Chapter Twenty-Seven

Six Characters in Search of a Duel

June 15 was the night it all went down.

Neville pulled his cloak about him as he huddled over a steaming cauldron in the old potions classroom. The dungeons had hardly been his first pick of locations to spend his time in, given that, even in the midst of summer it grew chilly at night, not to mention the years of bad memories he had on account of Snape. Still, there was hardly a better place in the castle to brew potions since most potions were better made in dark, cool, places with a consistent temperature year round. Now, though, he had grown to take comfort in the solitude. People had been bustling about all day, getting things ready. There was a feeling of energy in the air, the feeling that they were on the cusp of something enormous. It was final jeopardy.

Neville reflected on how strange it was that they had become key players in the fight against the Dark Lord. For him and for many others, the Dark Lord had been something of a bogeyman during his childhood. Sure, the thought of him had been scary, but it was also something intangible, something in history or out of a fantasy story and there had been this sense that the creature of nightmares had been confined to the pages of a book, that there was really nothing for it. And then, he had returned. Neville had felt it at the time, back on that warm summer day when Harry returned with Cedric's body, when Albus Dumbledore made the announcement to the entire school about the second rise of the Dark Lord, he had known somewhere in the back of his mind, in a place he dared not acknowledge, that the war would fall on their shoulders. The old crowd had their chance, and they failed. The fourteen year reprieve from the Dark Lord had only been a means to give them time to prepare. And now it was upon them. They, who were just children, being made to raise the flag of war against the practitioners of the dark arts. It all seemed so momentous, as though failure would mean the destruction of the world, as if failure would mean the fall of eternal darkness, the end of muggles, the end of light.

Neville felt the faint stir of the air as a person moved toward him. He knew it had to be Luna, for there was no one else in Hogwarts who could maneuver with so much stealth. Just as Harry was a natural with a broom, Luna was a natural with her ability to make herself unseen, to go unnoticed by all but the most keen of observers. Neville had grown accustomed to this peculiarity of hers, just as he had grown accustomed to all the other peculiarities that came along with Luna Lovegood.

Silently and gently she came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, hugging him, giving him silent comfort for the tumult of emotions that were warring within him. Only she knew.

Neville continued to stir the contents of his cauldron as the potion cooled, acknowledgment of her presence coming only in the form of the slight stiffening of his shoulders. Since the loss of his hand, he had taken to using the potions room as his own private refuge and had jealously guarded his time there, even from intrusion by his friends. Even from Luna.

Tentatively, she leaned her head against his shoulder, so that he could feel both the pressure and the heat from her body that much more acutely. She sighed. And then, after a moment of being held like that, Neville felt the press of her body against his disappear, leaving a vacancy, the warmth receding and the cold rushing in to steal that which had been made between them. "Good luck, Neville Longbottom." she said softly in his ear.

Neville gave no notice that he heard her - a tribute to his newly developed occlumancy shields. The potion was sufficiently cool now, its contents sufficiently mixed. He supposed he should have known he couldn't fool her. Just as he had grown so adept at reading her, feeling her presence from a distance, she too had grown adept at reading him, feeling him from a distance. Neville didn't bother bottling the potion. There really wasn't that much of it anyway, and he only made it to serve for a single dose. One which he now took, ladling it up with a serving spoon and gently drinking it. He felt a chill run through him as the potion took effect. He glanced in a mirror to make sure it had taken effect properly. It had. He was now invisible. By the time he was done, and turned around to go, having vanished the remaining contents of the cauldron, he noted with a mix of despair and hope that Luna had departed already. The activation of the portkeys was imminent now.

"I DON'T CARE HOW DANGEROUS IT IS!" Minnie shrieked, picking up a copy of Unfogging the Future and throwing it across the room so that it whacked into Harry's shoulder. "YOU ARE IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM LEAVING ME BEHIND!"

"Minnie," Harry began in the most pleading tone he could manage, his hands held up before him in supplication. "Minnie, please..."

"DON'T YOU MINNIE ME! DON'T YOU DARE!"

Another book arced its way across the kitchen, this time missing Harry completely and landing in a bowl of leftover gumbo.

Goddamn fucking hell, Harry thought tiredly. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?

The 'discussion' had started out with a simple outline of the nightly venture. Harry was going to go duel Voldemort. It seemed simple enough. There would be phoenix soldiers there, probably duelling Voldemort's minions, and there would be vampires and werewolves too. He, of course, wouldn't be terribly concerned with any of that, instead, conserving his energy for the battle with Voldemort. It seemed simple enough, at least to Harry, and certainly he thought nothing of it when he explained the situation to Minnie over a an iced mocha latte. She was a sucker for chocolate and coffee.

And then it had started. She had seemed so excited, so eager, so energetic. Her eyes had been alight with that warmth, that that child-like, naive innocence that Harry was beginning to grow fond of. And then the question came. She leaned close and asked, "So what do I get to do?"

Now, at this point, it should be noted that, while Harry has had difficulty in the past understanding women, he was not a complete idiot and had managed to pick up a thing or two. He knew, for instance, that the question had a certain implied answer. That is to say, the question rested on the assumption that there was, in fact, something productive for Minnie to do. And so, in those precious few seconds between her question and his response, his mind raced like a bat out of hell through all the possible, menial tasks that he could possibly assign to her in order to appease her and keep her out of the way. Alas, he just wasn't that quick on his feet, when it came to these sorts of things.

"Er, nothing?"

Oh, how painful it was to watch the transformation from unrestrained jubilation to... consternation. And then, from consternation to annoyance, which swiftly morphed into God-like wrath. And the worst part about it was that he knew it was coming; he saw it coming from a good fifty feet away and found himself completely unable to stop it.

"Nothing?" she repeated, her soft tone belying the dangerous tortures that awaited the poor sod that dared to cross paths with her.

"er, well, maybe we could get you to-"

"Nothing?" she repeated, cutting him off, her mind attempting to process the meaning of the word, as though it held deep secrets to the meaning of life.

"Well, no, nothing," he said, back-peddling at a speed that would make Olympic gold medalists proud. "I mean I just hadn't thought of anything in particular."

"You hadn't thought of anything?" she echoed, a dangerous hiss beneath her words forming.

And so it went. Minnie was angry. Minnie was indignant.

"I CAN BE USEFUL!" she wailed, throwing the last weapon at her disposal, a pillow in the shape of Winnie-the-Pooh. "I SWEAR I CAN BE!" And with that last proclamation, she broke into sobs, hiccupping and holding herself afraid she might break.

Seeing her like that, Harry couldn't help but go to her and hold her before she collapsed to the ground. He enfolded her tightly in his arms, making shushing noises and gently rubbing her back in circular patterns. "Shh, Minnie. It's okay. It's okay."

"It's not okay!" she said through a stream of sniffles, her tears soaking through Harry's Egyptian style three hundred twenty thread cotton t-shirt. "I'm bloody useless."

"No you're not," Harry coaxed softly. "You're not useless. You're as far from useless as humanly possible."

"I am?" she asked, the rate of her sniffles decreasing. She looked up into Harry's eyes, her silver ones practically glowing through her tears.

"I promise," he affirmed, cupping her cheek in one hand and gently wiping away a tear.

"But I can't do magic," she said mournfully.

"Of course you can," he said, smiling.

"Really?" She brightened considerably. "Can I make things float?"

"Er, no," he said in a regretful tone. "I'm afraid you can't make things float, Minnie."

"Oh."

"But did you know, love is a form of magic."

"Love?" she asked, her voice full of doubt. "What kind of magic can you do with that?"

Harry just smiled some more. "Didn't I ever tell you?

"Tell me what?" she asked, still trying to figure out the magic-love connection, if her furrowed brow were any indication.

"Love's what my mum used to protect me from the Dark Lord. It was so powerful that not even he could harm me. In fact, it vapourized him. Twice, in fact."

"Hmm," Minnie said, clearly unimpressed. "Didn't she die doing that?"

"Er, well, yes," he admitted reluctantly.

"Oh phooey!" Minnie said, stamping her foot on the ground. "I want to make things float! And make things go poof! Like the way you made that squashy leather armchair just sort of poof up out of nothing."

Harry sighed and counted slowly to ten. Eventually, he said, "Listen, I'm heading off to go take care of business. I'll see you tonight, okay?"

"Yeah, fine," she muttered, pulling away from his embrace and heading off to the bedroom of the small muggle flat they had commandeered so that Minnie could be stashed away with relative safety until Harry returned.

"All right, on the count of three," Ron said, taking hold of an ordinary looking quill. Luna and Katie followed suit, along with Susan, Hannah, Ernie, Dean, Dennis, Collin, Terry, Sue, Susan and a handful of others. Harry had elected to make his way to the Ministry on his own. "Just remember to keep in your groups. Keep your eyes on your targets, stay focused, and remember, this time it's shoot to kill. If it's someone you don't recognize, use the .22 and aim for a non-vital. If they show signs of poisoning, then you know you're dealing with either a vampire, or a werewolf, and chances are they're on the Dark Lord's side. Take them out and move on."

His soldiers all nodded, affirming his words. Ron took a deep breath and went on, "In all likelihood, this is it. This is the battle we've been moving towards since the beginning, since this whole Goddamned mess started. I won't lie and say it doesn't matter whether we win or lose. This is not a Quidditch game." He paused and surveyed his troops, carefully choosing his next words. "It's a war. One we've been fighting for a long time now. For years even. It's a war that's been passed down to us from our fathers and our mothers, our uncles and our aunts. I won't lie to you. It's brutal. Most of you know that already. I like to think that the thing that makes us different from the Death Eaters, the thing that's going to give us the edge in this fight is that we know we'll watch each others backs. Death Eaters are Slytherins to the core. They will turn on one another if it suits them. I know to expect from each and every one of you that you'll do your Goddamnedest to bring us each back alive and healthy. I also expect that, if one of us doesn't come back, then none of us come back." Ron stopped again to stare each one in the eyes before he said his final words. "We're all strong. In body and in spirit. Never forget that. Tonight, we're going to do things that are ugly. That most would wish we never had to do, but we're going to do it anyway. I'm telling you now. I'm bloody ordering it of you - that you do not show them any quarter. Show them no mercy. Look to your comrades to your left, and look to the ones to your right. If you show these motherfuckers mercy, then chances are, you'll be helping torture and murder your friends. Remember that." Ron paused yet again, and then, just before they left, he decided to say one final thing. "If one of you runs away tonight, then you will have failed not only me, and your friends and the light side, but your House as well, for you would have to be a coward to flee, and you would have to be disloyal. And, most of all, you would have to be really stupid. You would have to be stupid to think that the Dark Lord wouldn't get you eventually. Not that it would matter, for, if I survive tonight, then I'll hunt down any of those who betrayed us here." Seeing the resolve and the defiance and the anger that his words evoked, Ron just smiled a feral smile and nodded. "Good, let's go."

And with that, they raised their portkeys into the air and all cried out in unison, "FREEDOM!"

Harry stood bathed in the light of the setting sun, concrete shadows pooling around him like dementors, his hair mussed, his emerald eyes glistening, the taste of exhaust fumes billowing about in the breeze that made his t-shirt flutter.

"What troubles you so, master?" Bono asked, flicking its forked tongue, its yellow eyes dripping with magic as it gazed about, idly killing off insects, rats and stray dogs.

"My journey is coming to an end," he said calmly, only the barest hint of sadness evident in his voice. He sighed quietly.

