A/N: Hope you all enjoy. This chapter wraps up the story, though there is a little epilogue I'll write as the fifth and final chapter. Do comment/review your thoughts, and happy reading!
1
Hermione Granger was in a whirlwind of fighting and death. Stench of blood staining her nostrils. Lights spelling out spells of death and spells of life flying past her every second.
The front courtyard of Malfoy Manor was ablaze with magical warfare, the severity of which Hermione had never expected.
Guts stank the floor, rotting into the soil. Wisping a sinful scent straight up and into Hermione's nose.
Everything, from flung up grass to the molten gates to the dead bodies themselves, lit in shades of devilish red as spells volleyed across Hermione's eyes.
Colours that had once fascinated her, enthralled her. Now being used for ends only the strongest of means could justify—and only one side, the side of the light, was justified.
She'd known this would happen. Known that war entailed death, entailed killing, entailed witnessing others pass before her very eyes. Many of whom had done so, the names too horrifying to think about.
But to actually see it, breathe it, live it—another experience entirely. And one that, even if they won the final battle, would never leave her nightmares.
A death eater, masked of course, challenged her to one side of the courtyard. Her eyes all the while scanning, for Harry, to make sure he above all else was alive.
But she couldn't find him.
Not a trace.
Hermione's north star had vanished, turning her compass upside down.
Where was he? Where had he gone? Disappeared off to?
Was he dea—
No, she couldn't think on that.
Couldn't imagine it.
Couldn't cement it as a possibility.
Because…he just couldn't have.
Her attention sputtered, noise of destruction popping open her ears.
A flash of purple to her left. Blasting towards her. Death its message. Intent to kill.
She dodged to her right, spell whizzing past, her own wand already flying up. Diffindo wordlessly flung back at the death eater, just as she'd practiced all these months.
Missed. Just about. Death eater throwing themselves onto the grass, prone, but alive.
But it bought Hermione enough time.
And time, as Tonks always said in their many training sessions, was there to be used.
And use it Hermione did.
Resting one knee on the spoiled grass, sole of her other foot planted firmly, she waited for the death eater to fire.
Fire they did.
This time a green spell.
The ugliest unforgivable.
Death not its wish, but its guarantee.
Right at her eyes. But the spell missed as Hermione jumped to the left. Airborne as she slammed a stupefy in return, arm strong, wand steady.
Hit the target, bullseye. And this death eater wasn't high ranking enough to wear the protective robe Bellatrix had worn.
The target—the scum of a death eater—dropped to the floor. Limp. Unconscious, but only temporarily.
Hermione would make that permanent.
She vaulted over to where the death eater lay, pressed her wand against their neck, and whispered a cutting charm.
Impossible to miss at point blank range.
Blood spurted out as the life left their eyes, blood that stained her clothes, but Hermione didn't care.
She inhaled a deep breath, calming herself. Despite the war around her, she never got used to seeing and causing death.
She wiped the grime off her mouth, then turned to face the fighting once more.
To see if Harry was alive.
No, he had to be alive.
He just had to.
But then, as spells flew like poisoned arrows of death, as the sky bellowed with smoke and the shouting and screaming and scent of rotten flesh coalesced around Hermione, a terrifying roar—
Burst out from the—
Gates of the manor—
A roar that seized Hermione's heart and squeezed it within an inch of its life—
A roar that said—
HARRY POTTER IS DEAD.
0
"What will you do if I die, Hermione Granger?"
Harry had asked that question one night in the tent, after Ron had nipped off to bed. The atmosphere was one of a quiet comfort, no sounds present in the air, a peaceful sense of, well, peace as they sat on Harry's bed and watched the front of the tent in case a death eater barged through.
A death eater, thankfully, didn't barge through. Letting Hermione have her moment of serenity. Apart from Harry's abrupt question, that was.
"Why my full name?" Hermione asked, instead of addressing the question. A question she, naturally, didn't wish to think about, let alone speak of.
