The night sky in the real world was different than the sky in Malfoy’s canopy: there was a full moon sailing in the air over Hogwarts.
It seemed to be gleaming gold in a pale reflection of the flames.
They flew towards the towers: Harry felt the usual kick of exultation he felt flying hit him twice as hard, blood burning with adrenaline and the night wind in his hair like cold fingers trying to catch him and never quite able to manage it. He looked back at Malfoy and caught his flashing wild grin. Even that idiot Smith flew well.
He landed first on the stone flags of the Astronomy Tower, dark shapes whirling in the shadows to face him.
“Hi, Potter,” Goyle said brightly. “Nice to see you. Did you see the explosion of stones just now? I think that was Longbottom blowing up the Charms classroom.”
“Hello Harry,” Luna said, her voice dreamy and serene. “Our job is to blow poison darts at people from here. I’m very good at it.”
“Um,” Ron said, landing. “That’s, um, that’s really excellent, Luna.”
Malfoy hit the stones and curved even in his landing so he was directly beside Goyle, who looked like he might cry or hug Malfoy. He ended up just thumping Malfoy on the back so hard that Malfoy staggered and almost fell.
“I knew you’d come.”
“I thought about staying home to do a crossword puzzle,” Malfoy told him. “But I was told this was a good time.”
“I knew you’d come,” Goyle repeated, as if he hadn’t heard Malfoy. “D’you have a plan?”
Malfoy threw Harry a look. “Yes, actually we do,” he drawled.
Goyle looked ready to collapse from relief. “Thank God. Justin kept saying he had a plan, but I don’t think that ‘blow up Scotland’ counts.”
“Don’t listen to Hufflepuffs, I’ve taught you better than that,” Malfoy said with the absently autocratic air that had annoyed Harry for six years and seemed to be comforting Goyle now. “Keep the poisoned darts coming.”
Goyle’s manly hand on his shoulder was clinging a little, and everyone else was lingering and pretending that they weren’t. Smith was even worse at faking casual than Ron. Malfoy snapped a glance around and squared his thin shoulders under Goyle’s hand.
“Enough dawdling, you people,” he drawled. “Let’s go.”
As they went down the winding stone stairs in the shadows Harry heard Luna’s voice saying calmly behind them: “He was pleased to see you, Greg. You could tell.”
Even through the stone walls Harry could hear the sounds of battle. He heard shouts and bangs and crashing and one long scream: he wished he knew who had screamed and then realised that there would be a lot of screaming tonight and he couldn’t worry about it. People were going to die, on his word and because of his plan.
He kept walking. Ron and Hermione were a warm and solid presence behind him.
“How’re you doing?” he asked Malfoy softly.
“Fine!” Smith said, his voice a little high and rising, balanced on a sharp edge. “Fine. I don’t even know why you’re asking.”
Panic was so clear in his tone that Harry didn’t mention he hadn’t been asking Smith. He didn’t say anything at all.
“Bit of a worrier, our Harry,” observed Ron. “Always asks about our feelings before we defeat evil. He has leadership qualities that way. We know you’re fine.”
Smith’s breathing went a little more even and Harry kept quiet. He watched the silhouette in the shadows in front of him and saw Malfoy flinch every time they heard a noise louder than the others. When Malfoy pushed the door open on the war the first thing Harry saw were his grey eyes, wide and filled with the reflected light of the fires.
“Are you scared?” Malfoy asked.
“No,” Harry said. “Why?”
Malfoy laughed a short involuntary laugh. “Uh, because you and the most powerful and fearsome wizard in all the world have an appointment to discuss your imminent horrible death? Sometimes I think you might be a little slow, Potter.” He tilted his head in Harry’s direction. “It’s a serious concern.”
Harry couldn’t tell him not to be worried or promise him that everything was going to be fine, but he jostled elbows with him harder than necessary as he passed over the threshold and into the storm.
He saw the battlefield his beloved school had become for all of a second when he was tackled to the ground. A huge piece of masonry went flying by to bury itself like a meteorite in the lawn.
Ron rolled off Harry and to his feet.
“Thanks,” Harry said, getting up.
Ron grinned. “No problem. Just watch where you’re going in future.”
