Chapter 29

When he heard the telltale whoosh of a malignant spell, Sirius whirled around, wand ready, only to see the Reducto that would have turned him into splattered bits on the wall impact with a glowing blue shield.

His eyes sought and found Neville, who stood by the door with his wand raised, and for a heartbeat they looked at each other in perfect understanding.

Then the shield collapsed, Harry switched from crooning over a cursed dagger to battle-ready so fast it could give you whiplash, Hermione swished her wand once and collected the chosen artefacts in her belt pouch, and Neville, with a voice so thunderous and angry that it resonated deep within Sirius, bellowed two words:

"Bellatrix Lestrange!"

He threw himself out of the vault, and before Sirius had even reached the threshold, he could hear the sounds of a violent duel from outside.

Neville was a good dueller, quick on his feet, but Bellatrix had twenty years of life-or-death situations under her belt, and while Neville held his own, fighting offensively and without a hint of regard for his own safety, it wasn't until Sirius and Harry joined him that the tables turned.

Bellatrix cackled, but she looked worried and quite out of her depth.

"Neville Longbottom," she hissed. "I heard you weren't dead after all, but that you'd dare go up against me after I sliced your pretty little body to bits, that's surprising."

Sirius went cold. So she was the one who had killed his Neville. He might have known. His cousin had always had a taste for cruelty.

Neville bared his teeth in a snarl and his curses got that much nastier. Under the onslaught of spells, Bellatrix was reduced to keeping up her strongest shield, and her eyes were flickering left and right, looking for an escape route.

"And who's that there? Sirius, dearest cousin? Always your faithful dog, wasn't he, Neville? Always by your side. Sickening, how he cared about you. Was he saaad when he couldn't save you, when he wasn't there when it really mattered? Did he…"

A blue spell light sliced right through her shields, and with a shriek, Bellatrix collapsed, both legs broken, her wand flying towards Harry, who pocketed it calmly. Sirius winced at the awful snap of breaking bones, and then turned to the source of that particular curse.

Hermione stood to his right, her wand trained steadily on Bellatrix, and by her side was Luna, who observed the fallen Death Eater with cold, clear eyes.

"Petrificus Totalus," Luna said, unnecessarily, and watched as Bella's body went stiff.

For a moment, there was complete silence save for the panting sound of their breathing. Sirius quickly swept the cavern and saw that everyone appeared unharmed. Lily and Severus were still standing close to the vault entrance – the whole thing hadn't taken more than five minutes, after all. Remus was next to the Gringotts official who had brought them here. His wand was out, but he hadn't gotten a chance to use it.

"Everything alright?" Sirius called out and received confirmation from his friends and a disgusted grunt from the goblin. There went their cooperation.

"How the hell did she get in here?" he then demanded from the official. "And why didn't your colleagues inform you the moment she entered Gringotts?"

The goblin shrugged. He seemed to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from the whole situation.

"No communication between the offices and the caves," he told him gruffly. "Security protocol. And I assume she cast additional wards on her vault. Some customers do, usually the paranoid ones. We probably cancelled them and that alerted her to the fact that something was wrong."

"And you didn't think to tell us this might happen?" Sirius asked, furiously.

Bellatrix's words had cut deeper than he'd expected. Even after all these years, he could remember the night he had found Neville with perfect clarity. The way the boy's limbs had sprawled in unnatural angles on the rough dirt of the graveyard. The sticky sensation of his blood on Sirius' hands. The cold, clammy feeling of his hand as Sirius…

He felt a touch on his shoulder and stiffened. It was Neville who'd stepped up to him, the other Neville, the one whose blood had never been spilt that night.

"Don't let her get to you," Neville said quietly. "She does that to everyone, but you mustn't allow it."

He nodded mutely. They had never reached this stage, Sirius and his Neville, the one where they could lend each other strength, the one where they were equals. His Neville had always been dependent on him, and although seeing what this one had grown up to be filled him with pride, the sight also ached like a wound. This Neville didn't need him.

But then he looked again, and closer, and saw the slightly wild expression in Neville's eyes. He noticed that the young man hadn't yet moved his hand from Sirius' shoulder. And when he saw Severus silently watching them, and caught the worry in his best friend's eyes, who had, after all, almost seen him murdered minutes ago, he remembered.

