HUMONGOUS BLATANT SPOILERS.
IF YOU HAVE NOT READ 'DEATHLY HALLOWS', DO NOT READ.
THIS IS A STORY THAT TAKES DIRECT DIALOGUE FROM THE CLIMATIC SCENE IN 'DEATHLY HALLOWS'.
IT WILL NOT MAKE SENSE UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE ENTIRETY OF 'DEATHLY HALLOWS'.
DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED 'DEATHLY HALLOWS'.
Have I made myself clear?
:)
A/N: First of a series of scenes taken from the final battle between Hogwarts and the Order versus the Death Eaters. Told from various points of view; Rowling was unfortunately only able to give us Harry's version of the occurrences during the final battle, and these are my takes on what was happening to everyone else that night.
Disclaimer: I did not write any of the dialogue between Harry and Voldemort. Miz Rowling did. I feel kind of bad using it, since it takes up so very much of the body, but I had to write what this character was feeling during the scene. Both the dialogue and what happens during the scene was created by Rowlingdo not accuse me of plagiarism, I claim creation only of the first-person narrative between their words.
"Protego!" roars a voice, achingly close by and terrifyingly familiar. I thought I would never hear that voice again. It can't have been my imagination. A Shield Charm popped up in front of Voldemort when I heard it cast. Voldemort's looking around for the culprit—
—and not ten feet away from me, Harry pulls off his Invisibility Cloak.
"HARRY!" I shriek, and a second later, hundreds of others shout his name as well, and things like "He's alive!" I can't believe it. My heart swells to fill my chest; I start to run forward, but Ron grabs me and pulls me back to the edge of the crowd as Harry and Voldemort begin to slowly circle each other in the middle of the Hall. I want to call his name again, I can't bear to just watch...but he only has eyes for Voldemort now.
"I don't want anyone else to help," he says loudly, and I feel my eyes fill up with tears at how brave he is. How is he not dead? My mind wants to burst with questions, but as I stop struggling against Ron and his strong grip on me fades, I can only listen. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me." Silence echoes loudly through the Hall.
Voldemort hisses, snakelike to the last. "Potter doesn't mean that," he says, and I feel a surge of anger rush through me again; it takes all the control I possess to refrain from throwing myself between them. My mind and heart scream for him to die, but it has to be Harry who kills him in the end. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"
I bite back a scream of indignation. My teeth pierce my tongue on one side and I can taste blood.
"Nobody," Harry replies, and my eyes fill up with tears again. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me." I want to help, to do anything. "Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good..."
"One of us? You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?" I think that when Harry said 'leave for good' he meant die...but it seems Voldemort interpreted it differently. I breathe heavily through my nose, not trusting myself to open my mouth for fear of shouting things that would get me killed. Loathing and hatred courses through me and I find myself thinking I would make a good Death Eater with this amount of rage...but the thought passes as I hear Harry's response.
"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" No one exists for him but Voldemort. They're still circling in the middle of everyone, the middle of everything. I feel a pang for my own mother, happy in Australia with my dad, unaware that they ever had a daughter. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"
Voldemort killed him, and he came back? My mind is spinning. I feel dizzy; Ron's grip strengthens again as he feels me about to collapse, and steadies me as I get my footing back.
"Accidents!" screams Voldemort, and I know Harry is getting to him now. He still makes no move to attack Harry; they just circle each other slowly, maintaining the same distance perfectly between them. With every turn of their ring Harry passes close by me; I could take one step forward, reach out and touch him, grab his robes and throw him behind me and let Voldemort attack...Harry can't die...not again...Voldemort is circling closer to me now, though, and his eyes are just as fixed on Harry as the latter's are on him. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"
That bastard thinks he can stand there and spit insults at Harry, Harry Potter, and no consequences will come of it? "You won't be killing anyone else tonight," Harry says calmly, unwilling to rise to the bait. Something has changed about him tonight. My heart swells again in pride. "You won't be able to kill any of them, ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people—"
"But you did not!" Voldemort shrieks, and my lips part slightly in wonder. Voldemort tried to kill Harry and Harry didn't defend himself and he came back...it didn't work...
"—I meant to, and that's what did it," Harry explains patiently, for the benefit of the hundreds of people barely breathing around the walls of the Great Hall as much as for the Dark Lord's. Though I doubt he remembers that anyone else exists, at this point...I suck in breath at his next words. "I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"
"You dare—"
YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT, HE DARES.
