The castle was far quieter than he expected it to be as Harry entered it.
The destruction from the battle was obvious, yet there were very few people around.
The gems from the hourglasses that recorded house points were shattered even more than they were the last time he saw them; several chunks of wall were missing, the banisters of the stairs were blasted half off...
Not to mention various pools of blood of varying sizes staining the floor.
When he reached the entrance hall, he nearly stopped in his tracks.
This was where all the activity had gone.
The house tables had been pushed to the sides of the hall to make way for everyone inside, some of whom were sitting all together, with no regard for house affiliation and some who were standing in groups.
On a raised platform, the injured were being seen to by Madam Pomfrey, with the assistance of Andrina, whose hair had come loose and looked severely battered herself and Krystal, whose own healing magic had become much more powerful when she had gained her Enchantix.
He looked away as he saw her activate her Fairy Dust and attempt to heal a large gash on Ernie MacMillan's leg.
Dumbledore walked amongst the crowd, helping with minor healing charms and words of comfort.
The dead...
Harry swallowed.
The dead... were laid out in a single row across the middle of the hall.
He did not want to look; didn't want to see if anyone he knew had died, but it would be extremely disrespectful of him, he felt, not to see who had died for him... died helping him fight...
Roxy put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and gave him a look, not of pity, but of reassurance.
He took her hand and squeezed it firmly; for once, glad of her presence in the midst of all the chaos.
He saw Luna Lovegood, knelt down over the body of a man, who could only be her father.
Now apparently, she was fully an orphan, just like him...
Right next to his body, was... Isaac.
Harry looked down at his feet.
No wonder it was Andrina alone up there helping to tend to the injured.
To be helping others to heal, so soon after she lost the love of her life, the father of her children... Healing them when the one she would have wanted healed the most could not be helped...
He didn't know if he would have the strength to do so himself...
"I could have been among the dead..." Harry turned when he heard Remus' voice behind him.
"I'm glad you're not." Harry admitted. "I don't think my heart could have taken it if you had..."
Remus smiled wryly. "If it weren't for one of your Red Fountain friends, Dolohov would have finished me off. Remind me to thank Aki after all of this is over. One well-placed lightning bolt from him was quite... shocking to my would-be killer..."
"I thought that lame puns were supposed to be Sirius' thing." Harry raised an eyebrow.
"Why shouldn't we honour his memory? Were he still alive, you know that he would be here, fighting alongside us..."
"It's true..." Harry nodded, noticing idly that Roxy had gone off to help wherever she could.
"Where is Tonks?" he asked suddenly. "Is she-"
"She's alive." Remus nearly growled. "But only just. Her lovely aunt tried to finish her off with a particularly nasty curse, but one of your fellow students and I got to them just in time to stave off the very worst. They're seeing to her up there right now..." the werewolf inclined his head towards where most of the healing was going on.
The hall, which had been full of murmured chatter before, went completely silent as the doors opened and people from Red Fountain and Britain alike came in, carrying more bodies.
Harry saw Neville and Darian carrying in on a stretcher, the body of Mad-Eye Moody.
"Moody was killed? I can't believe it!" Harry stared in shock as they laid his body not too far away from Mr Lovegood's.
"I suppose that he went down the way he would have wanted to. As a hero, fighting against scum." Remus began walking over to the body as did several Order members, including Dumbledore.
"I saw it happen," Hermione sniffed, having come in just after Moody's body was brought in.
She swallowed nervously as everyone turned to look at her.
"It took several of the top-notch Death Eaters to bring him down. Macnair, Bellatrix and her husband, Malfoy senior, among others... They all attacked him at once. He did his best- did more than I certainly ever could, but..." Hermione sniffled.
Harry put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her.
"Constant Vigilance, eh?" Fred spoke up. "I'm never going to forget the way he kept old Georgie and I here on our toes over a certain summer..."
George, who was standing next to him, nodded solemnly, not a single trace of humour on his face.
"Rest assured, he and the others on our side will be given an appropriate hero's memorial once this is all over." Dumbledore assured them.
Harry turned out of the hall tuning out what everyone else was saying.
As soon as the doors closed behind him, he drew out his invisibility cloak and draped it around himself, not wanting to be bothered by anyone.
