Disclaimer: HP is not owned by me. Neither the sauce or the boy. LB

The One Where Everyone Laughs

Lord Voldemort stared and then screamed in anger as the portkey and its surrounding people vanished. He couldn't believe it; the boy had escaped him again!

Ever since the Ministry forces and the Order of the Phoenix had been joined under one leader, things had gone from bad to worse for the Dark Lord. Minister Dumbledore (Fudge had died from shock when he found his office filled with balloons baring the dark mark – the culprits were never identified) now ran the country with a kind but firm hand. Well coordinated Auror/Order teams protected the main magical sites – St. Mungos, Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and the Ministry itself – leaving Lord Voldemort attacking villages and Quidditch pitches if he wanted to keep his Death Eaters alive.

And all the while that boy, messy haired, infuriatingly happy, chosen one - Harry Potter! taunted the power of the Dark Lord at every turn. Slipping out from his grasp again and again, Lord Voldemort was starting to think that the boy would even come back from the dead just to haunt him.

He screamed again, throwing unforgivables around him. He just...couldn't...take...it...anymore!

In the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, Harry Potter winced and then grinned, the pain and anger flooding down the scar-link proving that when he got mad, Voldemort got sloppy. In his mind he tutted; not putting up his occulemency barriers, silly Dark Lord. Harry sniggered and then continued with the head count – four Aurors and one Order member down, not bad when facing the main body of Death Eaters.

His eyes quickly spotted two heads – one a fiery red, the other a bushy brown – hurtling towards him. Ron skidded to a stop, his left sleeve torn and blood on his cheek, the excited look on his face contradicting his injuries. He bounced up and down whilst Harry disentangled himself from the bushy hair in his face.

"Well? Well? Did it work?" Ron enthused.

"Unless he's got really good at faking...it worked." Harry said dryly, not bothering to fight the smile on his face as he tried not to eat any more hair, "Erm. Hermione? You can let go of me now." he added.

"Oh. Sorry." Hermione unlatched herself, blushing lightly.

"Aww. Sweet." commented Harry, walking over to the trio.

"Yeah, if you ignore the fact that she's supposed to be my girlfriend." Ron mock-scowled, making Hermione blush more and latch herself onto him.

"You don't look too injured." said Harry to his doppelgänger.

"Your good luck goes with your looks!" teased Harry.

"You should have since his face when we portkeyed away." said Ron, pulling an awful twisted expression.

"I think it was a bit more like this..." Harry corrected, his face suddenly morphing into the snarling hate-filled features of the Voldemort.

Ron yelped startling the strangely quiet Hermione at his side, earning him an elbow poke. Harry shuddered saying, "You have no idea how unnerving that is."

Voldemort's face grinned unnaturally before bright pink hair grew over the bald skull and Tonks reasserted her usual looks.

"Wotcher." she said, ruffling her hair into a decent style, "So, now that we've enraged the beast, what next?"

"Now we have to rely on Snape." said Harry seriously.

"Still say that's a really bad idea. After everything he's done, the greasy git." Ron scowled.

"Shut up, Ron." Hermione and Harry sing-songed, both so used to his complaints they didn't even try arguing anymore.

Snape bowed before the Dark Lord, smirking on the inside. Potter had underestimated how furious "his" escape would make Voldemort.

Pacing back and forth across the small space of the cave he'd been forced to hide in (the Riddle House had been raided and seized soon after Dumbledore's accession to Minister), the Dark Lord, commander of dozens of Death Eaters, most feared wizard in generations, was muttering under his breath. He sounded like he'd finally snapped. Certainly Severus had been close to doing that back when he'd been teaching the insolent brat, but seeing Voldemort doing it leant a strange sense of surrealism to event.

"My Lord?" he asked, injecting a false note of fear into his voice.

Voldemort swivelled, his red gaze fixing on Snape as a twitch started in his cheek. "What?" he hissed.

"I have received news of a camping trip, my Lord." said Snape obsequiously.

"A what?" the twitch in Voldemort's cheek got larger.

"A camping trip, my Lord." repeated Snape, "The...enemy and his best friends will be in the Forest of Arden for three nights."

