Here we go.
If you notice parallels here, they're deliberate. Just as Chapters 16 and 30 were parallels to each other with the release of Harry's magic and his phoenix web, so this one parallels Chapter 23, where Harry spoke with Lily. The title literally means "dance of death" or "grotesque dance."
Ready?
Chapter Forty: Danse Macabre
Harry moved a step into the Shack. He saw the bed before him, the edge of a foot sticking out from beyond it, the marking of what could be a circle traced on the floor—
And then he felt powerful magic slam down in front of him and to the sides and behind, and the door slammed and sealed itself shut. Harry tensed. Quite apart from the strength of the magic, he didn't think that anyone else would be getting in behind him to help.
You are not alone, the voice in his head breathed, but it sounded distracted. All of this…it feels familiar…
Then Harry heard the clear, cold laughter he had been imagining while he held the letter, but it was a familiar voice that spoke the words, "Hold him. The dance is about to begin."
Harry felt the magic fall into place around him, gripping him as tightly as a full body-bind. Sick with rage, he watched Sirius step from beyond the bed, his eyes wide and quite mad, his smile bizarre. Harry's heart thumped and stuck in his throat, and the voice of his own thoughts whispered, It wasn't Peter. It never was.
Harry couldn't shake his head, he found when he tried to move, but he could still speak. "Why, Sirius?" he whispered. "I thought you were sane now, after the golden ornament managed to tame your thoughts."
Sirius clucked his tongue at him and lifted the ornament over his head. "Poor Potter," he said, voice almost familiar. The sound was Sirius's, but the intonations were someone else's, Harry knew. "Do you mean to tell me that you didn't figure it out? I was so sure you would." He tapped the golden ornament with his wand. "Finite Incantatem!"
The ornament shifted and shivered, and then an intricate illusion charm melted away from it. What was left was heavy and gold, and hung on the end of a chain, but was assuredly not the ruby-studded ball that Sirius had worn for months now. It was a locket instead, with a rusted clasp, marked with an ornate S that Harry recognized after a few moments of staring.
Slytherin's mark.
And now that the locket was free of what must have been powerful spells to disguise its magic as well as its shape, Harry could feel it. It was humming, all but snarling, shedding a cold aura. It felt…
It felt like the diary that Harry had held last year, the one that had contained a piece or memory of Voldemort.
Harry could feel himself stop breathing.
Sirius looked down fondly at the locket, shaking his head slightly. When he looked up, Harry could see Tom Riddle in his smile, though the intonations were not exactly the same as Tom Riddle's, and not the same as Harry had heard from Voldemort's mouth when he fought him as Quirrell, either. "This locket lay among the Black treasures for years. They never suspected what they had. And then your old godfather, in searching for weapons that he could use to train your precious brother, found it and picked it up." Sirius chuckled, a sound that, like his smile, was turned sideways from what it should have been. "And I was free. In his head, at least."
My nightmare, Harry thought. Something small destroying Sirius, and the pain I felt when it happened. Not a rat after all. That was the piece of Voldemort swallowing the last freedom of his mind.
He met Harry's eyes and smiled unpleasantly. "You'll have guessed that I'm part of Voldemort, of course, but no sixteen-year-old boy. I have forty years of his memories. And I'm far more experienced than Tom Riddle was, I think you'll find, and far more sane than my latest incarnation." A spasm of distaste crossed Sirius's borrowed face. "I shall have to make a special point of finding and killing him, when I've completed this ritual," he muttered.
And then we'll have two Voldemorts to face.
The thought terrified Harry as few other things could have. He began to struggle in earnest, his magic snapping and beating at the bindings. But they held him immobile, and Voldemort-in-Sirius didn't seem at all bothered by his fight. In fact, he cocked his head to the side, looking mildly puzzled, until he suddenly snapped his fingers.
