A big thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter; your words, as always, are muchly appreciated :)
Saturday 2 May, 1998:
"You really have quite the god complex, don't you?"
"God complex?"
"You have such an unshakeable belief in your own abilities and intelligence that when you see something go wrong, you always think you could have prevented it. You think you should be infallible. But you're not. You're only human, Lena. A very clever, very talented, very ambitious human. But not a god."
Lena twirled a lock of hair around her finger as she stared up at the early morning twilight sky, remembering Remus' words from the day they had first admitted their love for each other. Right now, the echo of his voice in her head was the only thing stopping her from going insane.
It had been over six hours since Remus and the others had left for the battle, and she hadn't heard anything from anyone yet. For all she knew, they could all be dead. And all that time, she was just sitting on the front doorstep of the Lestrange house, unable to do anything to save them.
Mortimer and Tizzy kept her company, but in silence, for which Lena was grateful. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, all she would do was scream.
If Remus died, what would she do? Would she be able to keep control of the Nekrosía raging inside her? Or overcome with anger and devastation, would she lose her mind, and let everything burn? That was Remus' worst fear…
'Which means you can't let that happen,' Lena told herself, for the thousandth time that night. 'You have to keep a hold of yourself. For him.'
But she was not alone in her head.
'If you truly loved him,' whispered Hecate, her voice crawling like a spider around Lena's mind, 'you wouldn't have stayed here. You would have gone to Hogwarts, and ended the war before anyone could get hurt. You have that power – you are choosing not to use it.'
Lena ignored her. She couldn't trust the Nekrosía. All it wanted was death – and it didn't care whose it was. And because she wasn't letting it take anyone else's life, it was trying to destroy hers – every cell of her body. Her magic was putting up a good fight, but it couldn't hold off the Nekrosía forever. So, no matter what happened, she had to keep trying to find a way to get rid of it – even if there didn't seem like much point in living without Remus.
She let go of her hair and closed her eyes, focusing on the image of his face; his light green eyes, the premature crow's feet that surrounded them, his long nose, every single scar…
"Miss Lena!" shrieked Tizzy, her hand urgently nudging her mistress.
Lena's eyes flew open, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw a silver light appearing in front of her. As the Patronus began to shape itself, she wanted to stand, but her knees were suddenly too weak.
Four legs, a tail, a canine head…
"Lena," said the wolf Patronus in Remus' voice, and a primal noise of relief burst out of her, "it's over. Voldemort is dead. Harry… I'm still not sure how he did it, but… but he did. Come to Hogwarts, Tizzy can bring you. I…" The Patronus shook its head a little. "Merlin, I can't believe it. The war is over."
With a soft pop, the silver wolf vanished.
"Oh, Miss Lena!" cried Tizzy, hugging her joyously. "Mr Remus is all right!"
Mortimer, sliding down to Lena's lap, began to twitter excitedly. Lena, too stunned to properly return Tizzy's hug, stared wordlessly at the spot where the Patronus had disappeared.
Remus was alive. And what was more – they had won.
Finding her voice, Lena replied to Tizzy, "Yes." A smile broke across her face. "Yes, he is." The house-elf released her, and Lena stood up, putting Mortimer into the pocket of the light grey cardigan she was wearing. "Okay, let's go."
Tizzy nodded, then furrowed her brow. "But where to, Miss Lena? If there has been a battle–"
"A lot of the castle has probably been damaged, yes," finished Lena. She considered her options. What place was most likely to have been untouched by the fighting? "Let's try the Headmaster's office."
Hidden by the Invisibility Cloak, Harry slipped out of the Great Hall. He just wanted a few minutes alone before he explained everything to Ron and Hermione, or spent some time with Eve – just to truly process what had happened.
Voldemort was dead. His body lay in the chamber where during his Fourth Year, Harry had joined the other Triwizard Champions when the Goblet of Fire had shockingly spat out his name; the first time he had even spoken to Cedric Diggory, whose murder had now finally been avenged.
Once he was out of everyone else's sight, Harry took the Cloak off, and wandered along the corridors. Not really thinking, he let his feet guide him to the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Headmaster's office – where not long ago, he had finally learned the truth. Several truths, in fact.
Dumbledore's portrait hadn't been there then. But perhaps he was back now.
The gargoyle had been knocked aside; it stood lopsided, looking a little punch-drunk, and Harry wondered whether it would be able to distinguish passwords anymore.
"Can I go up?" he asked the statue.
"Feel free," groaned the gargoyle.
Harry clambered over him and onto the spiral stone staircase that moved slowly upward like an escalator. He pushed open the door at the top. He had one, brief glimpse of the stone Pensieve on the desk where he had left it, and the fact there was somebody standing behind the desk, then an ear-splitting noise made him cry out, thinking of curses and returning Death Eaters and the rebirth of Voldemort–
But it was applause. All around the walls, the headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation; they waved their hats and in some cases their wigs, they reached through their frames to grip each other's hands, and they danced up and down on the chairs in which they had been painted. Amongst the cacophony, Harry heard Phineas Nigellus Black calling, in his high, reedy voice, "And let it be noted that Slytherin house played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!"
