Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

90 chapters! It feels like a lot less somehow, but here we are.

Enjoy...

Chapter 90

He was woken by a slim, warm arm slipping gently around his shoulders, and opened his eyes just in time to receive a faceful of silver-blonde hair as Fleur tucked her head into his collarbone.

'It's cold,' Fleur complained sleepily into his neck, pushing herself as close to him as she could manage.

There was frost on the window, twisting, spiralling patterns of it that spread all the way across the glass. This was Fleur's first real taste of English winter, and Harry had no doubt it was a far cry from the mild chill she was used to in France.

'I'm sure there is some way to enchant the walls and windows to retain the heat better,' Harry told her, using his free hand to smooth her hair down out of his eyes.

'Dangerous,' Fleur mumbled in response, pulling her knees up, and Harry winced as her feet came into contact with his calves. They were cold as ice. 'It's very complicated, and if you get it wrong you can destroy your house in any number of ways. Air currents, mould, damp, and fire,' she listed, sounding progressively less sleepy as she went.

'Speaking of fire,' Harry smiled, 'I'm sure there are easier ways to warm your feet.'

'I like this way,' Fleur decided. 'It is nice to have you here warming up the bed again.'

'I feel so appreciated,' Harry grinned, kissing her gently on the head, then rubbing his nose where her hair tickled him.

It is nice to be back, he thought.

The dormitories at Hogwarts were full of people, and had once felt like the home Harry had never had, but nothing could now compare to waking up beside Fleur. It was how the days were meant to start, and each dawn that did not happen so was a day that was less than it should have been.

'You know you're appreciated,' Fleur smirked, pulling her head back to give him a smoulderingly sultry stare from under long eyelashes. The fingers of the hand not around his neck gently traced their way down Harry's stomach, leaving light, hot lines as they trailed lower and lower.

Something crashed against the door, and Fleur's fingers flinched away.

Harry thrust his left hand out, wordlessly summoning his wand, and gently scooping Fleur off his chest.

'I'll see who it is,' he told her, conjuring himself a set of simple, dark robes from the air.

'Nobody is meant to be visiting today,' Fleur whispered, scrambling for her clothes on the opposite side of the bed. 'Sirius said the Order was busy with something big.'

Harry returned her concerned look, then, wand in hand, stealthily made his way along the landing and down the stairs, avoiding the creaky floorboards by the door to the bathroom and at the summit of the stairs.

The door banged again, more loudly, but Harry's revealing spell showed only a single wizard; it was red-edged, glowing silhouette he would always recognise.

'Sirius,' he greeted warmly, opening the door, 'what time do you-'

He fell silent.

His godfather was caked in blood, mud, and worse, dark, oily water dripped from his hair and ran from his soaked clothes to pool across their doorstep. Harry ran his eyes over Sirius, but none of the multitude of cuts and scrapes seemed life-threatening, though a few oozed nastily.

'Would you like a shower?' Harry offered glibly. 'You can tell me everything you need to when you're cleaned up, and healed. Fleur will do a better job than I when she's up.'

His godfather nodded tiredly, wand still clenched tightly in his trembling fingers, and staggered across the doorstep.

'You won't need that here,' Harry told calmly, nodding in the direction of the wand. It wasn't Sirius' second wand, which had been lost in the conflict in the Department of Mysteries, and nor was it the replacement he'd been using since; the wood was much lighter. Harry knew his first had been snapped upon his sentencing to Azkaban, so he could not have retrieved that wand, and that meant somewhere a wizard or witch was missing their most prized possession.

The light-wooded wand clattered to the floor.

'Whose is it?' Harry asked, picking it up gingerly. He was aware, given the extremely picky, defensive nature of his own wand, that some wands were best left alone. This wand didn't burn him, but a few, dull, green sparks sputtered from its scarred, battered tip.

'Moody's,' Sirius said after a long while. 'He's dead.'

'Tell me everything,' Harry ordered firmly, forgetting about the shower he had suggested completely, and helping a still filthy Sirius onto a chair in the kitchen.

'The Ministry relies on its eyes and ears across Britain, and, secretly, on the Order, to anticipate Death Eater attacks and raids,' Sirius relayed woodenly. 'Without Snape, the Order is blind, we heard nothing for weeks, and the raids began to grow expensive, aurors and hit wizards lost every time we turned around.'

