Summary: The final battle

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters, their world or their toys.

Author's Note: Remember this story was conceived and the majority of it written BEFORE Half-Blood Prince came out. This chapter and the ones to follow are dedicated to Serengeti Dawn. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Serengeti! I miss you!

Sacred Bonds

By Rebecca

The Plan

Harry reappeared on the grounds, several hundred yards away from the castle. He moved swiftly, slipping between battle sights and fallen wizards as the war carried on around him. In the distance he could make out the vague shapes of witches and wizards on thestrals, striking in all directions at enemies swarming the sky. He squinted and looked more closely, identifying one of them as Oliver Wood.

Wood looked wild, crazed even, setting his black stallion on a collision course straight for a line of six Death Eaters on broomsticks. Harry paused, unable to tear his eyes away as Oliver stupefied all six of them with one shot of his wand and, in a rage, knocked them all from their broomsticks and sent them spiraling toward the ground. Wood then tore after another cluster of Death Eaters with inexhaustible ferocity. Harry sighed and shook his head, unable to fathom what it was that had prompted such ire and wrath in his old Quidditch captain, and lamented the fact that he had no time to find out.

This journey will not be easy Harry because it is a quest meant for you alone…only you can open the door to the past."

Dumbledore's words filled his head, and he realized now how significant that final order had been. He continued his trek beyond the aerial battlefield and further toward the forest.

"Did you want to see Camelot? Or was Dumbledore wrong about you?"

No, Dumbledore had not been wrong about him. Dumbledore knew that when the time came, Harry would be strong. He would do what needed to be done. Dumbledore knew that Harry would succeed in restoring the balance. And now…so would Merlin.

…

The battle had spilled into every corridor, hallway, classroom and courtyard of the castle. Beyond the Great Hall, witches and wizards of all houses and all ages converged on each other. The great tower of staircases had never moved and shifted in such unpredictable patterns and impassible speeds. So it was with considerable effort that Hermione aimed a collapsing hex at Narcissa Malfoy as she scurried up a staircase swinging toward her. The hex struck with an explosive blow and Draco's mother shrieked as the stone steps crumbled apart beneath her and she fell with a scream.

"Hermione!" she heard and turned to see Ron running down the steps toward her.

"Ron, where do you think Harry – "

But Ron startled her as he aimed his Auror staff seemingly right at her. She gasped as a thick red stream of wand sparks flew mere inches to her side hitting two Death Eaters who had disapparated behind her. The magnified stunning spell hit the grisly werewolf-looking brute first, ricocheted off his chest, and then struck the other shorter Death Eater in the head. Both collapsed at her feet, leaving Hermione untouched in the middle.

Ron breathed a sigh of relief. "You all right?"

She nodded, looking down at them. "The price of relaxing the apparition barriers, I suppose," she half-joked, tightening her grip on her wand.

"No other way though," he offered. "Otherwise—"

"I know," she said waving her hand impatiently. She sighed looking up at her husband. On the step above her he was even taller than usual. "Honestly, this is mad! Where do you think he went?"

"He knows what he's doing, Hermione."

"I know but…but this is just so…oh!" she huffed, reaching around him suddenly to deflect a curse. "Kozar Damnum!" she cried and Walden Macnair's legs buckled beneath him. Ron winced as he heard the familiar crack of breaking bones amidst Macnair's painful yelps.

"Ouch," Ron said without sympathy.

"We should be helping him," Hermione said, continuing her argument as if she hadn't just paused to cripple one of Voldemort's deadliest followers.

"We are helping him."

"I know but—"

Ron grasped her arms and squeezed. Knowing her as well as he did, he understood all too well how frustrated she must be. She'd spent the better part of two weeks in a coma and 8 months before that in hiding. It had never been in Hermione's nature to run from a fight, but circumstances had made it unavoidable. Even now, she still felt like she was playing catch-up.

"This is what he asked us to do. What he prepared us for," he said reassuringly. "Harry can defeat Voldemort now, I know it. But if the castle falls to his followers, it won't make any difference, right?"

