His Midnight Apprentice

Epilogue

The silence was suffocating.

Hogwarts, once filled with the laughter of students and the bustling energy of life, now stood eerily still. The Great Hall, the heart of the school, had become a mausoleum. Bodies lay strewn across the stone floor—friends, foes, all indistinguishable in death. 

The battle had been long and fierce, but now, there was only quiet, the kind that filled the lungs like a cold, heavy fog.

"The Boy Who Lived had finally fallen," Voldemort said with a grin on his lips. And the death eater behind him laughs as if they are required to do that. 

A sob broke the silence, raw and desperate. Ginny Weasley stumbled forward. But her family immediately stopped her.

"No... no, no, no!" Her voice was a strangled cry, torn from the depths of her soul as she clutched at his lifeless body, pulling him to her as if she could somehow bring him back by sheer will alone. "Harry, please... please don't leave me. Please..."

But there was no response, no miracle.  With every passing second, the hope that had once driven them, the belief that Harry could survive anything, crumbled into dust.

Around them, the survivors of the battle began to gather, their faces etched with grief and disbelief. 

Ron and Hermione stood at a distance, too stunned to move, their minds refusing to accept what their eyes were seeing. Ron's fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, his whole body trembling with the force of his emotions. 

Hermione was silent, tears streaming down her face as she struggled to keep herself from collapsing under the weight of it all.

"This can't be happening," Ron finally whispered, his voice thick with emotion. 

"He can't be dead... he can't..." 

"But he was," Hermione said in disbelief. The truth of it hung in the air, heavy and inescapable.

McGonagall stood at the edge of the hall, her face a mask of sorrow, her hands gripping the back of a chair so hard that the wood creaked under the pressure. She had always known that there was a chance, a terrible chance, that Harry might not survive this war. But knowing it in her mind and seeing it with her own eyes were two entirely different things. 

The boy she had watched grow up, the child she had protected as fiercely as any of her own, was gone. And with him, it felt as though the very heart of Hogwarts had been ripped away.

Even the Death Eaters, those who remained, seemed taken aback, their triumph dulled by the sight of the fallen hero. 

They had won, but it did not feel like victory.

 Voldemort's cackling laughter had died away, leaving behind only a hollow silence, as even he seemed to grasp the weight of what had just occurred. The one who had defied him again and again, the boy who had been his nemesis from the very beginning, was no more. Yet there was no satisfaction in it, no sense of achievement—only the cold, empty finality of death.

Neville Longbottom stepped forward, his face set in grim determination as he looked at Harry's body. He had always admired Harry and had always believed in him, even when others had doubted. Now, looking at his friend's lifeless form, something broke inside of him—a fragile thread of hope that had been holding him together. But in its place, a new resolve took root, hard and unyielding. Harry had given everything for them, and now it was their turn to fight in his name.

"We can't let this be the end," Neville said, his voice firm despite the tears in his eyes. "Harry didn't die for nothing. We have to keep fighting... for him, for everyone who's fallen."