Chapter 39: Loyalty
Harry takes a deep breath.
"We'll win," Hermione whispers. Guilt twists in his stomach, but he nods.
"Let's go," Harry calls. The Great Hall empties onto the grounds.
It shocks Hermione still for a moment, seeing fighting on the Hogwarts grounds again. Last time they didn't need warming charms, but the odds were against them then.
Draco pulls her roughly to the side and a curse splashes into the wall.
"You alright?" Draco asks. She nods and starts casting her own curses.
Harry defects a couple spells as he walks calmly to the center of the field. Voldemort's eyes zero in on the Chosen One. He meets him in the center of the chaos.
"Ready to die, Harry Potter?" Voldemort asks.
"Yes, but how about you first," Harry answers. Voldemorts wand is hardly visible as it whips out spell after spell. Harry's skill has only improved since they met in the graveyard two and half years ago. The elder wand increases the power behind in.
"Don't get hit by anything except the killing curse," Luna had warned. "Your body needs to be intact."
Harry dodges the flames that scorched the grass. Then banishes the knives back at their creator. 'Deep breath,' Harry thinks.
"Expelliarmus," Harry says. Voldemort bats the spell away.
"It is time to die," he hisses. Harry finds the door in his mind with the lightning bolt on it. "Avada Kedavra," Voldemort says. The green light speeds towards Harry as he pulls the prison away and forces the horcrux to the front.
Harry falls to the ground, eyes empty.
Voldemort laughs over his body.
Kreature appears next to Snape in Malfoy Manor.
"Master said you need this," the elf says, handing him the sword of Gryffindor.
Nagini sits curled up in the corner but starts to shift when Snape take the sword. He turns to the snake. Nagini rises and strikes at the potion master. Snape swings the sword and chops the head off.
Snape steps away.
"Let's go," he says. Kreature takes his arm and they pop away.
"No," Voldemort screeched on the battlefield. Harry rises from the ground. Voldemort looks at the boy and casts another killing spell. Harry doges and enters the fray once more.
His spell are more exact and powerful now as he matches against the dark lord and pushes him back.
Draco isn't fighting for his life, he's fighting for hers and that changes everything. A monster lays beneath his skin, one with teeth and claws in the form of curses. He placed a chain upon its neck when he got his second chance, determined not to raise his wand against another creature to do harm.
But now he doesn't care. Let that monster consume him. What does it matter? He'll die tonight, but she'll live.
'They're furious,' Hermione thinks, seeing another Death Eater launch curses at Draco. Practicality had pulled them in separate directions, but she can see their movements getting more desperate against him. Hermione fights her way to him.
'I can't lose you,' she thinks desperately. A Death Eater in her way falls to her wand and she keeps moving.
She's ten yards away when the curse hits him. His back arches at the force of the dark blue spell, teeth gritted against the pain. He falls to his knees, muscles rigid and spasming. His hands claw into the dirt.
"No," Hermione whispers. "No," she screams. She pushes forward, faster. He can't die, not now.
The Death Eater raise his wand and a green light burst from the tip.
Hermione's voice cuts through the air. Tonks turns to the girl who sounds like she's being tortured.
Tonks follows the witch's pained gaze to where her cousin, Draco, is on the ground. She's never met him, but she's heard rumors that he had taken his mother and left Voldemort. That Voldemort tortured his bastard father for it. Tonks can't feel sympathy for Lucius.
But she feels sympathy for Hermione. The obvious pain speaks of loss and of love.
Tonks looks at Remus, fighting at her side.
'I love you,' she thinks.
Draco fights with a fury, taking down Death Eaters right and left. When the spell hits his back, he's not surprised. The Death Eaters has been enraged that he was fighting against them, enough so that they wanted him put down hard.
They had amused themselves assuming he had ran from the fighting, that he didn't have it in him to raise a wand. When he fought with strength and precision that felled their comrades, that rage became blinding.
More and more poured in around Draco, desperate to kill the one who could have been an asset, but had abandoned them.
It isn't the the curse hitting that surprised him, nor the pain that drops him to his knees. It is that he is still alive, given a moment for his eyes to search for Hermione. The pain increases and he falls to his side, eyes finding his love.
'I'm sorry,' he wants to say. He wants to explain that there was no other way. That in the end he didn't deserve a second chance. That he had to pay for all the pain and terrible things he had done in the first time line. That this was his penance. That he would gladly die in her place. That he loved her.
But there wasn't time to explain now. And he couldn't have told her before or she would have found a way to stop him. He sees a flicker of a green light heading his way, but he refuses to look away from his love.
A bright blue veil falls between his eyes and Hermione.
"Take care of her," a rough voice commands. The pain is gone, but there is a weight on him, over his whole body.
"No," a man screams behind the darkness.
Remus glances at his wife. He is forever surprised at the love he sees reflected there. And forever grateful. He still doesn't know how he got so lucky, or how he could ever deserve her. She'd given birth to his son not quite two months ago and now she fights on the battlefield.
He'd asked her not to go. He knew she would never agree, but he had to try. Maybe for Teddy...but no, she had to fight and Teddy was the strongest reason.
He loved her for it, but it still terrified him.
"No," Hermione screams. He looks for who is hurting one of his pack, but sees no one. Tonks finds his eyes. 'I love you,' her look says, but 'I'm sorry' hides in the creases of her eyes. There is a finality to it that shakes him to his core.
Remus reach out a hand to Tonks, but she darts forward. Her hair changes to a bright blue as she throws her body on top of another.
The green light hits her unprotected back.
"No," Remus screams, the sound devolving into a roar. The wolf inside rises. His mate has been slain.
Remus dashes forward with the speed of a wolf and snaps the neck of the Death Eater that dare cast against his mate. He continues tearing apart the enemy that took her from him.
"You," Voldemort spits, raging at the loss of his precious snake and horcrux. He lunges towards Harry, curses springing from his wand.
"Did you ever wonder," Harry asks, dodging and returning fire, "what the prophecy meant when it said the power you knew not?"
Voldemort sends another killing curse which shatters the stone that Harry summoned.
"Loyalty," Harry answers. Voldemort laughs.
"I have loyalty," Voldemort sneers. "My followers are loyal unto death."
"They are crazy unto death," Harry corrects and then dodges another dark curse that would most likely also cause death. "But 'no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.' And fear is all you ever had."
Harry pushes Voldemort back again.
"This war ends now," he says, leveling the wand at the dark lord.
"You have to want it. Really want it," Bellatrix's voice cackles from his memory.
He does want it. He wants Voldemort dead. Not for some perverse pleasure or to cause anyone pain. But it is time for this to end. He wants to be free and for other to be free. He wants the pain to end.
"Avada Kedavra," Harry says. The burst of green light heads towards Voldemort, but a strand of white light swirls around it.
'Intent matters,' Harry thinks watching the different and same killing curse impact Voldemort. He looks shocked for a moment, and then it touches and he's gone.
It is over.