Harry talked through a last-minute diary entry in which he told his friends about the snake, explained what he was about to do, and warned that if it didn't work, and they received this diary, it meant Voldemort had killed him or – worse – possessed him. When he was finished, he called Kreacher in.

"If you see me come out of this room," he said, "and I look at all funny - funny-peculiar, I mean, not myself, like if I have red eyes or I've got some leering grin - get out immediately, take this diary with you to Hermione Granger at Hogwarts, and tell her 'it all went to hell: read the last entry'. You got that?"

Kreacher gave Harry an offended look. "House elves are not fooled by those pretending to be our masters," he said. Harry stuttered out his thanks for this reassurance, and Kreacher bowed and departed.

Harry stared for a long while at the stunned snake in its glass container. He didn't want this to be the last thing he saw before death, and started thinking about how he needed to change his plans or rearrange the room in order to avoid that fate, but – realizing he was only indulging in obvious delaying tactics – he shoved these thoughts down in frustration. Then he took a deep breath, grasped the resurrection stone and called out,

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Immediately, a handsome schoolboy appeared, holding a diary, next to the motionless snake. For a split second Harry saw a much thinner ghostly presence surrounding the sixteen-year-old Tom, a form Harry recognized as Moaning Myrtle, but it vanished the moment Tom solidified. Harry had not been prepared for this, but he knew (without knowing exactly how he knew it) that the fragment of Myrtle's soul – the fragment used to keep the horcrux 'alive' – had been able to free itself of the horcrux's possession the moment that she and it were exposed once more to air and light. He took a great deal of satisfaction at the thought that Riddle's work was being undone, and felt stronger and more confident as he said, again,

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

A still-handsome, late-teenaged male appeared on the other side of the snake, holding Slytherin's ring, and a ghostly Tom Riddle Senior appeared and vanished.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

A twenty-something figure appeared, holding Hufflepuff's cup, and Hepzibah Smith appeared and vanished. Like the other ghosts, she sent a grateful glance towards Harry before she left.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

A virtually identical figure, holding Slytherin's locket; a male ghost came and went, his face unfamiliar, but Harry seemed to hear a name, Thomas Domville (whispered by a female voice, oddly enough) and made a pledge to himself to look it up (if he survived) and see to it the name was not forgotten.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

And now an older, paler, more twisted version of the formerly attractive man, holding Ravenclaw's diadem, and a young woman finding her freedom. Elaine Hughes, the whisper said, and Harry stored that name, too.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Finally, a small, grotesque-looking homunculus squatted next to the others, with a snake much larger than himself wrapped around him, from whom Bertha Jorkins' spirit fled.

All six of the Riddles, three on either side of the snake, were turning towards the Riddle-adder and staring at it with looks of savage hunger. None could speak or move, Harry knew, until he gave them permission.

Harry held the resurrection stone for a while, preparing to use it one last time, then turned it three times and whispered,

"James and Lily Potter."

He had tried his best to prepare himself to see his dead parents for what would be the third time, and almost certainly the last time this side of the veil: first in the mirror of Erised, near the beginning of his life as a wizard; then at the graveyard at Little Hangleton, at the most terrible event of his life; and now, at the moment which would determine his future. They were more solid, more colorful than he expected, more alive than any of the dead he had called on before, and they smiled at him, then hugged him. He had never touched or been touched by the dead before, but this touch had nothing of the unnatural in it.

"You'll stay with me?"

"Always."

They took their places on either side of him, or maybe a little in front of him, as if to stand between Harry and the seven Riddles on the other side of the room. He raised the phoenix-feather wand, pointed it at the adder and incanted "Renervate." Then he delved unhesitatingly into the hybrid human-serpent mind, as he had done to the Riddle-serpent at the Burrow before he had discovered the awful truth from Dumbledore. Harry felt the angry snake-man beginning to stir, waken, and gather itself for an attack. He surrounded it then with a thought, a thought he felt with firm conviction to be true, and which he knew was true when he heard himself pronounce it out loud in the presence of those who would not permit any falsehood to be spoken:

"My mother and father love me, no matter what."

Harry felt Voldemort's spirit halt and struggle against the mental bonds with which Harry was squeezing him, and heard it fight back with all that was left to it, words: "You know what you are, don't you, Potter? You are a fool who was led by the nose by Dumbledore; you're a murderer who leapt at the chance to kill, kill, kill, and killed one of your own in your blind, ignorant rage; you're a double fool now, putting everything you love at risk because of your need to be the Conquering Hero."