Ron further descended the steps, now settling on the one below her so his eyes were level with hers. She gazed into them – full of love and strength – and nodded. Ron pulled her to him and kissed her fiercely.

"We help Harry by holding Hogwarts," he said pulling apart from her seconds later, their foreheads still touching. "We help him by surviving."

Hermione nodded again and squeezed his hand tightly. Together, they continued their descent down the stairs, their goal reaffirmed. Survival. They would survive. For Harry…and for their son.

…

Harry arrived at the shores of the enchanted lake and sighed.

"Quite a difficult business managing these rifts, Harry…never quite know which portals you'll just slip right through if you're not careful."

He smiled to himself, remembering a time when that comment had made no sense. But he understood now. He understood everything. He closed his eyes and concentrated. I need you now…please join me at the lake, he thought. It was one of only a handful of signals like it he had allowed himself to send. Too much of his own thoughts traveling through theirs could alert Voldemort to their locations, further risking their safety. But they'll take no more risks for me now, he thought. They had fulfilled their mission flawlessly.

With four soft cracks they appeared, disapparating on the grassy shore of the lake, surrounding him as they had in the Great Hall that fateful day. His Sentinels: George Weasley, Dean Thomas, Luna Lovegood, and Severus Snape. Each held an enchanted stone, still pulsating like glowing embers as hot and bright as when the spell was first cast. They were silent for what seemed like an age, each wordlessly communicating how…odd it felt for all of them to be rejoining their brethren.

Unsurprisingly, it was Luna who spoke first. "'Lo Harry," she said in a small, pleasant voice. "You look taller."

Harry smiled as George chuckled, his hair as long and untidy now as his brother Bill's. "Yeah mate, you're looking…fit." He clapped Harry on the back and then stepped aside. "Lupin says hello by the way. Said he'd be joining the fight at Hogwarts as soon as we were gone." Harry nodded.

Dean's expression, though friendly, was a little more etched with worry. "Harry, how's…er…well, Lavender, is she—"

Harry was about to answer but Snape, looking a little more ragged than the other three, interrupted. "Nevermind that now, Mr. Thomas. Are you ready Potter? Is he here?"

Harry glanced at Snape but did not answer him. He turned back to Dean, "She's safe. She's with Seamus." Dean, instantly satisfied by this response, relaxed. Harry turned back to Snape. "He's close. He'll be here as soon as we finish. Hurry," he glanced behind them at the early evening sun. "We don't have much time."

They closed in on him, each holding tightly to their stones. Harry noticed they had begun to draw their wands, ready to reverse their incantations, but he held his hands up in protest. "No," he commanded. "You won't need them. I'll do it." They looked at him, confused. But he merely smiled gratefully. "You have done enough."

Harry closed his eyes again and raised his arms high in the sky. Without wands, words or warning, thick iridescent bands of color shimmered from within their stones, building to unimaginable pulses of energy, and began to wrap and coil themselves around each Sentinel. They were stunned…but not afraid. The streams of magic were wild and hot and powerful…but they did not burn. They felt his energy flow back through them. One by one, they were released of their burdens as ancient magic circled around them…and back into Harry.

Dean, the blood of a muggle. Harry twisted and writhed in the air, floating slightly off the ground. Luna, the mind of the phoenix. His mind was slowly stitching itself back together. George, the heart of a lion. The remnants of the protective modified Fidelius charm peeled itself away as if in layers. Snape, the magic of the serpent….

As each piece was reconstructed, Harry could hear Voldemort's voice. It felt strangely as if tuning back into a radio program he had left off in the middle of and was finally returning to finish. First it was faint, and then grew louder, almost deafening in his head. Harry winced as the awful burning he hadn't felt in ages returned to his scar, but he forced himself to be strong and accepted, rather than resisted, the dark and evil thoughts.

Voldemort was angry again – angry beyond expression, his fury directed at too many of his followers. He was surrounded by failure: failure to capture or hold any ground at Hogwarts; failure to locate the boy or those alleged guardians of his mind; failure to sense him after all these years.

The power built up around Harry, each bond detaching itself from the Sentinels, and suddenly… his mind was completely unmasked…and Voldemort was upon them.