'There was another raid tonight?' Fleur asked, descending from the stairs, tucking her wand back into her waist now that she knew it was only Sirius.

'Not a raid,' Sirius shook his head, 'a prison break.'

'Azkaban,' Harry realised softly.

'Voldemort needed the rest of his followers, the ones who fought for him in the first war, but weren't high enough priority the first time he broke out a group.' Sirius' eyes had darkened at the mere mention of the hell he had spent thirteen years in. 'When we learnt of his plan we reacted immediately, we never thought, never even considered, that it was the first thing we had heard for weeks, and so used to knowing his true plans from Snape, we didn't suspect a thing.'

'It was a trap.'

'Worse,' Sirius whispered hoarsely. 'Minister Bones committed almost every auror and hit wizard she could spare to defending Azkaban, and we were winning, even when Voldemort himself entered the conflict we were winning.' He took a deep breath, clenching his still shaking fingers into fists on the surface of the table. 'Werewolves, giants, every wizard in Europe who is willing to kill innocents for amnesty in Britain, and his Death Eaters, the real deal, not the blank masked, black cloaked initiates that have been raiding across the country. Moody reckoned it was almost his entire army.'

'And you were winning?' Fleur's disbelief was evident, and her wand was back in her hand now she had seen Sirius' injuries.

'Azkaban does not easily relinquish her victims, a fact I know all too well,' Sirius chuckled darkly, 'and a lesson I have learnt again.' He stared down into the wood of the table as if the visions of the Mirror of Erised were displayed within it. 'Scores of his followers died taking the harbour,' Sirius' voice hardened noticeably, 'it's the only place you can magically travel to or from, and even then only by a portkey authorised by the Ministry.'

'They had another spy, then,' Harry deduced.

'Likely many,' Sirius agreed absently, his hands had stilled, and his breathing slowed to a more even pace. 'It was only when the bodies of his initiates had piled so high that nobody could move that Voldemort acted himself. He and his Inner Circle drove most of our side back from the harbour's edge, and into the prison itself, but we held again once we had the walls and wards to shelter behind. Moody refused to retreat, staying to fight alongside Dawlish, and Scrimgeour at the top of one of the inlets, and I,' he grinned ruefully, 'I listened to my pride, and went after Lucius when I should not have done.'

'What happened to Moody?' Harry asked. The ex-auror had fought and survived more battles than anyone else, and he couldn't imagine the auror being killed easily.

'Voldemort,' Sirius said simply. 'The Inner Circle kept everyone pinned inside the walls, so nobody else could get out to fight, and Moody was left to duel him alone once Dawlish and Scrimgeour fell to the Lestrange twins, and Dolohov.'

'He will be missed,' Harry murmured.

'Voldemort ripped out his spine in front of the walls,' Sirius continued bluntly. 'He flicked his wand like Molly Weasley does when she's turning fish in the oven, and tore out Moody's skull and spinal column while he was still alive.'

Fleur winced, and even Harry frowned. There was nothing worse than finding yourself at the end of the Dark Lord's wand when he wanted to set an example.

'Once Moody was dead he had his followers surround the place, and ordered us to throw down our wands, join him and realise the prisoners, or die.' The shadows on his godfather's face lengthened. 'Nobody did, of course. The walls are well warded, and his numbers counted for little in the face of them, I thought we had a fair chance of winning, even with Voldemort there, but we forgot about the wardens.'

'The dementors,' Harry gritted, of course the creatures had joined Voldemort.

'They let the prisoners free from their cells, and attacked us just before Voldemort's followers outside did. It was a massacre.'

I hope Katie's father was not among the hit-wizards, Harry thought, a cold finger of fear wrapping around his spine. It's unlikely, he convinced himself, she would have contacted me with the badge if that had happened.

'How did you escape?' Fleur asked, running the tip of her wand along the last of Sirius' visible wounds, and watching it fade to a thin, pink line.

