of people.

One body has marble white skin, wide open red eyes and a mask of horror frozen on his unmoving face. Dead.
The other has a messy set of hair, with bottle green eyes and most importantly, a moving chest signifying the presence of life.

"He's breathing! Harry Potter lives!" A cheer follows the announcement and many hugs and kisses are exchanged amongst the crowd, though not without the melancholy for those lost. Pomfrey pushes against the crowd with speed and force, having been called for medical attention. When she arrives to Potter's body she checks all his vitals, and satisfied that he's healthy, she closes the lids of Potter's eyes. Levitating him to where all the injured are, Pomfrey sets him down and moves on to more urgent cases.

Little does she - or any one - know that she'll be the last to see those Avadra Kedavra colored eyes.

━━━━━

Harry stares at the person and the hand outstretched towards him. His environment is a blinding white. The door he came from is behind him, standing on its own, open without support. And the only other visible things are him and the stranger, whose hand still hangs midair waiting for Harry to grasp it.

A part of him screams at him to step away, to spin around and run as fast as his legs can take him towards the door he came from, to ignore the outstretched hand being offered. But another voice in him, though he's not sure it's really him at all, calmly tells him to go with the stranger. That the stranger is not really that strange at all, and that everything will be fine. He looks into the dark black eyes of the person, trying to sense any maliciousness in them, but he sees none.

Ignoring the screaming instinct, he takes a step forward towards the being - because he's now certain he's not human - and halts right in front of the hand. He opens his mouth to ask the being something but stops, opting not to ruin the peaceful silence, he closes his mouth and for some reason he smiles.

The being seems surprised, but the corners of his mouth twitch up. Harry doesn't know what gets into him, so he's just as surprised as the being when he does the weird action.

Harry wiggles his eyebrows in a weird manner, the way someone does to amuse a baby, and laughs. The being seems even more surprised, and his lips turns up a bit more. Harry finally decides he has nothing to lose, and takes the hand that was still awkwardly hanging in ofference. The being's eyes soften, and in a voice that's loud but low at the same time, he says,

"Exactly like Ignotus I see...walking right into Death."

and he pulls Harry towards him in a hug. The door behind him slams shut, and he gets the feeling Death just closed his chance of life. Harry can't bring himself to care. Because when Death releases him, Platform 9 and 3/4 appears. And he sees his Mom, Dad, Remus, and Sirius, his family, again. He quickly walks to them, hugging all of them with tears in his eyes, and right before he boards the train, he turns to Death and mouths, 'Thank you.'

Death finally smiles.

━━━━━

In the world of the living, Harry's heart stops beating.

(Annie's Note: Yeah...a bit weird I guess. But hey, I kinda liked it. I always thought Harry should've died at the Battle of Hogwarts, it just seemed so appropriate. That in the end he gets what he's always wanted. Yeah sure, I like Ginny and the kids and shit, but that just seemed too happy for me. I would've enjoyed a bitter-sweet ending of Harry finally dying and joining his parents. Then there's the fact Teddy also became an orphan at the Battle of Hogwarts. Like, an orphan is born but another dies? I liked that thought. So yeah, one-shot of Harry dying to satisfy my imagination and wants.)