"Gallopin' Gorgons," Hagrid cursed. "The Forest is on fire!"

No sooner had he said that than he set off, pushing past Ginny and then Harry as he stampeded towards the source of the orange glow. They followed him, but it was hard to keep up with the his enormous steps.

"Hagrid!" Professor McGonagall called, who despite her age seemed to have no trouble trampling through the forest like this. "Hagrid, perhaps we should go back! This is not safe."

"I wan' ter see how bad it is!" he shouted back. "And catch whoever the ruddy hell did this!"

"Harry!" Ginny said, slowing down to get next to him. "Whatever happens, we stay together."

"Whatever happens," he repeated. Their hands found each other for a moment, and then they ran on.

The temperature of the forest increased as they got closer to that faint orange glow in the distance.

"It doesn' look tha' big!" Hagrid shouted. "Maybe we can stop it before it really sets the Forest ablaze!"

"I don't know much about forest fires, but this seems like a bad idea," Harry said. But Hagrid would not stop. The air got thicker with smoke as they marched on, and Harry heard Ginny and Professor McGonagall's breathing become more laboured.

The trees here were, if possible, thicker than the others, Harry realised. Many of them were so wide that even Hagrid would not even come close to being able to wrap his arms around the trunk. The ground became more uneven with enormous roots that jutted out from the soil, sometimes reaching so high that they were forced to climb underneath the mossy arches that they formed in order to get closer to the strange fire. Tendrils of hanging moss grazed against his face like ghostly fingers.

"This part of the Forest is old, very old," McGonagall said. Even she, the Headmistress of Hogwarts, looked ill at ease here.

"I've never seen this part of the Forest," Harry said. His voice sounded muffled and he realised that it was not just the smoke that was making the air denser; the trees themselves seemed to suck the very air from their surroundings.

"It feels like we're not supposed to be here," Ginny said softly. It seemed strangely appropriate to lower their voice here, in the presence of the monstrously large trees that dwarfed even Hagrid as he marched on ahead of them. It was hard for them to keep up with him, as the foliage here was a lot denser as well than their surroundings, and snaking branches repeatedly gripped onto their clothes.

"Hagrid, slow down!" Ginny called.

Hagrid stopped, looked around, and then seemed to come back down to Earth again. He took a few steps back towards them again.

"Sorry 'bout tha'," he said. "S'pose we'll need ter work together to pu' this fire ou'."

"Indeed," McGonagall said. "But do you know where we are?"

"Prob'ly the oldes' par' of the forest," Hagrid said. "I never come even close to here I can avoid it. Only the Centaurs go 'ere sometimes, bu' tha's all I know 'bout this par'."

Harry could feel why. He felt infinitesimally small here, but there was something just beyond that seemed to pull him in, to entice him to go further into the heart of the Forest, where no human being seemed to ever have been before.

"We're getting close to the fire now," he said. "Let's go."

Hagrid led the way, but more slowly now, bending branches out of the way as they slowly trudged their way forward. The scarred bark of the trees they passed were lit up by the orange glow that grew stronger and stronger. The trees stood closer and closer together until Hagrid began to have trouble squeezing through between them. McGonagall couldn't keep up with them either as she repeatedly had to stop and cough because of the smoke. Harry and Ginny took charge. And then–

"I can see the fire now!" Ginny said. She pointed ahead, and Harry took a few steps towards her so that he could see through the narrow gap in the trees as well.

He saw a sliver of a clearing, a massive clearing, and in the middle of it stood an overwhelmingly large tree. Its trunk was impossibly wide, and its limbs stretched out to immense distances. And it was on fire. At the base lay a large pile of wood, and flames reached up from it, reaching the canopy where the fire spread out further. Several flames shot up into the sky, past the canopy, forming odd, tentacle-like tendrils that snaked around the edge of the clearing, rushing past the leaves and branches and leaving sparks and smaller flames behind there. And behind the ancient tree, on the other side of the clearing, he could see a shadow scuttering around. The hairs on his neck raised up in alert. A breeze rolled through, making the canopy high up above shiver in the wind, and a waft of sick heat reached them, watering his eyes as it drifted past him.

"C'mon, let's go see what this is all about," he said softly and he made to move again, but Ginny tugged on his arm.

"Wait for Hagrid and McGonagall," she whispered. Her eyes glittered in the glow of the fire. "What's the hurry?"

"What d'you mean?"

She hesitated. "I just… I have a bad feeling about this," she then said.

"Of course you do, there's a massive fire right over there that's threatening to turn the entire forest into ash!" he whispered back, his voice threatening to spill over into louder tones.

Ginny grabbed his other arm as well and forced him to face her.

"Harry, listen to yourself!" she said.

"What?!"

"You're not thinking straight, and I think it's because…"

But she never could finish that sentence. Just before Hagrid and McGonagall caught up with them, one of the flame tendrils grew impossibly large, and swept down like a whip, cutting through the leafy cover, snaking through the limbs of the trees, descending down upon them. He never had time to reach for his wand, and the flame wrapped itself around his middle and wrenched him backwards, towards the clearing. He saw Ginny's expression morph into one of shock, but she didn't let go of him. Their eyes met, and his arms closed around hers as well, and they held onto each other as they flew backwards, away from Hagrid and McGonagall.

