Rosalyn became aware that she was lying on the forest floor, half of her face pressed into it. She heard Bellatrix fussing over Voldemort, and him shoving her away, then she heard someone coming over to her. A comment from Bellatrix told her it was Narcissa Malfoy.

"Come on, Cissy, check if she's dead!"

Narcissa leant low over Rosalyn, turning her back to the death eaters. "Is he alive?" She barely whispered, but Rosalyn could hear every word. "Draco, is he alive? Is he in the castle?"

I'll tell you if you tell them I'm dead, Rosalyn thought. However, she did nod her head. She felt Narcissa stand up and begged her not to give her away.

"Dead."

Rosalyn could have celebrated right then and there, if she hadn't been playing dead.

Voldemort made a noise of joy. "Then we must announce it! Hagrid, you carry her- they need to be able to see her red hair-"

Rosalyn felt Hagrid's big arms pick her up, and for that moment, she was just glad that the person carrying her wasn't a death eater.

The procession continued out of the forest, up the grounds, across the bridge and into the courtyard. Rosalyn's heart ached as she heard Neville's voice.

"Who's that Hagrid's carrying?"

They already knew. Him, Ron, Harry and Hermione.

When they got close enough, and the death eaters were on one side, the order, DA, students and teachers on the other, Voldemort announced joyfully.

"Rosalyn Potter... is dead!"

Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville's voices were much worse than Hagrid's.

"Silence!" Voldemort shouted. "You stupid people. Rosalyn Potter is dead. From this day forth, you put your faith... in me."

They weren't going to do that.

Voldemort turned to the death eaters. "Rosalyn Potter is dead!"

There were great cheers and laughs.

"And now is the time to declare yourselves!" Voldemort shouted. "Come forward and join us... or die."

There was a pause before Lucius Malfoy spoke up. "D-Draco..."

"Draco," came Narcissa's warmer voice. "Come."

Rosalyn heard Draco move, and Voldemort welcome him, but she zoned out until she heard him speak again.

"And who might you be, young man?"

"Neville Longbottom," Rosalyn heard the shame in his voice. It lit a fire in her stomach as death eaters laughed.

"Well, Neville, I'm sure we can find some place for you in our ranks," Voldemort sounded reluctant.

"I'd like to say something," Neville raised his voice, clinging onto the sorting hat that lay in his hands.

Voldemort paused. "Well, Neville, I'm sure we'd all be interested in what you'd like to say."

Neville paused. "It doesn't matter that Rosie's gone."

"Stand down, Neville," Rosalyn heard Seamus speak up.

"People die everyday," Neville turned to him side. "Fred... Remus... Tonks... we lost Rosie tonight. But she's still with us... in here," he pointed to his heart. "They didn't die in vain," he turned to Voldemort. "But you will! Cause you're wrong! Rosie's heart did beat for us! For all of us! It's not over!"

From the sorting hat he pulled the sword of Gryffindor, brandishing it at Voldemort.

Rosalyn had had enough. Throwing herself out of Hagrid's arms, she fell to the ground immediately, bruising herself as she did so. She didn't worry about this, however, as she got to her feet at once and yelled "confringo!" At Nagini. The spell didn't work, of course, but she didn't care. Only glimpsing Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville's shocked and joyful faces for a second, she ran, dodging the fire spells and killing curses Voldemort sent at her.

The whole mob suddenly disbanded, and the battle began again.

Rosalyn met up with her fellow quartet members and her boyfriend at the doors. Before anyone could do anything, Neville ran at Rosalyn, kissing her on the lips and looking into the hazel eyes that he thought he would never see again.

"For a second I thought I'd lost you there," he breathed.

"For a second I thought that too," Rosalyn nodded breathlessly. She then turned to Harry, Ron and Hermione, though she was already sprinting inside the oak doors.

"I'll lure him into the castle, you have to kill the snake!" Rosalyn hollered at them.

"You'll need this!" Hermione chucked her a basilisk fang which she caught gratefully.

She ran into the blown apart castle after giving Neville a look. 'I love you so much', it said. Or she hoped it did. She might be dead in a matter of minutes.

She was going to find Voldemort. But the solitary also gave her time to think about the elder wand.

Voldemort had killed Snape because he thought Snape had been the master of the wand... but that wasn't true...

With a thud of her heart, Rosalyn knew.

Wands didn't have to pass from hand to hand by death, just by winning. So disarming would qualify. She thought back to the Astronomy tower and remembered that way way back, before the death eaters or Snape, when there was only three people on the tower. Draco Malfoy had disarmed Dumbledore.

So he was the master of the wand.

Was.

But then Rosalyn brought her thoughts more forward and realised... that at Malfoy Manor, she had disarmed Draco.

She was the master of the wand.

She realised this just as Voldemort came storming up the stairs. Rosalyn ran out from hiding behind a pillar and then green light came flying at her.

Protego, she thought, and shielded herself from the killing curses that kept flying at her.

But Voldemort broke the shield, and Rosalyn had no choice. Thinking, expelliarmus! the red light met the green, and yet again, Rosalyn's and Lord Voldemort's wands connected.

