"Where is Harry?" Y/n asked looking around.
"Huh?" Ron said and looked behind them. "But he was just here a minute ago..."
"Bloody fool..." Y/n said as he quickly shot a look at Hermione and she made her excuses to leave the others and join him and Ron.
"Mum, I'm going to help some of the others." They heard Ginny say as she passed them all now.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked in a whisper reaching Y/n and Ron.
"Harry has gone missing." Ron told her as his head quickly looked around hoping to spot him.
"No! You don't think he would have gone down to the forest do you?" Hermione asked.
"He has let Voldemort get into his head with the talk of using others as a shield." Y/n said annoyed.
"Then we got to go before it's too late!" Ron said.
"No you two will stay here." Y/n told him and Hermione.
"What?" Hermione asked him.
"We've got to stop him Y/n." Ron said.
"I know Ron, But we do not have the cloak and to leave the castle without a form of cover is to walk with a target on your back. In these times even a disillusionment charm might not be enough to fool talented enough eyes." Y/n said.
"So what do we do then? We can't just let him hand himself over mate!" Ron stressed.
"No we cannot." Y/n shook his head in agreement. "Which is why I will head to the forest edge to see if it is not too late."
"But Y/n how are you going to do that if we can't even use disillusionment charms?" Hermione asked him.
"You forget. I am an Animagus." Y/n told her. "A cat running away from the battleground and noise should not raise too much attention or look out of the ordinary."
"But that's incredibly risky!" Hermione argued.
"Yes, but it is better than us all going. Besides we could be wrong, Harry might not have left for the forest. He might simply not have been able to handle staying in this room." Y/n reasoned with her.
"But that's..." Hermione stopped herself seeing his point.
"I suppose." Ron shrugged. "So what do we do then if Harry comes back or we find him in the castle?"
"Send out a Patronus to let me know. I will recognize both of yours straight away and head back to the castle in such a case." Y/n suggested.
"Alright, But then you send us one if you find Harry." Ron said back.
Y/n just nodded in agreement. "Both of you cover me so I can change without others noticing."
Both Hermione and Ron moved around him as Y/n crouched down and began to change into his cat form.
"Just be quick and stay safe Y/n." Hermione told the cat with a wand in its mouth.
It nodded and quickly set off from the great hall.
Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort's remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort's path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric's Hollow would be finished. Neither would live, neither could survive.
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself. His will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself, dying.
If he could only have died on that summer's night when he had left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had saved him! If he could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened! Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved...He envied even his parents' deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control them, although no one could see him, the portraits on the walls of the Headmasters office were all empty.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone...or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.
Dumbledore's betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan. Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never questioned his own assumption that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life! How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort.
And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn't he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it. The images of those lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind's eye, and for a moment he could hardly breathe. Death was impatient...
But Dumbledore had overestimated him. He had failed. The snake survived. One Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the earth, even after Harry had been killed. True, that would mean an easier job for somebody. He wondered who would do it...Ron, Y/n and Hermione would know what needed to be done, but could he hope on the fact that Y/n would survive another duel with his family? But then Harry thought that would have been why Dumbledore wanted him to confide in two others... so that if they fulfilled their true destinies and paid for it with their lives, they could both carry on...
Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must die. I must die. It must end.
Ron, Y/n and Hermione seemed a long way away, in a far-off country. He felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no explanations, he was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts they would make to stop him would waste valuable time. He looked down at the battered gold watch he had received on his seventeenth birthday. Nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his surrender had elapsed.
He stood up. His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime's beats before the end. He did not look back as he closed the office door.
The castle was empty. He felt ghostly striding through it alone, as if he had already died. The portrait people were still missing from their frames, the whole place was eerily still, as if all its remaining lifeblood were concentrated in the Great Hall where the dead and the mourners were crammed.
Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself and descended through the floors, at last walking down the marble staircase into the entrance hall. Perhaps some tiny part of him hoped to be sensed, to be seen, to be stopped, but the Cloak was, as ever, impenetrable, perfect, and he reached the front doors easily.
Then Neville nearly walked into him. He was one half of a pair that was carrying a body in from the grounds. Harry glanced down and felt another dull blow to his stomach. Colin Creevey, though underage, must have sneaked back just as Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had done. He was tiny in death.
