Voldemort stood in the doorway, a cringing, mangy man next to him. The doorway wasn't wide - just a regular door - but everything in Malfoy Manor was grand enough there was plenty of room for Neville, Hermione, and Draco to stand side by side in the hallway and stare.

Behind him, in the room with the garbage chute to the incinerator, were three of the most powerful witches in Britain. He should have been trapped - he shouldn't even be here - but if he had any feeling of fear, it didn't show. He eyed the children contemptuously, then turned to face the women.

"How?" Draco asked desperately.

"Does it matter?" Neville answered him in a low voice, and the obvious answer was it didn't, but Draco wondered if perhaps the same unearthly scream that had brought up memories of things he'd never experienced had also alerted Voldemort. Or maybe he had always planned to come today, and it was a coincidence. It didn't matter. They had to deal with the monster in front of them, no matter what had summoned him.

Molly Weasley shot a curse at him. It was an ugly spell, one she hadn't used since the war. If it had landed, it would have eaten away at Voldemort's waxy, grey skin like acid, burning down to the bone in unstoppable fury. He flicked his wand, and the curse blinked out of existence in a flash of blue light. Minerva McGonagall tried to sever his limbs, thinking that without a hand to use his wand his arsenal would shrink. He laughed, and the sound swallowed her curse into nothing. Narcissa Malfoy went right to the Unforgivable and cast an avada kedavra. Her son was behind the monster, and she would do anything to protect Draco.

Voldemort met the curse with a matching one of his own, and they sparked in the air, a fireworks display of blue and green, then points of light rained down and Voldemort was still standing.

"Narcissssa," he said in a low, sibilant hiss. "Peter was right when he told me not to trust you, that you have betrayed our great cause and are protecting Harry Potter, not holding him in check for me."

"You will not hurt my son," Narcissa said in a low, intense voice. Hermione had never heard her be so determined. So unstoppable.

Voldemort only giggled in response. It was the sound of madness. Of fear. Of a thousand nightmares crawling out from under the bed at once, suddenly real despite daylight and gleeful in their reality. "I will," he promised with poisonous delight. "And you will watch. And you will beg me to spare him and I will not be merciful."

Hermione shot a curse at Voldemort. It wasn't an impressive curse, not like Molly's or Minerva's or Narcissa's. Hermione had grown up in peace, and she didn't know the sorts of spells a woman raised in war and turmoil would have had to hand. It was still dangerous and still powered by fear and loathing of Voldemort and a soul-deep love for the boy the monster in front of her threatened.

Voldemort blocked it without even turning to look at her.

"Using children now," he asked. "Seems not quite the thing for an aristocrat such as yourself, Narcissa. Or are you willing to throw anyone between your preciousss son and me? Do you want them to die on the altar of your motherly love?"

The three witches didn't bother to answer. The air lit up as they fired curse after curse at him, and he blocked them all. If Hermione hadn't been consumed by dread, she might have admired the display. This was power against power. Light against dark. Spells she'd had never heard of flew through the air only to fizzle out.

But the witches were winning.

Step by step, Voldemort was being forced back into the hallway. Hermione waited for the inevitable final blow. There were three of them and one of him. But it wasn't coming and, unbelievably, he laughed. "You cannot kill me," he said. "You tried after the last war, and I came back. I was a broken spirit, lower than the meanest ghost, but I survived. And I will survive again."

The battle was summoning more and more of the party guests. They came to find the source of the shouting. They stayed, horror-struck maybe, or hoping they could help. The hall served as a bottleneck, keeping everyone from being able to attack him at once. Hermione didn't dare take her eyes off the monster in order to look, but she could feel people piling up behind them in the hallway. Some of the adults -Remus and Lucius Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass' mother - but also students. She knew Harry was there, and Astoria, and Blaise. But the added weight of more and more wizards and witches didn't seem to bother Voldemort. Again, he laughed, and this time he spun, sending an arc of curses along the hallway. Hermione ducked. A man screamed.