'I was not inside,' Sirius answered. 'Malfoy wanted revenge for his face, and I foolishly let him provoke me. We duelled along the inlet and he had forced me down to the edge of the sea when the dementors attacked. He did this.' Sirius drew back the tattered edge of his robes to reveal his ribs. A dark, crescent-shaped cut oozed thick, yellow pus, and weak, watery blood down his side. 'It looks worse than it is,' his godfather assured them, at their joint intake of breath.

'What spell was it?' Fleur asked, poking the inflamed flesh around it with the tip of her wand.

'I don't know,' Sirius shrugged helplessly. 'He cast it non-verbally, of course, but from the wand motion, and the colour of the spell I would guess that it's a variation of the flesh cutting curse.'

'Whatever it is,' Fleur frowned, flourishing her wand repeatedly over the wound, 'it is not healing, and the inflammation and infection is already spreading across your chest.' She traced the tip of her wand gently over the swollen, dark veins that stretched across his ribs. 'There are potions in the cupboard under the sink,' she told Harry quietly, 'bring the reddish-pink one, and one of each of the small vials.'

'Is it bad?' Sirius asked carefully.

'It's not good,' Fleur replied, 'you are lucky that my mother saw fit to foist any potion I might have use of on me in the times I have visited her.'

'It will heal then,' he smiled darkly. 'One more scar to tell another bitter story.'

'It will not heal completely,' Fleur corrected, taking the the armful of potions from Harry as he returned from the cupboard. 'These will stop it spreading, but that won't heal properly for at least a month or two, and the infection will take twice as long to fade.'

'A small price to pay,' Sirius shrugged, squeezing a small swell of pus and blood down his side. The rush of liquid came with a fetid, rotting smell, and Fleur's frown deepened.

'It's corrupted,' she said, peering more closely at the wound. 'This will hurt,' she warned, setting her wand down, 'it will hurt a lot.'

Without any further notice she pressed all five of her fingertips into the flesh around the wound, and pinched, squeezing out half a pint of red-tinged, yellow pus, and pushing the crescent open.

Sirius hissed, then clenched his jaw. 'That wasn't so bad,' he grinned weakly.

'I haven't done it yet,' Fleur told him seriously.

Harry's godfather paled, and swallowed hard.

A bright, blue flame burst into life over Fleur's forefinger, hovering there for a moment until it swelled white hot, then she thrust the tip of her finger inside the wound and held it there for several long seconds.

Sirius writhed, sweating and twisting in the chair so much that Harry cast a handful of sticking charms to keep in place.

'Are you done now?' He asked hopefully, when Fleur withdrew her finger.

'I am done,' she nodded. 'That curse would have rotted you from the inside out over the next week if I had not burnt away all the flesh affected by it.'

'That explains why he let me escape,' Sirius muttered, slumping in the chair as Fleur gently dabbed potions onto the edge of the crescent. 'I thought it was odd he let me swim out to sea without trying to curse me.'

'Will it have any permanent effects?' Harry asked Fleur softly. The wound looks even worse now that it had been cauterised. The inside of the crescent was blackened, burnt flesh, and the whole area was even more red, and swollen than before.

'He's not going to be up to duelling anyone for a month or two,' she said simply, 'and when it is healed as well as it ever will he will find that the scar, and the damage to his muscles will affect his movement.'

'Soon there'll be no more marauders left,' Sirius added quietly. 'I'm the last. Moony's gone too. Greyback tore him apart for interfering with the packs, he bragged about it at Azkaban.'

'We'll get Greyback,' Harry promised.

'I'll get him,' Sirius disagreed. 'You need to find those horcruxes. There's not much of the Ministry left now, certainly not enough to stop a determined attack should Voldemort throw his full strength into it, and the Order is gone. It's just me, Minerva, Filius, the Weasleys, and Dumbledore left, and I'm useless,' he poked viciously at the injury on his chest before Harry or Fleur could catch his hand. 'Dumbledore doesn't care about us, he's not said a word since Snape died, and we're dropping like flies, and Minerva and Filius are teachers.' He looked up at Harry, his eyes glazed with pain, practically delirious with it. 'There's nobody else left to stop him now. We're out of time.'

A cold shiver ran down Harry's spine. Voldemort was on the verge of victory from the sound of it, Dumbledore, and what was left of the Ministry and the Order were all that stood in his way.

