And here's the confrontation at least one of you has been waiting for! So I did take the HvsV battle out of the book because there was no sense in rewriting it, but I did trim it down and I added a bit at the end.
Battle at Hogwarts
May 2nd, 1998
Post Hogwarts
-
As the Death Eaters were dislodging themselves from the muck, beaters from every house—except for Fred—took up their bats and beat in the bludgers. The black balls ricocheted off heads and torsos and when they came back to the students, the beaters whacked them in again.
Unexpectedly, Jo found herself cornered by a death eater who had escaped the swamp's muck. They were more skilled in nonverbal spell work than she was, it was almost all she could do to dodge and shield in time.
Blast.
Dodge.
Blast.
Shield.
Blast.
"Shit!"
The death eater was pressing his advantage, stepping in every time he cast a spell so that every time she blocked, she had to step back to keep the distance. Pretty soon, he had backed her into a corner. She began pulling up every shield charm she knew when someone else jumped in front of her. She could recognize the back of that head anywhere.
As Marcus beat back his ally Jo cried, "What are you doing?!"
"Saving your ass!" He called back.
"Melofors!" she said, turning their opponent's head into a pumpkin "Whatever trick you've got up your sleeve, it won't work!" she said before she turned her wand on him and forced sardines to pour from his nose.
"I'm—" curse "Not trying—" curse-curse "To TRICK you, damn it, I'm trying to HELP YOU!" curse.
He was putting up with the annoying little spells she kept throwing at him. She had to alternate between cursing the death eaters that were attacking her and the one that was defending her. It was tough, but she made it work.
"You're a DEATH EATER!"
"Not by choice!"
"WHAT?" she shrieked.
"I LOVE you, Goddamnit!"
The world went silent.
Jo could hear her heartbeat in her ears as the words rang in her mind.
Suddenly a green spell missed Ginny with nary an inch to spare and Bellatrix cackled when Molly screamed, "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" and the brief moment of peace was gone.
"What will happen when I've killed you? What will happen when Mummy's gone?" Bellatrix taunted.
"You—will—never—touch—our—children—again!" screamed Molly, every word punctuated by a spell. She was quite right too, for her next curse ended Bellatrix's laughter when it flew under her arm to hit her in the heart.
Bellatrix's gloating smile froze, her eyes began to bulge: For the tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled. The watching crowd roared and Voldemort screamed, raising his wand at Molly. But Harry was quicker; he pulled off his father's cloak and screamed, "PROTEGO!"
The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of "Harry!" "HE'S ALIVE!" were stifled at once as Voldemort's eyes settled up the black haired, bespectacled young man. Silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other and began to circle each other.
People reached for their wands, and Voldemort hissed, "Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"
"Nobody," said Harry simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives. Only one of us is getting out of this alive."
"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, his red eyes staring like a snake about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, or because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"
"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving sideways in that perfect circle, "Accident, when I stopped you from getting the Stone? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived?"
"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them in your place!"
"You won't be killing anyone else tonight. You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—"
"But you did not!"
"I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You. Can't. Even. Touch. Them. You don't learn from your mistakes, do you Riddle?"
"You dare—"
"Yes, I dare, because I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle." A hushed whisper rippled through the crowd. "I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"
Voldemort did not initially speak, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a final secret, but it didn't last long.
"Is it love again?" he finally jeered. "Dumbledore's favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death. Love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like old waxwork! Love did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter—and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you from dying now when I strike? If it is not love that will save you this time, you must believe that you have some magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"
"I believe both," Harry replied, watching shock flit across his enemy's face, there in an instant and gone in a flash.
Voldemort began to laugh, humorless and insane, "You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of? Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words as though they would cause unendurable pain. "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle. I have seen it, Potter! He will not return!"
For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the walls drew breath as one, the way he spat the name of a hero to so many; it was almost blasphemous.
"Yes, Dumbledore's dead," Harry said calmly, "but you didn't kill him. He chose his death, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."
"What childish dream is this?" he asked, but still did not strike.
"Severus Snape wasn't yours. He was Dumbledore's from the moment you threatened my mother. And you never realized it; because of the one thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"
Voldemort did not answer.
"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as my mother's, because he loved her nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realized," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her, didn't he?"
"He desired her, that was all," Voldemort sneered, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him—"
"Of course he told you that," Harry said, laughing slightly, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape killed him!"
Everyone watched as the pair circled each other like rabid dogs, listened as Harry revealed secrets about Dumbledore and Snape that even he had only learned tonight. Dumbledore was smarter than Voldemort; that much was obvious. He had orchestrated his own death, planned it with Severus Snape; if the situation hadn't been so very dire Jo might have let out a triumphant "HA!" for she had been right and Snape had been a good guy all along.
"Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy—I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up, I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the WAND OF DESTINY is finally, truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!" Voldemort ranted, barely breathing between sentences. He sounded insane.
"Yeah, it did. You're right; it did backfire. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done... Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle..."
"What is this?" Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this.
"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left. I've seen what you'll be otherwise. Try for some remorse. Be a man, Tom."
"You dare—?" Voldemort said again.
"Yes, I dare," said Harry, again, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle."
Voldemort's hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's very tightly. Harry could hear the seconds ticking down in his ears; this was all about to come to a head very soon.
"You murdered the wrong person, that's why the wand won't obey you. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore."
"He killed—"
"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die undefeated as the wand's last master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"
"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort shook with malicious glee. "I stole the wand from its last master's tomb! I removed it against its last master's wishes! Its power is mine!"
"You still don't get it, do you? Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard. The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who has never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance…"
Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.
"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."
Draco stared at Harry; he was the master of the wand that Voldemort had craved so badly?
But then Harry continued, "But you're too late. You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took this wand from him." Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall on it, particularly Draco's. Draco, whose mind was reeling, Draco, who had turned good and no one had noticed.
"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does… then I am the true master of the Elder Wand."
A red-gold glow suddenly burst across the enchanted sky above them as the sun appeared over the crown of the nearest hill.
"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"
With a bang like a cannon blast, the spells collided.
Harry saw Voldemort's spell meet his own, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last.
With the unerring skill of a Seeker, Harry caught the wand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, his scarlet eyes rolling upward. He hit the ground with a mundane finality, his white hands empty, his snakelike face vacant.
Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell hardly daring to breathe. And after a moment's silence, the air was filled with a deafening cheer as the few remaining Death Eaters Apparated away. Ron and Hermione reached him first and both hugged him and then Ginny gave him a big kiss before he was lifted atop shoulders and everyone rejoiced.
Harry didn't feel when Draco's wand was slipped from his hand; it didn't matter anymore. He didn't notice Luna slip in front of the stunned boy and hand it back to him, he didn't see Draco hesitantly take it from her and he didn't see the forgiving smile Luna gave Draco before she skipped away.