He did not fall--as she watched with stunned eyes, the curse merely bounced off him, and rebounded towards a solitary black-clad figure at the gates. With a sick feeling, she knew that if Voldemort somehow had enough power to turn aside a Killing Curse, they were in damn serious trouble.
Severus managed to dodge the spell, though her heart was in her throat as it missed him by bare inches. All the Death Eaters and Voldemort turned as one to see who had failed in their attempt. "You!" Voldemort roared, raising his wand.
He didn't stop to answer--wisely, he ducked through the gates and behind the protection of the wall. Soon enough a dark, shadowy figure rose into the air, almost cloaked by the dark of the night. But Voldemort's gaze and his wand followed him fleeing in his falcon state, and Tosca could only stare in horror, dimly aware that the humans below had taken the Death Eaters' distraction to start throwing spells and taking full advantage of the chance. The Death Eaters turned and began returning the favor in full force. Severus wouldn't make it; fast as a falcon flew, he couldn't. Grimly she launched herself from her perch, taking only a bare instant to consider the consequences to herself, and then dismissing them.
The agony of the spell released, Harold Lowe managed to take advantage of Voldemort's distraction with Professor Snape, scurrying with his friends towards the safety of the castle doors. Every nerve in his body was screaming in pain--a thousand times worse than the time he had fallen from the tree in the yard and broken his arm, a million times worse than bruises from rugby. It was as if every bone in his body had been smashed to splinters, every nerve carefully shredded.
He glanced over his shoulder at the Dark Lord as he fled towards safety on unsure feet, expecting to find the wand aimed at his back and a death curse flying his way. He was startled to see Voldemort looking almost winded for a moment. He shook his head, blinked, and looked again. No, it must have just been his imagination. He was there and malevolent-looking as ever.
The spells started flying, and he got down low, grateful for once in his life that he wasn't yet fifteen like his brother with the height of that age. Thomas had the presence of mind to snatch up their wands from where a Death Eater had dropped them when a well-aimed Killing Curse felled him. Harold turned as he reached the steps, praying that Snape would make it. Snape hadn't been overly fond of him; that was true, as he was Gryffindor. Apparently in years past he'd been quite the biased man towards the Serpent's Den. But he had been at least fair in it--he had been as hard on his Slytherins as any other house this year. And Snape had just probably saved his life.
Snape ducked behind the wall around the castle. Harold saw a bird of some sort trying to fly away, and Voldemort's eyes and wand following it with unerring accuracy. He's an Animagus? Thomas pressed his wand into his fingers. "So long as we're stuck in the thick of it, we might as well try to help," Thomas murmured, his soft Irish accent thickening now that he was afraid.
Above the sizzle and whine of the spells came a loud, blood-curdling shriek. A large white form swooped down towards Voldemort. A Banshee? No, it was a bird that flew right in Voldemort's face, blinding him and allowing Snape to escape--a large white falcon. Was it another Animagus? Snape by this point was well hidden in the trees, so whoever the white falcon was, it had succeeded as she flew off before Voldemort could attack her, his attention firmly divided. Voldemort chose to ignore the bird and then shouted again for Harry Potter, audible even above the sounds of battle.
Her heart slowed as she flew again over the battle, hardly able to believe what she had just done. And she had come out alive, for a miracle. She hadn't been thinking, just reacting on pure instinct. Nobody would cause harm to her human if she had any say in the matter.
She kept circling, looking frantically for any chance to lend aid. Just below, she heard a shout of a Disarming Spell and a Summoning Charm, the crisp, aristocratic tones unmistakable. Draco Malfoy had a smile on his face as his father's wand slid neatly into his hand.
Was he finally confronting him? She knew what troubled Draco's soul--more than once the young professor had talked to her on a lonely night as Severus used to. He was convinced that no human wanted to listen to him with what he was. He'd become almost shy in the past few years, very withdrawn. He'd vaguely explained it as knowing he'd done a great wrong in his past but not knowing what it was. "And the not knowing is the worst…" She had begun to think that Severus and Hermione's rescue with the Forgetfulness Potion was as much curse as gift. Draco could never confront what he'd done and learn to forgive himself for it, and without that, he hadn't any hope of forming any sort of attachment with others. And the demon of it, the black, terrible void of not knowing, had steadily eaten at him.
