It's been a long three plus years, readers. Just this and the epilogue to go now before it's all over.
Dang...
In years to come, Harry would wonder just where he had pulled that gargantuan amount of magical power from in the fight that had followed that terrible sight.
All he knew was that his very magic burned within his veins looking for a release and that Voldemort's face was the perfect target.
He managed to get to his feet, shooting an energy blast from his hand and the most powerful stinging hex he could muster from his wand simultaneously, but Voldemort dodged and sent a deadly hex of his own, which Harry raised a giant wall of diamonds to counter.
He could feel the ringing in his ears as the spell made impact with his wall; cracking, but never shattering, making a deep, loud, gong as it did.
Harry swiped his wand, cracking the shield and sending thousands of long shards towards the self-styled Dark Lord with such an amount and ferocity that he couldn't block or damage them all.
Screeching with rage and bloodied from Harry's last attack, Voldemort transfigured the remaining shards into large, black snakes, that all turned in unison towards Harry, fangs bared and hissing angrily.
Harry dropped to the ground and tossed a Spell Sphere at Voldemort's feet, which caused the snakes flying above his head to vanish as Voldemort's feet started to bubble, now coated in hot tar.
The only thing on Harry's mind now was Roxy's crumpled form, falling to the ground, her fairy form completely gone...
He'd had enough.
Voldemort had taken his family (godfather included), several of those that he considered his friends- including his best friend, forced many more people to go into hiding, fearful that they too, would be next...
And now, Roxy- who had accepted him as hers for who he was; with little questions asked...
Spells whizzed past his ears, but he paid them no mind; the ground beneath them cracked with the sheer power that they both radiated...
A bright light, though Harry did not notice it at first nor did Voldemort for that matter started to grow from the spot that Roxy had fallen, completely engulfing her.
The light soon became too bright for either wizard to ignore as they paused in their fight to shield their eyes.
When it cleared away, Harry's heart nearly stopped, but this time, it was for a good reason.
Roxy stood there, very much alive and her fairy form had completely changed.
Her hair had grown longer and was tightly curled; held up in a half-up, half-down style with a jewelled silver tiara.
Her dress was a baby doll styled one in various hues of silver, blue and green which stopped just above her knees in the front and was enough in the back to barely touch the forest floor, her shimmering, translucent elbow-length green gloves, her silver sandals, which were dotted with dark blue and green gems around the big toes twisted up to just above her ankles.
Her necklace was a silver choker with a blue and green paw-print pendant and her wings...
Her large, shimmering wings that were shaped like a Monarch butterfly's, were outlined with light green, filled with silver and trimmed with blue and pink gems.
Roxy had gained her Enchantix.
And she looked bloody gorgeous in it.
Once Voldemort comprehended what he was seeing, in his rage at once again failing to kill a teenager- one that had even less magical training than Harry to add insult to injury, he let loose a scream of fury and sent a curse at her.
She quickly flew up and out of the way.
"No way, Voldemort! Your fight's not with me!" she exclaimed.
She remained high in the sky, making sure to stay out of the way of any stray curses while watching the battle between her boyfriend and Voldemort.
"You tried to kill Roxy!" Harry screeched. "You tried to take another one of my loved ones from me. Well, I'm going to kill you right now so you can't do it again!"
Harry kept tossing out spell after lethal spell without pause forcing Voldemort to keep on dodging, ducking and blocking each one.
Harry ignored the taunts Voldemort was attempting to piss him off with, seeing as he was already beyond being able to be pissed off even further.
"Falsum Tormentis! Cor Impetum!"
Spell after spell, pulsating with energy that Roxy could feel from even far above the fight kept coming from Harry's wand as he focused on nothing else but absolutely destroying his opponent.
An image flashed through Harry's mind of a clear gem, shaped like a sphere, about the size of a golf ball.
"If the fight gets really bad between you two... You can use this to drain his magic."
Harry remembered Garnet's words as he gave him the gem, which was currently securely stowed away in a pocket.
"I have no choice but to use it, but I just need the right opening..." Harry thought as he did an odd sort of pirouette while brandishing his swords, in an effort to dodge Voldemort's latest curse, which sailed right past him and ended up instantly reducing a tree to ashes.
"I thought you wanted to have a body to parade about as your victory trophy, Tom!" Harry taunted him.
It was more than one person who'd told him that taunts could rattle an opponent long enough to get a few good blows in.
All of his teachers at Red Fountain (even the ones who didn't teach combat-oriented classes), Garnet, Matthias, Alamar, Queen Nebula and Princess Morgana...
He dearly hoped that it would be the case in this situation.
"You dare?" Voldemort hissed.
