Destinies

Hermione had the time to look from Ron to Harry. She could see the expressions they both had.

Then Larissa flung herself into Hermione's arms. "I'm sorry. She… She fucking jumped in front of an A.K. for me. I…"

Oh, fuck. Hermione squeezed Larissa tightly. Larissa, of all people, didn't need that guilt on top of everything else. But she'd have it, and that was that. When the hand of fate wrote—there was no escaping destiny.

"Never blame yourself, Lara," she whispered.

"I won't. It's war. But I want to end it," she answered softly. "She was a true friend. But your friends need you just as much."

Hermione nodded, and shook herself loose, a hand still around Larissa's hips, letting Larissa reach out with her own hand to take Draco's again. Hermione, instead, looked to Harry and Ron.

"She was a soldier. She was brave, and courageous and fighting for this future that we're fighting for. And she was always kind to me no matter what I got up to. I know she meant everything to both of you. To all of us."

"I've lost the ability to cry," Ron answered, tired more than anything else. "I'm envious that you still have it."

Harry had not lost the ability to cry. But then, Luna quietly stepped up and gave him a hug, and a soft kiss on the cheek. "I am very sorry for Ginny, Harry. She was a very good friend, with flowers in her hair and everything."

"Thank you, Luna." Harry turned to follow Hermione's worried look, toward the storm on the western shore. "But, we still have to defeat Him. Bellatrix?" A glance back to Hermione.

"Holding him off," Hermione answered, not turning to face him, unable to tear her gaze away. "We don't have much time, we need to hurry."

Harry looked like he had so many things to say.

"We don't have time to mourn, or hesitation."

"I've been talking to Nagini," Luna added with a knowing smile.

Harry stared at Luna as if she were daft for just a moment, and then remembered Bellatrix's plan.

"No, she really has," Hermione offered, grinning as she turned back. "Bella's plan worked, at least when it comes to the water life." The grin flickered away quickly enough, though. The last glimpse of the lake showed how high it had gotten, the waves completely covering the beach, even washing up the streets of Van, creeping closer to the hotel. And, out under the black clouds to the west, one of the auxiliary cruisers had disappeared. She thought of herself on the Ushakov, and how close she had come to the same fate, and whispered a prayer for those men as she stepped inside.

They'd covered her in clothes, a mishmash from the wardrobes of officers stationed in Van. They'd given her some tea, which she seemed to appreciate. Dark eyes, sharply looking around, until at last, hoarsely, remembering a function of vocal cords that hadn't existed for her in decades, words were brought forth to face all of them as they returned, a question, and a statement: "...The Water of Life?"

"The Water of Life," Hermione agreed, feeling tense. They had clothed her, and garbed her, and given her drink—every part of possibility. When her stomach was settled, they'd give her food too. But she had been the enemy.

Nagini, until minutes ago, the last horcrux. Nagini, Voldemort's pet. What was her real name? People certainly didn't go around naming their children that. This had already been forgotten to the cruel uncaring pages of history—and Nagini had much better reason to be the enemy than even Bellatrix had.

So Hermione folded her legs up, sat down on the floor, on the rug next to Nagini, and made herself smile, even though the hour was late, and she was fighting the feeling of frantic worry inside of herself. "Hermione Granger," she offered, trying to ignore that frantic fear about whatever Bella was doing, about wherever Bella was.

"Natalena," the woman began, opening her mouth, and then pausing. "If I had known Bellatrix was trying to save me… I … Anything." Looking down into the tea, her voice fell away.

"Bellatrix is actually a remarkably good woman," Hermione answered with a smile growing wide on her face despite the tears that she had to wipe off still from hearing the news of Ginny. The feelings of emotions of pride and worry and loss jumbling together were as raw and agonising as anything she could imagine. "Do you know … Did you know everything?"

"It's strange. I can remember, but… I could transform into a snake long before I was trapped as one. I remembered then, too. Yes. I do."

"How did Voldemort come to know about the power in the mountain?" Hermione reached for a cigarette, and lit it on the flame below the samovar. Fortunately, Natalena didn't complain; everyone probably smoked, in her time.

