"I don't get it, Harry," Hermione commented as she helped Harry dig a trench. "Why are we doing this instead of continuing the search for the Horcruxes?"
"Because killing You-Know-Who won't solve the problem," Harry said, "Riddle's followers have completely taken over the government. If we defeat him and leave them in place, they'll just continue running the Ministry to suit themselves. Even if they all claim to repent after their master falls, they'll just work behind the scenes like they did after the last war, and in ten years' time the only difference between the world they wanted and the world we'll be living in the that the purists will have to pretend to be civilized while in public.
"If we want to really win the war, we've got to defeat the Death Eaters and everyone in the Ministry working on their behalf before we take out the Dark Lord."
"But how is a trench and wall going to do that?"
"It isn't. It's going to provide us cover while we do so."
An hour later, the two had successfully dug a deep trench and shaped the dirt into a wall.
"Alright," Harry said, "Next step. Dobby, Kreacher!"
The two house elves popped in.
"I'll need one of the crates I had you gather."
Moments later, a crate had been placed in the trench. Harry opened it and started removing plastic blocks from it.
"Harry, are those…" Hermione asked.
"Yup," he answered as he attached the blocks to the wall and wired them together. Then he transfigured himself a periscope, which he placed in the trench.
"How is this going to defeat the Death Eaters?"
"We've just set up a trap. Now all we need to do is set the bait. Fortunately, that's easy to do.
"The greatest strength of an irregular force like the Death Eaters is that their enemies don't know who or where they are between attacks. But thanks to a certain spell that their leader cast, all I need to do to make them openly come to me is say the word Voldemort."
Hermione's eyes widened as Harry deliberately set off the taboo. Then Harry hurriedly guided her around the wall and into the trench.
Five minutes later…
Harry set down the periscope. "All clear," he announced.
The two got out of the trench and walked around the wall. Hermione took one look at what lay on the other side and turned away.
Most of the Snatchers on the other side were dead. The rest were working on it. All of them looked like they had been torn to pieces by an explosion. That was essentially what had happened, after all.
"Harry, you just…" She began.
"They'd have done the same or worse to us. You know what they did to Neville's parents. What they're doing to every muggleborn they can get their hands on right now. You watched Umbridge put a dozen people on trial for offending her sensibilities with something beyond their control. That will continue unless we stop them. Not just ending the war, but doing it so decisively that they won't come back and try it again in our children's time, and in their children's time, and over and over again until they either have the entire magical world under their boots or get everyone killed trying.
"The Ministry always claimed that they won the last war, but all they really did was end it. I'm not making that mistake this time. Are you with me?" Harry held out his hand.
There was a pause as Hermione considered his words, then she turned and took it.
"Come on. We need to finish off the wounded, banish the bodies, and reset the trap."
One hour later…
"Dobby, we're going to need another crate."
Three hours later…
"I hope we have enough crates in stock."
Six hours later…
"COME ON! I can't believe that they're this stupid! The Taboo is being set off in the same place over and over again, and none of the people they've sent to investigate have come back. Surely Voldemort is smart enough to connect the dots by now!" There was a pause as Harry realized he had set the Taboo off early, and the two rushed to finish resetting the trap before the next batch of Death Eaters arrived.
The next morning…
Lord Voldemort apparated into the clearing. His servants had been responding to people setting off the Taboo on his name for hours now. None of them had returned. And the Taboo had been set off yet again.
Looking around the clearing, he saw no sign of his followers. The only unusual feature he could see was an earthen mound, which had clearly been erected recently. Placed on top of the mound were a number of boxes. Walking over to them, Voldemort cast a quick spell and determined that they were wholly unmagical. As he picked one up, he saw that there was writing etched on one side.
FRONT TOWARD ENEMY
Voldemort barely had time to register the sound of the claymore mine going off in his hand before a hail of steel ball bearings cut him down.
In the halls of the Ministry of Magic, the Wizengamot met. What was left of it, anyway. A few days previously, there had been a massive rash of mysterious disappearances. Many members of respectable families had vanished without a trace. Attempts to get the Ministry to look into this proved in vain when it was revealed that a great many people in the Ministry were also missing, including Minister Thicknesse himself.
