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Emerald Ascension

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Synopsis
Harry Potter enters the Forbidden Forest to die, carrying Voldemort's Horcrux in his scar. The Starheart—an ancient cosmic entity—finds him and grants him a Green Lantern ring, destroying the Horcrux and giving him incredible power fueled by willpower. Now armored in green light, Harry confronts Voldemort and his Death Eaters, demonstrating abilities far beyond magic, ready to end their conflict. I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you! If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling! Click the link below to join the conversation: https://discord.com/invite/HHHwRsB6wd Can't wait to see you there! Thank you for your support!
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Chapter 1 - Prologue

There are moments when the world narrows to a single point, when all of existence compresses into the space between one breath and the next. This was one of those moments.

Harry Potter was walking through the Forbidden Forest to die.

He knew this the way you know things in dreams—with absolute certainty and no surprise at all. The Resurrection Stone sat heavy in his palm, warm as a living heart, and the dead walked beside him. His mother. His father. Sirius. Remus. They were there and not-there, the way dead things often are, more real than memory but less solid than hope.

"You're being very brave," his mother said, or perhaps he only imagined she said it. With ghosts, it's always difficult to tell.

Harry thought about Severus Snape, who had loved his mother for decades and never said so. Who had been cruel and small and petty and had also been, in his own peculiar way, heroic. People, Harry was learning, contained multitudes. They were never just one thing.

He was a Horcrux. Voldemort had made him into a container for a piece of soul, the way you might store jam in a jar, and the only way to destroy it was to destroy the jar.

The trees leaned in to listen.

This is how the story was supposed to end: a boy walking into darkness, choosing death so that others might live. It was, Harry reflected, a very old story. Perhaps the oldest story. He wondered if all the other boys who'd walked this path had felt this same curious emptiness, this sense of being slightly to the left of real.

And then, between one step and the next, something changed.

The forest, which had been holding its breath, exhaled.

Light came.

Not the sickly green of the Killing Curse, though it was green. This was the green of new leaves in spring, of grass after rain, of life asserting itself against the dark. It moved between the trees like something searching, like something with purpose and agency and desire.

The ghosts beside him stopped walking.

Harry stopped too.

The light resolved itself into a ring, hovering in the air at precisely the height of his heart. It was made of green fire and something that might have been metal or might have been solidified starlight or might have been neither and both. Symbols moved across its surface—not English, not runes, something older than language—and Harry understood that he was looking at something that had crossed a very long distance to find him.

"Hello," said Harry, because it seemed polite.

The ring said nothing, but then, rings rarely do.

What it did instead was resonate. Harry felt it in his chest, in his bones, in the scar on his forehead that had ached for sixteen years. The ring was calling to something in him, but not to his magic. Deeper than magic. It was calling to the part of him that had chosen to walk into the forest. The part that had decided to die.

The part that had chosen love over survival.

*But that's not quite right,* whispered something that might have been the ring or might have been the forest or might have been Harry's own thoughts, *is it? You didn't choose death. You chose life. Everyone else's life. You chose to be the sacrifice so the world could continue turning.*

Harry's hand rose. He was still holding the Resurrection Stone, but his fingers opened anyway, reaching toward the floating ring with a kind of inevitability that felt less like choice and more like gravity.

"Harry," his mother said, and there was warning in her voice, but also something else. Permission, perhaps. Or blessing.

His finger slipped through the ring.

The universe noticed.

Power arrived in a great green wave, crashing into Harry like the tide coming in, and Harry understood in that moment why the ocean was feared and loved in equal measure. The ring *knew* him, saw him, claimed him for its own, and Harry felt something vast and old and infinitely patient wake up inside his soul and look around with interest.

And then it found the thing that didn't belong.

The Horcrux screamed.

Voldemort's soul fragment had been hiding behind Harry's scar for sixteen years, a splinter of murder and malice, and the green fire found it immediately. Harry felt it burn, felt Voldemort's rage and terror as the ring unmade the Horcrux with the casual efficiency of light dispelling shadow.

Some things cannot exist in the presence of their opposite.

The scar on Harry's forehead grew hot, then cold, then simply stopped being a scar at all.

Harry fell to his knees in the leaf litter and tried to remember how to breathe.