"You know what? I can manage him alone, Neville." said Oliver Wood, and he heaved Colin over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and carried him into the Great Hall.
Neville leaned against the door frame for a moment and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked like an old man. Then he set off down the steps again into the darkness to recover more bodies.
Harry took one glance back at the entrance of the Great Hall. People were moving around, trying to comfort each other, drinking, kneeling beside the dead, but he could not see any of the people he loved, no hint of Hermione, Y/n, Ron, Ginny, or any of the other Weasleys, no Luna. He felt he would have given all the time remaining to him for just one last look at them, but then, would he ever have the strength to stop looking? It was better like this.
He moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was nearly four in the morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds felt as though they were holding their breath, waiting to see whether he could do what he must.
Harry moved toward Neville, who was bending over another body.
"Neville."
"Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure!"
Harry had pulled off the Cloak. The idea had come to him out of nowhere, born out of a desire to make absolutely sure.
"Where are you going, alone?" Neville asked suspiciously.
"It's all part of the plan." said Harry. "There's something I've got to do. Listen...Neville..."
"Harry!" Neville looked suddenly scared. "Harry, you're not thinking of handing yourself over?"
"No." Harry lied easily. "'Course not...this is something else. But I might be out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort's snake, Neville? He's got a huge snake...Calls it Nagini..."
"I've heard, yeah...What about it?"
"It's got to be killed. Ron, Y/n and Hermione know that, but just in case they..."
The awfulness of that possibility smothered him for a moment, made it impossible to keep talking. But he pulled himself together again. This was crucial, he must be like Dumbledore, keep a cool head, make sure there were backups, others to carry on. Dumbledore had died knowing that four people still knew about the Horcruxes, now Neville would take Harry's place. There would still be four in the secret.
"Just in case they're...busy...and you get the chance..."
"Kill the snake?"
"Kill the snake." Harry repeated.
"All right, Harry. You're okay, are you?"
"I'm fine. Thanks, Neville."
But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to move on.
"We're all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?"
"Yeah, I..."
The suffocating feeling was extinguished at the end of the sentence, he could not go on. Neville did not seem to find it strange. He patted Harry on the shoulder, released him, and walked away to look for more bodies.
Harry swung the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Someone else was moving not far away, stooping over another prone figure on the ground. He was feet away from her when he realized it was Ginny.
He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.
"It's all right." Ginny was saying. "It's okay. We're going to get you inside."
"But I want to go home." whispered the girl. "I don't want to fight anymore!"
"I know." said Ginny, and her voice broke. "It's going to be all right."
Ripples of cold undulated over Harry's skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home...
But he was home. Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, even Y/n, they all felt they had all found home here...
Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had sensed someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.
Hagrid's hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights, no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and rock cakes and giant grubs, and his great bearded face, and Ron vomiting slugs, Y/n telling the half-giant that he did not care about his parentage and Hermione helping him save Norbert...
He moved on, and now he reached the edge of the forest, and he stopped.
There stood leaning by a tree was Y/n. The darkness of the forest did a good job of hiding him in truth, Harry had only noticed him because Y/n had stirred at his appearance.
"I know you are there Harry." Y/n said looking straight at where Harry stood. "Spent too many years with you not to know when you are under the cloak..."
Harry slowly removed his invisibility cloak and Y/n looked at him.
"I had a feeling you would try this..." Y/n started quietly.
"Go back to the castle Y/n." Harry said back not wanting to argue with him. This was the last thing he wanted, any time he wasted would make what he had to do all the harder.
"Only if you come with me." Y/n told him.
Harry shook his head. "I have to go Y/n..."
"Then tell me why." Y/n said annoyed. "Why does Harry Potter feel the need to throw away his life away when all the people he knows and love have sacrificed so much of their own lives to protect him. You expect Voldemort to keep his word that he will leave the others alone? Of course he will not, that is why we are fighting against him! Do not throw your life away over his taunts towards you!"
"You don't understand Y/n. I have to go, I have to die..." Harry said getting annoyed himself now.
"No you do not Harry." Y/n told him
"Yes...I do!" Harry almost shouted at him now. "I'm a Horcrux Y/n..."