And so the young, almost fatalistic Malfoy was smiling a cold smile that almost replicated the one often on his father's face. Frozen to the spot, she watched. Wordlessly Draco gestured away from the fray, to a quiet part of the courtyard. So this was to be it. He was out to kill the man he had once admired and thought to emulate. And from the look on his face, he didn't care if he survived it, so long as he took Lucius down with him. He had told her he didn't expect to be the victor in their inevitable duel. But he'd do his damnedest, he had said calmly, and inflict a world of hurt before he lost. The fatalism of it had almost frightened her.
Lucius smiled that same cold smile as Draco wordlessly tossed his wand back. "You always were a fool, Draco. Do you think you can best me in a duel?"
"We'll find out, won't we?" he said almost lightly. "Besides, I know you wouldn't stand for anyone else to be the one to try to kill me. You'd have sent assassins years ago otherwise. You've been waiting for this just as I have."
"You're not of their sort, Draco," Lucius cajoled in a silky tone. "You never were, and they know it. The good Professor Malfoy, kindhearted keeper of magical beasts? Does her face ever haunt you at night, hmm?"
"Whose?" He looked dumbstruck, obviously confused, but the slight tremor in him betrayed his fear that Lucius was referring to the night he would never fully recall except the in semi-lucid visions of nightmares.
"Don't play coy, Draco. That girl you raped." Draco flinched as if he'd just been physically struck and inadvertently took a step back, shaking his head, suddenly gone pale as Voldemort himself. "Do they know about that?" Lucius continued almost conversationally. "Oh dear. Have I brought back a bad memory?"
She stared in shock herself, seeing him look now little more than the uncertain, very young man that he was. He looked away for a second, blinking and shaking his head as if to clear his mind of it. Lucius raised his wand, and she recalled a lesson Severus had repeated more than once to new students, a code for survival in Slytherin.Never take your eyes off of a Slytherin. Not even for an instant; one from the Serpent's Den needs only that moment where you lose concentration. She shouted out to him, knowing he'd hear no more than a falcon's cry, praying it was enough. She tensed, spread her wings, ready to dive on Lucius if need be.
He came out of his stupor, thankfully, at her warning shout, even though he'd have heard it as nothing more than a falcon cry. He had just enough time to shout "Avada Kedavra!" himself as the bolt of green light sizzled towards him. No time to dodge it: all the time he had possessed to do so had been given over to casting his own spell. The curse hit him, and Tosca watched, horror-stricken. Just as his curse hit Lucius, Draco collapsed, limp as a rag doll.
Worried for him, there was still no time to dive in to check; there was poor little need to anyhow. Nobody survived the Killing Curse. Allowing only a moment's grief, she hurried away: there would be time to grieve later. If they won, that was. She was wishing for once in her life that she was a bloody human and could lend aid with a wand. She felt so utterly helpless just circling and watching, waiting for any small chance to cause distraction to Death Eaters and allowing the forces of Hogwarts to move in for the kill.
On the way, she saw Severus had returned to the battle, fighting by Hermione's side. He threw a Killing Curse at a Death Eater, who crumpled to the ground. She thought rather wryly, Well, that one didn't fail. The battle looked to be turning in their favor, but all the Death Eaters killed or captured would mean nothing if Voldemort survived to rise again. It all rested on Harry Potter's slender shoulders as he now approached Voldemort with the eerie serenity of a sacrifice to the ancient pagan gods.
The two of them were still staring at each other as Harry approached, eyes locked and seeming as if everything else had faded from their consciousness. Voldemort saw him coming. When Harry was ten feet away, the Dark Lord shouted a spell in a harsh, guttural tongue. A dazzle of orange light surrounded the two for a minute, its brightness blinding Tosca for a moment. The beams twisted, converged, reached from the ground to form a dome around them. Hovering right above the shield-dome, she could make out what was being said within, voices and words distorted slightly as if with a jokester wizard's favorite: the Morphidicta Charm. The shield radiated heat, as if she was standing over a steaming cauldron. "I've waited years for this moment, saved all my strength and energy for this. My greatest victory--for the Boy Who Lived to be no more, and finally no obstacle left in my path. Just you and I, Harry Potter; no interference."