"Is that not a good thing? You can rest, master. We will retire to some place where there is grass and trees. It will be quiet. I can hunt."

Harry smiled at the vision of life that Bono was supplying. It sounded both peaceful and rhythmic. He supposed that what disturbed him about that picture was just how foreign it felt, like it were a dream that wasn't his, or that there was a shadow lurking in the midst that he was supposed to be seeing. "I've just been on this road so long, I'm not sure I know of anything else."

"You will learn, master."

"Yeah, I reckon I will."

"You and your lady friend," Bono added, a hint of something teasing in his voice.

"Yeah, me and my lady friend." Harry turned his gaze away from the blood red light that encircled the sun as it descended between two large buildings, one of which being part of the Ministry of Magic. He gazed down at his new familiar. "I have asked something of you, Bono."

"Indeed you have," the basilisk agreed.

Are you still prepared to do it?"

Bono merely nodded his head.

"Good. Tonight is the night."

"I know, master. I feel it in the air."

Harry smiled. "Your magic is one of a kind, Bono."

"That it is."

"How long do you reckon it'll take?"

Bono considered the question carefully, knowing that accuracy and precision were critical to Harry's plans. Finally, it said, "Give me two hours."

Harry nodded. "All right, then. If you feel safe completing the task in that time, then I will head down only after the completion of the second hour."

"It will be enough."

"Do not forget that she is no ordinary snake. Her master has given her the gift of his own intelligence, his own memories, his own mind. She will be ruthless and cunning, and she will have her mind protected from the same superior occlumancy shields that the Dark Lord has."

"I understand, master. I shan't fail you. Take faith in me."

"Of course I do, Bono. Go forth then. Kill Nagini, and all that stands in your way."

Bono nodded one last time before silently slithering away, down the cement walk, keeping to the shadows, its piercing yellow eyes watching as it moved forward towards Technoparc. Harry glanced down at his wrist to check the time, only to mutter a curse under his breath. "Damn tournament," he lamented, before apparating away to the nearest watch retailer.

The Ministry of Magic was as quiet as a tomb. Its halls were empty, unusually so, since there usually were a few stragglers who had decided to burn the midnight oil, as it were. On this evening, however, there was in fact, nobody in the building. Much like it was the day Harry led five intrepid Hogwarts students on a raid to free his godfather years prior. That, of course, all changed soon enough.

At precisely eight o'clock, Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters apparated directly into the Ministry's main lobby. All was silent, save for the cracks of incoming wizards.

Voldemort made a quick scan of the attendees, making sure that all forty had arrived, all in standard black cloaks with their customary masks in place. At the head of the group were his six ever-faithful inner circle members, while Hermione Granger was at the back, covering the rear in case there were any ambushes. Voldemort's considerable senses told him that nothing was amiss. So they have not arrive then, he mused, stroking his pale chin.

"Death Eaters," he said, letting his gaze sweep over them. "You have your tasks. Go now, and do not fail me."

The Death Eaters all made a swift, tight nod before breaking up into small groups and heading to the lifts. Soon, the vast repositories of knowledge at the Ministry of Magic would all be destroyed. Everything from the archives to the research, to the prophecies. All of it, slashed to ribbons, shattered, incinerated. Voldemort understood that institutions like the Ministry of Magic derived its strength not from the individuals but from their output. By striking at their knowledge-base, he would cripple them in a way that assassinations and tortures would never be able to achieve. Already having at his disposal the cornerstone of wizarding Britain's finances through his venerable pureblood followers, the destruction of the Ministry's vast data collection and archival system would grind their operations to a halt. From there, key assassinations would simply pave the way for the ascension of his followers to the highest ranks of the Ministry. Within three months, his power-base within the Ministry would be solidified, whereupon he could effectuate laws that would advantage his cause, centralize and consolidate power within his grip. It was merely a bonus that, tonight, the muggle-loving upstarts that had dared oppose him would be crushed, thinning out the ranks of his future opponents. It was, all in all, too much to ask for, but he knew it could be done. After all, he was Lord Voldemort. Who among them could possibly challenge him? Especially when he still had his vampires and werewolves, the bulk of whom were set to arrive upon his signal. They may have developed tools to fight wizards, relying on their muggle toys, but they couldn't possibly be prepared for the onslaught of the undead.

Eight thirty.

Ron, Dean, Collin, Dennis and Katie found themselves digging their heels into the ground in the center of the Hall of Prophecies. They formed a tight ring, their backs to one another, each of them carrying a pistol in one hand, a wand in the other as they stared down the twenty or so vampires that now lurked amongst the shelves. Some of them were visible, others weren't. One glided down from overhead, effectively forming a five-way pincer with them in the shadows all around.

"Fire at will," Ron said in a tightly controlled voice. He put a bullet through the head of the vampire overhead, sending it crashing down in the small, empty space at the center of their ring. Suddenly, as if triggering the powderkeg, vampires from all corners converged on them, moving with their customary lightning speed. Just as swiftly, twenty rounds were fired in the span of a single second, blowing chunks of flesh off their bodies, blood spattering, black veins forming wherever the poisoned bullets struck home, stopping half the vampires in their tracks to double over in fiery agony as the unicorn essence seeped through their bodies. In a flash, ten vampires were downed before they broke through the quintet's defenses.

"Ergh," Ron grunted as a vampire impacted with his chest, causing him to stagger back and trip over the dead body of a vampire. He twisted in mid-fall, swinging the gun around and plugging three quick bullets into the creature's torso, one of them exiting through the creature's back and nicking another oncoming vampire in the cheek before the bullet vanished in mid-flight.

"Collin, behind you!" cried Dennis, who Ron briefly noticed out of the periphery of his vision was being lifted into the air and thrown bodily into one of the shelves. He picked himself up, but before he could fire another shot, the vampire in front of him lunged forward and swiped at his hand, cutting into the skin of his palm as the gun was batted to the side. "Arbrum reducto," said Ron, a wooden stake erupting from his wand and impaling the creature. Ron summoned a collection of four prophecies in his direction, each of them impacting on a gaggle of vampires' heads, stunning them briefly as their heads clouded over with misty images of apparitions that were speaking in creepy tones.

"What the-?" one asked, his life swiftly extinguished as Ron pumped him full of .22 caliber rounds while simultaneously discharging wooden stakes at his friends. Gore and blood pooled around them, not that Ron noticed as he whirled around, gun and wand smoking, Dennis on the floor knocked out, a deep gash along his throat that was swiftly spilling blood. His other companions seemed to have moved down the aisles, and he could see that Katie was sporting an injured arm, her wand now put away, while Dean and Collin were missing altogether.

Ron did a quick body count. There seemed to be about twenty bodies down. Any others would seek to strike in stealth. Ron thus knelt before Dennis and examined his wound. It was rather severe, but he was confident he would be all right. Swiftly sealing the wound with his wand, Ron then proceeded to administer a blood replenishing potion, all the while looking around. The sudden rush of battle had exhilarated him, and the adrenaline that had begun coursing through his veins was in full swing. The quiet report of a gun caught his attention, drawing his gaze to the side, where he saw Katie pointing it at some place overhead. Sure enough, there was a vampire hiding in the shadows looking down upon him, blood now dripping out of his smashed up face. He gave her a thumbs up and finished ministering to Dennis, who he quickly enervated.

"S'okay," Ron said softly, keeping a firm hand down on Dennis's torso as he struggled to consciousness, his mind still awash with the battle. "You got your wand?" Ron asked.

"Er, yeah," Dennis replied quietly, now looking around.

"Good," Ron said, letting go and standing up and giving Dennis a helping hand, which he took.

"They dispatched?"

Ron shrugged. "A whole whack of them are, yeah. Still more, I reckon. C'mon." The two met up with Katie, who was breathing hard, and, upon closer inspection, Ron noticed that there was some heavy bruising around her abdomen.

"Fuckers got a mean kick," she said, wheezing. "Vest's kept me alive."

"You need to get back to the infirmary," Ron said, gently touching her torso. "Looks broken."

Katie waved away his words with a hand. "I can still fight."

"You're returning right away," said Ron. "And you too, Dennis. You can come back together. No buts about it." He shoved a portkey into her hand and whispered the activation word before she could let go of it, thus sending her and Dennis away with a slight popping sound. Ron conjured a handful of sparrow patroni and sent them out in all directions, searching both for friends and for foe. One came back and led him to an injured vampire that was nursing a fractured arm in the shadows. Ron put a bullet in its head without hesitating before turning around to see three patroni whirling around another vampire, this one with a broken leg, who had been limping towards him, the patroni trying to distract him long enough for Ron to become aware of the creature's presence. It hissed viciously as Ron raised his gun. He pulled the trigger, and the creature collapsed to the ground dead.

After a thorough search of the hall, Ron, Dean and Collin made their way across the glass littered floor en route to another room.

"Avada kedavra," came the voice of an unknown Death Eater somewhere to their left. Immediately, one of Ron's sparrows dived in the way, intercepting the curse, the two annihilating one another in the process. The Death Eater was momentarily stunned and therefore did nothing when all three of them whirled around and fired rounds into his chest, blowing apart his thorax cavity and causing a slight fizzing sound from the depressurization. Two curses hit them in the back, one a bone-shattering curse and another a reductor. Ron was pitched forward from the force, but managed to turn around in mid-fall and fire off another four swift rounds, satisfied when he saw the bullet pass right through the Death Eater's magical shield and hit him right in the heart. Collin and Dean dispatched another two Death Eaters that had crept up around the side of the nearest shelf. Without being given a second to enjoy their victory, they found all the glass orbs around them exploding in a fit of shards and smoke and wispy vaporous figures chanting ominously, their words all fusing together to form an incoherent cacophony.

Ron instinctively rolled over to one side, his body coming up against Collin's as he peered through the mass of ghostly images. Not sure who was all where, he silently fired off a pair of stunners, one of them hitting another prophecy in the distance, as he heard the glass shatter. Quickly, he scrambled to his feet, and just managed to throw himself out of the way of a killing curse, conjuring up a shield to block yet another one. Two Death Eaters, he thought, grimly, the prophecies now starting to fade. He heard the distinct sound of silenced gunfire and felt warm, sticky blood splatter across his face. Looking up, he saw a vampire collapsing in front of him.

Damn, he thought, still aware that there were two Death Eaters about. Ron rolled out of the way and scanned around, searching for Dean and the two assailants. Collin seemed to be out cold on the floor. With a wide, sweeping gesture with his wand, he conjured a sea of patronus flowers that blanketed the surrounding area. He hoped he had conjured enough light magic to negate dark magic usage generally. It would depend on the strength of his opponents.

They didn't seem to be anywhere. From his left, he heard the Death Eater incant the killing curse, and to his relief, there was no green light. "Accio invisibility cloak," Ron said," pointing his wand in the direction of the sound of the voice. Sure enough, a shimmering silver object came flying off a Death Eater, knocking him over in the process as the cloak extricated itself from his body. Before Ron could snatch it, however, another person incanted the bone shattering curse, and Ron dived forward, flattening himself to the ground as the curse flew by overhead. Ron rolled over and fired two quick rounds in the direction of the Death Eater, but he had already moved away. The first one tried the killing curse again, but it still did not work. However, the mere attempt seemed to call enough dark magic to him that it was wilting the patronus flowers, and Ron knew he couldn't rely on it a third time. "Arbrum reducto," he said, sending a wooden stake at the Death Eater, who easily side-stepped it and returned with the bone shattering curse yet again. The curse hit him directly in the chest, again the vest absorbing the brunt of the spell, leaving Ron free and clear to send off a retaliatory hex without breaking stride. "Flambé," Ron said, internally wincing at his own stupidity and cursing his mother for forcing all those stupid cooking spells on him. Oddly enough, though, it struck home and seemed to do the trick, because the Death Eater began screaming in pain as he was roasted to a nice, golden brown through and through.

