Unofficial Portkey Archive

Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Still poor.

All thanks for this chapter goes to JazzyGeorgie, who listened to me agonize my way through it and only blocked me from IM once by accident. Draco lives on because of her patience with me, so if you are a Draco fan you have her to thank, and if not.... well, it's all her fault.

Magic Never Dies

Chapter 26

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Someone had beaten them to it, and it wasn't Voldemort.

However he had gotten down into the Chamber it wasn't the way Harry had managed it last time; the sink in Myrtle's bathroom was still firmly in place.

Malfoy, however, was waiting. Draco Malfoy, the other boy Myrtle had befriended in a toilet. Harry had a brief, uncomfortable flashback to another bathroom; Malfoy's face streaked with tears and contorting as he attempted to Crucio Harry, the crimson blossoming of blood when Harry had countered with the Prince's Sectumsempra on Draco, desperate and unaware of the havoc it would wreak.

But he'd do it again in a heartbeat now if Malfoy didn't move, and he could see that Draco knew it too.

"I knew it was too good to be true," Myrtle lamented, swooping from above Malfoy's white-blond head toward Harry. "They said you were dead, but I knew."

"Well, look who it is," Ron sneered. "Voldemort's naughty lap dog."

"Don't, Ron," Harry heard Hermione say softly, and he knew that she could see the shadows in Malfoy's eyes too.

"Excuse us," Harry said, indicating the sink.

Draco's wand arm quivered and Ron let fly with a stupefy; the Slytherin dodged it and hexed back. Ron shielded himself and Hermione and the hex rebounded on Harry who shuddered once like a wet cat and resumed his progress toward the sink unharmed.

Draco paled significantly but his silvery eyes gleamed. "We need to talk," he said, and cast a muffliato toward Ron and Hermione. His time on the run with Snape had clearly produced more than just potions, then.

Harry waved his wand vaguely and undid it. "Anything you have to say to me, you say to them as well. They're my friends."

Malfoy gave a Snape-worthy sneer. "That's always been half your problem, Potter. No taste in companions."

"Perhaps you could cut the obligatory Slytherin shite and get on with it, `cause I've got things to do," Harry reminded him. "Are you trying to stop me from getting into the Chamber or not?"

"He's got my mother down there," Malfoy said quietly, "and he's going to kill her if either my father or I don't bring you to him alive and alone."

"Don't listen to this rubbish, Harry. Even if a word of it were true, his mother made her bed a long time ago," Ron warned him.

"If you think I'm actually going to surrender myself to you or something you're out of your mind, Malfoy. Look at it this way. I'm so bloody tired of all this that I'm going down there anyway. Only I'm going on my own terms, and Ron and Hermione are coming with me. If he kills me, your side wins. If I kill him, your Mum lives. She'll probably end up in Azkaban with you and your Dad, but you'll still be one big happy family together. So why don't you just get out of my way, okay?"

Draco stepped aside.

Harry looked at him suspiciously. "Come on, Malfoy, I don't have time for this. What are you really up to?"

The very first magical boy he ever met all those years ago, in Madam Malkins in Diagon Alley before ever even coming to Hogwarts, gazed at him steadily. "It's been a long time coming, Potter, but if you're still noble enough and stupid enough to feel that you have to go down there on your own who am I to get in your way?" Draco said. "I envy you that… not what's going to happen to you, but actually wanting to… face it. Finish it. Good luck, Po… Harry. Whichever way it goes, I don't imagine I'll see you again."

Harry remembered again the boy who'd faced Dumbledore. Just because Albus had been well intentioned didn't mean he wouldn't have been terrifying to cross; he'd been the most powerful wizard in the world after all, the only one Voldemort himself feared, and Draco had gotten Death Eaters into Hogwarts past his wards, gotten himself far enough to stand up to him. It hadn't worked, but it took its own kind of guts, he supposed.

"I'd like to say `you too, Mal…Draco,' but I can't. I can't help hoping that no matter what happens to me you and your family never know a moment's peace if you go on helping him with this madness," Harry said regretfully. "And if you go down there and fight for him I'll kill you first."

"I know," Draco told him, taking another step back. "He's going to kill my Mother, Potter. My family has supported him longer than I've been alive…. But there's no one he won't kill, and I don't care what my father's doing anymore, I `m done. I only want my mother safe."

"Harry, bloody hell, you're not going to…" Ron implored him.

"I can't stop you from following us," Harry told Malfoy. "I'm going down there for one reason only, to kill him. Anything else is up to you. Turn on me or get in my way and you're dead too."

Malfoy inclined his head once, biting his lip. Harry turned to the sink and the tap with its etched image of a snake. He remembered having to try and imagine it alive the first time to manage the parseltongue; it was effortless now. He wasn't entirely sure whether that was good, or bad.

A low hiss issued from his lips, and the magical sink ground open to reveal its wretched entrance.

Once more into the abyss.

