The Final Battle

Chapter 1: Neville

He charged through the driving rain like a man possessed, hurling curse after curse at any Death Eater stupid enough to try to stop him. After nineteen years of being in the shadows of his betters, Neville Longbottom shone. To anyone watching he looked like a vengeful God, doling out justice to any who dared trespass against him. One by one his enemies fell before him as he searched the battlefield for the one foe he cared about.

When he finally spied her, desperately guarding her Lord, a grim smile overtook his features. 'One way or another,' he told himself as he purposefully strode toward his target, 'this ends now.'

Step by step he came closer, until he was less than fifteen feet away. Still she hadn't noticed him. In the beginning of the battle, there had been dozens of Death Eaters guarding their master, but now she was the only one left. He could easily kill her with a single spell and she would never know what hit her.

'But I don't want that,' he thought to himself, as he gazed at the woman who had ruined his life three times over. 'I want her to know it was me. I want her to look at my face as she dies.'

Beyond the woman, he saw her Lord locked into a fierce battle with Neville's friend and compatriot, Harry Potter. Beyond that, Severus Snape was guarding Harry in much the same way that Neville's enemy was guarding her Lord. Neville felt a subtle pride knowing that, along with his vengeance, he would be opening up the Dark Lord to renewed attack from his flank. Neville knew that that fact should be more important than his personal revenge, but he just couldn't bring himself to think of it first.

Neville shook his head to rid himself of these and all other superfluous thoughts, honing all his focus on the upcoming battle. Setting his stance and steeling himself, he addressed his adversary. "BELLATRIX LESTRANGE!" He roared above his din of the battle and the driving rain.

Her head whipped around at hearing her name, and her eyes lit up at seeing the young man. He couldn't hear it, but he saw her lips move in a way that suggested she had just growled, "Longbottom…" under her breath.

Neville rolled his wand between his fingers in anticipation as she abandoned her post and slowly made her way over to him. When they were about ten paces away, she stopped and smiled maniacally at him. At this distance they could hear each other relatively well, and Bellatrix took advantage of that fact. "So, Longbottom," she shouted at him, "you've come to give me the opportunity to finish off your pathetic family?"

Neville did not respond, but he stopped rolling his wand and gripped it tightly in his hand. Taking his silence for fear, Bellatrix kept shouting at him.

"First your parents," she taunted, "17 years of misery in that hospital. Really, you should have thanked me when I slit their throats last year. And then your grandmother. Well, she was old and useless, wasn't she? I put an end to her life before she could realize that fact."

Bellatrix's grin grew wider with each word of her diatribe, and Neville's eyes became more hate-filled. "Really, Neville," she finished, as she took the proper stance for a duel, "you should be thanking me instead of…well…doing whatever it is you trudged up here to do."

"I'm here to kill you, Bellatrix," Neville responded in a steely voice. "Nothing more and nothing less."

Bellatrix locked eyes with Neville then, and what she saw there made her smile falter. She realized for the first time that he wasn't just some child with delusions of grandeur. Neville was willing to die for this. He was willing to die in order to see her death. Bellatrix saw this, and, for the first time, felt a twinge of fear.

Neville saw this fear in Bellatrix's eyes, and smiled. He smiled and knew he was going to win. Bellatrix was too old, too insane, too confident, and too tired to do anything but die in this battle.

Bellatrix saw Neville's smile and her fear grew more intense. Driven by this new fear, she lashed out; throwing a deadly curse towards Neville which she hoped would end this silly duel before it even started.

Neville easily rolled out of the way and returned a curse of his own, which Bellatrix effortlessly sidestepped.

Time was a blur of colors and movement for Neville and Bellatrix, as they battled to the death. The intensity of their battle rivaled even that of Harry and Voldemort, catching the attention of idle soldiers from both sides. Curse after curse was thrown between the two combatants as the minutes slipped towards an hour. But, just when it seemed to both Neville and Bellatrix that their duel would end in stalemate, Neville suddenly caught Bellatrix by surprise and hit her with a full-body bind.

