Hadrian easily dispatched the group of Death Eaters that stood before him. Ever since he had removed the Horcrux from his scar he had felt better than he ever had before. Magic was so easy now. Every spell he performed was successful on the first try and was more powerful than it would be normally. This was due to his extremely strong magical core which, until recently, was unblocked and fully operational.
The reason that his core was blocked in the first place was because the Horcrux was leeching off the magic in it, preventing Hadrian from achieving his true potential. That was no longer a problem now. Thanks to the goblins at Gringotts, Voldemort's Horcrux was removed and destroyed.
Three out of the four Death Eaters were laying on the floor, dead. The one who remained alive was holding the bloody stump that used to be his arm, squealing in both the pain of losing a limb and fear of the powerful wizard that stood before him.
Hadrian began to walk up to the fallen Death Eater.
"Wait! Please!" The Death Eater pleaded. The closer Hadrian got to him, the more he could clearly see the terror in the man's eyes.
Normally, Hadrian would feel guilty at instelling such fear in a person, but this man was no person. He was a Death Eater, a follower of the Dark Lord Voldemort, a killer, a murderer, and at worst possibly even a rapist. He deserved no guilt from Hadrian, he deserved no sympathy.
"P-Please! I'll tell you everything I know!" The man continued to plead.
"What do you know, that I already don't?" Hadrian asked, as he continued to walk forward.
The man began to list off many secrets from meetings with Voldemort and other high ranking members, but Hadrian knew most of this or didn't find the information useful.
Hadrian reached out and grabbed the man by his collar and pulled him up.
"S-Snape! I can tell you where Snape is!"
Hadrian froze.
"Where?" He asked.
"I-I overheard the Dark Lord tell him to head down to the greenhouses." The man stammered out.
"The greenhouses? Why?"
"I-I don't know, honest!"
Hadrian shot the man with a stunner and dropped him back to the ground. He had more important things to deal with.
Voldemort looked at the wand held in his hand. The most powerful wand in existence, a wand so powerful that anyone who wielded it had their magic increased by tenfold. The Elder Wand. This wand only belonged to the most powerful witches and wizards. Its two previous owners were signs of that. Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.
Dumbledore came into possession of the Elder Wand when he defeated Grindelwald in combat to end the Global Wizarding War. Voldemort came into possession of the wand, when Severus Snape handed it to him after killing Dumbledore at the end of June last year. However Voldemort felt disconnected from the wand. It felt awkward using it when compared to his regular phoenix feather wand. The reason for that was simple: he was not the wand's true master.
The only way one could become the master of the Elder Wand, was to defeat its previous owner. Voldemort did not kill Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape did. From what Bellatrix had told him, Snape had blasted Dumbledore with the killing curse off the Astronomy Tower. Oh, how Voldemort wished he could've been there, he wished he could have seen the look on Dumbledore's face as the killing curse rushed towards him. That would have been a patronus memory for sure.
Snape had given Voldemort the wand, but that didn't transfer ownership. The Elder Wand didn't work that way. The only way Voldemort was going to become master of the Elder Wand, was if he defeated its current one. Snape was a good and faithful servant. Voldemort considered him one of his most trusted and loyal members, but no one was indispensable. No one would stand in his way of becoming the most powerful of them all. He would rule over the magical world and lead them to their true purpose. They should be the ones ruling the world, not those muggles! Witches and wizards had the extraordinary honor of being blessed by Mother Magic herself and given the ability to use a fraction of her power. That alone proved they were meant for more, they should be the ones ruling the world, the muggles should be the ones hiding, not them.
And they would, once Voldemort established his rule over the magical world, the muggle world would follow quickly. But to do that, he needed the power of the Elder Wand. With its power no one could challenge him and any that did would meet the same fate as all the rest.
He had told Snape to meet him at the greenhouses, there he would explain his reasons before removing him from the equation. It would be an unfortunate loss, but a necessary one. This was war after all.
Yes… Everything was working out nicely.
