If in DH when Harry was killed he was given a choice to come back and fight or go on.

What if he decided to stay dead? His sacrifice would still be valid, Voldemort’s powers would be mostly broken, not able to properly harm people anymore.

The final battle we see would still happen exactly the same up until Harry’s former reveal, so all his Death Eaters would be dead or captured, his regime crippled beyond repair.

But we see even with his powers broken he still duelled three vs one and kinda won.

What would happen to finish the battle and after.

 

That ending might have been more satisfying for adults, but it would have left a generation of kids traumatized. Like when Old Yeller was shot. We'd probably have even more shitty time travel fanfic too. At least it would have spared us the epilogue.

My guess is that the British magical world could have been better off in some ways. Harry would have been turned into a powerful symbol, and his martyrdom would have been used to annihilate pureblood supremacy. With Harry alive, people could simply rebuild and think, 'well, that was awful, but at least we had Potter to replace Dumbledore.' With Harry dead, they all have to struggle with why their society required a child sacrifice--twice--in order to save it.

Best case scenario, he becomes a messianic figure, and the DA generation remakes society in his image. Worst case, magical Britain is left without a symbolic hero, the traditionalists who tacitly supported Voldemort retrench, and the aftermath is like vultures fighting over a rotting corpse.

 

I'm not sure how anything would happen to Voldemort except for losing his accidental horcrux. Even if we assume Longbottom still kills the snake, Voldemort is no less deadly. If the rules of wandlore decide to be especially cheeky, he won't be able to use the Elder Wand properly, but that's about it; he could probably still win the battle since his followers control the Ministry.

 

I haven't reread the end of DH recently, but the way I remember it, Voldemort literally couldn't harm anyone. Harry's sacrifice protected everybody, just like his mother's sacrifice protected him. Maybe he could have played defense well enough to escape, but he had a small army of people gunning for him.

Edit: I like to think that Parvati could have nailed him with something nasty--a hair-growth inversion hex?--after what happened to Lavender.

 

No. Harry’s sacrifice broke Voldemort’s powers. Voldemort could never again cast full harmful magic against them.

He fought three powerful magic users and won, but couldn’t kill or maim them.

It’s a odd balance of power.

 

Oh, that's interesting. The general cringe of DH has kept me from rereading it. In that case I would need some sort of estimate of how many people were still alive on each side at that point to hazard a guess as to how that would go down, because it did not really seem like one side or the other had it entirely in the bag. If he managed to escape, it'd be interesting to see how Voldemort would try to skirt the rules with that, like making a new horcrux by killing someone through nonmagical means and then planting the horcrux down the throat of a mind-controlled dragon. He then creates a dark wizard school and becomes a teacher, like he always wanted. You could spin out a whole new plot from this if the battle doesn't just immediately end one way or the other.

 

The premise here is that Harry died in the first and stayed dead.

So everything stays the same really until Harry stops Voldemort turning on Molly.

So basically Voldemort’s whole army and the vast majority of his death eaters are dead or captured.

Yet Voldemort is alive and no one, no three people can take him on, yet he can’t kill or maim.

 

I honestly don't think it would end well. No, Voldemort doesn't understand love and his respect for sacrificial magic is non-existent, but given enough time, and since I doubt the possibility of the Ministry being able to capture him, time will be something he has a lot of, I think he would eventually find a way around it.

 

Seems simple enough. Use spells that indirectly harm the target. Projectiles, concussion curses, lifting and throwing people (letting gravity do the work of actually hurting them). Most elemental-type attacks would probably still work since they focus on harnessing/conjuring external objects and forces that are then aimed in the direction you want. So Fiendfyre would probably still work fine, since it seems to take on a life of its own once it's conjured and only relies on the caster for focus and direction.

Honestly, if Voldemort wasn't so laser-focused on the Killing Curse and other spells that required his magic to act directly upon the bodies of his enemies, Harry's sacrificial protection probably wouldn't have amounted to much.

 

By my recollection, none of the defenders were killed following Harry's sacrifice. He cast shield spells in several instances to protect people moving into the castle, and cursing some Death Eaters from beneath the Cloak so that they were trampled by giants and centaurs. Harry's protection appeared to be sparing everyone fighting against Voldemort's forces. The key to the victory from that point would be making sure Voldemort and his senior followers didn't escape. More people were arriving to fight, so even Voldemort would have fallen to expert attacks, eventually.

 

At the time Molly offs Bellatrix, there were hundreds of people lining up the walls watching both their duel and Voldemort's three-to-one. Even removing Harry's interventions, I think the number of free Death Eaters would be negligible. From this point, I think there are two possibilities considering Harry's sacrificial protection:

1) Voldemort's Avada rebounds on Molly like it did on baby Harry, and without his Horcruxes he dies and she's hailed as the Mother-Who-Lived. The Epilogue would pretty much the same but with Neville instead of Harry and the kids being called Frank Freddie, Alice Luna and Harry Lucius Longbottom or something.

2) Molly "only" gets back up after the spell fails, and I think Voldemort would see the writing on the wall and flee, because there's really no one able to stop him completely. He would probably blame the Elder Wand for his failure and take the yew wand again, and assemble any follower of his who weren't in Hogwarts. With time he would notice that his spell don't work anymore, and he would probably understand how Harry trapped him.

Depending on the breadth of the protection, that might make him unable to hurt anyone, or simply force him to get creative. As a last option, he would probably indoctrinate Delphini into doing the grunt work for him. Or sacrifice her in an attempt to break the love protection, both are about equally probable.

 

There's no person left to beat Voldemort in narratively satisfying way. I think the best idea is Goten's - Voldemort's Avada rebounds on him. I could imagine a world where Voldemort decides to avenge Bellatrix and targets Ginny, only for the curse to rebound off her. But that's probably the fanfiction in me speaking.

 

We're told that what Harry did was effectively the exact same sacrifice Lily made for him, so I can't imagine Voldemort's attack on Molly ending any other way, really. Even if it didn't result in his immediate demise, we also saw him set Neville on fire and that did nothing lasting, so no, elemental attacks clearly aren't an answer for him either.

 

I'm not sure that Harry's sacrifice would be enough to ensure a win. He managed to blow away Minerva, Slughorn, and Kingsley and he was still described as "striking and smiting all within reach" previously. Though Voldemort may not be able to make his victories permanent, it seems that he can temporarily slow people down since his body-bind took some time for Neville to break. Since his death eaters are more than capable of killing for him (given how Ginny barely dodged death from Bellatrix's killing curse per scene narration), I think the victory goes to Voldemort in the end.

 

But the vast majority of his death eaters are dead or captured in this last fight.

It’s said when Bella falls she was the last of his lieutenants. Hell he has even pulled in Pius the imperio’ed minister. He seems tapped out on supporters.

 

It's true that his death eaters had taken significant casualties before Voldemort died, but the description after Voldemort's death states that Death Eaters ran away or surrendered and that many of the imperiused in the country were coming back to themselves. I think the implication is that Voldemort still had a significant force at Hogwarts which probably wouldn't have routed if Voldemort hadn't been defeated. Even if Voldemort had to retreat from Hogwarts, he has the imperiused to start building back up from.

 

When you think about it the moment he chooses to return is supposed to have emotional weight and be almost a sacrifice. Harry sacrificing his peace and the next great adventure to go back and face Voldemort.

In reality it's either, "Welp, may as well go back and take a crack at it. Either I win or I'll be back in ten minutes, don't go anywhere."