Ignoring those who were bringing in even more dead bodies, he headed straight for the lake and sat down beneath a tree next to it, which was somehow still standing, undamaged.
People were dying for him.
Many of those were people he actually knew...
He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't notice when Roxy flew over to him and sat next to him, detransforming as she did.
"You do know that your Invisibility Cloak doesn't help you hide from me, right?" she said, nearly scaring him out of his skin.
"How did you even-" Harry let the Cloak fall off his shoulders and looked at her in surprise.
"My eyesight is sharper than most. A bit of a side effect of my type of magic, I guess. I could see the... how do I describe it? I could see the distortion in the air when I came out looking for you." she reached out and touched him on the shoulder.
"You don't have to sit out here and mope like this, you know..." her tone was soft. "Come back to the castle. No one is mad at you there. No one blames you..."
"So many of them are dead or hurt... Luna's father, Isaac, Moody... he was one of the best. If he died... was murdered like that, then what chance does anyone else have?" Harry asked.
"Dumbledore's still standing, though." Roxy pointed out.
"Yes, but he's Dumbledore. If Voldemort fears him, then wouldn't the Death Eaters fear him even more?"
"Voldemort doesn't seem to fear him that much anymore if he's willing to attack Hogwarts like this though..." Roxy pointed out.
Harry put his head in his hands, covering his face.
"I trained to fight him and his cronies. Yet, so many people had to die. And the battle is not over, so the death toll may very well rise..."
"That is true," Roxy acknowledged. "but if you give up, they will have died in vain. None of them were forced to stay here and fight. They all came here because they believed it was the right thing to do. I came because it was the right thing to do. My friends came because it was the right thing to do."
"Or was it because you dragged them along?" Harry raised an eyebrow at her. "Or perhaps you guilted them into coming?"
"I did no such thing!" Roxy sat straighter, indignant.
Harry looked her in the eye.
"Really? Because I honestly cannot picture Rainer, Athena, Anahita or Krystal as being the sort of fairies that would quite willingly engage in a fight that could result in their death or worse. I know you well enough by now to tell that you tend to have a bit of a manipulative side. And a stubborn side too, as you completely disregarded my request to stay the hell out of this."
Roxy looked hurt.
"So you did do that." Harry realised, upon noting Harry's expression. "I care for you. I really do. I just don't think you're prepared for this kind of fight and I don't like that you dragged others into this!"
"I really just wanted to help..." Roxy spoke in a small voice.
"You could have helped by staying out of this. Now I'll have to worry about you and your friends." Harry rubbed his temples, before standing up.
"Anyway, this isn't the time. Let's focus on figuring our way out of this and then we can sort out our problems."
As he walked away, Roxy reached out a hand to touch him, but drew it back at the last second.
Looking down, she felt tears building up and threatening to fall, but with a great effort, she willed them away.
She was not weak.
She would not let this one little argument get to her.
Especially not at a time like this when she needed all her wits about her.
Harry found himself back inside the castle, sitting at a table with a mixture of Red Fountain students and Hogwartians alike, drinking a bottle of water that Aki had tossed him.
"I hadn't quite imagined that my first visit to Earth would be like this..." Orett muttered as he held an ice pack to his head. "I got curious after hearing about the whole debacle with Princess Roxy and then Harry showed up and started doing all sorts of interesting things in Magix..."
"Who would, man?" Seamus asked, tracing a scar that went from his jaw line to his hairline from a wound that couldn't be fully healed- even with Fairy Dust. "Never imagined coming back to Hogwarts like this either. Always thought it would be like a class reunion or something like it."
"It is a reunion, just not one that you'd have had in mind..." Dean, seated next to him, noted wryly.
"I think I'll reconsider my career choices after this. I mean, considering that I managed to survive this so far, I think I'll be an Auror instead of a journalist." Su Li gulped down the bottle of water she'd gotten.
"All I know is that I want to survive this and just hurry up and off the Dark Bastard as quickly as possible. I can't live like this forever, looking over my shoulder, being constantly wary of him and his minions..." Harry finished off his water and twirled the bottle idly on the table.