The locket. The cup. Nagini. We need to go to Gringotts as soon as possible, Harry decided, sharing a look with Fleur.

'We found one, and Dumbledore has destroyed another over the summer and identified the rest,' Harry told Sirius. 'Nagini, Voldemort's familiar, and a locket,' a cold flush of fury flared at the memory of what Voldemort had defiled, 'then the cup which is in the Lestrange vault in Gringotts.'

'The snake that killed Arthur,' Sirius murmured, closing his eyes. 'I'll watch out for it. It was at Azkaban, if only I had known.'

'Go to sleep,' Fleur told him kindly, transfiguring the chair into something more comfortable, 'when you're rested, and feeling a bit better you can return to Grimmauld Place to recuperate if you must.'

'I must,' Sirius sighed faintly. 'Can't let them find this Fidelius too.'

'This changes things,' Fleur said after a long silence. 'We can't wait and pick off Inner Circle members one at a time anymore.'

'We need to go to Gringotts,' Harry agreed. 'When school starts again at the beginning of next week I will sneak you in through the chamber to the room of requirement too help me plan with Neville and Katie.'

'Why do we need them?'

'Neville deserves his chance for revenge against the Lestranges,' Harry explained, 'and Katie will cover for me with everyone at Hogwarts.'

'So we go after the horcrux in Gringotts,' Fleur summarised, 'what next?'

'The locket, and Nagini,' Harry said flatly. 'The snake is always with its master, so I will have to kill it just before him, but the locket is harder to find.' He looked wearily at Fleur. 'I'm not strong enough to defeat Voldemort yet either,' he gave her an apologetic look, 'I am going to have to do something drastic.'

'What?' Fleur sidled closer, fingers grasping as if she were afraid he might disappear if she were not holding onto him.

'The first ritual I did,' Harry said slowly, 'it altered my magic ever so slightly, making it more fluid, faster, there are a whole succession of rituals that follow on from it. Voldemort will have done them, so I must do them too.'

'Are they dangerous?'

'Not on their own, with a careful amount of time in between them,' Harry grinned ruefully, knowing Fleur would realise his plan immediately. Voldemort had likely done them in a cautious fashion over the years before he began his first war.

'All together,' she murmured, bowing her head and disappearing beneath her cascade of hair.

'We are out of time,' Harry said simply. 'I have everything I need,' he admitted. 'They're done almost completely with arithmancy and blood; it's simply a matter of using arithmantic principles to amplify, affect and alter the properties of my magic, and blood magic to make it permanent.'

'Will it make you much stronger?' Fleur asked quietly.

'It will change my magic,' Harry answered, 'I will be no stronger, but the differences will make conventional, usual defences less viable against me, and increase the effectiveness of certain aspects of my own spells.'

'Now?'

'No time like the present,' Harry remarked dryly.

'What will the ritual do?' Fleur asked, raising her voice to be heard over Sirius' snoring.

'It will make things more volatile and sensitive,' Harry answered. 'My magic will be more answerable to my emotions.'

'And that means,' she sighed.

'It means I will need to keep a tight rein on my feelings to cast some spells, and others, well if I pour my emotions into them they will become far more powerful.' The fiendfyre Voldemort had unleashed in Diagon Alley bore all the earmarks of a spell that had been so enhanced.

'Afterwards we will go to France,' Fleur decided softly. 'If we are out of time, then I should take my chance to see my family, just in case.'

'You know you can stay there,' Harry offered gently. 'The weather is much better.'

'The cold is not so bad with company,' Fleur answered firmly. Harry hadn't really expected her to consider it. 'Do you need to go outside?'

'No,' Harry shook his head, 'the blood will freeze, and wreak havoc with the ritual; it will have to be done in here, but you don't have to watch if you don't want to.'

'If I am not here,' Fleur rolled her eyes, 'who will pick you up and put you together afterwards.'

'It's not going to be Sirius,' Harry agreed, throwing a pointed look at his exhausted, injured godfather.

'I will tell Gabrielle that we are briefly visiting,' Fleur said, 'my parents too.' She disappeared upstairs to find her locket, which she had not had time to put on with Sirius' surprise arrival.

