Chapter Fifteen

Lord Voldemort Strikes Back

January 22.

It had gotten to the point where Lord Voldemort was downright baffled. The only thing that made sense now was that, either there were well-coordinated, multiple factions working against him or there were traitors amongst his group. The Crabbe Manor fiasco was the last straw. Reports of some strange dark witch slaughtering a bunch of his supporters was weird enough. Add to that the myriad of other coincidences, plus the giant hole in the ceiling that led into Crabbe's private study, of which Voldemort had no prior knowledge, and discovering items of great concern that implicated certain individuals, made for a story that he did not like very much. As such, it was time to execute one of his more complex strategies. The difficulty with traitors is that they often had to perform multiple calculations in their head when dealing with high activity environments. As such, Lord Voldemort had constructed a series of fast paced raids designed to test both indirectly and directly the loyalty of his followers. In the wake of Crabbe Manor, he also resolved to oversee some of the raids personally, observing some of his soldiers and also to demonstrate his power to both the public and also to his subordinates. It was time he exercised his considerable magical power.

January 31.

Minerva McGonagall was just sitting down to have a cup of Earl Grey and re-read an old Sherlock Holmes novel that happened to be a favourite of hers, soft rabbit hair slippers on her feet, a fire in the fireplace, snow gently falling outside under a star-speckled night sky, when suddenly the flames in her fireplace turned black, immediately catching her attention. She had seen all colours of floo travel in the past, ranging from red to green to purple. Albus had apparently even used a canary yellow once, but she had never seen black, though reports of it had once reached her ears. It meant only one thing; it was the Dark Lord's personal floo powder, reputed to be capable of cutting through nearly any floo ward in existence.

McGonagall's first action was to transform into a tabby cat, at which point she fled towards her bedroom in search of her wand, silently cursing herself for not keeping it on her. Her acute cat ears caught the sound of movement behind her and her whiskers picked up the feel of magic closing in. A summoning charm, she thought, racing that much more quickly and then transforming as she crossed the threshold of her bedroom, throwing her body out of the way of a killing curse as she closed her fingers around the familiar wood of her nine inch wand, pivoting in mid fall so that she could make an arcing motion in the direction of her assailant, turning every portrait and loose object into red-winged orioles. Red-winged Orioles from Canada, no less.

One of them was immediately blown apart by a blasting hex and another was hit with the imperius and sent to fight off the others. Minerva, collecting herself and nursing a sprained ankle, searched for assailant through the haze of falling red feathers as the birds chirped and fluttered about aimlessly in her bedroom. With her wand, she sent the birds flying out of the room and hovering in the hallway, hoping they would act in a manner that would clue her in to the number of her assailants. She briefly considered jumping through the window and making a run for the edge of the anti-apparation ward, but immediately discounted it as a feeble hope. All she would end up doing was breaking her legs on the fall downward.

A streak of purple light hit one of the birds, causing it to fly drunkenly for a moment before collapsing to the ground. That was definitely a dark curse, she thought, seeing another beam of light, this one blood red, hit yet another bird, causing it to explode in a fit of feathers and blood. Two more well placed blasting hexes destroyed the last of the bipeds. There must only be one attacker, she thought grimly, not sure whether to be thankful or disturbed. Whoever it is, the person would have to be very skilled to be expected to dispatch her. If it were recruits, she might have been able to simply slink by as a cat and avoid them altogether.

It was a surprise to say the least when none other than Severus Snape stepped into the doorway of her bedroom, his fathomless black eyes boring into hers, his mouth stretched tight in a look of grim anticipation. "Severus," she said instantly, fighting the instinct to lower her wand, which came from the years of professionalism she had ingrained in herself when dealing with colleagues. He's not a colleague, however. Remember that.

Snape only responded by sending the killing curse at her, which she promptly dodged by transforming into a cat and then dashing under the bed, transforming back while still underneath the bed, and coming out laying flat - a trick she had developed herself through long time experience mastering her field. She then eyed Snape's black boots as he tried to execute a summoning charm for the cat, discovering to his dismay that it wasn't working, because the cat had transformed, something he wasn't quite able to believe. Sensing that his robes had been charmed against transfigurations, but that his boots weren't, she quickly hit them with a spell, turning them into ice skates that promptly had Snape going, "Wha?" as he came crashing to the ground, his wand skittering from his fingers. She then hit him with the tickling hex, effectively incapacitating him as she transformed back into a cat and made a break for the exit. Once down the stairs, she transfigured back, and then transfigured the stairwell into a mass of sharp knives jutting in all directions, hoping that would keep Snape at bay while she escaped.