There were Death Eaters in black robes and students in the same, everyone struggling and blending in the night. Harry thought he could see colour in the distance: Hermione was beside him suddenly, one hand shielding her eyes and the other holding her wand.
“The Order?” she asked.
“Or Scrimgeour’s people,” Harry shouted. “I wrote to him and told him he didn’t want to miss the public relations opportunity of a lifetime.”
That made Malfoy smile, even shaking in a whirlwind of noise and horror. It made Ron frown.
“Just think, if we make it through this we’re never getting rid of him.”
“Oh I don’t know,” said Hermione, pausing to hex a black-robed man as he went by. “Think about Winston Churchill.”
“Er, I hardly ever think about anyone else,” said Ron. “Er. Was he in Hufflepuff?”
Before Hermione could tell Ron how sadly ignorant he was about Muggle culture another chunk of Hogwarts went hurtling through the air and they scattered. Harry thought he saw Ron yank Smith to safety as the dust rose: he grabbed Malfoy’s elbow and pulled him back, stumbling when Malfoy overbalanced and knocked into him.
Someone else knocked into him: Harry spun with his wand at the ready and met Pansy Parkinson’s glittering eyes.
“I love catapults!” she screamed in her ear-splitting voice, ignoring Harry completely. She lunged for Malfoy and grabbed his shirt in both hands, drawing him close to her and kissing him on the mouth.
He grabbed her back, pale fists curled tight in her tumbling black hair. The kiss lasted a single fierce instant and then he pushed her back, hands going to her shoulders. He shook her a little.
“Don’t you dare die,” he ordered her.
Pansy smiled at him. She’d worn makeup to go to war and it was already so irrevocably ruined that the kiss had made no difference: she wore her smeared scarlet lipstick like a battle flag.
“Don’t you dare die either,” she said, their shared smile bright and sharp. She kissed him again, shook him in return and repeated: “I love catapults!” before she whirled away into the night.
Justin came running after her and caught what she said on the wind. “I love catapults too!” he yelled, eyes gleaming bright in his soot-dark face.
Malfoy took one look at him and stepped sharply back. Justin blinked at him, looking politely puzzled and totally insane.
“You on our side?” he inquired. “Good show.”
He dashed off in pursuit of Pansy. Malfoy stared after him in dismay.
“I knew the Hufflepuffs would start running wild the moment I turned my back on them,” he said. “I knew it.”
Harry grabbed his wrist and dragged him towards the school. He would have bet anything that Voldemort would’ve headed straight for the castle, not just to crush the rebellion at its heart but to take possession.
That was what he would’ve done.
It meant getting through the battle. Harry should’ve brought his Invisibility Cloak, but he had to keep hold of Malfoy and two of them under the Cloak in this loud, struggling mass of people wouldn’t have worked. Besides that, he couldn’t have let other people do all the fighting. It would’ve felt cowardly.
He threw a hex every time he saw a Death Eater mask. One woman in the robes but without the mask looked at him and tried to back away, eyes wide: it was strange to see someone so much older, looking at him with what seemed to be fear. It took Harry aback for a moment, long enough for Malfoy to cast a Jellylegs curse and bring her down instead.
It was the only time in the whole long furious ordeal that Malfoy cast before Harry did: he kept hesitating.
“You’ve got to hex them!” Harry roared as Malfoy flinched and hesitated again, and then had to duck to avoid the resulting curse. “Not bat your eyes at them!”
“I’m sorry!” Malfoy shouted back. “I just—I know them, all right?”
It was a horrible disadvantage for the Slytherins, the fact that some of these people were their family and friends, that feeling disloyal was added to the fear and panic as the Death Eaters descended on Hogwarts.
It had advantages too.
Harry saw two Death Eaters to all appearances bearing down on Millicent Bulstrode and raised his wand, when one of the Death Eaters shouted: “Don’t you dare touch her, that’s my daughter!” and hexed the other from behind. She snatched at Millicent, mask slipping to show a worried and worn face.
Across the battlefield that had been Hogwarts Harry saw Death Eaters turn into spots of colour where there had been darkness, as they tore off their robes and turned to defend children they knew from their comrades.
It didn’t always work. Malfoy stopped in mid-hex and even Harry hesitated when they were faced with a tall man who was, dark blazing eyes and pug nose and all, unmistakably Pansy Parkinson’s brother.