They landed, roughly, on the soil, and the air was pushed from his lungs as Ginny fell on top of him.

They scrambled up, but before they could stand up and grab their wands, he heard a rough voice hoarsely cry: "Incarcerous!" and they both found themselves bound tightly by ropes. Unable to move from his awkward kneeled pose, Harry slowly toppled sideways and came to rest with his head on the cold soil. He saw from his position how a ring of fire quickly spread around the clearing, and behind it he saw the giant silhouette of Hagrid.

"Those two will not stand in my way now, no, not even the halfbreed Giant and his thick skin," that same deathly voice said. "Meddlesome fools. Let's see what they'll do with this."

Part of the ring of fire grew larger and larger, and it latched onto the trees there, quickly setting them ablaze. And then it spread to the trees next to it, and those next to them as well. The inferno spread around the ancient trees at an impossibly fast rate, and Harry heard Hagrid's furious shout in the distance. A stab of fear shot through him.

Please don't let them be caught in that, he thought. It seemed a futile wish.

"Visitors," the voice muttered. "Unwanted, yes, they disturb us, father, but maybe… maybe this is a blessing in disguise."

"Are you alright?" he whispered to Ginny, who, judging by her breathing, was still close to him.

"Yeah. You?"

"I'll live. Who is this?"

"That's what I wanted to tell you, Harry. I think this is Yaxley!"

"They are whispering, father, whispering about me behind our backs." Harry heard footsteps coming closer to him, trampling leaves and branches on its way. He cringed as two careworn boots came into view. The black pantleg above it must have looked impeccable once, but there was not much left of it now but tattered pieces of cloth that barely concealed smudged, pale, wounded skin underneath, the leg hairs wet and clinging to the skin.

The man kneeled, and Harry heard the joints pop and groan, as if his body were an old, rusted machine. More ruined clothes came into view, two claw-like hands with filthy, long nails, withered hair, and then a face that would be burned into Harry's retina until his death.

Yaxley had undergone a change in the short time since they'd last seen each other; a horrible, monstrous metamorphosis. His face was wrinkled almost beyond recognition, the soft, cheesy skin looking like it was melting in the heat of the flames, leaving his mouth a shapeless black hole that let forth a deathly smell. His eyes were almost entirely red with blood that leaked from broken veins, and they faced in opposite directions. The few wisps of white hair that were left clung to his withered visage, and his back stuck out in a grotesque hunchback. How could he have degenerated so quickly?

"Harry Potter," the husk of a man wheezed. His mouth twitched and moved, and Harry realised that he must be smiling. "You look terrified! Ha! You should be!"

Harry's heart thumped in his chest as his gaze shifted from the man's face to what he held in one of his beastly hands.

"Yesss, the Elder Wand," Yaxley hissed. He stroked the wand with his other hand, and Harry saw that he could barely move his bent fingers anymore. "What a gift, what a gift… I've done things I could not have dreamed of before with this artefact. Well… You've gotten a little taste of its powers just now, oh yes. And I think your two companions are having fun with it as we speak. Ha! Oh, the terrible biting, scorching heat!"

"What are you doing here, Corban?" Harry asked, fighting to push down waves of intense nausea as the man breathed out close to his face.

The hole that was his mouth twitched in another twisted parody of a grin. "Magic, Harry. Magic that this world has not seen for centuries. And you two are about to witness it all unfold. Yes, you two will do perfectly. I wanted to snatch maybe a poor, itty Hogwarts student for this, but no need now, no need…"

"What are you going to do with us?"

"You'll see, you'll see…" His gaze then shifted to look behind Harry. "Or maybe she will, hmm?" He scuttled around Harry, out of his view, and he felt a rush of fury when he imagined him touching her, but he couldn't move; the ropes were too tight. "Yes, will you? Would you like to watch as I suck the life from his body before your eyes?"

"Don't touch me!" she cried.

"Silence!" Yaxley shouted, his voice getting more hoarse as his volume increased.

"What happened to you, Corban?" Harry asked. He had to distract the man, and then maybe…

"What happened to me?" Yaxley repeated. He marched back towards Harry and kneeled by his side again. "Do you mean this?" he demanded. He grabbed a few plucks of hair and pulled, and Harry watched on in morbid fascination as they simply came loose from his scalp without any trouble whatsoever. "Or my skin?" He raked his claws over his waxy face, drawing lines and leaving behind red stripes. Blood began to ooze from them, blood that was far too dark and that shone in the light of the inferno surrounding them. "Oh my, my, but it's been so awful here! I haven't slept since the day where I thought I'd finally killed you, just worked and talked and talked and worked. The books didn't lie when they said that the Wand was special, Harry." His doll-like eyes lit up in excitement. "I can see it in your eyes as well! You know that feeling, don't you? Of the wand whispering things in your ear… You want it back, don't you? Hah!"

He brought down his grotesque hand, there was a sharp flash of pain, and then Harry felt burning scratch marks on his cheek of where Yaxley had struck him.

"You can't! It's mine now, Harry. I took it, fair and square from you, and this Wand recognises me as its master. And now…" He spread his arms, and a strange shadow was cast around him, as if there was someone – or something – much larger standing behind him. "Now I am the Master of Death at last."

