AN - Fair warning - not intended for serious reading...may cause brain damage. Blame it on Aloria!
'What bad luck I have!' he thought desperately.
Harry shook his hair from his eyes as he ran, narrowly avoiding corners as he careened through the emptied halls of Hogwarts.
Bad luck, bad timing- or maybe just a bad life, but in any case, here he was, running from Voldemort through the school. In retrospect, the day had started out normal enough. Harry had gotten out of bed, gotten dressed, gone to his first two classes, then it was lunch break and he'd met up with Hermione and Ron and then things had gotten bad.
The latest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had burst into the Great Hall, slinging reductor curses at students, and because Harry was... well, Harry, he felt it was his obligation to Get Involved and Save People. Typically, almost to the point of cliché, the teacher turned out to be Voldemort in disguise. Ron had been buried under a collapsing wall and Hermione had been hit dead on with a bolt, but had had enough time to speak to him on her dying breath, her frizzy curls glowing like a halo in the sunlight that had broken through the clouds and into the Great Hall as Harry held her.
Harry blinked tears from his eyes as he ran, recalling Hermione's last words...
"Harry- I- just wanted you to know... I- I- I've always loved... Snape."
"It's okay, Hermione! I've always wanted him too!" he'd replied, and then Hermione had gone limp and said "Hyurgh!"
Voldemort, after politely waiting for Hermione's death scene, had revealed his true form, and Harry had started this life-or-death game of Tag.
A blast ricocheted off the wall beside Harry, and out of instinct the boy dodged and dove to the side, rolling as another curse pulverised the stone tiles of the floor. Looking back as he scrambled to his feet again, Harry gasped as Voldemort glided effortlessly across the floor, his arm outstretched and wand pointed at Harry.
Eyes wide in mad glee, Voldemort shouted, "I will kill you, you little pest! And your little dog too!"
"But I haven't got a dog!" Harry objected with bewilderment.
Alas, he wasn't given much more opportunity to argue with the Dark Lord, for he had to leap aside to narrowly avoid another blast. Frantically, Harry began running again, then turned at a bendof the corridor to sling a cutting curse back at Voldemort. Unfortunately, the spell did little damage- just sparkled off Voldemort's shielding. Even more unfortunately, Harry found that he'd come to a dead-end, for ahead lay the closed doors to the courtyard. They were heavy and he didn't have the time to cast an opening spell on them and stand there and wait for the bloody things to slowly squeak their way wide enough to allow him to escape. About to just give up, Harry looked back just in time to see the Dark Lord lifting his wand again to cast another spell down the hall.
Ducking, Harry rolled as the incendio spell sizzled past over his head, frying the ends of his wild hair, and crashed into the large wooden doors that led into the school's courtyard. Relief washed through Harry and he scrambled to his feet and dived through the sizzling hole the Evil Dark Lord's spell had made in the door, rolling in the river pebbles that made the pathway beyond. Self-preservation instincts had him on his feet again and running left across the grass with the intention of putting the carnivorous rose garden between himself and the Dark Lord. Maybe it wouldn't slow Voldemort down much, but it'd slow him down and, well, if the hedge got blasted in the meantime, Harry wouldn't be all that sorry about it.
Even while Voldemort was slightly wider in build than the dark haired boy he chased, the Dark Lord was smart enough to not bother trying to climb through the hole Harry had easily dived through. Instead, since he had plenty of dark power to waste and Harry wasn't putting up much of a fight, Voldemort blasted the hole bigger and easily stepped out through the wreckage, to pause, turning to look around the area.
"Now where could that brat have gone...?" the Dark Lord murmured, then smirked as he heard the frantic cursing coming from the carnivorous hedges. "There you are..." Turning to the left, Voldemort threw a wide blasting spell at the hedges, obliterating the first row. Cheerfully walking across the wreckage, Voldemort blasted the second row, then the third, killing the plants gleefully. "Soon, the whole world will look like this!" he cackled, his red eyes glowing. "Blasted, twisted wreckage!"
Freeing himself from the clutching thorne of the last row of roses, Harry cursed at his bad choice of path. The roses had been more time consuming for him to go through then he'd hoped they would be to Voldemort. Stumbling into motion, Harry partially turned and threw another spell at Voldemort just after he blasted the last hedge that stood between them. Again, the spell sizzled off Voldemort's shield and Harry could have cried. This battle was hopeless without Ron and Hermione! And where was the Headmaster, or the other teachers for that matter?
Turning away, Harry ran again, leaping over craters Voldemort created in his path as he dodged his enemy's spells. Ducking around the side of the castle, Harry found himself in the cul-de-sac where the greenhouses had been built. While everyone else, upon hearing the destructive running battle between Harry and Voldemort had prudently fled the school, including the teachers and Snape- who was Harry's secret love even if he didn't know it- leaving Harry to fight this battle alone. Or so he'd thought.
Neville stood from where he'd been weeding a bed of cabbages and looked over. "Oh, hi Harry!" the oblivious boy said cheerfully, dropping the hand trowel on his foot as he waved to Harry. Sometimes Harry just had to wonder at him- considering that Neville's parents had gotten tortured to insanity right in front of the boy the same year Harry's parents had died. He'd always wondered if something had happened to his friend - nobody could be that clumsy normally. "Have you come to see my Horticulture Apprenticeship Project?" Neville asked. "No one else wants to see it," he pouted.
