DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine. I'm borrowing them from the esteemed Joss Whedon and J.K. Rawling.

SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from BtVS Season 1 to Season 6, AtS Seasons 1 to 3, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Reviews always welcome!

CHAPTER 44:

GRUDGES

"Impedimenta!" Harry snapped.

"Protego!" Bellatrix' reflexes were as quick as Harry remembered; he was sure a lot of people had made the claim to be 'the Dark Lord's most loyal servant,' but Bellatrix probably laid a better claim to the title than most. The fact that Voldemort had spared a few seconds of his precious time to rescue her from within the Department of Mysteries gave her claim some legitimacy.

Harry had been expecting her to send it back at him, however, remembering the Stunner she had nearly blocked back into him in the Ministry. "Protego!" Harry snapped, sending it right back at her.

"Protego!" she snapped again. Harry had to twist violently and duck aside as his curse came back at him a second time; his Seeker's reflexes were barely equal to the task. Bellatrix had a satisfied smirk on her face. Harry was already breathing heavily. He had never heard of a curse being bounced back and forth three times between Shields. The way Bellatrix had handled it, it was like she had seen it before.

"Stupefy!" she continued while he was off-balance, sending a Stunner right behind Harry's Impediment.

Harry's Firebolt, still in his off-hand, leapt to his defense, twisting and blocking the ray of light streaking for his stomach. Harry used the opportunity to dart a few steps farther away from Bellatrix, looking to gain just a little more space …

"Luminaris solaire!" he shouted, and a flash of sunlight burst from his wand.

"Tenebris nocturne!" Bellatrix countered immediately, and a spiral of darkness swirled forth from her own wand, swallowing the blinding light like a drain swallowing water.

Harry had finally gotten what he wanted, however; the flash had bought him enough time to get astride his broom, and he quickly darted for the ceiling of the great dining room. There was not enough room in here for real maneuvering, and the weight of Dumbledore's package concealed inside his robe made flight a little more cumbersome than usual, but he felt much more comfortable against Bellatrix in the air than on the ground.

Bellatrix hissed, realizing what he had done, and quickly cried, "Reducto!" aiming for his broom. Harry twisted aside; Bellatrix' curses were faster than any bludger, but Harry was no ordinary Seeker.

Then Bellatrix sent another, and another, forcing him to keep his distance. Her curses flew faster than crossbow bolts, and it was all he could do to avoid them; Bellatrix was moving around the room in a slow dance, not too quickly, just enough to present him with a moving target.

The dark-haired Death Eater was more than just quick, however; she was cunning, and had been practicing the Dark Arts for longer than Harry had been alive. She motioned with her wand as if to cast another Reductor, and Harry twisted aside too soon, only realizing too late that she had not chanted anything. A moment later, he came out of his twist to see an Impediment only feet from his chest.

There was no time to dodge. Harry tensed as the bolt struck home, and was blasted backwards with a cry. Bellatrix was already laughing below as Harry was thrown toward the side of the chamber.

Harry was not done yet, however, and he had been hit by bludgers before and still ended up with the Snitch in his hands at the end of the match. He could not stop his momentum, but he could turn it, and turn it he did, veering away from a collision with the stone wall and instead catapulted himself back-first out one of the great glass windows high in the dining room. There was a crash of glass as Harry passed through, and the air left his lungs, but he was moving so quickly that the glass barely had any time to cut him; the initial impact jarred his grip on his broom, but then he was through, and the glass fell away down the outside wall while he was hurled a hundred feet or more away from the window.

The meteor shower outside was beginning to abate, but glowing rocks the size of tennis balls were still falling amidst the torrential rain outside Malfoy Manor. The window through which he had been thrown was a barely-visible spot of light almost two hundred feet away by the time he got his broom back under control.

He coughed once, and the muscles on his back were burning with pain, but his eyes were still cold and alert. Not that easy, Bellatrix, the thought burned across his mind. Not this time.

He began streaking back for the window, counting on the darkness and the rain to hide his approach. Here we go, he thought with a malicious grin as he closed the last hundred feet to the window. It had only been seconds.

"Stupefy!" he roared as he twisted in through the jagged gap.

Bellatrix, still laughing, was caught off guard, but still managed to get a Shield up. The force of Harry's curse pushed her back a few steps, however, and the smile quickly vanished from her face. A smile appeared on Harry's face, however, as he realized where she had stepped.

"Reducto!" he snapped as he crossed the room. Not aiming at her. That had done almost nothing. This time, he aimed for the thick, braided chain supporting the massive crystal chandelier under which Bellatrix now stood. There was a shriek of tearing metal, and the chandelier plunged earthward.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Bellatrix' voice, now clearly alarmed, came from below. Harry was going so fast that he should have slammed headlong into the wall on the far side of the dining room, but he twisted in midair on the Firebolt only inches shy of it, and actually pushed off the wall with his feet as he sprang back towards her.