The ring pulsed on his finger like a second heart, and Harry realized that the constant whisper he'd learned to ignore—that background radiation of anger and hunger that had been Voldemort's soul—was simply gone. The silence in his head was profound.

Words rose in his mind, in a language he'd never learned but somehow spoke fluently:

*In brightest day, in blackest night,* 

*No evil shall escape my sight.* 

*Let those who worship evil's might,* 

*Beware my power—Green Lantern's light.*

It was an oath. A promise. A story that he'd just become part of.

"I was supposed to die," Harry said to the ring, to the forest, to the universe that had just changed its mind about his story.

The Starheart—for that was its name, he knew that now—pulsed with something that felt like amusement. It had crossed three and a half billion years and countless light-years to find him, and it had not come all this way to watch him die.

It had come because Harry Potter had been willing to.

His mother's ghost was fading now, smiling as she disappeared. "Live," she said, and it was both goodbye and instruction. "Live, Harry."

The dead departed, as they always do, leaving the living to sort things out.

Harry stood in the empty forest. The ring glowed soft green on his finger. The Horcrux was gone. Voldemort was still out there, waiting with his Death Eaters and his certainty of victory and his snake.

But the story had changed.

Harry Potter had walked into the Forbidden Forest as a boy going to his execution. He would walk out of it as something else entirely.

He looked down at his hand, watched green light ripple across his skin like water, like fire, like the aurora borealis compressed into the space between his fingers.

"Right then," said Harry Potter, the first Green Lantern of Earth in centuries, the boy who had died and chosen not to stay dead. "Let's try this again."

He turned toward the clearing where Voldemort waited.

After all, every good story needs a proper ending.

And Harry had just been given the power to write his own.

---

In the clearing, Voldemort was waiting.

He had arranged himself the way certain men do when they believe themselves to be performing greatness—back straight, chin lifted, one pale hand resting on the head of his serpent like a king with his scepter. Nagini coiled at his feet, tasting the air with her tongue, patient as only predators can be.

The Death Eaters formed a half-circle around their master, silver masks catching the pre-dawn light. They shifted and whispered among themselves the way people do at executions, eager and uncomfortable in equal measure.

And in the center of it all, bound with ropes that glowed with malice, was Hagrid.

The half-giant's face was a ruin of tears and bruises. His beetle-black eyes kept darting toward the forest path, then away, then back again, as though he couldn't help himself. Each time he looked, his massive frame shuddered with the effort of not breaking entirely.

"Still waiting for your little hero?" Bellatrix crooned, circling Hagrid like a shark that had found something wounded in the water. Her dark hair was wild, her eyes wilder, and she moved with the peculiar grace of people who have misplaced their sanity and don't particularly miss it. "Poor, poor Hagrid. Potter's abandoned you. Left you here all alone with us."

"Harry'll come," Hagrid said, and his voice cracked on the name. "He always comes."

"Yes," Voldemort agreed, and his voice was soft as silk over razors. "He will come. The boy has always been so... predictable. So very Gryffindor." The word was pronounced with the same delicate distaste one might use for something found on the bottom of a shoe. "All that tedious nobility. All that self-sacrifice. It's almost touching, really, how reliably heroic he is."

"Better'n being whatever you are," Hagrid spat.

One of the Death Eaters—Rowle, massive and cruel—kicked Hagrid in the ribs. The half-giant grunted but didn't scream, which seemed to disappoint several of the masked figures.

"Now, now," Voldemort said, raising one white hand. "We mustn't damage him too severely. I want Potter to see his dear friend before the end. I want him to understand what his defiance has cost." He smiled, and it was the sort of smile that made small animals hide. "I want him to die knowing he failed."

"You won't win," Hagrid said, and blood trickled from his mouth. "Harry's beaten yeh before. He'll beat yeh again."

Bellatrix shrieked with laughter. "Beaten him? Beaten him? Oh, you stupid, stupid creature. Potter's been running around with a piece of the Dark Lord's soul in his head for sixteen years. He's a Horcrux. And the only way to kill a Horcrux—" She danced closer, her face inches from Hagrid's. "—is to destroy it completely."

Hagrid's face went gray. "No. No, Harry didn't—he wouldn't—"

"Oh, but he did," Voldemort murmured. "And he does. Even now, he's walking through that forest, coming to die like a lamb to slaughter. How very... noble."

