A/N: GIANT HONKING SPOILERS FOR HBP! Just so no one gets surprised.
Some of this came to me about halfway through the book, some as I was sitting writing it. Just had to share.
And I'm still divided on our resident Death Eater's leanings, but this worked for this story, so I'll keep it for now.
The great snake Nagini lay dead between them. To one side was just visible the melted remains of what was once a beautiful chalice, the mutilated traces of what once may have been a badger visible if one squinted hard.
On either side of these stood a wizard, wand in hand. One was the acknowledged greatest Dark Lord in living memory, with the face of a snake and a heart to match it. The other was a seventeen year old boy.
Not a boy anymore, really. Not after what he'd lived through, not after the last year especially. Not after the training he'd endured, nor the battles fought for the remaining Horcruxes.
Harry had lived nearly a year with his mantra in his head; the locket…the cup…the snake…something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's… It had filled his mind and haunted his dreams.
He, Ron, and Hermione had taken up residence at number 12 Grimmauld Place, despite the harsh memories attached to it. Harry rather thought that Sirius would have been happy that his family's dark legacy was used to bring down Voldemort. The place had the added benefit of being Unplottable, and covered with more protective wards than they had the time or knowledge to erect on their own. With Dumbledore, the former Secret Keeper, dead, the remaining members of the order seemed to have forgotten its existence. Hermione reasoned that, as the proper owner, Harry was exempted from forgetting, and since he brought them along, so were they.
Interestingly, moving into the Black household had turned into an unexpected blessing. In their searches for defensive techniques the trio had found an old spell which tracked dark magic. Ron was the lucky, or perhaps not-so-lucky, one who tried it on the third floor.
The ensuing chaos resulted in three rooms being destroyed by fire and smoke damage, Hermione losing several inches of hair to scorching, and Harry's glasses being half melted off his face. Ron suffered worse, burning nearly half his body. Dobby, who had come with them to help manage Kreacher, had responded immediately to Harry's call and managed to transport Ron to the hospital wing at Hogwarts, where Madam Pomfrey's care kept him alive, if badly scarred.
When Ron heard the other results of the fiasco, however, he counted his injuries as worth it.
"I can't believe we never thought of it before!" Hermione said as she sat beside Ron's bed. He'd been released from the hospital wing under strict orders to rest for at least another week before even attempting any magic.
"It's not like we memorized everyone's initials, 'Mione," Ron told her patiently. Harry had told him privately that his patience was bordering saintly, since this was nearly the tenth time Hermione had made this complaint – in the last hour.
"Regulus A. Black. R.A.B. He took the locket- Slytherin's locket- and hid it here – I guess he planned to destroy it but was killed too soon…"
They all agreed that the discovery and destruction of one of the Horcruxes was worth the damages.
And now, nearly a year after Dumbledore's death, Harry stood over the body of an enormous snake and a pile of goo that had once been Helga Hufflepuff's cup. The 'something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's' had caused them problems over and over again, as they tried to search out any device with equal amounts of Light and Dark magics attached to it. They had managed to completely rule out only one item: Godric's sword, the one Harry had once killed a basilisk with. There was no trace of any Dark magic on or in it, and they had the Sorting Hat's assurance that it had been locked in the Headmaster's office continuously from the time of Godric's death until Harry had used it.
Finally Hermione had found, in a long abandoned corner of a junk shop on Diagon Alley, an inkstand that bore the Ravenclaw emblem.
"Makes sense," Harry commented after they all got over their surprise. "Ravenclaw prized knowledge; we should have figured on looking for a book or something." They had destroyed it with much less effort than the locket had taken, which made Harry faintly uneasy, but there seemed nothing else to be done about it.
And now the final battle had come calling, and all their planning was put to the test. Harry, Hermione, and Ron had called on all their trusted adult friends, and on their classmates they trusted, and trained their hearts out. The former DA members proved that their skills had not suffered in the time that had passed, and the adults seemed peacefully resigned to taking orders from someone they had until recently considered a child.