From behind him, he heard Dean ask if he were all right. Ron nodded and said, "Yeah." Dean helped him to his feet, Ron wincing as he felt the bruises underneath his flak jacket. "You took out the other guy?" Ron asked. Dean nodded. Ron noticed, however, that he didn't have his wand out, and Ron gave him a questioning look.

Dean grimaced. "Had to chuck it in the way of the killing curse," he explained. "Damned scariest thing I ever did in my whole life, coming face to face with that curse." He then shrugged. "I can't thank you enough for making us learn to do that."

Ron nodded in acknowledgment of the compliment. "Yeah, well, it once saved a Death Eater's life. Figured it had to be pretty useful."

Dean smiled. "Except that I'm out of a wand."

"Take one of their wands," Ron said, pointing to the dead Death Eater. Dean went over and tried to pick it up, only to yelp in pain and let it fall back to the ground. Curiously, Ron joined him and kneeled down, tentatively touching the wand and, feeling the sharp burning shock at the contact, gently rolled it over using his wand tip and examined the wood. At the base there was a peculiar marking, which Ron could only guess at being a rune. He looked up at Dean and said, "Doesn't look like we're going to get to use Death Eater wands tonight. Go back to HQ and get a spare one. Take him with you and return when you two are ready. Don't come alone." Ron pointed at Collin, who was lying unconscious, his breathing shallow. He looked to be in a bad way, judging from the angle of his limbs and the pallor of his skin.

Dean did so, and, suddenly, Ron realized that he was alone. As proficient a fighter as he was, he knew that it was extremely hard for one person to take on more than two opponents. He himself wouldn't have survived nearly as long as he had without the pistols, the Kevlar vest, and his patronus wand.

Still, he was a Gryffindor and not one to back down, even if it were the sensible option. As such, he moved forward, taking care to fire off rounds as he whirled around corners, keeping patroni fluttering about him at all times to watch his back as he searched the Hall of Prophecies for anymore enemies. When he found none, he breathed a momentary sigh of relief before making his way to the next room. Only after walking through the door and peering about did he realize just exactly where he was. The veil room.

Down at the center stood the Colonel, her gaze fixed on the arch, a pensive expression on her face. She cast a reductor curse at the thing, her expression growing more thoughtful as it impacted on the stone and fizzled away.

She's trying to figure out how to destroy it, Ron thought. Curious, I wonder why. Then again, the vampires were in the process of shattering prophecy orbs when they had come across them in the Hall of Prophecies. As Ron took a moment to study her, he felt a sudden tingling sensation, as though his magic were coming in contact with a familiar taste. Before he could reflect on it, he saw Hermione walking around the other side of the veil. There's two of them, he thought grimly. He figured he had an even chance of beating either one or the other in a duel, but the pair of them together... Go get back up, the rational part of his mind instructed him. However, he did not move.

It did not take long for the two women to notice him. The Colonel remained emotionless, while Hermione just smirked.

Here comes the taunting, Ron thought, keeping a grip on his pistol. However, words, it seemed, were not going to be exchanged. Both of them gave each other a quick glance before firing off a volley of hard spells, including two cruciatuses, one killing curse and a smattering of cutting hexes. The duel had begun.

Neville fingered the portkey as it dropped him in one of the lower levels of the Ministry. He looped the chain around his neck and let it drop under his shirt. It would not do for others to see the curious object that could be used to trace the PA's operations back to Hogwarts. All around him, there were a number of directions he could go, and, despite it all, there was a persistent silence that was distinctly unnerving. Neville had decided a long time ago, long before he met Luna Lovegood, long before he joined the Phoenix Army, that, if there were a way, he would do this one thing. He would put an end to Bellatrix Lestrange's life. Even if it meant sacrificing his own. It was a funny feeling, knowing that you were prepared to die for something as emotionally unhealthy as revenge. He had never given Luna any illusions that this one task, this one driving motivation that had taken residence in his mind and his heart trumped all other considerations. He supposed that she, out of everyone he knew, would be the only one to understand that it came as part of the Longbottom package. Never once had she tried to change him, and for that he was grateful.

Neville eventually found Bella in courtroom number ten. She was in the process of reducing all the benches, chairs podiums and boxes to splintered ruins. It took Neville a moment to understand why it was that she seemed so gleeful about destroying what was a strategically useless place. Ah, he thought, realization dawning on him. This is the courtroom where she was sentenced to Azkaban. She must really have gone around the bend, then. No matter, she's still a menace and still guilty.

Unable to cast more than a simple lumos with his non-dominant hand, Neville had been rendered pretty much a squib thanks to Hermione's liberal use of raw dark energy. It was kind of ironic, really, since it had only been in the last year or so that he had managed to scrape acceptable marks and had been able to become a productive member of the PA. And within a few months, the things he had finally strived to master for so long, the things that made him feel worthwhile in the world had been cruelly torn from him.

As he stood there, silently watching the one who tormented his parents, he reflected on the long Christmas days spent in the anti-septic calm of the Janis Thickey ward. He remembered the chill feel of his own embarrassment during his fifth year when his classmates had seen his parents like that. He remembered spying from the shadows when he was five, his uncle Algie and his grandmother discussing what traumatic experience to inflict upon him to galvanize his magic, and he remembered slinking away back to his bedroom, stunned at what they planned to do. Terrified and wanting nothing more than his mother and his father to hold him. He remembered feeling weak and pathetic and crying and berating himself, because he knew he would never have a parent. No one would ever tell him they loved him, would coo softly to him and hold him in a warm embrace when he had something as childish as a nightmare. He remembered wanting to grow up as quickly as possible, but not knowing how. He did not know how to cut himself from those wants that would never be satisfied.

I'm worth ten of you, Bellatrix Lestrange, Neville thought fiercely, a tear coming to his eye as he watched the devil of his childhood nightmares prance around amidst the pools of floating dust. I'm worth ten of you. Neville pulled out the .38 caliber pistol and aimed it at her, all the while she was oblivious to his presence. For a moment, he wasn't sure he was going to be able to hold the gun steady, even after all the training, all the life-sized Bellatrix Lestrange replicas he had blown apart in the room of requirement. It would be a fitting end if I missed, he thought bitterly, absently noting that he had bitten his tongue somewhere in the last few minutes. The tang of blood, the sting of the wound felt alive to him, somehow. It made him feel real.

Bellatrix stopped casting spells, seeming to be satisfied with her handiwork. "Take that, Ministry!" she exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air. It struck Neville as being odd, because it seemed like such a childish gesture. It was incongruous with the image of a crazed terrorist and sadistic torturer.

No matter, he thought grimly, undoing the safety on the pistol. None of it matters now.

Bellatrix paused in her survey of the room, and Neville could see a frown creasing her smile. She cast about as if looking for something before turning in a slow circle, eventually coming to face Neville. She looked quizzically in his direction as if searching for something, as if sensing him. Not that she would find anything, he knew. He had so little magic in him, he hardly would register in the Ministry on her magical sense charms, and he was motionless. He had learned just enough occlumancy to keep hidden from prying eyes. He wondered if maybe they shared a connection with one another, like the way Harry had with Voldemort.

"Hello?" she asked, her eyes locking with his, though she didn't know it.

It's now or never, he thought, idly caressing the trigger with his index finger. It's now or never.

Bellatrix seemed to shake herself, as if from a trance and proceeded to take one final glance at the carnage she had inflicted on the room that had brought her and Harry Potter, oddly enough, so much anxiety.

Neville pulled the trigger. Silently, the bullet was discharged from the gun, its magical essences occluded by the Kevlar shielding. Still, Bellatrix seemed to sense it coming, for she turned back to face him, locking gazes with him once more as the bullet made its silent way across the space between them. And then, in a flash, it hit, plunging into her heart with the kind of sudden, blunt force such that it took several seconds for her brain to process that she had been fatally wounded. She looked down at her body, even as she took a staggered step backward, blood now soaking through her clothes and dripping down the wound, her heart pumping blood out of her body. She still didn't seem to comprehend what had happened, how it was that she had been wounded so. She merely stared at the wound for a long time before looking up and locking her gaze with Neville's for a third and final time. She seemed to want to speak, but no words came out. Instead, she simply mouthed one word, which Neville found he could make out: Longbottom.

Neville fired two more rounds, which mangled her torso, and caused her to crumple to the ground dead. Now that it was done, he felt as though it were rather dissatisfying. Not really knowing why he wanted to do it, Neville walked up to her body and aimed his gun yet again. He then proceeded to depress the trigger, letting one bullet discharge and hit her carcass. Still not feeling satisfied. Neville fired another shot. And then another. He kept firing shots, one at a time, for what seemed like several minutes. After the sixtieth round, at which point she was no longer recognizable as human, Neville stopped and stepped away, holstering his gun and surveying his handiwork. Was he satisfied? Yes, he thought so.

It was done.

Luna and Katie fitted themselves with flak jackets and walked out of the hospital wing.

"You ready?" Katie asked, lighting a cigarette with a Zippo and inhaling before holding out the non-descript ring that was to serve as their portkey.

Luna merely nodded.

"All right. Let's rock." Katie took one final drag before tossing the smoke to the ground and snuffing it out with the tip of her steel-toed boot. Luna touched a finger to the portkey and Katie activated the transport device by annunciating clearly one word. "Kilgore."

They disappeared from Hogwarts and reappeared in the auror complex inside the Ministry. Already drawing their wands, they began rapid firing rounds into the vampires, Death Eaters and werewolves that were all around them.

In about ten seconds, they'd mowed down ten opponents before their enemies had the sense to duck for cover. Immediately, they were assaulted with no less than five killing curses, which Luna aptly dispatched by firing bullets into their pathway, demonstrating inhumanly precise marksmanship as she continued to press the assault on the hapless Death Eaters.

"Accio!" cried one of the Death Eaters, sticking his wand out from between an ink blotter and a quill holder. "Protago," Luna said, sounding almost bored as she deflected the summoning charm that was meant to deprive her of her gun. She turned the weapon to the death Eater, who had not realized that the bullets would shoot clean through the cheap particle board crap that the desks were made of. As such, his face was smashed into by three bullets before his body jerked backwards, his entire skull exploding and sending globs of grey, wet fleshy material everywhere.

Vampires, who were known for their notorious persistence, made a suicide dive attempt on Luna. She picked off the first one of five with three bullets that tore through its neck, effectively decapitating it. It gurgled a cry of futile rage before collapsing in a heap. Luna managed to hit the next one in line clean in the head, its eyes rolling about as its life spilled from it, and, before it collapsed to the ground, she then proceeded to fire rounds into the third vampire, while, at the same time, discharging wooden stakes at the fourth, one of which impaled the creature through its mouth, skull and brain fragments flying out the back of its head and into the fifth vampire, who, in a rage, hurled itself over the final distance and came down on top of Luna, who, showing still more uncanny virulence, cleaved it in two with a powerful cutting hex, causing gastro-intestinal juices to come pouring down atop her head as its body parts crashed limply around her.

A Death Eater appeared from behind a bookshelf, terror painting every one of his aristocratic features. He threw his wand to the ground and said, "I give up! I surrender."