But Harry only had eyes for two people: the man in the largest portrait, directly behind the Headmaster's chair, and the young woman stood in front of the painting, who hadn't joined in with the applause, but was smiling at him.
"Lena?" said Harry, as the sounds of the portraits' jubilation faded out. "How are you–"
"Tizzy brought me," she replied. "She's gone down to the kitchens to check on the other house-elves." She indicated to the living painting of Albus Dumbledore, whose tears were sliding down from behind his half-moon spectacles into his long silver beard. "I just wanted… a brief chat, before I came down to join the rest of you."
Letting the study door swing shut behind him, Harry stared at her, unsure of where to begin. At last, he said, "You knew, didn't you? That I was a–"
"Horcrux? Yes."
Harry swallowed. "How long?"
"Since we encountered Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets."
He nodded slowly, continuing to gaze at her uncertainly. "I was… drawn to you," he said finally. "From the moment we met. Was that because–"
"You were influenced by the part of Voldemort's soul that resided within you? I'm not sure." She paused. "But probably."
Harry bit his lip, looking away, not sure how to express himself.
But Lena knew. She always did.
"Just because something is borne out of a dark and terrible thing, doesn't mean it will grow into something bad," she told him softly. She came out from behind the desk. "Sometimes, a lie can become a truth as the world changes around it."
Relief filled Harry, and he crossed the study, intending to hug her. But instead of embracing him, Lena reached up and held his face between her hands, studying him. There was something in her expression that wasn't just sisterly. It was almost… maternal. And it struck Harry that since he'd last seen her a year ago, he had finally grown taller than her.
With a small smile, she said, "I'm very proud of you." Then, standing on her tiptoes, she kissed the scar on his forehead, and Harry had a strange sense of déjà vu. A vague, blurry image of a woman with green eyes and dark red hair, bending down to kiss him on the same place, flashed in his mind.
"You've missed a crazy year," he said to her.
Lena let out a half-chuckle. "Then I suppose you better tell me all about it."
Lena listened with little interruption as Harry told her the tale of his year on-the-run and the Battle of Hogwarts as they returned to the Great Hall. Fifty people had died fighting against Voldemort; Harry wasn't sure of all their identities, but among them were Colin Creevey, Lavender Brown and Fred Weasley. The number of Death Eaters who had perished was undetermined – some of them had fled the school, and were being hunted down by a team led by Kingsley – but at least twenty bodies had been recovered, as well as a number of Acromantula and a few giants.
Madam Pomfrey had alerted the Healers at St. Mungo's, who had come to tend to the more seriously injured combatants, taking a few of those in the most critical conditions back to the hospital. Among them were Tonks, who had lost her left leg from the knee, and one of Lena's 'ducklings', Bec Aldridge – the youngest fighter, who had suffered a serious head injury.
Turning into the corridor that led to the Hall, Lena saw they were no longer alone. Remus was standing in the middle of the corridor, looking around anxiously – an expression which slipped off his face the moment he locked eyes with her.
Without speaking, the two of them ran to each other. Lena threw her arms around him, clinging to him tightly, as he buried his face in her neck.
For a minute, they didn't say anything. Then Lena slightly relinquished her grip, whispering, "Is everybody else–"
"Maggie and Rolf are okay," Remus told her, pulling his face back so he could look at her, while his arms remained encircled around her waist. "Markellos, Hedda, Sârbu and Kamilah are all pretty much uninjured too."
Lena's eyes widened. "What about Valeriya?"
"She's alive," he said quickly. "But… well, it's probably just easier if you come in and see her."
Opening the door, he, Lena and Harry went into the Great Hall. There must have been over a hundred people inside. Humans, house-elves, centaurs, ghosts were all intermingling – even a young giant, who Lena presumed was Hagrid's younger half-brother, was peering through a smashed window.
As Harry moved off to find Ron and Hermione, to finally give them the explanations he owed them, Lena spotted the back of Valeriya's head, identifying it by the mess of grey-streaked, corkscrew curls. She was sitting at the end of the Slytherin table that was closest to the back corner. Kamilah was bent over her, inspecting her face. Lena hurried over to join them.
"Valeriya!" she called out, and Valeriya turned her head to look at her niece. Involuntarily, Lena stopped and gawped.
Something had happened to Valeriya's right eye. It looked as though it had… exploded.
"Bloody hell," breathed Lena. "What happened to you?"
"She saved my life," said Remus quietly, standing beside her. "I was duelling one of the Imperiused wizards on the Death Eaters' side when Dolohov shot a curse at me. But Valeriya stepped in front."
Valeriya shrugged. "I promised I would keep you safe."
Moving closer, Lena glanced at Kamilah. "Can the eye be fixed?"
Straightening, the Healer shook her head. "Even if all the pieces were recovered, I don't think the eyeball could be put back together. The good news is that the curse didn't damage anything past it, like the brain, and we were able to stop the bleeding quickly."