However, it was not meant to be. In the living room, just as Minerva was grabbing her pot of floo powder, she saw the flames in the fireplace die, and a network of ice patches form in its place. Severus? she thought, whipping around in search of her attacker. No, it wasn't Severus. She had effectively dispatched him it seemed. The person that was sitting casually in her favourite armchair, watching her with an amused smile was none other than Lord Voldemort himself, his hands idly crossed together and resting comfortably on one knee, as though he were preparing for an interview.

Minerva was struck speechless. "Tom?" she asked in a quiet voice.

Lord Voldemort's smile broadened. "Indeed, it is I, Minerva."

Those red eyes, she thought, feeling suddenly entranced by them. Before she knew it, her whole life seemed to be playing before her eyes, all her thoughts, all her knowledge and secrets and wishes and dreams and emotions were surging upward, like a great tide. "Tom," she managed to say again, as she fell to her knees. "Tom, stop." But the person known as Tom did not stop, for he could not hear her. In fact, he was no more; only Lord Voldemort stood in his place and he was not the kind of person to take orders from lesser beings. No, he continued to consume her thoughts at an alarming rate, effectively crushing her mind beneath his will before killing her with a simple bludgeoning hex to the head, leaning her body out so that the tip of her skull was near the mantel place and then apparating through the anti-apparation wards, as though they weren't even there. when Severus made it downstairs, he found her lying sprawled on the floor, a bump on her head, not a trace of a magical hex or curse on her. Assuming she had simply fallen and brained herself on the edge of her stone mantel, he left.

Lord Voldemort stood on the sands of a great, grey beach. It was no ordinary beach, for it led to the island prison of Azkaban, an enormous stone structure that stood like a monolith in the centre of the island, beset on all sides by countless protrusions of rock and dead bodies of those few foolish enough to try to escape. Lord Voldemort took a moment to marvel at the taste of cold magic in the air. It was rich and thick and swam about aimlessly as if it were the most natural thing in the world, pooling about his body, bouncing off and coming back, ripple after ripple, drop after drop. He had never realized just how magically intense the island was, never having set foot on it before. Perhaps I will make this my new home, he thought. The magic of Hogwarts paled in comparison to the magnitude of what stood before him. No wonder people fear this place, even today.

Lord Voldemort walked down the long, white path through the beach and continued straight up to the front gates, two guards standing to either side.

"Halt!" one of them called when he was no more than ten feet away. "Who goes there?"

"It is I, Lord Voldemort," said he, standing alone against the great wash of the sea, the sand the clouded skies, that foreboding fortress. One man, who could hardly be called a man at all anymore; the one who would bring order to chaos. The Dark Lord.

He could see that the two guards, both of whom were old and grizzled and dangerously alert, exchanged a swift glance imperceptible to normal eyes. They are both occlumans, he mused, watching them attempt to sound the alarm. Lord Voldemort's wand was suddenly in his hand, and the green light of death was flowing forth like a river, travelling at unusually high speed, driving the first soldier into the wall so that his head cracked open on the jagged stones.

Sirens were raised, the sound of inner gates being closed reverberated through the stone, sand and sky. The other guard sent two dark spells Voldemort's way and called up a torrent of sand to wash the Dark Lord, or, at least hold him off until reinforcements could come. Lord Voldemort merely stood there, casually flicking his wand back and forth, parting the rising sand like the red sea, sending both curses off in either direction. Let them come, he mused. Let them come and watch as I dispense my wrath upon thee.

The guard sent a silver shaft straight at Voldemort, who stopped it in mid-flight and reversed its magical polarity, sending it like a homing beacon back to the caster. The guard nimbly dodged out of its way, but the spear merely angled itself en route and plunged into his chest, ripping to shred his heart and leaving a pool of growing blood on the front steps of Azkaban.

