A/N Yes, Chapter Three is here! Yayness! This one is very short, but fits together with the next one nicely. I was quite surprised at the number of people who asked me what had happened to Harry in their reviews at the end of the last chapter, and whether he had been kidnapped. Although I admit that would be an interesting twist for the fic, that is NOT what has happened to Harry, not in the least. If you haven't read HBP, (and why not?) then THIS chapter doesn't really contain any spoilers, but Four and Five are full of them, and also if you haven't read it you just won't get where Harry was. If you have read HBP, it should be kinda obvious why he disappeared. I reiterate that this fic works with the most important parts of HBP, except for the Draco plot line, which I admit is kinda important, but whatever. On with the fic!

20th June 1998

09:14 am

They didn't speak to each other; they barely spoke at all, and the Ancient Greek words that they did say were memorised with absolute precision and whispered with clarity and determination, three wands forming a triangle that surrounded the house. The magic was swift and powerful, hanging thickly and tangibly like a huge spider web for only a moment before dissapearing from non-magical detection.

Harry barely paused to think as he grabbed his pack and settled onto his broom. After all, the time for thinking and planning was all but over. Now, today, had to be the time for doing.

09:17am

The smoke started just like steam, rising slowly and lazily in a wavering line. Quickly though the bomb opened out and started spewing thick black clouds which spread and multiplied. Soon the whole area for a good 200m around was thick and dark.

In six other places thrroughout the valley other super strong smoke bombs went off.

Harry held a hand up in front of his face, perhaps a foot away. He couldn't see it, which was the idea. He tapped his glasses and mutered, 'Videns Bene' and waited patiently while his vision cleared. Once he could see well again he took a deep breath and looked down at the house he was hovering over, still wrapped in his now pretty redundant invisiblity cloak. As he took it off and put it back in his small pack, Harry looked back at the forest that he, Hermione and Ron had been living in for the past eleven days. He didn't feel sentimental toward it, but it had been an important part of the end of this particular part of his life.

He hoped that this plan would work. It had to. Not because everything in the plan was perfect; unfortunately everything wasn't perfect. There were plenty of things that could go horribly wrong. And not because he was Harry Potter and stuff went well for him. The last year had certainly proven that wrong.

But it would work, because if it didn't Harry wasn't sure what he would do next. He was tired, deep inside, and this last year had taken so much out of him, out of all of them.

Now, today, it had to end.

Harry turned his broom toward the rickety house and began to decend toward it, carefully hidden behind the screen of smoke from the remaining five smoke bombs on the ground. As he flew in a carefully planned arc he set off another two of the levitated smoke bombs before landing precariously on the roof.

'Well, here goes nothing,' he murmured to himself, and with that activated the Portkey that should –would, damnit, would- take him to Hermione and Ron inside the building.

10:51 am

Suddenly Harry could hear again. The utter silence of the room compared to the buzzing of magic that had ended so abruptly, and beyond that the shouts of the rest of the battle that he had somehow become separate from.

He glanced around the still room once more before leaving. He broke into a run in the corridor, trying to get to the fight before it went very badly wrong.

When he broke into the room where the shouts had become screams however, he wondered if he was really necessary.

Hermione and Ron were standing in the middle of the room, back to back defensively and out of breath. The only other person in the room was Snape, standing awkardly and cradling his left arm against his chest.

Surrounding them were the corpses of Death Eaters, at least twenty of them. Clearly dead.

'What happened?' he asked sharply.

'They just collapsed, one by one,' Ron shook his head. 'Cept Snape, and he only turned up a couple of seconds before you did.'

Hermione turned to Harry, leaving Ron with his wand on the disarmed Snape.

'Is he… Did it… Is it over?' she asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer.

Harry smiled tiredly.

'Yeah. Yeah, it is.'

There was a crash from the right, and a door openned suddenly, sharply drawing the attention of all the parties in the room.

Lucius Malfoy practically fell into the room, a haried and desperate look on his face. He froze as he took in the scene, his eyes finally resting on Harry.

Harry made a curious eye contact with Lucius, but fainted dead away before any words could be exchanged.

A/N I spent a lot of time figuring out exactly what to put in this chapter as clearly it is very short and there are huge gaps in the narrative. I did plan for this chapter to be longer and include more of the action that was so clearly cut out. However, I did eventually settled on this as it mentions the more important things without putting in too much of what I felt was excess action, and also I did not want to be repeating myself too much since a lot of the goings on in this chapter will come up in conversation later on and particularly during Chapter Five.

The times are pretty irrelevant for this chapter on its on, but I included them so it is more clear how it fits in with Chapter Four, which is much longer and is all about what Lucius was doing while all this was going on…