Posting tonight because I finished the chapter unexpectedly. That does mean there won't be another chapter so soon; Chapter 43 will come on my Wednesday, and some other people's Thursday.
Hope you like nasty surprises!
Because things are not quite over yet.
Chapter Forty-Two: Stand or FallHarry froze as he reached the end of the tunnel under the Whomping Willow. He heard Connor make an inquiring noise behind him, but he didn't move, instead staring forward and reaching out as much as he could with his dulled senses. They throbbed with magical exhaustion, and he couldn't be sure that what he felt was really there.
"What is it, Harry?" Peter asked from behind Connor.
Harry shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he whispered.
I do, said the voice in his head, abruptly returning from wherever it had been. Bad things.
How do you know? Harry thought back, continuing to strain his senses. He still heard nothing, but enemies didn't have to make noise to be dangerous. That was one of the first things his mother had taught him.
I know pain, said the voice simply. And there's pain waiting for us outside this tree. It took on a whining tone. There's always pain. Why is there always pain? I don't like it. I can't escape it. And you can't escape it. Why can't it just go away?
Harry sighed and banished the voice to the back of his head, seeing he would get no help from it. He went on listening, since he could see nothing but the usual calm evening in front of him, and hear nothing but the whisper of wind in the grass, and smell or taste or feel nothing out of the ordinary.
"Fuck," said Peter abruptly.
Harry turned to look back at him. "What is it?" He would trust Peter's senses more than his own right now, and Peter was a better wizard than Connor, and trained in recognizing Dark magic besides.
"The air," Peter whispered. "Doesn't it feel heavy to you?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't know." He had to lean against the side of the tunnel just to keep on his feet. He hoped neither Connor nor Peter could see that, since they would probably insist on him going to sleep the moment they saw it, perhaps even carrying him back to the school. Harry didn't think it a wise decision. If there was evil here, then he had to be ready to meet it.
Peter smiled, but the smile was strained. "I've only felt it this heavy once before," he said, still in a whisper. "When I went into Godric's Hollow behind V-Voldemort. There's a prophecy getting ready to come true, Harry. Damn it."
Harry closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Now that he concentrated, he thought he could feel it, a weight in the air that slid down his face like melted marmalade. He shuddered and opened his eyes again.
"Well," he said, his voice hoarse with what he hoped they would think was anger and not weariness, "we still have to leave this tree. You said that the Aurors aren't going to give you time to explain, Peter, and running into Dumbledore would be even worse." He shuddered to think of what Dumbledore would say about the knowledge he and Connor now possessed.
"Yes, we've got to leave," Connor agreed. "Harry needs to get to the hospital wing."
Harry looked at him sharply. His brother gave him an irritated glance back. "What?" he asked. "Anyone can see that you need to rest, Harry. You're not doing a good job of hiding it."
Harry shuffled from foot to foot, muttered in his throat, and looked to the entrance. Still nothing moved beyond it, and Harry heard no voices, raised in either laughter or threat. He thought they should be able to get back to Hogwarts relatively unobserved; most people would be at dinner, and he hoped that Snape would still be stunned by whatever pain the voice in his head had shared with him.
He tried to think about the second half of the prophecy, but the words warped and blurred and slid away from him. All Harry really wanted was to go put his head down on something soft and close his eyes.
He took a deep breath "Let's go, then," he said, and stepped out of the way, so that Connor could duck past him and press the knot in the Willow's trunk to calm it. Peter took Harry's arm and helped him up the slight slope out. Harry accepted the hold, grudgingly, since it was obvious that Peter wouldn't let him simply walk out on his own.
And, damn it, he was tired, even though he couldn't afford to be. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and told himself it would be better when he reached Hogwarts and had some healing potions.
And then the late sun darkened, and the air turned cold, and Dementors were everywhere, turning the world gray.
Peter let out a faint scream, overwhelmed by the presence of so many of them, and crumpled to the ground. Harry shouted, but it was a faint and strangled sound. Connor didn't cry out at all, though his eyes grew wider and wider in his increasingly pale face.
A dark figure floated towards Peter, drawing its hood back from its face. Harry saw the yawning, distended mouth, and knew the thing was about to try and suck Peter's soul out in the Kiss.