Snape had been waiting by the greenhouses for around five minutes. He wondered why his lord had asked him to meet here. He had his suspicions, of course, and hoped it was just that his lord had a new secret task for him.
He sensed a powerful presence approaching and turned to face it. A figure was making its way towards him, this must surely be Voldemort. Who else could it be? As the figure came closer Snape was shocked to find that it wasn't Voldemort, it was a boy, no a man, that had been the reason he had been playing both sides in this war for so long. Hadrian Potter.
The son of the man he hated and the woman he loved.
Snape observed that Potter was wearing the outfit of the Lord of the House of Potter. He had seen James Potter wear it during many of the battles from the previous war. For just a second, Snape thought that James Potter was walking towards him, but he quickly recognized his mistake. It was a mistake he had been making for the past seven years he had known the Potter boy. Hadrian Potter had the same messy hair of his father, however unlike his father, whose hair was auburn, his hair was jet black much like his grandmother. His face looked like an exact replica of James Potter, the same face that had laughed at his expense and stared at him as if he was nothing but dirt under a shoe. But unlike James, his face held her eyes. Those same eyes that Snape wished he could look at forever, they shone like emeralds, and had a light in them that showed that the person behind them was someone who cared deeply for those around her. But this time, those eyes showed anger. They showed hatred, hatred for Snape and everything he stood for.
Snape wondered if she were still alive today would her eyes show the same thing?
Hadrian stopped when he was about a couple feet away from Snape. The two stared at each other for a while, in complete silence. A silence which spoke volumes.
"I've been waiting for this moment for almost seven years." Hadrian finally spoke.
"For the moment I could finally get back at you for everything you've done."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Potter, if you are referring to what I may have said or done during my tenure as your professor, then you truly are thin-skinned. Much like your father."
"I'm not talking about that!" Hadrian roared. His intensity slightly shocking Snape.
"I don't care about the bullying. I don't care about the times you've tried to sabotage my future, with your crappy and bias grading. I care about the fact you sold my parents to Voldemort!"
This time Snape couldn't hide his surprise and it showed on his face. "How do you know about that?!"
Hadrian smirked, "Dumbledore left me with memories about your discussions over the past few years. He probably thought I'd feel sympathy towards you. But instead, I felt my hate grow."
Hadrian gave Snape a cold, hard stare, the kind he reserved only for people like Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange.
"How could you!?" He yelled. "How could you sell out a man and his child?! For what? Because he bullied you in school? Because he married the girl you had a crush on? How pathetic and miserable do you have to be to still hold a grudge against a man from things that happened when you were teenagers? Not only that, but you pass that grudge onto his son, who did nothing to you!"
Snape merely continued to stare at Hadrian as he gave his tirade.
"And if that wasn't enough, you asked the psychopath you sent to kill them to spare the woman you loved, because you hoped you could win her back." Hadrian laughed. "Hahaha… Yeah, because she'd fall in love with the guy who got her husband and son killed."
"Be quiet." Snape snarled softly.
"You couldn't stand it. You couldn't stand the fact that she realized that you were nothing more than some sad little psycho. Someone who upon given the chance would join a group of murderers and rapists."
"Be quiet." Snape snarled again, this time audible enough that Hadrian could hear him.
"What did she say?" Hadrian asked. "When she found out you joined Voldemort, what did she say? Did she say anything or did she look at you with the same look that she used to give my father and his friends? A look as if you've come across something not worth your time, a look that said that you've never been more disappointed in your life."
"Be quiet!" Snape snarled louder.
"You hated the fact that she saw you for what you were. A sad, miserable, insignificant, little-"
"BE QUIET!" Snape yelled, shooting a cutting curse at Hadrian, who easily moved to the side and avoided the curse.
Hadrian smirked upon seeing Snape in this state.
"I should have been the one she ended up with!" Snape yelled, "I was the one she should have married!"
"But she didn't. She realized what you were and found the person who truly loved her, the one she loved."
