Harry Potter was certain he was dreaming.

This couldn't really be happening. He wasn't standing in the devastated Great Hall at Hogwarts, he couldn't be. That wasn't the Weasley family over there, standing together in a tight, redheaded heartbroken huddle. And that couldn't really be Fred lying so still, so pale, at their feet, cut off forever mid-laugh...

And over there, that wasn't Tonks lying with that same stillness, her lurid hair turned mousy brown by death. Beside her, looking so completely, so heartbreakingly, at peace, was Remus...

A shuffle of movement caught Harry's eye, and he watched a small group of tattered and weary witches and wizards lower a black robed form to the ground, next to Remus and Tonks, and Harry dug his nails into the skin of his hands, not caring that he was aggravating already painful cuts and bruises.

Why didn't he wake?

This was beyond surreal. How could it be that Severus Snape, evil-cruel-greasy-git Snape was in fact none of the things they had called him in hatred... was neither willing murderer nor traitor to the Light. And now he too was dead, dead saving Harry once again from the Dark Lord's demented malice.

The Dark Lord. Voldemort. Tom Riddle. Harry had at last fulfilled his destiny as the Chosen One, becoming forever the Boy-Who-Lived, the One who had vanquished Lord Voldemort for good.

So why did it feel like a dream?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. How could he win and still lose? This victory was supposed to restore his life to him, make things somehow right. Why had it gone so wrong?

Nor was the death the only loss. A year ago he'd grieved at Dumbledore's death, watched in frozen, stricken horror as the old Headmaster's body had fallen with almost avian grace from the top of the tallest tower... and now he felt he'd lost Dumbledore all over again. Lost him in so many ways beyond death's simple inevitability. Just as he'd lost, so shockingly, so stunningly, his conviction that Snape wanted him dead.

How could his world tilt so suddenly on its axis, and still allow him to stand?

He turned, slowly, and found his rock sitting nearby, looking nearly as detached as he felt. She sat with her old rigid-backed pose in the Headmaster's throne, uncaring of ripped robes, smashed spectacles, bloody face, bloodier hands, and dishevelled hair.

He stumbled towards her, nearly tripping twice. Her eyes met his, and he remembered her pride in him, and how it had warmed him. He remembered her shriek of grief and anger when Hagrid had carried his limp and unconscious body into the hall after his first confrontation with Voldemort. Remembered the fierce hug she'd given him in the immediate euphoria of his victory.

"Professor," he said. Hearing his own voice made him feel more grounded, somehow.

The corners of her mouth twitched in a movement that was half smile, half grimace. "Mr Potter," she said with the same calm inflexibility he'd heard a thousand times in her Transfiguration classroom, in his seven years as one of her Gryffindor charges.

He tried to breathe, but the air wasn't moving in properly. Or out.

"Sit down, Mr Potter, before you fall down!"

Her familiar sharpness made his eyes fill, and he blinked the tears away. As his vision cleared from the distorting effects of salt water, he realised he could see properly again. See with hideous, vivid, soul shattering clarity.

This was no dream. Merlin, it was real. It was all real.

He collapsed bonelessly at the feet of his old Head of House, who was, as she had always been, solidly, dependably there.