He began: “Avada-” and then stopped abruptly and crumpled forward.
Neville stepped over him, sweaty and grimy from the battle, and said: “She’s going to give me hell for that.” He nodded as he wiped his face, leaving a slightly cleaner streak across his brow. “Harry. Malfoy.”
“We’ve got to make it to the castle,” Harry shouted.
“I know,” Neville told him. “We’ll get you through.” He raked an eye over faces in the darkness. “Oi, Vince! Hey, Anthony, Terry! We’ve got to get Harry to the castle as fast as we can!”
Two Ravenclaws and Crabbe turned, fighting through the crowds.
“Whatever you say,” Crabbe yelled.
“I beg your pardon, what?” demanded Malfoy, hexing an elderly lady in Death Eater robes and looking completely scandalised by this new turn of events.
Crabbe’s eyes caught on him and he stilled for a moment and beamed. “Hey, boss.”
“Sorry, are you talking to me or Longbottom?” Malfoy inquired, trying his best to infuse a sneer even into his panicked shout.
“You guys should go now,” said Neville.
Barely perceptibly, Crabbe’s eyes flicked over towards Malfoy, who shrugged irritably at him.
“Oh, for God’s sake, he’s in charge for now. Tomorrow’s a different story, though! I am seriously displeased. There will be words!”
“Yeah?” said Crabbe, casting the Cruciatus in two different directions with fluid ease it was strange to see him moving with, as if the Unforgivables for him were like flying or Parseltongue for Harry. “Looking forward to it.”
He gave Malfoy a solid push between the shoulderblades and Harry dragged him along, keeping his fingers locked around Malfoy’s wrist. He refused to let his grip weaken for even an instant, lest they be separated in the screaming mass and Malfoy lost.
They were making good headway when the howls rose up to the moon, thin and cold and eerie, and they saw silvery and brindled fur in the moonlight as Fenrir Greyback’s pack came racing through Hogwarts students and the Order alike. Fenrir was in front, recognisable even in wolf form, huge jaws hanging open in a fanged grin. Even as Harry watched he saw his haunches bunch as he launched his body into a spring: he saw Orla Quirke go down in a mess of blood.
They must be forcing Snape to make the Potion for them all. These wolves weren’t attacking at random: they were thinking. And they were acting like predators, circling, wheeling, searching for the weakest creatures to pull down. Fenrir was going to pick off the youngest children.
Even as Harry watched he saw Fenrir leave the remains of what had been Orla and lead his pack, snarling, towards a knot of people who Harry recognised as fourth years.
Harry turned and started to struggle through the crowds towards them.
The Order got there first. He saw Kingsley Shacklebolt hurtling into the midst of the children, and Tonks, blond hair white in the moonlight, throwing herself into the midst of the wolves.
Fenrir gave a yelp vibrating with dark harmonics, part furious surprise and part a low promise of death. His quarters bunched for another spring.
He was hit from the side by a pale-grey wolf and went tumbling over in a flurry of fur and teeth: after a short barking, snarling roll both wolves regained their feet but Fenrir, the leader of the pack, was limping and blood was pouring over one eye.
Tonks, crouched low and circling as the wolves circled her, lithe strong body braced for the first attack, laughed a laugh louder and more carefree than Harry’d ever heard before and yelled: “Hey, baby.”
Lupin the wolf cut through his fellow werewolves to go to her and they moved together, a weaving circle of fur and flesh.
“C’mon, they have it sorted, we have to move,” yelled Crabbe, and Harry turned and plunged back into the battle, into the direction of the castle.
The closer they got, the tighter the knots and the more furious the fighting. A spell rebounded or possibly just missed and Harry cried out, his entire left side going numb for a moment. He might’ve fallen if Malfoy hadn’t taken his weight and thrown a furious hex in the direction the spell that’d hit Harry had come from.
“I’m fine!” Harry shouted, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
“Oh, clearly,” Malfoy shouted back, bearing some of his weight for a little while longer, until Harry’s vision cleared.
There were waves of Death Eaters coming up to the castle, wave on wave of them. Harry could see the steps in front of them, but when he glanced over his shoulder he could also see another wave of Death Eaters bearing down on them. They’d lost the two Ravenclaws somewhere behind them: Harry hoped they were fighting somewhere behind them and not cut down.