"Yes, I dare," says Harry, and I want to cheer. I can't suppress the rising sense of elation in my chest, tempered until by now by the fear for Harry's life. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"
Voldemort doesn't answer right away. Harry has him spellbound—figuratively, of course.
"Is it love again?" he sneers after a few seconds, and I sincerely hope it isn't, because that might undermine what Harry's doing. "Dumbledore's favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the Tower and breaking like an old waxwork?" My entire body stiffens, and Ron tightens his grip on me again, probably fearing I'm going to rush forward, wand raised, and get myself killed in righteous anger for Dumbledore. I'm not that stupid. He should learn. "Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter—and nobody seems to love you enough to run forwards this time, and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"
Now Ron's tight grip is justified. He holds me close to him as I struggle silently—I love you enough, no, Ron, please let me go—I don't let a wail escape my lips; breaking the reverent, taut, scared silence now would shatter the protective and intangible dome that Harry is weaving with his words.
"Just one thing."
"If it is not love that will save you this time, you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?" Voldemort asks, sounding suspicious.
"I believe both," Harry says, and I can see the shock flash across the other man's face before being replaced by triumphant glee. My heart drops a fraction as he begins to laugh that terrible laugh, chilling me and everyone else in the room to the bone. He is out of his mind. And the more dangerous because of it.
"You think you know more magic than I do? Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"
"Oh, he dreamed of it," says Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done." I shudder in relief that Voldemort has not affected him the way he has the rest of us. Harry knows things we don't. Harry is...
"You mean he was weak!" Voldemort screams, his frightening temper flaring. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"
"No, he was cleverer than you; a better wizard, a better man." My heart rises right up into my throat.
"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"
"You thought you did, but you were wrong."
Everyone in the Hall gasps in unison. Dumbledore is alive? No—but Harry saw him die—we all saw the body—why would Harry lie about—how can he have—?
"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort shrieks wildly, obviously confident in his knowledge, but still with that glimmer of terror—could Harry be right—? "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"
"Yes, Dumbledore's dead," Harry says calmly, as all the breath goes out of me, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."
What?
"What childish dream is this?" Voldemort jeers, but I know why he still won't attack. He has to know.
"Severus Snape wasn't yours." I gasp, unable to control myself, and I foolishly hope no one heard me. "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother." I gasp again, and Ron's fingers tighten around my arm like iron; I gulp back anything I might have said and watch the two men circle each other, always circling. The two men. Something changed tonight, and that's what it is. Harry is no longer a boy. "And you never realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"
Voldemort, again, doesn't answer. What is Harry talking about?
"Snape's Patronus was a doe, the same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children." Oh my god, oh my god...Snape's memories...Harry must have gone up to Dumbledore's Pensieve and seen them. "You should have realized, he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"
Voldemort's nostrils flare in anger. Uncertainty. "He desired her, that was all," he says scornfully, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him—"
"Of course he told you that, but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape finished him!" Harry says, his voice raising triumphantly, his emotions finally beginning to show through.
"It matters not!" Voldemort cackles—there is no other word for that horrid sound—and my blood runs cold. Can he have outthought Harry at the last? No, no—I realize I haven't blinked in what feels like about ten minutes, and do so, my eyelids burning against my feverishly wide eyes. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love!" There he goes again about love. "Oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand! Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy—I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up. I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"
My heart goes out to Severus Snape, driven to the last by that thing that—as Harry said—Voldemort will never understand. Dumbledore's man. Just like Harry. Like all of us. After a moment of sorrow, I turn my attention to what the Dark Lord just said: could he be the Elder—
"Yeah, it did. You're right." Oh, NO—but Harry speaks with the calm of the man he is defending. "But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done...think, and try for some remorse, Riddle..."
"What is this?" Voldemort's eyes have widened; though he is on the other side of the circle from me now and I cannot make out his expression as clearly as Harry probably can, I can see that he is shaken by Harry's words.
"It's your one last chance," he goes on quietly. "It's all you've got left...I've seen what you'll be otherwise...be a man...try...try for some remorse..."
"You dare—?"
"Yes, I dare." My heart cries out in triumph, swelling again with pride and confidence in Harry as he repeats his answer to Voldemort's same shocked accusation of earlier. "Because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle."
All I can think is Thank god. Running through my head over and over. Harry's known exactly what he's doing since he pulled off the Cloak. He has every last card in his hands. Voldemort's hand, holding the Elder Wand, is shaking; with rage or fear I can't say. Hopefully both. He deserves it.
"That wand still isn't working properly for you, because you murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."