Harry did not know for certain whether Riddle also had to tell the truth in the presence of the dead, or whether the rule didn't apply since Riddle hadn't either summoned or been summoned by the dead, or whether it just was too small a fragment of a human soul to be bound by any 'sacred' laws. It didn't ultimately matter, for he felt his parents' arms tighten around his waist and shoulders and said, again,

"My mother and father love me, no matter what!"

The mental cage tightened still more around Voldemort, and the last living and conscious piece of the Dark Lord's spirit was carried out of the adder, towards his alter egos who waited for their chance to consume him. Harry could also feel something lift out and away from behind his scar, the unintended horcrux hurrying out as if it felt James and Lily's presence and couldn't bear it. The last horcrux, and the last original piece of Riddle's soul, were both now in near-corporeal form, like a translucent, blackish pensieve fluid, floating almost within the grasp of the six revenant horcrux-Riddles.

Voldemort tried to break free from his possessor one last time: "You will have no life after this, Potter; they will know what you are and they will turn from you, perhaps even join the Ministry in hunting you down as a dangerous thing of darkness." And Harry responded, one last time,

"My mother and father love me, no matter what!"

And then he gave his last order to them: "Conjuge: join yourself!"

Between the power of Harry's mental control over them, and the power of attraction between soul-mates which Herpo had spoken of, the two fluid-like soul-pieces seemed almost eager to obey, seemed to spread and pour themselves over the six Riddles whom Harry had called from death. Somehow the six old horcrux-Riddles were dissolving themselves and using the two last fragments as a grotesque kind of paste with which to re-form themselves into one body.

There was an indescribable motion of souls in that 'space' of their own which wasn't quite up-and-down or side-to-side, a kind of whirlwind of dark matter and finally, after perhaps a minute or less, one figure was standing where before there had been six, or seven or eight. It was a man of about seventy, and he looked it, though he was still recognizably the same man who had once been the brilliant, handsome schoolboy. And what happened next was the one event of the day, or of the whole of his magical life, which Harry found the most astonishing, stranger and more shocking by far than time travel or phoenixes being reborn or all the rest: the seventy-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, turned towards Harry with a sorrowful expression, and bowed to him.

Harry turned the stone to banish Riddle back into Death's realm for good, and spent the next few minutes crying uncontrollably in the arms of his mother and father. And then, it was time for them to say goodbye as well.

Sept. 19 (later) . . . so I turned the stone, and they were gone.

I felt pretty pleased with myself for coming up with that way of using the stone to dispose of Riddle for good, and rather stupid for having such trouble coming up with a thought which could repel him. My explanation or excuse, I guess, is that I'd become trapped in the idea that it had to be some 'power' of mine that would win, that it needed to be the things I had done, the things that made my parents proud of me - being brave and such - which had to supply the mental force that would overpower Riddle. Not just this kind of passive thing, this being the recipient of the kind of steadfast love that I could never earn or deserve. That wasn't wizardly enough. But it is, isn't it? If that isn't magical, what is?

[Pause]

So... tomorrow I think I'll show up for breakfast at Hogwarts and say "Hey, guys, anything interesting happen while I was away? Because I've got a story or two..."

If only. I really don't know how everybody will react to hearing the story; incredibly good news, obviously; huge relief, obviously; but also probably a large chunk of "why didn't you trust us? why wouldn't you let us help you?" Especially Ginny. She might even wonder if I couldn't have used her feelings for me as a patronus thought, but – just the fact that I don't even know if I can say "Her love for me," tells the story. And why should I be so sure of it, we're 17 and 16, we're not at a time to be sure of anything, certainly not stake-your-life-on-it sure. And I think I can also give some good reasons for keeping the whole thing from them until it was over. But, I don't know... maybe I can't fully answer except by talking about the feeling, the feeling which might be a psychotic delusion, that I had some special instinct about how this had to be done, since I'm the favorite child of Death or something.

