Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Warnings for blood, gore, cliffhanger.

Chapter Ninety-One: Children of Godric and Helga

Zacharias steadied his golden horse as it stamped and tossed its mane beneath him. He wasn't entirely sure if it was picking up on his emotions, or whether the Gloryflowers had crafted it just so that it would do these kinds of things, to make it more like a normal horse.

He didn't really care. His whole mind was taken up with Hermione.

Yes, the school was buzzing with other things, other rumors, other gossip, but what did that matter? They were the lesser concerns of lesser mortals. Hermione had come in wounded to the hospital wing; the Headmistress had seen a witch hovering with her on her broomstick beyond the school's wards and apparently recognized the witch, so she'd let them inside. Madam Pomfrey was working on her right now, but the Severing Curse was a tricky spell, difficult to heal. She didn't know if she would save Hermione's life yet. And she had insisted that Zacharias would be a distraction if he stayed in the hospital wing and tried to watch.

So he was going out to ride with the others on the golden horses, as soon as the fighting in front of the entrance hall had cleared enough for them to make a charge. The other riders shifted and whispered and exchanged tense notes about whether they expected to survive on the battlefield, or even odds on who else might come back alive.

Zacharias wanted to scream at them to stop it, that death was nothing to joke about. He understood why they were doing it, though. They didn't have someone possibly dying in the hospital wing.

He had already decided what he was going to do. He simply had to clear his mind of boiling fury enough to attempt it. He sat on the horse's back and let the chatter of his classmates wash over him like the useless blather it was. He had to be calm. He could feel his mother watching him across the gap between their mounts, and wondered if she knew what he was about to do. She was the one who had instructed him in this, long ago, when he was first Sorted into Hufflepuff.

This is a weapon I hope you will never have to use, Zacharias, and certainly not in the middle of battle. It is tricky, not entirely under your control, the way the magic of your wand is. And you stand a chance of losing a part of yourself if you give in to the seductions of the change.

Zacharias knew that was all true; what little information was available on the phenomenon agreed with what his mother had said. In taking on the identity of an ancestor, he risked losing himself.

He did not care. He was angry enough not to care. And this, this breathless pause before they went to battle, was the best chance he would have to calm himself and call out in breathless appeal. The Light storm overhead should help. Both he, and his ancestor in life, had served the Light. And their connection through his being in her House should help, too. Zacharias didn't know if it was going to work, not for certain, but nothing was certain in this process, one reason it hadn't been tried in decades.

Helga? he called. He knew part of her lingered within the school. He'd sometimes been privileged with a glimpse of her, sliding along the corridors or peering at him from behind a tapestry. Zacharias had always imagined he could see her not just because he was a Hufflepuff student, but because he and his family were her last blood heirs. Most of the time, that meant nothing, was no more than a formality he might use to gain a political advantage over people particularly impressed by the Founders and their legends.

But, if she would agree, then he could yield control of his body to her, allow her to possess him and ride forth to battle. Zacharias continued calling her name, his voice steady and sweet, and some moments later he felt the first approach of the shy gentleness he'd always associated with her.

Why? a voice asked him. He might be creating the voice, but he didn't think so, not when he was sincere in his desires to have her spirit possess him. He answered back as if it were real, at least.

Because I am angry, and the woman I love may be dying. And because this battle is being fought at Hogwarts, and threatening the students you stayed here to protect. And because I am asking. Please?

He felt her regard for long, silent moments. Zacharias realized he didn't even know what having part of Helga's spirit ride out with him would do to the battle. Perhaps it would weaken the defenses of the school, and that would be a good reason for her not to leave. Or perhaps she would have a hard time sensing the other two Founders present in Hogwarts and reconnecting with them, even once her possession of him was done. He hadn't thought of consequences like that. He'd simply asked.

Then she said, Yes.

And Zacharias gasped as magic flooded him.

Oh, of course he'd felt his own magic rise up before: when he first received his wand, when his mother taught him the more complicated spells, when he was confirmed as the magical heir of his family. But it had been nothing like this. Zacharias knew how deep his magical core was, how joined to the rest of him. He was a powerful wizard, but his power did not extend forever.