The nicotine did nothing good, but it hid the pain and helped her concentrate and ignore the fact that Ginny was dead for a while; she could see out of the corner of her eye, Ron standing just outside the room, puffing away like a chimney himself.

Natalena calculated that answer—one could see her thinking it over, taking her time, weighing the risks. "To put it plainly, what's in it for me?"

"Wealth, money, a helicopter east as fast as it will bear you. The smallest, slightest chance of not being punished by Voldemort as it already stands, because you know he will kill you. I will give you everything," Hermione promised, and whipped her wand out, and through a cigarette clenched in her teeth, "Imperio."

Natalena was swathed in the curse, and in doing so took on a slack-jawed, relaxed look. One could see real relief, though. Hermione had known it from the first—she was terrified of Voldemort as much as she had been Voldemort's friend, in the way anyone in a prison would be, for Voldemort, for decades, had very much been the only person that she could talk to. And the loneliness when he was gone must have been unbearable.

Now, she was free to betray him, without really betraying him. It probably wouldn't save her, if Voldemort won, but it was likely that nothing would save her, as Voldemort raged about the loss of his horcruxes and avenged himself in petty punishments. Still, it gave the illusion of a chance, and it eased the entire process along. "He freed the soul bound to the mountain, and took that place himself. There must always be a vessel," Natalena answered, calmly, and her words made Hermione's heart sink.

And then flicker upwards again. "Not a person, a soul?"

"A soul."

"Was the soul … Here?"

"No."

"As long as he is alive…"

"As long as he is here. Only when you send him through…" Natalena shrugged. "That very moment. I know, you have only seconds. I saw the first ceremony, and I garner he must have completed the second. You must never let someone complete the second. That is what unleashes Azi Dahaka."

"Did you see… The first ceremony?"

"I did."

"Could you repeat it?"

"Yes, if I had a wand."

"Hermione!" Ron leaned in. "Is giving her a wand really wise?"

"Don't worry, I have her under the Imperious curse, by a sort of unspoken mutual consent," Hermione replied with a small smirk at Ron's expression, and then bounded to her feet with a last drag on the cigarette. "Come, Natalena. We have a war to win. You'll be free to do whatever you want when it's over—you have my word of honour as a Russian officer." It wasn't the answer Hermione had wanted to hear, but it was an answer she could make work.

The storm swirled around her, the whipping of the wind, the sting of the rain on her cheeks. Her shield held most of it away, energy waving in patterns and oscillating around her. She was driven to the absolute frenetic limits of exertion. Now she faced Voldemort with only Elahaïs at her side.

Still, the eunuch ghost, mustering the powers of an undead Room of Requirement in the service of fighting with the vigour of a living being, was a better ally than any she had had before. In truth, Bellatrix was pleased to fight at Elahaïs' side. They had checked the Dark Lord. But Tamar's body, desecrated by the energies still being thrown across the battlefield, was a terrifying reminder of the cost.

Voldemort, with Dolohov dead, had no reinforcements. He had terrified his own men, having borrowed a few thousand of them for service as Dementors (a sort of borrowing that lasted for eternity), and something else had prevented more reinforcements and especially more magical reinforcements from arriving.

Whomever had done that, Bellatrix saluted them, and wished them well. The intensity of the storm around Voldemort was growing greater, making it harder for her to keep her balance, to force her arms through the motions of her spells, and calling forth her power. She grounded herself, and fought on, matching spell for spell.

There was no contempt in Voldemort's expression anymore. He was completely concentrated on this battle, completely focused on their defeat. She was not Bella the Traitor anymore—she was the greatest enemy he had ever faced.

Serves you right, fucker.

She squeezed every erg out of the lake—adjusting electrical charge, and drawing it forth, from the salt-water. It should be impossible, but it was magic. She shot bolts of electrical energy out of the water and at Voldemort.

He fell back, but again the interlocking black and red of his shield held until the smokey green of a magic smoke that surrounded him and repelled any of the energy leaking through finished the job. He turned back toward her, summoned up living threads of earth forming massive magical snakes of dirt that spiralled and twisted and tried to crush and bury Bellatrix under them.