He whipped his head around towards the burning tree in the middle of the clearing.

"I know they're distracting me, father!" he said. Harry craned his neck but couldn't see anyone else there. Then it hit him. Father. His eyes widened.

"You've used the Resurrection Stone to bring back your father," Harry whispered.

Yaxley fixed his gaze on him again, and he cringed as he did so. "No, no, you've got it wrong! I tried to bring him back, but he's not really here! I can talk, but not touch… And he's so far away, so distant, so ethereal!" But then he stopped cringing, and he raked his eyes over Harry's body. He felt goose bumps spread on his skin under the mans leering scrutiny. "But soon, my friend, we will remedy that. With this wand, I will perform what has been deemed impossible by generations of even the most gifted Wizards of our age! One life for another, Harry, and the Master of Death shall reverse the injustice that was wrought onto my family."

"That was what this was all about, wasn't it?" Harry asked. Despite his mounting fear, he had to keep talking. Maybe Hagrid and McGonagall would be able to do something…

"Oh, yes, you've connected the dots!" Yaxley's shapeless mouth twitched. "Oh, but it was so hard, and so gruelling! All I ever wanted was to have my father back, after he was taken away from me by you Aurors. But how? I searched for so long, so long, but even the Dark Lord had no answers for me." A strange green glow seemed to light up in his eyes and his incoherent madness started to make way for a manic energy. "And then you defeated him, and my mind was muddled. Sullied by lust for revenge against you. But how? How could I ever go up against the vanquisher of my Lord?"

His head then snapped back into the direction of the fire. "Yes, father! Yes, I'm going to make more haste!" he cried. He looked back at Harry, seemed to consider something, and then he waved his wand at him, and Harry was lifted up into the air. "Got to get everything ready now, yes. The fire must be fed and nourished," he murmured, walking towards the fire with Harry floating in the air in front of him. "It's so hungry, Harry. Look around us. Do you see it growing and growing?"

Harry looked away from Yaxley's grotesque appearance and gasped as he took in his surroundings. The ancient trees that used to enclose the clearing in a tight wall of wood and leaves, were now all succumbed in flames. The sky had turned red with the flames and sparks that violently shot up, burning branches shook heavily in heat-generated winds, and he could see no end to the fire further away. The ancient heart of the Forbidden Forest was burning.

And the oak that stood in the centre of the clearing was entirely ablaze, its mighty branches that spread out so far from the trunk all succumbed to the flames. There was hardly anything left of what once had been the oldest, largest tree in the woods.

Yaxley sat Harry down on the ground there, and then summoned Ginny towards them to seat her next to him. He took his and Ginny's wands, and snap them before their eyes. Harry watched the two broken pieces of his holly wand fall to the ground, landing in a patch of moss that had blackened in the heat.

Then Yaxley set to work, with Harry and Ginny watching on in a morbid parody of a play as he scuttled around the clearing, collecting fallen branches and placing them in a pile at the base of the tree.

"I couldn't confront you," he said, his voice carrying unnaturally far over the clearing. It was getting hotter and hotter here, and Harry felt his throat getting more and more parched. "You were too strong and too protected and I was just all on my own, isolated, broken, running away constantly to evade you and your Aurors."

He took something from his withered coat, something that looked eerily similar to the cadaver of some rodent, and he chucked it in the fire. There was a white flash-flame that emitted a shrieking sound that raised the necks on Harry's hair. Then Yaxley turned towards them. He bent over and pressed two fingers against Harry's temples. "I had to get inside your head if I wanted to do something against you. So I made that chit you were with shag another man." His blackened tongue slithered from his shapeless mouth and licked his thin lips. "I was right there, you know, watching it all unfold. And then I thought I had you. You were so lonely and sad… But oh, I was so blind back then! All I was out for was revenge! And I waited and waited for the opportune moment…"

He shifted his maddened gaze to Ginny. "But then you entered his life again!" he said, stepping towards her. "I was so angry that all my work had been for nothing! Nothing!" he screamed, his mouth close to Ginny's face. She closed her eyes and turned her head, grimacing.

"But then those Deathly Hallows," he said, continuing in a softer tone. "Julie spied on you, you know. She was in and out of your home all the time, and saw how you hid that Elder Wand from everyone so carefully. I couldn't believe it! It was as if a light had gone on inside of me, like it had done when the Dark Lord first approached me! Everything became clear to me, and I knew that I had to become the Master of Death. So I read, and I read, but so little information came to me. I knew that you had the Wand, and I suspected that you had the Invisibility Cloak as well. But where was the Resurrection Stone, then? I had to know. So I went to Hogwarts to try and search for it, and I almost got caught by that House Elf. Still no Hallows. I asked the wandmaker Ollivander, but he wouldn't tell me anything about the Hallows, no matter how many fingers of his I broke."

His head twisted around, and Harry heard a few vertebrae pop. "Yes, father! I will!"

He turned back to the tree and started circling it, drawing complex patterns with the Elder Wand, and all the while murmuring incantations in languages that Harry didn't recognise. Occasionally he pulled more cadavers, or parts of them, from his coat pocket, dropping them into the fire and creating more of those morbid white flash flames.

