So as I expected, I got a lot of backlash for killing Bekka last chapter. Do you all remember how devastated we were after Fred's death in Deathly Hallows? J.K.R. killed him to prove war is random. War can kill anyone, including beloved pets, including only one twin, and including a beloved, motherly house-elf. I didn't plan to kill her, if that helps. It just sort of wrote itself. And yes, I miss her too.

On the bright side, wish a happy birthday to our very own beloved character Shawnee Haven! September 15th, people. And let's get excited because this story's almost done!

Zola Greene.

Lenore Hobbes.

Eric Montgomery.

Kitty Willis.

Helen MacDougal.

Those were the five people trapped inside a pulsating dome of white light- a smaller, more visible barrier curse. Kitty was holding Lenore- a Gryffindor first-year with her same blonde hair- in her arms, rocking her back and forth as the younger girl sobbed into my old Quidditch captain's robes. Zola and Eric sat still as statues, Zola gazing at her brother- on the fringes of a crowd of students, weeping and flailing for her as he was held back by a few of his friends (it was the first time I'd ever seen Will act truly human)- and Eric watching a pile of dead corpses on the floor as if they might get up and move around normally at any moment (they didn't). Following his eyes, I spotted Art, Kevin, Kira, and Annie in the pile, all staring blankly at nothingness with dead dark eyes. My heart twisted in my chest. Art's with Liana now, Annie with Zach, and Kira with Lindsey. Did Kevin have any loved ones die this year? Did he even have loved ones at this school? I can't remember, but maybe they're happier now…

A hand caught my arm, brown and thick with long, jagged nails. I turned to see Oscar's dark eyes, haunted with the deaths of so many students and friends that he would never be able to unsee.

"The Werewolf Code of Conduct was developed in the year sixteen-thirty-seven, but almost no werewolves signed it," he whispered urgently, nearly-black eyes boring into mine. Black and green. Green and black. "Those with hawthorn wands walk a precarious balance between life and death."

He slipped something long and supple into my hand. I put it in my pocket without looking at it as Reuben tugged on my sleeve, pulling me away from Oscar. I took a look at the American boy's face as we walked through the crowds. His eyes were sunken, cheekbones prominent, face deathly white. He knew he was marching me to my demise, and it was most likely tearing him apart. Reuben was not the kind of person to take death lightly.

But now I understood his eagerness to find me and bring me back to Damien Kayash. Kitty was in danger. Zach would have sacrificed anything to save Kitty- he had even given up his own live trying to preserve hers- and until that instant I had not known that Reuben felt the same way.

Damien was flanked by two Aurors, all facing away from me, as the dethroned tyrant directed the fluctuating barrier with his wand. He turned as I approached, crowd backing away in terror, and grinned that familiar, toothy, evil smile. "Alyssa, my traitorous child. Fancy seeing you again."

I snapped at him, "I'm not your child."

One of his icy eyes twitched. Reuben let go of my sleeve and backed away, teary blue eyes still stuck on Kitty. My neighbor looked up and they locked eyes. Kitty mouthed something, but Damien was speaking, and I turned my attention back to him. "Ah, but you are, Alyssa. We are one and the same soul, you and I. I hear from a dearly deceased follower that you murdered Finley Denton in quite a… cruel… way."

My body went cold. How does he know about that? Is he just bluffing?

"Aly's not the same as you!" someone yelled. I turned to look at- of all people- Nathan Price. His pudgy face was dark maroon and still streaked with tears, his hands clenched into tight fists. Nick stood beside him, still hugging Bekka's dead body as if he refused to believe she was well and truly gone, too worried for his adoptive house-elf mother to think about me. "Aly will never be like you! You're a murderer!"

"Ah, but did you not hear what I said?" Damien grinned at my ex-boyfriend. "Alyssa Salinger too is a murderer." He enunciated every word clearly, as if he wasn't sure people would hear him otherwise. "A knife to the eye and a knife to the chest for my perfect new protégé, if the rumor mill is true, of course." He pierced me with his cold, almost dead gaze. "But I forgive you, my child. Come here, so I may caress your face one final time before I go to prison for eternity."

The last word echoed throughout the dead silent Hall. Frozen, I slowly shook my head. "No. I don't want you to touch me."

