A/N: You'll never believe this!! It's taken me what, 8 months? I've felt like my identity has been ripped from me since I've slacked on writing. I finally sat down and finished this last chapter today. I wrote a good four pages in about an hour. I've had this story planned for so long, it was just itching to come out. Anyway, I wanted to let y'all know that I love your reviews and support and suggestions (although suggestions right now might be a bit pointless, with my fanfic career ending with the next chapter). It puts a huge smile on my face and helps me write my own stories (the ones that aren't owned by JKR).

By the way, it may take a couple of years, but keep a lookout for my name, J. Holtemore, in the bookstores. I have books planned and I'm gonna write 'em! So right now it's... September, 2007. Let's see how long it takes me, shall we?

I really hope y'all like this chapter! I worked hard to pump it out. It's obviously completely AU now, what with DH, but who cares? Again, like the rest of this story, it hasn't been beta-ed. Sorry.

Gravestones

Chapter 5

"ARGH!"

Harry screamed as he ripped a large shard of splintered wood out of his shoulder, collapsing to the ground as he did so. It felt as if his arm had been chopped off from his collar bone to his arm pit. He looked down at his wound to see a large gash where the shard had been lodged and it was now bleeding freely.

Gasping, he kicked off his shoes and pushed his socks off with his feet. With his good arm he grabbed the socks, shoved one into his mouth and wrapping the other awkwardly around his injured shoulder. Pain shot down his arm with the slightest movement, and he bit down on the sock in his mouth to prevent screaming.

As he slowly fumbled with the knot, he couldn't help but notice how battered he was. Aside from the most evident wound in his shoulder, he also had scratches and bruises everywhere, as well as a nasty headache that had persistently nagged him ever since he'd regained consciousness. What was more, he felt very ill, and his shoulder was definitely not helping.

Finally the sock was secured, albeit precariously. It was simple and not the best solution, but it was the only choice he had at the moment. He spat the other sock out and pushed himself onto his bare feet, wobbling slightly as another wave of sickening pain washed over him. When his vision cleared, he looked about.

It was dark. Dust hung in the air, making it difficult to breathe. He could vaguely make out distorted shapes in the cloudy darkness, which he assumed were large sections of the walls and ceiling that had caved in. Bookshelves, papers, chairs and desks were all scattered about his feet or under sections of debris. He stepped to the side and nearly fell. It appeared that the middle of the stone floor had a great crack through it, running from one end of the room to the other, and caused the floor to slope downwards dangerously.

Harry sighed despairingly, trying to piece together the last couple of moments that had led up to this mess.

The Death Eaters had him surrounded. Ron and Hermione had their backs against his, and all three had their wands pointing between several different opponents. Harry saw MacNair was preparing to place a strong anti-apparition enchantment around the three, so he shouted to Ron and Hermione to apparate away.

"Harry James Potter, stop acting so noble," Hermione scolded without looking at him. "We're staying!"

"No way, Harry. We're not leaving you behind!" Ron shouted, shooting a stunner at a masked Death Eater and ducking as a shield rebounded it back on him. Harry felt a buzzing all around him and knew that MacNair had succeeded with the anti-apparition spell. He'd have to think of something else.

The ground at their feet began to shake and some of the Death Eaters looked confused. Apparently things were not going according to plan for them, and they became distracted. Harry took the opportunity to grab his friends by their robes and throw them behind a stone pillar. A cutting curse zoomed past him just as he was about to join them, so he changed directions and charged for another pillar a few feet away. The floor began to shake in earnest, and chunks began to fall from the ceiling, forcing the Death Eaters to take cover as well.

Harry thought quickly, looking for anything to help him get his friends out of there. He turned his head and felt a tightness around his neck. Reaching up, he fingered an old string with a small bottle cap attached to it. His emergency portkey, courtesy of Luna. It was set to go off in about 20 minutes, but that was too much time. He needed it to go off now.