Both boys just stared at each other now as only the silence of the forest remained. All sorts of thoughts were travelling through Y/n's head but the only thing he could utter was.
"What?"
"I'm a horcrux..." Harry repeated. "I think deep down, I've always known."
"But...No...that does not make sense..." Y/n said.
"The night Voldemort tried to kill me, when my mother cast her own life between me and him as a shield...the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from him, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsing building. Me. There's a reason why I can talk with snakes, why I have a connection with Voldemort's mind...while I'm alive Voldemort cannot die..." Harry told Y/n.
Y/n felt every fiber of him wanting to fight what he heard, to deny any possibility but when Harry broke it down like that it made sense. Y/n could not think of any of think of any other reason to explain those things.
He understood now.
There was nothing he could do to help.
Harry had to die.
"I...Harry..." Y/n felt as if he'd been hit with a stunning spell. His whole body felt heavy and lethargic.
"It's okay Y/n. Just look after the others won't you, It's just the snake left now, kill it then he's vulnerable. You guys can finish this without..." But Harry never got to finish his sentence as Y/n pulled him into a hug.
Harry wrapped his own arms around Y/n and despite being best friends for years Harry could not remember a time when he and Y/n had hugged one another like brothers. To Harry, that is what it felt like, like a brother was seeing him off. It filled him with a small amount of confidence, that he was doing the right thing.
The two pulled apart now and Y/n put his hand on Harry's shoulder.
"You are a brave man Harry Potter. We are all so proud of you." Y/n told him. He needed Harry to know how proud he was of him in this moment.
"You are brave too Y/n." Harry said. "I know when the time comes you will do what you need to." Y/n knew he was referring to the inevitable duel with Atticus and he just slowly nodded.
Harry moved now as Y/n's hand fell away from his shoulder and placed his invisibility cloak back on. Y/n wanted an excuse to stop Harry, to delay him even slightly. But he knew Harry had made up his mind. His friend was prepared to meet his end. To greet Death as if he was an old friend...
Y/n's head lowered as he heard Harry's footsteps disappear into the forest and he had to force himself to look at the castle to stop himself running after Harry. He thought of the others, what would he tell them? That he let Harry walk to his death unopposed?
He felt his legs stirring as he found himself beginning to head back towards the castle.
A swarm of dementors were gliding amongst the trees, Harry could feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely through the forest. He had no strength left for a Patronus. He could no longer control his own trembling. Seeing Y/n had been a small relief but It also made one thing clear to Harry. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious. To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air...
The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.
I open at the close.
Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have bypassed thought. This was the close. This was the moment.
He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered. "I am about to die."
The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco's wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured. "Lumos."
The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible.
And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them, They were fetching him.
He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times.
He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthy, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.
They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.
James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's.
Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.
Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.
"You've been so brave."
He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.
"You are nearly there." said James. "Very close. We are...so proud of you."
"Does it hurt?"
The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it.
"Dying? Not at all." said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."
"I didn't want you to die." Harry said. These words came without his volition. "Any of you. I'm sorry..."
But the three of them just smile at Harry.
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision.
"You'll stay with me?"
"Until the very end." said James.
"They won't be able to see you?" asked Harry.
"We are part of you." said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."
Harry looked at his mother.
"Stay close to me." he said quietly.
And he set off. The dementors' chill did not overcome him, he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like Patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now than the living back at the castle. Ron, Y/n, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort...
A thud and a whisper. Some other living creature had stirred close by. Harry stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening, and his mother and father, Lupin and Sirius stopped too.
"Someone there." came a rough whisper close at hand. "He's got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be..."
Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree. Their wands flared, and Harry saw Yaxley and a death eater he didn't recognise peering into the darkness, directly at the place Harry, his mother and father and Sirius stood. Apparently they could not see anything.
"Definitely heard something." said Yaxley. "Animal, d'you reckon?"
"That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here." said the other Death Eater glancing over his shoulder.
Yaxley looked down at his watch. "Time's nearly up. Potter's had his hour. He's not coming."
"And he was sure he'd come! He won't be happy. He's just let the three Grindelwalds go ahead in their hunt for the bloodtraitor."
