27. The Final Battle part 2.

The New Forest always seemed immensely vast to anyone who ventured into it. It seemed that it carried on for kilometres, that it was a planet in its own right, that nothing else in the world existed beyond those tranquil trees and lively animals. It was so easy just to lean back, close your eyes, and simply let go.

But today, the silence was punctuated by loud sounds every few minutes, almost as if a gunfight was happening right in its depths. The wildlife fled in terror, not knowing what else to do in the face of such an unforeseen danger. It wasn't every day, after all, that they saw humans just appear out of nowhere.

What the animals hadn't expected, what they would never know, having run off to safety, was that these humans were not here to hunt. Rather, they hid as soon as they appeared, glances furtive, breath coming in short bursts, pointing weapons around them, as though they were the ones who were being hunted.

The bushes that they hid behind shimmered, and any rustling sounds suddenly cut out halfway through, as though they had been muffled by some sort of invisible force. And the humans sat, simply sat in the bushes, and waited.

oOo

River crouched behind a bush alongside the Doctor. Further along, she could just about see Harry hiding with his friends. All three of them looked pale and scared, their jaws clenched and wands at the ready. Under any other circumstances she would have smiled as she realised that Ron and Hermione were holding hands. Today, however, she only wondered if they would both survive long enough to even build a life together.

She hoped that they would.

"Take my gun," she murmured to the Doctor.

The Doctor squinted at her. "Why? I have ammunition."

"You have laughing gas and a Sonic that doesn't do wood," she shot back. "Normally I admire your ethics but this time, Doctor, it's just being stubborn! Just take it!"

She shoved the gun into the Doctor's hands. He shoved it back to her. "No. No guns."

"Why? You don't have a problem with me using one."

The Doctor looked down at the forest floor. "I just can't. Don't ask me to explain, not now."

"Now," River said, "is exactly the reason I'm asking you to explain! You go out there without anything to defend yourself and you'll get yourself killed!"

"It's a risk I'm willing to take."

River growled. "You're impossible."

She didn't know how long they crouched there, waiting for something to happen, but her legs were starting to go numb, and she suspected that the others were in the same position. Starting a war with pins and needles should be fairly interesting.

Just when she was starting to wonder if they had found the right time and place, there was a loud pop and the Death Eaters that they had seen in the past suddenly appeared in a large group, all of them gathered around the modified time turner that they had been holding when they had disappeared.

She watched as they shook themselves off like dogs, clearly not having expected such strong effects, several of them staggering, struggling to keep their balance. One fell to the floor and started retching.

But River's eyes were drawn to the large, primitive looking cage and the man inside. He too had been shaken by the unexpected jump, and had pressed a hand to his forehead, the other hand clutching the bars of his makeshift cell.

"The Master…" The Doctor muttered. "He's still alive. How can he be? His life force…"

As if to prove the Doctor's point, the Master's entire frame suddenly flashed blue, and for a minute they saw what could only have been the man's skeleton.

"The jump between universes won't have helped," River murmured in reply.

The Master raised his head and looked up, his attention distracted from the time jump by a sudden crack as someone apparated within the clearing. He was fairly tall, incredibly thin, and had tousled brown hair which framed the beginnings of stubble on his face. Next to her, River felt the Doctor's entire body stiffen, his breath hitch, and his balance waver. She stuck out an arm to keep him from falling.

The Master seemed to be in a similar state of shock, but managed to hide it extremely well. "Well, well, well, Doctor. You do seem to have a habit of popping up whenever you're not needed. You're like a cockroach. Or," he said, lowering his voice, "a stalker."

The dark haired man simply stared at him in a bizarre mixture of contempt and power lust. "I see you're just as mad as the last one."

"What last one?"

"River," the Doctor murmured from beside her, "that's… that's not me, is it?"

She turned to stare at him in shock. "Don't you remember?"

"I… my memories got a bit jumbled…" The Doctor stared at the dark haired man, a look of worry passing over his features. "But that can't be me, can it?" He turned to River. "Wouldn't I remember?"

He looked so lost, so unsure, that River paused to mentally kick herself for not checking the Doctor's mental state. How could she have forgotten? He'd been locked in with that homicidal lunatic for months, his mind periodically being broken into…

The dark haired man, having turned to one of the other Death Eaters, sent off a Patronus. River watched it disappear through the forest, her mind racing at a million miles an hour.

"Is it the Valeyard?" The Doctor continued. "River, you know all of my faces. Who is it?"

