Nothing is mine.

Die Walküren

'Cesare,' Harry whispered.

The tower whirled away with a loud crack and he stepped out into a broad hall. Sunlight streamed in through the tall, stained glass windows over bright rugs and tapestries, but smoke curled from a scatter of scorch marks across the walls and the figures in the paintings cowered in their frames.

'The game's already begun!' Bella skipped forward.

'Bella,' Harry murmured.

She froze. 'Yes?'

'Hush.' He slid his wand from sleeve, striding down the hall. 'It's very quiet and we don't want them to hear us coming yet. It's meant to be a surprise.'

A dull thud reverberated through the house.

'No it isn't!' She beamed. 'Let's go! We can play together!'

'Why not.' Harry strode after her down the hall past the smoking scorch marks, over wooden splinters and deep scores in the stone. 'The Greengrasses are definitely here; their magic leaves marks like that.'

'It's just them,' Bella chirped. 'Chasca and Enni went to Nurmengard to wait for you.'

And they must've noticed you're not there. Harry prowled toward the distant banging past marble statues, bright paintings and tall ornate clocks. I can't allow these two to get away to help Grindelwald later.

He raised his wand, pouring magic into a thick mesh of wards as he approached the broad, grand marble stairs.

Bella giggled. 'No more running away. Feel alive or die, Cousin Harry.'

'Win or dawn,' Harry murmured.

Great gaps yawned in the pale stone balustrade and the walls behind, chunks of marble scattered the steps, and their torn still canvases draped the stone.

Red trickled down through their splintered frames.

Harry swept up the stairs.

Cedric sat on the top step, slumped against half a grandfather clock, his hair full of glinting glass shards. Blood pooled beneath him, soaking his tattered dark robes, snaking across the floor and streaming down the marble stairs to Harry's feet.

A fine silver hair stuck from the snapped wand in Cedric's clenched fist, glowing like starlight as he stared down the corridor.

Harry crouched in front of him. 'Cedric.'

Cedric's eyes dragged across, fluttering and focusing. 'Harry,' he whispered. 'You always… come back… when it all… looks lost.'

Bella cocked her head, spilling dark curls over her shoulder. 'He's lost.'

Harry brushed Cedric's robes aside with the tip of his wand. Eight fist-sized holes gaped in his stomach, full of glistening entrails and leaking crimson across the floor.

'I warded… the door…' Cedric's head flopped to the side and the light of the unicorn hair faded out.

'Bye Cedric,' he whispered. 'I'm sorry you didn't get to see the sun rise, but I'll make sure it wasn't for nothing.'

Je te le promets. Harry brushed the glass from Cedric's hair. It will all be worth it.

Smashed urns and toppled, shattered statues lay beneath the smoking, scorched walls of the corridor to a sharp corner halfway to the window at the end.

'Bella.' Harry stood back up. 'I think I'm going to do this myself. Get Zoë de Medici and anyone else here out of my way.'

'Awwwww.' Bella screwed her face up. 'But I want to play together with you! Family stays together!'

'You got to play with Grant, Hestia and Flora. After this, you'll get to play with Grindelwald while I deal with Enni and Chasca.'

'I get to play with him?' Her bright purple eyes burnt with excitement. 'Really? With you? Together?'

A small sad smile flitted across Harry's lips. 'As long as you don't lose before Enni and Chasca do.'

And if you do, you deserve it. You belong to this world too.

Bella bobbed her head. 'Yes, Mithras!'

Harry picked his way toward the corner, rolling his feet with each step. Bits of broken glass and portrait splinters gave under his boots in quiet crunches.

Daphne and Astoria stood side by side halfway down the corridor, hurling lances of grey mist into the shimmering aura hanging over the door.

'There are no others here!' Zoë cried from behind the door. 'Go away! It is just me and my children. You got who you came for!'

'We know!' Astoria chimed. 'But we want to make a nice clean sweep of it, right, Daph?'

Harry eased his magic into the air, sweeping the floor clear of debris with a soft ripple of air, and crept close across the wooden boards.

'It's a waste,' Daphne murmured. 'But better not to let things fester and risk it spreading through the ICW from Madame de Medici.'

'Sorry, Madame de Medici.' Astoria snickered. 'Daph likes tidy, I'm afraid.'

Harry leant in close to her ear. 'Are you afraid?' he whispered.

A shriek tore from Astoria's lips and Daphne hissed, clapping her hands to her ears, hunching back against the wall.

'We all scream for Team Ice Cream.' Harry reached for the amber mask with a small chuckle. 'I believe I owed you a surprise, right, Daph?'