She concentrated the wind and condensed it with such power that the air turned liquid – condensing to liquid oxygen – and with a single Confrigo unleashed a terrible inferno, a backblast of energy that disintegrated the living sand snakes. The sweat streaked down across her dirt and soot choked face, and she blinked her eyes hard, and barely blocked the next attack, dropping down to the shattered earth just to rise up again, her wand once again singing.

At the same time, Elahaïs had been tearing into the ground below Voldemort's feet, hitting it over and again with charges and borrowing and vanishing charms which had completely eroded the land around his position. Several times now he had changed positions, making short, point-to-point apparations within the immediate vicinity, keeping his line of sight to both of them and seamlessly moving into the attack.

But in doing so, Elahaïs had lured him closer to the shore, in the undermined and sunken rock surrounded by deep trenches from the previous attacks. Voldemort did not realise the trap, until Elahaïs with a last complicated L- of the Rabdos laughed and cackled in triumph. Bellatrix, a moment laughter, laughed too with the feminine eunuch. The last of the rock exploded and the ground on which Voldemort stood was overtaken in a wall of storming, frothing water from the lake.

There were few places left for him to stand, and both of the combatants who faced him, laid down barrage patterns of attacks just as he was forced to disapparate away from the flood of water. Elahaïs' caught him, and he staggered, an actual physical wound, that with a closer blow might have been mortal, if he had any part of a man left in him at all.

Bellatrix spun back to her right with a cutting motion of her own wand, a quick stunner which then morphed into another spell entirely. Take advantage, take advantage, take advantage! It was the only thing she could think as she followed up on Elahaïs' success, a mantra flashing through her mind in a split second. Bellatrix knew of many powerful curses of dark magic, and Voldemort was terribly fatigued.

Just like she was.

But she had an opening.

"Commorati putredis!" The splash of blue and green energy managed to cut through his shields as he was trying to heal the damage Elahaïs had inflicted upon him. It struck his left leg, and he staggered, and staggered again.

Elahaïs followed it up with a Confrigo of her own, but Voldemort was not that far gone. Tesseracts of black and red appeared in the sky like an interlocking wall, the attack slammed into it, and the be-skirted ghost on the hill grimaced. Something changed, as Voldemort looked about between the two of them like a wounded animal.

There would be no easy way to heal that curse, no quick method to heal Bella's handywork in the midst of battle, or possibly ever, though it wouldn't, couldn't, kill him, either. She sneered. "I have wounded you, and you'll remember it as long as you live."

He limped. He glared, almost in betrayal, as if Bellatrix was never supposed to try this, not even when they were locked in mortal combat.

Like some fucking child who abused his pets, and was surprised when they bit back.

And then came the storm. Raising Koschei's Rabdos in a single moment of terrible power, he unleashed all of the pent-up magical energy in the storm above. He had spent hours curating and building it, and even with the single interruption before, he had regained the strength she had unleashed in lightening, and kept building and growing it.

It was directed against Elahaïs. It was directed against her. Buffeted, with waves of magical energy hitting them, Bellatrix was smashed and staggered into flooded, muddy, broken ground. She brought forth one shield and another, extended duration Protego, variations that fed with electric energy from the sky to try and stand alone, and each one was cleaved in two.

The ground thundered and roared and ripped under her, the pomegranate orchard vanished in the flames of magical energy. She watched, in horror, as her only ally was overcome, as in a flash, Elahaïs went from a simulcra of a normal living being into a pale and blue shade, as Voldemort's hoarded power, perhaps being curated and focused by the storm, smashed her link to the ghostly Room of Requirement that had given her whatever she had required—what had made the feminine eunuch exist as if she were still alive, when she stayed tethered to it, was gone in a moment, and her power to stop him at last overcome.

Hope faded. She kept her shields intact, but was pounded down onto her knees, and they frayed, and began to shatter, and every motion of her wand was trying to hold them up. A desperate effort to keep herself alive, to keep the power directed against her at bay until it passed.

But we did it. He spent this power against us, he spent the power of Azi Dahaka against us, not against Hermione and Draco and Larissa and that Potter boy and all their friends. Even as the last of her shields were battered aside, she laughed, desperate, not without fear, but proud.

I forced you to throw your bolt.

