For a moment, Harry stood frozen, the sheer mind-numbing horror of seeing his parents, of anyone being tortured and then sent to Azkaban to remember it until they died, alone with the voids in the world and their own pain freezing his tongue, and then a fierce, aching desperation began to well up in his heart, because

I promised I would destroy death.

And Voldemort was not the phoenix's defiant cry, he was no defeater of death but one who used it, who flew from it and ever tried to escape.

The Dark Lord Voldemort defeated death with yet more death. Harry Potter used magic and life, the Patronus Charm, the Lightest of all magics, to destroy and vanquish death forever.

And if Harry could do that, then could he not also do this?

And then a memory rose: Voldemort, in his Quirrel disguise, seated upon the grass in Hogwarts, telling him that no one truly cared enough to destroy death for the sake of a friend, and then kneeling before his parents' grave and seeing the engraved epitaph that repudiated everything Voldemort thought to be true.

But the Lord Voldemort was darkness itself, irredeemable: how could Harry, in sixty seconds or less, hope to convince Voldemort that death was not to be feared and manage to persuade him of how utterly horrible sending people to Azkaban was?

The answer was simple: you couldn't.

Except. . . hang on a minute. Because if Voldemort was Harry, or rather, Harry's not-longer-mysterious dark side, then. . .

Then I already convinced him, in Azkaban, when I repaired the hole in my anti-Death defenses.

And the stubborn, Gryffindor side of him that did things like sacrifice twice his bank vault to keep Hermione out of Azkaban and be willing to kill himself to destroy the Dementors within Azkaban wouldn't let him give up without at least trying.

"The last enemy that sshall be desstroyed iss death," Harry hissed. "That iss the unofficial motto of my family, and it iss written upon my parentss' grave. The brotherss who made the Cloak and Resurrection Sstone made the decission to desstroy death, and their quest was passsed down, through the yearss, until it hass fallen to me." Harry drew in a breath, for this was the moment in which he would succeed or fail, and if he failed then the future of nonexistent death would fail as well and the promise of the night sky would never be fulfilled. "Sso you ssee, Lord Voldemort, that we aren't alone, there are otherss who have dessired to desstroy death and we are not, and have never been, unique – "

"Enough," Voldemort hissed, hand slashing through the air in fury. "Iss that all you could give me, boy? The information about the brothers might have interessted me, but you have ussed it only to try and convince me of the goodnesss of people." The last words were spat out as if they were poison. "You have ssaved no one, now. They will die within Azkaban, and know as you are sslain that you have failed them."

The Dark Lord's words were a knife to his heart, and Harry wondered briefly where he could have failed, but then –

Voldemort does not know or comprehend Good. He admitted it himself, that he has made mistakes that could have been averted by being Good. That is a power he knows not, and the Patronus Charm is fueled by the desire to save others for the purpose of saving them, not for some later gain to himself. The prophecy said we are different spirits, and we cannot exist in the same world.

With that decided, with the pure knowledge of his looming death, Harry felt a sudden surge of determination, for there was nothing left to constrain him, his life was numbered in seconds, and if there as any road, any pathway he could take to save those he loved, then there was nothing left to stop him from taking it.

(Nothing, that was, save the Unbreakable Vow, but as that was a neurological pattern rather than some foreign consciousness invading and forcing him to conform as with an Imperius Curse, there was nothing that made Harry think of it yet.)

Power the Dark Lord knows not, Harry's brain prodded. What doesn't the Dark Lord know?

The True Patronus Charm, Harry supplied helpfully.

What else?

The Side of Good, the Light and everything that it is and which embodies it.

And then Harry remembered the defiance in Fawkes' eyes, the clear and shining note of refusal as he screamed in opposition to Death –

Dumbledore didn't have Fawkes with him, in the Mirror.

Which meant –

Voldemort opened his mouth to give the order for the Death Eaters to fire, he had only the time it took for sound to reach the Death Eaters' ears and the time it took them to cast the spell to live –

But the phoenix was faster, and barely had Harry flung the message calling him to action, naming the time for Death to be destroyed and screaming that that time was now then Fawkes was there with a screech of wild defiance and the blazing heat of a wildfire. The Death Eaters let out cries of shock and Harry saw Voldemort raising the gun and pulling the trigger, before the phoenix's claws wrapped around his shoulder and the image was consumed in the flame of phoenix teleportation.

Harry ignited in the air above Azkaban, and for a long moment he was consumed with the burning hatred of the wounds in the world and the politicians who had decided that they would make good, reliable, safe jailers.

And then Harry noticed that he was confused.

But didn't that Vow make it impossible for me to do things like this, things that might destroy the world? And even if this was "the lesser destruction", why should I still be able to do it without confiding in Mr. Grim?

For a long moment, Harry simply hung in the air, puzzled. That made no logical sense, the Unbreakable Vow should have kept him from considering the possibility of calling Fawkes to destroy Azkaban, now that he knew it was the last resort.

But. . . inherently, what about destroying the Dementors was so dangerous and/or world-ending? What should make the Vow want to stop that?

It could possibly be that simple, could it?