This was power that seemed to go on rising, like a mountain being pushed up from the collision of continents. The magic shuddered through him, solid as stone, the strength of the earth. Zacharias contemplated that concept in a dazed fashion for a moment. Most wizards didn't care that much about earth magic in comparison to the "mightier" forces of wind and fire and water, but those who did knew it was the strongest of all. The earth had only to shrug, and the continents went scurrying, rivers tumbled from their courses, and the volcanoes shuddered and belched fire.

Helga was the same way. Zacharias felt in a moment as if she'd always been sleeping in some part of him, perhaps his blood, and now she had awakened and claimed the rest of his power. That was all. It was less a losing of himself than an expansion into a piece he hadn't known he had. Suddenly he remembered the days of the Founders a thousand years ago, and the odd thing seemed that he had never done it before.

The change was noticeable. Zacharias, looked around through dazed eyes, saw the other riders staring at him. He apparently had an image hovering over him, superimposed on his features. He suspected it would be the image of a short, plump witch with kind brown eyes—or, at least, they would be kind if they weren't currently lit with battle-fire at the danger to Hogwarts's students.

"It is safe for us to go forth now," said Helga through Zacharias's mouth. It should have been strange to feel his own mouth moving without his will. It wasn't. The voice wasn't his own, so of course he couldn't use it himself. Helga turned towards the wards and nodded.

A face formed in the white mist of the wards, nodding back. Zacharias knew it was Godric Gryffindor, though he hadn't seen that particular Founder before. A moment later, the wards dropped, and the horses foamed forward, heading straight for the break.

Zacharias had ridden horses before, but Helga had ridden all kinds of beasts, horses and flying horses and dragons when she'd had a disagreement with a Hebridean Black over the site of her garden, and she seized control as the better rider. The golden horse lifted and flowed with Zacharias through a quarter-turn that plunged them straight into a mass of Death Eaters, standing back-to-back as they fired curses at a bevy of golden-haired witches and wizards.

Helga let out a battle-cry that hadn't been heard on any field in a thousand years. "Blood and bone and storm and crow!" Zacharias tried to uncover her memories of what it meant, but they were in the thick of battle before he could figure it out, and then he was hurting the people who had helped hurt Hermione.

A spear formed in Helga's hand, the memory of a spear long gone joined to the storm of Light swirling overhead, which recognized the Founder and hailed her with joy as an old comrade. Zacharias felt Light surround him with a dizzying corona that made most of the Death Eaters scream and hide their eyes as the spear plunged down, taking the first victim through the area between collarbone and throat. He fell, and he screamed again, a separate cry from the blinded ones, and Helga laughed and danced the horse backward. It moved with a grace no living thing could have had. Helga approved of the Gloryflower horses; she wished she could have had one the last time she fought Inferi.

She spun the horse so that she faced the rest of the tangle of Death Eaters, coming back together after her initial charge. She clasped her hands this time, having no need of reins to command her mount, and imagined a quiet brown plain in her mind, suddenly ripping and fracturing open to reveal a pit of deep green and red waiting beneath.

The earth opened under the Death Eaters and dropped them straight down. They cried out as they fell, too. Helga laughed softly. They should know better than to face a Founder on the grounds of her school, she thought, as the horse jumped easily over the crack and landed on the other side. Because it amused her, Helga channeled her magic through the golden hoof as it gave a delicate stamp. The grass and dirt and stone rolled over the heads of her victims when the horse stamped, as easily as if nothing had happened.

Helga whooped aloud and turned to search out the next group of enemies. It had always taken enormous amounts of destruction, or an enormous threat to the students, to rouse her; she had never been of a temper like Godric, who went forth to war at the slightest excuse, or like Salazar, who would nurse his grudges until they were smoldering like lava under the surface. But now she was roused, and her descendant had called her, and what was this Voldemort but another Dark Lord, like Aelfric, like Yellowgorge? She had fought them in her time, been part of the army that fought them, and she had survived. She would survive this, too, and send Voldemort howling.

It is contemptible that he attacks children. Even Yellowgorge never did that, she thought, and charged at the next group of Death Eaters. She was singing as she rode, and the earth sang back to her, long spikes of stone that she had implanted beneath the soil to serve as a last defense spinning for the surface. The Death Eaters did look satisfactorily surprised when they were spitted on them.