Harry drew the tip of his wand across his forearm, drawing, in crimson ichor, and burning, purple fire, the patterns of the runes in the air around him, and across the ground beneath him. He was careful to ensure that the patterns were perfect, and that his arithmantic properties were exactly as he needed.

With flourish of his wand he closed the patterns, and then, tensing his jaw, he activated the ritual, hoping it would finish before Fleur returned to see him suffer.

Please let this not hurt more than I can bear, he hoped.

There was nothing, no pain, no discomfort, no queasiness, and no sensations out of the ordinary whatsoever.

A faint, prickling, tingling feeling began in his fingertips and toes, little lancelets of discomfort that spread with excruciating, inexorable slowness from his extremities inwards.

He took several deep breaths, waiting for the pain to come as it inevitably must.

Harry did not have to wait long.

By the time the tingling had reached his elbows and knees it had swelled to sudden, stabbing pains that rippled over his skin like a cascade of needles, amplified the closer it drew to his chest.

Sensing what was to come would likely be far worse, Harry calmly took a seat on the floor crossing his legs, and folding his arms before, as an afterthought, casting a swift silencing charm upon himself.

Fleur did not need to hear him scream.

He took one last deep breath as the sensation swept over his shoulders to his heart, then squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth.

It was as if he had had his fingers dipped into magma. The burning sensation was so intense his fingers felt cold, and it moved fast, faster than Harry could anticipate to wash over him in a vast wave of hurt that blotted out everything else as its crest hung over him. In the eye of his mind he stared up at it for an eternity, waiting for it to break and obliterate him, but it only rose higher.

Something within him lurched, and twisted, contracting into itself and swirling like molten mercury with a wrenching pain that ripped the air from his lungs in a startled gasp.

The wave broke in a moment of noiseless, senseless darkness, the pain too much for Harry to comprehend.

He opened his eyes to find his head cradled between Fleur's fingers, pressed tightly into her stomach as she tried to wrap herself around him and shield him from the pain.

'Your silencing charm disintegrated,' she told him, voice and lip wavering. Her eyes were wet again, her lashes too. Tears she refused to let fall trapped between within them.

'Sorry,' he apologised ruefully, sitting upright. Fleur reluctantly let go of him, wrapping her arms around his chest instead.

'Is it over?' She asked.

'Yes,' he nodded, wandlessly summoning his wand from where he had dropped it.

The slender piece of ebony flew towards him far faster than before, and only his quick reflexes saved him from being hit in the face.

'What has changed?' Fleur demanded. 'What was worth that?'

'My magic is denser,' Harry frowned, twisting around to cup her cheek, 'and more volatile. It answers much more easily to my intent now, the affect my emotions had on my magic before will be amplified, and my denser magic will let me cast spells much more powerfully than is otherwise possible.'

'Was it worth it?' She pressed, placing her hand over his, keeping his fingertips against her face.

'I survived,' Harry said simply, 'my experimental ritual has worked, and there is nothing I need to give.'

'You need to recover,' Fleur told him firmly, reaching for the row of bottles he had not noticed.

'Ah,' Harry grinned weakly, trying and failing to stand and escape treatment. 'Hello, nurse.'

'Next time I will not look after you,' she said sternly, passing him potion after potion and waiting expectantly until he drank them. Harry recognised the iron tang of the blood replenishing potion amongst a handful of unfamiliar ones.

'You'd leave to me suffer?' He asked innocently, knowing she was bluffing.

'I would heal you perfectly,' Fleur responded lightly, 'then take away that silly book, and make sure you cannot ever get your hands on another.'

'I don't think there are any other copies,' Harry mused. 'It's handwritten by Salazar, and most of the ritualistic blood magic looks like it has been invented by him.'

'That explains why nobody else has ever done the rituals,' Fleur murmured softly.

'That and most of those who tried would have died,' Harry added absently, wincing when he realised that Fleur would definitely not appreciate his cavalier attitude to the dangers.

'Died?' There was certainly a note of ice to her tone.

'It takes a lot of magic to reach the threshold at which the ritual becomes permanent,' he explained quickly, 'more than almost any wizard has, and it all has to be from you. Other wizards and witches have different magic and that would upset the ritual.'

'How much?' Fleur looked only a little mollified.