The fire became more intense, and Harry felt the skin of his face singe from the heat. Yet even though they were in the midst of the raging fire, with trees burning all around them, they didn't burn alive. It was as if they were in a cocoon here, something inexplicable and beyond nature that sheltered them from most of the heat of the fire. And the burning branches and logs rained that down all around them seemed to avoid them as well. And as Yaxley continued to chant and feed the fire, Harry felt a different sensation underneath the heat and his mounting anxiety: it was a rushing in his ears, and something that pressed down onto him, as if there was an unnatural amount of pressure here. The very air seemed to thrum with mounting energy that pulsed from the ancient tree.

"And still I had to get the Wand from you as well. I ordered that girl to try and steal it from you, but she disobeyed me. Oh, the punishment…" Harry clenched his teeth and balled his fists in fury, but it was all he could do.

"And then suddenly, you and Shacklebolt offered me that deal!" He cackled. "Such an obvious trap, yes, but I played along very well, yes. That Unbreakable Vow? You actually believed that it had worked! Ha!" He paused and held out his left arm, and then he conjured a golden thread that snaked around his extended arm. "See? Magic! Smoke, light, and a few bangs, and everyone will believe you." His expression, shimmering in the dancing light of the flames, darkened. "But I still didn't have the Deathly Hallows. There was one last person who I could… interrogate. That Lovegood man. Everyone knows he always walks around with the sign of the Hallows around his neck. But he was uncooperative as well." Harry noticed that the immense tree was starting to lean more to the side. It wouldn't be long now before it would collapse.

"I was out of options, so I decided to chance it and go back to Hogwarts. And then it all made sense to me, where I should be going." He approached Harry again, his eyes emitting a strange, unnatural light. He reached out with a dirt and ash-covered finger and traced Harry's scar. He closed his eyes in disgust at the hard touch. "I had to go to the place where you should have died, in the Forbidden Forest. And before I could even begin my search, you showed up, and led me directly to the Resurrection Stone! In my joy I didn't even consider going after you anymore!" He pulled on a chord that was hanging around his neck. It looked roughly made, and there were a few hairs sticking out here and there. And on the end of it hung – Harry's heart started beating faster and harder in his chest – the Resurrection Stone.

"I see it in your eyes," Yaxley said in his wheezy voice. "You understand, don't you? I could see my father again, after all those years, touch him, talk to him… Or so I thought." He grimaced and clawed with those brown nails of his at his face, leaving more red, dirt-specked traces. "He's here, but not fully. He's but an imprint, an echo. And when I embraced him, my hands felt nothing but cold, cold air… I spent many hours talking to him, wondering how I could solve this, until I read in one of the few books on the Deathly Hallows about a woman resurrecting her husband from the brink of death by exchanging her soul for his life, and I knew then that that was my only chance at solving this. Oh how long I've searched for the precise workings of this! I've put one of the Hogwarts students under the Imperius Curse and he has been providing me with all the ancient tomes on resurrection rituals that he could find. Most were useless to me, and so I travelled to Geneva, to where that woman allegedly resurrected her husband. Their mansion still stands to this day, you know, but it is completely in ruins. No Muggles will go near it due to the Muggle-repelling charms. And in the ruins I found a journal that belonged to the same woman that fairy tale talked about."

"Elisabeth?" Ginny whispered.

"Yes," he hissed, leering at her. "Elisabeth. The fairy tale comes close to the truth, except for one thing: all the things about that figure called Mephistopheles coming to her aid is all a lie. Whoever wrote down the story read too much Goethe, methinks. No, she did all of it herself. Quite where she got the knowledge of the precise workings of the ritual from is a mystery to me, but she procured the Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone, and then cast a ritual with them that is as old as time itself. A resurrection ritual. See?" He turned around and spread his mangled arms, as if to offer himself to the grand fire that rose with all its might above them. "From the ashes of the old, new life will rise." He turned back towards them and drew from his jacket an unremarkable-looking acorn and a vial that contained what looked like a small pile of dust. "After this tree is turned to ash, I shall plant this in its remains. I shall christen it with your blood, and then from his remains, my father shall rise again." He shook the vial, the dust inside it swirling around the tiny glass container.

"But she didn't reverse death," Ginny said softly. "You've read it as well: she didn't revive him, she just took him back from the brink of death. This won't work, Yaxley. Your father is dead."

Harry felt a jolt travel through him, and for a moment he was back in the Black Lake, raking the Elder Wand over Ginny's stomach to pull the bullets from her and bring her back from the brink of death.

Yaxley's cold, mirthless laughter brought him back to the present. "You think that you can still convince me? No, no, missy, your blood will flow tonight, and so will his. I've come too far, I've sacrificed too much."

And with that, he turned back to the burning tree in the centre of the clearing.

"It's not going to work," Ginny said to Harry.

"How do you know?"

"I have read far too much on the Deathly Hallows while you were away, Harry, and there have been a few instances of this kind of thing happening, but they were always about people who were still alive, but only barely. Including that fairy tale that he'd read about the Swiss man."

"But have you seen magic like this before?" Harry asked. "And do you feel it? That energy coming from the tree? There's something going on here that's far bigger than us."

"I feel it too," she said. She shivered against him. "I hope Hagrid and McGonagall are alright."