"Finite Incantatem!" Harry shouted as he approached, once again aiming not at her, but at the chandelier, and the Levitation Charm that held it aloft above her head.

With a panicked scream, Bellatrix let the Levitation Charm go, and shrieked "Reducto!" channeling every last drop of power she could to pulverize the chandelier in midair as it closed the last few feet towards her. There was a thunderous crash, and the air around Bellatrix was suddenly filled with a shower of crystal dust and splinters of metal.

Harry was jubilant, but he was not finished. "Stupefy!" he thundered, sending a jet of red light at Bellatrix' form in the midst of the collapsing chandelier.

"Protego!" Bellatrix screamed, but Harry had not put a lot of power into the Stunner; he had never intended to finish her with that. It had simply forced her to shield his attack and take the punishment from the collapsing shards of the chandelier. Bellatrix screamed as twisted pieces of silver wire and sharp shards of brilliant crystal cut into her. She was not laughing anymore.

Harry was still closing fast, however, and Bellatrix saw her opening at last. Targets moving directly towards or away from someone were much easier to hit than those moving from side to side. She ignored the cuts that laced her face and hands, and leveled her wand at him less than a second before he reached her.

"Crucio!" she shouted.

Harry's eyes did not even have time to widen; he had prayed that she had been too hurt and drained to work any of the Unforgivable Curses. Perhaps she was past the Killing Curse, but he had underestimated her. Indescribable pain suddenly burned up and down every nerve of his body, and his body jerked as though having a seizure. His wand tumbled from his grasp.

Time seemed to compress into one frozen instant in that moment of agony, however. Years later, Harry would look back upon that instant and wonder how so much had passed through his mind in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch …

Aaaah … did you love him, little baby Potter?

Oh yes, Harry … I have a package for you, too.

He had underestimated her—but she had also underestimated him.

Fighting against the pain that sought to numb every nerve in his body, fighting for just enough consciousness for one last action, Harry reached into his robe, and his hand closed around the end of Dumbledore's package. With a cry that held every ounce of pain of the Cruciatus Curse and every ounce of the rage he had felt since seeing his godfather tumble through the arch into the inescapable realms of the dead, Harry swept the sword of Godric Gryffindor free of its hiding place.

Carried forward by the momentum of his own Firebolt, rapidly losing the battle with the pain of the Cruciatus, Harry held the sword numbly out at an angle as he passed. There was a brief feel of resistance, but Harry barely felt it; he was too far gone to pull up, and he and his Firebolt crashed into the floor a heartbeat later, a few feet past the dark sorceress.

He hit the ground and rolled, doing his best to roll with the impact, but was largely just rolled by it. His broom skipped away across the polished wooden floor. Godric's sword spun backwards out of his hands and landed, point downward at an angle, embedded in the floor.

He seized a hoarse breath the moment he stopped rolling, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. It was only after a second one that he realized that his breathing, while painful, was less painful than it had been a moment earlier. He turned his head sideways and his eyes fell on the sword embedded in the floor.

There was clearly a red stain along one side of the blade.

Throwing off the dazedness in his head, he rolled and turned his head in Bellatrix' direction, forcing himself to his hands and knees as he did so. He could go no further.

Neither could Bellatrix.

The dark-haired woman was on her hands and knees as well, crawling weakly toward her wand as blood flowed from a gash in her side. The wand was only a few feet from her, but she was already weakened and injured, and she had to crawl through a floor blanketed with shards of crystal and metal.

Quickly, Harry looked for his own wand, only realizing a few moments later that he had dropped it when Bellatrix' Cruciatus had struck him, and it was on the far side of the sorceress from him. Godric's sword was only a few feet away, however, and he slowly, painfully began to crawl toward it. Even without any debris on the ground here, he winced each time his hand or knee touched the ground. Nevertheless, as slowly as he felt he was going after the dizzying speed of the Firebolt, he was moving faster than Bellatrix. His hands closed about the hilt of the Sword of Gryffindor.

For some reason, holding the hilt of the sword returned a small amount of life to his limbs. Using the sword as a crutch, he was able to leverage himself slowly to his feet. He pulled the tip free of the floor just as Bellatrix finally closed her hand about her wand, turned, and rose to one knee to meet his eyes.