"I suppose I could get a glass-eye," remarked Valeriya mildly.
Lena sat down next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Personally, I think an eyepatch would suit you better. You've always struck me as something of a modern pirate."
Valeriya snorted in response.
Hesitantly, Lena asked, "So, what happened to Antonin?"
"I don't think he was expecting me to do what I did," replied Valeriya. "He looked quite shocked. So, while he was off-guard, I killed him."
"Oh." Her aunt's little brother, dead by her hand. "Are you okay with that?"
Valeriya considered this briefly. "Not really," she admitted. "But I would feel worse if he had lived to kill more people."
As Kamilah moved off to help someone else, Valeriya looked at Remus. "Did you tell her?"
"Tell me what?" asked Lena sharply.
"Theodora's dead," said Valeriya shortly. "I'm not sure what happened, but it looked like she was crushed by one of the giants."
"Tiffany mentioned to me that a witch she didn't know had protected her from one," added Remus. "I think it must have been Theodora."
Lena closed her eyes, remembering the face of the beautiful young woman that she had first seen in a Florentine restaurant nearly four years earlier. Perhaps if they had never spoken that day…
"Besides, if you've spent as much as your life doing bad things as I have, it's kind of exciting for once to do something good. I want to know what it feels like."
'I'm sorry,' thought Lena. 'I'm so sorry.' She wasn't exactly sure for what offense in particular she was apologising. She just knew she was sad that she would never get to see more of the Theodora who no longer lived in the shadow of the Orkístike.
Opening her eyes again, Lena looked around the Hall. Harry had pulled Ron and Hermione away from the rest of the Weasleys, who were sitting and grieving together, and was heading outside with them. Maggie was standing with Oliver, whose arms were around her. Rolf was leaning against the Ravenclaw table, looking faintly amused at whatever Luna Lovegood was saying to him. Tiffany and Eve were being fussed over by some of the house-elves. Hedda was talking with Professor Vector and Professor Sinistra. Markellos and Sârbu were both absent, having gone with Kingsley to round up the escaped Death Eaters. At the Gryffindor table sat Neville Longbottom, a sword placed in front of him, and surrounded by at least a dozen admiring students.
With her one good eye, Valeriya followed her gaze. "Young Longbottom got Rabastan," she said casually.
Lena raised an eyebrow. "Got him?"
"Somehow, he managed to trap him in some Devil's Snare in one of the greenhouses, and it strangled him."
Her uncle was dead. Lena was the last Lestrange.
As if she had spoken aloud, Remus nodded towards the other end of the Slytherin table, and said, "Not all your family died." There, being given a wide berth by everyone else, were the Malfoys, huddling together.
Lena gazed at them. "Harry said they stopped fighting for the Death Eaters before the end of the battle."
Once again, Valeriya snorted. "The Malfoys really do have an uncanny ability to figure out which way the wind is blowing," she said wryly.
A second later, Lena found Narcissa's eyes looking back at her. Remembering what Harry had said about her lying to Voldemort to protect him, Lena nodded at her.
Narcissa, after a moment, nodded back.
Lena spent the next half an hour catching up with everyone who she hadn't seen in over a year. A few of them looked at her quizzically, and some others asked outright why she hadn't fought. She told them the truth: she was ill, and her magic was too unstable to be of any use.
She offered her condolences to the Weasleys, and comforted Tiffany and Eve, who were worried about Bec. She caught up with her old teachers and fellow members of the Order. She even had a quick chat with Peeves, offering him some critique on his newly composed victory song.
Then Harry, having returned from his conversation with Ron and Hermione, found her, and indicated to the door at the back left corner of the Hall, opposite to the teachers' entrance. Lena nodded, gave Mortimer to Remus, and followed him over to it. Nobody else was watching as they slipped out, and into the chamber where Voldemort's body lay.
As Harry closed the door behind them, Lena took a deep breath, and approached the corpse of the first person she had ever loved. Reaching him, she knelt beside the body, looking upon the frozen, snake-like face.
"He was afraid," she said softly, after a long silence, not shifting her gaze from the still-open eyes.
From behind her, Harry spoke. "He was scared all year. I could feel it, even before I knew it was because you'd destroyed the Cup."
Lena continued to stare at Voldemort's body, and thought of the Tom Riddle in the Other world – the man she still considered her father. What this man might have become if things had worked out differently.
She also remembered this Lord Voldemort. The lessons at the Lestrange house, the night he had stayed by her side as she had recovered from Bellatrix's Cruciatus Curse, the last time she had seen him before he had murdered James and Lily Potter…
She had loved him dearly. But love was not blind. Not for Lena. Not anymore.
"You know," she said, finally looking back at Harry, "I don't actually know where either of my parents' bodies are. I'm not even sure whether they were buried or cremated. And I don't really care if I never find out."
After a few seconds, Harry asked, "Well, what do you want to do with his?"
"Me?" said Lena, surprised. "That's not really up to me, is it?"
"Why not?" replied Harry. "I think you, more than anyone else, have the right to choose what happens."