"Yes, I dare, Tom. You wanted to rule Wizarding Britain? Why not do it through politics? You certainly had the brains, the charm, the looks... Granted you don't have them anymore, but still..."
Harry threw a dagger at Voldemort, which narrowly missed his head.
"It's pathetic. As much as I hate to admit it, we both had similar upbringings. My parents died at your hands, your barely-a-witch mum died giving birth to you while your Muggle father simply didn't care, we grew up in-" Harry conjured another diamond wall to block Voldemort's latest attempt at Avada Kedavra-ing him. "-less than loving homes... But look at the paths we chose. You became this monstrosity and I... they'd probably make me Minister of Magic if I wanted it."
"I became the most powerful wizard in the world!" Voldemort raged, conjuring a snake that looked reminiscent of Nagini and commanding it to attack him.
Harry Summoned the dagger he had thrown earlier.
Pulling itself from the tree it had become embedded in, it came zooming back in his direction, but as the snake was in its path, it ended up slicing its head clean off.
The Dark Lord didn't stop his onslaught, instead speaking the incantation that Harry immediately recognised as the one to summon Fiendfyre.
"Nope, nope, nope..." Harry chanted in his mind. "I've got to end this soon..."
The fire shot out of Voldemort's wand, rushing straight for him.
If it wasn't for Harry narrowly managing to Apparate out of the way, he'd have burnt to death right there...
He re-appeared behind Voldemort.
"Didn't we just have a chat about leaving a body behind?" Harry spoke calmly as the forest around them erupted into flames.
Voldemort whipped around and shot a stream of the Fiendfyre at him, which Harry managed to (barely) block with another diamond wall.
"Figures. It must be all the inbreeding. That's why your mum was so weak, wasn't she?"
Harry did his best imitation of a Malfoy sneer.
"All the incest and the inbreeding? What a pity that Slytherin's descendants came down to that. And here you are, not doing much better. I'd bet all the contents of my Gringotts vault that he'd be ashamed of you and everything you've done too, if he were here to see it!"
Voldemort snarled, letting loose even more spells at him, even as the Fiendfyre drew nearer to them both.
"Time to end this," Harry thought.
As Voldemort geared up to fire off another barrage of spells, Harry Apparated behind him once again and quickly retrieved the gem that Garnet had given him.
Tapping it once with his wand, he cried out: "Nullis Magicis!".
The stone started glowing and shot forward towards Voldemort.
He turned around just in time for the gem to crash into his chest and bounce back, floating in the air.
"What is this, Potter? Is a mere gem supposed to stop m-" Voldemort stopped mid-taunt when a very unexpected (for him) effect of the gem started happening.
Black tendrils of magical energy started flowing out of Voldemort's chest and into the gem, changing its colour as the more energy came from Voldemort, the darker the gem became, until it became pure black.
The more energy that was drained from Voldemort, the less strong the Fiendfyre seemed to get, until the fire had disappeared around them completely.
Before either of them could react, a burst of energy erupted from the gem, throwing them off their feet and obliterating several of the trees with such an impact that it could be seen and heard back at Hogwarts castle, startling the fighters there.
Roxy herself was nearly knocked out of the sky and had to fight hard with her new wings to stay airborne.
Harry summoned the gem back to him as he got to his feet and caught it in his left hand quite smoothly, his Seeker's reflexes coming into play.
He watched warily as Voldemort got to his feet, clutching his wand.
"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort shrieked, brandishing his wand.
Nothing happened.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Still nothing.
"Crucio!"
Harry blinked.
"You..." Harry didn't even know it was possible, but Voldemort seemed to be looking at him with even more loathing than before. "...what did you do to me?"
"Just a little trick I learnt. Stealing magic." Harry threw the gem in his hand up and down, catching it each time as he stared down his opponent, before putting it in his pocket. "Congratulations, Tom Riddle. You're now a Squib. No magic in you. Just like your father."
Voldemort seemed to snap and actually lunged for Harry, reaching out his long, pale, thin hands towards his neck.
He gasped as Harry's swords, grasped in his right hand, impaled him.
Coughing up blood as Harry pulled out the swords, Voldemort tumbled to the ground and seemed to seize up for a few moments as he bled out even more before he finally stopped moving, his eyes sill wide open in shock.
Harry stashed away the swords as if he were in a daze.
He'd finally done it.
Harry looked down on Voldemort's... Tom Riddle's dead body at his feet, then looked at the now blackened gem in his hand.
He breathed heavily; splattering drops of blood from his still broken nose onto the ground as the effects of the Midnight Oil and adrenalin began wearing off.
"Well, it looks like you finally did him in for good." Roxy spoke calmly as she finally flew down to Harry's side. "Congratulations."