"No, damn it!" he managed. "Where is your leader? The gray one?" He let his magic flare around him, calling the Dementors' attention. "I spoke with him once before. He released my magic. I want to know where he is!"
Here, vates.
Harry shivered as he felt the voice drill into his head, like ice spikes through his ears. It hurt less this time than it had, though. He wondered why.
I am keeping it out, said the voice in the back of his head. This is my territory. I don't want to share it with any more pain, thank you.
Harry blinked and nodded shortly, then forced himself to his feet as the Dementors parted like a thunderhead and let the gray one glide down an aisle in the middle of them. Harry felt its freezing not-gaze, and flinched. His thoughts and eyes were still trying to slide sideways. He could sleep later, he told himself. He didn't have time to be exhausted right now.
It didn't seem to be working. As far as his body was concerned, the plea that Harry had used to such good effect when he was dashing out of Hogwarts and rescuing Connor was so much air. He had done his part, rescued Connor and defeated Voldemort and seen the truth and resolved to struggle in the future. Now he needed to rest.
Not yet, Harry thought, and used some of the stolen magic that he had gotten from Voldemort to stiffen his legs and spine. He grimaced. It felt as though raw shit was pouring through his veins when he did that, but it did was supposed to do, and kept him upright as the gray Dementor floated to a halt in front of him. The one hovering above Peter hadn't moved, but Harry was grateful to see that it hadn't stooped and sucked out Peter's soul, either.
You are among us again, vates. The gray Dementor's voice was thick in his head, like condensation, like fog—or maybe it was just that combining with his tiredness. And your magic is free, and so are your thoughts. You have learned of your duties and the path of choice. Will you choose to free us?
Harry blinked. That did not sound like such a horrible price. Why had the Dementors come up as if they were attacking, then?
Probably because they wanted Peter, he thought, his gaze sliding sideways to the motionless wizard. And the black ones don't seem to be as smart as their leader.
He looked back at the gray Dementor. "You're bound like all the other magical creatures, aren't you?" he asked.
The gray Dementor inclined its head. We want to be free, vates.
And then, just as Harry supposed Dementors could pour despair into the victims of Azkaban, the gray leader poured longing into him. Harry could feel the clinging chains of the web that the Dementors labored under, how they longed to rest and reproduce and feed and live as normal magical creatures would, but how they could not do that until the chain was removed.
They enslave us, the gray Dementor said, its voice causing a faint rime of ice to form on Harry's face. We cannot breed, vates. There will never be more of us until the chains are removed. There have not been more of us in centuries. And we cannot eat, not truly eat, and we cannot sleep. We cannot dream. Can you imagine what it would be like, never to dream, vates?
Harry's first thought was, It would be heaven, and he found himself wanting to giggle as if he were drunk. But he restrained himself. Just because his dreams were usually nightmares induced by Voldemort didn't mean that the dreams of all creatures were like that.
And he could certainly understand the plea for rest right now. And to be free of a certain weary, bothersome, burdensome duty that hounded him, or rested on his shoulders. The Dementors, all of them, had been chained to Azkaban for centuries, guarding human prisoners. It was no existence for magical creatures.
That was horrible, what the wizards did to you, he thought dimly, but the gray Dementor picked up on it and inclined its head.
We have helped you, vates. We freed you under the hope that someday we would be free ourselves. And now that time has come.
Harry considered that, as clearly as he could in his current state. It seemed reasonable to him. Why not? The Dementors had freed him, and certainly they deserved to be free. And they seemed to be as good a candidate for the fulfillment of the prophecy as any other. The gray one was before him. He had even thought the line in the prophecy might mean the gray Dementor when he was traveling through time with Hermione. And what was the line about his decision this evening setting the path for them all? That must mean that his first action as vates, to free the Dementors, would mean setting the precedent to free other creatures from their magical nets. Harry remembered how wonderful he had felt when freed from the phoenix web. Surely it could not be a bad thing, for others to feel that surge of joy and completion.
Can you show me the web? he asked the gray Dementor, not without embarrassment. I'm not feeling as well as I should be right now, and I'm afraid that I can't see it on my own.
The Dementor gestured once, and a glowing ice-blue web sprang into being, writhing among the Dementors and trailing away into the distance. Harry studied it for a moment. There are other Dementors still at Azkaban?
The gray head inclined.
