Chapter 39
The rat-like man who approached Harry was familiar from old family photographs.
"Wormtail!" said Harry, joyously. "Padfoot's been looking for you! But just remember, don't look behind the curtain."
"What?" said Wormtail, honestly confused more than he was terrified by the thought of Padfoot looking for him. "Where's your scar? You're not Harry Potter."
"Namen und forenamen: Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz," said Harry, who liked Polish comedy classics too.
"Durmstrang...?" said Wormtail, wondering what to do.
"No, Chrząszczyżewoszyce powiat Łękołody," said Harry, unable to resist using the way the fictional Private Franek Dolas had confused SS officers trying to write down his assumed name and place of birth.
"Wormtail! Get on with it," said a high pitched, baby voice. "Barty said he had taken some outlandish middle European name. It has to be Harry Potter!"
"Now that takes us into existential arguments," said Harry. "I don't think it's compulsory for me to be Harry Potter, so the use of the imperative tense is surely quite inappropriate. Wormtail, what went wrong when you gave birth? Your baby seems decidedly... inhuman. And by the smell, I'd say it wants its nappy changed."
Wormtail whimpered, but fired a stunner at Harry, who dodged, reflexively.
Then he remembered he was supposed to be captured, put up a shield to absorb rather than bounce the spell, and went artistically limp. Wormtail tied him to the tombstone and cut his arm for blood.
"Eww, you didn't sterilise that first," said Harry, seeming to come to.
"You won't live long enough to care," said Wormtail.
He went through the ceremony of renewal, calling the bones from Tom Riddle senior's grave, cutting off his hand, and putting Harry's blood in until the tall, white, snake-like figure arose, naked.
"Robe me," it said in a high voice.
"Ugh, yes, please do," muttered Fleur.
Jurko meanwhile had gone on a snake hunt. He had managed to confund Nagini whilst Voldemort was preoccupied in the cauldron, waiting to kill her until, as seemed likely, the entity formerly known as Tom Riddle called in such of his minions as were likely to come.
Draco's sole job was to cut Harry loose whilst all this was going on.
And as the few who answered the call arrived, Jurko struck with a basilisk tooth, and he and Harry started chanting, including the origin of the dark mark in what they called forth. Feeling the pull on their arms, the deatheaters started fighting back; and that was where Fleur, Cedric, Draco and Viktor came in, casting shields over the two Cossacks, and casting the odd nuisance level spell, including transfiguring Voldemort's robes into a pink bunny suit, as the boys took the chant to the limit they had used through Mr. Goyle at the World Cup. They now reached out to every dark mark attached to the snake-faced principal of the spell, including those in Azkaban, and felt the power flow into them as they ripped it away. Each had a storage globe, and both realised in time and threw them from them as they exploded for being overfilled.
And then they must vent the power through raw power, bolts of lightning streaming out of their agonised hands.
"Palpatine, eat your heart out!" said Draco, awed.
And then it was over.
The construct which hosted Voldemort's final soul piece literally fell apart into powdered bone, a puddle of blood, and a rather well-broiled piece of hand-shaped meat. The soul puffed briefly forth... and vanished with a scream and a rather sulphurous smell.
Jurko managed to fall on Harry and take his hand as they both passed out.
The squibs in Halloween masks also passed out.
Draco picked Jurko's pocket for a communications mirror.
"Cowardly Lion calling Padfoot, Ding Dong the dark lord's dead, not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead," he said.
"We have your co-ordinates, Lion, standby, standby for tornado," said Sirius. "And you know what to do now..."
Jurko opened his eyes.
"Go through their pockets for loose change," he said, and passed out again.
"There's a good little Cossack," said Sirius.
.
.
.
The aurors came in to clear up the mess, and get the contestants back to Hogwarts.
"But who won?" asked the replacement for Ludo Bagman.
"Ze whole wizarding world," said Fleur, smiling for Colin's camera. "Let eet be known zat zis 'ole competition was a trap for ze wraith of ze man, Tom Reedle, 'oo call 'imself 'Voldemort' and zat we all co-operated weez 'Arry Pottair, 'oo was ze subject of a prophecy which ees now fulfilled. And now zat is over at long last, I am feenished weez school, and I can snog my dark lover senseless." She beamed on Severus.
Luna grabbed Jurko.
"I have a riddle for you," she said. "Who is the prettier, me, or a sphynx?"
"Why, I had to flatter the poor sphynx, for she is no comparison to you, my dear," said Jurko.
Luna squealed in delight.
"I forgive you," she said.
Hermione grabbed Draco.
"You imbecilic, nincompoop of a disturbed, mentally-challenged numbskull, you have no idea how much I have been suffering while you took part in that ludicrous and execrable excuse of a competition, that spectacle of farcical, risible numbskullery, designed by the moronic for the entertainment of the droolingly retarded!" she said.
"I love you, too, Hermione," said Draco.
Millie just clung to Harry.
Fleur threw herself into Severus' arms and he found himself kissing her.
"Pity the bunny suit didn't survive," said Harry.
"We can put its brief life in a pensieve," said Jurko.
"Sure, and Colin can photograph it for the 'Prophet'," said Harry.
.
The last image of Voldemort being in a pink bunny suit as he disintegrated was enough to dissipate all the fear. And the wizarding world rejoiced.
.
.
.
By the time the Cossacks had left school, Severus and Fleur had twin blonde daughters and a red-haired son. Albus Dumbledore was running a rabbit sanctuary, Viktor Krum was still at the top of his field as a Quidditch player, Karkaroff had introduced a more relaxed policy to blood status in Durmstrang which was now considered the top magical school in Europe, and Ludo Bagman was still on the run.
Percy Weasley was the youngest ever minister of magic, Fudge having been forced out for wanting to incarcerate anyone who claimed that Voldemort had been resurrected however temporarily, and the Dark Chocolate Lord ticket having been endorsed by Harry Potter, Lords Black and Prince, and Lucius Malfoy, who campaigned for Percy using Wizarding Wireless Vision, which had grown out of the scrying globes.
"And Lucius won't do it himself, because he prefers to be behind the scenes than being a minister," said Harry.
"Yes," said Jurko. "Less of an eminence gris than an eminence grubby-round-the edges."
And the muggle who reported that there really was a vorpal bunny, otherwise known as the Dreaded Beast of AAARG in the Scottish Highlands was assumed by the authorities to have had a few too many drachms, and was kindly shown out.
"And I never got to tell them it was overcome and eaten by a ruddy great spider the size of a cow," said the random muggle.
Finis.