She instead glanced to her bag, left beside her bed, within which their main supplies were stashed. Books Hermione needed for research, spare potions, miniaturised flying brooms that expanded when held by its owner, any money they required to get around, spare ingredients for brewing more potions.
"I could give you a nickname," Harry muttered, breaking Hermione's thoughts.
"Please, don't."
"What should it be?" Harry said in a sing-song voice. "I wonder what would fit you perfectly."
He lay back and cradled his head in his palms, elbows spread out. "Might wanna give me some ideas here, smartest witch of our age. My brain's running out of steam right now."
"Your brain has been out of steam since first year," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "You and that Ron over there."
"Sleeps like a troll, doesn't he?" Harry muttered, glancing over to where Ron's form rose up and down, as did the volume of his snorting breaths.
"Still never gave me a nickname to call you," Harry continued, looking back at her.
Their eyes meeting. And Hermione, coward that she was, broke that gaze first.
"Anything you want," Hermione finally muttered when Harry seemed utterly unwilling to break the quiet. "Call me anything you fancy, to be honest."
"Anything, hmmm."
The warm comfort insulating them from the evil of the world, at that very moment, was something Hermione treasured, and would continue to treasure. The smell of Harry's earthy shampoo, the innocent white walls of the tent, the way he leaned back and sighed and hit her with a dazzling grin—
Hermione would remember it all.
As she would his next words.
"Just want to call you mine forever," Harry then said. "That's all, really."
Hermione decided to suck back her cowardice for once. "Then why don't you? Call me yours forever, that is."
"Because forever isn't guaranteed. And I'm afraid, too."
Hermione did everything she could to quell the quaking of her heart. "Why's that?"
"You'll become something else Voldemort can target," Harry said. "And…I know that…that I can't actually—"
"Actually what?"
But Hermione's question went unanswered, despite her knowing the truth. That Harry thought he would die, knew he would die, and so he was afraid of breaking her heart as much as his own.
It was better to have loved and lost, Hermione believed that.
But how could one love when they knew they'd ultimately lose?
A question, like many others, that Hermione just didn't have the answers to.
And she wouldn't—not for a long time, anyway.
0
The final Order meeting. Grimmauld Place. Days before their attack on Malfoy Manor. Only a few present around the central table in the dining room. Low lights hovering overhead, casting a faint orange tint to the large room.
Harry sat at one end of the table, with Hermione and Tonks, Ron and Remus—all sitting around him, all with eyes on him.
After all, after Dumbledore's passing, the reigns had been passed onto Harry as the leader of the Order. And Snape too, but as of late Snape's spy duties had been put on hold to ensure Voldemort didn't suspect any plans being made by the side of the light.
War, at times, was a delicate game of chess, and Harry was planning the ultimate checkmate.
They hashed out the plan properly whilst sitting at the table, ironing out all the details, checking to make sure the two-ways all worked efficiently. Hermione brought out the wand holsters she'd made for them, though Harry's felt a lot heavier than the others when he tried it out.
The wand holster would be important. More than perhaps even Harry knew.
He didn't dwell on the details, however, since they'd run through the plan a million times before. Rather, he stared at the faces of those around him, those he loved like the family he never had, and then closed his eyes.
Let the comforting warmth of Sirius' house envelope him like a sweet hug from the man himself. And he remembered everyone else who would come through the two-ways the next day to join the battle at Malfoy Manor.
Friends, Professors at Hogwarts, everyone who'd joined the Order whether from Hogwarts or shortly after graduating. All in an effort to save the world that had captivated them. Save the world from the tyranny of a genocidal monster hell bent on serving his own vile interests.
"If I die," Harry muttered, flitting his eyes open and burrowing his gaze into the swirling wood of the table, "then don't think about quitting, all right."
"What you talkin' about, mate?" Ron said with a nervous laugh.
Although they all knew that war, and a battle against death eaters especially, entailed death more than anything else.
Whether the deaths of their enemies, or of their own.
"I meant what I said," Harry muttered, fingers drumming the table, then playing with each other. "The fight doesn't live with me—it lives with everyone. So if I die, then you have to keep fighting, all right."