"Me too. But I don't know if they can help us here. They couldn't get through the edge of the clearing, and I don't see a way through the fire now anymore."

Ginny leaned against him.

"We're going to fight him to the end, Ginny," he said. He wanted to turn to her but couldn't. "If there's anything I've learnt, it's that nothing is set in stone when it comes to the future. I've lost count at how many times I was sure that I would lose everything… that I would never see you again. And still, despite all that, we ended up together again."

"I know," she said. "I never thought we'd be able to have a second chance together, and then we got back together…" She sniffed. "When I lost you, it just seemed to be a sort of… It just felt morbidly right that it wasn't to be. And then you proved that wrong as well. And Harry…"

"Hmm?"

"Should we die here, then I'm glad that we're together at least."

"I love you."

"I love you too," she said.

He wanted to hold her, kiss her, show her through his affection that it was going to be alright, but his hands were tied. So he simply leaned against her. And yet, despite his words, it was hard to imagine everything turning out alright as he looked around and saw forest that seemed older than time itself burn down and collapse before his very eyes. And the tree at the centre of the clearing groaned under its own weight and leaned more and more to the side. The thrumming in his ears turned into a roar. His eardrums stung in the pressure and the wind picked up, tearing through the burning trees with vigour, casting flames high up to the sky. Harry shivered despite it being so hot here. He wanted to curl up and hide away from whatever it was that tore through this place, but he couldn't. He closed his eyes. This was magic at its rawest, tearing at the roots of the Earth. Harry was paralysed at the winds of pure energy that rushed through and past him. He hardly even felt Ginny next to him anymore, and he heard nothing but the roaring in his ears and, distantly, the groaning, creaking, shrieking sound of the mighty oak collapsing under its weight. The magical cocoon that protected them before, that sheltered them from all around them, was washed away as if it was nothing.

Ash was kicked up and washed over him in a wave of hot and filthy air, blocking his nostrils and making him retch and cough, and the Earth shook violently under the weight and the roots that were torn up, unearthed. Harry no longer felt himself. He no longer felt the ground underneath him. There was nothing anymore, it was all swept up and blown away in the earth-shattering torrents of magic, and all he was, was his frightened consciousness that was swept up in the violence like an insect tossed around in a summer-evening storm.

And through the chaos he heard a sharp, unearthly cry that cut through the noise. He cracked open one eye. The clearing was hardly visible in the clouds of ash and flame that were cast around by swirling torrents of magic-fed winds, but there, somewhere in the apocalyptic sight, he saw the crooked form of Yaxley. The last vestiges of humanity that had barely clung to him had finally left his husk of a body. He danced around in ecstasy, emitting hoarse cries of joy.

"I am the Master of Death!" he shrieked. "I have conquered nature itself! Father! You will come home at last!"

He pointed his wand up in the air. There was an almighty rumble, Yaxley was for a brief moment of time lit up by red light that seemed to protrude from the earth beneath him, and then a silvery light erupted from the Elder Wand. It shot up into the sky at a blistering pace and exploded in a blinding flash of light.

Monstrous clouds rushed in from all sides, and their black, porous texture seemed to boil, and they were cast in a dark red hue by the flame-fed glow of the forest fire. The magic-saturated clouds condensed in above them and were sucked into a vortex that spun around rapidly. The ash and flames that already whipped around wildly were only torn around even faster now, plucking at his clothes, blistering his exposed skin.

Yaxley shouted until his vocal chords were ripped apart. Harry could barely watch the intensity of it all, but then the man stopped shouting, and he hobbled quickly to Harry and Ginny, withdrawing a knife that glittered in the chaotic light of the flames. Harry noticed that the circle of fire that blocked the clearing was now gone, and there was nothing anymore that stopped the raging forest fire around them from spreading into the clearing itself.

"Death comes for you now," he growled. He flicked the Elder Wand and he and Ginny were lifted from the scorching ground, flying through the ash and flames towards the centre of the clearing. "I shall command it. I am above Death now."

Something did not like that. An ash-ridden surge of wind ripped through them, and he and Ginny were dropped to the ground. Yaxley grunted behind them.

"I will hurry, father!" he said. His voice warbled in discomfort. "Something is working against me! But it shall not stop the Master of Death now!"

He stepped around Harry and Ginny and produced the acorn from his tattered jacket again. He knelt before them and scratched a hole into the still glowing ash with his bare hands.

"I am your Master now," he said to the acorn. Another gust of wind tore through the desolate clearing. Harry's eyes fell on a small spark that travelled up from the felled tree that lay prone behind Yaxley. The ember danced in the stormy winds, swirling around in its many torrents, until it landed on one of the tatters of Yaxley's jacket. The spark found its home there and hungrily bit at the cloth around it, growing into a small flame.

Yaxley continued to dig the hole until he was satisfied with it, and then, with surprising tenderness, he laid the acorn in its warm nest. The flame on his back spread further and further, spurred on by the surges of wind, but he didn't notice it.

Yaxley stood up and fixed his gaze on him.

"And now," he said. "Now we bathe the seed in blood. One life for the other." He marched over to Harry, knife still in his hand. But he finally started to notice the flames on his back.

His grim expression morphed into one of shock, his unfocused eyes widened, and he emitted a shrill yell.