Connor went to his knees, and not only because Owen had slammed a hand onto his shoulder urging him to do so, though the older boy would think that was the reason. He'd known a Killing Curse was coming. What Moody said was true: after a while you learned to identify wand movements out of the corner of your eye, or you didn't survive.

He scrambled back to his feet at once. That wasn't entirely his choice. The sword buzzing and humming in his hand tugged him along.

Connor looked down proudly at the sword as he attacked a Death Eater who had cornered Ginny and was threatening her and the wounded girl she stood in front of. He'd retrieved it from Lux Aeterna over the Easter holidays, from behind a ward that opened to him as soon as it realized that he, and not James, was the Potter heir now. The sword had a sharp, barbed blade, and a hilt so bristling with thorn-like projections that Connor had been unsure how to hold it until the sword itself showed him. It talked, sometimes, but not often, and then it had a male voice, as brusque and commanding as Moody's. It mostly wielded itself, too, which Connor didn't mind, since he didn't know that much about swordwork.

And with the storm of Light in the sky, the sword was active and alive and darting happily around.

Death Eater coming at you from the side, the sword's voice hissed in his head.

Connor knew the opponent must be dangerous. The sword didn't normally warn him about enemies, even the ones who came so close that Owen had to fend them off. He stopped and spun around, nearly spitting Owen. Owen muttered and leaped out of the way. Connor chose not to pay attention to the muttering.

The Death Eater who faced him still wore a mask, and so Connor couldn't focus on his eyes the way Moody had taught them, even as the man lifted his wand and whispered, "Sanguinolentus."

Owen shouted the countercurse. Connor didn't need him to. He'd already ducked. And his eyes were fixed on the man, still. So far, he'd wounded people with the sword, and then run away again as the tide of battle, and the sword's hunger to feed on the Dark, carried him on. He had the sense that this would be his first conscious kill.

Yes, it will, said the sword in his head, and a thick, muffling layer grew over his thoughts. Connor thought it had already been there, but now it was more present, more bracing.

It's to keep you from thinking too much about what you're doing as you kill, said the blade calmly. You would only fall into hysterics, and that's not something you need right now. Right now, you need to be a hero.

And that made sense to Connor. Of course it did. He stood up, and held the sword at the ready. The crystal blade vibrated and buzzed, but the actual sword hung low in his hands, as if he didn't know how to wield it. And Connor was prepared to say that that knowledge wasn't part of his muscles. The sword would wield itself.

The Death Eater whispered, in that same horrible voice, "Dolor."

The curse came at him. The sword jerked up, and the curse bounced off it. The crystal was glowing like a Shield Charm now, and Connor experienced a moment's wistfulness that Harry wasn't there to see it. He always appreciated a good Protego. He would have liked to have seen this, Connor thought.

The Death Eater incanted a wind curse next, one that was probably meant to tear the sword from his hand. But Connor stepped forward, and the gust died as he walked into the middle of it. The Death Eater raised a shield and began to speak a long and complicated curse. Connor experienced a moment's contempt in the part of his mind that was still his own. You don't do that. Moody said you don't do that. It gives your enemy too much chance to hurt you while you're still struggling to reach the end of your spell.

The sword cut through the shield and stabbed straight into the Death Eater's chest.

The man screamed, and Connor saw why when he tried to move away and found he couldn't. Some of the barbs on the edge had hooked into his flesh. And now the sword was glowing like a heartbeat in time with the lazy currents of Light overhead, inflicting pain on the man. Connor swallowed. "What's that for?" he whispered aloud.

The Light knows what he has done, the sword said in its stern voice. All the murders, all the torture, all the rapes he has committed. So now it is inflicting that pain back on him, making him feel what his victims felt. That is justice.

Connor shivered, and wondered if it really was, but then he reminded himself that he was Declared to the Light, and just because Harry wouldn't approve of this didn't mean it wasn't justice. Harry had a hard time recognizing justice and differentiating it from vengeance.

The sword pulled free at last, leaving the man dead on the ground, and turned Connor in a different direction. Just before he completed the spin, Connor caught a glimpse of Owen's face. His eyes were dark and thoughtful, and not all of what was in his expression was approval, either.

Connor looked away, and let the sword tug him deeper into the tides of battle.

Snape could not watch Harry as much as he would have liked, because he had to pay attention to the battle on the ground.