Lena opened her mouth to argue, then paused. He was right; Voldemort would never have written a will, but if there was a next-of-kin, it was her. She had been ever since they'd first met, when he'd stopped Bellatrix from hurting her. The first time Tom Riddle had ever cared about someone other than himself.
Carefully, she closed Voldemort's eyes. Then she stood up, looking to Harry. "Can you Conjure a stretcher?"
Harry looked out across the lake, shielding his eyes as the morning sunlight glinted off the water. He glanced at Lena. "You sure this is how you want to do it?"
Lena looked down at the boat between them, in which lay the body. "Yes. It just feels… right."
The Hall had gone silent as they'd exited the chamber with Voldemort's corpse on a floating stretcher, but nobody had questioned them as they had gone past. Nor had anyone followed them down to the lake.
After taking off their socks and shoes, Harry and Lena waded into the water, pushing the boat with them.
Once they were knee-deep, they paused for Harry to wave the Elder Wand and murmur, "Incendio," as Lena released the boat, letting it drift out further into the lake.
The boat burst into flames, and Voldemort's body with it. Harry and Lena stayed in the water, watching the cremation.
As the red, amber and golden flames danced, spiralling smoke into the air, Harry finally understood why Lena had chosen this way. Crossing the lake in a boat had brought Tom Riddle to his first home. It was only fitting that was the way he should leave it too.
He felt Lena take his hand, and he squeezed hers in return as they continued to watch both the boat and the body turn to ash. He wasn't sure how long it took, but they didn't move from that position until there was nothing left.
When they turned around, Lena released his hand to brush some hair out of her face. As she did, Harry caught sight of the palm of her right hand, and froze.
His voice trembled. "Lena, what is that on your hand?"
Confused, she held it in front of her, allowing them both a clear view of it.
There was a black mark stretching from the base of her fingers to the heel of her hand. It looked almost… dead.
"Oh," whispered Lena, staring at it. "It's happening. I didn't think it would be so soon."
"What?" asked Harry urgently. "Is it the Nekrosía?"
"Yes," she said quietly. "My magic's stopped it from escaping my body so far. But the bone, the blood, the flesh – it's all starting to deteriorate. And I don't know how much longer –"
"No," said Harry violently, grabbing her hand. "No, you're going to be okay. Let's go back up and talk to Dumbledore's portrait, he'll know what to–"
"Harry."
He brandished the Elder Wand. "Look, this is supposed to have incredible power – what if it could help? Or–" he let go of her hand and dug his into his pocket, "–I've still got the Resurrection Stone, maybe–"
"What?" Lena's expression sharpened. "You've got the Stone?"
"Yeah." He pulled it out and held it up to show her. "I used it to speak to my parents and Sirius before I went to meet Voldemort in the Forest."
"So, you have the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak all in your possession? All three of the Deathly Hallows?" Lena covered her mouth with her hands, gazing at him with an expression Harry couldn't quite decipher.
Then it clicked. "Wait, are you – are you saying that having all the Hallows actually makes me… me–"
"The Master of Death," finished Lena, uncovering her mouth. "And maybe, just maybe, the one person who can kill what is already dead."
After a night of battle and the morning's aftermath of celebration and commiseration, it was eerily quiet as Remus walked along the empty halls and corridors of the Lestrange house. They were moving back to the house in Notting Hill that night. Well, Remus was. Lena had one last thing to do before she left – with the help of Harry, finally destroy the Nekrosía. For good.
Harry would be arriving soon, after spending most of the afternoon and early evening at the Ministry. The Boy-Who-Lived had finally become the Man-Who-Ended-Voldemort, and right now, everybody wanted to hear from him as British Wizarding society moved into a new era. But any minute now, Tizzy would bring him to the estate, because his day of saving the world wasn't over – not that, apart from Valeriya and the others who had been helping Lena over the past two weeks, anyone knew it.
Remus found Lena in the second-floor study, where she had been packing her possessions away for Remus to take with him to the other house. But her work had come to a standstill, as Remus saw – with a pang in his heart – that she was holding a shard of the Mirror of Erised, staring into it with tortured eyes.
His stomach twisted as his eyes fell on her right hand. The black mark that had appeared on the palm this morning had grown, so the hand now closely resembled Dumbledore's in his final year of life. The rapid deterioration was why Lena had firmly told him they couldn't wait any longer. It had to be done tonight, even if neither she nor Harry had slept at all in the last forty hours.
He came to stand behind her, resting his hands on her waist as he sadly looked into the broken glass too. Gazing back at him, with delighted smiles, were himself and Lena, who held Matilda in her arms.
"She'd be three weeks old today," said Lena quietly.
"I know," murmured Remus. It wasn't the first time the thought had occurred to him since the end of the Battle of Hogwarts. He didn't say it aloud, but he knew Lena could hear what he was thinking: 'I miss her too.'
They continued to stare at the Mirror fragment for another minute, before Lena reluctantly put it in the box on her desk, on top of everything else she had already packed away. As she did, Remus cleared his throat.
"Lena, I want to stay."