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Voldemort's inhuman army had clearly been dispatched upstairs for maximum effect and because they were nothing to him anyway; Harry was quite sure the fastidious Riddle despised them all. If you had problems coping with mudbloods, how much could you really enjoy the company of a troll, or an inferius or hag? All they found down below were Death Eaters, many with what Harry took for an imperiused gleam in their empty eyes. The Dark Lord was taking no chances with fading wills today.

There were too many Death Eaters ranging the pipes to have any real hope of sneaking up on him. Hermione thought that maybe they could simply collapse the whole chamber to trap him, but Harry wasn't sure they could pull it off from where they hid and it became a moot point as the battle wore on and they were slowly forced further and further in themselves. Malfoy had followed them down the tunnel and through the half-collapsed entrance but he'd disappeared shortly after, blending into the general chaos. Harry reckoned he was off looking for Narcissa. His father was thankfully nowhere to be seen, presumably absorbed up above, but like a bad penny Snape had turned up behind them as well. His bottomless eyes had met Harry's once with a flash of something he still could not read, but his face had fallen into its habitual sneer. He was fighting amongst the Death Eaters now, albeit with little visible enthusiasm; a solitary black crow amongst the flock of masked white. Harry hexed him with the most annoying thing he could think of at the moment. A thousand spiders hatching in his trousers ought to do the trick.

They fought valiantly, and Harry was both fiercely proud and touched at the bravery of his friends. They never lost their heads and they worked both together and with him, covering each other and even combining spells to greater effect than they ever managed before. They thought their way through it, not wasting energy on unproductive or simply reactive hexes and they held on longer than they had any right to expect. The battle clearly raged on above and in the end they were still alone when they were driven into the main Chamber and turned to find Voldemort and his inner circle waiting behind them, wands pointed.

"Expelliarmus!"

The Chamber appeared unchanged since last he was there, the towering stone pillars with their entwined serpents, the reflecting puddles and dank and greenish gloom that made them almost seem to move. He'd forgotten that Ron had never seen the big central room with its enormous likeness of Salazar and the putrid stain where the sightless basilisk had fallen near the pool. The skull lay there still, grinning in welcome.

He heard Hermione's low moan as she realized what it was she was seeing, more focused on the remains of the basilisk for a moment than the others that awaited them.

"Oh, Harry…" she whispered, and he squeezed her fingers grasped now within his own.

The chosen of the Death Eaters surrounded them, circling and feinting hungrily. Harry recognized Belatrix's mad cackle immediately.

"Call off your dogs," he said evenly. "We're not here to play games."

Hisses of derision met his words.

Voldemort broke through their ranks, grinning with the cold ferocity of the truly insane when gifted with their most obsessive desire. "Potter!"

It was almost loving, the way he said. Harry reckoned that never having loved anything, Voldemort's feelings for him were quite probably some of the most intense he'd ever had. It was a repulsive, full-body-shudder type of thought.

Harry had always imagined that when he finally faced the man who'd killed his parents and robbed him of any hope of a normal life that he would feel an empowering wave of hate, a driving need for justice, a surge of righteous anger. He'd been counting on it, really. It was hard to find that the truth of the situation was a combination of bitter exhaustion and gut-wrenching fear now for that extra little thump in Hermione. He would do anything for that thump now, anything to keep the wretched cycle of his own life from repeating, or worse. He needed to get Hermione out, free, away somehow, no matter what the cost.

"Riddle," he acknowledged.

The Death Eaters collectively sucked in enough air to cause a small, chill breeze at that.

The scarlet eyes flared and lips stretched from smile to snarl. "You mistake me, whelp. You will speak when you are bidden and with respect or I will let Macnair rip the tongue from your very mouth. He so… hungers for it."

There was a breathless, eager laugh from the ranks of the still masked Death Eaters around him. A burst of sparking red erupted from Voldemort's wand and Harry and Hermione moved together to deflect it with a protego. The Death Eater it rebounded on gagged and seemed to choke on his own tongue, staggering. The others skirted away from him as if whatever it was were catching, unwilling to counter Voldemort's curse before him. The masked figure fell to its knees, scrabbling desperately at its mouth; the cloth slipping to reveal the elder Nott.

Voldemort loosed a faint snarl as he flicked his wand, countering the spell.

Harry swallowed reflexively but did not allow his voice to falter. "The last time we were here, you told me that the longer I talked, the longer I'd stay alive. I don't think there's really all that much left to say; is there?"

"There is nothing you can say," the Dark Lord allowed, flicking his wand again and surrounding the three of them in a circle of flames.

Harry felt the stones of the floor grow uncomfortably warm more through his connection to the place than his own skin. He doused them with a wave of his hand, wiping any traces from the stone with the return motion.

".And you have nothing I want to hear," he said. "We're at an impasse. The castle doesn't care for that, by the way."

Ron shifted from foot to foot, rolling an eye at Harry, clearly caught between panic and defiance. Hermione subtly shook her head at him.