Ministry aurors were pooling around him to either side, no more than two hundred feet away. They do not dare open the gates to me, he thought. They know what folly it would be. But this pincer attack will not serve to do either. With another wave of his wand, two silver boulders were conjured to either side of him. He then disillusioned them both and banished them to either side of him, turning his interest from the soon to be maimed aurors to the seemingly impenetrable door. Wards, he thought. Funny things they are, being based on magic. Lord Voldemort annihilated them with a few strokes of his wand, and then hit the front door with a Reductor curse so powerful, it reduced iron and stone to shrapnel. He then walked forward, the cries of those ill-fated aurors to either side of him ringing out in the afternoon sky, drowning in the rush of ocean waves and the call of the gulls over the open waters.

Azkaban was breached.

The prison foyer was surprisingly banal looking, with offices and magical paper airplanes and what not floating about, waiting to be used by clerks and other assistants. The three or four personnel that should have been there had clearly been evacuated immediately by the sound of the alarms. That hardly bothered him, for they were not really his concern. No, he was here to simply walk the halls and look around, killing anyone who dared come near him. Eventually, he supposed he would go and look at the inner sanctum and investigate the ward stones used to power and maintain the wards. He would probably want to alter them so that he could walk freely and without having to constantly manipulate his energies to keep them from detecting him. But for now, he was content to let them come to him. At the very least, they would not be expecting it.

They think I am here for my soldiers. They think I am here for Lucius, and will operate accordingly. As such, instead of making his way to the maximum security wing, he decided to take a stroll down the minimum security area and see what kind of ruffians the Ministry was holding. Perhaps he would garner a bit of support from the disenfranchised. The halls in the lower part were deathly quiet save for the distant sound of alarms, shouting and footfalls. The halls were dark, the walls stained with the taint of dementors, thin films of light oozing through cracks, from between window bars, glinting drops of water trickling down shadow-darkened crevices.

It would make a good dungeon chamber, he thought, looking around at the haggard faces, many of the prisoners still haunted by the days when dementors patrolled the halls. They all watched him curiously, without fear or anger or hope. Many of them did not seem surprised that the dreaded Dark Lord, the thing that was a bogeyman to most of the wizarding world, was standing not five feet from them, eyeing them speculatively.

"So," he said, looking down at the nearest prisoner. "You are the infamous fiends of Azkaban. The detritus that society has locked away. For their own safety, of course. You are the forgotten."

"We don't want any," one called, his hazel eyes burning with intensity as he looked into the Dark Lord's face. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out from under."

Lord Voldemort turned his way and gazed upon his emaciated form for a long time, and then, as if hit by a sudden thought, began to laugh an eerie, high-pitched sound. "I remember you," he said, calming himself down. "I murdered your family, and you sought revenge against me. You killed one of my soldiers."

The man said nothing.

"Funny that I stand here on this side of the bars, while you rot there."

"Take us with you!" another shouted. "Please! We will serve you! We will do anything, yes I will! O Lord, free us!"

At this proclamation, some of the prisoners cheered, and others booed.

Lord Voldemort ignored the others and instead chose to focus on the man who had just spoken. He smelled rank, his body had lost a lot of weight recently, stretch marks around his belly and upper arms giving him a particularly wretched look, with his clothes hung in tatters and bags under his eyes. He did not, however, have the taut, wasted look of a man exposed to dementors. "What is your name?" Lord Voldemort asked.

"My name?" he responded, seeming surprised that the feared monstrosity would actually deign to take an interest in him. "why, it's Bert. Had me a friend, here, but they's killed him, yessir. They's just up and murdered him. Kicked 'im tah death."

"I see," Lord Voldemort said, considering his words. "And you want revenge, don't you?"

Bert nodded.

"You want to cause them pain, make them suffer, right?"

Bert again nodded.

"Tell me, do you know what the Cruciatus is?" he asked.

"Tis a pain curse," Bert said reverently. "Tis the greatest of 'em all. I will use it on my enemies."

Lord Voldemort shook his head. "No, it is not a pain curse, I'm afraid. It is quite different from that, though pain is an integral part of it. It was created long ago, by some of the greatest light wizards; light wizards who could have rivaled Albus Dumbledore. It was used to heal people."

Bert looked as though he were trying to figure out where the joke was. "But, sir-"

Voldemort cut him off, continuing as though he hadn't spoke. "Everything has an opposite. The Cruciatus is a spell of many contradictions. Do you truly wish to join me, Bert?"

Bert nodded.

"Will you take the mark and bear the consequences of all that it entails?"

He nodded again, still sure of himself.