Harry blinked. Well, he thought it would be hard, but not too hard. The web was large, yes, and ancient, but also clumsily stitched. The wizards who wove it had done nothing more than cast the ice-blue coils of the incantation around each Dementor's core, the thrumming black thing at the center of all of them. It was impossible for the Dementors to remove, of course, without tearing themselves apart, and most wizards wouldn't have the power or inclination to touch it, but it required only raw strength to shred the web itself, and leave everything that was not it untouched.
Harry started to reach out, concentrating on marshaling the stolen power, even the filthy Dark magic. He could find a good use for it.
Then he paused. There was something he was forgetting. What was it?
The prophecy? No, as much as he could understand the prophecy, Harry was sure he understood it.
Peter? No, the black Dementors had not touched him, and though Connor looked on the edge of fainting, they had not touched him, either. They were waiting patiently for their freedom, eyeless not-gazes fixed on him.
A part of his task as vates?
Yes.
Harry abruptly shuddered and lowered his hand and his magic. He swallowed thickly a few times, trying to push the horrified insight in his brain into words. He felt the gray Dementor's cold curiosity, and the voice in the back of his head whispered, Are you sure you should be doing this, when they're right there?
Shock had cleared Harry's head for a moment, though, and he knew this was the right thing to do.
He looked up and studied the gray Dementor. "You said," he managed, and paused. Merlin, I want to go to bed. He told himself to stop whining like a child and act like a vates. "You said that if you were free, you would dream and reproduce and feed. What did you mean, feed? Who are you going to eat?"
The Dementors went motionless. Harry knew they really couldn't have, since after all their robes were still drifting in the wind, and some of them were shifting around near the back of their crowd, but he felt as if it had happened, anyway. His heart knocked against his ribs, and adrenaline rose to chase away the blurriness. He stood a little straighter.
Connor whispered, "If they were free, wouldn't they just Kiss everyone, not only the Azkaban prisoners?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out," Harry whispered back. "Hush."
The gray Dementor waited long moments before it spoke. Harry wondered if that was because it had to consider its words so carefully, or whether it had hoped to use the pause to impress him or wear him down. If the latter was the intention, it didn't work. Harry only felt more and more tense as the moments passed. He could feel his head lifting, his nostrils flaring, his eyes narrowing. He was trained for battle, and he knew there might be another battle coming.
His childish side tried to wail a protest at that. Harry squashed it without much effort. He had known when he trained that there might come days with more than one battle—in fact, a running skirmish would be more usual than one enormous battle in a day, and no more. He had to keep moving, had to call up energy multiple times, had to be ready to face whatever appeared.
The gray Dementor said, We would feed as we always have, on happy memories and sometimes souls. The Kiss is necessary for us to breed.
"But you would feed on whoever you wanted?" Harry asked. "Not only criminals condemned to Azkaban?"
We would no longer be bound by wizarding notions of morality.
"So you would feed on whoever you wished?"
We would confine our hunting mostly to the Muggle world. They cannot see us. They would not hunt us. They would not know what killed them. We would be willing to leave your family and friends alone, vates.
Harry closed his eyes. Yes, this was the part of the vates name that he almost forgotten. He was responsible for his decisions, all of them, both the good and the bad ones. If he made one, then he had to know why he had made it, how it would affect his future decisions—and what consequences it would mean for others.
"How can I let you go free, when you will destroy others and leave soulless bodies behind you?" he whispered.
Think of it as justice, vates, the gray Dementor suggested. Your kind has held us prisoner for centuries. We will only be visiting on them the same terror and frustration they have visited on us.
"That's vengeance, not justice," Harry said.
The Dementors stirred around him like a trembling candle flame. The gray Dementor said, And is it justice to leave us confined in the web? A true vates cannot abide compulsion, neither for himself nor for anyone else. If you are not a true vates, perhaps we have made a mistake, and we then owe you nothing, neither obedience nor safety.
"You wouldn't owe me obedience anyway," Harry muttered, but he was thinking hard. Was there some way that he could free the Dementors and insure that they didn't feed on anyone else? He could see why those ancient wizards had taken the compromise of binding the Dementors to Azkaban. Those they fed on were already considered guilty, not worthy of protection from the Dementors, unlike the innocents outside the prison.
I cannot destroy them. That would be against their will. I cannot Transfigure them into something that does not need to feed on souls or memories. That would be immoral, when they are intelligent and know the world around them.
