"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"

As he yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos: It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere as Harry jumped over the bed and seized the dark shape he knew to be Hermione.

She shrieked with pain as he pulled her back across the bed: The snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate.

The snake lunged as he took a running leap, dragging Hermione with him; as it struck, Hermione screamed, "Confringo!" and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as, pulling Hermione with him, he leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as the snake coiled once more around his leg and her hand was ripped violently from his grip.

Then down, down, down to the garden below. Landing painfully on his back, he could feel the snake already ravelling its body around his chest, the wind knocked out of him from the fall. Then it began to squeeze and panic coursed through Harry's veins, because he couldn't feel that familiar piece of wood between his fingers. He had nothing, was alone and vulnerable, could do no more than squirm where he lay as the snake's grip strengthened. His scar was close to bursting open on his forehead and his eyes beginning to roll back into his head from lack of oxygen.

'I have him, master' hissed Nagini.

He saw himself like this from Tom's eyes as he walked slowly towards Harry's broken form. He could feel the other man's triumph, could appreciate the irony that it would end here as it had started – except there was no one to die for him now and for that, at least, he was grateful. Hermione was alive, alone somewhere but she would surely find Ron and they would carry on without him. They had to. The prophecy could not be true because if it was, Harry had failed more than his friends in death.

'Harry Potter' said a high, cold voice somewhere above his head and Harry raised his eyes to meet Voldemort's as he had that night in the graveyard.

'And without a wand'.

Harry struggled uselessly, his teeth gritted together with the effort.

'I want to see you die as yourself – Revelio Polutious!' Harry could feel his features realigning into his own form, his limbs lengthening and distorting in Nagini's grasp.

'It's fitting that it should end here. In fact, you would have done better to die as a baby, Harry. I would have been satisfied with killing the Potters then. But now? A single death will not pay for the inconvenience you have caused me. Crucio!'

Blood red agony, searing through every cell and piercing every inch of skin. God, make it stop. It did, eventually, but relief came in the form of those red eyes studying him calmly.

'I'll find every last person who ever cared for you. And I'll kill them too'.

Harry lunged blindly for Voldemort's wand but his body was shaking with the after-effects of the curse and he fell back limply to the ground. The locket was beating wildly against his shirt and he was sure if not for the snake, that Voldemort would see it too. Let it get lost beneath the snow, let it burn with his body… Maybe his friends would come back for it, maybe it hadn't all been a waste, himself and Regulus both sacrificed and Tom never the wiser.

'There will always be someone, Tom' gasped Harry as the snake tightened its hold on him. 'You're afraid to die. But we've got a reason to live and I've found that it's a powerful motivator'-

Another Cruciatus tore through him but Harry tried to keep eye contact through the white hot pain. He wanted to die with his eyes wide open.

'I suppose you think it's love' laughed Voldemort humourlessly. 'Dumbledore's oldest lie. Does it make you strong – to know that everyone you claim to love will be tortured, will leave this earth begging for death? You are weak, boy, and you will die knowing that you did nothing but cause them misery'.

Harry could see it coming, could see that flash of green light he'd dreamed about as a child building from deep within Voldemort's red eyes. And in the last moment he drew on every ounce of magic inside his body, pulled it from his fingertips, willed so desperately to apparate to another forgotten wood, to join Hermione, just one more escape, one last time…

'Avada Kedavra!'

He thought he heard a woman's scream, was it his mother's? Then the curse, blinding, as it crashed into his chest and another heartbeat screamed in agony. Was Tom yelling too? All dissolved into green, unforgiving light and its energy swept him up into fire. Like the floo, that emerald fire, bidding him into that great nothingness once more.