Crabbe shoved them and Harry, still a little shaky, had to lean on Malfoy for another instant.
“What—” he began furiously, but Crabbe shook his head at them.
“Go,” he shouted. “I can hold them back.”
There was a moment of stillness, when the noise of battle seemed drowned out by the quiet horror that came over Harry as he realised what Crabbe meant.
“Crabbe,” Malfoy faltered out, his voice suddenly very young and breaking. “I—Crabbe.”
“Better go, Malfoy,” Crabbe said shortly. “Like you said. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He turned to face the oncoming band of Death Eaters and Harry stayed frozen another second, when Malfoy dragged him forward and up the steps of Hogwarts.
“Come on,” he said through gritted teeth, his best autocratic drawl blurred by tears. “I believe we were told to go.”
They pounded up the steps. Harry looked back over his shoulder one more time as they pushed the great doors open, and wished he hadn’t: he saw Crabbe’s tall body crumple and fall under the black tide of Death Eaters.
He banged the door behind them fast and looked to Malfoy to check if he had seen, and found Malfoy staring straight ahead, an arrested look on his face.
“Hello, Dad,” he said, and they watched Lucius Malfoy hurry forward, pale hair gleaming like old bones under the false moonlight of the Great Hall’s ceiling.
“Draco,” said Lucius. “Oh, thank God. Is it true—do you have the—?”
Malfoy sighed and flicked open his shirt collar: against bloody, filthy material and skin, the last Horcrux shone like buried treasure.
“This is wonderful, Draco,” Lucius said. “We can use this to bargain our way back into favour—its safe return will be such a relief to the Dark Lord. I’ll be able to spin a plausible story for him, don’t you worry, we can put the whole blame on Snape where I am sure it lies anyway, I should never have trusted that man with you, I know how impressionable you are—”
“Father,” Malfoy drawled. “Would you stop talking for a moment? Would you stop for a single second and look at who I’m standing beside?”
Lucius Malfoy’s eyes slid over to Harry’s face. The man looked paler than ever, older and frailer, as if strain was bleaching him into a white dried husk. In spite of that he was immaculately put together, touched with none of the dirt or blood of the battlefield. He stared down at them with a touch of his old hauteur, the air that was never quite so convincing on his son, and Harry was aware they must look like filthy tired children, and Lucius must look like he was in control.
Harry let his lip curl. “Hello there, Mr Malfoy.”
Lucius’s lip curled unexpectedly in return, and he gave a sharp cold laugh. “Oh, is that the reason for all your extremely recalcitrant behaviour of late, Draco? Befriended the Potter boy at last, a long time after it could ever have been useful. How ironic.”
“Isn’t it?” Malfoy asked. “I know, I’m always such a disappointment.”
Harry’d been expecting that they’d have to face this scene at some point: he knew it was going to be difficult for Malfoy, and Harry would have to try and not kill Lucius. He was expecting it to be a mess.
He wasn’t expecting it when Lucius’s icy demeanour melted and he was suddenly all heat and hatred. “No, Draco,” he said, low. “That’s not what I meant. I mean that I find it ironic you chose to ally yourself with the other side, all because you blame me for what happened to your mother.”
“Blame you?” Malfoy shouted, always easily able to outmatch his father in heat if nothing else. “Blame you—you did it, you killed her, you threw her body to the wolves, how dare you even—”
“He did it,” Lucius interrupted savagely. “He was blackmailing Narcissa by holding your safety over her head. And he commanded her to go to Voldemort, he did it knowing the risks she would be taking, he didn’t care what happened to her. He sent her to her death! She told me so herself, and she told me that her death would mean Potter owed you protection forever. He isn’t being kind to you, Draco. He isn’t on your side. He owes you a blood debt. He’s the one who killed your mother, not me!”
Malfoy’s presence was suddenly gone from Harry’s side as abruptly as if Malfoy had fallen off a cliff, or if Harry had. Malfoy had removed his support and his wrist from Harry’s suddenly slack grasp that fast.
Harry looked across a distance into Malfoy’s eyes, wiped clean of expression, like an empty winter sky.