And then Harry realized what had happened, and if the situation weren't so dire he probably would have broken something laughing, and as it was he did let out a few small chuckles. It was gratifying, however, to note that Harry wasn't the only one capable of screwing up.

Because I swore that I would take no chances with an opportunity to save the world, and by my own mental patterns, even taking into account my identity as a possible instrument of destruction (and since the

Vow was sworn by me, it's my mental patterns that are important here), I would never even remotely consider the idea of destroying the Dementors anything but something with the capacity to save the world, thus ensuring that I had to do what I just did to fulfill the Vow. In fact, one might even argue that the Vow was the only reason I thought of that in the first place.

Harry straightened up as much as he could while hovering in midair in the clutches of a phoenix, still smiling, as he prepared to cast the spell that would fulfill the promise of the night sky, no matter what might come after.

And then someone said, "Harry Potter?"

Harry yelped and turned to look at the speaker, meeting the eyes of an Auror on a broomstick, who was currently staring at him in shock.

Harry abruptly remembered the fact that he was completely naked, and then he was roughly shoving his embarrassment aside and steeling himself for the task ahead.

"I need you to contact Director Bones as soon as possible and tell her that the Dark Lord Voldemort is resurrected, and tell her to contact anyone else and take any action she sees fit so long as she does not send any messages to Albus Dumbledore, contact anyone at Hogwarts until at least after 11:45 in Hogwarts' time zone, or have anyone with this information travel back in time to before one hour before 6:45, upon pain of temporal paradox. Do it!" he yelled when the Auror remained blinking at him in shocked confusion and slowly dawning horror. With luck, the Aurors wouldn't happen upon Voldemort's hidden graveyard, especially since Harry hadn't time-traveled to get here, just used Fawkes –

Speaking of which.

Harry drew in a long breath, his hands shaking ever so slightly as he remembered the shining starlight and the Earth glittering within it, and as Fawkes lowered them down to the pit of Dementors. The wounds in the world were already beginning to rise from the pit towards him, their aura of despair rushing around him, and for all that he had been so lost and alone before, Harry felt nothing but resolve now.

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," Harry said, and Fawkes screamed his defiance in the face of Death, the warmth and light that promised a future without farewells, without darkness.

The future of the children's children, where Death was a story that belonged to the long-ago past of Ancient Earth.

Harry thought of watching the sun sink beneath the horizon, looking into that little sliver of light left and knowing that there were those who would not bow down to the darkness, no matter what happened.

Harry Potter thought of the Hermiones of the world as he drew in the breath that might be his last and his wand twitched once, twice, thrice, four times –

He thought of the Peverell brothers, who created the instruments that would defend against death, though not defeat it, and their oath that had transcended the generations, as his fingers slid along the wand –

And he thought of the prophecy, and of the final, ominous line: for those two different spirits cannot exist in the same world.

But also a message of hope, for he and Lord Voldemort could not exist in the same world, for the Patronus and the Dementors could not exist in the same world, but if they met, one would be destroyed forever and never return.

And it was not the Patronus who would disappear.

Harry's wand swung upwards, and for a moment there was complete silence as the world waited for what would come next –

And then a young boy's voice, wavering but filled with a determination that might have, in another world, torn the very fabric of reality apart, rang out over the central pit of Azkaban:

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

And then Azkaban was surrounded and suffused with blazing light, brighter than a supernova, a shining light that could be seen from space by any with magic, as the wounds in the world screamed in terrible dying agony and the determination of the Boy-Who-Lived flooded into his Charm and burned Death itself away.

Fawkes slowly flew up towards the highest level of Azkaban, where Harry could see a small cluster of figures gathered at one corner of the triangular structure. Harry's wand was still in his hand, though more out of an automatic instinct to keep holding onto his wand at all times than out of any gesture of readiness.

Fawkes carefully brought them in to land so that Harry would settle gently onto his feet, but the moment the phoenix was no longer holding his weight Harry proceeded to collapse bonelessly to the ground.

"Someone get a healer, right now," a woman's voice barked, and then Director Bones was kneeling on the ground next to him, steely eyes boring into his.

"Mr. Potter," she said coldly, "why, exactly, did you just kill the Dementors and leave Azkaban undefended?"

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," the Boy-Who-Lived said for what felt like the thousandth time, his voice cracking in exhaustion. "What separates us from the Darkness, Madam Bones, is that we care about the lives of others than ourselves, and not for the use they can be to us. The True Patronus Charm works by looking at death and promising to oppose it, by taking the bright things that power the lesser charm and promising to do whatever it takes to defend those things, no matter what it may cost you.

"The Dementors are voids in the world," Harry continued into the silence, his voice faint and wavering. "They are the path through which the light is drained from the world; they are Death made manifest. But we can end it. We can destroy the wounds forever; we can ever destroy death, if we can find the strength within us to do it. The True Patronus Charm can revive the dead – I have done so myself, not hours ago. But you must have the strength to do it."

"How?" someone said, voice weak and wavering. "How can we – "

"Think of all things bright," Harry said, focusing upon the warmth of the phoenix at his side, and drawing strength from it as his vision darkened. "Think of everything you love and care about, and promise to protect them, now and forever until death and from death itself, and then cast the Charm. It will not fail you – " and the Boy-Who-Lived closed his eyes.