And with a terrible roar of magic engulfing her, tearing, lapping at her soul, a kaleidoscope of colours ripping through her eyes, she collapsed to the ground. There was a horrible, rending crack, and she watched in horror, and despair, as her walnut wand, of dragon heartstring core, was smashed, shattered, the infamous crooked wand, the appellation by which she had once been called by the enemy, who had become her allies; the wand she had gained as a child, which had been given to Cissy when she was sent to Azkaban, as a momento of her life, and returned by her sister upon her escape. It snapped, it shattered, it vanished into dust under the power.

She had lost it forever.

And wandless, collapsed into mud and water and rock, the noise faded, the power drifted away. The energy of the storm had exhausted itself. She forced herself skyward. She was going to die, or face a fate worse than death. But, she forced herself skyward, and saw the storm had cleared. She had done it—she and Elahaïs and Tamar before with them, had all worn him down. They had really done it.

The Cruciatus that hit her an instant later was a horrifying, blinding light of raw pain through her nerves. So was the second, and the third, in such short succession that she could not raise her head again between them. But she was laughing, cackling, even as she gasped for breath in agony. "Gods, gods, I have wounded you, and even if you win, in a thousand years you will walk with that limp!"

Again, and again, and again. Hammered by the Cruciatus until she couldn't stand, until her memories seemed redirected around pain. A dreadful thought: So this is how werde, fate, repays you for the Longbottoms. She laughed. Spit her defiance. She was Bellatrix Black, and she well knew pain.

And then she began to feel his power, his new power, the power of Azi Dahaka, descend around her, and now, with no wand to defend herself, it started to tug at her soul one more time, and this time, there would be nothing that she could do to stop it.

Whatever was left of her when Voldemort was done consuming her soul would become that thing she feared and hated most, a Dementor.

"Bella, Bella," Voldemort had regained some of his composure. "Since you care about her so much, I'll make sure your daughter joins you."

She raised her voice to start to reply, when there was a crack in the air, the crack of someone arriving through apparation.

Her heart flared with hope. He didn't have the time now to finish stealing her soul.

And then Voldemort cried out, "I will not let you save my slave from me, damn you!" And with a single sweep of his wand as he turned to face his fresh attackers, she felt herself bodily flung by a powerful curse, flying, exploding upwards, her body, made resilient, more resilient than any normal muggle thanks to her magical core, barely surviving the acceleration, her lungs barely able to draw breath, tumbling end over end through the sky, seeing the horrifying churning waves of Lake Van below, no wand to save herself, flying with the speed of a jet in the open air, and slowly falling down, down, down, into the savage frothing green water of the lake. She was going to die.

But Hermione had saved her soul.

The limp.

The storm, gone.

Hermione, finish him. Go home to Delphini. I... I love you.

And then the storm-tossed waters of the lake rose up to claim her, her body fell to meet them, a single speck in the storm, moving much, much too fast to survive the impact.

Their desperate charge down the mountain had swept the enemy before them, and for an hour, Alexandra had known glory and victory. Advancing in waves and quick, short bursts, bringing up machine-guns and mortars, calling for all the artillery and air support that could force its way through the storm, her ragged collection of shattered units had carried the enemy before them.

Using whatever radios she could find, whatever runners she could commandeer, Alexandra with Zoë at her side had pushed down into the valley. There, they found the enemy already trying to retreat to their right, while fresh formations pressed on from their left.

In the shoulder between the mountain and the valley to the west, the lake to the northeast, a few hundred Russian soldiers faced the better part of a division of Morsmordre troops. To the right, to the lakefront in the Northeast, which they had just gained by attacking the troops on Nemrut Dagi, the Morsmordre troops were broken, fleeing, horrified.

They spoke of a dark power eating souls as they tried to surrender. They threw themselves down and begged for mercy. Zoë looked up, looked to the northeast, and saw the dim black cloud spreading—saw a distinctive light blue glow.

"There is a powerful wizard there, hotly engaged in battle with a very dark force. Those are Dementors, and they're coming our way."

Alexandra had heard the horror stories of those nightmares of the magical world. She froze for a moment. But luck was with her, wasn't it? "Can you stop them?" Shells exploded around them, and machine-guns clattered, for even in the midst of this horror, the firefight continued.