He'd already dueled several Death Eaters whose fighting styles he recognized of old, though he hadn't known their names then, and hadn't heard of them even during the short time he'd spent in Azkaban before Dumbledore rescued him. It didn't matter. Their feints and parries and counterattacks were more important in a battle than their names and past histories, in any case. He traded counterattacks with them, and he either finished them or was swept away in the surging chaos. Their side was killing the Death Eaters, but five hundred wizards were not defeated that easily.

And their side suffered losses, too. Snape had heard about the Weasley twins before he entered the battle. He had briefly seen Hawthorn Parkinson, fighting like a woman possessed, and knew that only the loss of her daughter could reawaken the Red Death. He watched from a distance, too far away and too separated by wizards to do anything, as Rosier felled the Granger girl. And after the charge of the golden horses began, he saw the last giant on the field step directly on top of the Chang girl, crushing her out of existence.

More appalling, at least to his eyes and soul, was the loss of the only one of his Slytherins riding a golden horse, Catrina Flint-Digsby. She was busy unleashing binding curses on the Dark wizards in front of her, trying to weaken them and give the younger students easy victims, and she never saw the Avada Kedavra that took her from behind. For that matter, Snape never saw her killer. When he turned to look, the faceless figure had already vanished in another wall of surging flesh.

Snape had used the Killing Curse three times in a row after that, on the next three victims he faced, and the Rosier-Henlin boy fighting close at his side had never uttered a word of condemnation.

Now, at last, he burst into a clear space and could lift his head, staring at Harry. Voldemort was still contending with what Snape knew must be an illusory dragon, since Harry had told him about Acies's refusal to bring a true dragon to the battle. Harry flew his iron thestral in a circle and drank and drank and drank magic. Snape saw numerous pitiful, screaming shapes on the ground, and knew that must be Harry's doing. Suddenly turning into a Squib would be quite a shock.

He had to quell his fear and pain; Harry was doing magnificently. He either wasn't aware of the losses beneath him—and Snape had to admit that he might not be aware of individual deaths—or had learned to put them aside and do what had to be done. Snape felt a moment of shining hope. If Harry could indeed do what he had planned, it would wound the Dark Lord more deeply than any individual strike ever could.

"Sir, look out!"

Michael flung him to the ground. Snape ducked his head into the earth himself as he realized that Voldemort had destroyed the glamour of the dragon. Bits of magic were raining to earth, spell-flakes from whatever curse he had used. Snape tried not to breathe them in. It was generally a good idea not to let the Dark Lord's magic affect one.

He looked up after that, though, thinking Voldemort would return to his pursuit of Harry at once. He certainly couldn't let Harry drain the magic from every one of his living followers on the field. Snape's left arm burned with the reminder of Voldemort's temper.

But instead, the grotesque beast Voldemort had created, a mockery of even the illusory dragon he had just destroyed, simply hung in the air. Snape squinted, trying to make out the movements of his wand, but his former master was safely concealed behind that slick pink neck. He had no chance of learning what spell he would cast before he cast it.

He recognized the effect, though, when a dark purple bruise formed in the air not far above the battlefield, and thunder spoke in a death-rattle. Voldemort had not started the spell higher because the storm of Light would probably have stopped it, and because he wanted his victims to suffer more. Snape recognized it because he had once tried to help his Lord create a potion that would mimic the effect before Voldemort designed the spell: Imbrifer Voro.

Where the rain fell, it would flay the flesh, as it had in Valerian, the wizarding village Voldemort had devastated in the summer of 1980.

Snape scrambled to one knee and tapped his wand against his left arm, ignoring the pain of his Dark Mark, desperate to invoke the communication spell and warn Harry what they were about to face. He heard a shout, and looked up to see another pair of Death Eaters running at him, but Michael was holding them off, for now, his wand flashing in quick spellwork that made Snape suffer a brief, irrational pang that Rosier-Henlin had decided to send his sons to Durmstrang.

"What is it, sir?" Harry's voice was tight, and Snape didn't blame him. Even with the stones in his robe pockets as reservoirs, the effort of passing that much power through his body would tire him.

"Voldemort is calling the flesh-eating rain," Snape said tightly. "The purple spot a little behind you and off to the side."

Harry was silent for a moment, and Snape wondered if the communication spell had faltered. But when he looked up, he realized that Harry was flying the iron thestral like a Firebolt—just not in the direction of that bruise.