Growing up didn't stop the need for others. It just changed it.

So he leaned into Neville slightly, just enough to bump his shoulder.

"You did good," he told him hoarsely. He didn't talk to the boy he'd loved or to the hero he'd seen when he'd first met this Neville. He talked to the man he'd gotten to know these past days. "Thank you for saving my life."

And Neville's hand tightened on his shoulder for a moment before letting go. He turned away without lingering, but his eyes seemed clearer, somehow, and the lines of his body were steady and calm.

"Anytime," he said quietly.

"Great," Harry said, standing over the petrified Bellatrix like a big game hunter. The only thing missing was a boot resting on her midriff. "So who gets to kill her?"

"What?" Severus shouted in synchrony with Lily.

"We haven't even discussed what we're going to do with her," Remus protested. "How did killing her come into this?"

Sirius just shook his head. They wouldn't get far with the humanitarian approach, here. What they needed was a pragmatic argument.

"She might have good intel, Harry," he therefore said. "We don't catch enough Death Eaters that we could afford to kill one."

But Hermione was shaking her head, too.

"Not this one, Sirius," she disagreed. "Information might be valuable, but Bellatrix is too twisted for that. Too dangerous. We need to get rid of her."

"But we can't just kill her!" Severus looked honestly shocked, and Sirius kind of agreed. Killing indiscriminately during a battle was very different from killing a bound and disarmed enemy. That was murder in his book.

"Course you can," Harry disagreed happily. "It's quite easy. One little curse and, oops, dead Bellatrix. Could happen to anyone, really. I'd volunteer, but I did her in last time, and everyone should have a turn at killing Bella. It's only fair, right?"

"Harry, I don't think that would be the right thing…" Remus began, obviously horrified by his nonchalance, but Harry interrupted him.

"She killed my godfather," he said, suddenly stone cold sober. "She sliced through Molly Weasley like gutting a fish."

"She Crucioe'd my parents until they went insane," Neville said, stepping up to Harry's side. "She nailed Susan Bones to a tree and giggled while she did it."

"She killed my father," Luna said. Her eyes were dark, and her voice deeper and harder than they had ever heard it. "And then she killed Remus, because he tried to protect me and gave me his food and stepped in front of me when they wanted to hurt me. She killed him with a silver knife."

"She tortured me," Hermione said, joining the other three as they formed a line between Bellatrix and the rest of them. The symbolism was very clear. "She watched Lucius Malfoy kill Ron and laughed. And that's just the atrocities she committed in our dimension. From her words just now, she killed this Neville. Perhaps his parents. Who knows what else she did. We can't afford to let her live."

And there it was again, their old friend, the stunned silence.

"Right," Harry then said, clapping his hands together. "Any other objections?"

Lily took a step forward.

"Yes, actually," she answered. "I understand why you want to do this. I sympathise. If I had been there, I would have killed her myself to protect all of you. But this would be murder. It would be wrong. We can't let it happen."

Harry's face hardened.

"Try and stop us," he said, and Hermione opened her hand and threw a stone to the ground. She snapped her wand once and around them a shield bubble blinked into existence, golden and strong.

"I'm sorry," she told them, but she didn't look it, and although both Remus and Severus cast diagnostic charms and Sirius and Lily started slicing immediately, they all knew it would be of no use. To break through this would take them hours.

Still they tried.

"Together then?" Harry asked his three friends, completely ignoring the efforts to burst their shield bubble.

Hermione nodded, and something like a smile crossed her face.

"Together," she agreed – and where they really having a bonding moment over who got to kill Bellatrix Lestrange?

"Together," Neville and Luna echoed, and they all turned their backs on Sirius, Remus, Lily and Severus.

Green light filled the cavern. The shield bubble flickered out of existence, but no one moved.

They all knew Bellatrix' fate.


The trip back to Hogwarts was silent and tense.

Not for the first time, Sirius was glad that none of the students had stayed for Christmas this year. They had originally planned to strengthen Hogwarts' defences over the holidays and therefore sent everybody home. Instead, the empty school had seen something very different. But, now, even the thought of having students underfoot in a situation like this made Sirius shudder.

He could barely control himself. The idea of keeping a professional façade in front of children was too much to contemplate.