Harry glanced around the table, his eyes honing onto Hermione like a permanent find-me spell had been put on him. She'd always had that effect, across the seven years he'd known her, and she did now.
She averted her gaze first, staring into the table as though wisdoms and old truths hid in those swirls. And she didn't dare raise her head, for a reason Harry couldn't decipher no matter how much he thought on it.
But Harry didn't have time to interpret those signals, because they had a plan to enact. They had a war to fight. Right to the death.
And, though Harry would have to die as a horcrux, a secret known only to him, even he didn't anticipate the tumultuous turning tides that would thread through the terrifying finale of the war.
No, Harry didn't anticipate anything at all.
1
HARRY POTTER IS DEAD.
The shout rang out, and was ironically the first thing Harry Potter sensed as consciousness slipped back into his body like the last drop of spitting rain. Easily, quietly, and he jammed down on his heartbeat to stop it from rising.
Jammed down on his nerves at the blackness that encompassed his vision entirely.
Through a nose stuffed in someone's grimy jacket, and with the chills of Malfoy Manor and its courtyard skimming his body, Harry raked in jagged breaths, all whilst aware that something was settled on his body.
Something that brought a comforting and familiar touch.
Was that his…invisibility cloak?
He willed himself not to move, to stay stock still, right as that voice repeated itself. A loud, demonic kind of whisper, magnified by a spell no doubt. Voldemort's voice, a terrifying onslaught of words that caused the wind's howl to seem faint in comparison.
YES, HARRY POTTER IS DEAD.
Repetition for greater effect, to silence the enemy, to strike fear into their chests, to sink defeat into their bones.
And the invisibility cloak was probably placed onto him for the final, fanatic reveal.
HARRY POTTER IS TRULY DEAD.
Harry heard a cry in the distance, then people shouting and screaming, threatening to murder Voldemort, calling him a liar. Their words harsh, volatile, but words couldn't bring back the dead.
Harry would know.
He'd been there.
Whilst the screams and shouts circulated around him, he snuck a hand to his wand holster—thankfully it hadn't been tampered with. He'd used the spare wand in his pocket to cast the disarming spell, meaning Voldemort and his cronies didn't know about the wand holster hidden against his wrist. And they hadn't managed to find it whilst collecting his body and shrouding it with the cloak.
Harry sighed, ever so slightly, before sucking in a breath, careful not to let his body rise or fall. The air, prickly and dusty and dirty, stuck in his throat, then slipped to his lungs where it lodged itself, all whilst the noise around him intensified, as though attempting to chant him back to life.
"How can he be dead?" he heard someone shout, a panicked voice. "Where the hell is he?"
And Harry could sense the smirk on Voldemort's face at that moment.
A smirk Harry wanted to wipe off.
Permanently.
But he had to bide his time, wait for the right moment, not act irrationally—
Then somehow, beneath the waves of shouting and screaming, he heard a sniffle. A little sniffle, but one he had heard before, during sixth year, after she had been outright rejected by Ron for Lavender Brown, and Harry had comforted her with an arm over her shoulder and his warmth meshing with hers.
Hermione's sniffle.
And that singular sound, though it was soon drowned out by the ordeal around it, caused Harry to act.
Caused him to spring into motion.
He threw the invisibility cloak off himself and lunged out of the man's arms, in an instant, then rolled across the ground.
Knees and arms bashing the grass as it skidded against him. Wind scratching his face, dirt jamming his lips together. He jumped to his feet, wand already brandished from its holster, and the spell left his lips.
A second later, a massive stone wall erupted from the earth, blocking the death eaters from the side of the light.
Buying them all just enough time.
To process what had happened in that split second, with Harry's invisibility cloak on the floor.
Too far to pick up, since—
The wall smashed open, as though a second gate to Malfoy Manor, and the death eaters poured through.
In their multitudes, spells flying as they ran, wands high, masks failing to hide their demonic smiles. One death eater picking up the invisibility cloak and pocketing it quickly.
