A/N: Special thanks to Psychokelli for the latenight beta, and, as always, to Anastasia/TTFS (this time for sending Ana!Snape to hex the United counter), and a special thanks to my students and others who kept me so well distracted that this chapter had time to grow slowly. My especial thanks to my readers for their patience...


His voice the softest caress in the darkness –

"Avada Kedavra."

Even as Severus' voice satisfied the ravenous, patient terms of the trapping spell, enfolding Hermione within its lethal intent – even as his words fell in the darkness, his eyes locked on hers, unseeing, as the deadly spell arced toward her, the searing bands of vow and compulsion as nothing beside the ice blooming in his heart, in his veins, his blood, the green tracery from his wand shock-poisoning the leaden air, Hermione's eyes fixed on the point of red in the darkness and she fired her silent response: "Expelliarmus."

Two jets of light, fired in consciousness, in blindness, from beyond the outer limits of the human heart, from beyond hope, beyond love, beyond despair, in her eyes the light of a single red tear, and in her mind…

… a jackal wagging its tail…

… a mirror's breath on her skin…

… the cold chains on her cheek on her swing-set in her parents' backyard…

… "Come home."

And the ways of chaos converged, and impossibility and faith met, ensnared, conjoined across the space between them.

Two spells from two virgin wands born of the same phoenix, the phoenix of chaos born of passion, desperation, and sacrifice, born on the line between Light and Dark, and, out of the chaos of love, desire, and a small, playful bird, the Priori Incantatem effect burst from arcing lines from outstretched wands and outflung arms and the outpouring of heart and mind, body and soul, and Hermione and Severus divided by zero at last.

They held the line of light steady between them, and Hermione's vision began to clear, radiating outward from the sparkling red pinpoint of Tayet's tear, to a dark sweep of hair, a pale neck, a mask, a shimmer, and she sought his eyes.

His eyes a burning darkness alight and wide, his breath filling her mind, "I'm right here."

Two smiles, born of sadness, born of loss, born in the aching solace of greeting.

And from the ultraviolet line conjoining wands, minds, hearts, and souls, a shimmering veil descended like slow rain, rippling in the wind of their unthinkable faith.

The edges of the dome began to lift toward its apex, and, Foris Clausa satisfied by Severus' Unforgivable Curse, the dome spiraled, falling upward, inward, consuming itself toward its own center, where there fluttered a small, very young, very dirty phoenix.

The dome coiled in on itself, concentrating to a single, burning pinpoint of incandescent light.

Tayet caught the tiny light in her beak and swallowed it.

And as the Order watched, awestruck, the soot on her blackened feathers lifted, swirled around her, and burst open, a radiant blaze of shining darkness in the air behind her outstretched wings.

Voldemort saw none of this.

The curtain of the dome had risen to reveal Harry Potter, and Voldemort stopped smiling.

As Voldemort's eyes fell on Harry, Severus felt his Vow to Lily and the burning of the Compulsion constrict, and he steeled his mind against the urge to sweep his wand toward Voldemort to protect Lily's son. Liquid fire ran in his veins in protest, and he drew in a sharp breath. Hermione's eyes raised to his in alarm as she felt the force of the line they held between them alter. Not daring break her concentration, she watched his eyebrows furrow sharply, then smooth into their usual shape as he willed himself once more to control.

The Order fell away, wands raised, stepping backward to form a semi-circle behind the young wizard, whose green eyes swept the carnage, passing over the strange veil fluttering between Hermione and Snape to come to deathly rest on the unmoving form of his best friend before him, to one side.

"Ron," he heard Ginny whisper, Molly but a breath catching at his other shoulder, and, raising his wand, he turned his eyes, finally, to Voldemort.

For a moment, all was silence save for the rustling of Tayet's wings as she hovered over them.

"Har-" Voldemort began.

"No," Harry said flatly, cutting his name off from Voldemort's voice. "This ends now."

At the note of resolve in Harry's voice, in his "No," Severus' heart tightened – he had heard that resolution, that rejection before. Her son. His eyes brightened, but he refused to blink.

Tayet soared, talons outstretched to the center of the softly waving silvered curtain that fell suspended from the black light between their wands. Driving her talons into the impossibility of its substanceless form, she held its center steady, forcing it to bend, forming a curve, a concavity of the unknown.

"Squerk," she said firmly, the cadence of the universe in her voice.

Hermione had seen something darken in Severus' eyes, but it disappeared with Tayet's voice, and his eyes locked on hers, flicking once to the right, and back to her. She nodded once, and took a careful step to her left.

As they began to move, slowly, silently, drawing even with Voldemort, Harry's young eyes hardened as he saw Voldemort nod, felt his eyes move to his scar. Voldemort's eyes glowed intense, red, and Harry felt the familiar searing pain and his vision blurred and misted over his sight rippling, fading...

… and in Harry's mind, scales rustling, a whisper: "You are mine, Potter."

"No."

Harry heard a sliding scale of falling laughter as Voldemort's thoughts coiled around his mind.

And Severus watching Harry, black eyes locked on green, with piercing clarity, senses and perception extended to outer limits, waiting for the moment when Harry's pupils would relax and lose focus… edging nearer the Dark Lord, Hermione mirroring his movements, both stepping closer to the Dark Lord, drawing the ends of the spell closer, closer…

… and in Harry's mind, the voice again, seeming to come from his own mind, his own will, his own heart. "Your will is as nothing to mine, Potter. You will fail."

Hagrid's pink umbrella, Dudley with a pig's tail... "NO."