Harry clenched his fists, spitted for the first time by one of the thorns on his path, and hating it.
And I cannot leave them bound.
And, just to add to everything, the prophecy said that his first decision as vates would set the path for them all. And he was so tired that he could barely think straight, and growing in the back of his mind was the increasingly urgent need to get Connor and Peter away from the Dementors.
No pressure, of course.
Harry swallowed. Well, when in doubt, turn to the source. Perhaps the Dementors themselves could give him some idea of what they might do, what bargains they would be wiling to enter, so that freeing them would not linger so heavily on his conscience. Their offer to hunt in the Muggle world and spare his friends and family was unacceptable.
He lifted his head and stared at the gray Dementor. "I cannot free you without others suffering," he said. "Can you think of any way that you could be free and not cause others suffering?"
The gray Dementor did not speak for long moments, but eddied from side to side. Harry watched, and held his breath, and waited.
Then the gray Dementor said, Is this something that you will ask of all the bound magical creatures, vates?
"Probably not," said Harry. "Some of the bound creatures, like the unicorns, probably won't cause others to hurt when they're free. But the others—" He shrugged. "Yes."
It is a restriction of our free will.
"It is not," Harry pointed out. "I asked you what you're willing to do. If you enter into a bargain like this because you say you want to, then that's not a restriction of anything. You'll have chosen."
Even choice is a restriction.
Harry folded his arms. "You're not the whole of the wizarding world," he said, surprised for a moment by the irritation in his tone. Then he remembered that he had sounded this way as a six-year-old when he'd stayed up too late. The recollection almost made him smile, but the gray Dementor was there, and Harry was not sure how it would interpret the gesture. He kept his face blank. "You're not more important than anyone else. You're just as important as the wizards, and the house elves, and the unicorns, and not more important." He shook his head slightly when he realized he'd repeated that sentiment twice. Fatigue was affecting his eloquence. "I can't free you if it would hurt everyone else."
The gray Dementor was silent for long moments. Then it said, We came from nightmares, long ago, from the dark shadows that lurk at the edge of human souls. It is why we can feed on happy memories, and on souls themselves. We were called out, and lived in the daylit world, and did not want to return to nightmares. But, if need be, we could go back. We could live in that half-world, that dream-world, taking our food from human minds just like any other breed of nightmares.
Harry frowned uneasily. "That would mean you were still hurting people, wouldn't it?"
And would you stop every bad dream in the world, vates? For the first time, the gray Dementor sounded amused with him.
"If I could. Yes."
There as silence, and then the gray Dementor said, in tones of wonder, Yes, I do believe you would. It went on before Harry could spend much of his time being surprised about a Dementor experiencing wonder. You could consider yourself setting right the balance of nature and magic in sending us back. We were called into the open by a wizard who wished to use us against his enemies, and we adapted to the night. I am the only one still of the twilight, the only one who still remembers that we came from the dream-world. Yes, vates, send us back. Send us home.
"Do I have your word that you'll go to the dream-world and nowhere else if I release your web, then?" Harry demanded.
You have my word, and the others answer to me, vates.
Harry let his breath out in a deep wash. "Very well," he said, and then reached out and broke the ice-blue web with a twist of his power.
It was actually a good thing that he was so tired, or he might not have done it the right way. The web was too thick to be cut, too sticky to be freed one Dementor at a time. Harry just grabbed it and yanked it away from the gray Dementor, flushing out his tainted, stolen magic in a flood over it, and the web dissolved and rotted away. It was gone from every other Dementor in sight the moment it was gone from the gray one.
Harry was aware of the Dementors' oppressive aura increasing. There was no longer any barrier between him and the fear. But he stood straight under it, and looked at the gray one.
He had kept his part of the promise. It was up to them to keep theirs.
The gray Dementor held its arms wide and began to whirl. The others were swept towards it like leaves in a windstorm. The gray Dementor spun them all into a rotting, dark web of its own, and then into a funnel cloud with itself at the bottom. Harry saw it rise, soaring straight up the middle of the funnel. Ahead of it, the sky ripped open, but Harry saw no twilight-marked clouds or stars. Instead, he was staring at a sky the color of rotting muscle, a sky that it seemed he had seen in some of his nightmares.
Goodbye, vates.