A cold prickle worked its way down her body at the odd, disgustingly perverted chivalry of it. Then again, Voldemort always observed the niceties, like some sadistic, deluded aristocrat from yesteryear, the sort who'd insist on Irish linen napkins and fine vintage wine as he served his victims' heads for dinner. She'd seen enough of his peculiar mentality in her spying days. But Harry simply nodded. He gestured almost impatiently to the wand in Voldemort's hand. "Don't you recall what happened last time, old man?" The wands had canceled each other out, so Severus had told her when recalling the horrific events Harry Potter had revealed about the night of the Tri-Wizard Cup's culmination and Voldemort's return. That seemed to belong to another lifetime now.
"Fool. Do you think I wouldn't have a new wand by now?" Voldemort returned equally coldly. "I learnt my lesson, but it seems you have not. It may have been delayed twenty-one years, but tonight you will die."
"So you're going to talk me to death?" She was almost unnerved by the nonchalant wisecracks Harry was spouting. But then, he was a Gryffindor. Could he do this? He'd killed a wizard before--Liam Haverforth. But Haverforth was a pathetic worm to Voldemort's deadly cobra. The longer Voldemort spoke, the more unnerved Harry got. After the taste of Voldemort's malevolence that night seven years ago, he was obviously afraid, though bravely trying to conceal it.
Voldemort laughed his cold, high pitched laugh. "I can do a great deal more than that. You still recall how to duel, I presume," he said softly. "Perhaps you've acquired a bit more skill than the last time." Vaguely Tosca wished Harry had spent a good deal more time on dueling than on Quidditch practice.
She could only watch in helpless frustration as they formally bowed, neither pair of eyes lowering, red and green locked on each other. Strangely, the shield glowed a little less bright, gave off a little less burning heat. The shouted spells overlapped and she couldn't hear what had been cast. But the flash of green light proclaimed that Harry had shouted the Killing Curse. She darted her eyes towards the spell heading for him, but before she could distinguish it, Voldemort's spell had hit Harry.
Her heart must have literally skipped a beat as he dropped to the ground. But there was never a sound that brought more relief, perverse as it sounded, than to hear his choked shout of pain. Cruciatus, not the Killing Curse! After all this time, Voldemort still believed Harry an unworthy opponent to take seriously enough to kill straightaway. Wanting the sadistic pleasure of torture first, seeing his victims beg and scream for mercy, unwilling to administer that coup de grace until his anger and bloodlust had been slaked. Peculiarly, Harry wasn't seemingly in as much agony as a typical Cruciatus sufferer. God knew she'd seen enough of them.
The strangest thing happened. The shield vanished, the burning warmth suddenly gone. She could see the two of them clearly again instead of through the orange haze. Harry stopped moaning on the ground. His spell hit Voldemort just then, exploding with a dazzling, emerald green light. Harry let out another keening, animal cry of pain and clapped a hand to the scar on his forehead.
An eternal heartbeat and Voldemort unthinkably fell and did not stir.
A long moment Harry lay there, panting. Then he slowly sat up and then carefully got up, limping towards the still, crumpled form, wand at the ready in case Voldemort had some sort of trick up his sleeve.
But Voldemort had dropped his wand, and as Tosca dove in and landed a few feet away, she saw in shock that on the ground there was nothing but charred cinders and ash where it should have lain. It was as though it had just destroyed itself.
She glanced up at Harry, seeing the look of strain and fear on his boyish features. He reached out with his wand, ever so carefully, as if prodding a snake. He flipped the large brown hood away from Voldemort's face, trembling all over in shock and delayed fear. He let out a loud gasp. She hurried over to see, eschewing her clumsy feet to simply take off and glide the few feet to Harry's side.
She was equally shocked. It wasn't the white snake's face and burning red eyes that she'd stared at so many long evenings with Severus by her side, that had haunted her dreams so many nights.
Within that hood lay the simple face of a man of about seventy-five: wrinkled and spotted with age, sparse hair gone grey, green eyes glazed over and staring unseeing up at the starlit sky. Dead. Tom Riddle now looked like somebody's kindly grandfather, not the greatest scourge magic had ever known since Lucifer himself. No signs of the perversions, the evil, the hideous transformations, showed now on his face. Ironic that a man who'd brought pain and fear to so many now looked almost at peace.