"Oh, that's right," he said. "You didn't win the game. You didn't anticipate all my moves. You didn't guess about the locket, and you didn't guess what I was going to do once you got here. Well, really, Harry." More than anything he had done so far, Harry hated the chiding, playful tone his voice took on, as bad as the worse messages written on the parchment. "You should have. I was kind enough to tell you."
He looked at something on the other side of the bed. "Kreacher!"
A house elf came into view. Harry felt his face twist in disgust. The creature was beyond shabby, with knotted hair hanging down around its face and an expression full of fawning adoration as it looked up at Voldemort.
"Master Black is wanting something?" he asked. "The Master Black who became a true heir of the mistress is wanting something?"
"Move this boy into place in the circle," Voldemort instructed, striding around the bed. He leaned heavily to the left, Harry noticed, and hoped that that indicated a weakness he could exploit. Merlin knew he needed something. "The one I indicated to you earlier, mind, and not an inch to right or left."
"Master Black is being very good to Kreacher, letting him participate in important rituals," said the house elf, bowing from the waist and seizing Harry's arm with nails so long they drew blood. "Kreacher will not let Master Black down!"
He dragged Harry around the bed, and Harry could see the room fully now. There was a circle scratched on the floor, drawn in some thick liquid that did not look like either blood or ink to Harry. Kreacher positioned him carefully, still hopelessly bound, on the near side of the circle, with his heels treading on the dangling cover of the bed.
On the other side lay Connor. He was awake, his face ashen and his horrified eyes fixed on Sirius. They flicked to Harry for a moment, and Harry could see the terror in them briefly dim to shock. Then it turned to despair, and Connor turned his head away, tears trickling down his face.
Harry felt part of him ache with pity. It was only part, though; the rest of him was taking note of the fact that Connor could move, and thinking that it might be important.
I'm here, too, the voice in his head reminded him.
Can you do anything? Harry asked, watching as his godfather's body stooped down and gathered several small objects together into a heap. There was a knife, and a Pensieve, and a draped object that Voldemort treated more carefully than all the rest.
I don't know, said the voice unhappily. I can't see into his mind—most of it. But there's a part I can read, and its thoughts make no sense. They're twisting and plotting to stop him. That doesn't make sense, does it? The voice sounded as though it were appealing to Harry.
Harry swallowed. What he was about to think sounded mad and desperate, but if there was the slightest chance… Sirius? Could that part be Sirius?
The voice gave a squeal of the kind that it had when they were traveling through time. Yes! Yes, it is! Thank you, Harry! It's him! There's part of him still alive and sane in there! The voice turned puzzled. But then, I don't understand why he's not attacking. Why is he just waiting?
I don't think Voldemort knows he's there, or he wouldn't have let him remain, Harry decided. He's waiting for the best moment.
Part of him hoped that was it, and that Sirius wouldn't turn into a coward unable to face what he had done again. But since all he could do was wait, he decided he might as well wait and hope.
"You've given me a lot of trouble, you know," Voldemort went on conversationally, turning around and carefully setting the draped object in front of him. "I couldn't decide how best to take revenge on you, even when I knew that I was getting a body back, thanks to your dear godfather. I pumped your brother's ears full of poison, nonsense about Slytherins being evil and compulsion being good." Harry saw Connor flinch as if someone had driven needles into him. Voldemort didn't seem to notice, but his smile did turn a touch crueler, so perhaps he had. "But, of course, you gave me the best idea yourself, or your godfather did, thinking about what you'd done. So I decided to wait until the second prophecy was about to come true, and seize the chance to take revenge on you, turn the prophecy into what I wanted it to mean, and change your perceptions of those who have helped you all at once."
He waited to be sure he had Harry's absolute attention—as if he had a choice about facing forward with his head clasped by the magic, Harry thought—and then drew the cloth dramatically off the small object.
It was a dark container, made of what Harry thought was yew wood, the wood of death and resurrection. Despite the lack of rowan wood, he had no trouble recognizing it as a reparations box.