Harry turned to her.
"What were you thinking?" he managed to grind out. "When I saw you on the ground like that, not moving..."
"I was thinking that I didn't want to watch my boyfriend die. Especially at the hands of a maniac like that!" Roxy exclaimed.
"And here I was, thinking that I didn't want my girlfriend to die at the hands of that same maniac and thinking that despite doing all I could to prevent that, that I had failed..." Harry retorted. "How did you even survive that anyway?"
"Solid construct." Roxy explained. "You had already told me that the Killing Curse could pass through regular shields, so I started conjuring up a stone wall between you and him. The curse was speeding towards you though and I thought I wouldn't get the wall up in time so I just flew with it... Next thing I know, you're doing a quite a number on Voldemort and I've got new wings..."
She sighed. "We can talk about it later. What matters now is that Voldemort is finally dead, we're both relatively okay..."
"At least we're not the dead ones..." Harry muttered.
"Amen to that," Roxy agreed. "I really don't know what I'd do if you had died. Now let me see if my Fairy Dust will fix you up now..."
She took a few steps back from him as she willed her new ability, her pendant detaching itself.
Focusing on it as she flapped her wings slightly, the fairy dust from her wings seemed drawn to the bottle first before it headed towards Harry and engulfed him.
While it did not heal him one hundred percent, at least it had fixed his nose...
"Feeling better?" Roxy kissed his nose.
Harry allowed himself a small smile. "Much better than I was before..."
They fell into silence for a few moments until they glanced down at the gem that now housed Voldemort's magic.
"We have to destroy it," Harry said, breaking the silence. "We can't leave behind any loose ends. We can't just hide this gem. We need to completely obliterate its presence, as it had never existed in the first place. We can't take the chance that someone finds it and harnesses its magic somehow or that they find out what I did and construe me as the next Dark Lord..."
"I agree," Roxy nodded. "I could ask Bloom to destroy it. Dragon's Flame is the strongest magical source in Magix, after all. I'm sure that she could keep a secret..."
"Probably, but I'd rather as few people knew about this bit of dark magic as possible. " Harry pointed out.
"Well, I am due for a visit to Domino in a few days, actually. I could try to toss it into the Vortex of Flames there. If you trust me enough to keep it until I go. Or given recent events, I could-" Roxy rambled on until Harry touched her lips lightly, cutting her off.
"We will find a way," he slipped it into a small pouch, which he sealed shut with his wand, the pouch glowing black briefly as he did. "I'm sure there's a much simpler solution now that's escaping me, but given what I've just done..."
"I don't think anyone would be thinking clearly in your place..." Roxy put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hmm..." Harry sighed. "I suppose. We really do need to carry this body back though. Seeing it should work wondrous psychological effects on both sides."
"You're right. Go wrap this all up. I'll be right behind you." Roxy nodded solemnly.
One simple incantation later and Voldemort's body was floating in front of Harry, while Roxy hovered a few metres behind him as they made their way out of the forest.
Harry stepped out of the forest to be confronted with the sight of Augusta Longbottom duelling Bellatrix Lestrange.
"I'll do worse to you than I did to your precious Frankie!" Bellatrix shrieked. "Maybe I'll play with Nevvie for a bit too after you're gone!"
"You will do no such thing!" Madam Longbottom shrieked, her vulture-topped hat flying off her heard as she fought.
Bellatrix looked in Harry's direction out of the corner of her eye and saw Voldemort's corpse floating.
About to let out a shriek of horror at the sight, Madam Longbottom took advantage of Bellatrix's distraction and shot a curse at the other witch that ended up piercing a hole through her neck.
Breathing heavily as she watched Bellatrix die, she turned to see what had distracted her opponent.
The scream she let out was quite different to Bellatrix's own.
"Potter's won! He's done it!" she exclaimed, looking much less dignified than she normally did.
Neville and Hermione, who had been nearby, watching the duel between the two witches in awe, looked in Harry's direction and let out twin shouts of joy.
As they ran for him, Harry dropped Voldemort's body some distance away, barely managing to do so before the pair enveloped him in the tightest hugs he'd ever had.
"You did it, Harry! You did it!" Hermione started crying tears of joy.
As more and more people noticed what had happened, more and more cheers rose up from the ranks of the defenders.
Most stayed where they were, fighting off the Death Eaters and creatures that had remained, but upon seeing their master dead, most of them seemed to either lose morale and get sloppier in their fights, or get enraged and lost all reason, making it easier to defeat them.
Ginny shoved Neville out of the way, giving Harry a kiss on the cheek followed closely by Luna, with Hermione also giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Roxy chuckled. "He deserves his moment. They can kiss him on the cheek all they want."