"Miss Salinger," said one of the Aurors beside him, looking at me with grey eyes, "it is his last wish before he goes to prison. We really can't refuse him this."

"He thinks of you as a child," the second Auror added. "If your father was going off to prison for the rest of his life, wouldn't you want to hug him one last time?"

Their tones were flat, and it should've tipped me off at the time that they were being controlled by Damien, but I didn't realize that. Still feeling rather uncertain, I stepped towards the deposed emperor as both Aurors gestured me forward.

I was five feet away when Damien attacked.

The two Aurors went flying through the air, landing on their necks with sickening cracks. It was only then that I made the connection between Damien's love for the Imperius Curse and their lifeless voices, and I spun in horror to run just in time to see Oscar leap for me, ready to tackle me to the ground, to save me from a curse.

Just as Oscar's fingertips brushed my shoulder, a white barrier flickered into existence around Damien and me, slicing into my strange Ravenclaw friend's body. I screamed. Oscar fell to the floor, bleeding from many gashes. His eyes, lighter than I'd ever seen them, caught mine… and he smiled.

Hawthorn, he mouthed.

By the time I pulled Oscar's hawthorn wand, nearly as long and brown as mine, from my pocket, all of the life had gone from his dark eyes.

I put my own wand in my pocket and turned to face Damien. It was eerily silent inside the deathly bubble of Damien's creation, although I could see the mouths of students and Ministry workers alike moving furiously through the fogginess of the white barrier as they crowded around it, careful not to touch the stuff. Kingsley Shacklebolt raised his wand, dislodging the purple hat upon his greying dark hair, to take the barrier down and rescue me.

"Do not dare!" Damien roared to him, gesturing to the barrier that held the five captured students. Apparently people outside of the barrier could hear things happening inside it, because the Minister of Magic stopped midair. "If you dare take down this barrier, I swear on the memory of Salazar Slytherin and all of his descendants that the last thing I do will be to kill those five prisoners there!"

As if reacting to his fury, the globe holding Kitty, Eric, Helen, Lenore, and Zola shrank a foot. Helen's toes were now inches from the white fogginess. She pulled it back, her mouth opening in a silent, terrified cry, and the prisoners huddled together even more, watching the fog that could kill them all at any instant.

Slowly, Damien's enemies backed away from the barrier surrounding me and the tyrant.

"Do you want to kill me?" I shouted at my ex-Astronomy professor, gripping Oscar's thick, crooked wand in my wand hand. "Is that what you want?"

"No," Damien sneered. "I want you to go with me."

We began circling each other like sharks just waiting to strike, wands at the ready but completely unused.

"You belong in Azkaban just the same as I do," hissed the tyrant. "And I will not rest until you and I have adjoining cells in Azkaban, and I can feed on your screams as the damp and the dark strips you of your disloyal shred of a soul." His lip curled in a cruel sneer. "It's a pity that dementors don't inhabit that prison anymore. Perhaps some arrangements could be made."

I gripped Oscar's wand tighter. That was not what he wanted and I knew it. Deep down, all Damien wanted was for me to die before he did. I had betrayed him, and due to that he craved the vision of my lifeless eyes. But I wouldn't die. He would. And I knew it because I had friends with me.

I had Oscar's hawthorn wand.

I had Aleyn's protection.

I had Bekka's love.

I had love and friendship on my side, and all he had was terror.

And, best of all, I had a small vial half-full of a golden liquid from Nick in my pocket.

I smiled.

And with that, I made the first and only move.

I didn't cast a charm.

I didn't throw a spell.

I didn't charge or curse or criticize Damien.

No, I drew the bottle of Felix Felicis from my pocket, uncorked it, and put the potion to my lips.

Damien realized what I was doing too late, and he barreled toward me with a feral scream, dropping his swishy blackthorn wand as he did so. "That's mine!"

Time slowed down as he approached, getting closer, closer, closer. Then a small voice spoke in my head.

Not yet, it said.

Not yet.

I had a horrible feeling that if I disobeyed the voice and moved, something very, very bad would happen to me. So I stayed. I saw Damien, in slow motion, draw a knife from the sleeve of his Headmaster's robes and raise it high over his head, to split me in two with the sharp blade.

I closed my eyes.

Duck, urged the voice. Duck now!

So I ducked.