"But—you can't," he said, the first words to tumble through his thoughts. "The justice ritual can only be used on someone who's really wronged you."
Voldemort gave him a deep, jagged smile. "Oh, I think you have wronged me, Harry. But since when have you known me to use neutral or wholesome magic? I am going to use the magic of the ritual. It's that which holds you even now, and will prevent any human from entering this place. But I will twist it, and insure that it does what I want it to do." He stroked the yew box. "This will open to me again, unlike a rowan box, when I have completed the ritual and taken your magic, so that I might absorb your power. It's mine in the first place."
He smiled directly into Harry's eyes. "Always remember, you were the one who gave me this idea, with what you did to your mother." Harry saw Connor jump and flinch out of the corner of his eye again.
Harry rose above the panic, the terror, the guilt, and stared calmly at Voldemort. "I did the right thing," he said. "You're perverting the justice ritual to your own ends."
Voldemort only laughed, as if not at all fazed by his failure to intimidate Harry, and turned to Kreacher, who had retreated off to the side, to stand with his head bowed. "Kreacher!"
"Master Black?" Kreacher looked up, eyes adoring.
"Bring me the knife."
Kreacher hurried to scoop up the blade and bring it Voldemort's hand. This close, Harry could make out that the hilt was ebony, the blade some dull metal he did not think was either silver or steel. A silver serpent was etched on the hilt, just above the words Toujours pur.
"The Blacks understand family," said Voldemort softly, turning the knife over and over. "They always did, until this last generation, when both their sons turned traitor, in different ways."
The voice in the back of Harry's head made what sounded like an incoherent noise of protest.
"And they made magical items that could certainly affect family," said Voldemort. "Polaris!"
The knife trembled and came alive, twitching, in Voldemort's hand, which was Sirius's hand. Harry stared. He knew now what the knife must be—a blade like the one Lucius had sent him, capable of severing ties of love and loyalty and magic between family members.
Voldemort began to walk towards Connor.
"No," said Harry. He spoke calmly enough, but he could feel the bubble of rage building up inside of him, and wasn't surprised when his magic went mad.
The invisible force flung Kreacher to the far side of the room, wringing a snarl out of him as he hit the wall. Sirius turned as if to face a strong wind, one that made him list more to the left than ever. He put one hand over his face and clucked his tongue at Harry, laughing mockingly.
"If you could have stopped this, then you would have done so the first time you called your magic," he said. He raised his head and began to chant. "What you have done to me cannot be forgiven. I have no wish to face you in a duel, nor to arrange legal means of settling the insult."
Harry felt his own magic settle, stilled, under the weight of the far greater power that the justice ritual called forth. Shadows flickered madly in the room, above the outline of the circle. Voldemort watched them with a smile for a moment, then put out one hand. It was Sirius's broom-callused palm that was offered to the air, but Harry could not think of it as his hand again. He doubted that he would ever be able to, even if he somehow managed to separate Sirius and Voldemort out from each other's minds. Voldemort had been possessing Sirius for months, and no one had noticed.
That must be driving Connor mad, Harry thought dimly.
"I demand this of the old powers," Voldemort said, "for my will is strong, and my desire for justice firm." He took two steps towards Connor and moved Polaris in a broad sweep. A shimmering line of connection sprang into being between Harry and Connor, a cord that manifested as a red glow. "With the power that comes from the connection between the one who has wronged me and his brother, I draw the magic, and I draw the will. Corrumpo castimoniam!"
He brought the knife down.
Harry screamed as he felt a binding he hadn't known was there strain and leak and begin to break. Connor screamed in the same moment, a noise like the verbal equivalent of internal bleeding, and flung an arm over his face, or so Harry thought in the moment before his head bent back and he felt magic wash from him.
He could hear Voldemort repeating, every few moments, his voice as steady as rainfall, "Corrumpo castimoniam! Corrumpo castimoniam!"