He and his friends were angry, and they didn't bother to hide it. They had worked so hard this past week, stretched themselves far beyond any comfort zone to accommodate their visitors, to understand and support them. He'd really thought they'd built something together.

Only to have Harry and the others turn their backs on them the moment it suited them. Literally. Why were they supposed to do all the compromising? Why did they have to be understanding all the time, when the dimension travellers couldn't even bother to listen to their arguments?

Yes, they were furious. And as always when they'd reached this level of collective anger, they let Lily do the talking. She was best at her angriest. Even Albus apologized to her when she got like this.

On this occasion, she gave it her very best effort.

"That," she said as soon as they had entered the Hall and gathered around a table, "was not acceptable. Not in any way, shape, or form acceptable."

Harry shrugged.

"Needed to be done, though," he said lightly, and Sirius could see both Neville and Hermione nod their agreement.

"That's not for you to decide," she shot back. "This is our dimension. We call the shots. You should have at least let us discuss this!"

Harry had the gall to smirk at her.

"Nope!" he announced, settled down at the table and conjured tea for himself and his companions.

Now, Sirius had been an auror for a good long time before he accepted his teaching position, and he'd been a member of the Order since he was eighteen. He knew that, although he preferred to keep smiling and joking until he'd drawn his friends back from the abyss they were staring into, there needed to be moments when you had to steel your heart and let the smile slip and do justice.

He knew about the realities of life, about necessity. And this wasn't that. This was sheer obnoxiousness.

It seemed that Remus had come to the same conclusion.

"Do you have to be like that?" he demanded of Harry. It was rare for him to show his irritation that way.

Harry sipped his tea with obvious enjoyment.

"Yep!" he answered happily. Sirius could have throttled him.

He caught Neville's eyes and raised a critical brow. Neville had the decency to blush over his chosen leader's antics, but he didn't look sorry, not in any way that mattered.

"What Harry means," Neville said, "is that this was an operational decision we had to make. We got involved in your dimension when we started destroying the horcruxes, and we couldn't risk Bellatrix escaping. This had to be done."

He paused.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry that we overruled you."

"More like steamrolled," Sirius answered.

"And it doesn't change the fact that what you did was wrong!" Lily added. She, too, had turned towards Neville in hopes of a rational conversation. "There were other options, other ways we could have dealt with this."

Neville's eyes darted to Hermione, then to Harry. But then he shook his head.

"No," he said. "No other options. Not with this one."

Lily fairly growled with frustration.

"You can't simply…"

"There is nothing simple about this," Luna interrupted her. Her usually airy voice had a very determined quality to it. "There's threads and threads and layers and layers, and you can't see which way the spider's moving if you're caught in the web, only guess the worst!"

Harry used the confused silence that followed to jump into the conversation again, happily driving his point home.

"Besides," he said, "just think about how convenient this is! She's only safe dead, you wouldn't have been able to kill her with your funny little moral code, and there we were! An opportunity! Just consider it an all-round service!"

Sirius didn't even have to look at his friends to know that Harry had just made everything worse. He'd been in enough ethics discussions with Remus and Lily that he could predict their next words.

"Right and wrong isn't a matter of convenience," Remus protested as expected. "You shouldn't have gone over our heads, and you certainly shouldn't have killed her. These facts aren't changed because you don't like them!"

Harry scoffed and sipped his tea, as if they were just having a pleasant chat. But his voice was hard when he answered.

"We also probably shouldn't have destroyed your horcruxes for you – interference in other dimensions and all that rot – and I certainly shouldn't mention that we have an undestroyed one in our possession, and that you really don't want to upset me as long as the future of your world depends on my moods, do you?"

Stunned silence met that statement. Even Hermione looked a bit shocked. Then Lily drew a deep breath, and there was pain on her face, hurt disbelief, but also the kind of righteous anger that she'd never quite gotten under control, the kind that bubbled up no matter how hard she pressed the lid down.

"That is blackmail," she said in the very calm, very quiet tone that was the most dangerous of them all.

Harry cocked his head.

"So?" he asked, as if he honestly didn't know where she was going with that.

"So I can't believe you're just throwing this at us! We are thankful for what you've done for us, and we understand your situation, but we're not going to jump through your hoops just because you helped, and we certainly won't tolerate this kind of atrocity just because you think communication is for lesser beings!"