"Aguamenti!" he cried. But the Elder Wand failed his master. No water came forth from the tip of his wand. The wand chooses the Wizard, and Yaxley had been deemed obsolete by whatever power it was that rushed through the rearing, fire-soaked forest.

"NO! Aguamenti! AGUAMENTI!" It wouldn't happen, and the flames began to lick at his neck and the remaining strands of hair that were still there. "Please! Father! Please!" he cried to no avail. He dropped to the floor and rolled around, but the ash and glowing coal there only spread the fire further. He screamed and yelled, his voice gurgling more and more as he melted and burned away before their eyes, until he twitched for the last time.

And the man that had been Harry's shadow for nearly half his life was no more, his body rapidly consumed by the all-ending fire.

Harry didn't know how much time passed before he realised that the ropes that bound them were gone. But when he did, he shot up and pulled Ginny up with him.

"We have to get out of here!" she said, tugging on his arm. "The fire is spreading, and we can't Apparate without our wands!"

Harry didn't move. His eyes were drawn to the Elder Wand that lay in Yaxley's grasp. The man's hand wasn't consumed yet by the fire. The Wand was there for the taking. And the Invisibility Cloak and the Resurrection Stone were there as well, if they could still be rescued from the burning husk of what once had been a man.

"Harry, no!" Ginny cried. She pulled on his arm again but he was frozen in indecision. The lingering tainted seed that the Wand had planted inside him whispered in his ear right as more chaotic winds swept around them, blowing unbearable heat from the fire into his face. The vortex of monstrous clouds hadn't dissipated, even though Yaxley had died, and the forest fire approached them on all sides, towering above them.

"We can mend our wands," he said, though it felt as if it wasn't him who was speaking. His voice seemed oddly distant and the words were ripped from his lips by the wind.

"What?"

"With the Elder Wand. I mended my wand earlier, after the War. We can do it again."

"Fuck the Elder Wand! We'll get ourselves new wands, okay? Now come with me, you idiot!"

Harry, overcome by a daze, allowed himself to be dragged with her a few steps, but as he was removed further from the Deathly Hallows, there was a sharp ache in his chest, as if a hook had sunk into his skin and was reeling him in.

He wrenched himself from Ginny's grasp and dove forward before she could catch him. He landed on the ground, and ash was kicked up around him. He reached out and slapped Yaxley's prone hand away. The Elder Wand would be in his possession again and all would be right. He closed his hand around the Wand.

But it no longer cold to the touch as it had been before. All his delirious expectations were swept away and the torrential winds kicked up once more, washing ash and sickening spark-saturated heat over him. The wand was hot in his grasp, far too hot, hotter than anything he'd ever felt, and he screamed as he felt his skin melt to the touch.

Yet he couldn't let go. His hand was not in his control anymore. The feeling of being a passenger in his own body flooded back to him in a sickening déjà vu. And the unbearable heat of the wand reached out with its scalding fingers, reaching, pulling beneath the melting flesh. His vision blurred, his breath was squeezed from him and didn't come back, and his consciousness faded in the intense pain. In the back of his head he heard more screaming, but he was disconnected from that. Everything was swept away on the wind. All he felt was the Wand and that link that used to travel from the wood, through his veins, into his chest. That ice-cold connection burned, it bubbled and cooked beneath his skin, writhing around like a wounded snake in its last vestiges of panicked death. And then it wrenched at his being, the hook tore loose, and the immaterial yet all-consuming thing that tethered the cursed artefact to his soul was torn from him. The constraining around his chest lifted and he could finally move again.

His hand flew open and the wand tumbled from his grasp right as Ginny pulled him back.

"What did you do that for, you idiot?!" she shouted in his ear. She was gasping in his ear.

"It's gone," Harry said in a blissful moment of clarity.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The Elder Wand," he said. "It's… the link is gone."

"Well that's highly interesting and all, but we have to go now or we get burned to a crisp!" she said. "Now come on, Potter!"

He shook his head and stood up with her. He glanced at Yaxley one last time, and then at his hand. His palm was blackened. But it was a worry for later.

"Where can we go?" he asked Ginny.

"Finally! C'mon, there's one last part that's not burning yet!"

And then they were off. They left the clearing without looking back, through a part of the forest that was not entirely on fire yet, though Harry could see the flames already licking at the canopy here.

They scuttled away, but there was no way that they could outrun the fire through the maze of ancient trees. He looked back occasionally as they sped away, but the fire was always there, its innumerable writhing, flaming tendrils jumping from tree to tree like a predator on the hunt, rapidly catching up with them.

He didn't utter his fears to Ginny. He didn't have to; the look in her eye said enough, told him that she shared that same fear with him. They ran on, but the inevitable futility of their flight made time slow down to a surreal crawling pace.

"I don't think we're headed in the direction of Hogwarts," he said to Ginny, panting, but never breaking his stride. Trees cast in hellish hues passed by them. "Nor the Black Lake."

"Keep fucking running," she growled.