Voldemort visibly flinched at the mention of the individual who had destroyed his life and, by the looks of things, his remaining sanity. Then his brain clicked into gear and he asked, "Alone?"

"Yes, my Lord." Snape confirmed.

"When?" Voldemort practically yelled; another chance, and this time he would win!

Snape gloated internally; the plan was working, Voldemort's anger was clouding his judgement. He would never have even considered this as anything other than a trap if he wasn't, literally, twitching with anger. Maybe Potter did deserve some form of thanks...hmm, maybe he wouldn't poison him after all.

The cracking of a twig alerted Harry to the return of Hermione, but he pulled out his wand nonetheless, Moody's yell of "Constant Vigilance!" echoing through his brain. Hermione stepped into the firelight, a small smile on her face. She sat down next to the sleeping form of Ron and gently brushed his hair back from his face.

"Pumpkin Pasties." she said, seemingly randomly.

Harry nodded and put away his wand – it was the password for the night. "How are the others?" he asked.

"Nervous, but ready." she said, rummaging in her bag for her latest reading material.

Harry grunted, he knew what that felt like; the butterflies in his stomach had started the moment they had apparated to the forest and he kept checking his wand was at hand.

"When do you think he'll turn up?" asked Hermione, her own nerves buried under planning and determination.

"No idea. We've heard nothing from Snape, and the usual methods of tracking him failed weeks ago. We've just got to wait." Harry rambled slightly, eliciting an understanding smile from his best friend, "It's just so different, y'know?"

"How do you mean?" Hermione asked, knowing that the messy-haired boy just needed an outlet for all that energy.

"Every time I've gone up against him before it was by accident. Halloween, First Year, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and then what twice in Seventh?" Harry ticked the encounters off on his fingers, "Diagon Alley, Salisbury. Then there was Trafalgar last year. Each time I was just living my life, or fighting for others' and he just...turned up. I've never set out to do it before. It's just...different."

"Do you remember what Ron said when he arrived at Salisbury?" Hermione reminisced, her eyes watching the fire between them.

"What? Fu-"

"No." interrupted the witch, "Seventh time's a charm."

Harry snorted, remembering that fight. He'd been exhausted and bleeding from a dozen places before Voldemort had arrived. By the end of the night, Stonehenge was a few stones short and Harry had lost two of his fingers on his left hand, and his nose would never look the same again.

"Moody took one look at me after that fight and said, 'Looking good'." Harry chuckled, "I swear he doesn't think you're a proper Auror without a broken nose and bits missing."

Hermione started to laugh with Harry, when a sharp Crack! cut them both off. Silence fell on the clearing as they both pulled out their wands and backed out of the firelight, Hermione nudging Ron awake with her toe as they went. Ron was up in a shot, wand in hand, reaction times born of fighting a war and living, unhappily, as an Auror for the last two and a half years.

As the three of them watched from the shadows, a Death Eater emerged from the forest and started looking around the small camp, searching for any sign of Harry. Harry glanced back at Hermione and Ron, his nerves vanishing as the games began, but the pair were already disappearing into the forest to summon the others.

Taking a deep breath Harry strode out into the clearing, muttering a stunner in the Death Eater's direction. He fell to the ground with a thud, and Harry quickly went over, pulling up the left sleeve of the midnight robes. There, in all its twisted glory, lay the Dark Mark, burnt into the man's flesh. Thanking Fawkes for the shared cores of his and Voldemort's wands, Harry pressed the tip of his wand into the vile tattoo, reversing the call to the Death Eaters and sending one of his own to Voldemort. His mind felt the shadow of Voldemort's pain through the occulemency barriers as the Dark Lord was summoned.

Harry quickly bundled the Death Eater (who he suspected was Snape) into the tent and shrank back into the shadows to wait. He didn't have long. The crack of Voldemort's apparation sounded like a starting pistol in the still air, and Harry sneered. It was possible to make apparation as quiet as the breeze; all that sound was just showing off.

"Potter!" the Dark Lord hissed, and Harry walked into the light.

"You rang?" he said cheekily.

"Bane of my existence! You will die!" shrieked Voldemort, pointing his wand in Harry's direction.