"Better go back." said Yaxley. "Find out what the plan is now." He and the other turned and walked deeper into the forest. Harry followed them, knowing that they would lead him exactly where he wanted to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled at him, and his father nodded encouragement.
The Great Hall seemed all that much louder as Y/n entered it again, but he knew it was nowhere near as loud as the days when Gryffindor had won the house cup, when they celebrated feasts or the Yule Ball.
The Great Hall as it was now despite being full of people was no louder than the murmurs as those who were fine let the injured and deceased rest in peace. The loudest noises being cries and weeping coming from the terrified or grief-stricken.
"Y/n." He heard two voices call his name and he looked to see Hermione and Ron rushing towards him. "Y/n did you find him?"
"What? Oh, no...No." Y/n lied and shook his head. He could not bear the weight of telling them what he had learned just yet.
"Shit he must already be in the forest then..." Ron started.
"Language Ronald Weasley!" Mrs Weasley called out.
"In the middle of a bloody war and what does she care about? Me saying a few curse words." Ron said.
"I see Harry did not come back here then?" Y/n asked knowing the answer already as Hermione and Ron shook their heads.
"What do we do now?" Hermione asked in a low worried voice.
Only Y/n knew what the situation was, he felt Harry had left the task of guiding the two to him. "We carry on as we have always done in the face of adversity. It is as we said before, there is just the Snake left now. All we need to do is find a way to create an opening and kill it."
"And how are we..."
But Ron's statement was cut short by the doors to the Great Hall bursting open and it was not only them who came to attention. Half of the hall was now looking at the individual standing in the doorway.
"Wood?" Y/n said confused.
But Oliver Wood quickly raised his wand to one of the injured fighters near to him. "Ava..."
Y/n realizing what was about to happen quickly thrust his own wand forward. "Petrificus Totalus!" he cried and his spell hit Oliver before he could finish casting.
Many of the Order jumped to their feet wands at the ready.
"No stop!" Y/n called out to them.
They kept their wands raised but allowed Y/n to slowly edge forward towards Wood, who now lay on the stone floor his arms locked to the sides and his wand dropped. Y/n crouched down to look at him closer his wand at the ready
Behind him he could hear Hermione and Ron slowly joining him.
"But that's Wood ain't it?" Ron asked not understanding.
"I...I think so." Hermione said.
"This is unthinkable, Wood was under my house during his time at Hogwarts. Was always such a calm mannered boy, perhaps a little too enthusiastic about Quidditch but never a killer." McGonagall chimed.
"Minerva he's just tried to kill some of the injured. We have to act to save the others if needs be." Tonks said.
"I know Wood as well." Y/n spoke up. "Was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team with him for three years. He always played a fair game even when the other teams did not. He never would do something like this willingly. I think he has been cursed."
Kingsley moved forward now keeping his wand drawn as he crouched down beside Y/n to look at Wood. One look at the boy's eyes was enough to tell Kingsley what he needed to know.
"Grindelwald is right, the boy's been placed under the Imperius curse." Kingsley told the others. "He's not in control of his actions at all right now, best we keep him bound for the time being."
"But who would do such a thing?" McGonagall asked in shock. "We still have time till the hour is up surely?"
Y/n stood up now turning to face Hermione and Ron.
"They are here..." Was all Y/n said but it was enough to make Hermione gasp and Ron look paler in the face.
"No..."
"Blimey..."
"Who are you referring to Grindelwald?" McGonagall asked Y/n.
But Y/n did not face her instead he waved his wand and his patronus was summoned in front of the small group. It sat on the floor looking up at them and waiting.
Y/n stared down at it.
"I will meet you in the courtyard in five minutes." He said to the cat and it sped off with his message disappearing out the Great Hall.
Y/n closed his eyes and grimaced. Long had he been dreading this day but now it was finally time.
"Grindelwald who is it that you are going to meet?" McGonagall asked more urgently this time.
But Y/n felt Hermione take his hand into her own ones.
"His...his parents and Atticus." Hermione answered for him.
No one spoke. All of them knew about the great burden that had been placed upon Y/n. He had told them last year. Secretly they had hoped that such a task would not have to be undertaken but given everything that happened in the last few hours they all knew that it was impossible to avoid.