“That true, Potter?” Malfoy asked, and his voice wobbled. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s—it was—I didn’t think of it that way, it wasn’t like that,” Harry said. His stomach felt as if he was still in the process of falling off a cliff, and his mouth was dry with dread.
“What was it like?” Malfoy wondered aloud, almost hushed. “So—you never felt like you owed me, then? You didn’t tell her to go? Is he lying, Potter, or isn’t he?”
Harry swallowed down protests and the lump in his throat. “No. I guess he’s not.”
“Oh,” said Malfoy.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Draco,” Lucius put in eagerly, his face flushed suddenly with sudden life, anticipating victory. He reached out, and there was no way to know whether he wanted to grasp the Horcrux or his son.
Malfoy recoiled a few more steps back. “No, you’d just speak the Killing Curse and throw my mother’s body to the wolves!”
“Maybe I would,” Lucius said softly, plausibly, and Harry wished he could talk like him but right now the look on Malfoy’s face was making it hard to think of anything to say at all. “But the ultimate responsibility, my boy, it lies with—”
“Oh, maybe you both killed her!” Malfoy shouted. “And maybe I hate you both!”
His voice echoed like a cry for help off the false sky. Nobody came, of course.
Malfoy clenched his fists at his sides, one holding his wand and one empty. He looked sick and scared and alone.
“You want to be on the winning side, don’t you?” Lucius asked.
“Yes,” said Malfoy through his teeth.
“It’s the Dark Lord’s. Trust me: you have to trust me, my boy. I love you,” said Lucius, and he was able to say it, and able to make it sound true. “I’m the only family you have left.”
The tight line of Malfoy’s shoulders eased a fraction as he looked at his father.
“If I—if I did trust you,” he said. “Would you promise me not to hurt Potter? He may have—lied to me and worse, but he was kind enough in a time when I needed someone to be kind. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t watch you—”
“Of course,” Lucius hastened to agree. “Of course, we can leave right away. Draco, I won’t harm a hair of his head. You can trust me. I’ll prove it.”
He held his hand out again. It shook slightly.
Harry tried to catch Malfoy’s eye but Malfoy kept looking away, face determinedly averted and jaw tight. He didn’t know what Malfoy was going to do or what he could possibly do to make things right. There was no way to make things right, really: none at all.
“I’m—sorry,” Harry said. “I’m sorry it happened, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Do whatever you want.”
Harry threw himself at Lucius Malfoy’s throat, lifting him by the collar of his robes clean off his feet with the power of pure rage.
“As for you… You’re not going to hurt me?” he snarled. “What if I want to hurt you?”
Lucius threw his laugh in Harry’s face. “I see,” he said. “So you’re absolutely determined to leave my son an orphan just like you?”
Harry released him abruptly and shoved him backwards, taking savage satisfaction in the way he tottered. He looked around for Malfoy and saw him standing with his back to them, as if he could not possibly bear to look at them for a moment longer.
“Ready to go, Draco?” asked Lucius, his voice kind and fatherly, as if they were going out on an excursion he’d promised his son, as if it was a treat.
“Ready, Father,” said Malfoy, his voice only wavering on the name. He turned abruptly and held out a hand to Harry. “It’s been—eventful, Potter.”
Harry took it. He wanted to hold on, but he didn’t. He let him go. Lucius put an arm around his son’s shoulders as they went down towards the dungeons, pulling him close as if he was terribly glad to have him back and would not let him slip away again.
Harry took the stairs up from the Great Hall two at a time. He couldn’t stop now, couldn’t think. He could barely feel anything, not sick or despairing or desperate. He didn’t have time: there were people were dying outside. He had to hunt through the castle until he found Voldemort.
The second floor seemed to be where the revolt had begun. The place was in ashy ruins, what had been the Charms classroom was a look into infinity, and the Death Eaters who had reached the castle all seemed to be on detail to capture and disarm the students. Four ran by in pursuit of Marietta Edgecombe.
“Hey!” Harry shouted, and threw a hex before they turned.
“Hey, it’s Potter, get reinforcements!” shouted Amycus Carrow. “Bring him down!”
Harry grinned, the pain at the back of his mind soothed by the promise of this, of clean furious action. “I’d love to see you try.”
There was the thunder of far more Death Eaters than he’d expected arriving, emerging as if they were dark phoenixes from the ashes around him. Well, it was too late to run: he threw the Killing Curse and wheeled to fire it again, and kept grinning.