"Seriously. I've known your story for far less than your Hogwarts friends here and even I agree you deserve some fucking peace, man." Darian said.
Everyone gathered there made various noises of agreement with Darian's statement.
Lucas walked over to the group just then.
"The hour he gave us shall soon be up," he said. "and there is no telling if Voldemort will decide to come back early."
"Let the bastard come," Ginny growled. "we'll be ready for him and his lot!"
"Harry, how do you plan on ending this one?" Hermione asked. "You know he's coming here for you and would quite gladly kill anyone in his path..."
Harry looked around as most of the Red fountain students began running back outside to get to their vehicles.
"I'm not going to hide if that's what you're asking. My only option is to go to him and end it before he can even get close to the threshold."
"You're... going to go to him?" Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Where he could well have set a trap for you? He could be lying in wait for you somewhere in the forest and hit you with a Killing Curse before you even knew what happened!"
"That's not his style." Harry shook his head. "For the self-proclaimed dark lord and most powerful wizard alive, he's not so smart in that regard. It's a bit of a cliché, really. He enjoys toying with his victims before actually trying to do them in. He'd have murdered me ages ago if he'd gotten straight to the point whenever we've met in battle."
"Harry don't underestimate him this time." Hermione shot him a look that was somehow scolding, yet concerned. "This is the endgame. The final battle. He's putting his all into this one and you need to do that too. We've already lost Ron..." at this, the brunette squeezed her eyes shut and turned away for a moment, as if trying to will away tears. "...and I would rather not lose you as well..."
Harry hugged Hermione tightly pointedly ignoring the saddened looks that Roxy was giving him as she stood across the room, apparently ignoring something that Krystal was telling her.
"I've got a lot of people banking on me to come out of this alive," he said quietly as they hugged. "and you're at the top of the list. I don't plan on letting any of you down."
As they broke apart the hug, Hermione reached up to put her hands on his shoulders, looking him straight in the eyes.
"You'd better not, or all our misadventures over the years will have come to naught." she chuckled wryly.
Harry mirrored her laugh.
"You're right. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to introduce a certain Weasley to Freida before Voldy shows up. I'm sure the two will get along splendidly and I'd really like someone to be able to handle her while I'm off looking for him..."
Hermione nodded and watched as he ran across the hall to Charlie, before turning to Ginny and the other Hogwarts students and alumni, planning their next course of action.
The ground shook as the various roars, shrieks and shouts of various dark creatures returning for the battle .
Voldemort for once, had actually kept his word and had sent back his forces at precisely the hour he had said he would.
Draping his Invisibility Cloak over himself as he ran he ducked and twisted to avoid the start of the unfriendly spells beginning to go back and forth.
His Cloak might render him completely invisible, but it didn't shield against lethal curses as far as he knew and he was not about to test it...
There had been no sign of Voldemort so far, but that did not mean that he wasn't on the grounds somewhere.
His mind, however, told him that he was there and even though and even though their mind link had been destroyed for nearly two years, somehow, instinctively, he knew where to go to find him.
It was as if Fate itself was leading him to his destiny.
"Neither can live while the other survives..." he murmured. "Well, today, we shall find out which one of us is going to be living and I don't plan on it being him..."
He was so immersed in making his way into the Forbidden Forest to confront Voldemort, that he didn't notice Roxy, back at the castle, trying to find him even as she helped fight off the second wave of the battle.
Throwing up a quick shield to block Anahita and a Specialist she didn't know from being hit by a curse from a random Death Eater from behind, she blinked for a moment her eyes seeming to shine slightly as she did.
It was a fair distance away, but she spotted a distortion that indicated that someone was invisible, moving towards the Forbidden Forest.
Having a hunch that it was indeed Harry heading towards his inevitable final showdown with Voldemort, she cast an invisibility spell of her own on herself and took to the sky, determined to find out if it was indeed him and to help her boyfriend however she could.
"I am surprised that Potter did not show himself," Harry heard Voldemort's voice from some distance as he found himself deep inside the forest.
"He will show himself. I am sure of it."
Harry clenched his wand tightly as he recognised the voice that had replied to Voldemort.
Snape.
"Even with his sojourn in Magix, he was still highly cocky and highly arrogant with a penchant for heroics. It was even worsened by the fact that he was attending a school for heroes there." Snape scoffed.