She sighed, closing up the box, then turning back to him. "I know you do," she said softly. "But I can't let you. What Harry and I are doing is too dangerous – I told you, we're literally ripping a hole in the universe. And I can't allow our focus to be split. I can't be thinking about protecting you while we do this; I need you to be safe."
Using a combination of some of the things left over from Circe's vault that she had taken a year ago, Lena (with Valeriya's assistance) had spent the afternoon strengthening the boundaries of the Lestrange Estate so that things couldn't just not get inside, but so that things could not escape it – particularly whatever destructive force was unleashed when she and Harry broke the laws of nature tonight.
That was the main reason why they were going back to Notting Hill: Lena was predicting there would be significant damage done to the estate. However, apparently she and Harry would be safe due to some runes she had found in the Book of Thoth, as long as they stayed within the spaces that were encircled by them.
The Book was now also in the box on her desk, as Lena didn't want to risk such an important artefact being damaged or destroyed. She had copied out the necessary symbols onto a piece of parchment, which was also on the desk at the moment. Despite Remus having studied Ancient Runes at school, these were all alien to him. In truth, there was very little he understood about what she and Harry would be doing. All he knew was that Harry was using something called the Deathly Hallows to temporarily stop death (whatever that meant), and doing so would create a tear in the universe, at which point Lena would swap out Hecate's heart for her own and cast the infernal Orb into the void exposed by the tear, where the Nekrosía would finally meet its end. And there might possibly be some sort of explosion afterwards, although Lena didn't seem particularly fazed by this.
"I'd just rather not be two hundred miles away if–" a lump forming in Remus' throat forced him to swallow, "–if anything… goes wrong."
"It won't go wrong."
"Lena–"
"Please, Remus," she said, her hands on his shoulders, "have a little faith in me."
"I do," he insisted. "I know better than anyone how extraordinary you are; I've known it ever since the day I met you, when I stayed up past midnight reading every single Defence Against the Dark Arts essay you'd ever written. And I can't pretend to properly understand what exactly it is that you and Harry are doing here tonight. But I still…" He exhaled slowly. "Lena, I'm scared."
"So am I," replied Lena. "But I still have to believe we can do this. Because the moment I stop believing that is the moment we'll fail." She reached up, her hand touching his face. "So, help me believe."
Remus gazed into her blue-grey eyes – the most beautiful eyes in the world, as far as he was concerned – and steeled his heart against his fear. "You're going to do this," he whispered. "And I'm going to go home and make dinner. And when you get home, we'll eat it together, and then we'll put on some music, and we'll dance until we can't dance anymore, and we'll collapse onto our bed, and fall asleep together. Then we'll wake up tomorrow. Together. And we'll live the rest of our lives. Together."
Lena smiled, and traced the three large scars across his left cheek. "I like the sound of that."
Taking her hand – the one that hadn't been blackened – he brought it to his lips and kissed it on the knuckles. He brushed his lips against the two rings on her finger, the wedding ring and the engagement ring with its little white flower that still bloomed after more than eighteen months. "You know, you never mentioned in your wedding vow why, of all people, you chose me."
"What do you mean?"
"One of the most brilliant minds in the world, practically unmatched in magical ability, stronger than anyone else I know – and you fell in love with me." He shook his head, releasing her hand. "I don't think I'll ever quite understand that."
Leaning back against the desk, Lena looked at him, her expression suggesting she was giving his words a great deal of consideration. At last, she spoke.
"That night in the Defence classroom, when I first cast a Patronus and you saw what memory I had used – you had every right to yell at me, to tell me I was a bad person, to order me to get out, to never want to speak to me again, let alone trust me. Instead, you tried to understand. And once you went as far as you could with that, you sat beside me and held my hand while I cried. You had nothing to gain by being compassionate, but you did it anyway. Because that's who you are, Remus." She spread her hands a little, shrugging slightly. "How the hell do you think anyone else was ever going to compare with that?"
With no words to respond, Remus replied by leaning forward and kissing her lips with as much ardour as was humanly possible. As she returned the kiss, her hand pressed his chest, over his heart, and Remus thought of her own, which had spent the last year in a case under his protection. He had opened it less than an hour ago, in preparation for tonight. But Lena had said he wasn't giving it back to her, not really.
"It's always going to be yours, no matter where it is."
Just as the heart beating now in his chest was really hers.
At last, he drew back and took a moment to simply gaze at her: the wavy black hair that fell down to her waist; the grey t-shirt and black leggings she wore that he had seen upon her countless times before; her pale, bare feet; and the long, thin arms, in whose embrace there was no place he would rather be.
Then he picked up the last box and carried it downstairs to the front door to put it with all the others in a trunk with a magically enlarged interior. Together, he and Lena – with Mortimer – took everything down to the gate of the estate, just as Harry was arriving with Tizzy.
As Remus opened the gate to let himself out and Harry inside, Lena raised Mortimer to her face. Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead against Mortimer, who reciprocated with a soft twittering. Then she passed the Bowtruckle to Remus. Mortimer scuttled up his arm, as Remus once again gripped Lena's left hand.