Harry held the sword diagonally out and down in front of him, his left hand resting on the flat of the blade near the tip to keep it steady. Every muscle, bone, and nerve in his body was strained past what he would have believed were their utmost limits, but a fierce, predatory smile blossomed on his face as Bellatrix' eyes met his. Her hands and legs were cut and bloodied, there was a jagged laceration above her right eye and an enormous bruise on her left temple, and the cut in her side was deep. Had her Cruciatus not struck when it had, she might have been cut in half at the waist, and they both knew it. But it was her eyes that brought the smile to Harry's face. Before, even when he had tried his feeble Unforgivable on her in the Department of Mysteries, she had shown him nothing but contempt and scorn. It had been Dumbledore that had defeated her, after all, not Harry. Now, for the first time in his life, Bellatrix Lestrange was looking at him with the respect and fear that showed that she now regarded him as an equal.

"Give my regards … to Sirius," he murmured coldly, as steadily as he could manage.

"Well … done … boy," she rasped, in a voice dripping with spite and frustration. She lifted her wand just an inch from the floor, closed her eyes, and began to chant.

"Tenebris corporis meum et spiritus meus cedo, reviviscam mea."

Darkness began to swirl around the fallen woman, and there was a pulsing sound like a great, deep heartbeat. Harry's hand tensed on the sword, fearing that somehow Voldemort's right hand was still able to carry on the fight, and he began to totter forward. As he moved, however, he realized that that was not the case. Her form was beginning to grow less distinct, almost translucent, and she had slumped over again; she was still on one knee, but her head was bowed, her wand hand was on the ground, and her other was desperately clutching at her knee to prevent herself from falling completely prone again.

Once he realized he was not under attack, Harry's adrenaline subsided, and he collapsed to one knee, unable to press his attack, driving the point of Godric's bejeweled sword into the floor for support again. There, just at the edge of the debris of the fallen chandelier, Harry watched the shadowy immolation of Bellatrix Lestrange. Her hair and blood-smirched clothing rippled as though caught in a great wind, and the shadows coalesced into rippling, windswept trails like great flames, engulfing her body. To the deep, rhythmic beat was suddenly added a muted roar like a great bonfire in the distance. With a last, despairing, defeated cry, the form of Bellatrix Lestrange disintegrated, dispersing in a shower of baleful red-violet sparks into the roaring darkness. The fiery roar crescendoed for a brief moment, then faded, and the rippling shadows began to dissipate. The drumming beat faded as well.

Harry found himself alone in the dining hall, which was suddenly as silent as a sepulcher save for the labored sound of his breathing. He stood still for another minute, recovering his breath. Eventually, he began to stumble around the edge of the chandelier debris towards his wand. The after-effects of the Cruciatus were fading, but his back was still cut and bruised, and his entire left side was numb from where he had crashed into the floor.

He finally reached the familiar wand of holly … and promptly toppled over as he leaned forward to pick it up. Spots danced in front of his eyes, but his fingers closed about the base of the wand a moment later.

"Sanguinum obturo," he whispered. It was a weak healing spell that Willow had transcribed for him in one of her letters; all it did was stop the bleeding, it did not alleviate any pain, but it was all he was able to do at the moment. Indeed, he thought, as his chest constricted from the power running through him again, it might have been more than he was up for.

He searched through his memory for another healing spell, but his thoughts were already going dark. He clutched for the sword to steady himself, but it was now in his off-hand and was jarred loose by the impact. He collapsed ungracefully and lay, gasping, unseeing, on the wooden floor.

--------

Gradually, his thoughts began to collect themselves again. New sounds were reaching his ears … thunderous sounds in the distance, so violent that he could feel them vibrating the floor. Nevertheless, he still could not force his vision back into focus, or force his limbs to move. A minute or two later, he heard other sounds, nearer, softer. Footsteps. Running footsteps. He struggled to open his eyes, but his vision was still blanketed with glowing spots.

"Oh my gosh! Harry!" he heard a female voice nearby cry. A moment later, a male voice chanted, "Ennervate."

Energy flowed back into Harry's limbs, and his vision cleared. He reached forward and grasped his wand, straightening gradually to his feet as he did so; he was still extremely tender, but the welcome gift of the Revitalizing Charm made it much easier to bear. As his thoughts cleared, he recognized the voices that had spoken, and, despite the danger they were still in, he smiled as he turned to see Draco and Buffy, the latter dressed in some kind of uniform of green, silver, and black, hurrying along the dining room from one of the far entrances.

"Salazar's ghost, what happened to you, Potter?" Draco asked.

Harry chuckled, then winced as the soreness in his torso reminded him it was still there. "Bellatrix," he said simply. Then, seeing the state Draco was in, he added, "You?"

"Lucius," Draco answered coldly. "Got away. Apparated."

"Same to Bellatrix. But I don't think she'll be back."

"Right. Well, Father might."

"Guys?" Buffy demanded impatiently, flicking her head in the direction from which the sounds were coming.

