Disclaimer: I placed a bid on Percy once, but my cat head-butted me awake before I learned the outcome. Sadly, I must conclude that I don't even own the characters in my dreams.
The Ministry lay in shambles. All floors had areas of collapse. Blood painted the walls. Down in Department of Mysteries, a slender redhead made his way toward the sounds of the final battle. He held his wand in his left hand, and braced his limping against the wall with the side of that hand. His right arm he held curled against his chest, with only a bundle of cloth at the end of the wrist. As he turned left into the last corridor, he stumbled over a body. Wincing as his right arm hit the wall, he spared the skinned face a brief glance before trudging on.
At the end of the corridor, a door stood open. Inside the room, a red-eyed man with a reptilian face traded curses with a young man. The youth's short, black hair stuck out wildly. Cracks filled the left lens of his spectacles. The room held one other person: a scrawny, middle-aged woman decked out in too many 'mystical' baubles. Heedless of the two fighting, she stood calmly breaking through the enchantments around a blue ball secured to a pedestal. The redhead's eyes widened as he realized what the Unspeakables kept in that room. He scrambled inside, keeping to the walls.
Large chunks of plaster rained down on him, throwing him off balance. He had to cast his shield spell wordlessly as fine particulate entered his airways and made him cough. The jerking further weakened the resulting spell. Through the haze, he could see the snake man aiming another curse at him as his own shields absorbed his opponent's hex. Realizing even a decent shield would fail against that curse, the redhead started running. He tripped almost immediately. As a result, the green light of the deadliest curse known to wizards to hit the wall directly above his bum. A split second later he screamed as he landed on his nonexistent right hand. The brunette turned to him as the redhead rolled onto his left side. Green eyes widened as they caught sight of him. The snake man took advantage of the distraction to target his opponent's back.
"HARRY!"
With the redhead's warning, the man turned around in time to spot the green curse flying at him. It slammed into his gut and threw him to the floor. As he landed, messy bangs parted to reveal a lightning bolt scar. '
The redhead's eyes widened as he stared at the still form. "Harry..." he breathed. Fear and anger filled his face. He rolled onto his back, shooting a bolt of bright yellow magic from his wand. It hit the reptilian man in the nose, and threw into the opposite wall. Pushing himself up to his knees, he looked back and forth between his wand and the falling snake man. "How?"
The sound of breaking glass filled the room. Alarmed, the redhead looked over as the woman removed the sphere from the shelf. "Stop!" he stood and rushed over to her. He aimed his wand at her as she turned.
"I must finish my task," she said flatly, the whites of her eyes a neon orange--the result of a recently developed ward that indicated the presence of the Imperious curse.
"What task?" he asked calmly as he approached slowly. Individuals under Imperious were notoriously unpredictable.
"The task my master set for me," the woman replied.Oh, of course, the man thought sarcastically. "What are the detai--Master! He ensorcelled you?" The redhead demand, and started to turn. "Then--"
"He's not dead?" a voice hissed in his ear as an arm wrapped around his throat. "Very careless to turn your back before checking that fact," the reptilian man seized the redhead's wand. "You will pay for your impudence, Weasley. But first, I'll let you watch as your precious Potter's prophecy is erased from history. You will witness a world where I became supreme years ago. I'll be your god, and you'll beg my forgiveness long before I grant it with the mercy of death--"
The dark lord's arms jerked backwards and Weasley fell from his slackened grip. Something wet and warm hit the redhead's head and neck. The woman cried out. The redhead rushed foreword and scooped the grapefruit-sized globe out of her hand as she collapsed to the floor. Absently noting the bright red splatter of arterial blood on the wall in front of him, he turned. He brought the sphere protectively to his chest, folding his right arm over it.
And relaxed his posture as he saw Harry dragging the throat-slit corpse of the snake man to the center of the room, a bloody knife in his right hand. "He'd be our god?" Harry scoffed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Just when I thought he couldn't get any crazier." The green-eyed youth looked up at Weasley. "You okay?" Harry's eyes slid to the bloody stump of his wrist. "Er..."
"Yes, thank you," the redhead cut him off brusquely. "So is he gone for good this time?"
"Well, I didn't see the disembodied spirit that I saw my first year. That should mean Ron and Hermione destroyed the last Horcrux."
"He's alive then?" Weasley blurted, the relief evident in his voice as he sat down on the floor.
"Huh?"
The redhead flushed at Harry's bewildered look. "I know he can take care of himself--better than me, in fact. But he has always followed you into these insane messes. When he wasn't here--Horcrux!?" Weasley gestured at corpse, voice rising. "He created a Horcrux! And Ron set out to destroy it? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What can happen to the wizard who tries to destroy such a dark artifact?"
"Yeah," Harry nodded, more blood running from the corner of his mouth. "I took out Nagini before I faced Voldemort, and the three of us spent the past year hunting down the other three."
"Other THREE!? It's possible to butcher your own soul more than once? How--That--He--Depraved--"
"Incindio," Harry chanted, waving his wand over the corpse. The spell cut off the redhead's splutters.
"Why'd you do that?" he asked.
"In his quest for immortality, Voldemort did dark rituals to more then just his soul. I want to be sure he stays dead this time."
Weasley snorted. "Even a vampire needs blood flow, despite popular myth. Still... I believe I will sleep better knowing he's ash."
"Yeah."
"So Ron," Weasley began after they stared at the burning corpse a few moments. "He is doing all right? Obviously you don't know if anything happened since you came here, but if he's tagged along on three similar stunts unharmed, he should--he was unharmed for a change, right? I mean, you're not that reckless with him?"
Harry tilted his head studied the redhead a minute. "Is that why you believed F--"
Weasley cut Harry off with a growl. "I get enough of that from my family! I don't need you rubbing it in."
"Well obviously you need someone to! You're actions--"
"I prefer not to dwell on things I can't fix, thank you. Trust me, I wish I could go back and change things, but--"
A bright blue light burst out from the sphere he held. Weasley fell to the ground motionless. As Harry rushed foreword to help, he hit the dome of light and collapsed...
With a jolt, the redhead sat up in a bed he had not seen in years.