"That isn't fair," Hermione cut in. She was trying for reasonable, but her voice was a bit too shrill for that. "Harry may lack a certain diplomacy, but what we did was necessary, and if you're too busy with your scruples to realize that…"

"Do you even listen to yourself?" Lily hissed. "What you did was murder, and Harry isn't undiplomatic, he's pressuring us into tolerating his obnoxious behaviour, provoking us like a teenager who doesn't understand the concept of boundaries! This isn't you! You're better than this! You're acting like you want to estrange yourselves from us! I thought we'd come closer, but here you are, suddenly behaving like people I don't even know, and, to be honest, don't want to know!"

Hermione flinched back at those words, and Neville took a step towards his friend.

Harry's face just shut down.

"I really don't care," he said dismissively. "You can think of us what you want, as long as you stay out of the way and let us do our thing."

But that wasn't true, Sirius realized suddenly. He wasn't as good with people as Remus, perhaps, but he had been an auror for a long time, and then a teacher. He knew when people where lying, and Harry most definitely was.

Lily's words had hurt him. And, as if he'd just been waiting for the moment of rejection, he'd kept pushing them, needling and prodding and provoking, expecting the moment when it all collapsed and deriving a painful satisfaction from the failure. In that moment, he reminded Sirius of Severus and the way he'd taken ages to really trust in their friendship. He wondered what that said about Harry's childhood.

But Lily didn't share Sirius' realization. She was too invested in making Harry see reason.

"We won't stay out of the way! Not as long as your thing is killing people. We won't allow such a thing in this dimension, Harry!"

Harry chuckled, coldly, bitterly.

"Well, then I'm sure you'll be glad to see us go," he said lightly, but still with that undertone of hurt. "It's been good of you to tolerate us for so long, really. I told you I was a freak. And I told you you'd change your mind about me if you got to know me properly."

Shock spread on Lily's face as she took in his words, but he'd already turned around to leave the Great Hall and didn't see it. Sirius found that he was shuffling a step forward to stop him, because ending this here would be disastrous, and he saw Neville mirroring the motion. But Lily was quicker than the rest of them. Rushing after him, she gripped his elbow, and although he did not turn back to her, she held onto him.

"No, Harry," she said beseechingly. "You're not a freak. You come from a different world and a different background, and we'll always argue. But that's a good thing. And it doesn't mean I don't want to know you anymore. It just means I care about you enough that you drive me up the walls."

Harry kept his head averted, but his whole body was straining towards her.

"Why would you care," he murmured. It wasn't quite a question, but Lily answered it anyway.

"Because I like you," she answered, and Harry's head turned as if she'd yanked it towards her, as if he simply couldn't stop himself. "Because I want you around. Because I'm proud of who you are and what you've done, even if I disagree with some of your methods. It doesn't matter that I'm not your mother, not to me, but I'm sure she would have been proud, too. So, so proud of you."

Harry stared at her.

Sirius had never quite noticed how green his eyes were, before, how they were shaped like Lily's, but filled with such a different blend of emotions, such darkness that it had been impossible to see the likeness before.

But now, as Harry seemed to focus all of himself on looking at her, drinking in every nuance of her face as if he wanted to fix this moment in his memory forever, Sirius could finally see the similarity in them, their fierceness, their devoted loyalty to others. The quiet despair when they couldn't protect.

Harry was staring at Lily, and for the first time, Sirius was seeing a son and his mother.

"That's good," Harry finally said, and swallowed hard. "That's… I'm glad. I'm glad I got to hear that. It will hurt less, knowing that."

Remus' breath escaped him in a hissing gasp at that. Sirius frowned. He wasn't sure what Harry was talking about, but the words sounded foreboding, and the way Remus looked, heartbroken and pained, made him feel quite worried, above and beyond their current problems.

Lily noticed the undercurrent, too. She reached out with the hand that wasn't still gripping Harry's arm, and cupped his cheek in a gesture that would have been presumptuous only moments ago. Now, it made Harry shudder and lean into her touch.

"What are you talking about, Harry?" she asked quietly. "What will hurt?"

He gave her a slow smile, softened by something Sirius would have called tenderness on any other face. Then he stepped back, detaching himself from her touch easily, and with that step he seemed to gather his composure around him like a cloak.