Harry dodged, weaved in and out of grass and dead bodies and spells, fired his own incantations with a trained concentration that blocked anything out.
The side of the light was trained, too, and no doubt they battled the shock that Harry was alive still with sheer determination to win the war.
And Harry's determination—to stop Hermione's sniffling, to ensure she could live in a world where she wasn't discriminated against, wasn't bashed for her identity.
That determination carried him as he killed death eaters more, more and more and more, casting spells with a ferocity reminiscent of the horcrux that had been expelled from him.
The battle coalesced around him, borne from an idea of stealth turned to total fury. But it wasn't like before, at the start of the battle. It wasn't tentative, it wasn't tinged with hopelessness, it wasn't resigned.
Those who were alive, like Hermione and Ron and so many others, were gunning for the kill, and Harry knew it was now or never.
Today, the war had to end.
Either Voldemort had to die, or wizarding Britain, and perhaps the world, would fall to its knees.
As the fighting raged on, with one death eater even using the Sword of Gryffindor that Harry had dropped after killing Nagini, the courtyard of Malfoy Manor transformed to a battlefield mimicking no man's land during WWI. Craters smouldering with the smoke of fired spells, mangled bodies jutting out of dirt that had been flung up thousands of times, a fire roaring to the right where branches of the outer forest had caught aflame.
And one explosion erupted from Harry's left, throwing him to the right from the blast.
He landed on his side, shoulder hitting grass, then he rolled out of habit.
Should a death eater have fired a spell at him to time the drop, Harry had to evade.
Practice didn't just make perfect.
Practice saved lives.
Harry rolled again and then propped onto his knees, sucked in a breath, rose to his feet.
And his heart jumped as he realised Voldemort was standing before him.
And the entire battle dimmed at that moment, noises of shouting and smells of burning vacating the atmosphere. An unbreakable bubble of sorts, crackling with a tension Harry couldn't describe, encircled himself and Voldemort and the crater they both stood in.
The last dance.
A dance to the death.
Harry shot first.
A cutting spell, easy to block or evade, just testing the waters.
Voldemort replied back with a tsunami.
As Harry had expected.
Harry blocked Voldemort's onslaught easily enough, first with a stone wall spell to buy himself seconds, then with a well-timed protego to block the next spell, before hopping to the right to evade the final spell.
The dirt slid under his feet, but his balance retained itself. The dimmed smells of burning lapped at his nostrils, slinked down to his mouth where he swallowed.
On the other side of the mirage of smoke and dusted rubble, Voldemort burned with rage, before his slitted lips and nose turned up in a smirk.
"Harry Potter…thinks he can…defeat me," Voldemort said, words breathing out like a snake's hiss.
"Never," Voldemort shouted, before slamming a stupefy across the pit where they fought.
The velocity of the spell flung dirt into Harry's eyes, but he managed to throw himself out of the way.
Rolled.
Once and again.
Then back on his feet with a hop.
Left leg limping. Rubbed his eyes to get the dirt out. Let out a protego just in case Voldemort had followed up his first attack.
The fighting had taken a lot out of Harry. Physically, mentally, emotionally.
Harry had to force himself not to look left, not to find Hermione and make sure she was alive.
Voldemort was powerful, that was for sure. Even more powerful than Dumbledore, perhaps.
But he wasn't invincible.
And Harry had to bank on that.
Bank on that, survive long enough, and enact his plan when the timing presented itself.
"Confringo," Harry yelled, aim straight and true.
Voldemort easily sidestepped, and even if he hadn't, the protective robes only important death eaters wore would've blocked it anyway. Then Voldemort muttered something beneath his breath and began to float in the air, feet leaving the dirt.
How on earth was he—
A spell rained down from above, and Harry erected a stone barrier to avoid getting hit.
Then another stone barrier behind him, all whilst his head craned, trying to locate Voldemort above the smoke.
He turned once, twice, but the dark lord was a flitting blur in the smoke and ash-filled sky.
Harry's eyes squinted as he blocked more spells, one after the other.
But where was Voldemort—
A whoosh, like the air had been squeezed and released.
