Chapter 35

As the battle began to rage, explosive spells tearing into walls and bodies alike, Harry charged into the mansion, sword in one hand and Voldemort's wand in the other. He moved forward, sending a few quick spells towards some Death Eaters duelling beside him before evaporating a wall and moving through; he needed to find Voldemort.

A black-robed man ran towards him, raising a shield: he probably recognised it was Harry, the one had single-handedly slain fourteen Death Eaters at once. His shield did not help him as Harry narrowed his eyes in concentration for a few seconds, before waving his wand and instantly condensing and then freezing the water vapour behind the Death Eater into an icicle, and then driving it through his spine.

The man collapsed, shield flickering from existence and wand dropping from his hand to clatter against the stone.

Harry smiled. It had been a while since he had fought anyone one on one, and he had picked up quite a few tricks during his preparation for the tournament.

His senses screamed and he stepped backwards, narrowly dodging between twin beams of orange light. He turned and found himself facing two men, so similar looking they were probably brothers—cousins, too, knowing these purebloods.

"Infriga," Harry hissed, sending fourth a beam of light blue as he dodged to the side of a third spell.

His spell splashed against a shield as the second brother stepped forward to launch another spell. Whatever words were upon his lips, they faded as two bursts of gunfire roared, catching him and his accomplice in the torso and flinging them to the ground.

Harry nodded to the gunman before taking off at a sprint again, looking for Lord Voldemort.

He froze a wall and then shoulder barged through it, charging into a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. Two Death Eaters—they had been heading towards the battle—turned to face him a bit too late. Each caught an icicle through the throat and dropped like puppets with cut strings.

Harry spun and raised a shield, his enhanced hearing picking up the sounds of footsteps even over the raging battle. The shield caught two spells before breaking and he stepped aside the third, catching sight of the two Death Eaters attacking him—why, oh, why did they all have to travel in pairs? It made his job marginally harder.

Concentrating as hard as he could, he dodged two other spells, and dragged his wand towards the Death Eaters. A shield shimmered into existence in front of each, but that didn't help them as the water from the fountain surged up to smash into them from the side.

Both were thrown to the cobblestones, half-screaming, half-drowning. Both processes promptly ended as the water that had made its way into their lungs solidified into jagged ice.

Harry strode forward, over their barely moving bodies and shattered a pair of glass doors. On the other side was some kind of ballroom. Where the hell was Voldemort?

'If you were a dark lord,' began Harry, 'where would you hide?'

'I wouldn't hide. I would sit upon my throne, my guard surrounding me and wait for those who have dared to invade my kingdom come to face me.'

Harry snorted. 'The basement, then?'

He was torn from his detective work as a sound much louder than any of others shattered the night, a mix of a roar and an explosion, followed by a massive serpent of crimson fire ripping itself from the roof of the manor and illuminating the sky. And then it plunged back downwards.

Harry swallowed and stepped back into the courtyard. 'Think that might be Voldemort?'

'If it's one of his followers doing that, we are totally and utterly screwed.'

'Let's hope Dumbledore has something to match that.'

'Right. Think I should go over, or just stay here and watch the fireworks?'

'If our plan is to work, we should probably be near them.'

Harry sighed. 'I really don't want to get my hair burnt off—I just got it done.'

'You used a hair-cutting spell. Now go and watch the fight, you pansy.'

With no more resistance but a sigh, Harry rushed through the building. A Death Eater—this one alone, his partner probably already dead, judging by his bloodied robes—charged him, and found himself decapitated by Harry's sword.

The two others he faced were caught off-guard and thusly hurled into a wall at speeds more than fast enough to snap their necks and cave their skulls.

Weaving between corpses, almost-corpses, and soon-to-be corpses (if they got in his way) Harry made his way through the huge manor and out of the other side, passing the massive hole in the ceiling from which the fiery serpent had exploded.

His prediction had been correct: Dumbledore and Voldemort stood on the lawn, locked in mortal combat.

Voldemort's snake-like features were twisted into a vicious snarl. He held two wands, Harry's in his left hand and another in his right. Blood stain his black robes, most of it not his own, yet there were a few bullet holes that had decidedly proven not to be too effective. A few more crumpled bullets lied at his feet, and a few mangled corpses in black combat gear lied behind him; he had probably killed the poor bastards without even looking.