"Harry!" Snape shouted.

"There's a second one," said Harry, in a voice that said he was speaking from between clenched teeth. "And it's right above Draco."

Draco again leaped out of a dying Death Eater's mind, this time a witch. He shook his head as he opened his eyes and sat up on the thestral's back again. He had never quite got used to possessing someone female. It always left him feeling as if he had appendages he didn't, and lacked some of those he did, for hours afterward.

He looked up to see Harry flying at him, and blinked, wondering why. Sure, there was thunder speaking above him, but that was to be expected when there was a storm in the sky, wasn't it?

A drop of rain fell abruptly on his arm, and Draco screamed, even before he jerked his head away from Harry and stared at his skin. It was peeling neatly away from his left forearm, in a way that Draco had only ever imagined happening if he received the Dark Mark. The iron beast he rode jerked and shuddered beneath him as his panic translated downwards.

Another drop hit on his head, and Draco shouted with the pain. His scalp was splitting open, and he could just imagine the next drop hitting on the tender and unprotected bone of his skull. He began to flee wildly towards Hogwarts, not knowing what else he could do.

"Draco!"

That was Harry's shout, and Draco, despite his better judgment, turned the thestral around. Harry slid past him, crouched low in his own saddle, a desperate, focused look on his face. He flung his arm out, and a shimmering cage of green light formed around Draco, a ward that Harry added to as he turned and rode past again, and then again. When Draco looked up, he saw the sharp-edged rain being deflected from the edges of the cage.

He looked at Harry in wonder. Harry gave him a grim smile, and then dived. Draco looked on in astonishment as a green ward spread out from him like a spiderweb, a flat plane between sky and ground, fed from Harry's magic. Draco had never seen the spell before, but that didn't surprise him. Harry was full of such power at the moment that just being near him had made Draco's heart shudder and jump. He could probably do much more than this, if he wanted.

And he'll be afraid of that, and that's part of what's holding him back, Draco thought, as he went on watching, safe in his own drifting cage.

The ward spread further and further, billow on billow of green. Now it looked less like a spiderweb, and more like a storm in imitation of the storm of Light above. It coiled under Voldemort's purple bruise, which Draco saw when he looked for it, and refused to let any of the flesh-eating rain through. Draco caught a glimpse of white-blond hair, and was extremely glad of it. The thought of either of his parents flayed alive by that rain was more than he could bear.

Come to that, my wounds don't look that good, either.

Draco drew his wand and laid it against the wound in his arm, concentrating. Harry had taught him some of the most basic healing spells. He ought to be able to handle this.

"Integro," he murmured, and watched in satisfaction as the skin regrew over the wound. He wasn't sure about the one on his scalp. It did hurt, but he didn't want to try and heal it without a mirror. He put his left hand up, and felt gingerly at the cut. It seemed to have stopped bleeding. He decided to trust that it'd clotted, and looked back to find out the outcome of what Harry and Voldemort were doing.

He saw Harry rising up out of the green ward, and Voldemort riding straight towards him, bent over the neck of the flesh-dragon—the ugliest thing Draco had ever seen, far uglier than the iron animals he and Harry rode—and casting a curse that filled the air between them with whirling diamond shards.

Harry was tiring.

He could feel it in every muscle of his body. His legs gripped the thestral too hard. His feet pressed into the stirrups until his ankles ached. His throat burned every time he took a breath, though he thought some of that came from breathing in the reek of Voldemort's beast earlier. His arms shook when he moved them, and his hand was a joke; he didn't know how he'd managed to cast the first ward straight at Draco and not out into the wide and empty sky. His vision spun with the effort of watching out for Voldemort's spells and dodging them, and thinking faster than his opponent. And his magical core was overstretched with the sheer amount of magic he was passing through it into the stones, themselves full and warm with power.

He had not realized being a conduit for the magic was so exhausting. He had to fight himself every step of the way. The absorbere gift was meant for swallowing, he was learning now, or for vomiting back a wave of power in his opponents' faces, and not for simply acting as a tunnel through which the magic could pass on the way to somewhere else. Holding himself open like that, envisioning a passage instead of a mouth, hurt. He felt as though someone had been beating him with sticks from inside his skin.