Harry's mind translated the incantation, whether or not he wanted it to. I corrupt the purity.
Harry felt magic twist and writhe, buck and scream. The magic of the justice ritual was abruptly trying to flee, as though the ritual had sensed the danger it was in of being used wrongly.
Harry wrenched his eyes open, and could see dark red light trailing from the connection between him and Connor, attacking the shadows that danced above the circle. The circle itself came to life in the same instant, striking out with pale gray tendrils that reminded Harry uncomfortably of the silver fire on Walpurgis Night. Voldemort flung his own magic behind that, holding Slytherin's locket above his head and chanting the spell over and over again.
Harry's stolen magic, Connor's stolen magic, Voldemort's own Dark power—it was all too much for the ritual. Harry felt the nature of it overthrown, felt the very atmosphere in the room change. Now, the shadows that crouched and sidled nearer him looked dark, not as if they would burst into red-gold light the way that the shadows of his own justice ritual had. The circle was blazing. The hold that settled on Harry's body was not simply firm, preventing him from moving until justice had been done, but actively cruel, pinching his skin like chains.
Harry was reeling. He could feel hot tears slipping down his cheeks, and though Merlin knew he had plenty to cry about, he realized he was mourning the loss of the dance's purity. Voldemort could not change the nature of the justice ritual for anyone else, or permanently, but within this shack, something old and beautiful had died. Voldemort had perverted its intent and brought it back to life as a shambling corpse, ready to snatch the price he asked from an innocent. It was wrong. It was obscene.
Harry met Connor's eyes. He knew his brother was shocked and hurt and terrified beyond measure—
No, he didn't. He could guess it from his expression, but he didn't know it any more, the way he had always done with no more than a glance. That was the tie that Voldemort had cut, a connection to his twin that Harry hadn't even known was there.
This time, the bubble of anger didn't give him any warning that it was coming. Instead, Harry flung back his head, tossing off the weight that crowned it, and screamed, unleashing the full force of his magic for the first time since the storm last year.
The shack shuddered. The walls raced into ice in a moment, and Kreacher became a frozen statue between one step and the next. Harry felt the ritual clamp down on him, but he didn't care. He wanted nothing so much as he wanted to kill Voldemort in that moment, and as Sirius's body staggered and leaned to the left, it seemed his wish would be granted.
But Voldemort recovered in a moment, and made a negligent gesture. Harry's magic calmed, his ice turning into water. Kreacher shivered as the ice on his body cracked open like a nutshell, and gave Harry a baleful look. Voldemort chuckled through Sirius's voice, the laughter colder than it had been.
"I am very glad to see that your magic is so strong, Harry," he said cheerfully. "It gives me pleasure to imagine what I shall do when that power is mine."
Harry stared at him through narrowed eyes. Briefly, he wondered where his fear had gone, and then decided that it didn't matter. He felt at his magic. It was bound, but it was stirring under the surface, and he knew there was one thing he could do that might work. Might was the operative word, of course. He couldn't know that it would, especially when the justice ritual, perverted and broken though it had been, would probably still prevent him from using any magic to escape, the way it had prevented Lily from doing so when Harry used it on her.
Voldemort laid Polaris down and picked up the Pensieve. He gazed into it for a moment, Sirius's eyes contemplative the way they had been whenever he had spoken of the past, then shook his head and set it aside. "No," he said, as though speaking to someone else. "I do not think the time is right for that, yet. And if there is one way in which I am smarter than both my newest self and my sixteen-year-old one, it is knowing when the time is right."
He turned and smiled at Harry. "There will be plenty of time to show you the truth when I have stripped you of your power," he said. "In the meantime, before we begin that stripping, do you have any questions?"
The ritual loosened its fierce hold on Harry's chin and cheeks, and he could talk. He worked his jaw for a moment, eyes never moving from Voldemort's, and then said, "I don't understand why you wanted me to know the second prophecy."