"I can protect our troops, but there are not enough wizards here to cover the prisoners."

"Deny them to the enemy," Alexandra ordered simply, and turned to the west. The order went down the line. "Secure the prisoners we've taken, we've got that obligation, but deny quarter to the rest."

No surrenders, you will never survive.

In ancient times, the principle had been simple. 'No Quarter' – in the customary laws of European war, prisoners had to be protected.

But the right to become a prisoner was not absolute. One could decide not to grant it. And left with no choice, in a war where the Geneva Conventions had been forgotten from the start, Alexandra did exactly that.

The troops on her right flank opened fire in response to the flags of surrender.

She dropped down into a shell-crater with her radio, and began to call for support to the north northeast, where she had seen the blue light, right at the heart of the storm. Whomever was fighting there, could use the help.

More than her.

She'd just keep attacking, right up until her luck ran out.

Hermione had barely regained her senses from the apparation, wand at the ready, bringing forth a shield against the inevitable strike, when she saw it. A dark figure, black hair whipping, flying through the air to the east. She stared. She couldn't believe it. Her heart fell to her stomach—her knees knocked. Her face went pale, her lips, her body, her veins as cold as ice.

It was only Larissa's intervention with a protego in her direction that saved her from Voldemort's counterattack, immediately taking advantage of her shock. "Why why, if the little muddleblood isn't sad about losing her lover. I should have never trusted that sapphist," he mused, grinning, seeming unbothered by the snakes that writhed from his shoulders. "Very nice sense of timing. Just too late to save her. I wonder if your friend Potter planned it that way?" He spun to face his true enemy. "I admit, I'm surprised you're game for a rematch."

Hermione saw him limp as he turned, robes singed and burned by the vigour of the fight with Bellatrix, Tamar, Elahaïs. She remembered, in poems as a girl, reading the line 'and his cheeks turned pale with rage'. She had always thought the idea of going pale with rage was odd, but now she felt it, she lived it. She was sick to her stomach, crushed, devastated, withdrawn inwards, sheet pale, but she was enraged. Cold, the kind of cold rage that was the most dangerous of all. Every nerve in her body burned with the agony of having arrived just in time to lose Bellatrix.

And the burning of every nerve was fuel for adrenaline, fuel for a black, bitter rage that coursed through her veins and made her strong.

He knew, of course. And he took advantage of his knowledge, as he expected the sight of Bella flying away to her death to have shook Hermione to the core.

And it did. But not like that. The cold need for revenge overcame her terrible, shocked emotions. Above her, the sky was sharp with the remnants of the storm. Voldemort's power had dissipated, but the atmosphere had been wildly disturbed by the magical influence. Natural electrical power was still sharply charged through the remnant clouds.

His quick attempt with interlocking Bombarda to take the Golden Girl and Potter's best friend out of the equation failed with a casual electrically reinforced shield, exactly the same as the one that Bellatrix had just been presenting to him so well, for so long.

And then Hermione counterattacked. "Elektra Sempra!" Intersecting bolts of lightning tore down on Voldemort's position, and he was shocked enough to barely get his tesseracting shields of black and red glyphs back into place, as Hermione hammered him with lightning just like Bellatrix had. Not nearly strong with how the storm had dissipated, without Bellatrix's long practice of the unique art, but servicable in the circumstances.

Anyway, it wasn't three on two anymore. It was seven on one, for the moment with Nagini hanging back.

"I'm afraid you're wrong, Voldemort," Harry spat, giving him answer. "You've killed enough, and it's clear I have to stop that, so I will."

Hermione suddenly realised that this wasn't a case of a desperate fight. It was a case of keeping Voldemort from escaping. She shifted from the offensive to the support role. "I'll pin him, Harry!" She called, and turned from the lightning attacks—which had left him unable to move in the slightest while she had called them down upon him—and pulled the energy in to charge an anti-apparation spell, and make it, for at least as long as she could hold it, a general anti-apparation field, like the one that defended Hogwarts.

And six wizards and witches converged on Voldemort, hammering him with spell after spell. The Dark Lord, in turn, was forced to advance against them, to try and get at Hermione behind them. Limping, with no way to quickly overcome the curse and heal his leg, he certainly couldn't run. He could only attack since he couldn't disapparate. He was trapped, and forced to face them all.