Luna just smiled sweetly. "Of course you do." And then, in what would have seemed like an uncharacteristic gesture to those who didn't know her, she pulled the trigger of her pistol yet again and vaporized the Death Eater's head in a shower of still more bouts of brains and bones and blood.

Katie, while not quite as proficient as her partner, was still doing a decent job of shredding her opponents to bits. Never once letting go of the trigger of her gun, she just continued discharging an endless stream of lethal rounds at all her opponents. She couldn't claim to do that neat trick that Luna could do where she picked off curses with bullets, but that didn't mean Katie was a slouch. No, it just meant that she had to move a little more smoothly and with a little more grace, which she did.

"Avada kedavra."

"Avada kedavra."

"Avada kedavra."

At the same time as the three killing curses were sent off, four vampires came plunging down towards her from overhead, their arms reaching out to her like mindless inferi.

Katie collapsed to the ground, expertly performing a roll that put her out of the way of the three curses and the four vampires. One of them actually took the curse full on in the chest. The creature, which Katie thought was soulless, and thus immune to the dreaded curse, proved to experience unusual effects. The vampire's eyes bulged out of its sockets until they cracked and began bleeding, and then, in a fit of seizures, it exploded, sending pungent bits of itself in all directions. Katie turned her wand on herself and muttered, "Impervio," while promptly firing off several rounds into the vampires that were preparing to pounce. She downed to of them in a spray of bullets that turned them into bloodied carcasses. The fourth leapt over the gunfire and came crashing down on top of her, and taking a chunk of her arm with a swipe of its vicious claws. Bucking hard, she rolled the creature off, following suit by rolling on top of him and continuing to sideways somersault them until she caught the sight of incoming spellfire out of the periphery of her vision, at which point she suffered through a gash in the side of her neck in order to lift the creature in the air so that its head came into contact with a bone shattering curse. Immediately, its head partly exploded, with bone fragments jutting out of its skin at all angles as it lolled about drunkenly. Katie threw it carelessly to the floor before leaning over and, without hesitating, began firing still more rounds into the direction of the Death Eaters. One of them poked his head out at the wrong time and got a face full of bullets.

Jumping to her feet and sidestepping two more curses, she made a quick dash for their positions. One of them caught her with the cruciatus, but not before she fired off a round that hit the Death Eater in the throat, causing a wild spurt of blood to coat the upturned desk he had been using as cover. The last of them, seeing his chance to attack while Katie was still recovering from the cruciatus, fired off the killing curse, which hit dead on. Both of them froze in horror as Katie was hit, but, after a moment of expecting to die, she merely blinked and looked down. The Death Eater bit his lip furiously as the realization of what had happened filtered through his brain.

"You can't cast it?" Katie said aloud, incredulous. "You're just some fucking dumbass who can't cast the goddamned killing curse? Jesus fuck me." Katie got to her feet and pointed her wand at the still stunned and embarrassed Death eater and said, "Diffindo." The cutting hex went clean through his throat, his head rolling off to one side and his neck spouting off bubbles of blood as his body fell lifeless to the floor. "What a loser," she said, going up to his body and kicking it for good measure. "Goddamned, fucking recruits," she said, still shaking her head. "Where the fuck's the challenge?"

Just then, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange entered the room, their gazes sweeping over the carnage that Luna and Katie had wreaked upon the recruits.

"Well," Rabastan drawled, eyeing the two girls speculatively. Luna sidled up next to Katie and gave her a tight nod.

"S'pose you boys want to play," Katie called back, idly twirling the pistol in her hand.

The Lestrange brothers took two steps apart from one another and then raised their wands, their black cloaks billowing about them ominously. "Yeah, we do," was the only response that came back to the girls.

They duelled.

Despite the fall of darkness over Britain, the sky over Technoparc still shone with blood red light. Bono approached, his body smoothly navigating the cracked rocks and weeds and carcasses of vultures strewn about the fields that surrounded Voldemort's playground. Even from here, he could sense the Dark Lord's familiar, Nagini. She was indeed powerful, as Harry had warned. Her blood red eyes seemed to pierce the curtain of darkness as though she were searching for him. It was decidedly unnerving. Still Bono remained resolved to forge ahead, determined not to let Harry Potter down. Tonight, Bono would kill Nagini or die trying.

He felt the distinct sizzle of his skin as it contacted with the wards at the edge of the terrible city. It felt as though it were trying to eat him and squeeze him at the same time, but Bono was not deterred. He simply pushed ahead, its eight foot long body moving inexorably towards the Four Seasons, where Bono felt Nagini waiting.

Technoparc's streets were alive with all manner of creatures, ranging from vampires to werewolves to inferi. The chewed up, half-eaten, mutilated bodies of muggles were strewn about as the various dark creatures revelled in their own madness. The cement was stained with dried blood. One of the vampire's got too close, and Bono simply lashed at it with its powerful tail, breaking the creature's ribs and sending it sprawling to the asphalt, all the while Bono hissing invectives at it. A werewolf moved forward, its growl low, but Bono only spared it a glance, its yellow eyes boring into the dark creature and effectively striking it dead. The sentient creatures around seemed to understand that something foreign and powerful was amidst them, and they wisely receded into the darkness to continue muggle hunting. Some of the inferi dared to approach Bono, but they were quickly dispatched with the same efficient ease, Bono using his powerful tail to break their bones, and using his powerful jaws to sever heads.

Before long, he slithered up to the gates of the five star hotel, pausing only once to peer through the windows in search of signs of life. There was nothing, and so Bono pushed through the front doors. He expanded his legilimantic sense and, once feeling Nagini on the fifteenth floor, proceeded to climb the steps. Taking them one at a time, Bono made his way slowly to the top of the tower.

She feels me, Bono thought. She is waiting.

Despite the fact that it was a grueling trial making it up fifteen flights, it seemed to come to an end all too quickly. Bono moved down the hall until he reached the Presidential Suite. With another thump of his tail, Bono smashed the magnetic door locking system and pushed his way into the spacious living room of Nagini's private quarters. It took Bono no time at all to pinpoint Nagini's exact position. She remained relaxed, all fifteen feet of her coiled tightly near the large window overlooking the main street. Her head came up and her red eyes met Bono's. It was a peculiar sight to behold, the two snakes locking gazes. They held each other captive in those gazes for a long time, both of them exerting their superior legilimantic powers in an attempt to best one another. Unsurprisingly, neither gained any ground that way.

If Nagini were a normal snake, Bono would have been able to destroy her without breaking a sweat. However, this dark creature before him was far from normal. She uncoiled herself and moved toward him with a Slytherin grace that was bedeviling. For the first time, Bono entertained the possibility that he might lose.

At the stroke of ten, Harry descended the lift to the Ministry atrium. He compulsively toggled between checking his watch and glancing out at the horizon where Technoparc stood. Bono had seemed all too casual about his confrontation with Nagini and it worried him. It would not do to underestimate Voldemort's familiar. Still, there was nothing for it. He had to have faith in Bono. It was the least he could do for the creature he had adopted as his second familiar; for the creature that called him his master.

Harry wasn't sure what to make of the quietude that permeated the atrium. That old instinct he once had to rush off in search of his friends was gone now. Whether that was because he had faith in their abilities to survive or because he felt they were responsible for the costs of the burdens they chose to incur, he did not know. He had his part to play, just as they had theirs.

Not even having completed his first step, Harry felt the onset of the oppressive tingle of dark magic that pooled around the Dark Lord. He was not far. Distantly, he heard the screams of people, though whether it was Phoenix soldiers or Death Eaters he knew not. His senses told him that the Ministry was alive with people locked in combat, but he couldn't make out much, since they were scattered over several floors. Resolving to focus his attention on the Dark Lord, Harry picked his way soundlessly toward where he knew his nemesis was waiting. I'm coming for you, Voldemort, he thought, taking the lift to the sixth floor. To the Minister's private office.

The first thing Harry noticed when he stepped out of the lift was the sheer opulence that permeated every square inch of the open space that opened up before him. At the far end stood the reception desk where, presumably, Scrimgeour's secretary would spend his or her days sitting about doing whatever tasks were assigned to the person of such a station. Scrimgeour himself would be not far away, presumably behind the heavy oak doors that were, to Harry's disgust, adorned with a myriad of precious stones, ranging from emeralds to opals, diamonds and gold. The doors were closed, though that hardly dissuaded him. He knew from the second he stepped onto the floor that the Dark Lord was with him, that he was not far away.

Leaning idly against the desk, and casually burning pages of notes and memos and appointment and call records stood Severus Snape. The former potions master glanced up at the golden boy of Gryffindor and instinctively sneered. "Well, well," he said, not even bothering to snap to attention at the presence of a mortal enemy. "It appears the Chosen One has arrived. I assure you, I am quaking in fear."

"Good evening, Snape," Harry said, continuing to exude an aura of icy calm, which, to a casual passerby, would be mistaken as a tone of complete and utter lack of interest.

If Snape noticed Harry's newfound control over his emotions, he made no show of it. Instead, he just pressed on, "At least you've decided not to hide yourself away and cower, like your mudblood mother. Though I suppose stupidity could hardly be described as a more desirable trait than cowardice. I suppose it's true you do have more of your father in you."

"It's a pleasure to see you again also," Harry replied, still with that same determined calm, a hint of wryness in his voice. "Do the honours and kill me swiftly, won't you?"

"Pah," Snape said, assuming a more formal posture and aiming his wand at Harry. "You're arrogant to the end, Potter. It's fitting you should die that way. As much as I would like to spend time torturing you, perhaps cutting those putrid green eyes out of your head, I have better and more important things to do. As such, I will simply kill you outright. But before I do, I just want you to know that your mangy godfather didn't die by Bellatrix's hand alone. I spent the better part of a year planting suggestions into his dementor-addled mind. He was too good of a dueller to fall prey to her by mere accident. Certainly he had enough practice during his school years. I would know. By the time he made it to the Ministry, he would have been half-drunk with all the suggestions of self-loathing and recklessness that I embedded in his unconscious. It was only fortunate that the dementors had completely vaporized any occlumancy shields he might have once had."

"Were you ever loyal to the Order?" Harry asked, more out of curiosity than anything.

Snape smiled cruelly. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. For a time, even after the Dark Lord returned, though loyalty is not exactly the word I would use to describe it. No, it's something else."

Harry nodded to himself, satisfied. "I see. You were simply playing both sides waiting to see who would gain the upper hand. Very Slytherin. Not unlike Pettigrew."

Snape seemed almost taken aback to be paralleled with the quivering rat. But just as quickly, he composed himself and smirked. "Enough of this, Potter. Go join the mutt and the mudblood. Avada kedavra."

With an imperceptible flick of his wand, Harry sent an eight foot long silver javelin hurling from his wand at a speed of two hundred metres per second. Snape barely had time to register surprise as the flying silver weapon absorbed his curse, and continued on its way undeterred. Even as the javelin punched clean through his breastbone and came out the other side so that it was jutting from both ends of his body, his mind was still trying to process how it was that the boy could send a permanently conjured object of such size and shape at such speed with hardly an iota of concentration. Snape would have collapsed to the floor, except that the tip of the javelin had gone far enough that it buried itself into the wood of the reception desk, so that Snape was forced to die standing on his feet.

Harry went up to him and looked into his deep, black eyes, all the while his skin growing paler and paler as blood continued to pour out of the hole in his front and back. Snape seemed to try and say something, but all that came out was a gurgling noise followed by blood and spit, that now dripped down his chin. "It's quite possible that the Dark Lord will win," Harry said in a rather casual tone. "Still, I wonder, Severus. What good will it do you? For a Slytherin, you made a grave miscalculation."