"I'll see you in a bit," he told her firmly.
Once more, Lena smiled at him. "I'm looking forward to it."
They let go of each other's hands, and Lena shut the gate, sealing the protective enchantments around the estate again. As he Apparated away, with one hand on the trunk's handle and the other in Tizzy's, Remus felt a small spark of hope that the next time he saw her, for the first time since before they'd met, Lena would finally be truly free.
"And, just for the record, Potter, I don't hate you."
There was a long pause.
"I don't hate you either. Which I suppose means you could call me Harry, instead of 'Potter'."
Lena smiled. "Then I suppose that means you could call me Lena."
Harry returned the smile. "Yeah, I suppose it does."
As Lena slowly and carefully drew a series of runes on the cracked stone floor of the ruined hall that apparently had been her garage before she'd lost control of her magic a couple of weeks ago, Harry watched her, their conversation from five years ago – as they'd sat on a bench on the edge of the Forbidden Forest – playing like a film in his head.
'There was so much I didn't know back then,' thought Harry. 'About Lena's relationship with Voldemort, the truth of my own connection to him, anything about Hecate or Nekrosía, or the Deathly Hallows…'
Lena held the chalk in her blackened right hand, using the other to hold a piece of parchment which she was constantly checking as she inscribed the runes necessary for their protection tonight. Harry doubted that he would have understood the strange symbols even if he'd taken Ancient Runes as a subject. There was a lot about magic, he had come to learn through knowing Lena, that was not part of the Hogwarts' curriculum – including the majority of what they were about to undertake.
At last, Lena finished drawing the last rune and stood up to inspect her handiwork. The chalk runes were all interlocked, creating a figure-of-eight that was about ten metres in length. She indicated to the loop that was closest to where Harry was standing. "You're in that one."
Harry obediently stepped inside, as Lena put the chalk and parchment to the side of the hall where the wall was still mostly intact, next to the open case that contained her real heart. Picking up the heart, she moved back to the figure-of-eight to stand opposite him in the other loop, holding the red orb gingerly in her right hand. For a moment, Harry just stared at her. There was no makeup on her face, leaving the dark shadows under her eyes painfully visible in the torchlight that helped illuminate the open hall in the dim evening twilight. Right now, she looked much older than twenty-two.
The wall to Harry's left was now a mere pile of rubble, allowing the light wind to ripple his and Lena's hair, the cool air passing over their faces and bare forearms, as Lena pointed to the centre of the figure-of-eight, at the exact point where the lines crossed over. "Put the Stone there."
Pulling the Resurrection Stone out of his pocket, Harry moved forward and crouched down, carefully putting the cracked black stone inside the central rune, which was three connected spirals – one on top of the other two – with a small triangle in the middle of them. Standing up again, he walked backwards until he was in the centre of his loop again.
"Okay," said Lena calmly. "Put the Cloak on, but leave your face uncovered for the moment."
Again, Harry did as she asked, throwing the Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders. If the resulting effect of most of his body, with the exception of his head and some of his front, disappearing was off-puttingly bizarre, Lena made no indication of it.
"All right," she continued, her voice soft, yet filling the space, "are you ready?"
Harry swallowed and gripped the Elder Wand tightly. He breathed in and out deeply, then gave his answer: "Yes."
"Then let's begin."
Pointing the Elder Wand at the Stone, Harry closed his eyes for a couple of seconds as he tried to clear his mind, pushing away the events of the last twenty-four hours – the battle; Fred's unseeing eyes and the ghost of his last laugh etched upon his face; the walk into the Forest to be struck by Voldemort's Killing Curse; the conversation with Dumbledore in the clean, empty King's Cross Station; returning, and the final confrontation which ended with Voldemort's lifeless body hitting the ground; properly reuniting with Eve; standing in the lake with Lena as they watched the burning corpse of his parents' murderer, and the man who she had once loved – so that he could focus on his new task: making an opening to a place where there was neither life nor death, where the powerless Nekrosía could finally be destroyed.
Opening his eyes, Harry began the incantation Lena had taught him a couple of hours earlier. It wasn't a simple spell, but an entire verse, and in a language entirely unfamiliar to him – something ancient, a dialect that Lena had told him she didn't think had been uttered aloud in centuries, perhaps millennia. She had, however, also given him the English translation, as it was important that he understood what he was saying.
As he began, the light wind came to a still, creating an eerie silence in which the strange words echoed around. Moving his teeth, tongue and lips to form the unnatural syllables, Harry's mind was focused on their meaning:
With the power now entrusted to me,
Unthread what is woven through reality:
No longer must life end in endless death,
Let all the living draw yet one more breath…
The moment the last word left Harry's lips, something shot out of the Resurrection Stone, accompanied by a piercing, inhuman howl. It was black, but also paradoxically light, and it propelled itself through the already mostly missing ceiling, a continuous stream that rose higher and higher into the air until it crashed into the magical barrier that surrounded the estate like a dome. Unable to break past the invisible shield, it ran alongside, as if searching for any gap. Not finding any holes in the defence, it continued down the dome, crashing back down into the ground. As it buried deeper and deeper, still searching for a way out, the ground began to tremble like an earthquake, as more and more black light streamed out of the Stone, the howling noise almost deafening, but not quite drowning out the sound of the rest of the Lestrange house beginning to collapse.