"So be it," Lord Voldemort said. He looked around and said to the many watchers. "Watch and learn and see how Lord Voldemort repays his soldiers." He drew his wand and cast the Cruciatus on Bert, who promptly began writhing and screaming on the floor. He held the curse for a long time, each minute ticking past, the others growing more and more uncomfortable as they watched some of the most gruesome torture known to wizarding kind unfold before their very eyes. Bert had raked away most of his flesh with his fingers, clawing out his eyes, spitting bits of chewed pink flesh that many of them soon realized was bits of tongue. After the five minute mark, Bert stopped screaming, his voice having been lost to him. He continued to flail about and moan and writhe and whimper and cry and cut himself with his own nails, continually grating at the wounds, smearing his blood all over himself until he looked like a baby that had just popped out of its mother's womb, all wet with blood and saliva, its face scrunched up into a permanent look of agony, its flesh all hanging about its body uselessly. Lord Voldemort continued the torture him until Bert was completely silent, until his eyes stopped fluttering, until all the twitching ceased, until the drool stopped dribbling down his face and all the muscles that were once taut from pain slackened, and then he simply continued to apply the curse for several more minutes, long having since past the point where Frank and Alice Longbottom had been driven insane.

Some of the prisoners had begun mumbling to themselves and shying away from the Dark Lord, terrified of drawing his attention, not wanting to suffer Bert's fate. But then, as the curse continued to be applied, as they entered into the twenty-fifth minute of its application, something peculiar seemed to happen. Bert's wounds seemed to heal at an unusual rate so that, no more than five minutes later, he seemed whole again, his body no longer evincing any signs of the Cruciatus, even though it was still being applied with the same intensity as when he had started the treatment. Instead, the look of fatigue, of emaciation, of depression and melancholy and starvation were stripped from him, leaving him pink and healthy, much like a new baby. On the thirtieth minute, Lord Voldemort ended the curse, leaving a silent, unconscious, yet perfectly healthy man lying on the floor amidst the wreckage of human life that was the lower cell of Azkaban. He then went to the unconscious figure and knelt down, pressing his index finger into the man's forearm and whispering, "Morsmordre." The skull and snake etched itself onto that clean skin and lay there, a mark that would stay on the man's soul for eternity. Lord Voldemort stood once again and left the cell to stand in the hallway, from which point he turned back to Bert and enervated him.

The prone figure climbed to his feet, his mangled clothes falling about him in ribbons, his naked body exposed for all to see, his eyes glistening with vitality. Bert smiled a cold, Death Eater smile. He was a new man.

Nymphadora Tonks was scared shitless. She found herself standing deep within the shadows of the lower dungeons, watching with horror as Voldemort initiated his new recruit. Bert Munchausen, if she remembered correctly; Ron had been the one to apprehend him, and Arthur had called her in to smooth over the administrative details. It was both horrifying and fascinating to watch the process that led to Bert's transformation. Whatever it was that Lord Voldemort did to him, whatever way he used the Cruciatus seemed to require an in-depth knowledge of its properties - something she doubted anyone in the whole of the British wizarding world had knowledge of, except for the snake-like creature not twenty feet from her. Apart from renewed vigor, Bert seemed to move with a new sort of grace, as though he had been given animal instincts, a feral violent streak, as though his moral sense had been tainted. He snapped up a nearby prisoner and crushed his throat with his bare hands, drinking his victim's blood as it oozed from the neck. Bert then walked over to Lord Voldemort and kneeled in a show of subservience and gratitude, declaring his allegiance to all the other prisoners.

"Behold the greatness of your Lord," replied he. "Go forth and kill the aurors that roam this place. Collect that which is rightfully yours, dispense your wrath upon your captors. When I am ready for you, I will call you, and you will come to me, my loyal servant."

Nearby, Tonks saw that Shacklebolt had arrived, his dark eyes keening the landscape for threats and advantages. He saw her and made a hand gesture, indicating that there were aurors on the other side of the hall. Tonks acknowledged his statement, and then he made a gesture, indicating that they were all going to fire on the count of three, to which Tonks nodded, readying her wand and focusing her attention on the display before her.

Three, two, one.

Wordlessly, she shot a reductor curse at Voldemort's legs. Shacklebolt, meanwhile, sent a complex imprisonment field. Two more curses came flying from the other end, one being a dark curse that Tonks recognized as the Lutefisk curse, which saturated the body in lye, and the other was the Exsanguination curse, which caused blood to exit the body through the nearest orifice.

