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He lay facedown, listening to the noises. They were quiet, businesslike, making no attempt to disguise themselves as silence. At a guess, he thought, there were six or seven people making them, but none of them were taking notice of him. He might as well not be there. Perhaps he wasn’t.

Opening one eye, he saw a boy his own age, lanky and red-haired, sitting with his back against a stone wall and wearing an expression of careful nothingness. A girl sat beside him, her face and body unmarked by cuts or bruises, brown hair spilling in curls over her robed shoulders. Her hand lay between them, palm up.

"How can you even look at me?" Ron said quietly, still staring into the distance. "After what I did to Luna?"

"I love you." Hermione’s voice was soft and fond. "And stop worrying about Luna. She’s nothing to do with it."

Ron turned to stare at Hermione. "Nothing... to do..." He seemed unable to finish.

"She wasn’t there," Hermione added. "Not after that partition fell."

"Well, it sure looked a hell of a lot like her!"

"Of course it did. Her body didn’t go anywhere. She just left her body for a while."

"She left..." Ron leaned back against the wall again, his eyes falling shut. "She left. She wasn’t there. She isn’t going to hate me forever." He heaved a huge sigh. "She wasn’t there." His eyes came open again. "Hang on a tick. Someone was there."

"Someone had to be there. You were being watched." Hermione shivered slightly. "They kept hooting and whistling, some of them were shouting suggestions to the one who had you under the Imperius... I’m sure they would have noticed if Luna stopped responding."

Ron’s face set like iron. "I remember the suggestions," he said. "He tried, but I wouldn’t. Not like that. He could make me do it, but he couldn’t make me hurt her with it." A snorted laugh. "Like I didn’t hurt her enough the way it fell out. Or whoever it was."

"You didn’t," Hermione assured him. "You were actually quite gentle."

There followed a long and exceedingly awkward pause.

"No," Ron said finally. "I don’t believe it. It wasn’t you."

"Not quite the way I’d imagined our first time," Hermione admitted, "but it wasn’t a total disaster."

"It wasn’t—are you mad?" Ron shut his eyes and ground his hands against them. "No, never mind, of course you are, you’ve always been mad. But how could you do that to yourself? After what’s happened to you?"

"How could I not, knowing what was happening to you?" Hermione shot back. "It was the only way, Ron, the only way I could do anything at all—"

"You call this anything?" Ron’s voice nearly broke on the last word. "Making sure I know I hurt you that way?"

"How many times do I have to say you didn’t hurt me before you believe it?"

"At least one more!"

"Fine!" Hermione yanked her pendants out of her robes. "See for yourself!"

"Thank you, I will!" Ron threw the chain around his neck and tipped his head back, his face taking on the stillness of concentration. Hermione watched him for a few moments, then rearranged his quiescent body around her so that she was sitting in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder.

"I told you," she murmured, closing her own eyes. "I love you, and I know you. Luna would forgive you for it, but you’d never forgive yourself, and I couldn’t let them hurt you like that. So, since I was free by then, she and I swapped places. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want, you didn’t hurt me, and I’d like to try it again sometime soon." A quiet chuckle. "Wearing my own body this time, obviously!"

Ron echoed her laugh, hesitantly but with genuine warmth. "I don’t deserve you," he mumbled.

Hermione reached up and flicked a finger across his lips. "There are better things to do with these than tell stupid lies."

Harry closed his eyes on the reassuring familiarity of his best friend snogging his sister. It seemed some things really never would change.

He dozed again, and fell into a dream like one he’d had long ago, the first time he’d battled Voldemort and remembered it. Then he’d been a wolf cub, now he was a young wolf, but the principle was the same. The slayer who hated all wolves had captured him, and this time he had destroyed the wolf’s Pack first. There was nothing left to live for, no safety or home to return to, so why not let himself be killed to avoid the madness of the cage?

But every breath he took made the story a lie, for the Pack’s scents were all around him, fresh and living, not old and dead, and now that he thought rather than simply giving in to his fear, he remembered the truth. The Pack had not been destroyed; they had gone on before him to their new hunting grounds, leaving the old ones free of distraction for his final fight with the slayer.

What a silly cub he’d been, to whine ‘Take me with you’ when his battle was not done! How could he forget the deep pit, carefully covered over, into which he would lure the slayer, possibly at the price of his own life if he could not make the leap without alerting his enemy? But a wolf need not fear to die if his death would save the Pack, and so it would be done.

He grinned in his sleep, remembering his cleverness. For he had run as if in panic, and the slayer had run after him, and they had both tumbled into the pit—and then he had leapt on top of the slayer, using the evil one as a stairway to his own freedom! The wails of his enemy had made harmony with his joyous howls, and those of his Pack, as he sped on his way to join them in their new home. He must have arrived safely there, for their scents to be all around him now, and one most particularly...