"Such a school shall not help him... or his allies today when I finally defeat him." Voldemort spoke coolly. "Hiding from me shall not help him either."
Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak folded it and stuffed it away inside his suit.
Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes briefly as made sure his grip on his wand was firm, he made his presence known.
"Sorry I'm a little late. I had some things to do, people to talk to..." Harry stepped into the clearing where several Death Eaters had gathered, with Voldemort in the centre.
All the Death Eaters present immediately jumped up and had their wands turned towards him, but Voldemort, standing up casually, waved the hand not holding his own wand, motioning for them to stand down.
"Your assistance is not required, my friends. I shall be the one to take care of Potter. Myself. Go and join the battle on your Lord's behalf. I will join you later, bringing Potter's dead body with me."
"You wish." Harry watched out of the corner of his eye as the Death Eaters left, refusing to lose sight of his opponent for even a single second.
"Well then, Potter. This is it. Let us see if all that training you have been receiving is of any benefit to you, shall we?"
Voldemort didn't hold back, throwing out a Killing Curse as his first spell.
Harry dodged and fired back an energy blast, which Voldemort managed to deflect with a shield.
"You'll have to do better than that, Potter!" Voldemort sneered.
Harry didn't bother with a retort, simply choosing to fire a shower of sapphires at his opponent, who transfigured them into blades and sent them hurtling back at him.
Harry dropped to the ground as the blades hurtled over him, firing a spell at Voldemort that narrowly clipped the dark wizard, seemingly scalding his arm, although he showed no sign of pain.
Voldemort waved his wand and four trees behind Harry suddenly became animated, their branches and twigs becoming hands and arms; their roots becoming legs and eyes appearing to be carved out of their own trunks appeared on them.
Harry swore as one of them reached for him, jumping up onto its branch-arm and somersaulting off as another tree grabbed for him.
He landed on the top of another tree and fought to control his balance as he threw a Spell Sphere at Voldemort, which exploded and flung him back several feet, just as the tree Harry was standing on managed to throw him off.
"Crucio!" Voldemort hissed as he flew towards Harry, as if riding on a cloud of black smoke.
The curse hit Harry, but despite the extreme amount of pain he was feeling, he managed to cast Umbra Incarcera at him.
As Voldemort fought to throw off the shadow tendrils, the curse he had put on Harry lifted.
Harry shook off the after-effects of the curse and shot a fire spell at one of the trees, instantly reducing it to ashes.
Dodging the reach of another animated tree, he fired an energy blast at it, which shattered it into several pieces.
The third tree, he dodged yet another blow from it and casting a "Reducto!" at it, threw up a shield to deflect the pieces from that one.
But where... where was the fourth tree?
Out of nowhere, something hit him in the back with an extreme amount of force, sending crashing into the ground face first breaking his nose and sending blood gushing from it.
Before Harry could even register the pain of his broken nose, Voldemort had hit him with another dose of the torture curse this time, for much longer than he had before.
Harry struggled through the curse to turn over to face Voldemort, who was standing some distance away, brandishing his wand high as he tortured him.
"For all the magic you've been learning, Potter," Voldemort sneered as he walked over to him, who was doing a good job of concealing the pain he was feeling.
Not that it was going to do him much good.
"It is a pity that it didn't do you much good in the end. I expected someone fated to defeat me to put up a much better fight than you did." Voldemort finally lifted the curse.
It really was a pity that all of his training and all of his experiences in Magix were going to come to naught...
So many people were going to be severely disappointed in this turn of events...
"However, I have no time to waste with you. Avada Kedavra!"
A rush of green came straight towards him, but was interrupted by a blur of pink, yellow and black and the gleam of wings...
He heard Voldemort's high, cold laugh and blinked through the pain to see what had drawn the so-called Dark Lord's amusement, even though his Killing Curse had apparently failed.
His heart came to an abrupt halt when he saw Roxy, her fairy form gone, lying face down on the forest floor behind him, her hair splayed wildly, covering her face.
She did not move.
Harry looked back at a laughing Voldemort, at Roxy's body and back again.
With a primal scream, Harry snapped.