No, you didn't read that wrong. Yes, I killed Ginny. It's a good thing that allows for the obscurity of anonymity, otherwise I might have some of you out for my blood. If it makes you feel better, at least this isn't the real thing. Do any of you have trouble killing off characters? I certainly do. I cried when I wrote that last chapter, you know. Gah! I'm terrible….

Chapter 47

The Battle

His thoughts seemed frozen. He knew he had to do something, knew he could not just sit there for another second, but he could not fight his way past the scene in his mind, replaying itself before his eyes again and again and again. The last few seconds would be burned in his memory forever, branded there like a scar to be borne for all eternity. He wanted to forget, he wanted to push it away like it had never happened, he wanted to turn his head and see her standing there, grinning impishly down at him, but it would all be a hallucination, a deception… a lie.

In the end, she was still gone.

Something snapped inside of him. He saw Voldemort coolly picking up the Horcruxes from where Harry had tossed them to the ground, and, for the first time in six years, he was truly unafraid. He no longer cared, no longer wanted to go on living; he only wanted to bring this monster, this demon, this infernal bastard down with him. He tried to push against the foot that forced him into the ground, but it seemed like an anvil weighing him down, and he struggled to no avail. His magic was still blocked, but he knew he had to get to it. He fought and pushed at the barrier that kept him from his Inner Sanctum, but it was in vain. Voldemort was too powerful.

Voldemort had won.

He's going to kill me, Harry thought bitterly. His rational mind suddenly returned with sharper clarity than before, and with it rushed in the realization that in one fell swoop, Voldemort had swept all obstacles from his path. All the Dark Lord had to do was mutter one curse, the same curse he had cast hundreds of times, and there would be a flash of green light, and it would all be over.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…

He was the only one, the prophecy said, the only one who could stop the immortal evil that had blanketed the land. And now, he was going to die.

"Do you want to know how I found out that you knew about these, Harry?" the cold voice asked conversationally, holding up the Horcruxes.

Harry closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound. The truth was, however, that despite the amount of anguish he was in, he wanted to know.

"Look, Potter, and behold."

Harry turned his head and cracked open his eyes. On the grass beside Voldemort knelt a broken, bruised, and defeated Regulus Black. Harry groaned. How he had gotten there, he had no idea, but he didn't care. Regulus had told Voldemort everything. Willingly or unwillingly, it had ended in this…

"As accomplished an Occlumens as Master Black is," Voldemort spat, "he could not keep me from his mind. He showed me everything, Harry. Everything about his past, his desertion, and your little meetings."

Harry met Regulus' eyes, and they were full of sorrow and regret and self-loathing. Harry now knew why he had not shown up to meet Sirius the night before. It struck him that if they had not rescued Sirius, Regulus wouldn't have come back into the country, and none of this would have happened. It's too late now, he reprimanded himself sharply. He's been captured and he's given it all away. How he had been captured or even discovered was beyond Harry, but it didn't matter now.

Nothing matters now…

He tried to think clearly as Voldemort took the Horcruxes into his hands. The timeturner and the locket he strung around his neck, and the cup he hung from a cord around his waste. He kept Gryffindor's staff in hand and turned from Harry to face Regulus.

"This staff," he hissed, "holds a power more great and terrible than you can imagine. You think the Killing Curse is bad? What if you had to suffer first? What if you got hit by a spell, and you knew that you had fifteen minutes of long, torturous agony before it was all over?"

"Then I'd bear it," Regulus spat, "and I'd hope that one day, you might meet the same fate."

Voldemort leveled the staff to Regulus' chest. "Let us test your forbearance, then," he whispered.

The light that sprang from the tip of the staff was a vivid, brilliant green, ten times brighter than Avada Kedavra. Harry, helpless, could only watch once more as another met his death at the hands of the man apparently only Harry had the ability to defeat.

The bolt struck Regulus in the stomach, and he grunted, keeling over. His hands were bound behind his back, but they shook in agony as his face paled. Sixty seconds was all it took before his body was wracked in violent spasms.

Fifteen minutes…

Harry adverted his eyes after the first three. Regulus' screams ripped through his soul, tearing at his heart, but there was nothing he could do. His magic was still blocked, and physically he was no match for the Death Eater holding him down.

He felt numb as the wails finally died away. He knew that Regulus was dead, but he could not bring himself to look in his direction. He felt nothing, nothing but an empty void where all feeling had been. Most of it had been stripped away when Voldemort pointed his wand for the last time at Ginny, and the rest of it had gone with Regulus' death.

"Look at me, Harry Potter," Voldemort's voice hissed.

Harry raised his eyes to gaze into the red ones that stared mockingly down at him. They were cold and merciless and triumphant, and another wave of sickening grief washed over Harry. He's won, he thought. After all this time, after all the pain, the fighting, the mourning, it all comes to this… We lost. We lost. We lost.

"Stand up," Voldemort spat, waving to the Death Eater to stop pressing his foot into Harry's chest. "Stand up and fight me like a man."

Harry heaved himself from the ground, and he felt his numbness slowly changing into an uncontrollable, unafraid, and unrestrained rage. He did not bother to look for his wand, knowing it had been snapped in half some time ago. He felt the wall that blockaded his Inner Sanctum come crumbling down, and he let his magic rush to his fingertips. He couldn't win, but he was ready.

