It Ends Tonight
A/N--- I have given into temptation so here it is: my Final Battle fic. Everyone does it, why not me? This is not a companion to "Lose Yourself." No Neville bashing, sorry. ((And yes, the title is from the song.))
Harry flinched as his feet, which seemed far heavier and larger than normal, made tremendous noise as he slowly walked up the stone stairs. He avoided the all too familiar trick step but nearly tripped over an unfamiliar obstacle; a small girl who had fallen dead on the stairs as she had tried to climb to the safety of the North Tower, which had been sealed off. Shutting his eyes, Harry moved past her with great care to her small hands and ignored the squelching sound her blood now made on his shoes.
Past the stairs, he heard desperate cries for mercy echoing around a great passage and knew by the sudden stop of them that they had gone unheeded. Praying to no God in particular, he wished desperately that he didn't know the poor souls.
By the time Harry had reached his destination, the Room of Requirement, most all sounds of the battle were too far away for him to make out properly, creating a moment of calm as he paced outside the door.
I need a place to fight Voldemort, he thought, a place where no one can find us, where no one else can get hurt.
At the third pass, a large stone door appeared. After a failed attempt at a deep breath, Harry pushed the door aside with great difficulty. He stepped in and found the room, completely empty, to be just as bleak as he felt. The walls were black with age and soot, and the one window was covered in grime that was flecked with red. The air seemed too thick for Harry to breathe properly, so he tried to open the window.
The screams from the grounds below, forgotten by Harry as he had become entombed in this room and the castle, now pounded at the walls. Hastily shutting the window, Harry stepped back.
There was a moment, hidden in his fear an in his anxiety, that he considered running for it, considered hiding out in the Forbidden Forest until somebody found him or, better yet, until he found somebody. He could find himself a friend and build a little house out of fallen trees (with help from Grawp, of course)…or perhaps the giant himself could be Harry's friend! The smile Harry had allowed himself to have vanished when he saw the grimy windows again; there was something in the blood and muck mixture that made him see, without a doubt, he could not leave. The darkness of this room had him, and he would never be free of it until Voldemort showed up.
Slow footsteps and the soft calling of his name outside of the door shook Harry out of his thoughts. He tried to turn sharply towards the noise, but fell; the blood had made his shoes too slippery. Angrily swearing, he muttered a quick Evanesco at his shoes and tried to scramble to his feet but couldn't.
The floor itself, the grime and muck, had attached itself to him, holding him down. As Harry struggled against the room, the door opened.
Darkness framed a monster, more grotesque than anything else in existence. Harry stopped struggling and tried to breathe deeply again. With a flick of the monster's wand, Harry found himself free of the floor and on his feet. Immediately, the door slammed shut and the two enemies faced each other, wands out and at the ready.
"So, Potter, what do you call this place?"
Harry just stared at the red eyes, not rising to the bait. His heart was thumping painfully in his chest, and he felt like he wanted to scream. Voldemort started moving towards the window, and Harry tensed; he was not going to be caught off-guard by anything tonight.
The window creaked open for a second time and the now familiar sounds of death and pain filled the room. Harry didn't dare cringe, although he dearly wanted to, because the red eyes of the beast were boring into his. Instead, he settled for tightening his grip on his wand.
"Ah, yes. This is much better." Voldemort said with a smirk, indicating to the window. "I do love the smell of fresh blood. So…crisp, don't you think?"
A scream ripped through the room from the field below and this time Harry couldn't help it; he let out a yelp. He knew that person, he was certain he knew that person screaming. But who was it? Without thinking, he ran over to the window and looked out. It was useless a thing to do. The only lights were from the moon and wand-tips, and neither was strong enough to illuminate the battle below.
Harry realized his mistake in turning his back towards Voldemort the moment that the man laughed in his high-pitched and earth-shattering manner. With a flash of light, Harry was one the ground screaming.
The cruciatus curse ripped through Harry's body for a minute before Voldemort let it stop. "We're back to playing this game are we, Potter? If I recall the last time I used this curse on you you hid from me. Take a good look around, boy; there's nowhere to hide this time."
Harry staggered to his feet, still silent. He knew that Voldemort was trying to get under his skin by mentioning the disastrous night of the Third Task, and Harry wasn't going to fall for it. He had spent years traveling throughout Europe and training for this night and no amount of mental scars was going to stop him.
Barely flicking his wand, Harry cast a powerful spell towards Voldemort. The enemy was blasted off of his feet and sent flying into the back wall, but not before hissing a spell under his breath. Harry grinned as a snake, summoned by Voldemort, became level with his face and flicked his wand to strike it.