Grey mist flashed from Astoria's sleeve, snapping about Daphne's waist and dragging her back against the door, and Astoria shifted her weight.

'No, you're not getting out of here. And even if you could, where would you run? Nurmengard? I'll be going there soon enough.'

Astoria poked her sister in the hip. 'Daph… this isn't the moment to space out.'

Daphne took deep breaths and drew herself up, a little grimace on her face. 'You keep popping back up.' Grey fog poured from their sleeves circling around their waists. 'Henri Dufort.'

He smiled and lifted the mask from his face. 'Sort of.'

Two pairs of wide blue eyes stared back from beneath their blonde braids.

'Everyone's always so surprised.' Harry spun his wand in his fingers, showering the rugs in silver sparks. 'I died. And that's what everyone expected, isn't it? It's what I was supposed to do. Heroes are meant to die. Everyone else gets to be happy when they're gone.' A raw bitterness twisted the corner of his mouth up. 'But look at what you all did after I was. This is what you deserve, for turning all those dreams to dust and never giving anything back. But I won't let it be for nothing. It won't be a waste. We don't want that, right, Daph?'

Daphne twitched and Astoria's pale blue eyes narrowed.

'Bella, make sure Zoë and her family are safe and out of the way in there. We'll go back to Constantinople afterward.'

Bella bounced through the middle of the Greengrasses and tapped the door with her wand. 'Knock knock?'

The door clicked open an inch.

Bella yanked the door open and wriggled in. 'Hi, I'm Bella. Just Bella!'

The door swung shut with a soft thud.

Harry placed the mask back over his face. 'If you have anything honest to say, I'd say it now.'

'We don't really want to die?' Astoria grinned. 'So how about you go to Nurmengard and if you win, we'll help you instead?'

Daphne folded her arms. 'He won't fall for that.'

'He might have, Daph, if you hadn't given it away.'

'I won't,' Harry said. 'You belong in this world, with me, and Bella, and Grindelwald and everyone else who just takes dreams away. When the dawn comes, we should all just disappear.'

'What dawn?' Daphne murmured, pulling her wand from her sleeve.

A wry bitter smile tugged at the corner of Harry's mouth. 'The one you're about to die for, but will never see.'

Tendrils of grey mist lanced at him.

He swept them aside with a flick of his wand. 'I thought you were like my sisters. Like Katie. Like Gabby.' White sparks crackled along the length of his wand, spiralling about the tip. 'But you're not. You're like me.' He raised his wand. 'Fulminis.'

A searing flash tore at his eyes; bright arcs of lightning bounced off a ball of grey fog and ripped through the walls, setting light to the wooden beams and splintered paintings.

'Lacero.' Harry sent a streak of purple hissing into the wall of grey fog and watched it burst; he forced his arm faster, blurring through wand motions, slipping every spell in, unleashing a hail of hexes.

The broken, burning beams ripped themselves from the walls, sprouting long, thin tentacles lined with countless sharp splinters.

He thrust his magic into them, sweeping them together into a ball of lashing, slashing whiplike appendages and banishing it into the fog.

The grey mist closed over it, crushing it like a pumpkin in the fist of a giant, and the twitching splinters poured across the floor at the Greengrasses' feet.

Astoria snickered and drew her wand from her sleeve. 'You're still a hammer, Harry. And you know what they say about hammers, everything looks like a nail to them.' Bright yellow curses streaked from her wand down the corridor.

Harry raised his wand, batting the spells away. 'I find if you hit something hard enough, it doesn't matter if it was a nail or a needle.'

Spikes lanced from the walls.

Harry poured his magic into the air and twisted his wrist, ripping the spikes free and sweeping them back. The grey fog swirled around them and the debris bounced off, smashing into the walls and stabbing deep into the door behind them.

'Time to split, Daph,' Astoria said.

The mist parted, pouring back into a swirling ring around each of their waists, and Daphne raised her wand, conjuring a thick serpent of flame.

Harry slashed his wand.

A ripple of haze scattered the flames like smoke in the wind and hammered into a glowing white shield of magic.

He spun his wand in his fingers, swatting Astoria's orange curses back into Daphne's shield, firing glimmering purple bone-splintering curses into them in the moments between them. They burst in ripples of colours, leaving her wall of white magic trembling and shuddering.

Astoria grimaced and stuck her hand in her pocket. 'Alright. A lot stronger and a lot faster. Time for the back up plan, Daph.' A tiny vial of liquid gold glinted between her fingers.