… and in Hermione's mind, Severus' voice nodded, "Now."

And Severus and Hermione drew the edges of the curving, rippling shadow together around Voldemort's body, drawing wand tip to touch to wand tip, and Tayet released the arc, and the veil shadowed around the body, whispering it to nothingness, without even as much as a sigh to mark its passing.

The two lowered their wands, and Tayet fluttered to Hermione's shoulder.

Their hour was spent, and they turned to Harry, watching, and waiting.

/x/

"What's that?" Draco asked in disbelief, from the far edge of the battle. He had stayed on his feet when his mother had fallen, sheer force of will keeping him upright – something was wrong with his knees, he didn't know what, he felt himself detach and start to sway.

"No idea," Tonks breathed in reply, absorbed by the spectacle of Hermione, Severus, and Tayet curving something that blocked their view of Voldemort and Harry. She didn't notice that her breath was forming vapor clouds as the ragged fluttering above them drew nearer, no longer barred from attack.

/x/

Harry's eyes completely blank, closed, his every instinct, strength, power turned inward against the alien presence within himself.

Insistently, echoing from within his very bones, a whispering strategy formed – a strategy of dominance, of supremacy, of limitless power. "You are mine, Potter. My tool."

The strategy almost felt as though it were his own. Sirius' barking laughter... "No."

Again a dry crackle, that only Harry could feel as it slid, spiking underneath his skin. "You will be."

/x/

Whirr... Another clear shot, but – no – he had moved.

Whirr… whirr…

Moody's brow furrowed as his eye whirled madly, refusing to focus.

He scowled. What is that? A dark cascade from the Darkest of Curses, no doubt.

So many down. Moody couldn't see how many remained standing; why couldn't he see…

Click.

There.

/x/

Perhaps the part of Voldemort residing in Harry felt his body dissipate, foiled by a simple, fluttering suggestion of what cloth might be. Perhaps that part of his soul he had willingly severed and unwittingly placed in submission to the destiny he had murdered to avoid, Voldemort panicked. Harry only felt the pitch of his thoughts rise, his mind seeming to scent the flicker of doubt in the insistent hiss of "Mine!"

Dumbledore's half-moon glasses... "No!"

/x/

A semicircle of faces, worried, waiting, reflecting the refracted glow of distant streetlights…

… a twist of tangled bodies, bloodied, bleeding on the ground…

… the unmistakable sound of a mother, weeping, focus torn between the fate of her sons and that of her world…

… the watching hearts beating, breathing rapid, silent, frantic, hoping, the youngest scarcely daring breathe at all…

… a soul on the precipice between life and despair…

… a young woman with warm brown eyes tired in a mask of blood, reaching an unconscious hand to her lover's arm, darkly warm beside her…

… a pale hand to radiant purple wings, a softly arching neck reaching…

… small dark button eyes breaking into the scene watching the internal struggle on a plane only she could see and not even she could understand…

… pale blond and strawberry pink edging closer, from leafy shadow to glowing light leaving the dead behind, over debris, drawn forward, blind to the fluttering shape drawing closer behind…

… and a final Click as an indifferent eye governed by a will ever sorting, dividing, a binary judge focused, locked on an undifferentiated field of darkness on a shadowed plain.

A hiss should not shout, "Mine," and a "No!" is no shield; destruction poised in a deafening, menacing "Yes," and the fate of the world hanging on a word, a single word:

Ginny, lying, her hair a script of red in a deepening pool of blackest ink...

"Never." And as he thought it, that quiet, absolute refusal, Harry knew it was true, knew it as truth, and so a child becomes a man, and so a word, an arbitrary sound, may shape the real, and thus it was, and thus it was done.

And as Harry, just Harry, himself as he should always have been, sank, depleted, emptied, exhausted, to the ground, only Hermione saw the familiar Harry return, hazily, briefly, and finally, into his eyes once more.

Tayet's eyes traveled upward, her neck arching as she followed the invisible line that had been the last of Voldemort's soul, following it, watching it fray, unravel, and dissipate, sifting as smoke through a filter of summer leaves to wash forever amongst a sky distant with stars.

Moody might have been able to see it, too, had he looked.

He didn't. He had a bead on Severus' back once more.

A vicious slash of green in the mundane light of streetlamps - "Avada Kedavra."

The Curse streaked from Moody's wand, but Tayet was faster, swooping against the arcing light to burst into flames, falling to ashes on the dusty pathway.

Her tiny, newborn "Squeep?" was lost behind Hermione's furious cry as the remaining members of the Order burst into a storm of sound.

The one remaining Dementor swooped into a dive, accelerating, driven toward this new, passionate agony with a terrible, insatiable hunger.

It was starving.

And as the Order's wands flared to life to shield Severus, Hermione wheeled toward the Dementor as it dove for Tayet, and shouted, "Mine!" - and her Patronus shot forth with such fury that the Dementor exploded in a shower of ragged fabric that paused, suspended, as if surprised by its own sudden formlessness, then drifted downward, fluttering, settling finally into a falling silence.

Minerva's gasp was loud in the silence that still echoed with the force of Hermione's rage. All eyes were on Hermione's Patronus, which paced a stiff circle around the baby Tayet and glared at all of them, baring its teeth.

It was a jackal.

Hermione saw it, and her arm fell to her side, and she whispered, "Mine."

The tears that had sprung unbidden to trail her cheeks clean of blood were echoed behind Severus' mask.


Note: The chapter title, "Ex Favilla," is from the Requiem Mass, and is usually transated as "from the ashes."