Astoria Greengrass yanked off her ridiculous hat and flung it at Voldemort. It should have fallen to the floor, but it sailed above their heads, borne aloft on butterfly wings and magic. Where all the other curses and spells had been easily countered by the monster, the hat crashed into him, knocking him to the side and sending a line of flame up one of his arms.

"Damn," Harry breathed out.

"Peter," Voldemort said and held his burning arm out imperiously.

The little man who'd cringed and shrunk back during the entire fight thus far scurried forward. A quick spell put out Voldemort's fire, and another vanished the hat.

"We shall talk later, little girl," Voldemort promised. "Such talent is wasted with these fools."

"Fuck you," Astoria suggested.

"I know you," Harry said slowly. Hermione heard the dawning horror in his voice and, at first, she assumed it was because Voldemort had killed his parents. Harry was famous for that, after all, and even if he'd been a baby at the time, maybe a brutal memory had surfaced now at the worst possible time.

But when he added, "You were one of the Marauders," she knew he wasn't talking about Voldemort. He meant the other man. The skulking, ratty man who clung to Voldemort's shadow like a toddler to his mother's knees.

"Peter," Remus said, confirming her hunch. "We should have killed you when we had the chance."

"You fed Sirius to a snake," Harry said in a low tone, then pushed his way past Hermione and Draco and Neville to launch himself at Peter in a furious rage.

Voldemort swung his wand toward him, and Draco screamed in wordless fear and threw a curse of his own. It didn't kill Voldemort, but he had to take a moment to swat it aside, and that made him turn away from Harry and eye the group of students huddled together against him. "So much magical blood," he said. "And every drop precious. It will wound me to spill so much of it."

"Then don't," Harry suggested. "You fucker. Just fucking die instead."

Voldemort refocused on him, and a small smile twisted his lipless mouth into a rictus nightmare. He flamboyantly pulled his wand back, but before he could launch his next curse Remus shouted out a spell Hermione didn't know, and Harry was dragged back from Peter. It was as if a giant hand had him by the scruff on the neck and was pulling him back toward Remus. He fought the whole way, struggling to get closer to Peter, to curse him again and again. To kill him this time.

"You don't need that on your conscience," Remus said grimly, wrapping an arm around Harry tightly enough he couldn't escape. A quick blast from Remus' wand and Peter crumbled, all too obviously dead.

A terrible part of Hermione's mind whispered, "One down."

"My most loyal servant," Voldemort whispered before rage lit up his face and he began firing another barrage of curses both in front of him and behind. He was a wonder of power, a whirlwind twisting and turning, spells going off in every direction, and the witches and wizards arrayed against him were able to contain him, but only just.

"You cannot defeat me," he called out above the sounds of the battle. "I am immortal. I am unstoppable."

"You were", McGonagal said from behind him. "But we've destroyed your Horcruxes."

Voldemort paused. He continued to knock away attacks as if they were the work of the youngest of children, but he stopped launching attacks and turned to look at Minerva McGonagall. "You have not," he said.

"We have," Narcissa said with grim pleasure. "The diary, the locket, the cup, and the diadem were all burned in this very house."

"And the snake has been poisoned," Remus said.

"And Harry too," McGonagall said.

Hermione shot a quick, startled look at Harry. He'd been poisoned? He'd been a Horcrux? That was beyond horrible.

"And we tossed the ring in today," Molly went on with triumph in her voice. "You are mortal. You can die. And you will die, no matter how many of us have to go down with you."

Voldemort flicked aside spell after spell as if he were contemplating their words. At last, he said, "You are lying."

"Every word is the truth," Remus said.

"No." Voldemort shook his head. "I can feel one of them. Did you think I would not recognize a fragment of my own soul? It is here, calling out to me. I have sensed fragments of it before, but it disappeared again as quickly as I found it. But now it is here, and I shall collect it."

"That isn't possible," Minerva said, but her voice shook and Hermione could hear doubt for the first time. "We destroyed them."

"Are you so sure?" Voldemort asked. He took a step closer to her and fired off another curse. So many spells had been cast that tar slid down the walls, viscous evil eating its way into the paper and paint. Fire licked along the edges of ancient portraits, causing the witches and wizards within to huddle against their frames. The air smelt of smoke but also of the foul reek of decay and disease.