Voldemort flicked his wand again and magic stirred the air. This time Harry cut it off before it could even take the form of whatever spell he'd cast.

"This is our fight, yours and mine," he said softly, the one tack he knew he had to try. "The prophecy names only us. Send them all away, let it be the way it was foretold."

He heard a sound from Hermione, so soft and choked he could not say for sure what it meant.

Voldemort's bitter mirth was considerably louder. "I will not be dictated too by her."

It took a moment for Harry to realize it was not Hermione he meant. His eyes followed the crimson gaze through the gloom of the Chamber and saw that there at the base of Salazar's enormous likeness sat Professor Trelawney, still swaddled in her shawls and beads, her lost eyes enormous behind their glasses. She was muttering to herself, rocking back and forth like a frightened child. Narcissa Malfoy was beside her, though if looks alone could manage it she'd have been considerably further. Trelawney appeared unbound, Narcissa's hands and feet gleamed faintly with the magic that secured them.

Harry's heart dropped; the Divination teacher was a piece he'd missed. He'd taken her far too lightly; he'd mocked her in his own way and failed to protect her when he'd known, seen, the madness approaching. Dumbledore had always been careful to keep her within the castle walls, even challenging Umbridge at a most vulnerable time to do it.

"You'll be happy to know, though, that she always told me I was going to die," Harry admitted ruefully.

Voldemort choked out a bark of laughter again. "As did her predecessor, I. So I killed her and made a horcrux of her death to ensure it would never come true. Prophecy is but a suggestion to those with the will to control their own destiny, Potter."

Dear Merlin but he was a damaged piece of work.

"Your horcruxes are gone. What use is absolute power when it's cost you your entire soul to pay for it? Maybe it wasn't really a suggestion after all." Harry said tiredly. "Even if you kill me, Ron or Hermione or even Trelawney over there can kill you in turn and you'll have nothing to face that next great adventure with but that last tiny shred."

"There is no next great adventure," Voldemort snorted. "You listened to the old fool, did you? There is nothing beyond the veil but unknowing loss. And my horcruxes are not all gone. I still have you, Potter. You think you are somehow fit to face me when you are nothing but a pale, frightened shadow of me. It is through my great gift you speak parseltongue, through me that you were strong enough for a corporeal patronus…."

"Because of you, you mean." Harry cut him off. "If it weren't for you I'd never have needed to. I am no shadow of you at all, pale or otherwise. And you are wrong about the veil."

"Shall we see?"

He turned his wand on Narcissa. "Avada Kedavra!"

Harry wasn't expecting it; it was Cedric all over again. Who could anticipate the twisted moves that mind would make? He tried desperately to deflect it, but his own spell was too far behind and Narcissa was bound and unarmed. There was time for no more than brief widening of her eyes as the green flare struck her between them. She slumped sideways against Professor Trelawney.

Who'd clearly never seen it coming, either, from her horrified reaction.

"Tell me Draco, do you think you shall speak to her again?" Voldemort hissed toward the black mouths of the tunnels running off of the Chamber. Clearly he'd known the younger Malfoy was somewhere about, awaiting his chance. "Is she picking flowers under the blue skies of heaven? Rejoined with her loved ones? She loved no one but herself, not you, not your father. Heaven would be such a lonely place, if only it were real."

Harry's eyes ranged the openings to each tunnel, searching for the pale gleam that might mark Draco's presence. A son from any of Hogwarts' other Houses might have rushed to her or turned on Voldemort; a Slytherin predictably would have remained hidden or run for his own life.

Perhaps Draco wasn't such a Slytherin, after all.

Pale as death and shaking, Malfoy appeared from the left most tunnel, his wand extended. "You said… He's here. Potter is here, just like you wanted. She was faithful to you her whole life, you demented fuck! Nothing is good enough for you, is it? Nothing will ever be enough. Avada Kedav…."

But for a syllable and a little more speed, he might have pulled it off; there was certainly none of the hesitation he'd had before Dumbledore.

Voldemort's wand flick deflected Draco's curse easily, but they were all startled when the stone serpent it struck exploded into shards. No little fury in that one, then. Harry focused hard on his former enemy even as Voldemort's wand swished again. His wordless, wandless stupefy should have reached him before Voldemort's next Avada, Draco dropped like a stone though the green flare passed close enough to seem to hit him as he fell. Maybe it did. Harry had done all he could and he felt Voldemort's attention turn once more back his way.

Scarlet eyes narrowed and both hands and wand worked in concert, unleashing a dark sucking absence in the crackle of magic between the two of them. It hurt without even touching him, a tearing pain just by its very existence, insinuating itself where the magic ought to be. He thought his head was going to explode; for some reason the pressure in his ears was unbearable. He'd had no idea Voldemort could do this.

He could tell Hermione had felt something but was more concerned by his response. Ron appeared startled but unaffected, his eyes still searching for an opening to effect their escape. This spell was tailor made for him alone; Voldemort had clearly done his homework and once again Harry had come up short. He could practically feel Snape's sneer.