Just as Harry thought the ground beneath him was going to split open, the black torrent suddenly stopped in an explosion of light which forced him to temporarily shield his eyes, and the howling ceased. When his sight readjusted, a chill ran down his spine as he saw the fruit of their labours.
A crack in the universe.
It was a vertical gash about a foot wide, and three metres high. And inside the crack was a darkness more terrifying than any Harry had seen before, because it was Nothingness. A sound emanated from it, filling his head. It was like a choir of human voices, holding sustained notes that were simultaneously impossibly deep and high-pitched. It raised goosebumps on Harry's skin.
Forcing his gaze away from the crack, he looked around to Lena. Her eyes were closed, and her right hand had positioned her real heart against her chest, her left over the spot that held Hecate's. Harry's stomach swooped as she inhaled slowly, then plunged the left hand through her chest.
The black heart came out as the red heart was pushed inside.
And as soon as Lena's heart had been restored to its rightful place, and the ancient heart of Hecate was in her hands – the right one suddenly returned to its natural, pale state – Lena, with a wild cry, threw the black orb that had poisoned her for half her life into the crack. As it sailed through the air, Harry could have sworn he heard the sound of a woman screaming in rage and terror.
And Hecate's heart disappeared into the Nothingness.
'It's done,' thought Harry, hardly daring to believe it as relief started to creep into his mind. 'The Nekrosía is gone!'
He opened his mouth to call out joyously to Lena, but before the sound could leave his mouth, the crack spasmed. It began to grow longer. And the small pieces of rubble from around the hall began to float, before the crack started to suck them inside.
Harry's relief vanished, its place taken by dread. Lena had said that once she had thrown Hecate's heart into the crack, it would close and it would all be over. Panicking, he cried out, "Lena, what's happening? Why didn't it work?"
Lena, whose eyes had been fixed on the crack, tore her gaze away from it and looked at him, and Harry's stomach dropped.
She didn't look worried. But worse, she didn't appear surprised.
"It did work, Harry," she replied. "The Nekrosía's gone forever. Now we just have to close the crack."
"But you said–"
"I know. I lied."
Harry stared at her, uncomprehendingly, as some of the larger rubble and chunks of grass and dirt from outside were pulled into the air and through the crack.
"You opened the crack by using the Resurrection Stone to temporarily stop death," continued Lena. "And it's going to keep growing, eventually breaking past the barrier around the Lestrange Estate and sucking in more and more until you restore it."
"What do you mean, 'restore it'?" asked Harry, fear spreading through him like fire.
She met his terrified gaze with a calm expression. "The natural order, Harry. Death."
Death. Harry started to shake his head vigorously as he began to connect the dots. For the crack to close, Death needed to be revived. And the only way for that to happen was for Death to take a life.
For him to take a life.
Her life.
Lena entered the Headmaster's study, her eyes fixed on Dumbledore's portrait as the others noticed her and their excited conversations died out. She didn't have long; Remus, Valeriya, Mortimer and Tizzy would be waiting for her at the castle's entrance so they could Apparate back to the Lestrange Estate together. But Lena needed to speak to the old wizard in his office once more before she left. Now that she knew…
The painted Dumbledore looked at her with mild surprise, but before he could open his mouth, Lena said, "Harry has all the Hallows. He's the Master of Death."
Dumbledore inclined his head. "Yes."
Despite the fact they'd been discussing her present situation before Harry had arrived, she could see Dumbledore didn't yet realise where she was going with this, so she quickly told him her plan of how to use Harry's new status to get rid of the Nekrosía.
He listened to her silently – as did the other portraits, although with a great deal more confusion. When she had finished her explanation, he regarded her with an indecipherable expression.
"Are you certain," he finally asked, "that you cannot wait a few more days to try to figure out a way–"
She silenced him by holding up her marked right palm. "I don't have that kind of time," she said firmly. "The world doesn't have that time. Every hour I delay, the more I risk everyone and everything else. I have to destroy the Nekrosía before it forces its way out of me and kills whatever is in its path."
After another lengthy pause, Dumbledore spoke again, sounding so old and so tired that Lena forgot for a moment she was only speaking to a portrait, and not the man himself. "Do you really think Harry will agree to this? That he would accept this?"
"That he has to kill me to save everything else?" said Lena quietly. "No. He'd refuse to believe there isn't another way. That's why I haven't told him about that part. Not until the moment when he can see it is the only way forward."
Dumbledore's brow creased. "How does he think it is all going to end at present?"
Lena smiled sadly. "Happily."
Dumbledore processed this, and for the second time that day, she saw the brilliant blue eyes of the portrait start filling with tears. "I understand, although I wish with all my heart this was not how things must end. Will you tell Remus?"