She slowly unfolded her wings and took flight, leaving Harry to his thoughts and returning towards the now dying battle. Her heart was in such a muddle that she barely knew what to feel. Maybe it was grief so many others dead at Voldemort's hand. Perhaps even grief for Riddle's life, such talent and brilliance so utterly wasted. Relief in having the matter finally finished; relief Harry being the one left standing.
She thought of what might have happened. Severus, of all people, had told her one night when muttering over his potions lectures, running ideas by her. As a Potions Master's familiar, she had a fair degree of knowledge and enjoyed his subject. There existed a potion to give a slight boost to magical energy, useful when it was depleted by lack of sleep or the sort. Developed, naturally enough, during a long-ago and almost forgotten magical war. Severus had informed her that drinking more than one was not advisable. "Too much of this potion," he had said, sitting back in his armchair and obviously enjoying lecturing about his favored subject to an audience, even if it consisted of only a gyrfalcon, "is rather like too much of any good thing, Tosca. If you eat too many mice, you'll make yourself sick, for example. You can only handle so much of anything. If you seek to increase your power too much, you'll produce a handful of incredibly powerful spells, a mere handful. Then, it may happen that it will completely destroy any capacity that you have for magic. Too much magical current can do that, it's rather like Muggle electricity, you see?"
Had there been signs that she had missed, that they had all missed in their utter fear? However Voldemort had acquired the power to destroy the wards, he had wanted it so badly that he had forged on, heedless of caution or warning. Had he gambled that his magic wouldn't be affected, or that by the time it destroyed his magic, Hogwarts would be his? He'd finally gambled all and lost. It was bitter but somewhat fitting irony. In seeking to become the most powerful wizard the world had ever seen, he had died as the very thing he had loathed most: a mere Muggle.
The Death Eaters must have known. Severus knew too. A stabbing pain in his left arm made him gasp aloud, stumbling back for a moment behind the line of fire. He rolled up his sleeve, stupefied to see the skin of his forearm unblemished. Twenty years of staring at the Dark Mark, and it was gone as though it had never been. Voldemort was dead.
He looked over towards where Harry and Voldemort had been battling and received a second shock. Both of them lay on the ground. A nearby crackling sizzle of a spell striking home and suddenly Sirius Black collapsed at his feet, dead eyes staring at the sky.
Before he could curse himself with his stupidity in being distracted, his eye caught the green flash coming towards him. His muscles, numb and weary from the magical and physical expenditures of battle, refused to respond any faster than sluggishly, and he dimly realized, So here I die. No time for regret, no time for anything except perhaps a brief realization of pain, and then nothingness.
Suddenly, a large white form dove in front of him. The spell hit it, the explosion and concussive sound of the spell finding its target following right on the heels of the shout of Severus! finally reaching his ears. He could only look down in stunned horror as Tosca crumpled at his feet, suddenly so small and still. Hoping against hope, he crouched down as another spell whizzed by his shoulder, barely noticing or caring.
Tears welled unexpectedly in his eyes, though he could feel no shame over them as he carefully checked her. Any small spark of hope was extinguished: she was dead. She'd spent her entire life with him trying to save him from what she jokingly referred to as "the dead to life". She'd helped him find Hermione and thus his heart. And now, in this last act, she finally had saved him from the dead, at the cost of her own life.
He could only think of how he had come to know her and enjoy her company in the years since his managing Animagism. She'd become much more than the messenger bird he'd seen her as for years. Confidante, nagging nursemaid, fellow spy…friend. One of the few he could ever claim, and the truest of them all. A bit of Muggle Scripture came to his mind dimly as he crouched there. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. No man, perhaps, but no falcon either.
Suddenly the shout of "They're retreating!" came to his ears through the haze of grief and memory. He glanced up, dimly noticing that the mere ten or so Death Eaters remaining had broken ranks and run like hell for the edge of the Forbidden Forest, mere yards away. Trying to clear his mind, he looked over his should to see Minerva standing there. "Should we pursue?" he asked.