It soon became clear that nobody had any answers as to what had happened and why. It was also clear that nobody was willing to accept that. The meeting quickly degenerated into a senseless shouting match. The fighting came to an end when one voice called out.
"I know what happened."
Everyone stopped and looked around to find the source of the voice, but they couldn't see anyone. Then an object appeared out of nowhere and was thrown to the center of the room. One member picked up the object and held it up to show it to the others.
It was the head of Lord Voldemort, with a large hole punched straight through it.
"Every single person who disappeared had one thing in common," the voice announced, "They all chose to serve in Voldemort's forces, and demonstrated this willingness by trying to attack someone who had set off the Taboo. However, instead of finding some innocent victim to torture or murder, they found me." There was a pause as Harry Potter removed his invisibility cloak.
"I triggered the Taboo on purpose, to draw the Dark Lord's forces to me, and when they appeared, I cut them down. Then I did it again, and again, and again, until every single person willing to follow the orders of that madman was dead, and he had to investigate the Taboo himself. And then I killed him too.
"Some of you want to claim that the people I killed were upstanding citizens. I say to you that the fact that they showed up when I triggered the Taboo is incontrovertible proof that they were terrorists, who are not upstanding citizens by definition.
"Some of you might want to claim that with Voldemort's head on the floor, that he is dead. I tell you that so long as people are willing to champion his cause, his spirit lives on. Every time someone advocates pureblood supremacy, they are stating that they wish for Voldemort's rule. Every time someone allows talk of pureblood supremacy to be considered acceptable, they are surrendering to him. Voldemort will not truly be dead until his cause is dead. And I say it dies now.
"You are going to start passing laws ending all favoritism based on blood status, and converting the Wizengamot into a representative body, and you will do it today. If you don't, you'll all be answering to me." Harry pulled out his wand, and waited.
The Wizengamot looked at the Boy-Who-Wiped-Out-All-The-Death-Eaters-In-A-Single-Day, and hurriedly got to work.
Harry walked into the Headmaster's office. With the death of half the faculty during his purge of the Death Eaters, the office was empty. One portrait took notice of his arrival.
"Ah, Harry, my boy. I wasn't expecting to see you so soon." Former Headmaster Dumbledore said.
"Once I started taking the war seriously, defeating Voldemort was easy. The war's over." Harry said.
"Oh, you managed to destroy all the horcruxes, then?"
"No, but it doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter? But if any of them remain, his followers can revive him again!"
"It doesn't matter, because I've wiped out his followers. Nobody will want to resurrect a failed dark lord whose entire army was wiped out in a single day by two people. Without the Death Eaters, Riddle is just a powerless wraith. I can track down and deal with the horcruxes at my leisure now that the war is over."
"I am disappointed in you, my boy," The old man's image chided, "You're walking a dark road. Many of those people could have been guided back to the light…"
"Every single one of the people you wanted to guide back to the light is someone who you failed to keep from going dark in the first place. I wasn't fighting in the war to redeem terrorists, I was fighting to save their victims, and the best way to do that was to win once and for all. I've removed the Death Eaters, and bullied the Wizengamot into making the reforms that you should have made years ago. Now Hermione and I just need to deal with the last place that allowed the dark to spread – Hogwarts."
"Hogwarts has always been the bastion of the light!" Dumbledore protested.
"Don't make me laugh. Your policies created them, and weakened everyone who would stand against them. You allowed the Slytherin purists to radicalize their housemates and torment everyone else in the school, even when Draco was calling for the genocide of a quarter of the student body. And when anyone tried to stand up to them, you allowed Snape to punish those who fought back while letting the instigators off scot-free. Your actions taught the dark that their behavior was acceptable, and that resisting was wrong. We're going to fix that now, by turning this place into what it should have been all along – a place of learning, not the headquarters of a poorly defined Greater Good that never comes.
"Well, I have work to do, so I'll be going now. But just so you know, this is the Power The Dark Lord Knew Not, which I used to defeat him and his followers." Harry wrote something down on a piece of parchment and left it on the desk within the portrait's field of view.
After Harry left, the portrait read the parchment, upon which was written:
Those skilled at making the enemy move do so by creating a situation to which he must conform; they entice him with something he is certain to take, and with lures of ostensible profit they await him in strength.
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War