What did he have to live for now, really? It was clear he wasn't getting out of this duel alive. He'd now lost both his parents and his daughter to the Dark Arts. And more than likely, his wife would be next. Harry was going to die and he knew it full well. Deeply wounded by the lost, he tossed his wand to one side of the cage and looked at Voldemort with pain-filled eyes. He had nothing left to lose now. Voldemort had finally regained power. Harry could only pray that Dumbledore would continue the fight despite Harry's passing.
"You want me, Voldemort?" he said in a shaky voice. "I'm right here." Voldemort lifted his wand, triumph glowing in his monstrous red eyes, and pointed it at Harry's middle. Harry took a deep breath, wondering if this was how his father had felt before he'd died. No, he'd died defending Mum and me. I've already lost everything. For the hundredth time that night, the deep rumble of Voldemort's voice filled the air with its deafening cry of, "Avada Kedavra!"
What both wizards failed to notice was that Harry's wand had slipped beneath a weak section of the cage. It had rolled right over to Abby and collided with her open hand. The curse that had held Raphael in the power of Voldemort since the Potters' escape here seemed to break the instant he placed that final curse on Abby's weakened body. He'd dropped his own wand, muttering the same words again and again: "Great Merlin, what have I done? What have I done?" He took no notice of the two wizards dueling a short distance away. When he saw Harry's wand come to Abby, he placed it in the young girl's hand and closed her fingers around it. He bent to his knees and gently kissed her hand. "Your father is going to die here," he told the unresponsive body. "I know he is." With fresh tears dripping down his cheeks, he looked to the sky and said, "Father and daughter, united by love, divided by hatred."
The wand that Abby clutched seemed to glow. The color was impossible to describe. It seemed a mix of deep scarlet and gold, but there was a shimmer of silver and a bit of green as well. In fact, it was every House color of Hogwarts. Harry's wand had never produced that color before. Raphael watched in quiet awe as the light covered Abby like a misty fog. This was clearly a magic that hadn't been worked for years; else he would have seen it before. But it was impossible. No spell could bring back the dead. That was a general knowledge given to all wizards at birth. And yet here she was, her chest beginning to rise and fall again in its rhythmic pattern.
Then Abby, Raphael reasoned, wasn't really dead after all. But then he noticed the sparkling piece of silver fastened protectively around her neck. His necklace, the Locket of Pitié! It had worked! Why hadn't the 16-year-old Abby he'd fallen in love with told him about this incident? It was then he realized he was watching the work of a very powerful magic, a sort of magic that must have dated back to the times of the great sorcerer Merlin. He'd murdered the daughter of Harry Potter, but he'd also been able to revive her. There was no way such a thing could ever be duplicated, and he continued to watch in silenced amazement.
Abby's eyes fluttered open, and she groaned as she struggled to sit up. Raphael immediately thrust a hand behind her to help her up. She coughed a couple times. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Voldemort raising his wand. She saw the look of disheartened defeat on her father's face. She didn't notice that the one who had been torturing her all this time was helping her to sit up, or that she'd been tossed into an inky blackness for a few minutes. At that moment, the only thing her mind could register was that Harry, the boy who had been her saving grace during her first few months at Hogwarts, was giving himself up to die. She scrambled to her feet, weak though they were, and raced toward the mysterious cage of which she knew so little.
"Dad!" she screamed, pummeling herself straight into the meshed web of spells, charms, and curses. It had not deteriorated enough to allow such a break-through, but she somehow managed it and was able to successfully shove both her father and herself out of the way. She paid no mind to the eerie, iridescent light that shrouded her and allowed her to push through the phoenix web as though it were water. The Killing Curse bounced off the walls at least a dozen times before hitting Voldemort's wand. It was a perfect hit.
Voldemort watched in horror as his own curse melted his wand, which dripped to a puddle on the ground. The only recognizable part of the wand was the phoenix feather that had existed in its core. Even that, too, began to dissolve into the magical liquid that had once committed more murders than the Ministry of Magic could count. Voldemort cried out in frustration at this. This was a magic he had never yet seen, and he vainly tried to gather the liquid mess into his hands. The moment the raw ingredients touched his hands, they began to eat at his murderous skin. He screamed in agony as the pain he'd inflicted on each of his victims traveled up his body a thousand-fold. It crept into his skin and dissolved his figure into the same liquid as his wand now was.
Harry had been wrong. Lord Voldemort hadn't won. The Dark Lord had, at last, met his end at the hands of the most powerful wizarding family to emerge since the Merlin family of years past.
Neither Harry nor Abby paid much attention to the final battle cries of Voldemort. Both were huddled on the ground where they'd finally stopped rolling. Abby's plunge had hurtled the both of them a good distance away from the phoenix cage, and they lie panting heavily on the slick grass. Harry was lying flat against the ground, his daughter's body curled up in his arms as she sobbed into his shirt. She was only 12 years old after all, and had never experienced anything as traumatic as this. Most grown wizards would have been weeping at this point as well, so Harry said nothing and simply tried to comfort her.
"Abby Mae, I thought you were dead," he whispered, feeling his own tears of sorrow-induced relief fill his eyes. "You gave me such a scare. I was so sure I'd lost you."
"Dad, I never knew!" she cried hoarsely. "I knew you fought against the Dark wizards, but I never knew it was so hard. I never knew you went through so much pain and hurt. And…and Dad?" Harry continued to hold his daughter with trembling hands, so relieved was he that she had lived through the whole ordeal. No wizard he knew had ever faced Voldemort head-on and lived to tell the tale, none save for himself and Dumbledore. He'd never wanted her to go through this, but now that she had he'd never been so proud.
"I'm right here, Abby."
"I love you, Dad." Harry felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. As he stared up at the stars ahead, the sky blurred by his teary vision, he thanked every power he knew for bringing his sweet baby girl into his life and keeping her there. He ran his hands soothingly through her hair, trying to reassure her that he was there and wasn't planning on leaving. She again took up sobbing heavily into his robes, and he allowed her to because it brought him an odd sense of reassurance. It was a relief to know that she was alive and was still able to cry.
"I love you too, Abigail. And I promise none of this will ever happen again. You were very brave tonight. I wouldn't have expected such thoughtless bravery from a greater wizard. And you know, when we get home, I promise to let you have more of a say in the rules I make. You and your mother both."
Abby laughed through her tears. That certainly was the last thing on her mind. All of this had been the cruelest trial on her, but she'd survived and she'd made her father proud. Maybe, she thought as she lunged into thicker cries, maybe I can carry the Potter name, after all.
~
*Oh, come on now – you didn't really expect the bad guy to win this one, did you? Thank you all for your fantastic reviews; it's good to know I have an audience! My next chapter is an epilogue, so please don't think it ends here. But thank you for hanging around this long, it's been a wild ride but a very enjoyable one*