But Harry Potter is still the Hero, so he fights the Villain and wins.

Harry knows he will die the minute he steps out onto the battlefield. Death is all around him; people are fighting atop corpses. Corpses of his friends and his classmates and people he never even knew.

He feels the guilt for each one.

When he faces Voldemort, he looks him directly in the eye. The screams and sobs just seem to melt away; there is nothing in the world but him and the man that condemned his parents to the cold, dark earth. Nothing around them, and nothing, finally, standing between them.

In the end, he couldn’t tell you how it happened. All he knows is he raised his wand, and Voldemort collapsed. That was it. No bright light, or dramatic speech, or great explosion. Just a man, his life leaving him quietly and without a fuss.

Then Harry feels a sharp pain, and the world tips. His head bounces off the ground when he falls, and he coughs. His feels liquid on his chin, too thick to be saliva.So this is how it ends, he thinks, all alone on the battlefield. He doesn’t think anyone has even noticed – not Voldemort’s death, nor his own impending one.The thought makes him feel sad and impossibly small. He had been sure of his death the minute he saw Voldemort; been resigned for it for years before. But now that it is fast approaching, he feels far more scared than he thought he would be.

He is dying alone, surrounded by people too busy to notice. He finds it fitting, in an ironic way. But still, he wonders at how much of the pain in his chest is from whatever happened to cause him to bleed out.

He doesn’t want to die on his own.

Then suddenly, there is someone there; someone is picking him up and holding him tight. Harry’s vision is mostly gone now, but he knows the voice anywhere.

“Idiot boy.”

The arms holding him are warm and strong. He can feel the steady heartbeat against his chest. The rhythm lulls him.

“I killed Thicknesse, but I was too late. I…Merlin, Potter, what were you thinking?”

Harry Potter smiles, closes his eyes, and exhales his last breath.

Quietly and without a fuss.

A world of neither Black nor White, but a rainbow of Grey.