The Death Eaters laughed, a sound like breaking glass.

Voldemort turned his scarlet eyes toward the forest, toward the path where Harry would emerge. Any moment now. Any moment, and it would all be over. The prophecy fulfilled. The threat eliminated. Just clean, absolute victory, and then eternity stretched out before him like an empty road.

He had been waiting for this moment for so very long.

And then the forest caught fire.

At least, that's what it looked like. Light erupted from between the trees, brilliant and green and impossibly bright, as though someone had opened a door to a place where colors burned hotter. The Death Eaters cried out. Several stumbled backward. Bellatrix's laughter cut off mid-cackle.

Voldemort himself flinched—actually flinched—and that small betrayal of surprise made something cold coil in his chest.

The light grew brighter.

Something was coming.

"My Lord," one of the Death Eaters whispered, and there was uncertainty in his voice. Fear, even. "What is that?"

"I don't know," Voldemort said, and those three words tasted like ash in his mouth.

The figure emerged from the tree line, and time did something strange.

Harry Potter was floating.

Not flying, not levitating—floating, three feet above the ground, moving forward with the inexorable patience of tides. But it wasn't Harry Potter, not as they remembered him. The thin boy in broken glasses and hand-me-down robes was gone.

In his place was something that looked like it had been carved from will and starlight and pure, distilled fury.

He wore armor that seemed to be made of solidified light—green and black and silver, flowing over him like a second skin. Muscles that the skinny boy had never possessed were suddenly there, defined and powerful. A glowing emblem blazed on his chest: concentric circles that pulsed like a living heart. A cape billowed behind him despite the lack of wind. Shoulder guards rose like the wings of avenging angels.

And his eyes—his eyes blazed with the same green fire that surrounded him.

He looked, Voldemort thought with dawning horror, like something that had learned to be human but had never quite mastered the trick of it.

He looked like a god who had decided to be angry.

"Evening, all," said Harry Potter, and his voice carried across the clearing as though the very air was eager to deliver it. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic was murder. Well—" He smiled, and it was not a nice smile. "—attempted murder, anyway."

The silence that followed was profound.

Harry descended slowly, his feet touching the ground with careful deliberation. The green glow around him didn't fade—if anything, it intensified, casting long shadows that seemed to dance and writhe. Hagrid was staring at him with his mouth open, tears streaming down his face.

"Harry?" the half-giant whispered. "Is that— are you—"

"I'm fine, Hagrid," Harry said, and his voice was gentler now. "Better than fine, actually. Turns out I had a wardrobe malfunction. Fixed that." He looked down at himself, at the armor of light. "Bit flashy, I know, but I didn't have time to accessorize."

"What—" Voldemort's voice was hoarse. "What have you done? What *are* you?"

Harry turned his gaze to the Dark Lord, and Voldemort took an involuntary step backward. Those green eyes were infinite, ancient, burning with something that was not quite human anymore.

"What am I?" Harry repeated thoughtfully. "Well, I'm still Harry Potter. Still the Boy Who Lived. Still got your nose." He paused. "Oh wait, you don't have one of those, do you? My mistake."

One of the Death Eaters made a strangled sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.

Voldemort's face contorted. "You dare—"

"But I'm also," Harry continued as though Voldemort hadn't spoken, "something else now. The Starheart found me, Tom. Flew across three and a half billion years to tap me on the shoulder and say 'excuse me, would you like some cosmic power?' And I thought, well, I was just about to die anyway, so why not?"

He raised his right hand, showing them the ring that glowed on his finger like a captive star.

"So now I'm a Green Lantern. Quite an honor, really. There was probably supposed to be an orientation, some paperwork, maybe a welcome basket, but we skipped all that." He smiled again, sharper this time. "Emergency appointment, you might say."

"Impossible," Voldemort hissed. "I know you're a Horcrux. I looked into Snape's mind before I killed him. I know that you must die. The prophecy demands it. You have no choice—"

"Oh, Tom," Harry said, and there was something almost pitying in his voice. "I'm sorry, did no one tell you? The Horcrux is gone. Burned right out of my head. That little piece of you that's been squatting behind my scar for sixteen years? Dead. Properly, completely, absolutely dead." He touched his forehead where the scar had been. Smooth skin. Nothing. "Which means I don't actually have to die after all. Plot twist."