"Let me come with you Y/n." Lupin spoke up first.
"No." Y/n stopped him. "I must do this alone."
He understood Harry's predicament more now that he was facing his own. Understood that no one else could take over the duty or help with it. It had to be him.
"The time where I must leave you all has come." Y/n spoke. "I wonder if I could be selfish and ask to be left with Hermione for a moment."
The others all nodded and backed away to discuss plans and what they could do for the inevitable second part of the battle.
Y/n and Hermione stood alone now and without letting go of his hand Hermione let him turn to face her.
"I know I can't stop you...but is there really no other way?" Hermione asked him as she looked up at him.
"I wish there was Hermione. I really wish there was...But it has to be me who stops them. No one else can do it."
Hermione just nodded slowly.
"I just want you to know. That no matter what happens tonight, You are the best thing that could have happened to me. The fact that I came this far. That I was able to suffer through so much, was because I had you by my side. Thank you Hermione. For always staying by my side, even when times were difficult."
"Please Y/n just promise me you will stay safe. That you will come back to us all after this." Hermione said.
Y/n looked into her eyes he could see the tears that had begun to form and were ready to spill over. He truly did not know if he would survive tonight, but he knew that no matter what he would give the duel everything he had.
Y/n lowered his forehead to softly rest against Hermione's own.
"I will do what I can." He said with every intention of returning to her alive.
Y/n and Hermione looked at one another fully now as they closed their eyes and leaned forward to allow their lips to connect in a deep kiss.
Y/n pulled away first, feeling Hermione's grip on his shoulders tighten as he did, but there was no more time to delay. He had to go.
Mrs Weasley stepped forward now as she put a reassuring arm around Hermione. "Come on dear." She said kindly leading Hermione back a bit. "That's it."
"Thank you Mrs Weasley." Y/n told her.
"You had better come back safely now Y/n." Mrs Weasley told him. "We Weasleys haven't had the chance to properly thank you yet."
"Nor have we." Tonks spoke up for her and Lupin.
"Good luck Mr Grindelwald." Professor McGonagall spoke up but Y/n saw she also looked apprehensive about letting him go.
They all did.
But it was time, with one final look Y/n gave them a smile and then turned to exit the Great Hall.
The castle hallways felt so barren and empty as Y/n walked through them into the castle courtyard. Despite the darkness of the night, he could still see the three Silhouettes that stood in the distance opposite him.
Ivan, Priscilla and Atticus.
"We got your little message..." Atticus called out upon seeing Y/n and he got their parents' attention.
"So here he is...We thought you might do a runner." Ivan grinned with an intense gaze.
"I am no coward." Y/n said calmly but deep inside he felt sick with nerves and dread of the duel about to take place.
"But still a filthy blood traitor." Priscilla spoke up with disgust.
"Your words are empty Priscilla, for I give them nor their owner any worthy recognition." Y/n said back.
Priscilla sneered angrily at this retort and gripped her wand.
"You surely must have gotten our little gift though, tell us how many did he kill?" Ivan asked referring to the cursed Wood.
"None." Y/n stated. "I recognised what had happened straight away and immobilised him."
"Well...that's no fun now is it." Ivan sighed as if the matter was just a minor inconvenience.
Y/n's hand raised as he summoned a smaller version of Protego Diabolica around himself now and the blue flames encircled him in a protective ring. He wasted no time in striking the first blow as he pointed his wand forward and the flames began to dart forward forcing the three to divide on either side of it.
Ivan and Priscilla could be heard giving loud grunts as Y/n saw them start to push back the flames to his slight surprise.
Atticus however had his wand drawn upon Y/n he attempted to hit him with a Cruciatus Curse only for a quick-thinking Y/n to move his body to the side and avoid it.
The blue flames that had roared so majestically only a few moments ago were already now struggling to keep aflame.
"Do not think so lowly of us that we don't know to cancel out such a piece of magic." Ivan said as he and Priscilla finally finished putting out the spell though Y/n could hear the disdain in his voice. "I must say though...Protego Diabollica...well done. How was it that you, the one remaining Grindelwald that brings shame to our name knows how to use that spell?"
"I visited Gellert and he revealed the spell to me." Y/n said.