"Ah- look, Neville. I think you should get out of here. Voldemort's chasing me," Harry felt Obligated to point out to the boy.
Obliviously, Neville continued, "I'm making blue singing roses! I can't seem to get them to sing in chorus, though. I really wanted them to sing 'Silver Bells', but everyone else says I should have them sing 'Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy'. All they seem to want to sing is 'It's Raining Men' and I don't know who taught them that. What do you think, Harry?"
"I think-" Harry started to say.
"EXPLODICUS!" Voldemort shouted as he rounded the corner, landing a good solid blow on Harry as he blasted a crater in the perfect lawn and took out part of a row of turnips. The impact sent the boy flying, ripping his clothes and possibly causing internal injuries.
Landing hard, Harry struggled against darkening vision to crawl away from the approaching Dark Lord, blood pouring from his lips where he'd bitten his tongue. Was this it? Was this where Harry's short and Angsty life would end?
'No! I can't die now! I never got to kiss Snape!' Harry desperately thought as he crawled, broken and bleeding across the lawn. His fingers touched glass as Harry used the side of the greenhouse to lever himself to his feet, vision nearly blacking out completely as he climbed to his feet.
"Aww," Voldemort mused, "How cute. The little pest wants to die on his feet. Do you think it will make you Heroic?" the Dark Lord laughed. Lifting his hand, he intoned the words to his next spell, then aimed his wand and spoke the last syllable.
Eyes widening, Harry looked from Voldemort to Neville, who had stepped forward, hand outstretched, mouth opened in a gasp, "No! My Project is in there!"
Losing his balance, Harry landed on his face in the grass, the destructive spell shot straight over his head and the concussive explosion sent him flying once more to land in a broken heap amidst shards of glass and bits of pottery and smoking greenery.
With his last strength, Harry pushed himself onto his elbows and lifted his head to look Voldemort in the eyes, hoping to get one last blast at him Point Blank range- but his attention was caught by a flaming red aura flickering to life behind the Dark Lord.
"Now, little Harry Potter," Voldemort sneered, "The boy-who-lived will DIE! I will kill you and there will be nothing to stop me from destroying this school and everyone in it, and after that, the world!" Lifting his hands, Voldemort placed one on his hip and the other near his mouth as he took a deep breath and laughed in a most hideously annoying cackle, "OHHH HO HO HO!"
"YOU," came a blood-curdling accusation from behind Voldemort, causing him to stop laughing mid cackle. "YOU DESTROYED MY PROJECT! NOW DIE!"
It had to be the scariest thing Harry had ever seen. Voldemort was a sugar plum fairy next to the Image of Fury that stood near the partially weeded vegetable garden. Eyes gone black, hair standing on end, one white knuckled hand clenched around the remnants of a blue rose blossom, Neville's rage had manifested itself into a visible form around him- that of a pulsing red fire-like glow that made the grass at his feet wave like it was trying to crawl away.
"Harry! Harry Potter! Tell us how you defeated Voldemort?" Enchanted quills hovered over notepads as reporters loomed over him. He stood shakily, being supported by Neville, bleeding all over and hardly feeling chipper enough to talk to his dead mother, let alone these morons. Who had called the media anyway? How'd they get to Hogwarts so quickly for that matter? Let alone know anything about the Dark Lord being defeated...if he was? Cameras flashed incessantly, half blinding him.
In any case, Hermione pushed forward through the crowd and threw herself on him, choking him in a thicket of frizzy hair. "Oh Harry! You were brilliant!"
"Aren't you dead?" the black haired boy had to ask, spitting hair out of his mouth to do so.
Blinking at him, she tossed her hair and stated, "Honestly Harry! Just because someone goes HAGHK!" she dropped her head to the side with her eyes closed and tongue out, then straightened, "Doesn't mean they're dead."
"Yeah, Harry! Why'd you leave me under that wall? You know I get claustrophobic!" Ron complained as he dusted rock chips out of his hair. "How did you behead and bleach the Dark Lord though?"
Flushing a pretty shade of pink, Harry had to admit. "Um... actually... Neville did it."
Silence fell and a soft breeze skittered dead leaves across the path. All eyes turned to the pudgy teen.
Neville looked down, then lifted his eyes again, "Well- you see... When my parents were driven insane, someone must have cast an Obliviate spell on me to wipe my memories and locked most of my power away too. So... when Voldemort destroyed the greenhouse and my Horticulture Apprenticeship Project, I- I- was just so mad! I guess I broke the Obliviate spell and then cast the first thing that came to mind... It was an original spell I created, it removes the dead blossoms off plants, kills aphids, and cures black spot and powdery mildew, all at once! I never meant it to be an offensive spell!"
"But- but!" Hermione objected, "You're not marked by the Dark Lord! How could you kill him?"
Shaking his head, Neville replied, "Well, actually... I've remembered things since my memories were unlocked, and I believe I was." He shoved Harry off onto Ron as he continued, "You see, when Voldemort attacked my parents on my first birthday, my mother tried to save me, but I still got hit by one of Voldemort's spells," turning around, he lifted his robe and dropped his pants, revealing a wide blue streak across both cheeks of his bare butt.
Co-Authoress Aloria says: Uhhh... yeah, FrequencyQueen came up with the story idea, asked me to write it, and she fixed it up. So um, the major stupidity and insanity is my fault. The rest was hers! Shameless Plug- if you like Slayers, FF7, or Kingdom Hearts, read my stuff!