The cold thing in Voldemort's chest spread like frost.

"And the prophecy?" Harry continued, starting to walk forward now, each step deliberate. "Well, here's the thing about prophecies, Tom. They're a bit like horoscopes, aren't they? Vague. Open to interpretation. Could mean anything, really. But you got so obsessed with it that you made it real. You chose me. You marked me as your equal." He gestured at his armor, at the power that radiated from him like heat from a forge. "So thanks for that, I suppose."

"Kill him!" Voldemort shrieked, and his voice cracked like breaking ice. "Kill him NOW!"

The Death Eaters raised their wands as one, and the clearing filled with the sounds of incantations.

Dozens of spells flew toward Harry—green killing curses, red cutting hexes, purple flame, curses so dark they left trails in the air like wounds in reality itself.

Harry raised one hand almost lazily.

A wall of green energy materialized in front of him, solid as diamond, bright as captured lightning. The spells struck it and simply... stopped. Not deflected. Not absorbed. Just stopped, as though they'd hit the end of the universe and had nowhere else to go.

Harry hadn't even blinked.

"Really?" he said, looking at the Death Eaters with something like disappointment. "That's your opening move? Bit uninspired, honestly. I expected better from you lot." He glanced at Bellatrix, who was staring at him with her wand raised and her face slack with shock. "Especially you, Bellatrix. I thought you were supposed to be creative. That was just... sad, really."

"You—you can't—" she stammered.

"Can't what?" Harry asked pleasantly. "Can't block your spells with my mind? Can't construct solid objects out of pure will? Can't fly?" He rose a few inches off the ground to demonstrate. "Because I have to tell you, Bellatrix, I very much can. The ring gave me a bit of a manual. Telepathic instruction booklet. Very thorough."

Voldemort's wand hand was trembling. "This isn't possible. You're a wizard, Potter. You can't—"

"I'm a wizard with a power ring, Tom," Harry interrupted. "Which, I'll admit, is a somewhat unusual combination. Possibly unprecedented. But then, we've always been groundbreaking, haven't we? You and me. Setting trends. Making history." His expression hardened. "Although I'd prefer it if we could stop meeting like this. It's getting a bit tiresome."

"My Lord," Yaxley said from behind his mask, and his voice was uncertain. "Perhaps we should—"

"SILENCE," Voldemort hissed.

Harry looked at the assembled Death Eaters, at Hagrid bound and bleeding, at Voldemort with his snake and his fury and his fear barely concealed beneath layers of arrogance.

"Here's how this is going to work," Harry said, and his voice carried across the clearing like a proclamation. "I'm going to free Hagrid. I'm going to deal with you, Tom. And I'm going to make sure this ends. Tonight. Right here. No more running. No more hiding. No more Horcruxes. Just you and me and the choices we've made."

Green light began to swirl around him, brighter and brighter, until it was almost painful to look at.

"And Tom?" Harry said, his eyes blazing. "I choose to fight."

His hand moved, and the clearing exploded with emerald fire.

The green fire didn't explode outward—it *surged*, intelligent and purposeful, moving through the clearing like something alive and hunting. Harry's will made manifest, shaped by the Starheart into something that existed in the space between thought and reality.

The first construct materialized between Harry and Hagrid: a massive shield in the shape of a stag, translucent and glowing, every line of antler and muscle defined with impossible clarity. It charged forward, scattering Death Eaters like bowling pins, and when it reached Hagrid, it simply dissolved into a thousand points of light that cut through his bindings as cleanly as razorblades through silk.

"Hagrid," Harry said without looking away from Voldemort, "I need you to run."

"But Harry—"

"RUN."

The command wasn't spoken louder, but it carried *weight*, authority that pressed against the air itself. The Starheart pulsed on Harry's finger, and Hagrid found his legs moving before his mind caught up. He stumbled toward the forest, half-running, half-crawling, and none of the Death Eaters tried to stop him. They were too busy watching Harry.

Too busy being afraid.

*Good,* whispered the Starheart in Harry's mind, its voice ancient and patient and something like proud. *Fear is useful. But be careful, young one. The ring amplifies will, but it also amplifies emotion. Rage will make you powerful. It will also make you reckless.*

"I know," Harry murmured.