Voldemort shrugged. "So that you could lose further hope, of course. You do know that it says you'll kill your dear godfather?"
Harry nodded tightly. He heard Connor's sobs coming from the corner, but couldn't turn his attention from Voldemort to comfort his brother. He just didn't have time right now.
"I wanted you to brood on that," Voldemort said, and smiled widely. "Just as I wanted you to think that Peter was writing to you to break your hope. You cannot suffer enough for what you have done to me."
"What do you care?" Harry snarled, playing for time. He needed to gain as much strength as he could before he struck, and to gauge it. Under all the imprisoning layers of ritual, his magic was moving, but he knew if he simply unleashed it now, Connor would be hurt as well as Voldemort. "What I did was to your old self and Tom Riddle, not you."
"I would have become much more powerful the moment I manifested, if not for you," said Voldemort, losing his smile for the first time. "And I would never have had to go to the trouble of arranging this ritual." He shook his head. "You are going to have to pay for the inconvenience that you caused me."
He turned and snapped his fingers. "Kreacher!"
"Master Black," said the house elf, hastening forward.
"Help me disrobe," said Voldemort, and held out Sirius's arms.
Kreacher, bowing and fluttering, began to pull his clothes off. Voldemort looked back over his shoulder at Harry.
"Everything I wrote you in the letter was quite true," he said casually. "Sirius has been betraying you for months, whenever my old self's presence in his mind became too much for him. And then he picked me up, in the locket, and was foolish enough to put me on to see what he did. And that was the end. He'd managed to withstand or undermine my old self's attempts to hurt you; he chose to send that snake, for example, because he knew you were a Parselmouth and had a decent chance of stopping it. The spiders were mine, though I only meant their poison to weaken you. That was when I knew that I had complete control over this body and mind. Sirius was not able to object when I chose the spiders." He smiled.
"You were the one writing the letters to Lucius Malfoy," said Harry.
"Only the last one." Voldemort shrugged, and the robes came off his chest. "Sirius wrote the ones before, when the pressure of the curse, and Fenrir Greyback's and Walden Macnair's persuasions, became too much. Imagine, Harry. Your godfather might have been free of the curse long before I possessed him, only he was too proud to tell anyone."
Connor gave another sob. Harry suspected the barriers were falling in his mind, leaving him vulnerable to all sorts of truths.
Kreacher drew the robes almost completely off.
Harry gagged. There was a gray lump growing from Sirius's left side, pulsing gently in patterns of light and darkness. It looked like an egg, or at least mostly like an egg, since part of it was obviously still under Sirius's skin. It glistened with thick wetness, dark enough to look like blood, but obviously not it. Harry flicked a glance at the circle. He knew what it was made of, now.
"This will be ready in a moment." Voldemort stroked the egg's opaque side. "Your magic will enable me to hatch out a new body. Then I'll arrange for your godfather to die by your wand, and show you the truth, and depart." He looked at Harry with his head cocked on one side as Kreacher eased him down in the middle of the circle, his hands tender.
"Do you know what I will do first, Harry?" he breathed.
Harry stared stonily at him.
"What I gave Severus Snape was only a taste of what I will give him when we are done here." Voldemort's eyes glittered. "Not only is he a traitor, he dared to aid you. He will be flayed alive, inch by inch. There are spells that can do that. I will leave him no skin but that which bears my Dark Mark, and cast the Mark on every inch of his skinless flesh. The Mark will keep him alive, but it will also prevent any healing magic.
"Then I will go after those you are so fond of, the young Mudblood witch and the Malfoy boy. The Mudblood may have a fairly quick death, I think, with only a few broken limbs and mutilations first. After all, she did help you to learn the second prophecy, and indirectly to play my game.
"Draco Malfoy…" Voldemort's eyes were feral now. "He will stay alive, and come with me. I will send him back to his father, a piece at a time, over many years. The Prometheus Curse will do."