The sky closed with a thunderclap behind them, and Harry and Connor stood alone on the grass, beside a just-barely-stirring Peter.
Peter sat up and stared at Harry.
"I don't think they'll be bothering you any more, at least," Harry muttered, swaying on his feet. He blinked, then added, "And I think you should go, before someone sees you with us and Dumbledore calls the Aurors."
Peter did not move for long moments, despite his earlier urgency. His eyes scanned Harry intently for a moment, and then he nodded, his teeth flashing briefly in a fierce, feral grin.
"The next few years should be interesting," he muttered, as he stood.
Harry gave him what he knew was a faint smile. He hoped Peter would understand that the faintness came from his weariness, and not his lack of sincere emotion. "Goodbye, Peter. I hope that you have a safe journey. Write to me to let me know you're safe."
Peter nodded once. "I am sure I will, Harry. I do not want to lose contact with you. You have done so much for me."
Tired or no, Harry couldn't let that one pass. "You did a lot for me, too," he protested.
"Not as much, I think." Peter only shook his head when Harry would have argued, and held out a hand. Harry clasped it.
Peter turned and looked hesitantly at Connor. Connor stared back at him. Harry could read nothing on his brother's face at all.
"Goodbye, Connor," said Peter. "I am sorry about Sirius. He was my friend, once."
"I know," said Connor softly. "It wasn't your fault." He hesitated, then added, "Goodbye."
Peter nodded, and made the nod into part of the motion that carried him into his Animagus form. He scurried towards the Forbidden Forest, barely a movement in the thick grass, and quickly vanished. Harry found himself hoping absently that none of the rat-eating creatures in the Forest would be abroad tonight.
"What are we going to do now?" Connor asked, when a few moments had passed in silence.
Harry blinked, and came back to himself. He really was stupefied, he thought, if he'd just stood there and stared at nothing. "We go inside," he said firmly. "We find Snape. We get him to do…things with Sirius's body, and Voldemort's Pensieve, and that damn knife." Peter had retrieved his wand as they left the Shrieking Shack, a fact for which Harry was profoundly grateful. "And then we get Madam Pomfrey to check us both over." He glanced at his brother, searching for the signs of blood for the first time. "Did Voldemort hurt you?"
"A few cuts, that's all," said Connor. "Nothing like as bad as you got." But he seemed distracted, glancing around. "Harry," he said slowly. "That heaviness is still in the air."
Harry rubbed his cheek. "What heaviness?" Merlin, he was slow tonight. He knew, vaguely, that he had changed the world by freeing the Dementors, but he could not seem to care.
"The one that means a prophecy is coming true," said Connor. "It's still here." He turned to Harry, his eyes appealing. "I thought it was supposed to be done with? I thought freeing the Dementors was what the lines about the gray one and the decision were about?"
"What about the second half of the second half?" Harry found himself dropping to one knee in the grass. It would be soft enough to rest in, wouldn't it? Connor could run and fetch Snape by himself, couldn't he? Snape could get the information from Connor's mind himself, with Legilimency, if Connor couldn't tell him. That sounded like a wonderful idea, since it would allow Harry to rest.
Connor drew breath to answer, but his words were drowned by a furious voice.
"Harry!"
Harry lifted his head, and blinked drowsily as a black-clad figure swept towards them. "Oh, good," he said. "Snape's here. We don't have to find him."
Connor made a small squeaking sound of distress, but didn't get a chance to run away before Snape was upon them. Snape speared Connor with a glance, then turned to Harry and said, "I see that you have once again come back exhausted and half-dead from a mission to rescue your brother that you should have left up to older and more experienced wizards."
"Shut it, Snape," Harry muttered, hardly registering what he was saying. "Sirius is dead, and it wasn't Peter, and we defeated Voldemort again. I think I deserve a nap before you start yelling at me." He curled up on his side and closed his eyes.
Of course, he hadn't even fallen properly asleep before the vision of a circle of dark figures closing flashed behind his eyes, and he jerked himself up, gasping as a sharp pain cut into his side. Snape crouched down beside him, running his fingers over his ribs and hissing under his breath.
"You've sustained several nasty injuries, Harry," he murmured. "What—"
Harry turned his head blindly back and forth, closing his eyes, until the vision of the circle of shadows aligned with a particular direction. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring straight across the lake.
