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The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry could not see Fred's body, because his family surrounded him. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs. Weasley was lying across Fred's chest, her body shaking. Mr. Weasley stroking her hair while tears cascaded down his cheeks.
Without a word to Harry, Ron and Hermione walked away. Harry saw Hermione approach Ginny, whose face was swollen and blotchy, and hug her. Ron joined Bill, Fleur, and Percy, who flung an arm around Ron's shoulders. As Ginny and Hermione moved closer to the rest of the family, Harry had a clear view of the bodies lying next to Fred. Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling. The Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, shrink, as Harry reeled backward from the doorway. He could not draw breath. He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him.

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"He'll be all right", murmured Ginny.
As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead.
"I know he will". The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.

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If you don't end up in Gryffindor we'll disinherit you. But I don't want to put you under pressure.

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But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest portrait directly behind the headmaster's chair. Tears were sliding down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled Harry with the same balm as phoenix song.

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The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

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He could no longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air...
The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.
I open at the close. Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have bypassed thought. This was the close. This was the moment. He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, "I am about to die." The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco's wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, "Lumos." The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch.

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Like rain against a cold window pane, these thoughts drummed against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth: he had to die. I have to die. It had to end.

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He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in hisdread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered.

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Ginny looked up into Harry's face, took a deep breath, and said, "Happy seventeenth."
"Yeah. . . thanks."
She was looking at him steadily; he, however, found it difficult to look back at her; it was like gazing into a brilliant light.
"Nice view," he said feebly, pointing toward the window.
She ignored this. He could not blame her, "I couldn't think what to get you," she said.
"You didn't have to get me anything." She disregarded this too.
"I didn't know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you."
He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brother must have toughened her up. She took a step closer to him.
"So then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing."
"I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest."
"There's the silver lining I've been looking for," she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair.

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The law of the wise teddy bear says: it's better a good book at the loo than a shitty book in the living room.