Joyful and relieved shouts and cheers filled my ears like a refreshing rainstorm of sound, and I opened my eyes to see two barriers of fog dissipate into the air. Some people headed straight for the newly freed prisoners- Millie, Will, Reuben, some of the Aurors, for instance- but most of my fellow students and the Ministry workers rushed me. Brooklyn helped me to my feet with a slender tan hand and gathered me into a tight hug that squeezed all the breath from my lungs.

"You did it, Aly," she cried into my ear, a grin splitting her face. "You saved us all!"

I looked down as Brooklyn was shoved away and replaced with Lanie and Shawnee. My two short friends grasped me in tight squeezes from either side, and I looked down.

Blood poured from the thousands of tiny cuts decorating Damien's body, as well as from his mouth and nose. The tips of his fingers were stained with red, and his eyes were filled with blood, ice-blue turned scarlet in death.

Eli Lupin crawled through the crowd's feet, hair restored to brilliant white, and felt the side of Damien's neck. For one terrible moment, a chill shivered down my spine. Eli- has he actually been a follower of Damien all along? I thought that they were all dead!

But no! Eli leaped to his feet, accidentally knocking Lanie aside as his white hair flopped over his forehead in a grown-out bowl cut. "He's dead!" he howled in delight, feeling freedom that I knew and understood. "Damien is finally deeeaaadddd!"

The whole Hall cheered and jumped in celebration and liberation. Kitty and Reuben, both flushed and happy, pushed through the crowd and hoisted me up onto their shoulders. From my higher viewpoint, I saw people hugging, sobbing in relief, and even kissing. Conor Mathieson seized about eight girls who were standing around him, one at a time of course, and pecked each of them on the cheek. I laughed deliriously, blood pumping, remembering my silly crush on Conor from years before. Then I saw that one of the kissed girls had long wavy dark hair and dark tanned skin. It was Brooklyn, who had somehow been pushed away from me, and she was blushing to the root of her core. I smirked at my embarrassed cousin from my position atop the shoulders of the two remaining Chasers from last year as I was paraded out of the Hall and into one of the small corridors around the Great Hall.

Kitty and Reuben set me down there and went back inside. I caught a glimpse of their linked hands and recoiled in shock. Zach would feel so betrayed…

A large dark hand landed on my shoulder before I could ponder Reuben and Kitty's newfound relationship, and I whirled around, still spooked from the not-really-a-duel duel.

Kingsley Shacklebolt smiled down at me, purple robes and hat all neatly back in place. "Miss Salinger," he said in a deep voice. "It's a pleasure to finally meet the Heroine of Hogwarts in a more civilized location."

I flushed red. "I wouldn't say I'm a heroine-"

"But that's what they're calling you," he interrupted gently, leading me away from the door towards the front of Hogwarts. "Alyssa Salinger, the Heroine of Hogwarts. One of my top ex-Aurors, Harry Potter- you may have heard of him- has even recommended you for a few top honors. The Medal for Magical Merit, for one. The Special Award for Services to the School." A big smile took over his dark face. "I've even decided that you will join the ranks of those exceptional witches and wizards with an Order of Merlin, First Class- should you decide to accept all these marks of distinction, that is."

What? Order of Merlin, First Class is only awarded to those who perform outstanding acts of bravery or distinction in magic.

All I did was duck.

With a gasp, I realized exactly why I was being offered all of these medals.

The Felix Felicis.

The Minister of Magic apparently took my hesitation and gasp as uncertainty, because he continued to speak. "You would be the first witch to win that prestigious award in over one hundred years, you know," he pressed. "I believe the last one was Tilly Toke in nineteen-thirty-two for helping to cover up the Ilfracombe Incident."

The out-of-place fact reminded me of the wand in my hand. I looked down at the dark brown hawthorn stick, the same color as Oscar's dead eyes, with its crooked tip and thick, firm handle patterned with wavy lines.

Oscar's last fun fact had been about those with hawthorn wands. What had he said? Something about walking near death?

Death.

"I would be honored to receive even one of those awards Minister," I accepted, enunciating each word properly, my mind clearer than it had been in months. "But first I have a request. May I please see the dead?"

Ahhhh. One chapter left! Please, please, please review so I can know your thoughts on this chapter! I'm looking forward to your reviews!

~atrfla