Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: Sorry this took so long, and that's it kinda short. But as a result of good feedback from DLP, this is no longer the last chapter in the story - there's going to be one or two more. That, and working on other stories and having a life held me up a bit. Read, review, and enjoy!

I raised my wand, only to lower it again when a shining silver doe ran up to Dumbledore. "She is calling," came Snape's incongruous voice from the Patronus.

The Headmaster nodded and I felt Riddle fall in step with me as we followed him out of the room. "It is time," he said.

A faint string of tension wound through me, and I felt myself tapping my wand against my leg to my heartbeat. I put it away and grasped Riddle's hand in my own. Her face was calm, but her anger and anxiety blazed a bright streak across our connection.

Snape was waiting for us in the Headmaster's office when we stepped inside. "The plan?"

"Destroy the snake," Dumbledore said. "Then come find me. I will keep the wards up and attempt to keep the Death Eaters occupied. Harry, Miss Riddle... you know what to do." We nodded. "Everybody has their portkeys?" Another round of confirmations, though I knew it was a meaningless gesture. We would either kill Voldemort or die trying – there were no two ways about it. "Then we depart."

Snape grabbed a pinch of floo powder and threw it into the Headmaster's fireplace. "Malfoy Manor!" After he disappeared in a rush of green fire, the Headmaster gripped our shoulders and Fawkes transported us behind a bush, perhaps fifty meters from the back of a large house. Even from this distance, I could feel the faint throb of dark power, twisted but familiar. We would have no trouble finding Voldemort – I only hoped that she would not sense us coming.

"I will hijack the wards," Dumbledore said as he drew his wand. "Disillusion yourselves and then attempt to enter the house silently, on my word."

I nodded and started to withdraw my magic from the surroundings. It would not stop me from feeling Voldemort when we were close, but her senses ought to have been less refined than ours, especially if she was still recovering from her resurrection.

I felt a wash of power from behind us and Dumbledore whispered, "Go."

We disillusioned ourselves and strode forward, feeling the wards bend around us as we passed. As I approached the wall, I could feel the malignant power intrude on my senses again, a rotten scent that I could not (should not) block. I suppressed the urge to shift away from it and instead pressed forward, feeling the magic grow stronger and stronger until it was nearly overwhelming. I felt a warm hand touch mine and a rush of cold, clean power washed away the magical congestion that had made it difficult to breathe.

We stood in front of the back wall of the manor, likely next to the room where Voldemort was located. After layering ourselves with enough protective charms and defenses to deflect any surprise attack short of a Killing Curse, we looked at the wall and then at each other.

"Well?" Riddle's disillusioned form whispered. "Any brilliant ideas on how to get in silently?"

"Nngh," I replied. "Not yet." I considered our situation. Getting in without making any noise was a problem, but not the problem. Getting in without drawing attention to ourselves... well, that was rather more difficult. Transfiguring ourselves into and through the wall? I could do it to Riddle, but I wasn't sure I could do it to myself afterward. Then a better idea occurred to me.

Voldemort felt to be to our immediate right, so I pointed in that direction. "Go thirty steps that way and layer a few explosion and banishing spells on the wall with a release trigger, then come back here." I felt Riddle jog away and turned back to the wall in front of me.

Taking my wand, I crouched down and touched it to the wall where it met the ground. Standing up, I traced the wall with a thin but firm line of my magic above the height of my head, drew it horizontally, and then back down to the ground, forming a rectangle. Placing the tip of my wand in the center, I closed my eyes and stretched my senses out, using my wand as a focal point. When my magic met the rectangle I had drawn, I latched onto it, careful not to deform it, and pushed it forward into the wall, stretching it out, creating a corridor of magic.

That done, I opened my eyes and started placing silencing and imperturbable charms around my formation, on and inside the wall. As I was doing this, I felt Riddle approach me. "Am I to assume you wanted a distraction?"

I nodded, then remember that she couldn't see me. "That's right. I'm nearly done."

She stood silent for a moment, and I assumed she was examining my handiwork.

"What are you planning on turning that into?" she asked. "A large cutting spell?"

"Too messy," I replied, stepping back. The silencing was as done as it was going to get. "I was thinking of some sort of repelling barrier, actually, to make as clean a separation as possible. Then we can just pull the door out."