"What?" Voldemort's eyes narrowed. "Know what? Who are you talking to?"

Harry smiled. "My new friend. You wouldn't understand, Tom. It requires the capacity for connection."

Voldemort's face twisted, and he raised his wand—the Elder Wand, stolen from Dumbledore's grave, the most powerful wand in existence. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

The Killing Curse erupted from the wand, green as poison, green as envy, the color of endings.

Harry didn't dodge.

Instead, he caught it.

His hand shot out, fingers spread, and the curse struck his palm and simply... stopped. Held there. Writhing and spitting like a captured snake, the Killing Curse pressed against an invisible barrier, unable to penetrate, unable to continue, unable to kill.

*Impossible,* the Starheart whispered, and there was something like amusement in its ancient voice. *That's what they all say. But will shapes reality, Harry Potter. And your will is stronger than death right now.*

"No," Voldemort breathed. "No, that's—you can't block the Killing Curse, it's unblockable, it's—"

"Unblockable by magic," Harry agreed. He closed his fist, and the curse dissolved into sparks. "Good thing I'm not just using magic anymore."

He gestured, and the ground beneath three Death Eaters erupted into massive hands made of earth and emerald light, seizing them by the ankles and yanking them down. They screamed as the constructs dragged them into the dirt up to their waists, then solidified, trapping them completely.

"The ring responds to imagination," Harry said, almost conversationally. "To willpower. To the strength of your convictions. And I've spent seven years imagining ways to fight you, Tom. Seven years of nightmares and fear and fury." His eyes blazed brighter. "Turns out I have quite the imagination."

Bellatrix shrieked and sent a Cruciatus Curse at him, the spell crackling purple-red through the air.

Harry made a sweeping gesture, and a wall of green energy materialized, tall as a house, wide as the clearing. The curse hit it and rebounded, snapping back toward Bellatrix twice as fast. She barely managed to dive out of the way, her wild hair smoking where the curse had passed.

"Interesting," Harry mused. "The ring can redirect spells. I wonder—"

Twenty Death Eaters fired at once.

The air filled with light and sound and murder, spells of every color and cruelty, all converging on the boy who stood calmly in their center.

*Focus,* the Starheart said. *Feel them. Feel the shape of their magic, the intent behind it. Now PUSH.*

Harry spread his arms wide, and a dome of green light erupted around him, perfect and absolute. The spells struck it from all sides—and bounced back. Every curse, every hex, every cutting charm reversed course and flew back at its caster.

Chaos erupted.

Death Eaters scattered, diving, screaming, some not fast enough. Dolohov took his own slicing curse across the chest and went down hard. Macnair was hit by three different hexes at once and crumpled like a puppet with cut strings. Jugson's legs turned to jelly—his own spell—and he collapsed, unable to run.

"Stop!" Voldemort's voice cracked like a whip. "STOP, you fools! You're only hurting yourselves!"

The Death Eaters froze, wands raised but uncertain, looking between their master and the glowing figure that had once been a teenage boy.

Harry lowered his arms slowly. The dome faded but didn't disappear—it pulled inward, condensing around him like a second skin, a suit of hardened light that covered him from neck to toe. The emblem on his chest pulsed like a heartbeat.

"You know what's funny, Tom?" Harry said. "All these years, you've been trying to kill me. Personally. With your own wand, your own hands, your own curse. You could have sent anyone. You could have stayed hidden. But you always came yourself." He tilted his head. "Why is that, do you think?"

"Because you are MINE to kill," Voldemort hissed, and something like madness flickered behind his red eyes. "The prophecy says—"

"Oh, sod the prophecy," Harry interrupted. "I'm asking about you. About why you care so much. About why a boy with his mother's eyes keeps you up at night." He paused. "You do sleep, don't you? Or do you just sort of... lurk?"

*Careful,* the Starheart warned. *Mockery is satisfying, but it makes enemies reckless.*

"That's rather the point," Harry murmured.

Voldemort's face had gone bone-white, his lipless mouth stretched thin with rage. "You dare mock me? You, who would be nothing without your mother's sacrifice? You, who have survived only through luck and the help of others?"