Hadrian gripped his wand tightly, getting ready to fight.
"I said it before, and I'll say it again… The reason you hate me so much is that I'm a constant reminder that at the end of the day, Lily loved James Potter more than you."
Snape shot three curses in succession at Hadrian, yelling as he did it. Hadrian threw up a shield that absorbed all three of them.
Hadrian dashed at Snape, and threw a cutting curse of his own at him. He moved so fast that Snape didn't have enough time to create a shield and had to throw himself at the ground to avoid being hit.
Snape had to begrudgingly admit that Potter had indeed gotten stronger.
Hadrian sent a bone-breaking and blasting curse at Snape, who bashed them away, before sending a bone-breaker of his own. Hadrian caught the spell with his wand and sent it flying back to its caster. Snape's shield absorbed the spell, but cracks could be seen.
Hadrian continued to send spells and curses at Snape, many of them he had found while browsing through the Black family library. He even sent the more powerful version of the freezing charm that Daphne had created.
Eventually, Snape took advantage of a small break in his offensive barrage and started sending his own curses, causing Hadrian to take a defensive stance.
Snape was no mere Death Eater, he was one of Voldemort's most trusted and part of his inner circle. Hadrian knew the fight against him would be a tough one and was finding it to be that and a bit more. He hated the man, but Hadrian could admit that Snape could hold his own in a duel and was powerful in his own right.
Snape's spells were being absorbed by Hadrian's shield, but every spell caused more cracks to show. Hadrian was in a hard place, Snape had him on the defensive and wasn't letting up.
Hadrian was slowly getting nervous, his shield was breaking and he didn't have much time left. As the spells continued to bang against his shield he started to think about why he was fighting. He was fighting Snape to get revenge for his parents, he was fighting Snape to remove a powerful force from the upcoming duel with Voldemort.
'But more importantly,' Hadrian thought, 'I'm fighting to be with her.'
Hadrian's mind began to fill with the moments he cherished the most, and all of them were with her. The woman he loved more than anything in the world. He was fighting to have a future with her, and no one would take that from him.
An emerald green aura began to envelop him. Snape stopped his curses when he saw what was happening. He had seen with his own eyes what Potter was capable of when he entered this state. He had to stop this.
"Sectumsempra!"
Snape's personal curse sailed through the air and was aimed right at the heart of Hadrian, who had let down his shield once the curses had stopped.
Hadrian moved to the right and in the blink of an eye had moved closer to Snape, he was already getting ready to fire at Snape. Snape launched a huge blast of fire at the young wizard, Hadrian extended his wand and a large blast of emerald green began to shoot out. This wasn't any spell, this was his own magic, straight from his magical core. His magic cut threw the fire and hit its target.
Snape was sent flying into one of the greenhouses, crashing threw the glass walls and sending small pieces flying in the air.
Hadrian let the aura fade and walked over to Snape, the crunching sound of glass beneath his boots.
He stood before the beaten professor and saw his handy work. Snape was laying on the floor with a hole in his chest, bleeding profusely. Snape's wand was just out of reach from his right hand and he was struggling to grab it. Hadrian gave it a soft kick that sent it skidding across the floor.
Hadrian knelt beside Snape as the man groaned in pain.
"This is how your life was always going to end." Hadrian told him. "Whether it was Voldemort or me, this is what was going to happen to you the day you told him of the prophecy."
Snape tried to speak, but the pain was to much, when he opened his mouth to try blood began to leak out.
"Look at me." Hadrian told him, as he saw the professor's gaze begin to wonder. He grabbed the man's head with both his hands and forced him to look at him.
"I want the last thing you see to be these eyes." Hadrian said. "The eyes that belonged to the woman you loved, and also the one who killed you."
Tears began to leak from Snape's eyes before the life left them.
Hadrian stood up and summoned Snape's wand, which had rolled underneath a table, and pocketed it. He gave the body one last look and walked away. He had a war to win.
