Chapter 2
G1 - The Final Battle
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The Final Battle
By George Michaelson
Harry ducked behind a parapet narrowly dodging an errant spell from below. The purplish beam continued past him to the stone castle wall, sending a handful of stones outward in a miniature explosion. "Inflamare!" he cast back, incinerating the ground beneath two death eaters feet. It was a desperate battle - students, teachers, and the occasional auror versus the bulk of the Death Eaters forces; Harry had always imagined Hogwarts to be the locus of the fight against Voldemort, but he never imagined it to this extent!
"The Dementors are coming!" Ron bellowed out from the watch tower, somehow managing to be heard over the din of battle.
"Patronuses!" Harry called out, eyes narrowing hawk-like at the wreath of blackness closing upon the castle. It was hard to pick out individual dementors from the swarm at this distance, and it looked more like an amorphous blob of black satin fabric; Harry knew, though, that they wouldn't take more than a handful of seconds to close the distance to the school.
"Expecto Patronum!" several members of Dumbledore's Army shouted, producing an odd gamut of ghostly white forms. Harry's skin prickled with goosebumps as the air suddenly chilled around the castle, watching as the dementors swooped down upon the castle, trying to take the defenders by surprise while they focused on the wizards and creatures attacking them along the ground level.
"NOW!" Harry called out loudly. Just as the dementors were about to reach the upper ramparts in what looked like one long slip of tattered black robe, the patronuses charged. The dementors shrieked from the counterattack, several of which were caught by the patronus and were destroyed, leaving a fine cloud of black dust in their wake. More importantly, the defenders upon the ramparts were still free from the grief and sorrow the dementors wished to sew among their ranks.
"Harry Potter!" came a loud bellow from below, and Harry squinted to see who was calling him out.
There he was. Voldemort.
"End this, Harry Potter. Face me, once and for all. Or are you waiting until I kill every living thing in this castle?"
Harry steeled himself and nodded.
"No, Harry," Jordan said. "That's nuts. We're going to win this, you don't need to go down there!"
Dean nodded. "He's right, Harry - we're winning. Ten more minutes and he won't have any forces left at all."
"No, you two, I do," Harry replied back, a trace of a smile on his face. "Trust me."
It was almost surreal; the dozen giants, host of dementors, ranks of infereri, and handful of death eaters retreated away as Harry walked down the castle stairs; by the time he reached the grounds, only Voldemort was within spell's distance.
The duel was mesmerizing; spell after spell was cast and countered, created and dodged. But finally, in the end, Harry managed to hit Voldemort with Expelliarmus, catching the only other wand with Fawkes' feather inside in his other hand. One final spell, and Voldemort collapsed on the ground, finally defeated.
Harry turned around, ignoring the pain in his left leg where Voldemort had managed to hit him with a crucio spell. He looked up at the castle rampart and saw countless pairs of eyes staring at him - but only one of them mattered.
He rushed up the stairs back to where he'd been standing the bulk of the battle. "Ginny," he asked softly, "Are you alright?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Ginny, about that deal we made... to back away from each other in case Voldemort tried to hurt anyone close to me..."
Ginny, however, preempted him and gave him a deep passionate kiss. "Your bedroom or mine?" she whispered afterwards with a grin.
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George looked up as Teresa gave a giant upset cough at reading the last bit of her husband's story. Shaking his head, he went back to reading hers, which was a much slower (and in his opinion, stuffy) read.
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