He yanked at the string until it snapped and held the necklace out in his hand. He touched his wand to it and muttered "Portus." He tapped the necklace once before muttering the first address he could think of. "Number 9, Godric's Hollow," he muttered. The little bottle cap necklace trembled a bit and glowed a dull white before settling back down. It was highly illegal to make an unauthorized portkey, but considering that Harry was sitting in the middle of a thrashed Ministry Archives Office, battling Death Eaters to the death, he thought he might be able to slip under the radar. He just hoped the portkey worked.

Sneaking a peek around the pillar and not seeing any killing curses zoom at his head, Harry took a chance. He stood up, and bolted from his cover. As he did, though, he kicked a book that had fallen on the floor, and the noise drew attention to himself.

"Oi, look over there!"

"Get him!"

And then he felt like he was running through fireworks. Dashing across the hard stone floor, he quickly dove behind the pillar that Ron and Hermione currently occupied.

"Harry, there you are!" Hermione exclaimed, looking relieved.

"Bloody hell, mate. Are you mad, prancing across the floor like that?" Ron said with wide eyes, though Harry could see more admiration in Ron's eyes than anything else.

"I'm mad as Lockhart," Harry said with a grin. And you going to truly believe that in about one second, Harry thought grimly.

Ron grinned at Harry's comment when Harry suddenly cried, "Incarcerous!"

The grin slowly faded from Ron's face as he looked down to see his and Hermione's hands bound together tightly, his right to her left and her right to his left. Hermione looked stunned, staring blankly at the bindings. And then suddenly she was furious.

"Harry, I'll ring your neck at the end of this!" she hissed, trying to jerk her hand out of their confines. "Undo this!"

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly, stepping back and shaking his head.

Hermione let out a scream of frustration. She tried to point her wand at the binding to undo it, but her wrist wouldn't allow any movement. Ron seemed to come out of his shock and tried to do the same thing, but to no avail.

"Harry, you prat, get us out of this right now!" Ron growled.

Harry looked at Ron sadly and was about to respond when he felt his portkey begin to vibrate. He quickly shoved it into their joined hands just in the nick of time.

They both opened their mouths to speak, shock written across their faces as they disappeared, leaving Harry alone.

"Goodbye," he mumbled, wondering if he'd ever see his friends again.

He wiped sweat from his brow and leaned against the pillar. The floor gave another almighty rumble that brought Harry to the ground.

"What's going on here?" a shrill female voice shouted.

"Silence, Bella. Our plan is underway. Come, we must leave. Now."

A cold trill ran down Harry's spine upon hearing those words. If the earthquakes were caused by Voldemort, Harry's job had just been made much more difficult.

As if on cue, the floor seemed to drop from his feet. The entire room began to quake with ferocity, rattling his brain. He tried to clutch at the stone pillar, but it was a smooth surface and there were no hand holds. The floor seemed to tilt and Harry began to slide out into the open. He rolled over and slammed his feet into a wall, digging it into a crevice.

He looked up at the ceiling to see the pillar he'd just been behind begin to collapse. It dislodged from the ceiling, causing large amounts of debris to fall all over the room, some of it landing on Harry. He quickly threw his arm over his face and scrunched into a ball, hoping nothing big would fall on him. The floor shook violently again, and Harry saw from beneath his arm that the floor had literally cleaved in two in the center. As the floor continued to jerk about, Harry was thrown to the side. He looked up just in time to see a bookshelf, broken into large fragments by stray spells and barely still in one piece, fall. The very top of it landed on his arm, and a large piece of oak gouged into his right shoulder.

Grunting under the pressure and the excruciating pain that made his eyes water, Harry edged his feet under the bookshelf and managed to kick it off of him. But the bit of wood was lodged so deep that it remained in his shoulder, twisting as the bookshelf tore away from it. A scream ripped from Harry's lips and he grasped his shoulder, waiting for the pain to pass, but it didn't. It made Harry's stomach roil. He rolled to his good side and retched, his stomach heaving up anything that was in it, which wasn't much. Groaning, Harry tried to scoot to a solid part of the wall, far away from any bookshelves or other falling objects.

The floor jolted harder than ever before. Harry was dragged across the floor again, head first. Only this time his injured arm prevented him from stopping himself. He watched as the opposite wall seemed to zoom closer and closer until it encompassed all his vision. He heard a sickening crack, and then there was blackness.