Lord Voldemort merely made a zigzagging motion with his wand, effectively reversing the polarity of the imprisonment field, turning it into a shield that caused the dark curses to go flying back in the direction from which they came. The reductor curse, on the other hand, had gotten past the shield and hit Lord Voldemort on his shin, causing him to grimace, before regaining his equanimity.

Shacklebolt wasted no time cancelling the shield and firing off numerous basic attack spells, mostly reductor curses. Tonks followed suit, hoping that if the four of them battered the Dark Lord enough, he would simply cave in under the pressure. The other two aurors from the other side followed suit, and suddenly, like machine gun fire coming from all sides, the Dark Lord was being forced to evade spellfire and erect shields to protect himself. Occasionally, a reductor curse made it through, but it only ever hit his torso or legs, never his head or hands or feet.

"Reducto."

"Reducto."

"Reducto."

"Reducto."

All four aurors fired curses simultaneously, having driven the Dark Lord off course, and effectively pincering him from all sides, all the spells converging on his position. He stepped into the path of one of them, taking it full on in the chest, his clothes long ago shredded, his pale skin bruised wherever he had been hit with the curse. He then, in a masterful feat of coordination, said, "Protago," erecting a simple shield that he used to not just block, but deflect all three incoming reductor curses straight at Tonks, who immediately dodged out of the way of one of them while throwing up a shield to protect herself from the other two. The first reductor curse dissolved her shield, leaving her exposed to the last one, which Kingsley redirected using a spell-attraction charm. Voldemort took their moment of inaction to focus his attention on the other two aurors sending his own reductor curse. The auror dodged out of the way, firing back. Voldemort sidestepped the oncoming spell, letting it pass in the direction of Shacklebolt, who had to jump out of the way as well, at which point Voldemort made a sweeping gesture with his wand, transforming every prison bar in the hallway into three-foot long pit vipers.

All four aurors stopped to take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of the transfiguration prowess and magical strength involved to execute such a massive transfiguration.

"Kill them all," Lord Voldemort hissed, making all the spectators and the aurors shudder at the sound of the ancient language of snakes.

In a flash, he had effectively turned the table against them, forcing them to defend rapidly against the sixty odd snakes that were now dogging them at each step. Shacklebolt erected a large, transparent shield, and two illusions, while Tonks continued to discharge a battery of blasting hexes, all the while being forced to retreat slowly, often having to jump out of the way of their poisonous fangs. The other two aurors had taken the brunt of the snakes, and screams of pain could be heard, the constant throng of spells from that side of the room being snuffed out as they were effectively dispatched.

Having completely forgotten about the Dark Lord, Tonks was completely unprepared for the reductor curse that blew apart both her legs in one fell swoop, crippling her, sending her screaming to the ground, tears spilling down her face, which was contorted into an expression of agony.

Blearily, she saw Shacklebolt summon two snakes to take two killing curses before firing off a reductor curse and transfiguring three of the snakes into birds that flew towards Voldemort. Tonks gritted her teeth and pulled herself to one side, taking aim with her wand and doing the only thing she could think of to help them escape. She hit Lord Voldemort in the legs with the Trip Jinx, causing him to fall over, a momentary look of surprise crossing his features as he hit the ground.

Shacklebolt followed with the killing curse, having finally twigged into the fact that reductor curses were virtually useless against the Dark Lord. However, one of the four remaining snakes jumped in the path of the spell, taking it full on. They retreated around their master to protect him as he picked himself off the ground, each of them giving up their momentary existence for each of Shacklebolt's and Tonks's spells. Voldemort conjured a shield to absorb two magical fire curses, both of which harmlessly lit his shield on fire and were extinguished within moments.

More aurors came flowing down the steps from either end, having realized from the heavy spellfire the location of the intruder. "It appears my time here as almost come to an end," Voldemort said, batting away more spells and summoning a human to intercept another killing curse. "My, my, auror. Using unforgiveables. Not very appropriate, is it?"