And he had to fight the temptation to feast on the magic and make it part of himself, too, on two fronts. First was the mental distancing effect, the natural attraction that whispered the battle and the purpose Harry intended to use the magic for weren't half so important as exercising his will. Second was the absorbere gift trying to snap shut. He couldn't let that happen.

And now Voldemort, the bastard, was attacking his allies—no, it was him again, with the sun glittering sharply on the diamond shards that were rapidly closing the distance. At least Draco was no longer in immediate danger, and Harry could deal with the threat without losing his mind.

Harry uncoiled a tendril of the magic and sent forth a cone of intense light and heat, though it was in liquid form, the liquid he had once heard Hermione informing Ron actually comprised the sun. It poured on the shards and dissolved them. Of course, then Harry had to weave a net beneath the sun-liquid to keep it from plummeting to earth and harming his allies.

That was a stupid mistake, he thought, as he dodged the thestral around yet another bolt of lightning. That was a mistake Moody would punish me for. I should have used a different weapon.

"Tired, Harry?" Voldemort whispered as he sent another attack, a small ball of darkness that broke apart into many small balls and whizzed at Harry like Bludgers, ducking under and around Harry's defenses and forcing Harry to send many small counteracting balls of light after them. "You could get rid of me if you would only use that magic. I can feel you roiling with it. You could grow, as I have grown. I gave you the absorbere ability that night in Godric's Hollow, Harry. I know how it works. It is not simply a mechanism that you can use. Its purpose is to feed you and sustain your strength, very like the blood-drinking ability of a vampire. Any moment now, it will close, and force you to absorb what you have taken into your body. You cannot stop it any more than you can stop your stomach from digesting food."

"Shut up," Harry snapped, and then realized he was losing his hold on his temper and his emotions. His attention was necessarily divided into three: focusing on Voldemort's words, maintaining the wards he had spun over the battlefield and Draco to shield them from the flesh-devouring rain which hadn't stopped falling, and scooping magic from the Death Eaters. He shuddered and bent double as a tide of tainted magic flowed through him. The tunnel he kept envisioning trembled and nearly snapped shut. Harry thought he was holding it open by brute strength now.

Voldemort laughed softly, in delight, and pulled up his flesh-dragon. Harry watched him warily, but he sent no more spells. Instead, the snake stuck its head around the dragon's neck to watch him. Harry frowned at him in confusion.

"I will watch you," Voldemort remarked. "This is a possibility that I did not foresee, Harry: that you would swallow so much tainted magic that it would swamp your own and make you into a Dark Lord. In a few moments, you will be my heir in truth, unless you expel what you have taken, now."

Harry could feel an edge of compulsion riding that word, and he had to fight to ignore it. He clung to his "meal," and forced away the image of himself as a Dark Lord, uncaring about others, detached from them by the river of power flowing between him and them.

Voldemort laughed again. Harry closed his eyes, and admitted to himself that he needed help.

So he did what he hadn't dared to do so far, because, after all, he had not Declared. He reached up and asked the storm of the Light, the wild Light if there was such a thing, for help.

And the Light answered him. Perhaps it was only because he was fighting the Dark Lord and not because it considered him a Light wizard. Harry didn't know. He did know that he was suddenly bathed in a flood of gold, like pure, concentrated sunlight.

It struck through him like the phoenix fire, and made many of the impurities he had swallowed turn to smoke and vapor. It filled him with the memory of gryphon wings and flexing talons, and tearing the flesh of the wild Dark, forcing it back into limits. It reminded Harry of why his restraining himself was good, because to do otherwise would only be another instance of the strong conquering the weak. The self-restraint of Lord-level wizards was the salvation of the free will and sanity of others.

And it made him understand, for a moment, why his parents, and his brother, and Dumbledore, and Sirius, and Peter, had all Declared for Light, what about this great and golden force had attracted them.

Exultant, Harry stretched out his hand and laughed. He opened his eyes to see Voldemort's snake staring at him, and smiled.

"I am not like you," Harry said softly. His skin glimmered with gold as he spoke, as if the sun were creeping through him, and he felt courage rushing up behind the gold, propelling him back into battle. It did not matter if the fight was hopeless, because it had to be fought anyway. "I care about free will as much as wildness, and cooperation with others as much as doing things by myself. My parents and Dumbledore came much nearer to making me a Dark Lord than I ever will on my own." He clasped his hand over the stump of his left wrist and extended them towards Voldemort. "Fiat lux!"