"Your soul screams when we destroy it," Narcissa said with as much malice as Voldemort. "It writhes in agony in the fire. I tossed the locket and cup in myself."

"And I did the diadem," McGonagall said. "And the ring."

"I was there for the bit where they carved it out of me," Harry said. "Hard to miss, you fucker."

'How's the snake," Remus asked, and if they'd had any question the creature was dead, Voldemort's explosive rage put that to rest. He whirled his wand in a furious circle, spinning where he stood, and monsters from childhood nightmares poured out of the tip. Formless shapes that lurked in closets. Mouths with gibbering, bleeding teeth. Rats that bit and birds that reached for eyeballs with claws much too long. Along with the rest, Hermione banished and defeated and destroyed, and when she could focus on Voldemort again, unbelievably, he was smiling.

"But what about the diary?" he asked. "My first Horcrux, my strongest, my very self at sixteen, split after I killed a classmate. I reveled in her death and used her pain to bind myself to my diary so I would always be. That remains. And as long as it does, you cannot kill me."

"No," Neville said in what sounded like slow, dawning horror.

Voldemort had too many teeth for his mouth and when he bared them in delight the way he was doing now, it was impossible to focus on them. They shifted and moved as if they had a life of their own. Hermione swallowed around a lump on her throat. It was impossible to believe they weren't going to die at his hands. She'd smelled this rank miasma before. It was burned into her soul in a way she didn't understand. It meant the end of hope and falling into eternal darkness. She reached a hand over to take ahold of Draco. If this was the end, she would face it with him.

"I left my diary with Lucius," Voldemort said. "When he was still loyal to me. When I still was enough of a fool to trust him. What did you do with it, my dear Narcissa? What bookshelf is it on, lost and forgotten?"

"We sorted it out and burned it with the trash," Narcissa said, but a hint of fear slithered behind her words.

"Oh," Draco said. "Oh shit."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked in a hiss.

"Yes, son of Luciusss," Voldemort said. "Redeem yourself and I will let you live. I will Mark you as one of my chosen and you will be great and glorious above all men save myself. All you need to do is tell me - what did you do with my diary?"

"Draco?" Narcissa asked.

"Books were sorted out," Draco answered them both in a stammer. "Some for the incinerator, some for a charity sale, and I saw that one of them was a diary, and Neville had trouble remembering things. His gran had given him this awful remembrall, and I felt so bad, and I thought… I thought if he had a diary he could write things down and that would help him. So I took it back to school and gave it to him."

"But they… when they die…it's horrible," Molly Weasley got out, almost choking on the words. "Surely you knew."

"It was the first one," Narcissa said, and now she truly was horrified and everyone could see it. "We didn't know yet, and I've never… I try not to think about them, and-"

"You're a fucking idiot," Harry said to Draco. "You've fucking doomed all of us."

"I was trying to be nice!" Draco said.

"Great time for it," Harry muttered. "Giving Snake-face's diary Horcrux to Neville."

Everyone turned to look at Neville, and Voldemort focused on him. "You have my diary," he said. He licked his lips, and the sight of his long, forked tongue made shudders go down Hermione's spine.

"You tortured my parents," Neville said. Hermione had never heard him sound so horrified. "And I've been talking to you for years."

He yanked a small, black book out of one pocket. It wasn't a remarkable book at first. Then it twisted in Neville's hands as if it wanted to fling itself through the air and reconnect with Voldemort. Neville tightened his grip on it until his knuckles were white.

"We need to put that in the incinerator," Draco said urgently.

Neville couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from the book. His jaw trembled, and Hermione could see that his eyes were glistening.

"Neville," she said. "You have to destroy it."

"The incinerator is behind me, yes?" Voldemort asked. "Come, boy. Walk past me with that book in your hands."

Neville met Hermione's eyes. One of his hands let go of the book – of Voldemort's Horcrux - and Neville reached down into his pocket.

. . . . . . . . .

A/N - Thank you to arleney for beta reading!