The man turned his attention back to the Master and studied him for a moment. His tongue flickered to the corner of his mouth.

"Barty Crouch Junior," she whispered back.

"Well go on then," the Master said, sounding almost bored. "Tell me why you've got me all caged and 'helpless'. I'm just dying of curiosity."

"You'll find out soon enough," Crouch said. "The Dark Lord will be arriving shortly."

The Master snorted. "And who is this 'Dark Lord'?" He looked around himself almost in amusement. "If I didn't know you better, Doctor, I'd say this was some sort of weird fantasy."

Before Crouch had time to reply, the bushes shimmered and River saw Aurors jumping out, landing in the far end of the clearing. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed suite, wands out and shouting spells before anyone could even react.

River pulled her gas mask down over her mouth and nose, and motioned for the Doctor to do the same. "Don't," she warned him, "do that stupid joke of yours about gas masks!"

The Doctor's blank eyes stared at her through his mask. River jumped out from behind the bushes and began shooting spells left, right and centre, taking great care not to hit any of her own side. Death Eaters were falling like flies, struck down by the laughing gas or by other, more sinister hexes.

But they were being replaced at an alarming rate, and it took a while for River to realise that Voldemort had known all along that this would happen. That's why he and the other Death Eaters had not yet been in the clearing – he was waiting for the Death Eaters from the past and their present counterparts, who had come the long way round, to pick off Dumbledore's side one by one.

And it seemed to be working. Aurors fell all over the clearing, struck down by ruthless hexes or simply killed on the spot.

River frantically searched the clearing for any sign of the Doctor, intending to force the gun down his throat if she had to, but he was nowhere to be seen. She cursed and, hitting a Death Eater in the face with her gun, started searching for him.

Crack!

Out of nowhere, more Death Eaters had appeared, closing around the band of freedom fighters, fencing them in around the Master's cage. River shot around her frantically, ducking and weaving to avoid enemy fire. She was knocked suddenly to the side as an Auror crashed into her, dead before he even hit the ground.

"Doctor!" She shouted, hoping against anything to hear him reply.

All she could hear was the screams of the dying.

Just when it seemed that it couldn't get any worse, Voldemort himself appeared, Nagini in tow, and set her to eating the opposition alive, which she quickly did with relish. In shock, River could only stare as Voldemort bore down on Harry, who was lying on the ground, clutching his head in agony.

She fired her gun in random directions, frantic to save the defenceless boy who hadn't even picked up his wand, but was once again brought short by the sudden appearance of Dumbledore, who had until now remained hidden. The surrounding Death Eaters also paused to stare in shock, and some even apparated in outright fear.

Dumbledore's expression was fearsome. Gone was the kind, slightly dotty old professor with the twinkly eyes, and in his place stood the hardened wizard who had found it in himself to defeat Grindelwald, his childhood friend, and throw him in Azkaban.

And with Dumbledore appeared more reinforcements, attacking the Death Eaters from the outside at the same time as the original forces fought their way outwards. The Death Eaters screamed and fell, the new appearances having caught them completely off guard.

Voldemort, realising that it was a trap, raised his wand and, furious, began to attack Dumbledore, who fought back with equally terrifying power. Between them, Harry was scrambling blindly for his wand, which he must have dropped when he had fallen to the ground.

Nagini slithered past, chasing a screaming wizard, and River was horrified though not at all surprised to see the Doctor pounding after it, yelling for it to stop. In his hand, River could see the Soul Separator, and she rolled her eyes.

She started chasing after them, struggling to catch up after their head start, shooting anyone who got in her way. The screaming wizard led the snake through some thick trees, away from the battle, and the massive creature ground to a halt, stuck.

"Oh you clever, stupid man," she gasped, holding a stitch in her side.

The Doctor leapt onto the back of Nagini with a wordless holler apparently supposed to mean 'I can't believe I'm doing this!' while the man he had recruited to help him distract the snake stopped, hands on his knees and bent double, breathlessly smiling. As River got closer, she realised it was, in fact, Neville Longbottom, proving to River that the reinforcements must, in part, have come from Hogwarts along with the professors. She dreaded to think if there were any children running around out there.

River watched as the Doctor slapped the Soul Separator onto Nagini's head and shouted for her to hold still.

"Doctor!" She bellowed. "You can't do that to a snake!"

The Doctor turned to look at her, one hand clasping the Soul Separator while the other clutched at the snake's back, trying to keep his balance. "Why not?"