Harry shook his head and they sprinted on. The forest was getting less dense now, but that only meant that there was more oxygen for the fire to breathe in. Violent gusts of wind soared past them in all random directions as the forest was eaten alive by the fire behind them. He saw rodents, birds, bats, and larger creatures in the distance, all hierarchy of the forest forgotten as they all fled from the impending fire as one. He saw a large bird try to fly up above the ancient canopy, but it was then caught in a gust of swirling wind, and it was reeled in, sucked back into the inferno.

This was what the Centaurs were talking about, he thought. This was why the Thestrals and the unicorns fled. This was the end.

They were descending now, and they slowed down a touch out of fear, and Harry's stomach jolted in recognition. This was the valley that he had run into after last time. Images immediately detached from his unconscious brain and fought their way to the forefront of his thoughts, but he pushed them down.

"Ginny!" he breathed. "There is a lake at the bottom here!"

"How d'you…" she began, but then she shook his head. "Never mind, let's go!"

They slipped down further and further, but the fire caught up with them at last. The heat scorched their backs, the roaring became louder and louder in their ears. The lake shimmered in the red and orange light in the distance. Ginny shouted at him, but her words never reached him.

And then she cried as she tripped over a root, and she rolled past him, downhill, over the leafy soil. He slipped and slid towards her, stumbling to a halt next to her and pulling her on her feet. She swayed back and forth, completely disoriented by her fall. Harry snarled and simply pulled her up onto his back. Flames entered his vision on either side of him, and his legs burned with the extra weight on his back. Ginny's fists squeezed his jacket and she shouted something in his ear…

And then water splashed around his feet as he reached the edge of the lake. He hopped in further until he could hardly walk anymore, dumped Ginny into the water next to him, and they swam further until they were in the middle of the lake.

The immense sea of flames reached the edge of the lake as well, and quickly spread around it. The wind blew in all directions, embers rained down all around them, and they had to submerge every so often to douse them if they landed on them. But they were safe. He breathed out at last, oddly sweet-tasting water entering his mouth as he closed his eyes in relief. Ginny slipped her hand in his, and so they floated there, hand in hand, as they waited for the fire to pass.

Their feet found muddy ground at last, and they trudged the last bit out of the water, reaching the blackened edge of the lake.

There was nothing left. Everything they saw was laid to ash. Only a few scorched stumps remained, and the rest was all even, equal black. The ground crunched beneath their feet, and dark puffs of ash was kicked up with every step they took.

Ginny sniffed, and Harry felt his heart sink as well. The Forbidden Forest, as inhospitable as it had always been, had seemed so eternal, such an intrinsic part of Hogwarts. To think that the ancient woods were now gone, it was… incomprehensible.

"C'mon," he said softly. His voice sounded muffled. It was deathly silent. Nothing moved.

He reached out his left hand, which was incredibly wrinkled after spending such a long time in the water, and Ginny took it. He looked down at his right hand. The ash was now gone, but it only revealed a mess of white and red burn marks. There was nothing left of the palm of his hand.

"We'll ask Madam Pomfrey is she can do anything about it," Ginny said.

"I don't know if it will ever heal," he said. "Dittany can only do so much."

"We'll deal with that when we have to. Now let's go."

Time was of no meaning here, and their trek through the desolate landscape seemed to drag on forever. The air had a strange green hue to it, and they couldn't see far ahead, leaving them disoriented, lost. And they encountered not a single living thing. It was hard to see where they were going, and Harry only hoped that by going back roughly the way they came, they would eventually reach the castle grounds again. Surely the castle itself would have survived…

"Wait." Ginny's voice cut through the silence after what seemed like ages.

"What?"

"Shh! Listen!"

Harry stopped and pricked up his ears. Then – he heard it. Faint, muffled shouting that came from far away.

"D'you hear it?"

"Is that Hagrid?"

They stopped and listened again. This time it was unmistakable, and there was a second voice that joined them as well.

"McGonagall!" he shouted.

And then they were off, running into the direction of where the voices came from. And their silhouettes emerged from the green toxic hue, and before Harry knew it, he and Ginny were wrapped in Hagrid's trademark bone-crushing hugs.

"We thought you'd died!" Harry panted when he was released from Hagrid's grip.

"Wha' abou' yeh, then?" Hagrid said back, grinning from ear to ear. "How in the ruddy hell did yeh manage to survive?"

They launched into an abridged version of the tale of Yaxley's plan, their escape and subsequent rush into the lake.

"And what about you?" Harry then asked Hagrid and McGonagall.

"We had to Apparate out," she said in a shaky voice. We've alerted the other Professors and began to try to stop the fire immediately, but as you can see…" she gestured around the desolate landscape. "We didn't achieve much. We feared the worst for you two didn't appear from the fire."

"Professor McGonagall," Hagrid said. "Migh' we, erm… warn the others tha' they can stop searching?"

"Oh," she said. "Yes, of course." She flicked her wand a few times, and Patronuses shot into different directions, disappearing into the green, deathly fog. "Now, let's head back to the castle quickly. The less time we spend here, the better."

Hagrid bit back a chocked sob. "It's a tragedy…" he grumbled.

"I never thought the Forbidden Forest would be gone," Ginny said, her voice warbling with emotion. "It had seemed so…"

"Eternal," Harry said, blankly staring ahead at the desolate scene. "And just like that, it's gone."

"All the animals," Hagrid chocked out. He sniffed. "Mos' of 'em burn' ter a crisp, an' the ones who lef' los' their home."