Harry could feel nothing but the need to escape the yawning blackness of the absence of magic around him; he felt like a fish desperately gasping air but unable to extract what it needed. He'd taught himself to reach outside himself for magic and now he could not close that door.

He let himself go liquid and flow through the emptiness, surging like a swimmer kicking for the surface of the water. And found himself across the Chamber near Narcissa's body and Trelawney's sobbing form, looking back at the circle of Death Eaters around his friends.

You couldn't apparate at Hogwarts, but that hadn't been even remotely like apparition. He didn't know what the hell it had been, but it had removed him from the proximity of the spell. He could breathe again and he was grateful. His ears still hurt fiercely, though, and sound seemed to be coming to him from the bottom of a well.

Spooked Death Eaters desperately scanned the Chamber for him, but Voldemort's scarlet eyes found him unerringly and gleamed. A bright bubble like the one that had surrounded them when their wands locked in the graveyard swelled now from Voldemort's alone and closed around the group across from him; blocking his way back to Hermione and Ron.

Panic leapt in his throat then. He threw every spell, every hex and curse he knew at it while he was mocked from within. When his magic failed him he threw himself at it again and again, repelled each time. He could see them clearly, see their lips move… see their eyes.

Voldemort's first act was to crucio Ron, although he never bothered to look at him even to aim the spell. It was all about watching Harry, about feeding on Harry's despair like a Dementor's last meal. Harry felt as if his worst nightmares were coming to life; Ron cursing and screaming almost soundlessly for Harry to just kill him! to the taunts and jeers of the Voldemort's watching minions.

He could not physically pass the barrier, but Harry realized with sudden relief that his mind could still touch Ron's. He reached out and tried to shelter his friend; absorbing the evil pulse of the crucio spell before it infiltrated Ron's nervous system and buying him time to recover as best he could from the sheer assault of it. Ron's relief and gratitude rushed back to him along with the spell, a fair trade in Harry's eyes.

It did not take long however for Voldemort to recognize what was happening; with the creep of a single finger Hermione was dragged struggling closer while Harry watched helplessly, torn between the two of them. The falter in his shield was enough; Ron lurched to his feet again with empty eyes and turned on Harry where he was pressed against the invisible barrier.

"Bastard, you bastard, you've led us all here for nothing, you've killed us and for what? For the privilege of knowing you, the bloody Boy Who Lived," Ron howled. Harry could not clearly hear him, but still he understood and felt the full force of every single word.

Voldemort released Ron's captured wand with a feral grin and it flew into his hand. Ron looked at it as if he had never seen it before, but pointed it at Harry nonetheless.

Harry learned then that the barrier was one way; keeping him out. Ron's first spell slashed a bloody trail from cheek to shoulder on one side.

He was under imperius and Harry knew it. That rush of gratitude was the real Ron; this one had no control over what he said or did, and still that knowledge did nothing to stop the pain of seeing it issue forth from his own lips. A volley of hateful hexes, stinging, slashing and burning hurt no less for knowing Ron would never have willingly used them; Harry only hoped that whatever happened he never, ever learned he had. At least his final crucio was hearteningly feeble; it seemed that even under imperius Ron couldn't truly hate him.

Of course, Voldemort grew quickly tired of that, and Ron was stupified and cast aside like a snapped wand.

`You thought to take my immortality, you and that fool Dumbledore," he mouthed at Harry, red eyes alight. "I have been to the empty island in the cave and Ollivander's dying words informed me that you had Ravenclaw's wand. I visited the hovel my mother's blood called home, and I know the ring is gone. We both know what happened to my diary, and to the true cup from Durmstrang. We both know what you are. It is time, then, to take back what your mother stole from me," he raved.

His worm-pale, twisted fingers held Harry's claimed wand aloft. "Your little mudblood slut here will provide a fitting death to make a new horcrux, and I can think of no better repository for it than your own wand. It is useless against me, brother to mine, and when you are dead and gone no one will ever dare to violate this Chamber to retrieve it. Nagini is to become my new basilisk, and Salazar's desires will be restored. So in the end all your striving has been for naught, pretender, and you have wasted the time allotted you on this earth."

Harry remained pressed against the magical barrier separating him from Hermione, chest heaving, fighting the surge of panic. This was so not how it was supposed to go. He didn't truly need his wand any longer, but it hurt none the less to see it in Voldemort's hands and hear his plans for it. It had been a part of him, the first key to unlock the magic within him.

His mind couldn't begin to take in the bit about Hermione.

"I can take it from you," Voldemort mused, approaching Harry confidently on his side of the sphere, "in so many… different ways."

Each step deepened the throb in Harry's scar; he was fighting desperately not to show it but his eyes began to water with the effort. If Harry couldn't get through the barrier, could the horcrux?