Harry then proceeded to leave Severus there, functionally stapled to the desk as he dripped blood and gastrointestinal juices onto the soft, carpet floor. In an uncharacteristically reserved fashion, Harry opened the large oak doors with a gentleness that belied the battle that was about to commence. Inside, Harry found Voldemort sitting in the Minister's chair, his long legs raised so that his feet were using the desk as a foot rest. He was idly flipping through some internal document when he finally looked up to see Harry standing in the doorway.

"Ah, Mr. Potter," Voldemort said, lowering his legs and standing with one fluid motion, simultaneously extricating his wand from his robes. "It is good to finally see you again."

"Likewise, Tom," Harry said, neither his voice nor his face expressing anything other than the deepest calm.

"Disfugio," said Lord Voldemort.

"Ressendra," replied Harry.

They duelled.

Katie was well aware that there was a huge difference between a Death Eater recruit and a member of the Dark Lord's inner circle. Still, she hadn't imagined that much would get in her way when it came to taking down a jumped up pureblood like Rodolphus. How wrong she was.

It had taken her several long and agonizing seconds to understand how it was that her pistol had no effect on him.

Within a span of three seconds, she had fired off a dozen rounds, smugly watching to see how badly he would be mangled by the volley of bullets. So, it was to her dismay when she realized that not a single one hit its target.

Wordlessly, Rodolphus fired off the cruciatus curse, which clipped Katie in the arm as she twirled out of the way, firing off two more rounds, as she tried to understand how it was that her bullets were missing. She could see that many of them were striking the wall behind her adversary.

A cutting charm slashed across her shin, forcing her to take cover from another dark curse aimed at her lower half. Ten minutes into the battle, she became acutely aware that her foe was not taking a single shot at her torso, which was heavily protected by the flak jackets. Moreover, he was wearing some sort of object that had a powerful repulsion or diversion charm that was insulating him from the bullets by causing them to swerve to either side. Clearly, he had anticipated the PA's strategies. She could only assume that they had overtaken a PA member and had spent the last half hour pumping their victim for information. Katie wondered who the unlucky sod was.

"Imperio," said Rodolphus. Terrified at the thought of being controlled, Katie threw her gun at the spell, deflecting it and firing off a handful of reductor curses, as well as summoning a sneakoscope that bonked Rodolphus on the back of his head. A reductor clipped him in the shoulder, but he hardly seemed to notice, despite the bruising. "Avada kedavra," he said, once more, though Katie, now having gotten to her feet, managed to evade the curse and charm a chair to attack Rodolphus to keep him distracted long enough for her to numb the tingling feeling from where the cruciatus had hit her in the arm and to heal a number of the more serious cuts on her legs and arms.

From across the room, not twenty-five feet away, she could see Luna exchanging heavy fire with Rabastan, using her pistol fire to absorb the unforgiveables and her wand to send off a variety of hexes and curses, creating a multi-coloured light show that was rather awe-inspiring. You go girl, Katie thought, dodging another unforgiveable and summoning a liberal supply of paper clips to intercept the next volley of spells, all the while firing back with the usual jinxes. She managed to hit Rodolphus with the trip jinx, though he recovered before falling down. His momentary lapse did give Katie enough of a chance to slash his heel with a cutting curse, causing a liberal amount of blood to come pouring out of the wound. Rodolphus was up in a flash, his face contorted into a look of fury. He began rattling off curses at high speed, forcing Katie to take cover behind a desk and throw out a protection shield for the steady stream of dark curses that seeped past the desk. He's really pissed off. She managed to slip a reductor curse under the desk and, to her surprise, hit Rodolphus squarely in the shin, causing the bone to break from the impact and sending him sprawling to the floor. Bonus! she thought, jumping to her feet and firing off a stunner. Rodolphus summoned the desk to him, using it as a shield much like Katie had been doing earlier. She quickly took cover behind a bookshelf just as an evisceration curse whizzed by her. Before long, Rodolphus was back on his feet, though now with a pronounced limp, and he was coming for her, slowly pushing the desk in her direction as he decreased the space between them. There was a disturbed, manic glint in his eyes that Katie did not like. Spotting her gun just to the left of him, she had a bright idea. Aiming her wand at it, she said, "Reducto." Rodolphus didn't even bother blocking it, since it wasn't aimed at him. The curse hit the pistol dead on, causing it to explode in a spray of metal shrapnel, much of it reacting volatilely with the numerous enchantments already on the pistol.

"Ergh," Rodolphus managed, grunting and staggering out from behind his makeshift shield. Katie, having a clear shot, sent another stunner at him. He managed to block it, however, and fire off a killing curse that forced her to retreat behind her own desk. Peripherally, she saw that Luna and Rabastan were still duelling fiercely, though now they were a lot closer. Good grief, she thought irritably. Why don't these guys just die already? Of course, she knew the answer to that question. The Lestranges were as hard as they came.

Before too long, they had destroyed each other's defenses, forcing them to move apart to give them more maneuvering room. Katie found herself engaging in something that might have resembled a Spanish dance, as she twirled expertly, jumped, rolled and dived to avoid unforgiveable curses. She fired off a stunner just as a beam of orange light flooded her vision from the side, causing her to instinctively jump backwards, the sizzle of dark magic singing the tip of her nose. She whipped around to see that it had been a stray curse of Rabastan's that had almost done her in. Luna was engaged in a similar macabre dance and they were so close now that whatever spells they were casting that weren't being blocked were spilling into her own duel.

Rodolphus didn't seem to be quite as aware of the collateral spellfire, and instead focused on sending a confundus curse and a cruciatus. Katie threw herself in the way of the former to avoid the latter, much of it dissipating against her flak jacket. She fired off a stunner and a sharp, wooden projectile. The combination was deadly because there were few shields that could block both a magical attack and a physical one. Rodolphus did the sensible thing and summoned a collection of books to take the stunner while sidestepping the wooden stake, to which Katie just smiled. She had heard about Harry's clever use of a summoning charm and a banishment charm to create a boomerang effect when battling a Death Eater at the Leaky Cauldron. The stake flew harmlessly past only to curve around with the use of a summoning charm and come straight back for the Death Eater, who was caught unawares. Still, the task took more of her attention than she had thought it would, and was caught off guard by a cutting hex that sliced open her side. Katie grimaced from the pain and staggered to the side collapsing to one knee as she saw the stake punch clean through her opponent's stomach. He fired off another curse which Katie dodged partly, adding yet another vicious slash to her face. Rodolphus finally seemed to realize he had been mortally wounded and thus gazed down at his insides streaming out from the wound in little rivulets.

"Gotcha, motherfucker," she wheezed, still holding her wand out to cast another curse. They both fired spells which collided with one another in midair, sending one off in the direction of Luna's battle.

Rodolphus tracked the spells with his eyes and seemed to notice Luna gaining the upper hand on his brother. With a malicious smile, he aimed his wand and said, "Avada kedavra." Luna seemed acutely focused on delivering the deathblow to Rabastan and was therefore completely unaware of her impending death. No, Katie thought fiercely, already aware that she was most likely dying from her injured liver, if the black pus-like substance spilling from her body was any indication. The unforgiveables connect through your magic, she remembered Ron saying once, instructing them on proper handling of the curses. As such, she conjured a remote shield to absorb the curse. "Absorbia ex proxima," she managed despite the pain. A translucent pink shield flickered to life next to Luna, who surprised at the sight of it, stopped to look and see as the green light of the killing curse impacted with it. She glanced around and saw Katie's eyes widen as the killing curse disappeared and for a moment, lit up the otherwise invisible string of magic that connected her to her remote shield. And then, in the quarter second it took to travel up that invisible string, it struck home, snuffing out Katie's life and leaving her collapsed on the floor.

Without wasting another moment, Luna put a bullet in Rabastan's head at point blank range. The most powerful diversion or misdirection charm in the world wasn't going to deflect a bullet from that close.

Rabastan's eyes rolled into the back of his head before he pitched forward dead, his wand already having been broken. Luna turned to Rodolphus, who was seething with rage at the loss of his brother. "Bitch," he swore, his brown eyes fixed upon her.

Luna simply cocked her head as if inviting him to take her on, which he did, though it was a futile effort. Having already been impaled and on the cusp of death, he was operating on pure adrenalin, which Luna took advantage of. Given that his mobility had been reduced, Luna took a page out of Harry's book and apparated a nearby book into Rodolphus's head, effectively killing him on the spot. He had no way to dodge and his own internal magical defenses which were supposed to buffer him from that sort of thing were already so heavily depleted from keeping him alive long enough to get revenge that he had no defense from that kind of attack. As such, he died with paper absorbing the blood in his brain.

Luna brushed past him as his body collapsed to the ground. She knelt next to Katie and gently checked her pulse. There was none. Luna was not one for showing emotions and this time was no different. She merely took a moment to gently close Katie's eyes with her fingers and offer a moment of silence for her fallen comrade, before taking Katie's lifeless hand in her own, just as Harry had done in a graveyard so long ago with a fellow classmate. Her gaze still fixed to the sight of Katie's peaceful expression, Luna activated the portkey, causing them to disappear.

Ron realized early on that he was way in over his head with both Hermione and the Colonel. His only hope was that an ally might stumble in upon their battle and open a second front against them.

"Avis patroni," he said, launching a dozen patronus birds into the air, which provided a much needed shield from the multitude of spells approaching him. Simultaneously, he fired off a dozen rounds, only to discover that they were blocked by the erection of a giant granite wall.

"Avada kedavra," said the Colonel, killing off yet another patronus bird. With a wide arc of his wand, Ron conjured a sea of patronus flowers and vines and trees that spread out across the many surfaces of the room. Creepers sprouted over top of the archway as though it were a trellis. The light from the patroni gave the room an eerie, silver glow.

Without breaking stride, Hermione and the Colonel began firing off evisceration and bone shattering curses, which Ron raised a magical shield against. Simultaneously, he fired off more rounds from his pistol, hoping that it would be a sufficient offense. However, Hermione, quickly realizing the weakness of the weapon, hit the Colonel and herself with a trio of deflection spells, including the impervious charm, the diversion charm and the deflection charm, rendering the pistol all but useless. Despite the speed of the bullets, they were driven off course and sent striking the far wall.

Ron tossed himself to one side just as his shield collapsed and, as he hit the ground, cast a pair of cutting hexes, already rolling out of the way as a reductor curse struck the stone floor where he was just moments before. Neither Hermione nor the Colonel had to move much, as they could both rapid fire curses faster than he could. Ron took a bone shattering curse to the chest, but was saved by his flak jacket. He managed to graze the Colonel with a cutting hex on the cheek, but she hardly even flinched.

"Immolatus," said Hermione, waving her wand back and forth and shooting out a wild burst of fire that Ron instinctively doused with a jet of water. A silver arrow nicked his bicep on his wand arm, causing him to jerk to one side just as another past harmlessly by. slowly, he found himself being pushed to the far corner, where he knew he would end up being cornered.

This is ridiculous, he thought grimly, moving around the archway, and casting about for signs of objects he could transfigure or use as a shield. There was nothing and his conjurations sucked. He fired off a beam of raw energy, which Hermione blocked. Again, the two were advancing. Ron tried to fire a curse through the archway, but it disappeared into the veil and did not come out the other side. He wondered if he could somehow trip them up and send them stumbling through the veil, the way Sirius had done years prior.