Too late.
The snake had already lunged and had taken a good chunk out of Harry's chest, tearing his shirt in two. Still, Harry grinned. It was only a small flesh wound to him; he had suffered far worse from far more terrifying creatures. With a deft movement, he flicked his wand at the snake and watched it die. Seeing Voldemort about to make his way back over, Harry quickly drank the contents of a small phial that had been hidden in his now ruined cloak. Instantly, the snake wound became smooth as his the skin surrounding it, albeit a bit red.
Harry quickly kicked the wasted snake aside as Voldemort came back to the center of the room. Red eyes scanned the room and fell on the snake. Immediately a hard glint appeared in the rubies of the man's eyes and Harry took a grim pride in knowing he had put it there.
"You've killed my snake, boy."
"Yes."
There was a tense silence as Voldemort moved closer to Harry. Voldemort was angry, Harry could see that clearly. But did the man know what this death meant? Did he have any idea that Harry knew about the Horcruxes and the death of Nagini meant that he, Voldemort, could be killed just as easily as anything? Somehow, Harry doubted it.
Voldemort let out a terrible scream of anger that shook Harry's body. Without warning, the elder wizard grabbed Harry and slammed him against the wall, knocking his glasses off and choking him slightly. "You will pay for that, Potter."
Harry just grinned ruefully and kicked Voldemort as hard as he could in the softest spot he could find. With a slight yell, Harry was released.
Making the best out of his enemies' weakness, Harry raised his wand and uttered the fatal words. "Avada Kedavra!"
Voldemort moved at once and barely missed the curse. "What are you playing at, boy?" he hissed, rising at once from his spot on the floor. "You know I can't be…"
Voldemort froze as he caught sight of Harry's hand. There was a flash of something gold on Harry's ring finger. There shone one of the relics of the Gaunt family: Marvolo's Ring. Voldemort took a step back, horrified. Harry continued to grin as he dropped the ring onto the floor. Then he reached around his neck and took off a heavy locket before reaching into his pants pocket to bring out a small satchel.
As Harry pulled out the bag and returned it to his normal size, Voldemort looked around wildly for an escape. Harry noticed this and grinned. "There's no way out of here but death, boy." He said mockingly as he pulled a rather tattered diary, a goblet that sparkled with the inlay of a badger, and a quill that had a golden tip with the name "Ravenclaw" written in the tiniest of cursive. Throwing the bag aside, Harry kicked the snake over towards the small pile.
Voldemort wetted his lips slightly as he saw the items in front of him; Harry stood back to watch the effect of years of hard work and research. The wizard seemed unnerved, but he wasn't as scared as Harry would have liked him to be. Trying to convince himself that there was no way he could have been mistaken in any of these objects authenticity, he took Voldemort's lack of a proper reaction as shock.
"Well well well…so you've discovered my Horcruxes have you, boy? Alright then, let's duel and we'll see who's the better Wizard, once and for all."
With a flash of light, the duel began. It was violent and more than once the yells from the room were far louder and fare more brutal than the screams from the field. Every move that Harry made, Voldemort countered. Every time that Voldemort raised his wand, Harry was ready. They were evenly matched for the first time in either of their lives. Every time Harry would aim the killing curse however, Voldemort would find a way to avoid it. Within an hour Harry was frustrated; by the end of the second hour, Harry thought he might lose his mind.
Both of them were a bloody and mangled mess due to the violent spells going through the air, sharp as knives. Their states rivaled that of the window that, while open, still reflected the blood and dirt of duels past. It was only when Harry felt a particularly violent speall slice at his knees and knock him to the ground that he dared to stop.
"Confused?" Voldemort asked Harry bending down so that their faces were merely centimeters apart. "Let me fill you in on a small secret of mine." His voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "I never found anything of Ravenclaw's."
Harry slowly looked towards the small pile on the floor of the Horcruxes. The quill with Ravenclaw's name skillfully written on it seemed to sparkle with laughter.
He had failed.
With a gulp, he turned back to Voldemort, knowing that his death was coming.
With a high-pitched laugh and a blast of green light, Harry Potter was no more.
With a high-pitched laugh and a blast of green light, the Order lost all hope.
With a high-pitched laugh and a blast of green light, the world ended.
Harry was buried quickly in a shallow grave by Death Eaters, the only marking of where the boy-hero's body lay was carved into a tree---a scar.
Ok, I know. AGAIN with the violence. I swear that some fluff is coming up soon. Oh, and I hope you'll all notice that the last word here is "scar."
grins