Harry, Ron, Draco, Larissa, Luna, Tonks, all hammering him with every spell they could speak of, to disable, to bind, to disarm. And Hermione, three steps behind Harry in the centre, alternating shields to help cover them with her efforts to maintain the anti-apparation field, and keep Voldemort pinned in place.

Colours flickered across the battlefield, Voldemort faced a veritable gun line of wizards blasting away at him. Overhead, the sky began to darken, and Hermione could feel the wind whipping against her cheek. He is calling up another magic storm to overcome us with, she realised. Perhaps they had counted out the Dark Lord a bit too soon.

Harry could see it too. Knowing they did not have much time, he stepped to the fore. Matching the Dark Lord blow for blow, he pressed him back against the little inlet that the battle had created, the waves still frothing and churning within. Some called the Boy Who Lived a one-trick pony as a duellist, but his did his one trick very well. "Expelliarmus!" It slipped through Voldemort's shields, and his Rabdos, the Rabdos of Koschei, went flying.

Voldemort was not finished yet. He drew the Elder Wand, instead, even as he kept his shields going wandlessly. A Confrigo tore against them and forced the group to spread out, and again the battle was on.

It seemed like he was on the offensive, when the scream of a jet, damaged and struggling in the stormy, rotten air, sounded screaming above them. Hermione's head jerked skyward, and saw a damaged Su-25, losing altitude fast, but in a controlled way, for a point-blank gun pass. It had doubtless been supporting the troops to the north, and now damaged, was somehow, somewhy, trying to intervene here. Despite the damage, it was coming in for the attack, one pilot against the Dark Lord, for all the man in the machine knew.

Voldemort ignored it for a moment, and then twitched the Elder Wand up, and send a brief gout of flame between his other attacks, set the entire plane aflame from tip to tail, and turned back to his attacks against his wizarding opponents.

It left him quite unprepared for the moment when, having left the pilot with no hope, that single brave man repaid the favour, and dropped his "Rook" straight on the Dark Lord. With a rush of flame and fuel and cascading shrapnel against her hastily raised shields, Hermione protected her comrades from the explosion, but only just.

Voldemort, for a moment, vanished into it, and Harry stared with hope, and wonder, and a little bit of incredulity that he'd just seen a military attack jet crash directly into Voldemort, with all the selfless heroism of the dying.

But the flames passed by, and Voldemort remained, coming out once more on the attack. "Did you think a muggle could kill me, you idiots!?" He screamed and raged, and for all his words, it seemed like the attack had really thrown him off balance, stunted his offensive before it could begin.

And Voldemort was receiving no reinforcement. There were seven witches and wizards there to fight him, and Voldemort fought alone. Where were his troops? Where were his men? His Aurors, his remaining Death Eaters? There was nothing but the power of Azi Dahaka, and while fell, he had not yet learned to use it such that he could easily outmatch his foes, seven-on-one.

"I'm afraid, boy, that it's you who faces the Master of Death, now."

And with that, Hermione committed herself. Before she watched Bellatrix be killed by Voldemort, she might well have never actually committed the woman she held under the Imperious Curse to battle. But they needed every bit of help they could get.

Nagini's magic was not that of a normal witch; she used it through her affinity to snakes. But obligingly, she advanced—and the same venom which had once helped create Voldemort was magically channeled against him. A line of welts, black with ichor, appeared across his face, and he turned to the side.

Harry, with a smart rush of wand-work, battered him with three hexes again. "You're no Master of Death! You fear it. He is your Master, more even than the monster inside you!"

As Voldemort spun in another counter-attack, keeping himself balanced and trying to compensate for his leg—Elahaïs appeared again. Only a ghost, the terrible feeling of cold she could produce passing through Voldemort made him spin to the side, looking for an attack that wasn't there.

And Harry showed him the weakness of his presumption about the Elder Wand. "Expelliarmus!"

The Dark Lord was disarmed. His shields still held, and he turned back to them, reaching out with his power to tug on their souls.