“Leave him alone!” screamed Marietta, throwing herself in a flying tackle at Amycus’s massive back. He threw her off, brutally hard, and she hit the wall and slid down to the floor.
“I’ll deal with you later, you little traitor,” he told her limp body. “You think your face is a mess now? I—”
“Crucio,” said Harry.
He hesitated about throwing Unforgivables less than the Death Eaters did, he noted dully in the back of his head, in the same place he was keeping pain. And yet if it saved Marietta another hex or a kick in the ribs, it seemed worth it.
“Crucio,” screamed a woman’s voice behind him.
The pain hit hard, especially in his still-sore left side. It felt as if he was being flayed, bones aching and his insides twisting as if they could possibly get away from the agony. Harry kept his feet somehow, and wiped cold sweat off his face afterwards, tasting blood in his mouth again.
“That all you’ve got?” he demanded, and killed two more before another Cruciatus hit him, and he went down with that strange woman standing over him.
He lay in the ashes, his vision blurring, blood and ashes mingling together in his mouth now, and as if underwater he saw a tide rise at waist level and hit the Death Eaters, as a goblin army raced up the stairs of the Great Hall.
Ginny stood out because of her blazing curls as always, because of her height which was new, and because she had just thrown herself on the back of the woman standing before Harry and was trying to throttle her with her own hair.
After a moment she remembered she had a wand in her other hand, hit the woman on the side of the head with it and shouted something strange in what must have been a goblin tongue. The woman collapsed with blood coming out of her eyes and nose, trying to form shapes, and Ginny launched herself over her body to where Harry was trying to sit up, and offered him her hand. He took it and she hauled him to his feet, and he cursed another Death Eater at her shoulder.
“Thanks for saving me,” he yelled at her.
“No problem,” she said, grinning a bright triumphant grin. “Turns out you’re cute when you’re helpless.” She surveyed him with sparkling dark eyes. “You could maybe use a bath, though!” she shouted over a fresh roar from the goblins.
She was covered in masonry dust and blood: there was black ash in her bright hair.
“You on the other hand are spotless,” said Harry. “God, I hope Justin didn’t blow up the prefects’ bathroom.”
“Saw Justin on the way up here!” Ginny yelled, casting another of those disgusting blood-forming-shapes hexes: it looked like she’d mixed some dark goblin rite with the Bat-Bogey hex. “Apparently he loves catapults!”
“I’ve heard that!” Harry yelled back.
He threw another hex over her shoulder and they exchanged grins: sympathy bright between them. She liked to fly into Quidditch stands and he lost his temper and threw punches and curses without thinking, and it wasn’t ideal but it was, just now, a furious reckless bond.
“We’ll talk later!” Ginny screamed on his glance. “Go find Voldemort now!”
“Talk?” said Harry. “What about that bath?”
Ginny laughed and Harry ducked another hex, dodged and scythed his way through the fighting masses. The goblins had the Death Eaters on the run, and there was help on the way, students thundering through the far corridor with Pansy Parkinson at their head. Ginny nodded at them and Cho paused on her way to Marietta to bump fists with Ginny and exchange a bright smile: Harry didn’t know if the girls had ever spoken before. It didn’t seem to matter.
He saw with massive relief that Marietta was being helped to her feet, unsteady but with purpose alight on her face.
Her purpose caught fire in the other girls’ eyes. They circled in the same smooth way the wolves had outside, all with apparently the same target in mind.
Amycus Carrow took a step back, only to bump into Marietta. “Girls,” he began uneasily.
Pansy had her wand levelled at his throat. “I have a question, sir,” she said sweetly, and then her voice went cold. “Any last words?”
“Harry, for God’s sake go!” yelled Ginny.
Harry went, up onto the third floor, stairs moving smoothly as if they wanted him to get to where he wanted to be faster, as if they were on his side, the whole beloved castle fighting on their side, and then like staircases moving into a different pattern in his mind he realised how stupid he was being, and where Voldemort was.
He charged back down the stairs, and down the next flight of stairs, and was almost at the bottom when Ron, Hermione and Smith burst into the Great Hall.