Light burst from his fingers and struck Voldemort. Harry could see the flesh-dragon starting to melt away like a bad dream, its feet melting into the blocks of goo that which had lain on the battlefield when Voldemort corrupted the bodies of his victims. Voldemort screamed and rode the dragon down a short distance, getting out of range of the stream of Light.

Harry turned his head towards the Forbidden Forest as he caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, and saw centaurs pouring onto the battlefield. They carried spears and war-hammers, and one of them played a drum. Harry laughed. They had told him, once, how many hundreds of years it had been since wizards and centaurs had fought side by side, but he had forgotten.

With a fuller heart than he had possessed in some time, he lifted his hand so that the stream of Light glowed back into the sky like a beacon, and swirled towards the school, to drain those Death Eaters who were trying to attack the wards. For once, he thought as he glanced back and saw Voldemort laboring after him on his half-melted beast, he was forcing the Dark Lord to fight defensively.

Ginny pulled hard at Padma's arm. "Come on," she whispered. The Ravenclaw had been wounded on the back by a Death Eater she'd managed to kill, and then wounded again on the arm by the one who'd attacked her after that. Ginny had found her lying in the churned, trampled mud, in shock, and had to slap her several times to get her to move. Now they were almost back to the wards, but Padma had fallen again, and the wound on Ginny's arm that she'd received in the attack on the carriages was throbbing. She didn't think she had the ability to carry Padma with one limb so weak.

"Come on, Padma, come on, please," she whispered, crouching over her and stroking her hair. "Come on, you can see your sister again, she's safe in the school. You want to see her again, don't you?" Parvati had been one of the dueling club students who'd remained behind to safeguard the younger ones, since Moody hadn't judged her trained enough to accompany them onto the battlefield.

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Her mind was wandering. Mud and blood and death and pain surrounded her in every direction, and she didn't think Fred was going to live, and she had to get Padma back to Hogwarts.

"Come on," she repeated, and was about to begin the next round of coaxing when she heard hoofbeats. She lifted her head in fear. They'd barely managed to dodge the golden horses once before, and then the herd of silver unicorns after that. Ginny would have to crouch over Padma now and hope that the horses or unicorns jumped them if they were coming round again.

But it was a herd of centaurs instead, and they were slamming broadside into the Death Eaters like a whole bevy of Killing Curses. Ginny shivered as she watched one spear driven so far through a cloaked figure that it plunged out his back, planted itself in the mud, and then impaled its victim completely. She had never realized what kind of force a spear with the strength of a charging centaur behind it would carry.

The main group pounded past them, but one, a dark chestnut, wheeled around and trotted towards them, his black tail billowing. Ginny stared at him uncertainly. She had been raised on evil tales of rogue centaurs and what they did. Besides, she thought this herd was only friendly to Harry.

"My name is Bone," said the centaur in a deep voice. "Is your friend wounded?"

Ginny nodded, responding automatically to such a sensible question. "I don't think she'll make it back to the castle without help."

"Then come with me," said Bone, and dropped to his knees in the mud. "Climb onto my back," he added patiently, when Ginny just stared at him again. She had never heard of a centaur lowering himself enough to let any human ride him—again, with the exception of Harry, but Harry was the exception to everything.

Biting her lip, Ginny managed to drag Padma the few feet that separated them from the centaur. Then she draped her over Bone's back, and asked, "Can you carry two of us?"

"You are small," said Bone. Faint amusement tinged his voice.

Ginny waited, but he said nothing else. Carefully, she slung one leg over his back and then climbed up, holding Padma in place over his withers.

The centaur rose and trotted towards the castle. Ginny didn't dare believe they were safe until she saw the wards dip for them and then rise, closing behind them. Then she had to shut her eyes so the tears wouldn't fall, even as she gave Padma over to the eager, reaching arms of her sister.

She turned to thank Bone, but he had already charged out of the wards again and back onto the battlefield. Ginny wondered for a moment if she should join him, but Professor Sprout stepped up then, took one look at her arm, and began to cluck about taking her to the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey.

Ginny sighed, and tried to be satisfied with what she'd accomplished so far. At least, if she was going to the hospital wing, she could check on Fred.