Dumbledore stood defiant, Voldemort's antithesis. He held his wand high and his eyes were filled with steely determination, his face slick with sweat.

No one stood between them; no one stood near them. No, they cowered at a distance, knew this wasn't a battle for mortal men. If they had been nearby, they would've been killed ten times over: the ground around both opponents was blackened and cracked and marred with craters.

Neither man—if beings who wielded such power could be called men—gave any ground, or even moved. They each stood still, but for the flicking of their wands. Each parried the other's attack without much difficulty.

When Voldemort's flaming serpent burst from his wooden wand, it met only massive watery shields, and when he flicked Harry's wand, the blizzards he summoned were decapitated almost immediately.

This was not the place for incantations, but for the most difficult of spells—the occasionally spat "Avada Kedavra!" from Voldemort, each lance of green light countered by mighty stones being dragged into their path, or a flick of Dumbledore's wand raising mighty golems from the ground to take the lethal curse upon their chest.

Glancing away from the battle for a moment, Harry muttered, "Infrigum Sanguo," and idly froze the blood of the Death Eater who had been trying to sneak up on him. He glanced to the other corpses littering the battlefield. Other cries and yells and spells sounded throughout the rest of the manor, though they were almost drowned out by the constant explosions from the battle of the two titans before Harry.

He stood there, trying to decide what the hell he was going to do. His specialisation was catching people he was confident he could beat by surprise, and killing them before they had the chance to not underestimate him—fluking things tended to help as well. Something told him that his skillset might not apply well to this battle.

The fiery serpent burst from Voldemort's wand again, meeting a barrier of stone and earth that had just risen from the ground in an explosion of heat. And then Dumbledore staggered.

Harry spat out a curse; he had been correct about his prediction of Dumbledore not being in much of a state to fight. All accounts of their past duels had said Dumbledore was a superior duellist. Now, he was losing.

It became clearer the more he looked. Every Killing Curse came an inch closer to ending Dumbledore's life, and Voldemort countered his attacks with ever-increasing ease.

If Dumbledore died, the mission would likely die with him. Harry was no match for Voldemort—not like this—and he doubted any one of Dumbledore's or Marco's troops could claim to be, either.

After scanning around for any attackers—he spotted two of Marco's troops through a smashed wall and hoped Marco was already doing what he was supposed to—Harry burst into motion. He took off across the burnt earth at a sprint, heading straight for Lord Voldemort. He didn't doubt that Voldemort would notice him, so he yelled a spell anyway, as loud as he could.

"Stupefy!"

Voldemort brought one of his wands up behind him, flicking away the attack with contemptuous ease, while blocking one of Dumbledore's attacks at the same time. He must've seen it was Harry, for he turned, glee in his eyes as he hissed, "Avada Kedavra."

Green light flashed, and at this range, Lord Voldemort could not miss. Harry crumpled to the floor, and Voldemort barked a laugh out. Almost instantly, however, he was turning back to Dumbledore, so he didn't see as the illusion shimmered out of existence and the real Harry caught him around the legs in a vicious rugby tackle.

Harry tore his wand from Lord Voldemort's wand and stabbed it into his gut, standing in the same fluid motion and bringing his foot crunching down onto each of Voldemort's kneecaps, one after the other.

Voldemort screamed—probably more from anger than pain—and brought his wand upwards.

Harry grinned as icy power trickled through his veins, and sent forth an icicle. It caught Voldemort through the hand and pinned him to the floor. He writhed, and Harry only just had time to shield himself as a wave of kinetic force exploded from him.

Even if he blocked the brunt of it, Harry was still hurled backwards. He flipped in mid-air, landing on his feet. "Now, Dumbledore!"

Dumbledore didn't need to be told twice. He had already pulled the wardstone from God-knows-where and now, he shattered it.

Harry felt the wards collapse around him and charged, two copies of him flickering to life. One was instantly dispersed as a blast of force caught it. And then Harry was on Voldemort, yelling, "Lemon drops!"

