Final Decisions

Summary: The worst treasons...murder on high...the worst has come to Hogwarts.

A single night.

That was all it had taken for his very world to not only turn upside down...but to end.

Just earlier that day, Harry felt like the luckiest man on Earth. His team, Gryffindor, had won the Quidditch Cup, even though he had been in detention with Professor Snape. His best mate, Ron Weasley, had given his blessing for the pairing between his sister, Ginny, and the new Quidditch Captain. Harry himself would be going with Dumbledore to hunt down and destroy one of 6 Horcruxes that had been created by Lord Voldemort.

He had no way of foretelling what would happen in just a few short hours.

The mission to a mysterious cave was anything but fruitful. The potion that was required to be drunk had severely weakened the headmaster, almost to the point of killing him. They had managed to get a hold of the item they sought anyway...or so they had thought at the time.

When Harry had Apparated both back to Hogsmeade, it had gotten from bad to worse. The Dark Mark had appeared in the sky over the school...and all knew what it had meant.

The Death Eaters had entered the building...and probably had already murdered someone. Harry had gone to get help from Professor Snape...then had been cursed by Petrificus Totalus, by Dumbledore himself...and that was when he bore witness to the end of his world.

There had been treason, of the worst kind. Draco Malfoy, he knew was the newest Death Eater, Harry knew it, but nobody had taken it seriously, not even Ron or Hermione. But now, in front of the young man, his every suspicion was proved right.

God, I wish I was wrong.

Malfoy stood before Dumbledore. He had let in the Death Eaters, using the Vanishing Cabinet that had connected the Room of Requirement to Borgin and Burkes. One of the Cabinets had been broken, but Malfoy had somehow gotten it repaired. Now, he had raised his wand with the intent of carrying out his mission, to kill the headmaster.

Only...Albus had somehow hit the nail on the head...Draco had never committed murder before and, in that was, was still innocent. A such, he was unable to carry it out...he had even been on the verge of agreeing to stand down when the other Death Eaters had arrived.

That had been when the worst treason took place.

The Death Eaters had called to Snape, explaining that Draco was unable to carry out his mission. For the first time, Albus had pleaded with the man to help him...the man that Harry suspected most of all, the same man that had finally gotten the job he so coveted, Defense Against the Dark Arts...the same one that was a double agent between Dumbledore and Voldemort.

Before his eyes, Harry's scream of horror went unsounded as Snape pointed his wand at the headmaster...and executed the third Unforgivable Curse, Avada Kedavra.

Before his eyes, the last and greatest protector, the one that Harry perhaps had even grow to care for as a father, was murdered.

That was not the only catastrophe to happen.

Bill Weasley had been bitten by Fenrir in the face. He would never fully recover from it, scarred horribly for the rest of his life...and nobody knew if he would become a werewolf himself or not.

It had been a blessing that Fleur Delacour still intended to marry him, regardless of the fact that her fiance would never be the same again.

Rosmerta was under the Imperius Curse, that had been for certain.

Hawkes, the Phoenix, left the school forever the very same night.

And now...word was going around that Hogwarts might never open again.

Harry blinked as he watched the funeral proceedings, as Dumbledore's body had been carried by a weeping Hagrid to the funeral table. The Merfolk sang from Black Lake...white arrows shot over the sky from the centaurs...and between the singing and the arrows, the funeral table engulfed in blue flame...and transformed into a white tomb that would be on the school's grounds, forever. The first...possibly the only headmaster to be buried in Hogwarts.

The Hogwarts Express would be taking everyone home 1 hour after the funeral...but as he looked around him, watched the proceedings, he knew, in the deepest part of him, what the grim reality was...and the choices he would have to make.

James Potter...

Lilly Potter...

Sirius Black...

Albus Dumbledore...

All had protected him, cared for him...and now all had died, in precisely that order.

I can't...I won't have anyone near me at all, he thought, not my friends...not my mates...and not Ginny Weasley. No one else is going to die for me. Not now, never again.

He hated saying what he had to Ginny, officially breaking off their relationship...for her own good. If she were to remain close, she would probably be the next to die.

He also knew something else, at that very moment.

When I leave Hogwarts in one hour...I will never return. Even if it reopens, I will never come back.

As he got up and deliberately turned his back on his best mate's sister, the new Minister of Magic came up to him.

Rufus was, honestly, nothing more than a scumbag. He had innocent people arrested, including Shunpike of the Knight Bus...was firmly opposed to Harry's claims of the truth the previous year...and then had the nerve to outright propose, during Christmas, that Harry become the Ministry of Magic's mascot. He had even used Harry's ambition to become an Auror, to his advantage.

Of course, Harry refused, declaring himself as "Dumbledore's Man"...and that's what he did now, when Rufus made the same offer a second time.

As he walked from the Minister, Harry made another decision that felt, to him, very final.

He would return to the Dursleys, but only for a short visit, and only because he had promised Dumbledore at the beginning of the term. But after that visit, he would also leave the house he had grown up in, never to return. He would carry on the late headmaster's final mission and destroy all the remaining Horcurxes...including the real one that had been taken from the cave...and then go after Voldemort and Snape himself.

It was only at the very end that he learned something truly astounding when he explained his plans to Ron and Hermione.

The two of them would accompany Harry to the Dursleys...and then go with him on the final mission. Potter had argued that, of course...he wanted no more deaths in his name...nobody else close to him to die.

However, they could not be disuaded. They would go with him...even though it would mean leaving Hogwarts forever, one year short of graduation.

Although, in a way, he wished that they had not decided on this, deep inside, he was grateful that his friends were so loyal...and knew fully what they were consigning themselves into.

This most dangerous path would not be travelled alone...yet...all of them had still made very final decisions. Their childhoods were completely gone forever...their lives and worlds just as permanently lost...

When the three boarded the Hogwarts Express in the beginning of that term, they were still children, in all considerations...

When they left Hogwarts school for the last time, they were a woman and two men.

Let the Final War begin.

THE END