"Sure. Whatever." said Harry nonchalantly, "But first you will. Now!"

At Harry's cry the clearing filled with people; they burst out of the darkness to surround Voldemort in a circle. All members of the original DA, they were well prepared for this moment that the last six months had been leading up to.

Curses were flung from all directions, Voldemort spinning and ducking as he countered the onslaught. What he failed to notice was that not one of the curses was deadly, nor were they really serious. Among the cries could be made out individual curses of: "Tarrentallegra!", "Furnunculus!", and "Densaugeo!".

It took Ginny's infamous Bat Bogey Hex to break through the powerful wizard's defence, and soon Voldemort was a dancing snotty mess, desperately shouting "Finite!" every few seconds.

Harry grinned, the good feelings he was focusing on boosted by the sight of the Dark Lord brought low by first year hexes. Ron's idea was working perfectly. What he was about to do need the purest feeling of joy and happiness he could summon. Something he'd never been able to do in the presence of Voldemort. By making the Dark Lord into a sight that would make even Snape laugh, it counteracted the dread.

He giggled again as Voldemort's angry, "Avada-" was cut off by Fred's well-aimed spell based on the ton-tongue toffees. Then Luna and Neville's curses hit at the same time and the snake-like man turned a violent shade of puce with yellow spots. Harry couldn't help it, he burst out in wild laughter. As if that was a signal, all the DA stopped throwing curses.

Panting in the centre of the circle was a very strange looking Voldemort, though the murderous look in his eyes hadn't changed. Harry stepped forwards and fighting his way past his giggles incanted, "Expecto Patronum Spiritus!"

A familiar stag flew out of the end of his wand, but rather than the usual shade of silver, it glowed a brilliant gold. Cantering through the air it dived right into Voldemort, vanishing in an instant. Then a high pitched giggle, quickly stifled, rang out from the one man who hadn't been in a good mood.

Voldemort looked around wildly before he burst into laughter again. Looks somewhere between freaked-out and amused bounced around the DA members, as Voldemort collapsed in howls of laughter. A few smiles broke out on faces, Voldemort snorting and giggling to himself.

Then, sometime between a laugh and a hiccup, Voldemort gasped and fell.

The silence in the clearing was hopeful as Harry walked over and poked the Dark Lord with his boot.

"He's dead." he announced.

Cheers went up, sparks of every colour zoomed into the sky, and Harry was hugged by so many people that he fell over smiling in pure relief. At last he was free to live his life!

Many long years later a white haired old man stood at the foot of a grave, his arm wrapped around his bushy-haired wife.

"We thought we'd get here before the crowds, mate. It being Harry Potter Day, and all." Ron said cheerfully.

"You've no idea how difficult it was to get him up this early." confided Hermione to the stone.

"Herm, love, it's five am!" retorted Ron with a smile. The pair still fought like Crookshanks and Scabbers, but both knew it was never truly serious anymore.

"Anyway," Hermione continued, "We just wanted to say that we love you and miss you."

"Only you would die in such a clichéd way." added Ron.

"I don't know, Ron. Dumbledore choking on a lemon drop..."

"Yeah, well. Dying of a heart attack whilst catching the snitch for the over a-hundred league, in the hundred and fiftieth minute, thus earning the team a hundred and fifty points, when he was a hundred and fifty, is pretty bad."

Hermione tutted, shaking her head, "I hope you die doing that Wonky Faint thing." she retorted.

"It's Wronski Feint!" cried Ron, "Honestly, Hermione, how can you have been married to a famous Quidditch player for a hundred and twenty years and not know that?"

"It's only a game." said the witch, as they both laid flowers at the stone.

"You hear that, Harry? Only a game, she says." Ron sighed, "It's not just a game, dear, it's all about tactics and strategy-"

"And who can prove they're the manliest." Hermione interrupted.

"Say that to Ginny!" mocked Ron, as they walked away from the gravestone and back to their waiting family.

The sunlight broke through the clouds and highlighted the words etched in black on the white marble:

Harry James Potter

31 July 1980 – 31 July 2130

Live. Love. Laugh.

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