Harry Potter was dead. Lord Voldemort had won. Now he stood alone in the place he had killed the Chosen One, the boy’s open grave before him.
The young corpse’s expression was peaceful in his grave.
The murder weapon held in one hand and dirt and stones in the other, Lord Voldemort would not bury the body.
The half-giant had been a disconsolate mess; an obstacle that had refused to surrender the boy’s body. So he, too, had been executed. It took time and effort, but Bella managed. She had been euphoric.
Of course it was not grief that stayed Lord Voldemort’s hand now. But it wasn’t euphoria, either.
It had been euphoria when the boy had come to him here in the Forest that fateful day. It had been a glee so vivid he’d been dizzy at the edges of his consciousness.
He remembered the glow on the boy's face, now. The most beautiful, most Slytherin of greens, the green on green on green, like it was a comet crossing the sky and streaking across the boy’s eyes. The glow was so bright it made the world look like it was deep in the night and the green moon was between them.
And then the spell landed–he had finally killed the Boy Who Lived! In every way, had he not defeated death? He killed his own mortality, and then he killed the unkillable…
And then it was once again another dreary, cloudy day.
Voldemort could not understand how the dead boy looked at peace.
“What are you waiting for, Tom?” It was Dumbledore’s ghost, standing opposite him on the other side of his grave.
The dirt in Lord Voldemort’s hand slipped from his surprised fingers, but a stone remained–the stone that was once cradled in his ring. This whole time, it was the Resurrection Stone?
Lord Voldemort narrowed his eyes. “You,” he hissed.
“What are you so desperate for, you'll live forever for it?”
“I will not entertain this. You lost. You are dead. At long last be gone!”
The ghost stared unfeelingly into the boy’s grave.
“Why are you holding off? Is it that you miss having a nemesis? Or is it that you’re dreaming alone now?”
The words were a stinging hex.
“I should tell you–you’re mortal now, and there’s nothing left to make another Horcrux with. So be ca–”
Lord Voldemort dropped the stone and the ghost disappeared. He did not close the grave.
That night he returned with a snitch that was dropped in the forest clearing. Voldemort began his ritual, the snitch awaiting his soul, but as the ghost had said there was nothing of substance left of him.
His soul, much like a brittle autumn leaf, could not bear the regret. It disintegrated, and Tom’s body fell before the savior’s open grave in a position much like grief.