"Not a bad idea," she admitted. "Don't forget to silence the ground, though."

I shot off a few quick spells at the ground in front of us. "Done. Are you ready?"

"Yes," came the whispered reply. A slight trepidation came over me, but I brushed it off.

"Don't think about it," I suggested. I reached out for my construct of magic and twisted it into a matter-repelling barrier. I noted with satisfaction how the wood where the magic was splintered apart and away from it without making a sound.

"Blow the spells you placed," I said. A second later, there was an enormous explosion of sound to our right and I pulled the newly-created door toward me with a silent accio. It landed on a ground without a sound and revealed a lavish, empty sitting room.

We charged in, shields up, ready to duck at the slightest flash of green light, only to find Voldemort watching our entrance from the right. Our distraction had proved useless. She seemed unsurprised to see me, as far as I could tell from her features – like Riddle's, but marred and exaggerated. Colorless skin stretched across angular bones, framing a pair of blood red eyes. Those eyes widened when she saw Riddle come in, and she hissed. "What trickery is this?"

Riddle responded with a killing curse and I followed up with a volley of darts, aiming a banishing spell to the right of her feet. Voldemort dodged the killing curse to the right, as I predicted, but the darts and banisher floundered against a wavering blue shield that she summoned. I smiled with grim satisfaction, launching a piercing curse as Riddle tore apart the shield's magic. Voldemort's dueling style hadn't changed all that much over fifty years, and I would make it her death.

"How rude of you," she taunted, and launched a dark purple curse that carried a cloud of writhing magic behind it. "I only wanted to say hello."

Riddle swatted aside the curse and slashed apart the tendrils of darkness that had detached themselves from it. We ignored her words and continued to press on the attack. It had been an unspoken agreement between us. There was not a word she could say that would sway us from our purpose, so we would take advantage of her split attention.

Blood pounding in my ears, I started on a complex, simultaneous transfiguration. To my right, Riddle blocked and deflected every curse that Voldemort sent at us. One sickly yellow curse simply shattered in mid-air as Riddle swung her wand downward with a sort of vicious glee. I could feel her battle-lust pounding in my head, but I ignored it as I finished the spell I had been weaving. With one final sweep of my wand, the ground around Voldemort rippled for a split-second, then several body-length spears of wood erupted from the floor straight at her.

Displaying reflexes heretofore unseen in our duel, Voldemort surrounded herself in a shield, but one of spears managed to nick her arm and draw a thin line of blood. She hissed and blasted them apart, transfiguring the debris into a massive snake-like construct, all the while flicking aside our curses with contemptuous ease.

The snake slithered toward us with alarming speed. Riddle jabbed her wand at it and it stopped moving, but Voldemort was a better multitasker and continued to rain down deadly curses on us. I took over the defense as Riddle began dismantling the snake, and snarled as I started grappling with Voldemort's magic. It was more difficult than I had anticipated, the magic of each spell trying to slip away from mine. I could not see how Riddle could possibly have had such an easy time of it, except for the fact that it was practically her own magic she was tearing apart.

Voldemort seemed to be taking us seriously, now that I had wounded her. She was growing frustrated, but only because she couldn't see the thin threads by which we were hanging. We were, after all, only two teenagers. Talented, to be sure, and well-practiced, but she had literally decades of experience, many of which included battling multiple aurors at the same time. Our advantages, such as they were, weren't making up the difference.

Sweat caused my shirt to stick to me and I huffed as I pushed aside another curse. I had to do something to surprise her, and there wasn't much that I could without dipping into my experiments with deeper magic – something I was reluctant to do except in the last eventuality. Voldemort was simply faster than we were, whether a result of practice, rituals, or both. There was nothing I could do that traveled the space between us faster than her perception of it, except transfiguration, and she would be watching for that – ah.

I let loose my magic, allowing it to spread around me, and shoved it forward in wave. I had to resort to dodging curses now instead of blocking them, as I was literally incapable of casting magic in this state, but I could still manipulate her spells. Riddle seemed to notice that I was up to something, and starting barraging Voldemort with a steady stream of killing curses. Voldemort reacted as I would have thought – she grew irritated at the obvious insult, and focused more of her attention on Riddle. "You obviously do not appreciate the subtlety of the killing curse, girl. Perhaps I will teach you after you are turned back to my side."