Harry shuddered in spite of himself. The Prometheus Curse renewed every part of a body the moment it was cut off, in the way that Prometheus's liver renewed itself every day after being eaten by an eagle. The thought of Draco, suffering, unable to die, nearly made Harry launch his best weapon right then. But he refrained, and asked, quietly, "What will you do with my brother?"
Voldemort glanced in Connor's direction. "Why, I have been training him these past three months," he said. "It would be a shame to let such a well-trained and natural compeller go to waste. Imperio should remove any obstinate moral fixations he has, and then I have a follower skilled in doing Dark magic."
Harry nodded, calmly. It was what he needed to hear. It gave him the final bit of anger he needed in order to act as he had to, and it held out a promise, a faint hope, that if he failed here, then the Boy-Who-Lived might yet keep close to Voldemort's side and one day fell him.
If he failed.
I am not going to fail.
Voldemort held up one hand. "Mors Mordre!" he said clearly.
A glowing green Dark Mark appeared above his head, casting sparks down into the center of the circle. The magic of the corrupted ritual tightened in anticipation, and Harry supposed Voldemort had spoken to it silently.
Voldemort faced him, that same faint smile on his face. "I will take a payment from you," he said, "a weregild for all you have done to me. One time, one shattering price for another shattering price, one apology made in terms that I have decided. We will make the exchange, and it will be done." His smile twisted at the edges. "Last time pays for all."
The magic of the ritual reached down, and Harry saw the immense hand form, a sickly dark gray this time, coasting towards his body to remove his magic.
He unleashed his ability to eat magic.
It chewed its way out from the inside, through the layers of ritual and Voldemort's binding spells, swallowing all the powerful magic that lay on top it. It consumed them, and Harry felt his body swell with the rush of power as it handed that magic to him instead. He concentrated. He wanted to break free of this spell, and stop Voldemort, blast away the gray lump emerging from his side.
Voldemort roared, a wordless sound of protest, and closed his eyes in concentration. The sickly gray hand drifted a little nearer.
Harry envisioned his power as a snake, and sent it crawling out in front of him, eating everything in its path, working its jaws wider and wider. The hold on his body abruptly eased, and he dropped to the floor. He felt the power around him surging wildly as the snake ate and ate, consumed and devoured, snapped and tore, and he grew steadily more and more powerful, feeling his eyes bulge in his head.
A small movement off to the side distracted him. Harry blinked as he saw a gray rat dart along the wall, rolling a slender stick in front of it with a paw. Peter, Harry knew, and he'd brought along his wand.
His snake began eating the gray lump in Sirius's side, and Harry gagged. He felt as though he were drowning in filth. For the first time, it occurred to him that siphoning off Dark magic might not be a good idea.
"No!" Voldemort cried, and chanted once again, "Corrumpo castimoniam!"
Harry felt the ritual begin fighting him. This was still mighty magic, stronger than he was even with all he had swallowed. The sickly gray hand formed anew, and reached out for him. Harry felt the chill brush of its fingers like the touch of flaying knives.
Then his snake turned and lunged at Connor's and Peter's magic, and Kreacher landed on his back with a spitting snarl.
Harry dropped to his knees, trying to wrestle the house elf off. It wasn't working. His magic snapped around him wildly, out of control. Harry tried to restrain it, to turn it away from eating Connor's power or Peter's. He might as well have tried to stop a waterfall. Strength pounded through him, useless as that waterfall to someone who only wanted a drink. He could neither halt nor master it.
Dirty fingers found and locked around his throat, and nails scored it. Harry tried to force power into his hands to tear them off, and nearly drained Connor of magic entirely, and nearly let the gray hand of the corrupted ritual through. He gasped, sobbed, and pulled back, trying to decide what he should do—risk killing Kreacher, risk draining his brother or Peter, risk being stripped of magic entirely and resurrecting Voldemort—
He's doing it!