With that, the Portkey activated, and Harry's world became a blurring mass of colour. And then he was landing on the ground, in a few inches of snow—he was in Greenland, he knew.

Immediately, Harry felt wards burst into existence. He rolled from Voldemort, who screamed out a curse as he was struck by six simultaneous stunning spells. As though he was a dragon, they did not knock him out—only subdued him.

Upon noticing their tactics had failed, Marco and his men spat out a chorus of Crucios.

As six simultaneous waves of pain slammed into Voldemort—a few from people who were almost professional at the spell—he could do naught but scream.

Harry nodded gratefully at Marco before getting to work. He surrendered control of his body to Loki, and the god was instantly alert, delicately carving Norse runes in the air, undistracted by the screaming and writhing dark lord behind him, who was now being struck by stunning spells as well as Cruciatas Curses.

After half a minute of intense and exhausting concentration, the air twisted and warped, a portal slowly forming. Beyond laid a realm of snow and ice, even more forbidding than the Greenlandic winter wasteland in which they stood.

Harry felt Loki collapse—or do the mental equivalent of it, at least, the ritual and effort of possessing Harry taking its toll—and took control back.

The men released Voldemort from their respective spells and Harry yanked him up by his collar, and then, with a nod to Marco, dragged him through the portal. He was greeted by a biting wind, colder than any he had ever felt on Earth; for a moment, it tinged his skin blue, and he moved to fix it, before reconsidering, his face breaking out into a grin. This had not happened before—Loki had been able to ensure that, but now he was incapacitated—and so he would have some fun with it.

He lifted Voldemort over his head and flung him. He spun through the air ungracefully and then plunged into the knee-deep snow. Harry strode forward, a predator's grin on his face.

He grabbed the dark lord by his robes and pulled him up so that they were face to face. Voldemort's red and serpentine eyes narrowed upon seeing Harry's ones of a matching colour, and his new blue complexion, runes across the surface.

Snow rose from the ground, slowly snaking around Voldemort and binding him to where he stood, locking his arms to his sides.

"What are you?" Voldemort hissed. Even in the face of defeat, he refused to show fear.

Harry cackled. "I, Lord Voldemort, am what you wish to be—what you will never be." He laughed again, and slammed a fist into Voldemort's gut, dropping him into the snow. He leaned down towards him, grinning. "I am a god, an immortal. And you may be a god among men, but among gods, you are but a man."

He decided to ignore the fact that Voldemort would utterly destroy him in a fair fight.

"No, you—"

"Yes, Voldemort! I will live forever—and maintain my beauty whilst doing so, unlike you with your technique, with those crude little Horcruxes."

Now fear flashed across Voldemort's face. He drove it away a moment later. "You have not found them!"

It was true, but Harry enjoyed lying. "Haven't I, Voldemort?" he asked, eyebrow raised. "I bring you here, to Jotunheim, the realm of the Jotuns from Norse mythology who you didn't even know existed, and you doubt me?"

"I—"

"Hush, Tom, I'm monologuing." Harry waved his wand and a winter wind slammed Voldemort's jaw shut hard enough to break teeth. "Anyway, as I was saying, I am a god—or perhaps something closer to a demon. And I am unstoppable. I defy impossible odds again and again, and have slaughtered trained wizards in combat since I was a child. The Killing Curse did not work on me, and I have defeated you once again." He smiled. "But feel free to test if your Horcruxes are still intact—go on, kill yourself and escape."

Voldemort only glared.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Are you going to even ask what god I am? Which name I went by before I deigned to take mortal form?"

Voldemort continued to glare.

"Ah," Harry said, suddenly remembering Voldemort's teeth were shattered and his jaw was probably broken. "Never mind, then. I do, however, feel inclined to inform you that, in mythology, Loki's daughter is Hel, and she rules over the realm of the dead. Use that information as you like."

The ice that had wrapped itself around Voldemort continued to grow over him until he was completely entombed, red eyes glinting behind a glasslike layer. Harry nodded cordially and turned away. The portal enveloped him and closed a moment later, leaving Voldemort alone to freeze. To die. And then to wander Jotunheim for all eternity as a bodiless wraith.