I hope our story has a happier ending

lived through it to get to this moment

She'd always assumed it would happen in slow motion; that's how it seems in books, and films, and in her imagination.

This victory they've been working towards so desperately for so many years—surely, she'd thought, it would seem unreal, watching Riddle gradually collapse to his knees, and then forward, eyes blank and world around them silent and still at last.

It's nothing like that, though.

It's fast, his body caving, no longer held together by the miraculous magic and darkness and murder and violence that had allowed the new form to be stitched together in the first place. He topples within a heartbeat of Ginny's shot striking true, the Elder Wand slipping from his fingers into the dirt as though it were but a fallen branch carried over by the wind.

The air begins to smell foul, as it does whenever a person dies and their body releases its grip on all of its functions; it's this, more than anything else, that makes him appear human at last.

(So many years, so many lives last, all in his quest for immortality—and it only ever brought him here, to this moment of supreme vulnerability he might've never faced otherwise.)

Hermione had also assumed as soon as Riddle dropped dead, everything would freeze and it would all immediately be resolved—she wasn't right about that, either.

Only those nearest them can have begun to notice; everyone else locked in desperate combat, they couldn't begin to look over to check in on the key player of it all without risking an avada.

"Shit," Hermione whispers, scrambling for a way to alert them all.

(If anyone falls now, when it's over at last—she'll never forgive herself.)

And odds are plenty of them won't believe her, but—it's worth a shot.

"Sonorous," she whispers, wand aimed at her throat. She clears her throat then, heads jerking in her direction as the sound reverberates across all of Hogwarts.

There are no right words—it should be Harry, or anyone else, left to do this.

But somehow it's fallen to her, everyone else central enough to it all frozen in shock at the sight of Riddle crumpled—mortal.

"Your Dark Lord is dead!" she cries, sounding much more confident than she feels—much less liable to keel over from exhaustion and the adrenaline making her shake. "Lay down your weapons! Death Eaters—leave now, that you will still have a fair trial rather than lose your life in a war that's already been lost. Any crimes you've committed he has had a hand in—but any after this point are entirely your own."

It doesn't feel like enough.

The fighting slows, she'll admit.

And of course there's someone who doesn't believe it's really over—fires off a curse at someone else whose begun to put down their weapon, and is immediately targeted by no less than four wands.

It's Ginny who resorts to drastic measures—levitates Riddle's corpse through the air and towards the center of the remaining battle.

When she releases the spell, lets him crash to the ground, it's demeaning enough to make everyone go still.

(How gruesome, the way a body moves once the soul has left it.)

One voice yells, and then another, and then all at once a cheer goes up among the crowd.

It's the most deafening thing Hermione's ever heard, filled with such bone-deep relief she feels a part of herself she hadn't known was tensed relax for the first time in years.