He had barely begun when Hermione stepped up to Harry's side. "Accio Rabdos!" It was Koschei's Rabdos that flew into her hand.

And the great Rabdos of power, of the fell sorcerer, was much too fickle to be loyal to Voldemort.

"Accio Elder Wand!" Voldemort fought back against it—but disarmed from Voldemort's hand, it responded to Harry, not the Dark Lord.

The rain began to lash them above, and Hermione felt disoriented, like she were halfway outside of her body.

Ron stepped up to join them, lockstep, three together fighting as one. He distracted Voldemort, who called down wandless magic, speaking words of power that blew the redhead back, with a terrible wound to the left side of his face. He was undaunted, and stood again, even as the blood welled from shattered flesh, to stand together with his friends one more time.

And Harry and Hermione together mustered the power of the ancient wand and Rabdos, and Hermione directed the electricity bright in the air to cut through the shield.

And then Harry cleanly hit Voldemort with a Stupefy, and sent him to the ground. The feeling in their souls abruptly stopped.

Hermione dropped to her knees, breathing hard. All of them came about to their wits, looking around, realising that it was over.

Almost over.

Harry looked up, at the acrid rain falling on his cheeks, and looked back to Voldemort. Tonks followed his gaze and grimaced. "Hermione, the storm is still building."

"Yes," she agreed hoarsely, grabbing some dirt in her hands and flinging it back down, in frustration loss and rage. "We have to send him through the Door before he can build up the power to escape us. And, there's a problem, a big problem. We need a soul to bind to the door, to keep it closed." She looked around. "Elahaïs, you've been here for thousands of years. Will you help us finish the job?"

The ghost materialised, and shrugged. "Miss Granger, I have lost my normal life. I will just be one more ghost—the physical world is already fading away from me. You are right, a soul is a soul. I believe I can hold the Door. But what's in it for me? Haven't I guarded the world long enough?"

"You surely don't want to be remembered for failure." Hermione froze for a moment, tried to think through the raw pain that was consuming her mind. Bellatrix... "The Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. It was destroyed just like this one. It can be your's. I'll change your tether. You don't need to be tethered to the mountain to be the holder of the Door. Voldemort can move anywhere, so can you. It was the same way before, Nagini says he destroyed the spirit of the previous holder, somewhere else on the Earth. And as a ghost, you can't influence Azi Dahaka yourself. We have security, and you have the semblence of life you want." A faint smile. "Ma'am. We'll also record that for posterity's sake."

Elahaïs spared a glance to look at the stupefied form of Tom Riddle, which Tonks was hastily and thoroughly binding with magical bindings to hold firm and strong, even as she urgently glanced to the sky from time to time, and saw the storm growing. "It's not an easy thing to change a ghost's tether."

"I'll devote my life to it, if I have to."

"You are very smart." Elahaïs mused. "If you fail?"

"Give me forty years. Long enough to raise Delphini Black to adulthood, to marriage, to happiness. I'll sacrifice myself and take your place then, if I can't find a way to change your tether."

"Hermione!" Harry exclaimed in shocked horror. "My God, haven't I lost enough?!"

"My turn to be the hero, Harry," Hermione snapped. "Forty years is long enough."

"Fairly met," Elahaïs answered, agreeing to the terms, and waving an arm through Hermione with a soft cold chill. "You know, I am honoured to have fought at her side."

Hermione finally broke into tears. "What a rogue!" She laughed in agony and pain and love and delight at Bella's courage. "I fell for a rogue who committed treason and murder, but who loved her family, shared the dangers of those she led, and never shirked from the fight, never showed fear, and died saving the world. Gods, what a woman. Gods, what am I going to do without her?"

"Come quickly, let us walk the Dark Road and put an end to this monster," Elahaïs answered, gesturing to Voldemort. "Perhaps, for your Bellatrix, all hope is not lost."

Hermione's eyes lit, and with great haste, she made her way to Tonks' side, and levitated the insensate Dark Lord. Elahaïs led the way, with Larissa parting the waters to descend into the frothing and stormy lake, down into the Dark Road. The sea parted around them, the wavering form of the ghost surging on ahead of them.

They descended through a magic lock, into the dark halls and the dark caverns below the sea, which led into the flank of the mountain, until they were deep below Damawand, and far from the light of Anahit and the Lake of Anahit.

