Harry knew two large magically expanded internal parts of the trunk he wore shrunken and hanging on an unbreakable necklace around his neck were filled with that gold. He didn't need the gold for any purpose. He just didn't need the space in the trunk for anything else really.
Now it was just another memento. Like his parents' photo-album that Hagrid had gotten him, or the pieces of his first firebolt. The one Sirius had gotten him. Harry had another broom stored in there, but he never gave up the pieces of the first one. One of the only gifts he'd ever received from anyone in his life he felt even closely resembled a parental figure.
Another person lost because of Dumbledore's pathological need to keep secrets.
Harry violently wrenched his mind away from that line of thought. There was no good in dwelling on his intense anger for a man years gone. He returned his focus to the here and now. Back to the game between he and Voldemort.
That's what it had become. It wasn't a war any more. They were all that was left. They were all that had been left for almost a year now. Harry had no friends or allies left alive.
Well, almost no friends.
He glanced up at the sky by instinct and could see Hedwig's white outline in the sky. Hedwig had been his constant companion since he'd been introduced to the magical world, and now she was his only companion.
Voldemort had merely a handful of Death Eaters left alive. Even his demon horde had been massive thinned by Harry, so only a few still remained, but Harry had gotten really good at killing demons. And of course his damned snake. Nagini always slithered around her master. But beyond those handful of servants, Voldemort had no one. Harry had personally seen to that.
Occasionally, Harry wondered who had more blood on their hands. Himself or Voldemort.
The point was that Voldemort had very little left… and nowhere to recruit more.
Hell…the magical world itself had a handful of people left alive.
Now it was just a continuous cycle. One or the other would step outside of wherever they were hiding behind obscuring wards at the time to draw the other out. The other would attack, and one or the other would gain the upper hand before the one at a disadvantage would escape.
Voldemort refused to die or let himself be killed. Harry refused to lose and leave Voldemort alive before succumbing to oblivion himself. So one or both would retreat to lick his wounds, while the other waited for the inevitable next confrontation.
Harry hated Voldemort with his entire being. Revenge was all that motivated him at this point. Voldemort had quite successfully taken everything from Harry. His parents. His innocence and wonder of the magical world. His friends. Any desire he had for a future. His entire life.
The constant conflicts with Voldemort had even taken its toll on his health. Harry limped through the street toward the ministry because a demon had latched onto his leg and bit clean through the muscle, taking all the flesh down to the bone. That and his missing eye was merely the most visible. His body bore scars everywhere from the constant conflicts he'd been in.
His body would likely not even be mobile if it hadn't been for the runes that covered a large portion of the dragonhide armor he wore. Studying runes and integrating them into his body armor had been a long, and painful but necessary process. It had been something that Bill and Hermione had come up with after he had taken the curse in his leg. In the same fight that they had lost Ron.
Runes to strengthen his armor for protection. Runes for nearly anything and everything.
The branding of the rune into the dragonskin had been time consuming, but it was the powering of the rune from his magical core that hurt. Each time he had to power a rune for a permanent basis, and affixed to his armor, it was like volunteering for the Cruciatus curse, and then left him magically exhausted for days after, as his magical core expanded and adjusted to each new drain on it.
It had been Hermione that suggested that she or Bill help power the rune initially and then Harry attempt to give the final push of power to the run to permanize it and link it to himself. They never got to explore the idea before he'd lost her too. God he missed her. She was a genius and one of his best friends for years.
He was 23, but most times physically he felt like he was 80. Mentally he felt like he had always been 40. He moved with the weariness of someone who was mentally and emotionally dead or exhausted.
Every time he and Voldemort had one of these encounters, it usually lead to one or the other of them injured enough to require a month or two of recovery. Harry was Voldemort's personal obsession now. Harry alone had done more damage to his forces than anyone else, and the margin wasn't even close. After he'd lost the last of his friends and allies, Harry had gone on the offensive, and it had resulted in the current state of affairs.
Though the question was academic, at times Harry wondered if he had personally killed more witches and wizards than Voldemort had. He was nearly positive that he was responsible for more deaths, either indirectly killing enemies, or foolishly leading friends to their doom. Not to mention the hundreds and possibly thousands of Demons he had slain.
It had been almost three months since their last encounter. In that encounter, Voldmort had been the one forced to retreat, though Harry had managed to take out two of his remaining death eaters during the fight. They had attempted to trap him, and he had turned it around on them.
Harry had spent the last four months as a non-entity ghosting through the muggle world. Eating or sleeping when he required it. It wasn't hard to steal when one had an invisibility cloak, a disillusionment spell, confundus spells, notice-me-not spells, not to mention various memory charms and obliviates. He stole most of what he needed to live, and even some things he didn't need.
Before the last encounter (when he was recovering for almost 3 weeks from a curse that made his bones grow uncontrollably) he had stolen what had probably been his eighth muggle electronic device. It was mostly just a project to keep him from going insane. But he had been immeasurably satisfied when he'd managed to etch runes into a popular mp3 player that allowed him to use it when he ventured through magic areas, and continually charged it.