Felix Felicis. But barely enough for a few minutes, even if only one of them drinks it. He conjured a swathe of black butterflies, directing them around him in a swirling sphere of fluttering dark wings. I can just outlast it.

Astoria tipped the vial up and let a single drop of gold fall onto her tongue. 'We saved a little luck for an emergency, so let's hope it's enough to cut ice.' She tossed the vial to her sister.

Daphne drank the remaining drop and tucked the glass into her pocket.

'Really, Daph?' Astoria sniggered. 'It's not like the rest of this house is very tidy, what difference could it make?'

Grey fog lanced down the corridor.

Harry threw up his shield and watched it hammer against the blinding wall of white light. Beyond it, his butterflies burst into wisps of black mist and a barrage of colour washed across the shield.

Just like before. A small bitter smile curved his lips up as the spells splashed against the barrier of bright pale light, sending little flashes of fierce sparks showering over the floor and ripples of colour across his shield. But this time we're together, Tom. I swallowed you up before, but this is our dream, not just mine. I promised them something great. And together, we will not be stopped.

He stared through the last few butterflies at Astoria's fading grin and the dwindling gleam mischief in her eyes. 'Has it run out?'

The crystals in the chandelier above him lengthened into spikes and tore free, hissing through his shield.

Harry banished them away, but the crystals shattered and a handful of shards bounced back off the wall; they tore through his left arm in an explosion of bright, white-hot agony.

'Not quite,' Astoria chimed.

He ripped them out and dropped them to the floor, tearing his ruined left sleeve free. The bleeding gashes crept closed, shrinking to small patches of fresh pink skin.

'I can't get through,' Daphne murmured. 'It's not clever or deft. It's just… like hurling yourself against a wall.'

Harry let his Shield Charm fall. 'You thought you could outlast me—' he took a step forward, twirling his wand in his fingers '—that grey fog magic you learnt from Julien; it's versatile and pretty powerful, but it's also not too tiring to keep up, is it? You thought you could let me hammer away at it and I'd exhaust myself and you could escape back to Nurmengard.'

Astoria exchanged a swift look with Daphne and swiped sweat off her forehead on the back of her arm. 'We've probably won more duels than you've ever fought in, we know how to beat wizards or witches with more brute power than we have.'

'On a duelling circuit.' Harry levelled his wand at her. 'But, you know, if you'd tried that back when you were fighting Violette, or when you betrayed Lemon Sorbet, it might have worked.'

'It should work now then.' She swept her wand up before her face and dipped her head. 'A duel it is.'

'No… it won't. I'm not really just Harry Potter any more.' He pressed the fingertips of his free hand to the warm amber mask. 'For a little while, I was. Voldemort so desperately wished he still believed, so I swallowed him up and he dreamt my dream somewhere beneath the surface of me. But now, now there are no dreams left. Now we only have something great. Now, we're one.'

Astoria grinned. 'I suppose we'll see if sorbet really is superior to mere ice cream, then.' She nudged Daphne in the hip with her elbow. 'At least it wasn't a waste, right, Daph? We got our own back. We did what we could to end all this senseless wasting of life like you wanted us to—' her grin faded and her pale blue eyes swam with shadows '—and we'll go out together.'

Daphne raised her wand before her face and inclined her head an inch, her cool blue eyes fixed on Harry.

'You made it worse,' Harry said. 'You just took more and more dreams away, stealing wishes—' the storm stirred, a searing whisper of need '—and in the end, if I hadn't made sure it was all for something worth it, it would've been for nothing.'

A single spark of gold welled from the tip of his wand, shining like a star.

'You don't deserve to see the dawn. You ruin everything.'

The mote of magic burst into a bright butterfly, splitting into two, dividing into four, and swarming into countless more; they surrounded Harry in a silent swirling storm of searing gold.

'Pretty,' Daphne murmured, conjuring a wall of white magic.

It hurts. His heart sank into its scream, crumbling into the whirl of molten yearning, torn to ribbons on bittersweet blades as sharp as shards of glass and hot as flame. But it's meant to. And I'll make it all worth it.

Harry stood in the eye of the amber storm as it swept forward, slicing through Daphne's white shield charm, shredding Astoria to tatters and scattering her into nothing.

'Tori,' Daphne whispered.

Wry bitter humour curved the corner of Harry's mouth up. 'Just the two-scoop of us left now, Daph.'

A wordless hiss tore from her and her wand flashed up. 'Avada kedavra.'

A bright flash of green stabbed through the storm, but melted away into its searing golden swirl. The butterflies flocked between them, fusing together one by one, and a slender figure of dawn-bright flame coalesced at their heart.