Hermione, without hesitation, directed the Imperious curse against Voldemort. There would be no other way to accomplish the next part that was required to end the threat to Earth. She could see, as he came to, now under her control, the fear in his eyes. "Tom Riddle," she muttered, humiliating him with his true name just like Bellatrix had taken to, in the hours of her freedom. "Open the door, just a crack. You have the power."

He was terrified. Harry watched in wonder at that. "My God, he's always been such a coward."

"Go home to the monster you enslaved yourself to," Larissa declared. Tonks freed him from the bonds—just enough, just enough, taking no chances even with Voldemort firmly under Hermione's control via the Imperious Curse.

They all watched, as the door began to creak open. Hermione smiled, very darkly. "Ron, I think you're the strongest of us. Could you do the honours?"

Luna had helped him with a magical bandage around the wounded half of his face. He shook his head in pain and grim amusement.

Hermione turned to the flickering ghost. "Elahaïs, are you ready?"

"Ready," Elahaïs answered with grimly calm composure.

Hermione turned back, saw just how much of a coward, just how afraid Riddle was. Smiled.

"Have fun with your new master," she said. "Send him through, Ron."

Ron kicked Voldemort bodily into the Door, just as Hermione unleashed him from the Imperious curse, to avoid being tangled between her magic and him as he made his last journey. He failed, at the last moment—and then flashed into blackness and disappeared, with a powerful wash of green energy that staggered and knocked them all back.

All except Elahaïs, who advanced through it, and touched the open door.

And the yawing portal of darkness closed.

And silence and peace reigned over Ararat.

What price does the hero pay? Bravery and valiant courage in the service of one's Motherland, until the bitter end, life itself may be claimed by the enemy, but immortal glory – is it worth it? One cannot ask the dead.

Alexandra Rostislavna Lukachenko fell in action, with Zoë the Palmyran following soon enough, close at her side. The witches and wizards of the unit managed to at least protect them all from Dementors, but the lack of magical support, combined with the liquid luck exhausting itself, had finally told against them. Pinched by two absolutely desperate forces from two directions, under sustained attack by Morsmordre wizards trying to advance in confusion to serve a mission they did not understand, nor appreciate the urgency of, in the end, they had been undone.

On the Summer Solstice, in the year 2004, a young woman in her late twenties fell in battle, like so many before. She wouldn't even be the last; her luck had simply run out. There were millions of soldiers still serving the Morsmordre, and Death Eaters who knew there would be no pardon, no quarter, would lead them in bitter battles for years to come, unwillingly or otherwise, as they set up their own Warlord States and clung to petty remnants of power until the armies of the coalition governments at last swept them out of the territory they occupied.

A massive offensive to liberate Minsk and drive on to reach the Vistula would come soon enough, before these warlord states could begin to consolidate themselves in eastern Europe. Tens of thousands more heroes still had to die.

What kind of lunatic launches an offensive outnumbered ten to one? One who voluntarily downed a drug which makes one reckless and fearless because one is unnaturally lucky, that's who.

Hero of the Russian Federation. Posthumously promoted two steps in rank to Major General. A beautiful headstone, engraved with a severe but proud looking young woman's image, in uniform, marked with the banner of a Hero.

Her hometown, Klintsy in Bryansk Oblast, close to the border with Belarus (her father had actually been born there—when they were all Soviets, and all united, so precious few years before), was renamed after her. Her younger sister got a scholarship to university. Her mother received a special pension. Five years later, when post-war fleet construction began, a destroyer was named after her, too. None of this restored her to life.

Hundreds dead under her command. Most of them were decorated, but few received the same level of of this restored them to life, either.

But the historians would note, in defence of her conduct, that for two critical hours, when first Bellatrix and then Harry had led the fight against Voldemort, the fight to save the world from Azi Dahaka, he had received no reinforcement. Not a single Morsmordre wizard, not a single Death Eater, had arrived to help the Dark Lord. They had all been sucked into the terrible battle around Nemrut Dagi.

Notes:

Thank you all for reading "The Matter of Voldemort". The final five chapters and epilogue will follow soon.