For a moment, he looked almost regal.

"Dying," he answered simply, and the word was spoken gentle like a breeze, like a caress, as if to soften the harshness of its impact. "I always knew my mother loved me, loved me enough to sacrifice herself for me. But to know that you're proud of me, that she would be, that's… I'm going to remember that, when I walk to my death. It will make it easier, I think."

The look he fixed on her, on all of them, was kind and calm and with none of the feelings that were supposed to accompany a statement like that. There wasn't a hint of anger in his face, not a grain of resignation. Just acceptance and a strange lightness, as if his words had lifted a burden from his shoulders.

Harry smiled one last, lingering, thankful smile. Then he turned around and left the Great Hall.

For a moment, they were all frozen in a tableau of disbelief.

Then Lily's shocked breath echoed in the silence around them. She turned to Hermione. The fear in her face was awful.

"What did he mean?" she asked. "Tell me what he meant!"

Hermione opened her mouth, swallowed, closed it again.

It was Neville who spoke, and his voice was a broken thing.

"Harry is a horcrux. The last one. To make Voldemort mortal again, Harry will have to let Voldemort kill him. He will have to walk up to him and accept his death without lifting a hand against it. He'll die for us. We've known it for a while now."

"No!" Lily said. "No, there has to be another way! There must be…"

"There isn't," Hermione interrupted her. All her knowledge weighed down on her words, all her frantic research and the exhaustion Sirius had seen her brush away time and again. "There is nothing we can do but let him go to his death."

"But…"

"Nothing." Hermione repeated, a scream hiding behind the word, and Neville stepped closer to her and pulled her into his side.

"He is the Chosen One," he said quietly.

Sirius remembered that Harry had called himself by that name just this morning, during that awful fight with Hermione. He remembered the way Harry had looked, his eyes dark, his body tired.

But there hadn't been a hint of doubt in him even then, no hesitation. No despair.

Only determination and a will as hard as diamond.

"But he could stay here!" Lily whispered. "He could stay safe. You don't have to go back there, how can you, when you know…"

"And leave our world to the mercy of Voldemort?" Neville asked calmly. "He'd never do that."

He paused, and his hand tightened around Hermione's shoulder. To his right, Luna appeared and stepped smoothly under his arm. It wasn't clear who supported whom as they stood together like three columns carrying this terrible truth on their backs, but together they stood without wavering.

"He didn't choose this," Hermione said. "But ever since Voldemort marked him, his path was clear. And while he never wanted this, while he fought against it as long as he could, his only choice now is to do his duty or abandon everyone. He'd never do that."

"His love for us is greater than his will to survive," Luna told them. The words were clear and without burden, floating up to the enchanted ceiling like little doves. "He is his mother's son."

Lily made a sound that was a sob and a moan and a wail of denial, then buried her face against Remus' chest. And Remus folded himself around her, hanging on as tight as he could, as ever trying to protect them all from the hurts of this world, and, as ever, failing.

But his eyes were fixed on Luna, and when he spoke, he didn't use his own words.

"But the monster laughed at them," he said, strangely calm. Sirius recognized this as the first tale Luna had told him, the morning after they'd rescued her, the one Remus had been puzzling over for days. And he realized that Remus had known before the rest of them, and had kept quiet because he wanted to spare them. "And it reached out for all their hearts and crushed two of them. And would have crushed them all, when the last boy stepped forward."

Luna smiled, sad and achingly beautiful, and as she leaned against Neville she took over the thread of the tale.

"'No,' Harry said," she continued quietly. It was very silent in the hall, and the way the light fell through the windows and gathered in little pools on the ground seemed like the most peaceful thing Sirius had ever seen.

"And he stood firm. And he released his heart, and it was made of the greatest love the world had ever seen. 'This love is your death, monster,' he said. 'And we will die together.' And he embraced the monster, despite its terrible teeth and claws, and his love burnt hotter than the sun. And together they died, Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. The Boy Who Lived and the monster who had wanted to live forever."

She paused, then reached out and touched Hermione's forehead, then Neville's chest where his heart lay beating in its cavity.

"It is what it is," she said calmly. "And in the end, love will always be more powerful and more terrible than any other magic in the world."


A/N: Review, please