"He killed—"
"Aren't you listening?" Harry asks, the ghost of a grin in his eyes that I'm sure I'm not the only one to see. "Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"
And I gasp a third time, unable to help myself—as I finally catch up to what Harry has been leading up to. Someone else Disarmed Dumbledore before Snape got there—Harry told me, and Ron—the last thing Dumbledore did before his wand soared away from him was to perform Petrificus Totalus on Harry so he wouldn't be discovered—
"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort exclaimed gleefully, but I shake my head, eyes wide, and I can feel Ron's eyes flick to me. I'm sure my face has a look of wonder and anticipation on it—different from the confused and frightened ones of everyone around me. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against its last master's wishes! Its power is mine!" I keep shaking my head, unable to express anything more than that at Harry's brilliance.
"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you?" he's saying now, and I must be shining with the intensity of the emotion I'm feeling. Ron looks down at me momentarily. I can barely feel his grip now, whether because he's loosened it or just because I can't feel it, I don't know. "Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard...the Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance..."
And now Voldemort has stopped moving, and Harry has too. They stand facing each other across the circle they've worn into everyone present's minds, and I see taut anticipation in Harry's face and body. I mouth the words silently along with him as he says them, and Ron glances at me out of the corner of his eye and sees, and his eyes widen.
"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."
I don't look at Voldemort. I can't tear my gaze away from Harry. The former might be surprised or angry or fearful or just confused; I don't know, I don't care. The final moment—breaking point—is coming. Any second now...
"But what does it matter?" Voldemort says, his voice soft but lacking its usual deadliness. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: we duel on skill alone...and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy..."
I shake my head again. Harry is about to reveal the last thing—and after that it will all be out in the open—and it will be over, finally over—
"But you're too late," he says, equally as soft. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took this wand from him." He gives Draco's old wand a little twitch in his hand, and everyone in the room but me looks down at it. I already know what it looks like. I can't look away from Harry's face. It all comes down to this...
"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" Harry whispers, and I feel a smile beginning to form on my lips as he says what I'm thinking. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does...I am the true master of the Elder Wand."
Perfectly timed, as though this is the only place in the whole world that exists, a burst of gleaming, magnificent sunlight shines across the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall as the first edge of the sun peeks over the windowsills. And I know that now is when it all comes to a close. There is no question in my mind or in my heart; Harry is the answer.
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
As Harry shouts his signature move, as so eloquently put by Lupin almost a year ago—I feel a brief pang as I remember his fate—Voldemort screams his own signature move, and a bang like a cannon-blast goes off. The two curses meet in the middle of the circle, and gold flames erupt from the spot; the Elder Wand arcs over the whole thing, spinning madly, to fall into Harry's outstretched hand...and Voldemort falls backwards, spread-eagled, onto the floor of the Hall. He looks white and shrunken and weak. And unerringly, irreversibly dead.
For precisely one second, there is shocked silence in the Hall...and then as one, suddenly, a great cheer goes up from the hundreds of people here, and Ron isn't holding me back anymore, and I run to Harry and throw my arms around him at last, and Ron's right there beside me and so is Ginny and Neville and Luna and then the whole Weasley family and Hagrid and McGonagall and Kingsley and Flitwick and Sprout and everyone else in the world, it seems, is suddenly surrounding Harry and hugging him and I can't think straight because I'm crying so hard, I'm so happy...I kiss his cheek again and again, and all I want is to hug him so tightly that he'll never get away. Then when he gets his arms free, he encircles Ginny with them on his other side. Ron puts his arms around me, pulling me just enough away from Harry that Mrs. Weasley can budge her way in between and separate us entirely, all the while yodeling joyfully about how proud she is of him.
I have a funny feeling in my chest, I note quietly to myself as the cheering and roaring all around me fades a little to the background. It's not unpleasant, exactly, but not quite a good feeling, either. I recall with distinct clarity this same feeling occurring within me before, and during a similarly explosive celebration, though certainly not to this extent, and by that I mean both the feeling and the celebration. In fact, it has happened more than once during the past year; I have not been able to identify it, unfortunately, but as I break away from Ron's tight grasp and throw my arms once again around Harry, shrieking in uncontrollable glee at my joy of his triumph over Voldemort, the feeling dissipates. Harry tears himself away from Ginny and hugs me back this time, the old boyish sparkle in his eyes that hasn't been there for months. He is a man tonight, the boyishness merely returning in his elation.
VOLDEMORT IS DEAD FOR GOOD.
I let out another scream of sheer exhilaration, hearing it almost lost in the tumult around us, and I feel close to bursting with the scope of my delight. It's finally over.
We won.