She remembered what Harry had told her of how he'd been treated in a similar manner when he'd rescued Amethyst and Jasper and chuckled again.
Roxy nearly jumped out of her skin when someone appeared next to her.
"Despite this victory today and your obvious Enchantix gain, I do hope you realise how much I thoroughly disapprove of your presence here today..."
With a great feeling of dread, she turned to see her mother standing next to her.
"Oh. Hello, mother..." Roxy chuckled nervously.
"Imagine how I felt when Masika called. Saying that she had went to that hotel room, only to find her daughter, you and the other three gone. That in itself wasn't bad, but when she found out from the pixies precisely where you had gone..." Morgana narrowed her eyes at her daughter.
"Do we have to talk about this now, Mother?" Roxy asked. "I mean, we all did just help to end a major magical war..."
"That is true," Morgana nodded, smiling slightly. "We shall speak of this another time. For now, go. Join Harry and your friends."
Roxy nodded, smiling back at her mother as she flew forward to join the crowd congratulating her boyfriend.
Remaining outside of the crowd of people that surged forward to congratulate Harry, were two witches that stood smirking.
"Well, Stormy," the straw-blonde one said. "It's done. That Potter guy actually managed to kill Voldemort properly this time around..."
"You're right Icy. I guess he's less than a wimp than we thought..." the black-haired witch said. "I don't think Bloom would ever have the guts to kill off an opponent, even if it was the only way to beat them..."
"Darcy is avenged. We've done our part, messing with the Death Eaters and offing some of those dark creatures for him. It's time for us to take our leave from Britain for good." Icy said.
"Too true, Icy. Too true. I've had enough of this crappy place!" Stormy exclaimed.
With that, the two witches disappeared, though no one else noticed, as they were so caught up in their post-battle elation praising the Boy-Who-Lived, who had now evolved into the Man-Who-Won.
Many of the Gryffindor fighters had retired to the Gryffindor Tower after the battle, making some sort of attempt at winding down after the battle earlier in the day.
However, it wasn't Gryffindors alone that were present; a few others from other Houses, as well as some who had come from Magix, were scattered amongst them, wanting to stay close to friends and loved ones.
One such group that the others stood respectfully away from was Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna and Roxy.
Roxy was sitting in the corner of a sofa, with Harry lying down on it, his head on her lap as she ran her fingers through his hair lightly; Hermione sat in an armchair with Ginny perched on the handle, while Neville and Luna sat together in a love seat, all arranged in a shape somewhat reminiscent of a triangle.
"Well... it's over." Ginny remarked. "It's done. Now what?"
"It's not over just yet. A fair amount of Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters still managed to escape. They'll still be out there, biding their time until they can either get revenge or just trying their best not to be captured." Hermione pointed out.
"Don't I know it..." Neville muttered, remembering what had happened to his parents. "In any case, it's still best to keep lying low, I suppose. Maybe for a few months to a year, at least."
"I'll remain in Tir Nan Og for now. While I was there, I started researching ideas for furthering my education and it turns out that Magix has quite a few universities I could attend. I think I'd like that." Hermione beamed at the thought of more education. "Maybe I could move to Magix permanently in the future and have a career and a life there..."
Harry chuckled. "You'll get through. I'm sure of it. I mean, if I of all people could get through at Red Fountain..."
"Stop underestimating yourself, Harry." Ginny chided him. "Saladin wouldn't have personally offered you a place there if he didn't think you deserved it. And I think that you certainly proved that you deserved it today..."
"She's right, you know..." Roxy agreed.
They remained silent for a few moments, until Luna piped up.
"After my father's funeral, I think I'll do some travelling around Earth and maybe have a few stops in Magix and all the different planets there." Luna said. "I think it would be fun, I'd learn a lot and I think it would help me in the long run. I can't help but feel sad about my father's death, but I don't want to stay here and wallow in grief like I did when Mum died. Neither of them would have wanted that for me..."
They all made noises of agreement.
"In any case, there's an open invitation for all of you to visit Tir Nan Og this summer. We could all travel from there to Magix if you wanted to." Roxy offered.
Harry tuned out of the conversation just then as he started dozing off.
Voldemort was finally gone for good.
The Wizarding World would still have many issues going forward as it tried to heal, but the worse of it was gone.
He and Roxy still had a few issues in their relationship to iron out, but he thought it would work out in the end.
After all, if she was so willing to step in front of a Killing Curse for him, when only one other had before...
And she'd gotten her Enchantix from it too, proving in his opinion, that it was all genuine; that she did it because she truly liked him.
Perhaps, even... loved him.
The thought made a small smile form on his face as he finally fell asleep.
Everything would be okay.