He breathed, "There," at the same moment as Snape swung his head and snarled, "The anti-Apparition wards are down!"
"And only the members of the Order of the Phoenix know how to disable them," said Harry. He was barely conscious again, but he knew this was important. "And Voldemort controlled Sirius's mind for the past several months, and had his memories. He could have passed the knowledge on to the Death Eaters."
As if in answer, a mad, cackling laugh that he knew well rode the wind. Harry pushed his eyes open, and saw Bellatrix Lestrange hurrying forward, her cloak billowing. Behind her came four other Death Eaters, all men from the way they were walking. Harry shuddered. One of them flared with such foul Dark magic that he could feel it from here. He thought it quite as bad as the power that his magic-eating snake had swallowed.
He looked at Snape, his tired mind jolted into motion again. "You could pretend that you're loyal to Voldemort, and that you've captured me—" he suggested.
"I have chosen my side," said Snape, his voice deliberate, and rose to his feet, moving behind Harry as he drew his wand. "I choose again, and again, and that side is yours, Harry."
Bellatrix laughed again, and increased her stride. "Come to offer yourself and the babies up on a platter, Severus?" she asked shrilly. "Our Lord told us all about you, and I must say, I look forward to having you in a nice quiet room, with nothing but Crucios between us."
"You always did have a stunning lack of imagination, Bellatrix," Snape answered coolly, and aimed his wand. "Sectumsempra!"
Bellatrix sang out a defensive spell as the curse aimed at her, and then fired back a hex whose pronunciation Harry missed under the sudden roaring in his ears. The four male Death Eaters were spreading out next to Bellatrix, one of them nearly in the lake, and the magic was overcoming his senses.
Two of them were preparing complicated spells. One wore an intricate glamour, so deep and old that Harry wasn't sure what it could possibly be hiding. And the one who flared with foul magic went on flaring with it, the scent growing into the stink of raw sewage until Harry saw the Death Eater's face.
It was Rodolphus Lestrange, from all the descriptions he had heard, but he had faced the man before, and knew him to be slow and rather stupid next to his brilliant, insane wife. Now, his eyes were wide, his mouth distended in a smile that Harry had last seen on Sirius's face.
"No," Harry whispered.
"You did not destroy all of me, Harry," said Voldemort's voice, calm and patient, through Rodolphus's lips. "The locket, but not the bit of my soul within it. It fled, and sought out my loyal Death Eaters. That is what comes of playing with your food." He smiled more widely, a grotesque gesture, animated by rage and hatred. Harry wondered then how much Voldemort must hate him, given that he would have known all along that Harry was the one who had bounced back the Killing Curse at him. "This arrangement does have its disadvantages, of course, namely the lack of power and the time it will take to grow a new body, but I am fresh, and I have magic that I know how to use. Unlike you, Harry." He clucked his tongue.
Then he aimed his wand. "Caeco!"
Harry heard Connor's wild cry from beside him, and whirled, even though he already knew what he would see; he knew the effects of Caeco. His brother was groping at his face, his eyes wide and staring. He was blind.
Harry turned back. His tiredness was still present, and his limbs felt like bags of sand. He knew that his rage would stop fueling him in a moment, but for now he could speak. "Blind me instead, you bastard!"
"Why should I?" Voldemort asked, smiling through Rodolphus's lips. "I want you to see what will happen to your brother, Harry." He nodded to one of the Death Eaters who stood beside him, one of the two who did not wear the glamour. "Your turn, Mulciber."
Harry shivered. Mulciber was an Imperius Curse specialist, renowned for his control of the mind, and he was aiming his wand at Connor now. Harry gave Snape a hopeless look, but Snape was locked in a duel with Bellatrix and did not even have time to look away from the spells he was firing.
"Imperio!"
Harry saw his brother stiffen, and knew what he would be feeling, the soft and coaxing voice that would be invading his mind, whispering to him what to do. Connor grasped his left hand with his right and began to bend his middle finger towards the back of his hand.
Harry sobbed. He didn't think he could do anything about it. If he unleashed a wash of magic right now, it would simply strike out at everyone in sight, so tired was he and so weak was his control.
He didn't think he could do that. How could he? He would prefer to just use defensive magic and get everyone out of here alive, shield Snape and Connor from the Death Eaters, deliver some stinging blows but no more than that.