"Right," said Harry. He turned across the hall. "Accio Firebolt." His broom leapt back into his hands. "I'll get Willow. You get her to safe..." he broke off, see the look in both Buffy and Draco's eyes.

The blond American's emerald eyes suddenly glinted dangerously, and she approached him menacingly. She had a commanding presence for someone her size. "Really?" Her voice was soft, but heated. It was plain she did not think much of that plan.

Harry clenched his teeth. He didn't have time to argue this, and Willow was going to kill him if he let anything happen to Buffy.

"You might want to let this one go, Harry," Draco said softly, surprising Harry by using the Gryffindor prefect's first name for the first time. "She threw a roomful of dementors around like dolls. And she's royally tee'd off."

Harry turned to look at Buffy again. "You got your wand back?" he asked, surprised. That seemed more than a little careless of Voldemort.

"I meant barehanded," Draco said flatly.

Harry's eyes widened. He looked from one to the other to see if they were hiding anything, but they both looked in dead earnest. He turned another speculating look on the little slip of a Californian girl that had arrived from America with Willow. Things started clicking in the back of his mind. His mind flashed back to that night at the Atlantis when he had seen what Willow had been capable of, and he found that the idea that Willow's friend also had a few secret abilities up her sleeve was hardly that farfetched, particularly considering how much trouble Voldemort had gone through to lay hands on her.

Abruptly, he stepped forward, pulled Godric's sword out of the floor, and tossed it to the sunny-haired American. She caught it effortlessly.

"Think you can use that?" he asked.

Buffy twirled the sword in her hands a few times, and Harry marveled at how lightly she held it; it was no claymore, but it seemed almost weightless in her hands. Maybe Dumbledore hadn't been off his rocker when he had told Harry to give the sword to Buffy.

"Looks that way," Buffy answered.

"Take care of that. It belonged to Godric Gryffindor."

"Cool, tell him I said tha … oh, wait, that Godric Gryffindor."

Harry actually chuckled briefly, but then another rumble in the floor brought his mind crashing back to the task at hand. His head jerked up. Buffy's eyes had widened at the same time, as though she were cursing herself for wasting time as well.

"Dammit!" Harry shouted, starting back towards the private dining room, intent on breaking down the wall of earth that had sealed the door.

"No!" Draco shouted after him. "Every door on the ground floor's sealed. Second floor balcony!"

Right, Harry grimaced. He hated seeming like he was taking orders from Draco Malfoy, but the Slytherin prefect certainly knew his own home better.

They quickly clambered back up the stairs from the dining room, emerging in the hallway near the curtain opening onto the rear balcony of Malfoy Manor.

Draco immediately pointed around a corner immediately to their left. "That's the fastest way to the Hall," he said.

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going?"

Draco pointed off in the opposite direction. "We'll come in the north balcony. I'm getting her my old Nimbus. Plenty of room in the Hall for flying, just in case."

Harry nodded. He had seen what Buffy could do on a broom; with the Sword of Gryffindor and a Nimbus 2001, she would be as well armed as he could ask, if getting her a wand was impossible.

"All right, troops," Buffy's voice was barely above a whisper, but it somehow carried as though she were shouting. "Move."

A/N: Flying brooms and swords have always struck me as an awesome combination! :-)

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed … 20 reviews for the second chapter running! W00t!

LilGreenImp … glad to see that Dawn's near-absent role in this fic hasn't been too hard for you to bear. :-)

PhoebeOtaku … glad you took the time to sample the HP/BtVS crossover wares … there are some really good ones out there. (Shameless shout-out to my dark idol Lisette and my "Aussome" beta reader DragonKatGal here!)

smurfinator … close enough.

Silver Warrior … I kind of thought it would be, either that or a wyvern or dragonling or something of that sort. (And I rather thought that would be a happy memory, too. Freddie isn't talking, though.) ;-)

ShawThang, musicgirl141 … see my comments to Silver Warrior. Happy memory indeed. ;-)

pamie884 … don't be embarrassed … we've all felt that way before. That's why we take the time to do all this, after all. (Sure isn't for the lucrative profits and retirement plan.)

SnowyOwl-17 … welcome to the club!

BigHarryFan … you'll find out soon enough! :-D

Coming Soon: Chapter 45, "The Line Between Justice and Vengeance." One more little match-up to deal with before the final showdown between Willow and Voldemort. Remember Lucius escaped from Draco? Remember Buffy is free now?

Hint. Hint.

Sneak Preview:

As the collapsing dementor freed the line of sight between herself and a stunned Lucius Malfoy some distance down the corridor, she turned a predatory grin on the Death Eater. "You have no idea how screwed you are, do you?"