The corpselike visage spoke slowly as it approached him; caressing each syllable as though it brought a deep and moving pleasure. "That's right Harry. Cry. Cry for me like the scared little boy you still are. Rutting with the mudblood can not make you a man. I…"

Voldemort got too close. Hermione saw his expression change, saw him hover and swiftly turn away. `It's true then,' she thought. The tug was fiercer for Harry because he had more of it, but Voldemort felt the pull of his ruined soul then, and he sensed that it was he who was being drawn toward Harry and not the other way round. His barrier cost him; he could not pull the horcrux through without bringing Harry with it.

"You what?" Harry taunted him hoarsely, and Hermione saw he felt it too.

"I think," Voldemort hissed, turning on him from a safe distance, "that I might enjoy watching you kill her, and making the horcrux for me."

Harry shook his head. "You can't do that. You fooled me once, and Sirius died. I learned my lesson. And you could never control me. We both know that."

"No?" Voldemort asked, and pointed his wand at Hermione.

Her heart slowed when it should have raced, she felt a sluggish wave like ice flow through her veins.

"You will give me your magic, or she dies." Voldemort said, not a hiss now but almost a squeal of ill-suppressed frustration. The faceless Death Eaters stirred like a flock of startled birds. "I will drain every ounce of MY magic from your veins, you half blood freak, and I will have my… it back before you die. Only then might she survive."

Harry's eyes skittered away from hers then, and his head bowed for a moment.

"He's going to kill me anyway, Harry, we both know that." she cried to him desperately, "Don't…"

Voldemort's wordless silencio had been meaningless; he had been reading her lips through the barrier before he turned away. Some spell he could not name erupted like a slap across her cheek; she staggered and he looked up to see blood rush to the mark beneath her skin as her shaking hand rose to cover it.

"How?" asked Harry, his voice ruined and not his own. As if it mattered now.

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Hermione gave him the greatest gift she could then, and allowed herself to slump to the ground in the best imitation of a dead faint she could manage. She thought carefully of every fact she knew about Occlumency from researching and forcing Harry to practice; she had never really tried but if Voldemort assumed her unconscious and did not actively seek her out she might pass for exactly that. She only knew it seemed her one chance to help Harry; to wait and think and listen for an opening of some kind.

Voldemort drew out his imagined victory then.

She was left alone inside the glowing sphere of woven magic while the others emerged to claim his prize. Ron was flung outside, flopping limply to the floor of the Chamber.

He's okay, he's only stupefied, he's okay, he can't move, Harry will ennervate him.

But Harry was stripped of his wizard robes and forced to crawl through a gauntlet of Death Eaters to Voldemort in his muggle clothing. The Death Eaters were indiscriminate in their taunts and hexes, although Hermione noticed that good old muggle kicking and spitting were good enough for many of them. There wasn't much left of his shirt or the knees of his jeans by the time he reached the head of the line and his trainers were both gone. Blood dripped from his nose and the ear that she could just see through her barely slitted eyes. There was something heartbreaking and innocent to Hermione about the image of his socked feet. He paused as he passed Ron's abandoned and stupefied form and his fingers grasped at Ron's ankle for a moment until he was kicked away. She realized then why he didn't ennervate him; Ron was safer where he was, and spared from watching.

He didn't need his wand; he could call on so much magic now he could be fighting them all off. Why didn't he, how could he let them do this to him over her? They'd talked about it so often, promised each other to fight, to let the other defend themselves. He was breaking his promise far too easily even for saving-people-Harry; why?

At the end of the gauntlet Harry landed at Voldemort's feet once more. The Dark Lord's pale face had more than just revulsion on it now, and his snarled "kneel," probably had as much to do with keeping clear of the pull from his severed soul within Harry as subjugating his prey.

"Ssseveruss," Voldemort commanded with an eager lisp, his scarlet eyes never wavering from Harry's green ones. "Bring it to me now."

Snape swooped wordlessly from his place in line. He had managed a well placed kick and particularly stinging hex, and from the look on his face Harry knew that though his allegiance may not have changed he had still enjoyed them. His rage at Harry knew no bounds now that he was being forced to watch his undoing.

He moved to Voldemort and bowed deeply, then knelt before a locked ebony chest not far from the catatonic Trelawney and waited until Voldemort had hissed the proper password to induce the usual snake lock to uncoil. Nagini slithered forward, attracted perhaps by their sudden movement, and coiled around Snape's feet.

"Do choose the right one, Severus," Voldemort warned smoothly as Snape's fingers reached into the chest. "You know what I want. If Dumbledore could not bring himself to share in the cave we can surely recompense for his selfishness now."

The magic draining potion, then. The one that Snape had taunted Harry with.

"You see now why Dumbledore begged me to end it," Snape had sneered. "You might have lived a squib if you had drunk it, but he was old, his connection to magic too ingrained to survive losing it. He must have sensed what it was doing. He was prepared to die for Draco anyway, if it meant I could keep my cover and help you."

You might have lived a squib.