I stifled the entirely inappropriate urge to laugh and watched as Voldemort sent a variation on the Ice Tomb curse at Riddle. Seizing my chance, I grabbed the spell with my magic, rent it apart, and flung back the wisps straight at Voldemort. She stumbled backward as her face and robes acquired a faint sheen of ice, and the green light of the killing curse brushed at her robes.

"Fuck!" Riddle swore, and I swallowed the bitter rage at the missed opportunity. Voldemort finally seemed to have had enough, as she screamed like a banshee and swept her wand out in a wide arc. The floor in front of her tore itself up and launched itself at us.

Simultaneous banishers did nothing to slow it down and it spanned the width of the room, so we did the only reasonable thing – we dived under it. Almost too late, I saw the trap in the maneuver and stabbed my wand into the ground in front of my face. The spell that would have turned my head into a pile of gore instead splintered the floor in a foot-wide circle, and a shard of wood sliced open my cheek.

Dashing to my feet, I gasped as a bright line of fire flared its way up my back. Some spare board must have gouged me, and I hissed as I twisted aside from another flash of green light. We had to end this soon, or we would die. Voldemort was more skilled and more creative, and left me little room to think, only react. Every time I came up with something that I thought would end it, she came away with barely a scratch. I would have to turn to my unique talents, whatever the consequences of that would be.

Hold her, I thought at Riddle, and hoped that she understood my message. I could feel the exhaustion that she didn't let show, echoing my own. If this last trick didn't work, we would have to run and our best advantages would be lost to us.

I slashed my palm with my wand, and seized the pooling blood with a transfiguration. It turned into a rail-thin spike, and I pushed my magic against that of the blood, firmly keeping my mind the separation between inside and outside my body. The spike glinted and the center of my palm burned as the magic took hold, and I noted with a grim satisfaction that I was not dead yet.

A Bone-Breaker slipped through Riddle's guard and shattered one of my ribs, but barely felt it at this point. This would be the end of it. I wreathed myself in Soulfire and hoped that my blood-construct would hold together for at least a moment under it. Voldemort turned her attention to me with a surprised look on her face, and I gave her a pained grin. Perhaps she thought that I wished to die in a blaze of glory. No, not quite.

Instead of allowing the Soulfire to burn around me as it normally would, I grabbed it with my magic and quelled the scream of pain that threatened to erupt from me as my magic burned. It was necessary, I thought, and it was only the conviction that Voldemort had to die that allowed me to hold my concentration. Splitting my mind in a third direction, I used the Soulfire to tear at the anti-apparition wards around me. With one final push, I broke through the fabric of reality with a pop just as an unnoticed killing curse sped through where I had been.

I appeared directly in front of Voldemort, whose eyes widened for just an instant before a dull thwack splattered my robes with blood. She glanced down to where my dagger of blood emerged from her breast and looked back up with glazed eyes. I could see the fear in them, but I moved my wand under her chin without hesitation. "Avada Kedavra."

I let her body slide to the floor, and released the magic that had been holding my blood together. It splashed on the floor and I felt suddenly light-headed, with only Riddle's hand on my should keeping me grounded.

A second of silence was all she spared before moving. "Let's go," she said, dismissing the cooling corpse as inconsequential. "We need to find Snape and Dumbledore."

The scene outside left me gaping in astonishment. Dumbledore stood at the edge of the wards, blazing with power. Snape flanked his right side, visibly favoring one leg. Around them lay a dozen figures in black robes and white masks. Had they taken them all down by themselves?

"Harry!" The Headmaster's relieved voice carried across the grounds.

"She's dead," I yelled back. I watched them approach with intermingling exhaustion and excitement. "It's over."

I listed to the side, and looked up at Riddle's concerned gaze. "Harry? What's wrong?"

"What?" I asked, confused. "What do you mean, what's wrong?"

"Move aside, please." The Headmaster's shadow fell across me, and I frowned up at him. Then I gasped in pain as he started prodding me with his wand.

"Oh dear," he muttered.

I sighed in bafflement, too tired to do more. "Just a broken rib," I muttered.

"Severus, quickly!" Dumbledore shouted.

That was the last thing I heard before slipping into darkness.