Speaking of which, I tried to destroy the hallows, and found I couldn't. Even using the elder wand to try to crack or burn the others, didn't work. Couldn't break the elder wand either. So I tried to give them back; in effect, I tried to contact Death, and said, "Take these back or, if that would be too show-offy, to make them vanish, at least take back their power." I waited for a moment, feeling pretty stupid, and then tried using the wand: and it didn't work; I couldn't cast anything with it. Felt full of excitement, so I tried the stone: it didn't work anymore either. But when I put on the invisibility cloak and stood in front of the mirror, the cloak was working just fine. So it hit me, it was all in my mind. The magical objects which required intent – the wand and the stone – wouldn't work for me, because I didn't want them to work, and the cloak isn't something that relies on that, so of course it still worked.

I guess this will be my last entry.

Sept. 20 (early morning). One more entry, to tell about this dream.

I was sleeping – I mean, in the dream, I was sleeping – and got shaken awake, and there was a young woman sitting by me on the bed, looked about Tonks' age; black-haired, dressed in black, with a funny-shaped pendant on her necklace. "It's called an Ankh," she said, and I knew, the way you know things in dreams, that this was Death.

"You're a lot better-looking than you are in your pictures," I said. (I sort of knew it was a dream so I didn't worry about the consequences of sassing Death.) She laughed and said "Everyone says that."

"So, what brings you here?" I asked. (I also somehow knew she hadn't come to take me with her.)

"I have a little gift for you," she said.

"Is it something that comes with the Hallows? Because I really did want to give those back to you; as long as you're here, you can pick them up."

"I know, Harry, and I did take back the power of the wand and the stone. I thought I'd let you keep the cloak, because that's more of a family thing, and I didn't want to deprive you of something that mattered so much to you for that reason."

"Wow, that's really nice of you. Wait, does that mean I can hide from you?"

She laughed again.

"That's why I like you so much, Harry. You ask that as if you don't want to take unfair advantage of me. Don't worry about it, I'm really not out to hunt you down, and I don't think you're going to try spending your life hiding out under that cloak so that you'll never have to die."

"God, no. I don't think even Riddle would do that."

She looked thoughtful, like she wasn't quite sure if he wouldn't do exactly that if given the chance. I wondered if she took any special satisfaction at getting Riddle in the end after all his machinations against her, but if she read my thoughts this time she didn't respond to them.

"Back to the subject," she said. "I thought you deserved something, after giving up the Hallows. That, and I think you're kind of cute." (I blushed.)

She produced a bag, and she poured out its contents on the bed. It was a whole bunch of those little Ankhs, like she had around her neck.

"Each of these," she said, "represents a life I would have had to take earlier, if you hadn't stopped Riddle at Malfoy Manor. I know you still feel awful about Severus, and you always will. But this is part of the other side of things, not that I'm saying one side undoes the other. Pick one up."

I picked up one of the Ankhs now strewn on the bed, and I saw Charity Burbage taking the killing curse at the Manor.

"Another."

I picked up another, and Mad-Eye Moody was plummeting to his death from a broom.

"Another."

Scrimgeour assassinated by Riddle, a family in Germany killed by Riddle, Bathilda Bagshot, Ted Tonks, Dirk Cresswell.

Dobby.

Remus.

Tonks.

Fred.

Many, many more.

"I could never have believed Death had undone so many," I said. "Wait, where the hell did that come from?"

She smiled.

"As I said," she went on, "one side doesn't undo the other. But from time to time, particularly when you're getting too broody and angsty, you're going to be walking in your dream, and you'll find yourself with these Ankhs in your hand, and you'll think again of the people who have more of a life because of what you did, and of the friends you still have that you might have lost in a different world."

"Well, thanks again. You know, you're also a lot nicer than you are in the stories. But why come to me in a dream this way, why not just show up during the day and give me this?"

"Think of it as a way of preserving plausible deniability, Harry. Whenever you think of this, you won't say to yourself, 'I spoke with Death!'; you'll say, 'what an interesting dream I had about Death'!"

"I guess that makes sense."

She patted my cheek.

"See you later, Harry. Much later." And I woke up.

And said to myself, "What an interesting dream I had about Death!"

END

The portrayal of Death here is of course taken from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" saga. (I didn't think it was a big enough part to make this count as a crossover, though.)

"I could never have believed Death had undone so many" was Dante's reaction on seeing the souls in the Inferno. Contact with Death herself, like contact with the resurrection stone, sometimes brings knowledge of appropriate old quotations.