Harry's heart constricted. He wondered if he did survive the potion if Voldemort might just let him live a while to mock his magic-less state. There was more than one way to kill a wizard after all, if only the horcruxes could be destroyed first he might still manage it…

Snape removed a stoppered bottle from the chest and looked pointedly at Nagini until she slunk off his feet and over toward Harry instead. He returned to Voldemort and knelt again, offering up the bottle.

Voldemort's red eyes flicked to several of the Death Eaters in line and they moved forward to hold Harry down even as he reached for Harry's jaw himself.

He flailed against them then, letting every bit of magic he could still tap fly. They were thrown back, leg-locked and stunned, several of them far worse. He scrambled to his feet and ran back to the bubble, throwing himself against it. His body hit it with a resisting whump but Hermione still felt his familiar presence appear on the mat at the door to her consciousness, hammering. Either her Occlumency was pathetic or his ability to skirt round it very strong; as warm and deep and magical as their first real kiss when he had passed the cup to her tongue-to-tongue a thought suddenly appeared in the forefront of her mind.

`You have our child in you, Hermione. Please, love, please keep safe. You've given me everything I ever wanted and I'm not afraid. Please go on.'

Hermione felt as if her heart stopped with the weight of his words and in its place she could still hear a faint, determined throb. Joy swelled up within her at the very possibility and battered with balled fists at the wall her desperate fear of losing him had erected, aching to be felt despite it all.

`Beautiful, wonderful, but still not you. Never you. Please Harry, don't leave me…' she thought brokenly, hoping against hope he could hear her, too.

Freed by their master, Avery and Macnair and Bellatrix reached him as one, each with a different hex. He slumped down the invisible barrier to his knees; absorbing them while his mother's eyes implored her.

She blinked; all she was willing to risk. She would not let go. There was still hope, there was always hope until… She remembered Lily's words, her caution that Hermione could not help him in the end. Was this it? She would never have agreed to this, never. But surely Lily had said he would live? Had she meant only Durmstrang, the change into thestral form? Had the child been conceived then, or had he been saved only for that? She wanted the baby, she did, but she wanted Harry too.

Murder was not the only way to split one's soul. Hermione saw then that both she and Harry were torn by the blind, instinctive need to protect a life in its most vulnerable stage. Once upon a time whatever magic had created all life had done this same thing, cradling a tiny flame of hope against the vast black emptiness that sought to extinguish it.

Once Lily had done the same for her child and look what she had managed? This driven, lovely man who refused to turn from the struggle, trying long after he even knew why to do what he knew to be right.

There was something more powerful than death, despite the way Voldemort both feared and flaunted it. Life was a force to be reckoned with, and hope was a thing with wings. Harry had to survive. He had to.

The Death Eaters reached him again, pinning him. Bellatrix took hold of his hair and dragged his head back.

"No," he managed, vehement and broken at once. "No. You can't take my magic from me… I…"

Voldemort drew closer and grinned, and his tongue flicked out, snake like and eager.

"I can."

"You can't," Harry all but whispered, "because I give it to you. Freely. You could never take it from me any other way."

And he wrenched free and grasped the bottle in Voldemort's hovering hand and drank, deeply, as if thirsting for what it held. When he had finished every drop inside he flung the bottle away and it shattered at the stone feet of Salazar Slytherin himself.

"Foolish boy!" Voldemort taunted. "Your Gryffindor bravado is no more potent than your mother's charm. Your choice of words changes nothing in the end."

"It changes everything," Harry said softly; and only then did he cry out.

<O><O><O>

Hermione knew that even if she lived to be Dumbledore's age and tried to pensieve her memories of this time she would still never, ever forget that sound.

Draining one's magical core was clearly a painful and terrifying process; compounded as it was by the destruction of the horcruxes it seemed to literally be tearing Harry inside out.

Voldemort had bet wrong - or been lied to, and if Hermione had been able to tear her attention from Harry long enough she would have seen the truth for once on Severus Snape's face. Attempting to reclaim Harry's magic resulted not in the recoverable release of the last surviving segments of the horcruxed soul, but in their evident destruction.

It was as if three of the cup horcrux had been unleashed inside him and all were fighting for their very survival. As the very core of Harry's magic was extinguished within him they were drained of sustaining magic as well; and without it to support them or a magical object to contain them they were nothing more substantial than an ill-conceived idea, a desperate wish made by an abandoned son, stillborn from their host.

A final cry tore from Harry's lips as his body slumped to the floor and relinquished his own magic along with Voldemort's unwitting contribution from that Halloween night sixteen years before. It was wordless and anguished and accepting all at once, as if he'd always know that this might be the cost.

And with his choice and sacrifice Voldemort was rendered human once more.

<O><O><O>

There was absolute silence in the Chamber for a moment. Hermione realized the cowering Death Eaters did not know what to expect; most probably knew little enough of the horcruxes anyway. The look of contained fury on Voldemort's face seemed to indicate it would remain that way. He might wish to finish Harry off, but he had to be certain first.