"It'll kill you!"

As if to prove her point, the branches pinning the snake in place suddenly snapped under the snake's strength and determination to get free, and the Doctor was thrown from her back, landing painfully a few feet away. Nagini immediately turned around and began to go after him, having lost interest in Neville after the Doctor had started trying to mind meld with it.

The Doctor back peddled furiously, but the snake was catching him up. River started firing her gun at it, but it had little effect, only serving to slow it down. Before she could take out her wand, however, the snake collapsed to the ground, its body slashed into several different pieces, blood showering the ground around it.

The Doctor stared past River in shock. "Neville?"

Neville stared back at him, white faced, his wand hand shaking. "I read the spell in an old potions book," he explained, stammering slightly. "I didn't know – I didn't want to – is it dead?"

The Doctor bounced to his feet. "Er… yes. Fairly." He put a hand on Neville's shoulder. "Well, I guess that solves the problem of how to get rid of that Horcrux. Sectumpsempra," the Doctor said. "Never thought of that."

"Horcrux?" Neville asked.

"Where'd you find that book?" The Doctor asked, suddenly.

"I… forgot my book one day, and it was in the cupboard…" Neville said, clearly fazed by the sudden change of direction in the conversation. "Why is that-"

"Oh, no reason, I'm just nosey – oops!" The Doctor yelped, yanking Neville out of the way of an exploding tree. "Yes, battle going on behind us. Easy to lose track." He gestured at the clearing. "Shall we?"

River, who had been distracted by the minor problem of several Death Eaters trying to escape while the Doctor and Neville talked, abruptly turned away from her unconscious victims and stalked up to the Doctor. She promptly slapped him in the face.

The Doctor flinched. "Ow. What was that for?"

"For running off into a magical battle without any protection whatsoever, hunting down a giant snake and trying to mind meld with it!"

"Oh. That."

"Merlin's beard," Neville murmured, staring at the clearing.

Dumbledore and Voldemort were duelling in a flash of light, their movements too fast for anyone else to even begin to understand who had the upper hand. One minute, Voldemort would appear to be losing, one of Dumbledore's conjurations about to eat him whole, when he suddenly flicked his wand and the conjuration was eaten by a bigger, more terrifying creature, which would then start attacking Dumbledore.

Voldemort was losing patience. In a fit of explosive rage, he screamed in fury and sent a cannonball of fire in Dumbledore's direction. Harry, clutching his scar in agony, screamed and, as Voldemort cast the new spell, once more fell to the ground. His friends were by his side instantly, and Aurors defended them against the few Death Eaters skilled or stupid enough to still be fighting. Unfortunately, Dumbledore had also noticed Harry's sudden and unexpected distress, and this distraction seemed to be costing him the duel.

The elation on Voldemort's face was terrifying to behold as he pushed Dumbledore to the ground, where the older wizard, reduced to his knees, struggled and failed to fight off the fire that was on the verge of engulfing him.

Then the fire stopped.

Voldemort crumpled suddenly to the ground, a look of surprise etched onto his face, his wand clattering from his grasp, never to be used again. And, where Voldemort had previously stood, was the smug expression of River's younger self, wielding a smoking gun.

The Doctor turned to stare at current River. "What?!"

The Death Eaters, distracted by the death of their leader, were quickly overpowered and their wands taken before being bound and put with the others, ready for Azkaban. Past River stepped calmly over Voldemort's body and walked over to the Doctor.

"Honey, I'm home." She looked at Current River. "Twice, I see."

"You have to go."

"That's not exactly the welcome I was hoping for."

"No," the Doctor said, "I mean it – you have to go, right now, into the past. You told me so."

"I see," Younger River commented, as River knew she would, and held out her arm. "Co-ordinates?" She asked of her older self.

River typed the coordinates of the time and place she had arrived into her younger self's Vortex Manipulator. She disappeared in a flash of light.

"Why did you send me away so fast, Doctor?" River asked. "I've been meaning to ask."

"Because," the Doctor said simply, "you pointed out all the flaws in the attack plan as we were talking about it – which means you knew what we had to do, and you'd already mentioned meeting me in the future. But you never mentioned the Soul Separator failing, which means you left before what's about to happen."

River frowned at him. "What-"

She was cut off by an inhuman wailing as Harry's body started to convulse, black smoke coming from his mouth. To her horror, Voldemort's body also started to twitch.

The Doctor sighed. "I hate it when my suspicions are proven right."