His eyes locked on Rodolphus's face, Voldemort's cruel gaze and crueler smile. If I let them go, I'm letting Voldemort go.
There are some times I can't do what I want to do.
He heard the snap as Connor's finger broke, and the silence of someone under Imperio that was even more painful than a shriek would have been.
Sobbing, Harry lashed out, not using his magic as a snake this time, but simply draining, pulling, sucking all the magic away from the Death Eaters. He took their spells. He saw the glamour on the Death Eater on the far left shimmer and fade, revealing a different face and features, but he didn't care. He felt the magic of their bodies struggle for a moment and then remain intact—he wasn't pulling enough to drain their inner strength, only that floating loose around them—but he didn't care. He heard Snape shout in anger as his own dueling spells vanished, but he didn't care.
He let the magic flood away like high tide, and then brought it back around in a wave, directing all the force at Rodolphus-Voldemort, not trying to be coordinated, not trying to be controlled, all the desires of his mind focused on one thought: I want it to stop. I want him to go away.
The magic hit Rodolphus, and sent him flying. For a moment, Harry saw a slight dark shape in flight over the lake, like a moth.
Then he burst into flame, inside and out, fire that consumed him. Harry felt the bit of Voldemort's soul struggling madly, trying to fly free, and then felt it wither. Rodolphus's magic departed in the same moment.
He was dying. Ashes fell into the water.
He was dead. Bones and skin and flesh followed the ashes in an obscene rain.
Harry dropped his face into his hands and wept, collapsing as exhaustion and grief and the wash of the magic fell onto him. His body was entirely free of the magic he had swallowed in the Shrieking Shack now.
He heard Bellatrix give a long, descending wail, with no hint of sanity anywhere in it. Harry was open even to her pain just then, raw and bleeding, with no defenses. She had lost her husband and her risen lord in the same moment. Harry didn't know which one she might have loved more, but he wasn't surprised to roll over and see her staring at him with hatred in her eyes, the desire for vengeance written on her face.
"Wait, baby," she breathed. "Wait, and I'll come for you."
Then she turned and began to run, back around the lake and in the direction they had come from. The other Death Eaters followed her, Mulciber and a man who was probably Rabastan.
The last man, the one who had worn the glamour, lingered a moment to stare at Harry, as though he knew that no magic was left in the area to strike at him. His true face was heavy-featured, his eyes large and dark and intelligent behind the madness that Azkaban had induced. He cocked his head as Snape knelt behind Harry and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Chosen a good one, Severus," he said, sounding almost cheerful.
"Rosier," Snape snarled back, his anger not quite hiding his surprise. "Didn't die after all, did you?"
"No, Dolohov did," said the man Harry knew must be Evan Rosier, sounding quite unconcerned. "But everyone thought they saw me die, and, well, it seemed prudent to keep it that way." His face wore a smile so sudden it seemed to have simply appeared there from somewhere else, and he nodded to Harry. "That your future Lord?"
"My magic is returning, Rosier," Snape said, softly, dangerously, and aimed his wand.
"Can't stay, I'm afraid," said Rosier. "For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." He chuckled when he finished, and then turned and began to speed around the lake.
Harry turned to Connor. His brother blinked, one hand feeling at his eyes. He could see again, from the way he stared at Harry. Then he looked down at his broken finger, blinked again, and fainted.
Harry felt like doing the same thing, but he had things to do first. He turned to Snape.
"Read the memory of what happened from my mind," he said.
"I saw it, Harry."
Snape's voice was desperate with pity, which Harry didn't want. He reached out, bracing himself with one hand on his guardian's shoulder, and whispered, "No, not that. Before."
He dropped his barriers, and felt Snape slip in, fast and easy, so used to working with his mind that he found the memory of Sirius's death and what had happened in the Shrieking Shack the moment Harry willed him to see it. Harry felt Snape draw in a sharp breath, felt him shudder, and nodded wearily.
"Yes," he muttered. "Take care of his body and the Pensieve and the knife, won't you?"
"I will." Snape sounded shaken for the first time that Harry could remember. "Get some rest." He paused, and then added, "It was not your fault, Harry, you realize. You had to kill him."
"Rest sounds good," said Harry, and dropped away into a blackness that was far less confusing than the world he had just made for himself.