Trying to ignore the lump forming in her throat, Lena replied, "No. I think it's… better… if he thinks I'll survive it."
"You do not want to say goodbye?"
For a few seconds, Lena couldn't speak. She tried to imagine the conversation with Remus, telling him that she was going to… that she had to…
Then the words poured out of her, hot and angry like molten lava. "Say goodbye? No, Albus, I don't want to say goodbye, because I don't want to leave him! I don't want any of this! I want to live! I want to do more; I could do more!" A furious sob burst out of her, and she hit the wall beside the portrait. Emphasising each word with another blow, she shouted, "IT'S – NOT – FAIR! I TRIED TO BE BETTER! I TRIED TO DO THE RIGHT THING! I TRIED TO BE GOOD! AND NONE OF IT MATTERED, BECAUSE I STILL ENDED UP HERE!"
It was as though since Harry had revealed he was in possession of all the Hallows, she had been putting together her plan from a safe, removed distance, and only now was she back in the centre of it all, and being forced to accept this was happening to her.
She was going to die. Not in her old age, after living a full life, but tonight. Tomorrow would never come.
Her hands slid down the wall, and she slumped forward, resting her head against the wall as her shoulders shook from her silent weeping. She could feel all the pitying eyes of the portraits of the former headmasters and headmistresses upon her. She wanted to yell at them to leave her alone, but she couldn't muster the coherency. Instead, she hid her face from them all, crying into the wall. Until:
"Of course it mattered."
Slowly, Lena drew back from the wall and turned to Dumbledore. He looked like he wanted to reach through the portrait and hold her.
"It all mattered, Lena," he told her softly. "Every word, every deed, every choice. Be angry, and weep your tears – you have every right to do so. But don't ever say it did not matter."
She wiped her face, gazing at him, but thinking of others: Valeriya, Maggie, Rolf, Harry, Mortimer, Tizzy, the Tom Riddle of the Other world and tiny Matilda. And Remus.
"It's people, isn't it?" she said at last. "In the end, that's what it's really all about."
Dumbledore gave her a fatherly smile, and she knew what he was thinking: 'Look how far you've come…'
So, for a little while, Lena took the time to simply breathe, to feel the air fill her lungs. To feel alive.
Twenty-two years was not a very long time. Devastatingly brief, really. But they had been a rather extraordinary twenty-two years.
Lena looked into the brilliant blue eyes of the old wizard's portrait. And she knew it was time.
"Goodbye, Albus."
It took a few seconds for him to respond, and his voice cracked when he did. "Goodbye, Lena."
"No!" shouted Harry desperately. "I won't do it, Lena! I can't!"
Lena swallowed back the last of her remaining fear, as more and more of the crumbling remains of the Lestrange Estate were pulled into the crack that continued to grow higher and higher. "Yes, you can," she responded evenly. "You have to. I can't do it myself – it has to be you."
He still shook his head wildly. "No, I'd rather kill myself!"
Of course he would. He'd already proved that once in the last twenty-four hours. But not this time.
"You can't," explained Lena gently. "Because the Master of Death knows when somebody's time is up, and yours isn't yet. But me…" She shrugged. "I've been running away from death for half of my life, Harry. And you know it's finally caught up with me."
As far apart as they were, she could clearly see the torment in Harry's green eyes, and she felt a surge of sympathy for him. This morning, he had thought it was all over. Life was only supposed to get easier after everything he had been through. But now, his sister in all but blood had tricked him into doing something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
"Don't think of it as killing," she suggested. "Think of it as… helping me do something I was always going to have to do."
Tears were starting to run down Harry's anguished face, and Lena wished she could give him one last hug as he hoarsely said, "Lena…"
But all she could give him now were words. So, although she was afraid of what would come next, and she could feel her real heart breaking inside her chest because of everything she was leaving behind, she smiled at him. "It's okay, Harry. It's going to be okay."
The crack now almost reached where the last remnants of the ceiling were, continuing to strip their surroundings bare. And they both knew the time had come.
Harry gave her a tiny nod, finally accepting what had to happen, even though it was breaking him. Tears glistening on his face, he raised the Elder Wand, pointing it around the crack at Lena. The light that shot out its tip was not green, but white. And as it rushed to meet her, every memory so carefully stored in Lena's head played all at once in her mind, and she lived it all again. All the fear, all the anger, all the sadness, all the pain, all the joy, all the love. All the places, all the people, all the Time.
"I wish we had more time," she said softly. "But it has to be now."
She could almost hear Remus' heart breaking. "I love you," he breathed.
Lena gave him one last smile. "I know."
The white light engulfed her. For a second that lasted an eternity, Lena was suspended upright. Her head was thrown back, her chest thrust out, and her arms open wide, as if she were being crucified.
And then the brief eternity that was the final moment of Lena Lestrange's life ended.
There are still two chapters to go, and I hope that if you've read this far, you'll read them too.
Once again, thank you so much for reading. As always, I would love to hear your responses to this chapter - even if you're furious, and just want to yell at me (an instinct I can understand). And if you have any questions for me about anything, I'll do my best to answer them.