“Harry!” Hermione shouted, and broke away from the knot to grab him and hug him hard. “Harry, thank God. We lost sight of you—is everything—”
“Hermione, thank God,” said Harry back, and released her after a clinging instant. He thought of Malfoy’s face when Lucius had told him, the icy devastated distance in his eyes, and put a closed fist up to the hollow of his throat. “Fine. Everything’s fine.” He grinned at them, Ron and Hermione safe, and almost meant it when he added: “I’m with you guys. What could be wrong?”
“Ginny should be in here somewhere,” Ron told him. “She and Mum killed Bellatrix Lestrange!”
“Let’s see her later,” said Harry. “Let’s go to the Owlery now. That’s where Voldemort is, of course,” he said, to the inquiring look on Ron and Smith’s faces and the dawning comprehension on Hermione’s. “Receiving bulletins from all over about how the battle is going. Let’s go bring it to him, shall we?”
“Ready when you are,” said Ron, and thumped Smith on the back in what could have been congratulations or reassurance. “Be a pity to quit now. Zach here accounted for—what was it, let me see—”
Smith beamed. Harry gave him a nod of recognition and then they stopped talking and left the main castle, running for the Owlery and throwing curses as they went.
They reached the courtyard and found it alive with Death Eaters, and there near the back, tall and pale, with green light surrounding him as if he’d cast the Killing Curse so many times the light of death hung around him like a miasma, was Voldemort.
Harry’s heart started beating so fast in his chest that it hurt.
He was outside already. That was good: he wouldn’t have to be lured out.
“Let’s get you to him,” said Ron, his two best friends in the world solid at his back and his enemy in front of him, and they charged.
Peter Pettigrew was the first to duck one of their hastier curses, and he came face to face with Hermione, who whispered a spell and watched him start to scream as his silver hand suddenly turned to boiling liquid and melted down his arm.
“Things created by magic are very susceptible to magic, he should’ve known that,” she said after she’d hexed him again. “People don’t read.”
The crush was insane, it seemed fair enough that the Death Eaters were trying to murder him but the amount of shouting and elbows involved seemed crazy. Harry shoved at one man and killed another, and turned his head when Smith said: “Ron, look out—” pulling him a little to one side, and then was struck full in the chest with a Killing Curse himself.
Ron stopped cold with Smith at his feet. Hermione deflected a curse aimed at him hastily and Ron choked, Harry’s hand under his elbow, and then the crowd surged and they were all shoved irresistibly apart. Smith’s body was being trampled somewhere on the ground behind them, Harry could still hear the little sound of horror and disbelief rising in Ron’s throat, and then a voice cut through the roar of battle like a scythe.
“All right!” said Voldemort. “Let’s end this. Bring him to me.”
The path was clear before Harry suddenly. All he had to do was walk it, across the stones of Hogwarts, under the fire-lit sky, to where his enemy was waiting.
It seemed so simple for a moment.
Then he looked away from Voldemort’s red eyes and saw Malfoy sitting at his father’s side, knee drawn up to his chest and arm around it. There was a dark bruise like a stain across his face that hadn’t been there the last time Harry saw him: seemed like Voldemort had not been as forgiving as Lucius had promised. He hadn’t been totally unforgiving either, Harry saw: he must want to save Malfoy to torment for later.
Malfoy’s eyes were fixed on him, clear and cold. Harry’s heart seemed to trip, feeling as if he were at home in the dark, stumbling unexpectedly in a place he had counted as familiar and safe.
Snape was on the other side of Voldemort in chains, standing between a tall chestnut-haired woman and Queenie Greengrass, who had her chin balanced on his shoulder. He glared at Harry, so he was probably okay.
Harry’s gaze swung back to Voldemort like a compass to due north. Voldemort’s gaze was steady and red, like tiny openings to hell. Harry thought he looked taller, his eyes redder and his skin chalkier than before, as if there was no fixed point even when you were a creature made of nightmares. Just a path: you chose one and you had to keep walking.
“Been getting up to quite a few adventures since I saw you last,” Voldemort said, voice like a cold breath at the back of your neck when you thought you were alone. “Developing a bit of a taste for blood, I hear.”
It felt as if that voice was getting into every pore of Harry’s skin, gloating and crawling, making Harry like him and less than him.
“Just one more before I quit,” Harry said. “Just you.”