"Absolutely true," Harry agreed cheerfully. "I've had loads of help. Friends. Teachers. People who loved me enough to die for me. People who saw something in me worth protecting." He smiled, and there was no humor in it now. "What have you got, Tom? Servants who follow you out of fear? Followers who'd abandon you the moment you showed weakness?" He gestured at the Death Eaters. "Half of them are already thinking about running. I can see it in their body language."

Several Death Eaters shifted uncomfortably. Voldemort's hand tightened on his wand.

"But you want to know the real difference between us?" Harry continued. "I was ready to die tonight. Walked into that forest fully expecting to never walk out. I was afraid, Tom, absolutely terrified, but I did it anyway. Because it was the right thing to do. Because protecting the people I love mattered more than staying alive."

He rose higher into the air, green light streaming from his hands like water, like fire, like the aurora made solid.

"You've spent your whole life running from death. Tearing your soul apart to avoid it. Killing and maiming and destroying anything that reminds you that you're mortal." His voice grew harder. "But you know what I learned tonight? Death isn't the enemy. Death is just... what comes next. The real enemy is the refusal to live fully while you're here."

*Well said,* the Starheart murmured. *It seems I chose well.*

Voldemort raised the Elder Wand with both hands now, his face contorted with fury. "Enough. Enough of your sanctimonious drivel. You want to know why I can't let you live? Because you represent everything I despise. Love. Sacrifice. The weakness of caring about others. You are the antithesis of power, Potter, and I will not let you—"

"Protego Maxima. Fianto Duri. Repello Inimicum."

The words came from Harry's mouth, but they weren't just words anymore. The green light of the ring wove through his magic, amplifying it, transforming it into something unprecedented. Shield charms erupted from his hands, but they weren't the translucent barriers he'd learned at Hogwarts.

These were walls of crystallized will, fifty feet high, burning with emerald fire.

They slammed into the ground in a circle around the Death Eaters, one after another, creating a prison of light and intention. The Death Eaters scrambled backward, but there was nowhere to go. The walls rose, curved inward, began to form a dome—

"NO!" Voldemort screamed, and he fired the Killing Curse again, but this time at the walls themselves.

The green curse struck the green barrier, and for a moment, they were the same color, the same magic, meeting in the air between life and death.

Then the barrier shattered.

Not because it was weak—but because Harry let it.

He let it break into a thousand shards of solidified light, each piece sharp as glass, each one glowing with purpose. And then he *pushed*.

The shards flew outward like a shrapnel storm, not toward the Death Eaters but *around* them, past them, slicing through wands instead of flesh. Wood splintered. Magic cracked and died. Twenty wands fell from twenty hands in twenty pieces, and the Death Eaters stood there empty-handed, defenseless, staring at the pieces of their power scattered in the dirt.

Harry descended slowly until his feet touched the ground.

"I could kill you," he said quietly. "All of you. Right now. It would be easy. The ring is powered by will, and I have never been more certain of anything in my life than I am of wanting you gone."

*Yes,* the Starheart whispered, and there was hunger in its voice. *Yes, young one. Feel it. The rage. The righteousness. They deserve this. They've murdered. They've tortured. They've—*

"But I won't."

The Starheart fell silent.

Harry looked at each Death Eater in turn, at their masks and their fear and their sudden, profound vulnerability. "Because that's what makes me different from Tom. I choose to be better than my worst impulses. I choose mercy even when vengeance would be satisfying."

He raised his hand, and rings of light materialized around each Death Eater—around their wrists, their ankles, their throats. Not tight enough to hurt. Just tight enough to hold.

"But mercy doesn't mean forgiveness," Harry said. "And it doesn't mean freedom."

The rings constricted slightly, and the Death Eaters gasped as one.

"You're going to stand there and watch," Harry continued. "You're going to see what happens when someone fights not out of fear or ambition or hunger for power—but because they choose to. Because it's right."

He turned back to Voldemort.

The Dark Lord stood alone now, his followers bound, his snake coiled at his feet and hissing nervously. The Elder Wand trembled in his too-white hand.

"Just you and me now, Tom," Harry said softly. "The way it was always supposed to be."

"I will destroy you," Voldemort whispered. "I will unmake you. I will—"

"You'll try," Harry interrupted. "And Tom? I'm really, truly sorry about this. Not sorry enough to stop, but... sorry nonetheless."

His eyes blazed green, and the clearing filled with light.

"Let's finish this."

---

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