They moved on in silence as more and more tears streamed down Hagrid's face. McGonagall reached out and patted his enormous arm, but she said nothing. And there really was nothing more to say. Hagrid's beard was full of specks of ash, making his hair seem even greyer than it already was, and for the first time in his life it dawned on Harry that Hagrid was aging. He wondered how old half-giants could get, but the thought of Hagrid aging and possibly dying soon brought about a wave of sadness that washed over him as intense as it was sudden, and he bit his lip as tears pooled in his eyes. It was childish of him, he thought, to be so shocked and scared at this, but Hagrid was his oldest friend, and when Harry thought of Hogwarts, he thought of the immense castle, but also the grounds that surrounded it, and Hagrid lumbering around in it, going in and out of the forest, growing immense pumpkins, teaching children Care for Magical Animals. But now the forest was gone, and a nasty part of Harry's mind was sure that it would mean that Hagrid would go soon as well.

"We're getting there," Hagrid eventually said, shaking Harry from his morbid thoughts.

He looked up, wiping the tears from his cheeks, and saw the silhouette of Hogwarts. The bright rays of light cast out by the rising sun behind it sharply contrasted the shape against the sky, which was still darkened by the deathly grey-green hue that the fire had cast out. To his left was only more death and destruction that went on until it disappeared in the thick, murky fog. But then he looked to his right and saw something that made him stop in his tracks.

The ash-ridden fog cleared for a moment as a breeze sighed past, and it momentarily revealed a perfect sun-strewn view of the Black Lake. The water, abundant with small waves cast around by the wind, glittered, the morning sun reflecting in sparks and pinpoints off the wavy surface. Before it, stretching from them all the way down to the lake, was only blackened earth. But behind it was a sea of green, reaching out into the horizon, crawling up the mountains that still hadn't lost all of their snow yet. The fire had not destroyed everything after all. The forest was still there, just as it always had been, basking in the rising spring sun. And it had never looked more beautiful to him.

Such was his surprise and awe at the stupefying sight that he sank to his knees just as Hagrid, McGonagall and Ginny joined him in watching the scene of beauty. He barely felt the sharp pieces of coal that stung his knees.

"I couldn' believe it if I didn' see it with me own eyes," Hagrid murmured. "I though' we'd los' everything…"

The words barely registered with Harry. His heart soared and blood rushed through his ears. Thoughts of death and decay had completely made way for a new realisation that shook him to the point of dizziness: Yaxley was dead, Lord Castlereagh was behind bars, he and Ginny were back together, and he was forgiven for what he'd done.

"It's over," he said. He looked up at his side. Her red hair, cast alight by the sun, had never looked more beautiful. He didn't say anything more, because he knew that he didn't need to. They both understood what this meant. The fear, grief and anger of the previous period was behind them, and the life that they'd imagined together could finally begin now.

He looked back at the scene before him, but his eyes were drawn downward, to a point on the ground just by his knee.

It was small, almost too small to see in the black soil, but still he saw it. It was a tiny seedling, sprouting up not a few millimetres from the soil, its tiny leaf not opened up to the world yet.

"Look," he simply said.

The others were silent for a moment as they gazed at the point where Harry was pointing it.

"Oh, bless its soul," Hagrid then murmured.

"It sprouted so quickly already?" he asked. "But how? The ground is still warm from the fire!"

Then he looked around and saw more green seedlings here and there. Saplings of plants and trees sprung up all around him, and it was like looking at stars in the night sky – the longer he looked, the more specks of green he saw.

"I knew tha' forests regrow migh'y quickly after a fire," Hagrid said, his voice gruff. "Bu' this?"

"Let's leave it to grow in peace, then," McGonagall said softly. "And hope that sooner or later we can call it a forest again."

They rose up again, and Harry couldn't help himself: he wrapped an arm around Ginny and drew her close. They moved on with lifted spirits.

And far away, in a warm bed of doused coals, the acorn that Yaxley had planted, broke out of its shell. The sapling grew quickly from the fertile soil, far more quickly than the innumerable trees and bushes around it. Soon it would crown the forest again, just as it had always done.

And next to it, at the base of the tree, lay forgotten the three Deathly Hallows. Harry, freed from their spell, never thought about them anymore. Ginny, glad to have her Harry back again, never mentioned them anymore.

And so they laid there, waiting, as they had always done, to latch onto their new host, who would arrive here, once upon a time.

Author's notes: A little over three years ago, my writer's block finally ended. I was so happy at that, that I wrote a silly action novella that was basically a GTA 5 mission in the Harry Potter world. After publishing it, I asked the readers whether they were interested in a sequel. They were, and that spiralled into The Elder Tales. This was its final part.

I'd like to thank all the people who helped me with the writing and the editing process: Inareskai, Jenorama, Lawyer, and Vlaai. I would have gone mad somewhere in the planning stage or during editing without their help. I'd also like to thank the most active reviewers: Godricshelm, Bluest Witch, Bolshevikmuppet, and Yuan. Their words of encouragement have made my day brighter countless times. Finally I'd like to thank (of course) all the people who have read these fics. I hope you've enjoyed them, and I hope you'll all be on board for the next one!