Minerva knew how many students had been wounded or killed since Voldemort's initial attack. Godric was keeping track of them for her.

Eighty dead, thirty-one wounded.

For the moment, Fred Weasley and Hermione Granger were in the "wounded" category. Minerva had spoken with Poppy, though, and the matron refused to reassure her that that would not change by the end of the day.

Minerva stood now in the window of her office and watched as the centaurs joined the battle. They might be enough to turn the tide. They would never be enough, because nothing would, to bring back the dead.

She took a deep breath, and fought the urge to close her eyes as she saw another of the golden horses fall into an explosion of blood and churned earth from a detonating curse, marking the place where another of her students had just died. Godric's voice echoed softly in her head, changing the toll to eighty-one.

She could not be out there on the battlefield fighting, much as she wanted to, much as her fingers twitched and reached for her wand, because she had a school to protect. And she would protect all the students in it. Though she desperately wanted the wounded Gryffindors, her students, her lions, to live, she could not feel less desperation for Zacharias Smith, whom Godric had told her had called Helga to him, or for the Ravenclaw Patil girl Ginny Weasley had rescued from the battlefield.

Or even for my Slytherins, she thought, eyes on Harry as he wheeled low past the school, making three Death Eaters beneath him suddenly slump to the ground. Minerva could feel the force of his absorbere ability pulling on the wards for a moment, and then he was past and up and gone. She tilted her head back to watch him. The determination in her solidified like steel forged in a tempering fire.

Yes, they are my Slytherins, now, as much as they are Severus's. I think I could set the wards around their common room without help if I had to try again.

And she would stand by her students in all things, she thought, her hands pressing into the stone hard enough to hurt as she watched Harry pause to exchange another flurry of spells with Voldemort. That meant defending what they had done in the name of defending Hogwarts.

She had heard Voldemort's announcement this morning of Harry killing children by the lake. Everyone had. It was the one thing that could distract her students from talk of the battle—at least, students who didn't have siblings or parents or cousins fighting on the grounds. They were muttering, building fear in their eyes and their minds and their hearts, wondering if Harry could be responsible for killing them, too, if they pushed him far enough.

Minerva was sure there was a good explanation, and she would wait until Harry could give it to her, and then she would stand by him no matter what happened.

They are my students, she thought, forcing herself to be still as she saw the horse that bore Helga just barely escape a Killing Curse. All of them.

Harry surveyed the battlefield for a moment. He had the time. Voldemort was coming up behind him again, but he was slowed by his dragon's half-melted state, and his own rage. He obviously couldn't think of many spells to send at Harry that he hadn't already sent, and he was wary of simply contributing magic to Harry's growing stream of it.

He was surprised to see how many Death Eaters were dead. Perhaps fifty were left alive, and they were trying to retreat, though his allies weren't really letting them. The last giant had fallen, and the centaurs were running freely across grass that only an hour ago would have sprouted plants to snare them, bunching for massed cavalry charges against those Death Eaters stupid enough to stand and resist them, and then scattering apart again to chase the fleeing survivors. The grounds were thick with death.

The sight of all those piled bodies did not make Harry feel good. But he felt considerably better than he would have had the sight been a devastated, cracked-open Hogwarts filled with the bodies of students instead.

He lifted his head, wondering if it wasn't time to begin his final taunting of Voldemort that would sting the Dark Lord into chasing Harry and Draco to the place of their final confrontation.

A flicker of movement in the air caught his eye. Harry turned the thestral quickly. Was Voldemort brewing another killing storm?

But the shape that soon resolved itself was far stranger. It looked like a massed flight of winged horses, bearing riders. From the horses' bodies depended chains, leading to something enormous that hung and swayed gently beneath them. Harry thought he could see gold, but that was not unusual; the Light storm was reflecting off whatever it was. Polished glass, metal, water? Harry thought it must be a trick of Voldemort's, since he hadn't asked any of his allies to do something like this, but couldn't imagine that it was dangerous. Voldemort would have used such a weapon to threaten the children in Hogwarts before now.

Then the winged horses passed into the shade of a less intense part of the Light storm, and Harry could see what they were supporting. A tank, filled with water and swarming bodies.

And then the sirens began to sing, and as Harry saw compulsion twining around the minds of everyone beneath him, he felt the balance of the day once more tip towards despair.