From behind him.
Harry threw himself to the right, burning smell following him as Voldemort's wordless spells smacked the ground where he'd been standing.
Harry hadn't trained for curses flying down from above. Hadn't trained for it at all.
Hadn't even considered the possibility.
And his plan…it wouldn't work on an uneven playing field.
The bubble of warfare insulating Harry grew tighter, like a noose wrapping around his neck.
From above, Voldemort fired missile-like spells. One after the other. Of all colours smashed together. Raining down hell to send Harry to heaven.
Then that bubble insulating them broke.
Shattered, and the battle roared once more.
Through Hermione's voice.
"Take this, Harry," she called out, hand in her bottomless bag.
She flung the hand out and threw something at him.
Whilst Voldemort sent down a killing curse from above.
Green lit the dirt in snakey Slytherin colours.
But Harry threw himself to the left, towards Hermione's voice. He ate dirt, spat it out, with a hand outstretched to catch what Hermione had thrown him.
It was small, spiky fibres on one side, firm handle on the other.
And upon contact with Harry's skin, his firebolt expanded as he jumped to his feet.
"Die, Potter," Voldemort screamed, volleying curses like his life depended on it.
Eyes screaming wide, wind riffing his robes right to left, wand as gnarly as his devilish glare.
Harry hopped onto his trusty firebolt, wand gripped firm in his other hand, and flew into the air.
He'd needed an even playing field to enact the plan to end Voldemort once and for all.
And thanks to Hermione, they weren't on even footing, but even flying.
Now, it was time to end everything once and for all.
"Funny, Potter," Voldemort shouted over the roar of battle below them, over the cackling wind, over the smell of ashes and blood, over the pounding of Harry's heart. "You truly believe you can fool the Dark Lord?"
Voldemort's laughter echoed as though every molecule in the air laughed along with him.
Harry wasn't laughing, however.
He was ready to end this.
He positioned himself far away enough from Voldemort, wand held tight and steady, wand holster wrapped firmly against his forearm, primed for action.
Now it was a waiting game, as they battled each other, flinging spells and firing curses and flowing jinxes until their breaths gave out, and then they went wordless to confuse each other.
The curses, despite the lack of an incantation, growing more potent all the while.
Wind circling Harry as he flew, Voldemort's expression flitting between enraged and cocky as the last dance progressed above the raging battlefield below.
Hermione's watching, that voice within Harry said. And Harry knew this was all for her.
Every single jinx he fired, every inch of life he clung onto whilst Voldemort pummelled him with the entire spellbook and a half—it was all for her, and for her world to be right again.
Harry eyed Voldemort closely, waiting for the moment to strike—
And the moment flashed.
Voldemort firing a killing curse, straight at Harry.
From thirty or so metres away.
And Harry knew what he had to do.
Trick Voldemort.
By using the second wand hidden in his wand holster.
But not before taking the killing curse head on.
Voldemort's aim was golden, but his plan was murky. The green lit Harry's vision, aimed right between his eyes, and Harry lifted his forearm up.
Letting the robe slide down and reveal the glint of his wand holster. Lit in the glowing moonlight.
Hermione's earlier victory would soon mirror his.
Howling wind followed the venomous green jet of light, and Harry covered his eyes with his forearm.
An inscription in the wand holster met him, one he hadn't seen before, etched into metal.
01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101
And with thoughts of what on earth that could mean, and with that inscription flashing before his eyes—
0
Sometime around midnight.
Harry trying to sleep on the sofa in Grimmauld Place's main living room, because a bed felt too comfortable for him. And at times of war, comfort was far from what a soldier wanted. As long as Voldemort was alive, Harry couldn't sleep peacefully, couldn't rest one second.
Yet he closed his eyes anyway, letting that darkness ebb and flow along his black vision, whilst sounds of silence filled the empty space around him.
He sighed, then turned into the sofa's back and bent his legs. A foetal position, arms curling up, the only position in which he was able to catch some shuteye his entire life.