Harry shook his head in order to clear it from the sudden onslaught of memories. Unfortunately it caused his head injury, which he now remembered how he'd acquired, to protest. His vision swam and he quickly stopped, clasping his head in his hands.

What was that?

He could hear soft whispering, barely audible. At first he thought he might have hit his head a little too hard, until he noticed a faint light filtering through the fissure in the middle of the floor. The light refractedon the dust particles in the air to cause an eerie glow. The air was stuffy and uncomfortably warm, but Harry felt an unnatural shiver run down his spine.

So this was why there was an earthquake right in the heart of the Ministry of Magic, a building among the most protected in the entire wizarding world. There, right below him, lay the object of mystery that had caused him so much grief and confusion and anger. He stared, transfixed even in a time like this, by the breeze causing the veil to flutter as it hung from the stone arch. The soft whispering emanating from it both soothed his fast-beating heart and set the hairs on the back of his neck on edge.

And somehow he knew. He knew what he had to do and why it had to be done. There was no turning back.

His thigh had been wedged against a large chunk of debris, grounding him. He carefully extricated himself with his better arm, noting how loud the fall of debris seemed to be in comparison to the eerie silence he had been submerged in. Once completely free he sat down, gripped his wand firmly and pushed himself away from his grounding place, away from safety, and began to slide downward.

The incline was not enough to make him slide the entire length of the floor and drop down the twenty or so feet into the veil room, not to mention that he probably would not survive the fall, particularly in his current health. He slowly eased down to the ledge and looked at the drop. It was long; he would have to cushion himself somehow. He also noted that the room seemed to be empty, but he knew that wouldn't last long.

Harry carefully leaned over to the side and snatched up a chunk of stone about the size of his fist. He carefully set it in his lap and tapped it with his wand. It immediately began to change, shuddering at first and then flattening, its edges softening and squaring off until finally it lay still. He looked at his new pillow with a sort of disjointed satisfaction, like he would have been impressed if he had been anywhere else at any other time. Hermione would have managed tassels too, he thought to himself.

Taking his newly made pillow out of his lap, he immediately dropped it through the great crack to the floor below. Seeing it land safely at the bottom, a few feet in between the dais and the stairs, he aimed his wand and muttered, "Engorgio." The pillow again trembled and grew larger and larger, first reaching the size of a cat, then perhaps a small boy, and eventually grew under Harry's urging to rival Hagrid's gigantic mass. Satisfied and feeling decidedly nauseous (it seemed his rudimentary sock bandage was not stemming the blood flow quite as well as he would have liked), he slipped off the ledge.

Even with the huge cushion, it was still a rather long fall, making Harry's stomach lurch a bit. With a grunt he landed on the pillow and immediately rolled into a standing position, wand at the ready.

"So Harry Potter," came a high-pitched hiss from his right, and he turned to see Lord Voldemort emerging from the shadows, "you arrive at last."

Harry wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Is there a particular reason why you are speaking in Parseltongue, or did you just have the urge to show off?" he spat, remaining rooted at the spot and refusing to even flinch in Voldemort's presence. "Where are your Death Eater goons?"

Voldemort only acknowledged that Harry spoke with a twisted smile. "I do hope you are well?" he asked, continuing his use of Parseltongue.

"Oh, I'm brilliant, thanks," said Harry sarcastically, raising his wand a bit higher in his left hand. His right shoulder was still killing him. Perhaps literally. "And you?"

"Oh, I have a feeling I'll be doing quite well in just a moment."

And suddenly they were firing off spells as fast as they could. Red and green light rocketed by each other, and Harry was reminded of Christmas with Uncle Moony at his flat. With a pang of sadness at not being able to see his father's friend, he threw himself into the fight with ferocity. His feet were still bare and his head still hurt, but he kept at it. He fired off a stunner that ended up bouncing off the ceiling, making him wince at his bad aim.

"Don't you know you are no match for me?" Voldemort laughed, his high pitched voice ringing in Harry's ears.

"Ah, dropped the Parseltongue charade I see," Harry said as he threw a leg-locker curse at him, which was easily blocked.