"Avada kedavra," said the Colonel.

Slowly, they had been clearing away his patroni and were now able to cast dark magic once more. Ron raised a shield to deflect the killing curse, and took a reductor to the chest, again, saved by the flak jacket. He hit himself with the wingardiem leviosa spell, hoping that propelling himself into the air would give him some sort of advantage of surprise. As he felt the weightlessness take hold as he plunged through the air, he fired off a rapid succession of stunners, concentrating on Hermione, hoping to disable her and level the playing field. Needless to say, his aim was a little off and Hermione was fast. Still, he did not hesitate to fire off a streak of high powered stunners in her direction. To his surprise, he managed to clip her on the shoulder, causing her to drop her wand as she was in mid-roll, leaving it scattering to one side. Even as he crashed to the ground, he summoned it, amazed at his fortune. That is, until his brain registered the pain he was in from having twisted his ankle from the fall. He barely managed to roll toward the center of the room as an incendiary hex scorched the stone floor where he had lay just moments earlier. Instinctively, he cast a beam of raw energy, crazily aiming his wand about like a lunatic gunman.

He managed to throw another patronus in the way of a killing curse before he finally succumbed.

"Expelliarmus," said the Colonel, hitting Ron in his wand arm, effectively causing his wand to fly out of his grasp and sail through the air into her waiting hand. Delighted at having stripped him of his wand, the Colonel then said lazily, "Crucio."

Ron raised Hermione's wand in defense and tried to cast a patronus. However, to his horror, nothing came out. He could only assume that her wand had been laced with so much dark magic it had been effectively clogged. In a moment, however, he could conceive of nothing except that all-consuming pain that often came from exposure to the dreaded unforgiveable.

He screamed and writhed about, barely aware that his limbs were kicking at the stone ledge and the stone floor around him, causing even further injuries to himself, as he continued to be tortured. Barely able to make sense of his surroundings, he did manage to note that Hermione had regained her composure and had come to stand next to the Colonel. This is it for you, he thought to himself. You had a good run of it, but now it's time to move on.

Ron Weasley's life, it seemed, was at an end.

Harry's duel with Voldemort had started out simple enough. A killing curse here, a cruciatus there. It became clear soon enough that they were matched relatively well, all things considered. Harry was proving to have a tremendous reservoir of power behind him, to a level that even Voldemort could not claim to have, but he lacked the intimate experience that sixty years of living gave the Dark Lord. It appeared that spending thirteen years as a disembodied spirit did have an upshot.

Much of the Minister's office had been blasted apart, transfigured and conjured objects laying in splintered ruins at their feet. With a stroke of his wand, Harry levitated every piece of metal shrapnel and wood splinter and bit of fluff into the air, creating an asteroid field of debris, which he swiftly transfigured into misshapen iron balls that were suddenly charmed to go zooming around, while simultaneously hitting himself with the impervious charm. A few struck the Dark Lord before he swished his wand, creating a whirlwind that collected the dangerous little instruments and sent them in a focused assault on Harry, who transfigured them all into birds which he promptly sent fluttering back in Voldemort's direction, while sending a cutting curse at his legs and a reductor curse at the ground just before his feet. The three-pronged assault proved too much for Voldemort, and he managed only to slash the birds and deflect the cutting curse. The reductor impacted with enough force that it sent him sprawling to the floor.

This duel was distinctly different from Harry's previous encounter with Voldemort, or, at least, his encounter with an alternate version of Voldemort. Whereas before, he had spent half his time bounding around like a gummy bear high on gummy juice, only managing to survive through his superior agility, now he found that he could call upon enough magic to perform multiple tasks - as many as five or six at a time, often each one formidable in their own right. This afforded him a great deal of latitude. He no longer had to duck and weave and throw himself out of the way of curses. Instead, he could conjure a shield powerful enough to withstand multiple assaults while carrying on an offensive attack.

Voldemort sprang to his feet already casting a volley of powerful dark curses, most of which yielded the same result, whether it be mangled arms, or deep gashes, or shattering bones. Harry waved them away and sent a stunner at Voldemort, who, wary of the sheer power of his adversary, chose to block it with a conjured shield of silver, instead of simply ignoring it as he normally would have done.

"Necritus," said Voldemort, aiming his spell at the carcasses of birds that he had dispatched just moments earlier. Harry meanwhile, summoned the far wall, which creaked and groaned under the force of Harry's command. After a moment, it gave in, large cracks forming in the wall as giant chunks of wood and plaster began to rain down on Voldemort. However, Harry soon found himself defending against the onslaught of a dozen bird zombies that were flying at him and trying to peck out his eyes. "Inflammus," he said, lighting them ablaze and banishing them at Voldemort along with a handful of cutting hexes. Voldemort blew apart the debris that had momentarily buried him, sending large chunks of wood in Harry's direction, much of it impacting with the spells and the flaming bird zombies, which thudded and squelched as they smashed into the flying debris.

Harry continued his assault by summoning a loose piece of debris so that it struck Voldemort in the back of the knees, causing him to fold in on himself. He grunted as he collapsed to the ground yet again, Harry aiming a cutting hex at his feet. Voldemort raised a null field to absorb the curse, but already Harry sent a long silver javelin flying at high speed right at Voldemort, just as he had done with Snape. Likewise, Voldemort was surprised by the expert conjuration, which survived the null field, as it plunged into his arm, Voldemort only managing to get out of its way so that it didn't impale him in the chest. He fired off a pair of killing curses, one aimed just slightly to Harry's left and the second to Harry's right, forcing him to dance out of the way, giving Voldemort enough time to regain his equilibrium, which included banishing the silver javelin and mending his arm.

"This really isn't getting us very far," Harry mused, firing off another pair of spells, which Voldemort simply blocked.

"No, it isn't," he replied, brushing dust off his robes as he sent a jet of flame at Harry, who conjured a shield of blue ice, which he propelled at Voldemort, who took control of it with his wand and sent it flying back at Harry, transfiguring it into a mass of writhing snakes with snapping jaws. Harry hit it with a reductor curse and sent the blood and guts right back at Voldemort, who in turn vanished it. "What do you propose we do about it then?"

Harry shrugged. "I can only imagine that one of us will fail eventually." The two combatants slowly circled one another, keeping their eyes fixed on all the things in their environment. "I just kind of wish we'd get there already."

"You could throw down your wand," Voldemort suggested. "That would get us there rather fast, wouldn't it?"

"It would," Harry agreed. "Would be a bit of a hollow a victory for you, though. And you know I'm not the type to disappoint."

"I assure you, Harry. I would get over it most swiftly." Voldemort conjured a pair of large pythons, which he then disillusioned. However, instead of sending them to attack, he merely instructed them to wait by his side, and Harry got the distinctly uneasy feeling that Voldemort's experience duelling was about to shine through.

Harry flicked a reductor curse at one of them, but Voldemort batted it away.

"You know it makes no difference how many spells you throw at me, just as it appears that it makes no difference how many spells I throw at you. Barring the killing curse, our shields are virtually impregnable."

Harry nodded, still keeping half his attention on the two snakes. "What's your point?"

Voldemort shrugged. "Sorry I was just thinking aloud." He then sent a spell that was clearly meant to go wide, while simultaneously sending two spells in Harry's direction, forcing him to focus his shield on them, leaving the first spell to fly by. Dammit, Harry thought, irritably, wondering just what the hell Voldemort was up to. He let his magical senses wander and felt for whatever it was that was behind him. He did not dare turn his back on Voldemort and the two snakes. That may very well have been what Voldemort wanted.

Harry, having a burst of inspiration, sent a stream of liquid nitrogen at the Dark Lord, who conjured a shield to deflect it. However, he was not aware of the effect that the nitrogen was having on his two snakes, which were being splashed liberally with the toxic substance, causing them to stiffen and writhe weakly about as their internal systems shut down from the exposure to the intense cold. Moreover, ice was forming around the Dark Lord, which Harry hoped he could use to his advantage. He maintained the stream of the liquid nitrogen, aware that it was pooling around Voldemort's feet, and, presumably, freezing them.

However, before Harry could go much further with his plan, he felt the wall behind him explode from the time-delayed explosion hex that Voldemort had crafted. Harry was pitched forward, his face getting planted into the freezing fumes of nitrogen, his internal magical defenses trying to fend off the numbing substance.

Dimly, he felt Voldemort swiftly banishing the remains of the liquid nitrogen and casting a warming charm on his feet, while, simultaneously, sending a killing curse at Harry, who wandlessly summoned a dozen snakes crawling around on top of his body, one of which was the unfortunate recipient of the dreaded curse. He heard Voldemort utter a profane word at Harry's swift makeshift shield, but already Harry felt the sizzle of curses, and he knew that an imperius was cast on one of his snakes, forcing him to roll out of the way and vanish them while sending a flurry of spells at Voldemort, who, surprisingly, absorbed the assault, in order to deliver a nasty cutting hex to Harry's chest, which went wide and simply nicked his arm as he continued to roll and send curses and shields all about.

"Avada kedavra. Avada kedavra." Voldemort, his ire provoked, began sending a flurry of killing curses, which Harry blocked by conjuring a small armada of birds and butterflies that went fluttering about.

Harry picked himself off the floor and took a moment to regain his composure as he stared at Voldemort, who conjured a flame whip and began slashing mercilessly at all the innocent little creatures, many of the birds shrieking in agony as they were burned alive.

Harry proceeded to fire off sharpened projectile instruments, which he was rapidly conjuring. The Dark Lord simply batted them away with his wand, often sending them into the ground or the walls, where they occasionally exploded. Neither of them were quite aware of the magnitude of the damage they were inflicting on the structural integrity of the area. Harry persisted in continuing to discharge the heavy stream of conjured weapons in an attempt to overwhelm the Dark Lord by sheer force. Meanwhile, blades and other sharp instruments were beginning to pile around the room, turning the playground deadly. Voldemort banished a handful of fallen knives at Harry's legs, forcing Harry to redirect part of his attention at his feet in order to bat them to the side.

"Inflammus!" Harry said with a deep sort of intensity, creating a magical fire that exploded in a giant fireball of blazing blue and white light. It was so intense and ferocious, feeding off the ambient magical energy that had aggregated in the room, that it punched through Voldemort's shield and lit him ablaze for a moment, before he shrieked with rage, Harry already sending a handful of daggers at him, as well as two reductor curses at his feet. However, none of Harry's attacks made it to the Dark Lord, for, in a flash, the immeasurably hot flames that were attempting to eat him alive was reflected back in a torus of blazing, golden energy that scalded Harry on its way to the walls, where it seeped into the wood and plaster and, within moments, caused the entire floor to tremble. Apparently, it was the iron bar that broke the camel's back.

Not that either Lord Voldemort or Harry were paying attention. "Evangelo," Harry said, sending an arcing beam of white light at Voldemort, who dodged. The energy from the spell lit the air on fire as it shot past Voldemort whereupon it caused the entire back wall to explode in a shower of plaster and debris, exposing the downtown London street behind.

Voldemort, similarly, sent a beam of black energy at Harry, who erected a shield, causing thick bolts of the black energy to bounce off and smash into the walls and the floor and the ceiling, more dust and debris raining down upon them.

"Eviscero!" hissed Lord Voldemort.

"Antago," replied Harry.

Both spells collided in midair and, at the same time, the magical backlash caused the entire floor to explode, ripping out the walls and blowing them into a fierce whirlwind at which Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter were at the center. The ceiling came crashing down around them, the floor was shredded and melted and burned and was rising up on the currents of magical energy that flowed freely around them.