His breathing grew ragged as he let the sofa take his weight. Tomorrow was the day, or was it today since it could be already past midnight? Harry didn't know the exact time, but in less than twenty four hours, he'd be at Malfoy Manor for what looked to be the final battle.
The final time he and Voldemort would face each other.
And Harry was going to die, for sure. Since he was a horcrux, after all, and he had to sacrifice himself for the wizarding world, as Dumbledore and Snape had planned with him.
A click of a door closing pierced his hearing, and his body froze. Yet he kept his eyes shut, because he knew exactly who was treading along the dusty floorboards, approaching his sofa, footsteps light yet heavy with emotions.
A chair leg scraped across the floor, grating into Harry's ears, yet he never stopped staring into the blackness of his eyelids, never stopped sinking further into the sofa's scraggly fabric, never stopped curling his arms around himself.
"Don't die, Harry," a voice said.
The voice Harry had expected. Hermione's voice. Shuddering with every word.
"Please, Harry, don't die. Not…"
Her breath hitched once, then again, and Harry knew for a fact she was crying, knew that tears dripped down her eyes to her chin. Yet Hermione, strong as she was, would carry on fighting, even after Harry die—
"Don't die," Hermione pleaded, though Harry was sure she didn't know he was awake. "Because…because I love you…and I need you, okay."
Harry couldn't trick her anymore, so he turned around and opened his eyes. Darkness, perhaps even darker than his eyelids, met him from the living room without the light on. But the murkiness didn't hide Hermione—no amount of darkness could hide the light of her presence.
So there, in the middle of the room, a metre or so away from Harry, Hermione sat on a chair she'd dragged over. Tears swelling in her eyes and falling down her face, and she didn't bother to cover them, she just stared at him through her sobbing.
And Harry said the words that he'd wanted to utter for so long.
"I love you, too," he muttered. "Love you more than…anyone else in this world."
"Oh Harry," Hermione said, but she didn't come any closer, as though keeping her distance was the only way to keep her heart at bay. As though she was afraid what coming closer would do to her chest, to her emotions.
And for a while, for hours maybe, they stared at each other, into each other's eyes, finding comfort in the growing silence between them, in the dim hum of the nightly winds against the windows of Grimmauld Place.
Then, "There's something I have to tell you," Hermione said. "Something important."
"More important than the fact that you love me, and the fact that I love you too?"
"Even more important than that," Hermione said. "Because this…this could truly save your life, Harry. In fact, I think it will. Because I planned it that way."
"What are you talking about?" Harry said, sitting up on the sofa and eyeing her closely. He knew Hermione had been working behind the scenes, and working around the clock, to find new tactics against Voldemort.
But this secret tactic she was only telling him behind everyone else's backs…Harry wondered what it was.
"You know your wand holster holds two wands, right?" Hermione said.
"One normal one, and the other as a backup."
Hermione nodded. "And you're only supposed to use the second one as a last resort, remember. Well, there's something else about your holster that I didn't tell you for so long. It's…made of the same alloy material as my knife. And…I think that material can deflect the killing curse."
"But nothing can deflect the killing curse," Harry said, whisper echoing across the room. Nothing in history had stopped the killing curse…apart from Harry himself.
"This has a chance…a high chance, if my research is correct," Hermione said. "So…if you're in a pinch of sorts, Harry, and you need a last resort out, and someone fires a killing curse at you, and there is nothing else you can do…then try deflecting it off the wand holster. I'll try it with my knife too—"
"Don't put yourself in harm's way," Harry said.
And Hermione just chuckled, as though they were second years again and sharing a joke between themselves that Ron just wouldn't understand.
"Harry, we're all in harm's way tomorrow," Hermione muttered. "That's just the way that war works, and there's nothing anyone can change about that. You try the wand holster if you need to, and I'll try the knife…and if either one works, I guess we'll know for definite."
Harry wanted to protect Hermione forever…but forever would have to wait for tomorrow's end.
"I guess we just have to find out," Harry said, looking into the ceiling whilst the warmth of Hermione's presence wrapped over him like a second blanket.