'Fleur,' Harry breathed; a raw scream of need stuck in the back of his throat, snagged on sharp thorns of bitter guilt. 'I'm sorry—' the scream swallowed the words, swelling up into a fierce hot lump.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Bitter tears stung his eyes and blurred on his lashes. I'll make sure it wasn't for nothing. It'll be everything I said it would be. Je te le promets.

She turned away as the last of the butterflies settled over her in a dress of rippling fire, her hair trailing from her shoulders like the shimmering tail of a falling star streaking through the night sky.

Grey fog poured forward from Daphne's wand, but it dissipated into a cloud of swirling golden sparks.

Fleur thrust her arm through Daphne's chest to the elbow; the fierce amber flames seared away the winged sword over her heart

'Tu me manques, mon Rêve,' Harry whispered as she faded away. 'Je suis désolé.'

Wisps of smoke curled from the hole in Daphne's chest as her body crumpled to the scorched, smouldering floor.

Harry poked her in the side with the tip of his boot. 'Bella! They're dead.'

The door creaked open and Bella stuck her head out, her purple eyes bright and curious. 'They lost? Could they play well? Was it fun?'

'It's just done.' He stared down into Daphne's dull, pale blue eyes. 'They had no place in the world I promised; it's better this way.'

Zoë pushed the other half of the door open, her wand clutched in her fist and her three children trembling behind her.

'It's done.' Harry slipped his wand back into his sleeve. 'We're going back to the Nymphaeon, Bella.'

'Wait.' Zoë released a long shaky sigh. 'I owe you a debt of life once again, Violette. One for myself and one for my children.'

'I don't think so,' he replied. 'They came here because of me. You owe me nothing.'

She studied him with a small frown and a sharp glint in her deep brown eyes. 'Let us say I owe you a favour then, Violette. You and your companion. You know the name, all those who learnt it otherwise to come here are dead.'

'Or soon to be dead,' Harry said. 'But what does it matter?'

I'll disappear soon. Like I deserve.

He released the wards and disapparated, hopping back across the dark, windswept towers of the Unspeakables and out before the fluttering black silk veiling the Mirror of Erised.

A loud crack rang through the tent.

Bella skipped in. 'Now we find a new game! Another one! We go to Nurmengard and play together against Grindelwald!'

'When we're rested,' Harry murmured. 'Go rest, Bella.'

'Awwww.' She bounded out. 'I hate waiting!'

So do I. But there's no more of that now. No more waiting, no more hoping, no more wishing, and no more secrets. I've already won. A small smile spread across Harry's face. And when Grindelwald's absolute will to change the world and his Greater Good are sacrificed, I think that will be enough. It feels like it should be. Harry stared at the black veil hanging over the mirror. But just in case…

He vanished the dark silk.

A single shadow shivered beneath the shining silver surface, soft as summer shade beneath the willow tree and silent as the sunlight pouring through its fluttering leaves, but behind it, fierce golden light poured forth, washing across the world.

'I've kept my promise. If I win, I get to see the sun rise, and if I lose, it doesn't matter, dawn will still come without me.'

The shadow shrank into the curved shape of a familiar blade and the Spear of Truth fell into his arms.

He tucked it under his arm and slid his wand from his sleeve, touching the tip to the Mirror of Erised. 'Goodbye, baby bird.'

I don't deserve to see you again. Not here. Not wherever Fleur hid you. And every spell, every sacrifice counts. Harry let the storm snatch his heart away into the searing scream of its swirling winds, let the razor-sharp need slice it to ribbons and scatter it away into the whirl of burning yearning within. It's meant to hurt. You ruined everything.

A spark of golden magic burst from the tip of his wand, exploding into a ball of blazing butterflies. They swarmed together before the searing sun behind the cold silver glass, coalescing as the Mirror of Erised disintegrated. His tent collapsed into the whirling amber magic, and the great, bronze, two-headed eagle crumbled beneath his feet, torn apart by the dawn-bright storm.

Harry poured his magic into the air and caught himself, hovering in the eye of the storm as a pair of purple-eyed crows alighted upon his shoulders and the last of Constantinople sunk beneath the sea.

The vast swirl of searing gold shrank, melting into a small familiar silhouette. She hovered in the sky above him, bright and hot as the summer sun, veiled in a shroud of shivering heat haze.

A desperate yearning ripped through him like a fistful of red-hot razors.

'Look at you,' he whispered as she stretched her little arms out, grabbing for him with glowing golden fingers. 'Look how beautiful you are.'

AN: Self promo (and more importantly, working update notifications).

linktr . ee / mjbradley