"Die, Potter," Voldemort said through gritted teeth, and, as though that were a spell in and of itself, another beam of blood red light shone from his wand, bathing Harry in an effervescent red glow that slowly yet inexorably tried to suck the life from Harry's body.

"Ergh," Harry grunted as he willed his magic to stay within him. "No," he responded in outright defiance, and, in response to his unbending will, an emerald green shield formed around him, buffering him from Voldemort's unknown spell.

Neither of them seemed to realize that they were now floating, given that the floor had been completely destroyed. Snape's body and the reception desk had been exploded and sent in all directions, some of it dropping to the floor below, which was coated in magical residue. It was the floor for international magical cooperation, and there were a plethora of desks that were being compressed by the torrents of magical energy spilling freely out of both the combatants above.

"Solaris," said Voldemort.

Unlike most spells, which had the effect of issuing magic from the wand, this spell caused an unfocused flood of searing blue flame to explode from pockets all around them. The desks and the carpeting and the walls that were still intact all caught afire and from them, jets of flame shot out in all directions in a haphazard way, scorching the air, and causing Harry to shift edgily from one side to the other to avoid them. The downside was that Voldemort was forced to do the same.

In response, almost as though he wanted to prove that he could execute similarly powerful spells, Harry said, "Electrificus." And, in a flash of blinding light, the entire room exploded in a fit of electrical energy, dozens of lightning bolts flashing by and causing the far walls and whatever remaining objects that were still intact to either be fried, caught on fire, destroyed utterly or simply picked up by the gale force winds that all the fire and energy were creating and being sent hurtling at high velocity through the room. A magical stapler whacked Harry on the head.

"Fucker," he muttered, rubbing the slight bruise on his crown.

Voldemort used his magic to elevate a hundred flaming objects, some of them weighing over a hundred pounds on their own and he sent them whirling about with the same tornado spell he had used earlier. Harry whirled about in a bid to dodge whatever flaming debris managed to maneuver past his multiple shields.

Harry conjured a disillusioned flock of birds and sent them fluttering through the chaos of zooming objects in a bid to hit Voldemort from the side. He had sent two dozen birds, and, to his relief, one survived the firestorm and managed to peck at Voldemort's hairless head, distracting him for almost half a second before the bird was blown apart by a fierce act of wandless magic. Harry wasted no time in sending a volley of high powered explosion hexes at Voldemort, who erected a hastily made shield that still managed to deflect them all.

Bugger, Harry thought irritably. He fired off his most powerful explosion hex at the floor, causing a giant hole to form in the wake of the violent boom that signalled the destruction of what remained of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Voldemort, meanwhile, conjured a hundred razors and sent them all flying at Harry, who, in a desperate bid to stop the Dark Lord, ignored them completely, giving him the necessary moment to launch an offense. He created a vortex that shot out from the depths of the hole, its point of origin somewhere two floors below them. With enough space, it was able to grow to an enormous side and caught the Dark Lord in it, just as a dozen of the many blades punched into Harry's body, one of them striking with enough force to push all the way through. Absently, he noticed that some of the blades were turning about in midair and coming back for another go, distinctly reminding him of his Quidditch match with the rogue bludger in second year. He smiled, despite the pain, continuing to maintain the vortex, down which Voldemort's wand had fallen. Now, if I only manage not to pass out from blood loss. Harry caught some of the razors with his magic and sent them at Voldemort, who, still spinning about and vomiting from the dizziness, was helpless as they embedded themselves into all his vital organs, including his brain, where a razor was now sticking out of his forehead.

Another razor slashed one of his arms to ribbons, and he was forced to drop the vortex. Voldemort, unsurprisingly, was lucid enough to look directly into Harry's eyes and grit out his name, "Potter." And then, in a surprising show of force, managed to expel all the razors embedded in his body while still floating in midair. The razors disappeared uselessly to the floor below. and, to Harry's further horror, Lord Voldemort's magic seemed to go into overdrive and heal all his wounds, while Harry still floated about bleeding to death.

In less than a minute, the Dark Lord was making his way back to his feet, any evidence of his brush with death non-existent, a translucent black dome insulating him from any of Harry's attacks.

"Avada kedavra," said Harry, firing off the killing curse. However, the green light seemed to just become absorbed by the inky blackness that was swirling around Voldemort, whose eyes were glowing with unrestrained power. "Potter," he rasped, his voice coming out warbly through the thick tendrils of magic that swirled about him. "Potter," he repeated, fear and loathing evident in his voice.

"Tom," Harry said, inclining his head to one side, all the while his mind madly trying to figure out how to penetrate this strange dome that was protecting his mortal enemy. Experimentally, Harry sent one of his birds into the field, and watched with dismay as it exploded in a fit of blood and feathers upon contact with the dome's outermost edge. He cast a giant null field, but the moment the field closed around the Dark Lord, the magical dome spilled magic into the intervening space, effectively flooding the null field and collapsing it. Damn, Harry thought, annoyed that his star weapon proved wholly ineffective.

The Dark Lord tried to come towards Harry, but he only made it a step before he seemed to collapse under his own weight, falling to his knees. Harry took an instinctive step backward and decided to see what would happen if he fired off a continuous stunner. A powerful red jet of light streamed forth from his wand and impacted on the oily surface of Voldemort's last defense, but it seemed to simply be absorbed by the shield, and Harry abruptly cut himself off, realizing that it was quite possible that hitting the thing with magic would simply recharge it. It took Harry a moment to realize that the Dark Lord was not actually casting a spell. His wand, in fact, was, according to Harry's magical sense, a smoldering pile of ash. The shield seemed to be flowing from the Dark Lord's inner core directly, as though Harry had pierced some fundamental veil that had otherwise protected the Dark Lord, letting his aura expand without restraint.

And then it hit Harry, that Bono had succeeded. The last horcrux had fallen.Bono had been successful. And the Dark Lord knew it.

"You're mortal," Harry whispered, awestruck.

Harry's frank assertion of it made Voldemort wail with anguish. "IT CAN'T BE!" he half-shrieked, half-cried. "POTTER!"

"And yet a killing curse still won't kill you," he said aloud, realizing that, even though Voldemort was now terribly weak, even with the multiple injuries he had sustained, his own internal core was so formidable, had been beefed up by so many other transformations that it was refusing to let Voldemort exist unprotected, and was now protecting him with itself. How do you destroy an inner core? he wondered, wishing for the first time in the last eight months that Hermione were there to solve his problem for him. Magical theory wasn't exactly his forte, after all.

How do you overwhelm something which is magically infinite? he asked himself. Easy, something in his mind told him. You overwhelm it with your own magical core. Open yourself up, Harry Potter, and finish him.

As such, Harry put his wand away and stepped right up to the edge of the field. He put both his bloody palms against the outer edge of the shield. He could feel the vibrations of magic reverberating through his own core, almost as though the two were talking to one another, as though they were one and the same, that human flesh and blood and bile were crude barriers between the incredible, universalizing force that was magic.

In a voice that was soft and deadly, with his eyes closed, his magical senses and physical ones momentarily shut down, Harry whispered, "Luminaire." His body began to pulse with an eerie golden white light that slowly crescendoed in intensity. Soon, the Dark Lord would be no more.

During the last seven years, much of it spent inside the walls of Hogwarts, it had become clear to spectators who watched Hermione from the sidelines, that she was a really smart girl. Ron had once gone so far as to describe her brilliance as scary. As such, she was not the type to delude herself when certain facts presented themselves in obvious clarity before her eyes. In a two-on-one duel, it would take superior duelling abilities on the part of the underdog to hold out, let alone best his or her opponents. The fact that Ron made it more than five minutes was rather impressive. He demonstrated superior skill, his wand crackling with energy as he rapid fired multiple spells, as well as a ludicrous capacity to maintain the connection to his core that allowed him to persist without tiring. A memory of Ronald Weasley producing an unusually powerful shield to absorb the Mudblood curse long ago in the Weasley's kitchen flashed across her mind's eye as her body impacted with the cold stone floor. He may not have known how to permanently conjure an object, or enchant things or brew a potion, or understand the differences between theoretical models of magic, but he was magically strong, and he knew how to work with that.

It still made her want to scream to God and heaven about the unfairness of it all. However, she couldn't help but acknowledge the strength, speed, hand-eye coordination, and the sheer ballsiness that it took for him to self-levitate himself at high speed, using a basic first year charm to catapult him into the air and use his chaotic trajectory to catch his opponents off guard.

Hermione groaned as she felt the tingle of an enervate charm wash over her body, affording her enough mindfulness to pick herself off the ground and swipe irritably at the blood dripping down her face from the gash on her cheek where her head had hit a small ledge in the stonework. With the refocusing of her mind to the events at hand, she swiftly narrowed her eyes and whirled about in search of her attacker, noticing only after a moment that her wand had a crack running through it, from which black dementor blood oozed.

The rage that would have normally filled her at the sight of its effective destruction did not present itself. Instead, a determination and a weariness stole over her, as though she had awoken from a great long sleep. Not even bothering to collect it, she instead turned her attention to Weasley, who, despite having bested her with that little trick, had not managed to come out of it victorious over the Malfoy Matriarch. Quite the opposite, she saw. He was flailing about uselessly on the floor, his arms repeatedly banging against the stone as futilely tried to cope with the assault of the cruciatus. For a moment, Hermione looked away, disturbed at the sight of his lean form, his vibrantly red hair oddly complementing the amber light of the curse.

Resigned, she made her way over to the Colonel, letting a bitter smile express itself on her features. Oh how badly you wanted him dead. This is so much better, isn't it? she asked herself, her own mind not quite able to convince itself of the veracity of those words. No, she never truly wanted him dead. She loved him, sort of. Or at least, her love of him was tempered by her hate, her jealousy, her pride. She had always been better than him, gotten higher test scores, took more courses - real ones anyway. But still, at the end of the day, she couldn't bring him down. Not even when she had back up and he was alone. She hadn't wanted to admit it, but his ability to control light magic had disturbed her more than she could describe, which was saying something given her vocabulary. All the feelings of victory, of satisfaction, of self-actualization that she was supposed to have garnered from his defeat had, she realized, been cruelly stripped from her, and it was not taken due to fate, or the Colonel or even the Dark Lord. No, it was taken from Ron himself, who proved without a shadow of a doubt that she didn't deserve to experience those feelings. Even as he lay twitching, the Colonel ending the curse so she could stalk him like predator and prey, even with his death so imminent, she knew she had been beaten. He had beaten her fair and square. Hell, he had done so with the odds stacked against him.

It occurred to Hermione in those few, precious moments that she would never have peace again. She had wanted to prove her superiority to everybody, and had proved it to nobody. Or at least, those who were beaten were also dead, like Crabbe and Lucius. And the ones that really counted, the ones that would have provided the sweetest fruit, like Voldemort and Ron, had shown her up rather harshly, and now Voldemort was her master and Ron was soon to be dead, and she would be left to wander the earth, suffering from a perpetual substitution complex, always searching for another Ronald Weasley to best, never finding one, always licking the boots of a tyrant who would never truly let her off her leash.

How bitter the dark was. How sad and lonely.

"Would you care to have a go?" Narcissa asked. "I know your wandless capabilities are nominal, but I have also seen your dementor hand at work. I imagine it could inflict a kind of pain far more excruciating than any physical curse."