And he wondered just how the battle would go, and whether he would survive to see himself and Hermione build the forever they'd always wanted to, together.
1
—Harry let the killing curse bash into his wand holster, just as he'd planned all along.
The jet of green nearly knocked Harry off his broom, the wind joining in as it swung Harry around with ferocity, but quidditch training and tremendous core strength regained his balance for him, and the shock on Voldemort's expression gave Harry just enough time to enact his plan.
The plan he'd been scheming all along. Ever since witnessing Hermione's knife work against the killing curse in that tunnel.
See, spells could be combined for a greater magical potency, but the casting had to be at a speed not possible for one human being, and not possible for a single regular wand.
Unless someone, somehow, managed to cast a second spell with a different wand quick enough to attach the second spell to the first before it flew away.
And Hermione making Harry the wand holster, with its ability to hide a second wand underneath it—that was all he needed.
First, he cast a stupefy and blasted it at Voldemort, then his mind drummed up every person Voldemort was responsible for killing, every dead body on the battlefield, every person who'd had the life vanish from their eyes, and finally Hermione's face, and the fact that Voldemort wanted to end the world in which Hermione inhabited, and Hermione's falling tears from the night before—
And Harry allowed that rage to fill him up, completely, until he was consumed entirely by anger in that moment.
And, brandishing that second wand, he successfully cast, for the first time in his life, the killing curse. Directed right at the man who'd attempted to ruin his life time and time again.
Voldemort would ruin him no more.
"AVADA KEDAVRA," Harry screamed, at the top of his lungs, and the wind gave way for his words to turn magic to a jet of green light that zoomed towards Voldemort's shocked form.
Voldemort slammed a protego quickly, but the earlier stupefy had weakened it.
And right behind the stupefy, Harry's killing curse flew, until the green bullet merged with the red stupefy, and turned to an almost transcendental colour Harry had never seen before. Like the colour of where Harry had met Dumbledore after he'd died.
And that colour smashed through Voldemort's protego with a force Harry had never experienced from his spells, as though magic itself wished to end Voldemort's reign as the Dark Lord, as though the world was expelling evil from itself.
And Voldemort's eyes widened for a second, growing impossibly large, and a scream let out from the Dark Lord's lips, ragged and shuddering, and the killing curse merged with the stupefy hit his blue neck square on beneath his robes, and then his body began falling.
F
a
l
l
i
n
g—
Until Voldemort smacked the ground, and a heap of dust roared into the air, and the wind whipped around Harry, and the smells of burning and death rushed back into his nose.
Harry stared at his wand, then his wand holster, then at the sky, and the moon glinting in his direction, then at the fighting below that was coming to an end, at his friends that had battled so valiantly since running through those two-ways.
Was it really over?
Was everything truly…truly done?
Had Voldemort truly, finally, been defeated?
Not yet, a voice in his mind said, much like Hermione's voice. There's one thing you haven't done.
But Harry didn't need to. When he zoomed down to the ground to be sure of the kill, someone had beaten him to the punch.
Hermione stood over Voldemort's body, her knife in hand, and stabbed it right into Voldemort's chest. Letting blood spurt out, and Voldemort's insides nearly exploded from the pressure.
The Dark Lord, Lord Voldemort, was now truly dead.
And Hermione Granger had made sure of it.
And, in that moment, Harry couldn't have been more proud of her.
A/N: Well, that chapter was a long time coming, haha. One more epilogue chapter coming, though I don't think it'll be a 4-5k chapter, more like a 2-3k epilogue, but we'll see. The wand holster has a binary code in it, hmmm…I wonder what it translates to in normal text…and I wonder where else that code has come up…maybe in the 0s and 1s as scene headings…hmmm…
Anyway, I'll get to writing that epilogue as fast as possible, because my muse really wants to get this done and return to HHr Hogwarts Detective Agency, and start another HHr fic on the side…and that'll be a fluffy heartwarming one about emotional healing post-war, so look forward to that.
Anyway, see ya later, and thanks for reading, and comment since I love reading and responding to comments!