The Sentinels couldn't help but draw their wands this time as they turned and beheld He Who Must Not Be Named. Voldemort was ghastly to say the least, hardly the image of the sleek, smug, almost haughtily aristocratic madman that Snape had come to know a lifetime ago. The…thing before them now was pale, with sallow eyes, ashen cheeks, and a thin slit above his chin – the mere suggestion of a mouth. It was not a stretch to say that he hardly looked human; in fact, he looked rather like a skeleton with grayish, clammy skin hanging from his bones, his black cloak ragged and torn so much that it looked more to Harry like a dementor's cape rather than an arch villain's robes.

The war…had not been good to Voldemort.

One painless peak into his mind and Harry could tell that Voldemort had spent the last three years obsessed – crazed at the fact that Harry had simply vanished from his radar. And angrier still at the fact that Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix had continued to triumph in places that should have been devastated and crippled by Harry's absence. If he couldn't invade Harry's thoughts anymore, Harry must be dead and yet…he was clearly alive: alive in the ranks of his followers; alive and strong in the hearts of his army.

Harry stared into his soulless eyes. "Hello Riddle," he said, using Voldemort's muggle name, the most insulting address imaginable to the thing before him.

"Potter," he hissed like a snake, then glanced down at the four people surrounding Harry. "Severusssss," he whispered. "What a surprise."

But Snape did not answer. He had had more than enough close calls with the Dark Lord in the past three years to last him a lifetime. It occurred to Harry somewhere in the back of his mind that his old Potions Professor looked, despite his years in solitude, as if he sorely needed a vacation. Harry intended to ensure that he'd have one.

He glanced back at the lake which now stirred behind him in violent agitation.

"Only you can stop Voldemort because only you have been granted full access to this world and its secrets. Secrets you've only just begun to unfold."

He looked back at Voldemort. "Are you ready to finish this?"

Voldemort raised his wand. "I have waited twenty years to finish this, Potter."

"Your destiny lies beyond that of family, beyond that of love. It matters not that you are the heir of Gryffindor when you are the heir of so much more. The Heir of Magic."

Harry pulled the small gold vial from beneath his robes. "Well then," he said steadily. "Let's begin." In a flash, he blinked out of sight and immediately reappeared a few feet away from Voldemort. Too stunned to react, Voldemort simply gaped at Harry's speed. Whatever magic the boy had just performed, it wasn't apparition.

Harry raised the vial above their heads and then crushed it into Voldemort's skin with a shattering blow. Voldemort cried out, no doubt supposing the vial to contain some sort of deadly potion rather than the famed Elixir of Life. Harry rubbed the potion into the Dark Lord's arm, ensuring that it dissolved into him completely. Then he seized Voldemort around the collar of his torn robes and hoisted him into the air.

They were soaring now, high above the Hogwarts grounds, all the while grunting and struggling, an aimless entanglement of arms and wrists and jabs and punches, each one emitting its own magical burst of energy. Battles across the grounds halted as eyes were torn from opponents and forced to look toward the sky. Harry and Voldemort seemed to have melded together in a thick silver cloud, pulsing and flashing as they hovered in the air. And though it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, no one had a doubt as to what it was.

Come on, Harry thought as he continued to fight, suddenly nervous that something had gone wrong. Neville had been sure it would work but couldn't, of course, actually test the Elixir. Harry was stalling up here in the thinning atmosphere. He had hoped there would be some external sign that –

Suddenly, he saw it. He allowed himself to take a hit as Voldemort's wand, sparks flying, smashed into his face, searing across his cheek. Harry registered the pain but was more concerned with what he saw as Voldmort's arm passed in front of his eyes: ever so slightly, Voldemort's ugly gray flesh was glowing. And despite the beating he was getting, Harry smiled again. It was time. "Come on, Tom!" he shouted with renewed confidence. "There's something I think you should see." Tightening his grip on Voldemort's robes, Harry took them into a steep dive and, as hundreds of Death Eaters and Order members alike gasped in horror below, the two of them plunged toward the center of the enchanted lake allowing its churning waves to swallow them whole.