Harry opened his eyes again and looked down at a tangled mane of ginger hair, which seemed to be attached to the softly breathing warmth against his side. Ron and Hermione, he saw as he lifted his head, had fallen asleep sitting up, still sharing Hermione’s pendant chain. Luna lay beside Hermione, Snow Fox curled under her chin, his tail wrapped around one of Hermione’s ankles.

The others must be behind me.

Sitting up carefully, so as not to disturb Ginny, he turned. Sure enough, there lay Padfoot, on his back and snoring, one hand outstretched and loosely clasping Letha’s. Meghan had taken her usual spot between her parents, and a shimmer of silver on her back betrayed the location of Captain the demiguise. Harry stifled a snicker at the line of drool running down from her open mouth, then let his gaze roam down towards Letha’s feet. If he was right...

I’m right.

Moony waved one hand in greeting, his other being occupied with stroking Danger’s hair where she lay with her head in his lap. "Have a good sleep?" he asked.

"Fair to middling." Harry hitched himself more upright and hissed in pain at the soreness in his chest. "What hit me?"

"It’s called the Killing Curse."

"Oh yeah." Laughing a little at his own forgetfulness, Harry rubbed the spot. "You think it’s going to leave a mark?"

"We’ll see." Moony’s tone, posture, and scent all combined to indicate that he hadn’t a care in the world.

Which he doesn’t. You don’t, once you’re dead.

"In the meantime, you have one piece of unfinished business," Moony continued, pointing to a spot behind Harry.

Harry turned and jumped slightly. He hadn’t realized it until this moment, but they were still in the hall where he’d died, and they weren’t alone. Lord Voldemort himself lay crumpled at the other end of the room, his long-fingered hands empty, his face frozen in lines of anger and disbelief.

"What’s he doing here?" Harry asked loudly, waking Ron and Luna. "He doesn’t deserve what we get!"

"You’ve got the wrong end of the wand, Greeneyes." Moony helped Danger sit up and nudged Letha’s foot, making her stir and mumble a few words half-intelligibly. "He deserves exactly what we get, because to him, it will be the opposite of what it is to us."

Harry was about to say he didn’t understand when Ginny yawned beside him, diverting his attention to how cute she looked when she did. She was here, and she was his, and no one could ever part them again...

A-ha. Got it.

"He split us up and hurt us," he said, looking back at Moony. "And used some of our pain to make the rest of us hurt more. But now we’re back together, we’re all right again, and he can’t do anything about it, ever."

"Now you’ve got the idea."

Harry glanced at Voldemort. "Does he know?"

"Not yet."

"Can I tell him?"

"That depends on how you’re planning to do it."

"I’m going to gloat." Harry held out a hand to help Ginny pull herself upright beside him. "Because I have everything I want, and he has nothing, and it’s going to be that way forever and ever."

"You are a wicked young man, Harry Potter." Moony shared a satisfied look with Padfoot. "I knew we raised you right. Go ahead."

Harry drew his wand, took careful aim, and thought a particular word as hard as he could.

Voldemort emitted a muffled yell as he was dragged into the air by his ankle, his robes falling over his head and answering a question Harry had never wanted to ask (briefs in what looked like black silk). The girls all burst into giggles, and Harry held the spell for a few more seconds before letting the Dark Lord fall.

"Good morning, Mr. Riddle," he said in his chirpiest imitation of Meghan’s firecall voice. "This is your wake-up call."

The red eyes, slits though they were, opened wide for once, and the lipless mouth hung agape as Voldemort fought his way out of his veiling robes to see who had done this to him. "No," the Dark Lord breathed, reaching into his pocket only to find, as Harry had expected, that his wand was gone. "No. I killed you."

"Yes, you did." Harry put his arm around Ginny. "And I was your last Horcrux. We found all the other ones already, and destroyed them, and you never knew about it. Maybe you shouldn’t have split your soul so small." A tiny vestige of pity rose in him at the panicked, dumbfounded look on Voldemort’s face. "It might not be too late, you know. If you try for some remorse, really try, you might be able to get a few of the bits back, do a little healing..."

"Silence," Voldemort commanded. "Tell me what trick you used to stay alive or you will regret it, Harry Potter."

Harry shook his head. "You really don’t get it, do you?" he said. "I didn’t use any trick. You killed me. But you killed yourself too. You destroyed your own last Horcrux, and it dragged you down with it." Ginny was tracing letters on the back of his hand, and he nodded to show her he understood. "You’re dead, Tom Riddle," he said deliberately. "D-E-D, dead. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 Galleons. Dead."

Voldemort made an odd gasping noise, clutched at his chest, and collapsed. Harry laughed. "Did he just die again?"

"Er," said Draco. Harry turned to see a familiar expression on his brother’s face, the strained smile of someone who’d set a trap for a knarl and caught an erumpent. "About that..."

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