Voldemort raised his staff, and Harry tensed himself. If the force of the spell that had hit Regulus was any indication, he didn't stand a chance. But his father's voice was running again and again through his mind, reiterating what Harry knew he had to do.

"Lily, take Harry and run! I'll hold him off!"

He was going to go down fighting, like his father had, trying to protect his wife and son. Ginny was dead; he had no one to die trying to save, but he was going to give it his all anyway.

Harry could almost see the magic pooling at the end of Gryffindor's staff, ready to strike. He watched as, almost in slow motion, the bolt of vivid green light shot out of the end, and he readied himself for the pain. Fifteen minutes, he thought. I only have to bear fifteen more minutes, and then it will be over. And I can rest. I can finally rest…

But just as Harry braced himself to feel a sickening wave of agony, a dark shape flung itself in front of him, absorbing the beam of light and thudding to the ground a few feet away. Harry shook himself out of his daze and blinked at the figure on the ground.

Voldemort looked livid. "You," he hissed, enraged. He crossed to the man on the ground, who had jumped from the Death Eaters' ranks, and yanked off the mask, slamming it into the ground and grinding it under his heel.

Harry gazed at the man in amazement. Hatred and agony written all over his face, Severus Snape glowered up at him in bitter anguish.

"You," Harry gasped. "You saved…"

"I saved your life, yes," he spat savagely as the spell began to take hold. "Not for you, but for the rest of the wizarding world. If you die, no one has a chance. You're the only one who can kill him."

"You want Voldemort… dead?"

"You fool, Potter," he hissed. His body was twisting and jerking, and gasps of pain punctured his words. "You were too blind to see… too blind…"

"You saved my life so that I can defeat Voldemort?" This was too much for Harry to handle. He stumbled backwards. Apparently, Voldemort was just as astounded, but his feelings were not limited to shock. He was enraged.

"Traitor," he hissed. "I took you in, gave you status where you didn't deserve it, and you're a traitor… half-blood."

The insult didn't faze Snape, though whether that was because he didn't care or because he was in too much pain to hear, Harry didn't know. He couldn't absorb it. "You killed Dumbledore," he accused angrily. "You killed him."

"Because he wanted it," Snape snarled, doubling over. "He knew he was dying, and he knew that I had made the Unbreakable Vow. He didn't want me to die."

"You killed him," Harry repeated.

"I was fully prepared to die for him!" he roared, clutching his stomach as his frame shook wildly. "I knew that by swearing to help Draco Malfoy, I was signing my own death sentence! But he wouldn't have it." His lips twitched into a pained semblance of a sneer. "He wouldn't just let me die. The noble old fool made me swear that I would kill him rather than break my Vow.

"You killed him," Harry whispered.

"Shut up! You fool, Potter, you're as arrogant as your father ever was! Why do you think I saved your life just now? It was because I couldn't save Dumbledore's. Dumbledore, the only one who ever gave me a second chance, the only one who ever saw any good in me, other than your mother! I didn't do it for you, Potter. I couldn't care less if you died. I did it because Dumbledore would have—"

He broke off as a scream of anguish wrenched itself from his lips, and he began writhing and twisting on the ground. Harry took a step back, shaking his head dumbly. There was nothing he could do, and his own thoughts were so jumbled in his head he doubted he would have done anything even if he had been able to. Voldemort seemed to have forgotten him momentarily; he was staring down at Snape, a mixture of fury and amusement twisted across his flat face.

Suddenly, they were surrounded by popping noises. People were Apparating all around them. Harry ducked as a spell flew over his head. The circle of Death Eaters shattered, and Harry fought his way towards the edge of the scene that had turned into chaos. Who are they? he thought.

Then he caught a glimpse of one person's face, reflected in the silvery light of the almost-full moon. It was Sirius.

The Order was here.

And more than just the Order. Many people Harry had never seen before began appearing, sending spells off as soon as they arrived. Attention was no longer fixed on Harry, so he made his way towards Sirius.

"Who is everyone else?" he shouted to him, dispatching a Death Eater. He forced his mind away from the events of the last several minutes.

Sirius glanced Harry's way, then did a double take. "Oh, thank God," he muttered, moving to stand by him, "you're alright. We thought…"

"This isn't just the Order," Harry observed, pulling away from the fray. It was chaotic; spells were flying, people were shouting, and the ruins of Harry's parents' house were the cause of a lot of stumbling and cursing.

"The Ministry of Magic had a small volunteer army at the ready. We alerted them as soon as we found out where you had gone…"

"How'd you know?" Harry demanded. He didn't really care. He didn't care about much of anything anymore.

"Malfoy said that as you left the room you muttered 'where it all began.' Ron and Hermione guessed instantly that it meant here."

Harry didn't respond, instead glaring determinedly into the conflict. It seemed as though more Death Eaters and more Ministry supporters were arriving by the second, and before long, it was a fully-fledged battle.

He could see bodies fall to the ground, but they didn't faze him. Without another word to Sirius, he stepped back into the battle. He had decided that there was only one thing left for him to do.

The spells flew thick around his head, bright jets of light of all colors. However, there was only one place where brilliant flashes of emerald lit up the sky, and Harry knew who must be there. That was his destination.

He was going to end this, once and for all.