Ron took a rattling breath and slumped forwards, his head hitting the grass. His hands fell from Harry's shoulders, and his robes fluttered around him.
Harry took one last, long look at the blue eyes that could no longer see; then he stood and ripped off his invisibility cloak.
The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of "Harry!" "HE'S ALIVE!" were stifled at once. The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other.
"I don't want anyone else to try and help," Harry said loudly, and in total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."
Voldemort hissed.
"Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how it works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"
"Nobody," said Harry 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?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, 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?" asked Harry. They were moving sideways, both of them in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "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!" screamed Voldemort, but he still did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but they two. "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," said Harry as they circled, and stared 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 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."
"Then what about the Weasley boy?" Voldemort leered. "Your pathetic protection couldn't even save one person. There he lies, dead by your friendship, your mistakes-"
"Ron died for me," cut in Harry, blinking away the wetness in his eyes. "He was ready to stay with me, even when he thought I was dead. The two curses counteracted each other, but that won't happen again; because I learn from my mistakes."
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If Ron died
FanfictionI recently learned that JK Rowling was planning to kill off Ronald Weasley at some point in the series. I'm glad she didn't, but this is an idea of what would have happened if he had died. I used a small part in the last book where Ron is the one to...