Hermione just looked over at Narcissa for a long time, occasionally flicking her gaze to Ron, who was still shuddering and twitching involuntarily. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small girl was asking the question, You really picked a Malfoy over a Weasley? Hermione sighed, feeling defeated and just said, "No, go on ahead. I am content to watch."

The Colonel shrugged and merely continued.

That was when Hermione felt it. Something deep. Something electric.

There was a hum in the air, a current, which, through her many dark transformations, she felt attuned to. It was like she had suddenly become a radio receiver, like a current were moving through her, first soft like water and then stinging like static. Hermione looked around confused, trying to figure out where it was coming from. She first glanced at the archway, wondering if perhaps the suffusion of dark magic from the cruciatus was causing it to react in a fundamental way. But she dismissed that thought as the energy intensified, and, like the rise of the desert sun, it crystallized into a distinct point source that was directly overhead - far overhead about a dozen floors or so, and it was pulsing in a way that she understood on some internal level. A glance at Narcissa told her that her ally did not feel it, but, before she even turned to Ron, she knew he was quite aware of it. The energy was dampening the pain curse enough so that Ron could mouth words at her, his ocean blue eyes that she had found herself drifting into on so many warm nights on the Gryffindor common room sofa locking with hers, communicating a silent plea.

And she knew, just as Ron did, why that energy that was flowing in such great abundance was raining down upon them, why they were the only ones who could feel it. Ron intuited it on a visceral level while Hermione had read about the phenomenon in a book.

It was Harry. In the back of her mind, she knew that it could only mean one thing. He was destroying the Dark Lord once and for all. He was letting his inner core shine through decompressed in all its glory, its life essence flowing freely in all directions, sweeping through the Ministry - hell, probably all of London. So magnificent was it, so like phoenix song that it seemed to awaken Hermione, to give her strength, to tear down the meager occlumancy walls that she had used to distill and disconnect all the memories of the golden trio over the last seven years.

That strange energy that was sweeping down from above intensified so much that Narcissa cocked her head as if listening to it. Pinpricks of light, like drops of water lit aflame twinkled down over them, each one stabbing into the darkness with which she had unwittingly entombed herself.

Something fundamental broke in her, and, with typical Gryffindor thoughtlessness, she whirled on Narcissa. She grabbed her wand arm and yanked it up, causing the curse to lift literally and shoot off in a spray of sparks in the distance, the intense energy of the cruciatus, one of the most wretched curses ever to be created, spewed about into the wide open air.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" Narcissa screeched, unable to close off the energy that was now being forcibly left open through Hermione's tight grip on her arm. Narcissa flailed about, but Hermione possessed inhuman strength and was not averse to using it. Hermione simply let the dark energy diffuse into the room, thickening the air with the acrid taste of dark magic. Narcissa continued to beat futilely against Hermione's vice like grip, going so far as to try and swat at her face to no avail. They locked gazes for a moment, fear and loathing on Narcissa's pale white face, malignant glee in Hermione's. After what seemed like a lifetime, the magic petered out, though not because Narcissa had run dry of magic, or because her wand had been destroyed, though it was smoking a little bit. No it petered out because the rush of uncontrolled dark magic burnt her hand to a crisp, which flaked away like charred phyllo pastry and scattered to the floor, the Colonel's face screwed into a look of pure agony.

Hermione let Narcissa's unconscious body crumple to the ground uselessly as she herself staggered back to reclaim her lost balance. She felt drunk with dark energy, as though she had just siphoned off enough to poison even Albus Dumbledore.

Before she knew it, her legs had tumbled her near to the center of the room so that she crashed against the veil, her arms thrown out to it to hold her up. Vaguely, she was aware of Ron struggling to his knees and only barely making it. Given the duration of his torture under the curse, she wondered how much nerve damage he had suffered. No more catapulting stunts for you, Ron, she thought, a fatigue stealing over her as she thought of the life they could have had. She had no doubt in her mind that reparations could have been made, forgiveness dealt, life lived happily ever after.

She heard her ex-boyfriend, the one she had pined after for the better part of her Hogwarts career call out to her, using the nicknames he had invented for her, his voice barely audible his voice scratched up like an abused record album. Yes, he would forgive her all too easily. She knew it, because she knew that it was what light wizards did, and Ron was the paragon of the light.

A deep shame filled her, filled in all the vacancies that her burning drive to prove herself had once filled. It made her shake with the knowledge of her own compromises.

She felt Ron struggling to make his way to her, to hold her, comfort her, do all the things that he had done before, as though the chasm she had driven between them had never existed. They had aged a decade in the last year. She could not go back.

"Mione," Ron managed, crawling unsteadily toward her.

"No!" she cried, seeing that he was so close. Your touch will burn me. "She pulled back instinctively, "Stay away!" The hard edge in her voice shattered with these words and she resorted to begging in a broken voice, "Please... Ron."

"I won't," he replied, firm in his knowledge on what was right and what was wrong.

"No," she said, even more feebly than before, as if all the energy had been drained from her. "I'm not anything. I'm not anything. I can't be here. I can't stay."

"Hermione, please," Ron said, picking himself off the ground, his wand still a dozen feet away."You don't know what it's like," she choked out, looking up at his blue eyes. "I was never good enough for you."

"That's not true," he countered instantly, taking a tentative step forward.

Hermione seemed to regain a bit of her strength at his words, for she smiled, the lone tear she had managed to shed not being accompanied by any others. "You were always so strong. You felt your way through everything, Ronald Weasley. You felt it with your heart, and it made you great."

"I've always needed you, Hermione," he said softly.

"Not this past year, you haven't," she said again in that small voice.

"Especially this past year." Ron took another step forward, but this time, Hermione seemed to notice for she glanced downward and then frowned slightly.

"No, you didn't. You've done great things without me. You shine like a beacon." She sniffed. "I used to think that you would hold me back. That if I were with you, I wouldn't be able to achieve my dreams, to fulfill my potential. I left you, because I thought I could go do great things, start the world over, even." She laughed at this, as though there were a joke somewhere in her words. "But you know," she went on, her voice tinged with self-loathing, "I was so wrong. It wasn't you who was holding me back. It was me who was holding you. I was the weak one. I was the one who didn't understand things."

"That's not true," Ron said carefully, aware all of a sudden that he was, for all intents and purposes, talking to somebody who was giving serious thought to jumping off the roof of a really tall building. "You helped me in so many ways. It was your voice inside my head that told me to grow up, to take responsibility. I'm only now what I am because of you, Hermione Granger."

Hermione listened to his words, but she did not hear them. She just smiled again and looked into his intensely soft blue eyes. "I loved you and I tried to kill you. I'm glad you're better than me Ron." And, with that, Hermione whirled about with feline grace and crossed the threshold of the veil, only to disappear from view.

"NO!" Ron shouted, his eyes widening, one hand reaching out as if to clutch her, or summon her back. But there was nothing for it. Hermione Granger was gone.

No, Ron thought fiercely in his mind's eye. No, no, no. Again acting on impulses that he did not understand, Ron took a moment to fix his eyes on the point of infinity, somewhere where ordinary sight could not go, his heart and mind awash with so many memories of longing, of pining. With the same quick, decisive moves that carried Hermione through, so did Ron cross that dreaded barrier between life and death, to go in search of her.

At the same time that Ronald Weasley was rushing headlong through the veil, The golden white, burning energy radiating off Harry James Potter was moving like a shockwave through all the upper layers of the Ministry, causing deep cracks to form in the walls, the floors the ceilings, the golden energy of his inner core slowly and inexorably subsuming the tar-like substance of Voldemort's core. At the same time, the remnants of the PA who were still at the Ministry had gathered together, some limping, others wheezing.

"How many we got left?" Neville asked, the invisibility potion having worn off. Seven of them were crammed into one lift, another seven in the neighbouring lift as they climbed to the atrium level.

"Fourteen," Terry said, leaning against the wall for support. "I think there's five back at Hogwarts."

"Which means we've lost nine," said Susan, pursing her lips.

The seven remained silent, the knowledge of their nine dead comrades making them wonder just who was alive and who wasn't.

"Do we know if the Dark Lord has fallen?" Sue asked.

Terry shook his head. "No bloody clue. Figure he isn't, since I imagine he'd be the only one brash enough to actually try and destroy the Ministry." They were all too aware of the significance of the deep vibrations that were rumbling through every brick of the building. It was only a matter of time before it came down. Something about the energy flowing through the building had destroyed their portkeys, and now they were simply trying to make it to the apparation point to escape.

"You're wrong," said Neville with unusual conviction. "The Dark Lord is no more. Or at least, he shortly will be."

"How do you know?" Collin asked, turning a questioning gaze to the eldest Gryffindor.

"Because I can feel it," Neville said simply, speaking with such certainty that nobody in the lift refuted it. "I can feel Harry. He is destroying him. One molecule at a time."

The lift came to a halt with the tinkling of a bell. For a moment, the doors did not open, and the seven soldiers gave each other a quick glance, before drawing their weapons. It was rather a good thing, because, when the doors opened, they all became acutely aware of the rumbling of what looked like a sea of werewolves all crouching in the atrium, all of them with their amber eyes watching.

"Er," said Susan, unable to continue as her breath hitched at the sight of the army of dark creatures.

"Holy fuck," whispered Collin, his eyes locking momentarily with one of the werewolves at the front of the line.

"We are so screwed," said Terry, his mind racing with all the possible solutions to the problem. All zero of them.

"I guess this is where we go down fighting," Sue said, nervously biting her lower lip, clearly not relishing the prospect of being overwhelmed and eventually mauled.

"Hold on," Neville commanded gently, raising one hand to keep them from firing. "They don't seem to be attacking."

Strangely enough, it seemed to be true. As the seven of them stared out at the sea of creatures, absently aware that there must be another seven coming up in the neighbouring lift, they realized that none of the creatures had made a move. None of them were agitated by the bloodlust that otherwise characterized the werewolf. True to his house, Neville bravely stepped forward, his gun only partly lowered, ready to be used at a moment's notice. Even now that he was a mere three feet from the nearest wolf, it did not move to pounce, instead electing to watch Neville curiously through its slitted eyes for a moment before returning to listen to the sound of some unknown rhythm, or to await the return of its master.

Neville tentatively walked over to the next lift and peered inside. He found to his dismay, seven pale and drawn faces, a gaggle of Huffelpuffs clinging to one another for dear life, one of them clearly having wet his pants. Neville shook his head and said calmly, "They smell fear, you know." This comment clearly wasn't the right thing to say, because the seven soldiers of the Phoenix Army compacted themselves into an even more tightly knit ball of terrified bodies. Neville just sighed. He had no clue what was wrong with the werewolves, but he decided he didn't really care. They weren't attacking at the moment, and that was good enough for him. Terry, Sue, Susan Collin and the others from his lift walked by, pistols still pointed menacingly at the wolves, who remained utterly disconnected from the events and people around them. Gently, Neville took Hannah Abbott's hand and guided her and the other six members of the lift into the atrium and led them to the apparation point, where they were finally able to disappear with the customary popping sounds. Neville chose to stay just a moment longer to gaze out at the hundred and some creatures, all still unmoving. Just as he could feel the thrum of Harry's magic pervading every square inch of the building, he also knew that these creatures had come here for some greater reason. He supposed it might have been because of Harry, but he suspected that it was more to do with Hermione. He suspected that, on that night, not only had the Dark Lord been defeated, but so had the Dark One. It simply remained to be seen whether Hermione Granger would have survived the process.

Neville apparated away. Mission successful.