"If he deemed you worthy then clearly his age must be showing...I shall simply have to ask him myself for the spell then." Ivan sneered.
"You are too late Ivan." Y/n told him. "Did your master not tell you he visited Gellert in his cell recently and killed him?"
"What!?" Atticus could not help but shout in angry surprise.
"Calm yourself Atticus, The Dark Lord always has his reasons..." Priscilla told her son but it was clear this news had surprised her too.
"This...this is quite the surprise indeed." Ivan admitted. "I would have thought the Dark Lord would trust us if he was going to visit my uncle. But it does not matter. While the spell is lost through means of him...we can still get it through you."
"I will die before I reveal any secrets to any of you." Y/n said.
The three could be heard chuckling at this now.
"Don't worry. You will die before the sun even rises." Atticus said raising his wand again as his parent joined him in doing the same.
Y/n raised his own wand now. "I give you this one chance...stand down and atone for your crimes. Let no more blood be shed."
This caused the three to break out into laughter now.
"You seriously think we would surrender to you?" Atticus jeered.
"No. I do not." Y/n admitted. "I just want to be able to say I did what I could at the end."
"Enough of this." Ivan said now becoming serious and he fired a disarming spell at Y/n.
Y/n slashed his wand upwards as the spell that had been fired at him was cut in half.
Y/n then quickly raised a shield in front of him as he prepared to go on the offensive. He fired several curses in quick succession at the three but each one was cut down or avoided with relative ease.
The three began to split up now hoping to put more pressure on Y/n as they prowled for a blind spot. But with each spell they fired at him Y/n would deflect it, returning with a spell of his own.
Not a single killing curse had been fired yet, it was clear to Y/n that the three were toying with him, their opponent. Hoping to perhaps lure him into a false sense of security, or perhaps make him despair. But he would do neither. A calm level head was needed and he kept his attention on their wands, their hands, and their eyes waiting for signs of movement.
"Bombarda Maxima!" Pricilla cried as she aimed her wand at the castle behind Y/n.
"Protego!" Y/n quickly cast again as the castle wall behind him was blown to pieces and large slabs of stone and brick rained down upon him striking the shield he had conjured as a layer of dust covered the area. He heard a suit of armor that must have been inside clatter to the ground unable to stand anymore.
On any other given day the scene would have looked out of place but given how much damage had been inflicted upon the castle in the space of the last few hours it looked like any other part of it.
The dust from the wall's explosion scattered in the breeze now as Y/n looked around to see Priscilla's wand pointed straight at him.
This is what she had been waiting for...
"Avada Kedavra!"
They had traveled for a while when Harry saw light ahead, and Yaxley and the other Death eater stepped out into a clearing that Harry knew had been the place where the monstrous Aragog had once lived. The remnants of his vast web were there still, but the swarm of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death Eaters, to fight for their cause.
A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and its flickering light fell over a crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters. Some of them were still masked and hooded, others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, casting massive shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like rock. Harry saw Fenrir, skulking, chewing his long nails, the great blond Rowle was dabbing at his bleeding lip. He saw Lucius Malfoy, who looked defeated and terrified, and Narcissa, whose eyes were sunken and full of apprehension.
Every eye was fixed upon Voldemort, who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, or else counting silently in his mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene, thought absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind his head, still swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.
When the two rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.
"No sign of him, my Lord." said Yaxley.
Voldemort's expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers.
"My Lord..."
Bellatrix had spoken. She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled, her face a little bloody but otherwise unharmed.
Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak another word, but eyed him in worshipful fascination.
"I thought he would come." said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. "I expected him to come."
Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside. His hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.
"I was, it seems...mistaken." said Voldemort.
"You weren't."
Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster. He did not want to sound afraid. He slipped the Resurrection Stone into his pocket, If he was to die he wanted Y/n to at least have a chance to find it. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw his parents and Sirius vanish as he stepped forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.
The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared as Harry moved toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.
Then a voice yelled. "HARRY! NO!"
He turned. Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.
"NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT'RE YEH..."
"QUIET!" shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced.
Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort's head.
Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.
"Harry Potter." he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."
None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting. Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his...
Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear...
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.