Behind her, Rosalyn could see the snake, curled up on the stairs. In a moment of madness, she pulled her wand upwards, collapsing in half the ceiling, then jumped off the stairs. She felt a pain in her ankle and thought she had badly bruised it, but again, she didn't care. Brandishing the basilisk fang, she jumped towards the snake, who seemed to sense that even she couldn't survive that.

Suddenly, the banister Rosalyn was leaning on was blasted away and Rosalyn was thrown off it. She dropped the fang and slid down the stairs, watching it fade to nothing at the hands of Voldemort before her eyes. Nagini took this time to slither away. Please be ready Ron, Hermione, Rosalyn thought desperately.

She ran to the area of Hogwarts with loads of wooden bridges, but suddenly Voldemort materialised in front of her. He made the bridge she was standing on collapse to the floor below.

Rosalyn made to get up and fight, but she found a black rope on each wrist, and soon, one on her neck.

Voldemort was stringing her like a puppet, gradually strangling her and lifting her up. She was thrown back onto her back, on one of the bridges, struggling to get up.

"You were right," she choked as Voldemort used wandless magic to knock her back. "When you told Professor Snape that wand was failing you, it will always fail you."

She was backed up against a wall of the castle that had fallen in, leaving a treacherous cliff that fell at least a hundred metres.

"I killed Snape," Voldemort pinned her up against the wall by the neck.

"But what if the wand never belonged to Snape? What if its allegiance was always to someone else?" Rosalyn asked him, backed up. She challenged him, however, a smirk making its way onto her face. "Come on, Tom, let's finish this the way we started- together!"

She flung her hands around Voldemort's neck, launching them both off the hundred metre drop. Naturally, Voldemort turned to black smoke to survive, and this time, Rosalyn turned with him. She knew he would throw her off if she wasn't careful, so she grabbed on tightly, waiting for the moment when they would crash into the ground.

Which they soon did.

Rosalyn felt terrible, but she couldn't stop. Looking up, she saw her wand a few metres away from her. She crawled to get it as Voldemort did the same, but Rosalyn knew she couldn't yet destroy him, as the snake hadn't been destroyed-

She again cast her disarming charm and Voldemort cast his killing curse. Their spells met in the middle and collided, making Rosalyn have to hold on for dead life to the wand that was keeping her alive.

Suddenly, however, the spells stopped. Voldemort looked worried. Very worried. Rosalyn knew exactly why.

The snake had been killed.

In that moment, the two just looked, then both at the same time, exactly in sync, they raised their wands and the final duel began.

Rosalyn knew that Voldemort was using the elder wand, and she also knew that she was the master of it. It'll come to me, she thought, it has to.

And suddenly, the wand in Voldemort's hand released itself to join its master, and the priori incantatem stopped there and then. Confused, Voldemort looked Rosalyn up and down as she jumped up to get the elder wand, grabbing it.

Rosalyn looked at Voldemort as he started to fade. His body broke up into thousands of pieces, his robes were the only thing that remained. He screamed as he fell, but one thing was sure.

Lord Voldemort was dead.

☆☆☆

Rosalyn, a very relieved Rosalyn, walked into the great hall and saw a very big mix of people. However, she only sought one person.

She sat down beside Neville, looking at him. The scars on his face had gotten worse and his hair was dirty, but he was still him.

She spoke first. "Look, Neville I'm so sorry about your grandmother, I-I should've just given myself up, look, I understand if-"

"I love you," Neville interrupted her. She stopped talking, turning to look at him. "I still love you, Rosie, I'll always love you. I promise. Gran... she's in St Mungo's."

Tears came to Rosalyn's eyes. "Neville... I'm so sorry."

She rested her head on his shoulder. Neither spoke. Neville sighed, hugging her to him. She had to know how much he loved her.

After about five minutes, Rosalyn saw Harry, Ron and Hermione standing a bit away from them. She looked at Neville.

"Go," he said.

Rosalyn walked to her best friends and the four of them left, walking out to the bridge that had been half decapitated.

Rosalyn held the elder wand in her hand.

"Why didn't it work for him? The wand?" Hermione asked, genuinely curious.

"It answered to somebody else," Rosalyn answered. "When he killed Snape, he thought the wand would become his, but the thing is, the wand never belonged to Snape. It was Draco who disarmed Dumbledore that night on the Astronomy tower, and from that moment on, the wand answered to him.

"Until..." Rosalyn explained. "That night at Malfoy Manor when I disarmed Draco."

"So that means..." Ron caught up.

"It's mine," Rosalyn held the wand up. "But... I was happier with mine, so..."

She got out her broken wand and tapped it with the powerful one. "Reparo!"

Ron, Hermione and Harry took a moment to digest this. Rosalyn grinned as she got her wand back, however. "So... what are we doing with the other one?" Ron asked.

"We?" Hermione echoed.

"I'm just saying, that's the elder wand, rhe most powerful wand in the world," Ron reasoned. "With that, we'd be invincible."

Rosalyn, however, had other ideas. "Voldemort killed about five people searching for this wand alone," she told her fellow red head. "So..."

She took the wand in two hands and snapped it, then chucked it into the lake. She didn't care what people thought of her, she just wanted it over with.

And finally, as she, Harry, Ron and Hermione stood together on the bridge, it might just have been.