Still clutching her wand, Bellatrix fell stiffly to the ground. Neville stood stock still, blinking in shock at the turn of events. He had thrown that spell only to keep her busy while he thought of something nastier, not hoping in his wildest imaginings that it would actually hit her, considering how easily she had dodged everything else he'd been able to muster. Still dazed, he cautiously made his way over to her, his boots squelching in the mud as he did so. He vaguely noticed scores of Aurors rush past him towards Voldemort, but his attention was still held by the woman in front of him. Only a few steps away from her now, and he could see her eyes darting frantically from side to side, searching for any sort of help and finding none.

He was by her side now, grinning at her predicament. Quickly a voice in his head cautioned that he was receiving far too much pleasure from this, but he pushed that out of his mind just as quickly. This woman had done so much to him that he felt a little pleasure was warranted.

Convinced that he had no reason to worry, Neville knelt in the mud beside her, so that he could look into her eyes.

The rain had slackened, and the battle seemed to be winding down with it. So, when Neville whispered to the woman on the ground, she could hear it easily. "It's a terrible feeling being in a full-body bind, isn't it? I remember it well, though I would wager that this is a lot more frustrating for you than it was for me. I'm in such a vulnerable position right now, and, if you could just make the slightest move…you could kill me almost instantly."

Neville's grin turned into a full-blown smile as he leaned down and whispered directly into his tormentor's ear, "But you can't. You can't kill me, Bellatrix…but I can kill you. And I don't care if I'm damned for doing it."

He straightened up and looked directly into her eyes, holding them with his own. Taking his wand, he pressed it against the underside of her chin as hard as he could. His visage had lost all sign of joy or enjoyment, and, in fact, there were tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "Die," he said, in a voice devoid of all emotion except for grief, "Just die."

Neville opened his mouth to invoke the killing curse, ending Bellatrix's miserable life once and for all, when the entire battlefield was rocked by a cataclysmic explosion. Neville was thrown through the air by the force of the blast and landed on the ground more than twenty feet away, rolling through the mud head over heels. He ended up face down in the mud, and, with the last remaining ounce of his strength, managed to turn his head to the side to keep from suffocating before he blacked out.

The next thing he knew, he was being violently rolled over. His hair clung wetly to his face, and he could only see through one eye, because the other side of his face was completely caked with mud. Disoriented, he wasn't sure what to make of the fact that whoever had rolled him over was now straddling his chest until he felt the wand being pushed against the underside of his chin and Bellatrix Lestrange's grinning face came into his line of vision.

"Oh, Neville, Neville, Neville," Bellatrix cackled as she brought her face within an inch of Neville's. "You thought you had me, you silly prick. But you're just too weak, Neville. You and your entire fucking family."

Bellatrix was so intent on her own speech that she didn't notice his hand moving beneath her. All she knew was that she could see his wand twenty feet away, and because of this she felt totally safe. She pressed her wand harder into the soft flesh under his chin and laughed sadistically.

"I think you put it best, Neville," she whispered into his ear, "Die. Just die."

She opened her mouth to sentence him to his death, but he cut her off, saying, "You first, Bellatrix."

Confused, she looked down at him, and he nodded downward. Before she could even bother to look, she felt it: cold steel pressing against her stomach. She knew that feeling well, and when she cast her eyes down to where he had indicated her fears were proven. He was holding a short, silver dagger against her abdomen, poised to strike.

As quickly as she could manage, she straightened up and shouted, "AVADA KED-!"

But Neville was quicker. He shoved the dagger into her stomach as hard as he could and pushed upward until he struck bone. The killing curse died in Bellatrix's throat, and Bellatrix died a few moments later, her body collapsing to the side of Neville's.

Neville lay on the ground for a few more minutes, taking in the silence of the once roaring battlefield. The rain had stopped completely and the sun was all the brighter for the darkness that had come before. Neville let out a hitching sigh and rolled onto his stomach. With a grunt of effort, he pushed himself up and stood.

In the bright sunlight, covered in blood and mud, Neville Longbottom surveyed the battlefield. As this juncture, Neville didn't know who had lived or who had died, but he did know one thing: The Light had won. Good had triumphed over evil, and it was time to start a new life.