Minerva debated for a moment. "It's too dangerous and we have our own to tend to," she said quietly. "The Minotaur is probably out by now--with luck they'll probably run into him before they reach the clearing to Apparate. That, or the Acromantulas or the Erithaci." The Congo Dervishes, whirling beasts that spun around prey with maddening speed, plucking little bits of flesh, leaving nothing in the end but a cleaned skeleton to mark their passing.
Indeed, there was plenty of danger to take care of the last few Death Eaters in the forest--one reason he was grateful that his falcon wings allowed him to fly over it! The thought brought another dull pang of grief. "Besides, without Tom," Minerva murmured, unconsciously using the Dark Lord's real name, "they're nothing. Let the Ministry hunt them down if they wish."
He turned towards Hermione. Nothing had ever seemed so beautiful as the smile she gave him at that moment, even on a face streaked with dirt and sweat. Slowly, very slowly, he smiled back. Tosca would have wanted it that way.
Victory came with its price, and it sat heavily on the shoulders of those who survived. John Watson, Poppy Pomfrey, and some of their advanced Mediwizardry students tended carefully to the wounded. And the grim work of identifying and listing the dead was also going on. The courtyard of Hogwarts was a charnel house--Death Eater and Hogwarts defender all over, barely distinguishable in death until a Hogwarts crest could be spotted on some sets of black robes.
Sirius Black. Callisto Mycenae. Rubeus Hagrid. Olympe Maxime. Several of the older students, which they all grieved particularly over. Draco Malfoy. Hermione saw him lying there, having died in killing the only person he had ever truly hated: his father. Hermione blinked back a few tears of grief, wondering if she and Severus had done the right thing in erasing his memory of that terrible night. Draco had never been able to face what he had done and conquer the demon of it--he had changed afterwards. He had become quiet, almost shy. There could be no answer now, but she prayed to God Draco finally found the peace he deserved.
And Tosca. The loss that hit her the most, remembering the small things. Tosca Leading her to the Animagism notes, teaching her to fly, slowly but gently nudging herself and Severus together. So much to be grateful for to her friend, and now a debt that could never be repaid: the price of her husband's life. Dully she thought, Crookshanks will be devastated.
Young Harold Lowe now stood before her, dark eyes very wide and somber. She noticed he was trembling slightly from the entire experience. "I'm sorry," he whispered faintly. "We didn't mean to cause trouble, any of us…" He looked barely even his mere eleven years at that moment.
"Mister Lowe," she said wearily, "if you mean to beg me to not take points from Gryffindor, I think I'm going to put a Silencio on you."
"No ma'am," he said hastily. "I…who was that bird? That saved Professor Snape?"
"His familiar," she said softly. "And his friend." She had been friend to him when almost no other would.
"Oh, I see…"
"You fought well," she said wearily. And indeed the four hostage first years had, doing what they could with a simple Exepelliarmus and a few other minor spells. Though if she could have spared a minute from the fight, they'd had most definitely been put in the castle with a Repelling Spell on them to be safe.
She looked now towards where Tosca had fallen, seeing Severus standing there looking at her, her own heart still aching. She left Lowe standing there and strode over to him, hardly hearing the murmur of people around her. Did Severus realize that she had truly lived up to the name of Tosca--dying as a result of trying to save the man she cared for more than any other?
Morning rose over the battlefield at Hogwarts on the second of May as calmly and serenely as though nothing untoward had happened the night before. Only the bodies told the tale: the grim work of burial would last awhile. The Ministry had already ordered that the Death Eaters' corpses be handed over to them for "disposal". What that entailed was not questioned, or ever imagined, but there was relief that they wouldn't have to deal with that task themselves.
Fifteen funerals to hold in the fine spring days ahead. The safety of Hogwarts, and indeed the entire wizarding world, bought by the sacrifice of fifteen souls. Sixteen, if one counted Tosca, which the magical world at large would never do. For all her fine qualities, to them it came down to the fact that she was a falcon, a familiar, a mere animal. Any honor to her courage and sacrifice would have to be Severus and Hermione's own.
Harry Potter still seemed in a daze over the whole ordeal, and the very idea that Voldemort, in his lust for power, had caused his own downfall seemed still fairly incredible. The most fearsome figure of the last quarter century was dead by his misjudgment.