He flicked his wand at Harry's fallen form and it skittered weightlessly across the floor to rest near Ron's. The sight of the two of them lying there, seemingly lifeless and cast aside broke something deep within Hermione that she knew could never quite be pieced together again, no matter what came next.

"Go on, my loyal ones, you see what lies before you. Go up and spread the word that Harry Potter's magic is no more and I have won. Take the castle, and spare none that cross you. Glory belongs to the one who brings Godric's sword and hat to me. Go!" Voldemort ordered.

The Death Eaters remained stunned and silent a moment more, then cheers and wolf whistles broke out with whoops of bloodthirsty glee and they swooped for the tunnels, jostling each other like children to earn their Lord's favor.

Except for one, called back. "Severus, my… friend, stay with me."

<O><O><O>

The steady drip of water could be heard once the Death Eaters were gone, and the occasional sound of an explosive spell above, blasting a door or collapsing a staircase.

"Explain yourself!" Voldemort hissed to Snape as soon as they were alone. "Explain to me what just occurred. You said that draining the boy's magic would release the horcruxes!'

"Clearly, my Lord," Snape said smoothly, "I was…wrong."

"Wrong? Wrong? You dared to be wrong about this, of all things?"

"One does not dare to be wrong, my Lord. One is simply… mistaken. There is not a great body of knowledge to rely on when one goes further than any wizard before. There was no way to predict…"

"You are never simply wrong, Severus." Voldemort countered, drawing his cloak tighter around him as if chilled. "I might almost think you had betrayed me with this, had you not cost your would-be savior his own magic as well."

Severus Snape's lips stretched in a horrible parody of a smile. "Harry Potter? My Lord, surely you jest. Potter could never save anyone. He's just a boy, who lived."

"Who lives," came a soft voice from behind them; and Hermione could not stop herself then; her eyes flew open and she struggled up within the confines of the bubble, praying.

<O><O><O>

Losing his magic had felt like swallowing acid and turning his insides out; Harry felt raw and battered and bereft. But still he felt, and still he breathed and still he was alive, and still he knew his purpose was not yet fulfilled.

He had yet to kill Voldemort.

The battle raged on above, and people were still dying. Ron was cold and still beside him, only petrified, but beyond Harry's reach now to help in any way. Even without a wand in his hand Harry felt the emptiness where once his magic filled him and knew that the simplest finite incantum was beyond him. And Hermione… he could do nothing for Hermione. He was less than useless as a wizard now.

But Harry had been raised amongst muggles, had never even known he was born to be a wizard for over half his life… and with enough desire and a lack of inhibiting self-preservation even a muggle ought to be able to bring about a wizard's undoing.

His greatest surprise was to find himself still connected somehow to the castle. He had wondered at the feeling before but so much magic had flowed through him then that he had not understood the difference. The magic was gone now but still the castle claimed him as its own, and still he - though far more mutedly - sensed it. It was comforting at first; he'd felt as if held in embracing arms as he'd slowly come back to himself after the magic drained away. Now, though, the castle was urging him to his feet and on to complete his destiny.

Harry thought of his last time in this Chamber, how his loyalty to Dumbledore had called the sword of Goderic Gryffindor to him through Fawkes. His heart constricted at the loss of his magic, and with it his connection to so many impossibly wonderful things.

"Oh, Fawkes" he whispered brokenly. "I'm sorry."

Hogwarts grieved with him. `Fawkes, sorry, fawkes, sorry, fawkes… ' vibrated softly through the floors and walls themselves.

Harry struggled drunkenly to his feet, and staggered toward his fate.

"Who lives," he said to the two who mocked him.

<O><O><O>

He knew intimately now how a mouse felt when it saw that gleam in the cat's eye. All of Voldemort's disappointment in losing his horcruxes and his loathing for anything helpless and non-magical roiled to the surface. Harry's months of training at listening and channeling the natural magic around him along with his own was useless now. He would have given anything to discover he suddenly possessed skill in some obscure martial art form, but alas… he was just Harry Potter still.

Harry ran and ducked and dove and tried to hide. He was hexed and tripped and slammed into walls for his trouble. Invisible hands held his head in one of the stagnant puddles until he thought his lungs would burst. Voldemort could have killed him with a flick of his finger now, but he didn't, couldn't, couldn't stop himself from playing with that he had once actually…. But no, he had never feared Harry.

And Harry couldn't stop himself from getting back up and trying again. He only needed one chance, just one, and even if the opportunity needed to be greater the more broken he became, the odds never changed. Please, just one.

Voldemort hurled Harry halfway across the chamber after a particularly bold run in which he managed to get nowhere near the snake-faced bastard, and he landed with a sickening crack and a hastily muffled scream. Snape moved closer and rolled Harry's balled and trembling form over with his foot, a look of distaste upon his face and mercy in his eyes.

"My Lord, shall I… let me dispose of this for you," he said, his wand leveled between Harry's eyes.

Harry shook his head desperately; he well knew Snape could do it.

"Please…" he managed softly, and hastily added "don't," remembering Dumbledore.