Lord Voldemort began rapid firing killing curses at the aurors, who struggled to dodge out of the way in the narrow hall, many taking refuge in the cells along with the prisoners. With nearly a dozen aurors now on his heels, sending curses of all kinds and colours, Lord Voldemort took a running leap, his robes billowing about him as he threw himself past Kingsley, who also had to dodge the incoming spells, which flew harmlessly by overhead. The onslaught continued, but Voldemort began bringing the ceiling down on their heads, the trembling stone and unearthly squeal of metal and rock grating together, making the aurors and prisoners nervous. With a final jab of his wand, large cracks began forming in the walls, Lord Voldemort dashing up the flight of stairs and disappearing as large chunks fell on the hapless wizards, many of whom had begun fighting with the prisoners who were trying to take their wands.

From there, Lord Voldemort moved relatively freely through the halls of Azkaban, freeing his soldiers one by one, exterminating with efficient ease any of the aurors that tried to intercept him and blowing apart the walls, smashing the keystones that held the prison together. It would have been nice to use the fortress as his own private dwelling, but he had, somewhere along the way, decided that it was no longer feasible, and instead, returned to his original plan of simply destroying it. Perhaps I will build something new in its place, he mused. That probably made more sense anyway. So long as he did it swiftly, so that the lingering magic did not dissipate.

"Rise, Lucius," Lord Voldemort commanded, blowing apart the door that held his loyal subject in solitary confinement. Lucius did so, an air of regality still clinging to him despite his bedraggled appearance. Lord Voldemort gave him a wand and said, "I have cleared the way for your exit. I trust you can make your way to someplace safe. Go, clean yourself up and I will call for you in the days to come."

"Of course, my lord," Lucius said, prostrating himself and kissing the hem of his master's robes. "Thank you."

Lord Voldemort freed all of his servants that day, and many more who would, in the coming months, join him for the final battle. He stood atop the island fortress, having just cleared away the top floors. From his vantage point, he could see the rolling waves for miles on end in all directions, his red eyes feeling the life teeming in the air and the ocean, the magic rising and falling like a sleeping giant. He put his wand back in its holster and stood, arms splayed out to either side, his back arched, and he began to chant. Using his body like a giant magic conductor, Lord Voldemort began sapping the energy from the air, and transmitting it into the fortress, cracks forming as the pressure of the magic being forced through its body causing it buckle and give way. Minute by minute, his body lighting up like a jack-o-lantern, raw magic like electricity crackling across the surface of his skin, the rumbling beneath his feet growing louder, Azkaban began to break apart, chunks of stone falling away, tumbling to the rocks and sand below, smashing into them, kicking up dust into the evening air. The rumbling intensified until it became joined with a cacophony of squealing, the drowned out shouts of soldiers down below trying to extricate wounded and fallen comrades, victims of the Dark Lord's wrath. Plumes of dust and rock chips floated on the wind, cracks forming, the energy of all the magic being focused through his body reverberating, lifting up, energizing, illuminating, crushing bits of metal, pulverizing them into long thin strings like noodles.

Within minutes of the raging torrent of energy that sent whole prison cells jettisoning into the sky, crashing distantly into the waters, holes appearing in the prison, one entire wall coming apart and careening toward the beach below, an avalanche of stone and metal, within just minutes, Azkaban was no more. And there stood the Dark Lord, amidst the rubble, his body losing that strange luminescence that made his blood and the network of veins beneath his skin visible, his eyes regaining focus, his arms coming down to relax at his sides. He walked across the wreckage, his boots crunching against the debris in the ensuing silence, marred only by the ever-present waves in the distance. Lord Voldemort left.

March 1st.

Ron sat, staring out the library window, wondering how he was supposed to feel, what moves he was supposed to make. Nothing seemed right anymore. It had been six weeks since his encounter with Hermione, though he had only been awake for the last five, and functional for the last four. Overexposure to the Cruciatus, among other things, had put him temporarily out of commission. Since that day, his life seemed to have taken on new meaning. The slow approach of spring, the return of birds chirping in the blooming trees, the shining sun, the melting snow and burgeoning grass all seemed to be part of some sort of world that was outside his reach. He felt he could see all those beautiful things, nature, art, the passion and love between young idealists, in sharp relief, with a clarity he never before had, but still he could not take them into his arms, to hold them, to feel a connection to any of it. It was like he was disconnected, like somebody had turned the power off to his heart. With a swish of his wand, a field of patronus lilies grew out of the pools of snow outside, Katie and Terry oblivious to them, holding hands, feeling a great contentment with one another, reminding Ron acutely of his true love, the woman who tried to kill him not two months ago.

"Mind if I have a seat?" Neville asked, coming up next to Ron.