"Why do you despise the hallowed language of the greatest wizards in history, Harry?" Voldemort asked, and though he seemed congenial, his slitted red eyes narrowed. "You were given a talent, Harry, to achieve greatness!"

He sent a Killing Curse Harry's way, and Harry dove behind his giant cushion just in time. The spell seared a hole clean through it causing transfigured cotton to float down onto him. Pushing himself to his knees behind his protective pillow, he brought the tip of his wand to his lips and muttered "recodius." A small bubble appeared at the tip of his wand, and he quickly spoke into it. As he spoke, the bubble grew, and when he had finished the bubble had grown to be a good four inches in diameter. He muttered "fin," and then blew the bubble away from his wand, up into the air, where it hovered innocently.

He heard the whip of a cloak and knew Voldemort was Apparating around to where he sat. He quickly turned on the spot and landed back on his knees in the shadows just behind the dais without a sound.

"You see, Tom, I have an issue with using the language of cowardly creatures," Harry said, seeing Voldemort, far away from him, look up at his finally answered question. "It isn't my style."

Voldemort's eyes seemed to glow with his anger, and he turned on the spot. But Harry was ready for it, and he too apparated silently thirty feet away, so that he was standing atop the stairs.

Voldemort seemed to want to explode with frustration at seeing Harry disappear yet again. His back was to Harry, and so Harry spoke again.

"Have you ever wondered, Tom," Harry began, "exactly what the prophecy said? Exactly why I have been slipping-"

Voldemort spotted him and apparated to him, but again Harry was ready and apparated across the room, ducking behind a large chunk of debris that had fallen from the room above and continued where he left off.

"-from your grasp for all these years?"

"POTTER!" Voldemort screeched, his face twisting into a snarl so inhuman, so unearthly, that even the walls seemed to shrink from it.

Harry's eyes widened and he quickly took a step back, losing his footing and falling. Voldemort saw this and began to move toward him.

Harry quickly stood and shouted, "Relashio!" pointing his wand at the speech bubble he had created. The bubble popped loudly and his own voice rang out, magnified.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who thrice defied him. Born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives."

As Harry's recorded voice was speaking, he was crawling forward, stealthily moving ever closer to the veil. By the time his words had finished, he was already on top of the dais. He could see Voldemort, who had stood transfixed, listening to the prophecy. And then Harry spoke in a commanding voice that caused Voldemort to lift his snakelike, inhuman eyes.

"All of your Horcruxes are destroyed, Tom," Harry said, backing up against the veil. The whispering behind it was growing louder so that he felt he had to yell over them, though Voldemort didn't seem to notice them. He was too busy staring in shock at what Harry had revealed. "All 6 pieces of your soul that lay in other objects. Every last one of them, down to your pitiful, disgusting, cowardly snake."

Voldemort took a step back, stunned.

"And now, Tom, we are equal," Harry said. "Harry James Potter against Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Something inside the insane, unloved mind of Harry's worst enemy seemed to snap. Harry felt the ground quake again and saw Voldemort trembling in fury. His power was waiting to be unleashed, eager to burst from him and incinerate everything in its path. And Harry knew that this was moment.

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort screeched.

"Expelliarmus!" Harry yelled.

Immediately the two wands connected, the red and green lights joining in the middle just as it had three years ago. The wands shook and trembled under the power issuing from the two wizards, unable to sustain such tremendous amounts of magic. Harry's wand began to grow hot under his grip and a cage of light began to spread from the center of the connection point. But Harry did not wait for priori incantatem. He did not wait to see his parents as he had three years previously. Instead, he jerked his wand backward. The connection did not break, because unlike all those years ago, Harry was strong, and much more in control. As Harry heaved against his wand, Voldemort was lifted off his feet and came careening toward Harry.

It seemed to happen as if in slow motion, and Harry watched as Voldemort's eyes widened. Sheer terror shone on his face as Harry had never seen. Harry himself was trembling and aware of ever fiber of his being as the rope of the two spells reeled Voldemort in, arching as it neared Harry. Voldemort was now near enough to touch... Finally they collided with a crash, and the built up magic of their unfinished spells exploded around them, sending Harry flying through the air.

And then all went dark.