'I can think of only a handful of recent wizards or witches who could manage it. Myself, of course, Voldemort, Dumbledore if he was so inclined, and maybe a handful of the most powerful, like Bellatrix Lestrange.'

'Could I?'

'I don't know,' Harry tried not to sound completely opposed to the idea, but it wasn't easy. 'Your magic is already different from usual, and I'm not sure what affect that would have.'

'It's ok,' she reassured him softly, 'I have no intention or need of carrying out such a ritual. It would likely ruin my skill at enchanting.'

'That's probably true,' Harry agreed, relieved. 'I will have to be careful with my spells now,' he admitted, 'but hopefully my magic will now be closer to matching Voldemort's.'

'And Dumbledore's,' FLeur reminded.

'I think my magic is already more powerful, and volatile than his,' Harry responded thoughtfully. 'Voldemort's is too, but Dumbledore is the epitome of experience, he knows a thousand ways for every one I do, and never wastes a drop of magic he does not need to. I think,' he finished cheerfully, 'that I would prefer to duel Voldemort. More powerful is not necessarily more dangerous.'

'That sounded almost wise,' Fleur teased gently, pulling him to his feet. His failed attempt, that he had tried to conceal to keep her from forcing another batch of bottles upon him, had evidently not gone unnoticed.

'France?' Harry raised any eyebrow.

'France,' Fleur agreed, apparating them both before he could.

The kitchen whirled away into a weak, winter sun. There were no leaves on the willow tree, and a thin film of ice coated the pebbles at the bend in the river, but the spot besides the tree trunk was as beautiful as ever.

'It feels a world away,' Fleur said, voicing his thoughts.

'I wish I could stay here,' Harry murmured, 'with you, and never have to leave.'

'We can stay in France,' she suggested half-heartedly. Fleur knew that it was not possible, but she would make him tell her, just to kill the last of her hope before staying here made it's loss all the harder.

'You it will only delay the inevitable,' Harry sighed, 'and then it will be your family at risk as well. Eventually,' he threw a wistful look at the branch they had so often sat side by side on in the summer before his fifth year, 'I will return here, and on that day I will stay.'

'Let's go,' Fleur said softly, 'lingering will only make leaving later harder.'

'Fleur! Harry!' It took a moment for him to realise it was Gabby that had spoken, and not her older sister. 'You're here.'

'Only briefly,' Fleur warned, as a silver-haired blur buried itself into her shoulder, scattering shoes across the hall. Her sister was only an inch or two shorter than her now.

'Is everything ok?' Fleur's parents joined them in the hall having heard the two of them arrive.

'We are fine,' Harry answered, 'but the Ministry is losing the war, so we have come to visit while we can.'

The in case we can't again was left unsaid, but sounded loudly in the silence all the same. There was no need to sugarcoat things, they would find out one way or another anyway.

'Stay in France,' Gabrielle pleaded, grabbing Harry's hand as well as her sister's, clutching the two of them tightly.

'I can't,' he said slowly and sadly, 'he will come for me regardless of where I am, and the only way to defeat him is in Britain.'

He tried not to be visibly taken aback at how Gabrielle had changed since he last saw her. She had always had the same figure as her sister, but the youthful, childish innocence and playful nature that had been so prevalent before was faded. Her eyes now held the same hard, wary edge as Fleur's did, only softening for Harry, and family, and tightening in the instances when her thoughts drifted elsewhere.

She has been left alone, he realised sadly.

A terrible wrench of guilt turned his stomach suddenly, for it was his fault that she had been left on her own.

You have stolen my sister from me, he remembered her saying, and it was true, he had.

'You can stay for tonight?' Fleur's mother asked hopefully, her fingers twisted in the folds of her dress.

'For a few days actually,' Harry smiled, making his decision in an instant. 'At least until term starts.'

He'd give Gabrielle her sister back for as long as he could, and let Fleur have some time with her family too, but then he would return to Britain, and destroy Voldemort permanently so the Dark Lord could wreak no further indirect harm upon the ones he cared about, and so that he did not have to hurt them again either.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

P.S. Greyback was not the werewolf Harry killed in Diagon Alley, he was mentioned as simply a follower of Fenrir.