"Sure," he replied, not taking his eyes off the picturesque tableau outside.

Neville pulled out a chair and sat down, fixing his gaze at first on Ron and then on what it was he was looking at. After a time of sitting in companionable silence, he said, "She loves you, you know."

Ron thought it was a decidedly odd thing to say, and rather cruel, all told. "She has a funny way of showing it, trying to kill me and all."

Neville nodded, expecting that response from Ron. He then went on, "I wasn't talking about Hermione."

Outside, Terry lifted Katie into his arms and swung her about, all the while she laughed and patted feebly at his shoulders, begging him to stop. Terry had a crazy, goofy grin on his face, and when he stopped, he put her down on the ground so they were inches from one another, the heat of their bodies evident in the cool spring air. He leaned in and kissed her, and she melted into that kiss, her arms remaining by her side.

"She won't wait for you forever," Neville said. "Nor would anyone expect her to; or want or think she should. It would be crazy to pin your hopes to a dream."

Don't you know, Neville, Ron thought bitterly. I must be crazy, for I am still pinning my hopes to a dream. But then you already knew that, didn't you? "I know what you're trying to do, Neville," Ron said. "Thank you, but, I think I just need a little bit of time. That's all."

"Mate, you've had a month to work through it. It's time to move on. I'm not saying you should shag the next girl you see." Neville fell silent for a moment, contemplating his next words. Finally, when he spoke it was with a sad sort of reservation. "When I came back that night, I was in a right fit. She made me relive the night my parents were tortured by Lestrange and Crouch. I toggled between wanting to cry and wanting to go half-cocked in search of her, for doing that to me. For the first time, I put somebody higher up on my to kill list than the Dark Lord and Bellatrix. It took nearly two days to realize that I didn't have a hand. Whatever curse she used magically destroyed it for good. I guess that's what made it a dark curse. She took away my ability to cast spells."

"What are you trying to say, Neville?" Ron asked. "That she's evil? Well, jeez, thanks for the tip. I had no bloody idea. I'll keep it in mind the next time she's cruciating me."

"That wasn't my point," Neville said, retaining his composure. "With my wand hand destroyed, I felt useless. All I could focus on was the hate and the pain, and you know what? I loved it. I loved the feeling of my own sorrow; after years of struggling to keep up with you guys, after years of telling myself I'll catch the ones who did this to my parents, it finally felt good to let it all go, to wallow in it. In the end though, it wasn't very healthy for me, and I may very well have just offed myself in one of the unused classrooms, never to reappear again. It was Luna who finally pulled me out of my depression. She showed me that there were reasons to live. She showed me what it meant to fight for a purpose that was good and pure. I know what you're going through. You were fighting for Hermione; somewhere in the back of your mind, she was the reason you got up in the morning, practiced your spells, double-checked your maps, reigned in your temper. I know that feeling now. You wanted to keep her safe, for her to be proud of you. You fought for many things." Neville leaned in close, his blue eyes burning intently into Ron, whose gaze was finally drawn by the intensity in Neville's words. "I'm here to tell you, Commander, that those things are still out there. Love is still out there; reasons to fight have not gone away. They're there waiting for you. The reason you can't enjoy those things is because you've isolated yourself from them. It's time you tear down these walls. There are too many people counting on you, me and Luna included, and you need to start counting on us too, in all the ways that matter."

Neville, having said his peace, stood abruptly and left Ron there to continue ruminating, heading back to the potions laboratory where he could perform his duties - the one place where he could still be of assistance in the war.

A/N: Hi all. Well this is it. The last chapter before we return to find out what's going on with our intrepid inter-dimensional traveller and his three tag-alongs.

On a slightly related note, I had expected a few people to make suggestions about the kinds of things they would like to see. Some have suggested things like "more Harry", which I am now going to oblige. Initially, I had intended for him to simply return from his adventures abroad, but I got the sense that people would rather I not leave such a large lacuna in his development. From here on in, we'll be returning to the previous summer and chronicling Harry's adventures so that he can be brought up to speed with the current timelines for Ron and Hermione. Before I get too far ahead in the writing of the story, are there any things that people wish to see/ do not wish to see transpire? Pairings? Deaths? Redemptions? I'm only asking because I'm considering some pretty strange things, and I figured I would give you a chance to have a say before I decide. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, you forfeit your right to complain later.