Harry could hear the voice in his head, its clear, ringing tones cutting through all the other nonsense there, the desperate whirl of fears and plans. He forced his eyes up when the voice urged him, Look at Voldemort! Look, look, look!
Voldemort was clutching his head, which shook wildly. His eyes bulged, and he appeared to be wearing two different expressions at once.
Harry dragged his magic back from feeding on Connor again, and pushed Kreacher back from tearing his throat open again, and shouted, What's happening?
The voice replied at once. Sirius is charging! Sirius is fighting! This is what he was waiting for, what he was harboring all his strength for! I can see him, like a great black dog springing on a wolf! He's wrestling him, he's drowning him, he's taking his mind back—
Voldemort's groping hand abruptly hit Sirius's wand, and Harry thought he would lift it and strike at himself. Then his fingers spasmed, and he knocked it away. Harry supposed one of his selves didn't want to risk the other using it.
And Harry knew Voldemort would win in the end. There was the locket around his neck, and Voldemort was a skilled Legilimens. It could only end one way.
Yes, it could.
Understanding of the prophecy flooded into Harry's head, and he felt calmer than he had in a long time, even as his magic bucked wildly against its reins, growing stronger with every second that passed, as he swallowed more and more of it, and that in turn fed his ability to swallow more and more. He whistled sharply, and that caught the snake's attention. Harry pointed out, helpfully, how powerful the magic in the locket around Voldemort's neck must be.
His magic lunged forward and grabbed the locket—and yes, it was familiar, the same kind of power that it had swallowed when it destroyed the diary. It tore it open, snacking, feasting, glutting itself. Harry heard Voldemort scream.
And then Sirius's eyes were looking at him, and they were his godfather's, flashing gray and apologetic for a moment.
Harry used a bit of his magic to send Kreacher flying entirely free, and then shouted, "Peter! Roll the wand to me!"
He could feel the wand when it settled against his hand. There was no doubt that Peter had brought it for him, had intended for him to use it against Voldemort, and Harry was a bit sorry to disappoint him.
He tossed it underhanded to Sirius.
He heard Peter's squeak and Connor's wail, but they didn't understand. Neither of them understood. Neither of them had been battle-trained in the way Harry had, and neither of them understood the prophecy as he did in that instant, watching Sirius catch Peter's wand and stand.
Already, his face was flickering, showing signs of Voldemort returning. But, as it turned out, he did have time to say six words.
"Goodbye, Harry." He smiled slightly, and his eyes turned to the side. "Goodbye, Connor." His gaze faced forward again, fixing on the wand he held. Harry saw the bright Gryffindor courage there, the bravery in the face of death that the other Houses considered them mad for.
"Avada Kedavra."
And as the green light struck, killing Sirius, killing Voldemort with him, as Sirius died by the wand of the sacrifice, Harry brought his magic down in a Reducto that broke Voldemort's yew reparations box to pieces.
The justice ritual twisted a final time, and smashed free. Mightier magic than Harry's shoved his own magic back into his body, burned the circle away, tore the gray egg emerging from Sirius's side to shreds, ate the Dark Mark, and vented itself on Kreacher's body until the house elf was a series of small and bloody pieces, destroying everything that had been used to confine it and perpetrate injustice. Harry's snake had to vomit up most of the power it had swallowed. And Harry found that he could control what was left, so long as he thought, in utter determination, about not hurting anyone.
The dance broke apart, Voldemort's spell of corruption ceasing, and the shack shuddered a final time as the ritual fled. Sirius's body shook, too, a faint tendril of red-gold light caressing it. Harry nodded as the light flickered out. The ritual was simply making sure there was no more justice to be done, but there was not.
Last time pays for all, Harry thought.
Then the light was gone, and they were left—Peter crouching as a rat in the corner, Connor sobbing near the remains of the circle, and Harry kneeling on the floor with his throat bleeding—in utter silence.