"You dare-"
"Yes, I dare," said 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 did not speak, but prowled in a circle, and Harry knew that he had kept him temporarily mesmerized and at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a final secret. . .
"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering, "Dumbledore's favourite 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 forwards this time, and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now, when I strike?"
"Just one thing," said Harry, and still they circled 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," said Voldemort, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"
"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snake-like face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humorless and insane, it echoed across the silent Hall.
"You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, Lord Voldmort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"
"Oh, he dreamed of it," said Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."
"You mean he was weak!" screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"
"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry, "a better wizard, a better man."
"I brought the death of Albus Dumbledore!"
"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."
For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the walls drew breath as one.
"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled 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," said Harry 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?" said Voldemort, but still, he did not strike, and his red eyes did not waver from Harry's.
"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry, "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realised it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"
this is mostly directly from the book; I just wanted to have Voldemort die so I can focus on the grieving, but I wanted to do it properly. Thanks for reading :3
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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...