Voldemort laughed. Harry shot red sparks from his wand and Voldemort stiffened and then laughed again.
“Sending up a little plea for help? Who’s going to come?”
“Just letting people know I’m here,” Harry said, fighting to keep his voice steady.
They’d all see those lights on the battlefield, they’d all come running, and if Voldemort won then everyone would see and all the disparate pieces of Harry’s strange, wonderful army would be torn to shreds. There were so many ways this could go wrong.
“Argent,” barked Snape.
Everyone turned to look at him for a moment. Nothing happened.
Then Malfoy laughed softly and said, “I broke that spell a while ago, Professor.”
“Not quite as stupid as he usually acts, I see,” Voldemort commented. “I might even let him live, Lucius.” He raised his voice. “Do you people think this is entertainment? Kill them all!”
Fighting broke out around them, sudden and furious, but it did not touch them. It was like being in the eye of a storm.
“Here we are at last,” Voldemort said. “Scared?”
He saw Neville and Pansy in the struggling crowd, fighting back to back. He saw Hagrid and Grawp and Fang at his heels tearing people to shreds, and Lupin and Tonks cutting a swathe of destruction: the Weasleys in a tight, flame-haired, fighting knot. Bill was fighting his way over to Ron and Hermione, Fleur a hissing tower of Veela fury beside him, and Ginny was a flicker like firelight in the distance and among the goblins. Malfoy was close and very still, waiting with the tension of a creature that was either hunted or hunting something.
They could all die. Harry knew he was probably going to die, not some time soon but now, and he didn’t want to with a sick, passionate ferocity. He wanted to go home and be with everyone he loved. He wanted an end to this.
Voldemort stood, spectral with burning eyes, in this school he’d never outgrown and waiting for Harry’s answer.
“Yeah, I’m scared,” Harry said. “But scared of you? I don’t think so.”
“Do you know how tired I am of you?” Voldemort asked. “Let’s finish this.”
“Sure,” said Harry.
He kept his grip steady on his wand, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Voldemort would want to talk and posture, he’d known this, he thought he’d waited long enough. He watched Voldemort step back, his robe swishing with a sound like shadows whispering, and looked up for the last time into red eyes.
“One more thing,” said Harry. “I wanted to show you something.”
He reached up and undid the top button of his shirt, and showed Voldemort the last Horcrux hanging around his neck, where it had been ever since Malfoy passed it to Harry in his last handshake.
As if far away he could hear someone calling Malfoy a traitor and the sounds of a fight breaking out in the midst of the Death Eaters, and Queenie screaming at Snape that the time to run was now. All he could see were those narrowed red eyes.
He broke their gaze and broke the chain on the locket and threw it as high and as hard as he could into the air, then looked up and saw the shape of the dragon blotting out the moon.
Bessie and Charlie had seen Harry’s signal and come right on time.
Fire cut through the night and made it burn bright as day, the last Horcrux nothing but a point of light like a falling star and then nothing at all.
The time before the second blast of flame was a single instant. It seemed longer: Harry knew it was going to have to last him as a lifetime.
He’d told Charlie he would run as soon as he’d tossed the locket, that he wouldn’t wait, that he’d risk Voldemort breaking after him. But of course he wasn’t going to. He wasn’t risking their one chance at a clear shot.
He was glad Charlie’d been the one to explain about the dragon, telling them about trajectories and the heat of dragonfire, since Ron, Hermione and Malfoy would surely have been able to tell Harry was lying.
Voldemort was irrelevant as long as he was still, unreal, a nightmare that had to be banished from the world and not part of it. Malfoy was fighting in a crowd of Death Eaters in that desperate no-holds-barred way he sometimes could, face flushed pink and eyes glittering, his father unbelievably fighting alongside him, Ron and Hermione were hand in hand, Ginny was crossing the battlefield like a comet.
They were all fighting to get to him. None of them would make it.
This was all worth dying for.
Harry got back a little, knowing it wouldn’t be enough, just wanting to be away from Voldemort in the last few moments, and the firebolt hit like lightning and then like a bath of flames, filling the world to the brim with white and blue and crimson and gold. The pain was so huge, lightning running along his bones and burning his skin, that he felt nothing.
It was all just light and—in the end—so very, very worth it.