A liquid burst of song pierced the echoes of the cavern and Fawkes appeared once more. He hadn't troubled with the sorting hat this time; the Sword alone was in his talons. The castle itself must have called to him because it sure as hell couldn't have been Harry, but he was in no shape to look gift swords in the… whatever.

He grabbed for it from Fawkes outstretched claws and the sword came comfortably, familiarly into his hands, undisturbed by the lack of magic in them. It was Goderic Gryffindor's, magical in its own right, and it had accepted him before.

Harry turned and lunged past Snape, knocking him to the ground as he limped for Voldemort. He wasted no time brandishing the sword. Harry had nothing left; fear and pain were subsumed by his one need, to finish this. To close the door, end the story, leave some kind of peace behind him to mark his passage through this world for Hermione and… little thump.

He struck desperately.

He missed.

Voldemort spun easily away, graceful in his death-warmed-over kind of way. Harry skidded past him, carried on by momentum alone. He stumbled, falling hard. The sword tore from his hand and skittered across the wet stone to lie, gleaming, barely two arm lengths off. He pulled himself determinedly to his knees, gasping, and began to crawl toward it.

Don't stop… don't give up… don't stop now….

The kick from behind him actually drove him closer to the sword and he welcomed the pain of it, dragging himself forward and thinking `go on, one more good kick and I'll have it, you demented bastard and then you're…'

But Voldemort stepped lightly by him and his foot came down upon the sword.

Harry felt the fight go out of him then; he knew he'd seen the best chance he'd have and he'd blown it once again. He slumped to the ground, tears of frustration and failure finally mixing with the involuntary watering as the pain in his well-kicked ribcage was amplified by meeting something sharp upon the Chamber floor. How infuriating to know Vernon Dursley might have been right about him after all. He was a freak, hopeless and useless. He'd wanted to be so much more.

"Come, Harry, we have toyed long enough. You may kiss my foot and I will move it for you, you can at least die with the sword in your hand like the man you could never quite manage to become."

Harry groaned, fairly certain that actually hurling on Voldemort's foot was significantly less likely to be met with any kind of noble death offer. Like it mattered anymore. His entire body was shaking with the effort of simply not dying now. Swordplay was beyond him.

Voldemort actually crouched down; he truly seemed to need to see Harry's dying eyes, his own alight with rabid ecstasy.

"Go on and die, Harry. Feel the despair of it. There's nothing there. And when you are gone at last I shall take your pregnant whore and refashion my immortality."

Over my dead body.

Harry let out a last, heaving breath.

And reared wearily up, striking out. This time he did not miss. The broken basilisk fang he'd found beneath him must have lain there since his last defeat; it was only fitting that it served to end Tom Riddle's life once more. Harry wasn't a wizard anymore, but he buried the basilisk fang so far in the unblinking crimson eye that there was no spell that could have saved him. Death had cringed and snapped at Voldemort's heels long enough to see it's chance and sprang, leaving no time for words.

With a soft, surprised gag as the point curved through his foul brain and down into his throat, Voldemort met at last his greatest fear with nothing but what was left of his own soul, and was no more.

Harry swayed on his knees, trying desperately to focus through his streaming eyes. Any connection they had had died with the horcruxes and his magic; his scar was nothing now but marked skin. He extended one shaking hand but could not make himself touch the husk before him to be sure.

Footsteps approached; Harry saw what he knew to be Snape's black boots and tensed for a blow, although he could not fathom why now.

There was a rustle of fabric and a pale white forearm was thrust close to his battered face.

"Look, Potter."

Even Harry could see the angry black scar of the dark mark dissipating as blood pulsed through the veins beneath it and rushed away to be cleansed by the heart.

Assuming of course Snape had one.

A wand appeared in Harry's bleary line of vision next, and he wondered for a moment if Snape meant to put Harry out of his misery or attempt to save his life. He wanted Hermione desperately, but felt already the yawning chasm his dead magic would claw in their life together. He was fairly certain Ron lived, knew he would take care of her if he did. If the child was magical, it would despise him… he was withdrawing from the world with every breath.

He called upon the source of the deepest magic he had ever known, the one that had led him to her. `Into your hands I commend what's left of me,' his heart conceded. `I don't even know what to ask for anymore. Live or die, do with me what you will.'

And that was the last he knew.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

A/N: Wow. This one hurt a lot more than I thought it would… I don't envy JKR a bit anymore, actually. And no, this is NOT at all how I think she's going to end it, for obvious reasons.

Nor is it quite how this story ends, for there is at least one more chapters' worth left, possibly two, and most likely an epilogue of sorts after.

I know everyone had strong ideas about the final battle, and many of you have made excellent arguments against the path I chose. I wimped out on Voldie at Durmstrang, so I truly tried to do them both justice here, where I always wanted to do it. I am happy to hear your theories though, so feel free to dissent with this ~ it's only my version after all. Thanks for reading along, and your reviews mean the world to me.

Lindsay

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