The battle raged around Harry and Voldemort, though neither seemed to notice. The Dark Lord was noticeably enraged at the death of Nagini and the destruction of the cup. Harry decided to add fuel to the fire. He drew the melted remains of the locket from his pocket, as well as the cracked ring Dumbledore had destroyed two years earlier and tossed them forwards. "Look familiar?" he asked nonchalantly.
Voldemort snarled. "You don't know what you are dealing with, boy," he hissed angrily. "Just because you have found some trinkets-"
"I know what I've found. Horcruxes." The Dark Lord flinched at the word. "Oh yes, I know what they are, and I know that destroying them destroys you."
Something resembling a smirk appeared on the twisted face. "You do not know as much as you should, boy."
"Or maybe I just left some pieces elsewhere," Harry replied, before leaping back into battle. His training had certainly paid off to some extent at least, as he managed to give as good as he got for several minutes.
A slight flicker of Voldemort's eye was all the warning he got as a spell was shot at his back. He managed to turn only halfway, not nearly fast enough to retaliate, and saw the bright green flare of magic heading straight for him. He flinched back uselessly, half terrified and half furious that he would be caught out like this and leave his friends to do battle without him. He heard the spell streak toward him, then a thud, and he opened his eyes in surprise. He had only a split-second to recognize the silver-handed figure lying still at his feet before Voldemort pulled himself from the tangle of vines Harry had sent at him and retaliated.
Pettigrew had repaid his debt to Harry.
The brush with death had shaken him, enough so that his next spells were not as well aimed nor as forceful as they should have been. Which allowed the Dark Lord to slip in a simple 'Expelliarmus'.
Harry watched his wand fly from his fingers with a feeling of dread and shock deep in his belly. Knowing it was futile, he still dove for it, hearing Voldemort's scornful laughter.
"Sectumsempra!"
The laughter cut off abruptly, as Harry's fingers caught up his errant wand. He stood, turned, and aimed, faster than he would have thought possible, towards where the Dark Lord stared in disbelief at the raised wand of one of his Death Eaters. "Avada Kedavra," Harry gasped out, and watched, half horrified and mildly impressed, as his first Unforgivable took its toll. Voldemort's body fell, leaving Harry with a direct line of sight to the dark eyes staring at him from behind a death mask.
Before Harry could fully comprehend what had happened, he felt the worst pain he could imagine radiating out from his scar. It easily exceeded the pain of the Cruciatus, threatening to tear his body apart. In a sudden gasp, he had it.
If my calculations are correct, Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents' house.
I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death.
Potter belongs to the Dark Lord – we are to leave him!
The locket…the cup…the snake…something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's…
Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat, Harry.
Something of Gryffindor's…
Voldemort had been short of Horcruxes that night. But he had not counted on Lily Potter's love for her son. In the split second before his first body was destroyed, Voldemort must have seen what was coming, known he needed another Horcrux – and known that no one would kill an innocent child, not on the slim chance that Voldemort might have done something to him.
'He put some of himself into me,' Harry realized through the blinding pain. It made sense, now: the visions, his being a Parseltongue, the Dark Lord's command that he alone was to kill Harry. 'He wanted to see me die, so he'd know to make a new Horcrux. I'm the last piece of his soul, not that inkwell.' Then, irrelevantly, 'No wonder it melted so easily.'
As he raised his aching head, Harry saw that the Death Eater had not moved, was still gazing at him unmoving.
And he realized that the Unbreakable Vow had taken more of a toll than anyone had imagined, had driven someone to act against their nature. The hatred in his face had been for the situation, and for himself for not knowing what he'd taken on with that vow.
Harry knew now, too late. Now there was only one thing he could do. In a conscious echo of Dumbledore's last words, he croaked out, "Severus…please…"
The Death Eater's eyes flashed once, and Harry knew he'd been understood. He watched as Snape's wand rose until it aimed directly for his scar, and tried to brace himself against the pain to make an unmoving target. No one else would get in the way, he hoped, and prayed again, as he saw the green light rush toward him for the last time, that the others would understand.