Chapter Text
When your brother Rhaegar led his army into battle at the Trident, men died for him because they believed in him. Because they loved him.
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Rhaegar fought valiantly. Rhaegar fought nobly. … And Rhaegar died.
Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the End (day of battle)
Finally, the truth.
Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of Dumbledore’s office, Harry finally understood that he was not supposed to survive this. Neither would live, neither could survive.
It was over. He knew it. He had fought and he had survived so much and for such a long time, but this cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control them, though no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were all empty.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and with each rising inch he felt his stomach sinking to the floor. He felt so very heavy with the finality of it all; this was it. This was really it.
Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan. And Dumbledore had known Harry wouldn’t back out at the last moment, even though each step he took, each horcrux he destroyed, was another step towards his own destruction. Dumbledore had known, as Voldemort knew, as Harry knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now he had discovered that it was solely within his power to stop it. To stop the battle, the killing, the massacre.
And he wouldn’t.
He looked down at the battered gold watch, half of the surface glass marred with a scrape of indeterminate origin. There was enough clear glass left to see that nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his surrender had elapsed. Abruptly, he stood up, knees cracking, his heart beating hard in his chest.
He needed – he needed Ron and Hermione. He needed his friends. They had been with him since the beginning, and he needed them to be there at the end. He needed to say goodbye.
It took him barely ten minutes to reach the entrance hall. When he left Dumbledore’s office the castle was empty; everyone must have gathered in the Great Hall by now. He floated through the halls like a ghost, striding through rubble and over dark, wet bloodstains, past crumpled corpses. The broken wards thrummed in his ears, crackling at the ragged edges where the Death Eaters had torn through. It was the only sound in the eerie stillness.
He stopped in the shadows beside the entrance to the Great Hall, unable to enter. A low, indistinct murmur of voices floated through the doors, punctuated by the pained moans of the injured and the mourning. Looking through the doors, he could see people milling about, trying to comfort each other, kneeling beside the dead. A circle of red-haired heads surrounded the place where he knew Fred’s body laid, but Harry let his eyes skate over them for fear that seeing Ginny would weaken his resolve.
A gentle brush against his arm had him spinning around wildly, his heart hammering in his chest, his wand in the intruder’s face, teeth bared.
Hermione blinked at him, startled. The dark cloud of her hair blended into the shadows, but her eyes were wide and bright with something visceral he felt must be echoed in his own eyes.
“Hermione,” he breathed, lowering his wand. He must look feral – bloody-faced and hollow-eyed, still shell-shocked from the truth thrust upon him mere minutes before – but she let him pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her shoulders. He squeezed tightly, holding on and swaying slightly. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of smoke and dust and coppery blood like it was the freshest of air. He could smell the faintest hint of rose – the soap she used.
“Harry,” Hermione said against his chest. “You’re not…” She trailed off, the implication clear.
“No,” he said, the lie easy and sour-sweet in his mouth. “’Course not. I just…”
“Me too.”
A few more moments passed before Hermione pulled slightly away from his chest. He didn’t want to let go – this would be the last time he saw her. The last time she would see him, as well, though she didn’t – couldn’t, wouldn’t – know that. But he couldn’t hold on to her without her realising something was wrong. Maybe even realising what he meant to do. Realising that he’d lied.
Reluctantly, he let her slip from his arms.
“Ron’s inside,” she said, gesturing to the Great Hall.
Harry hadn’t been able – willing – to try and distinguish the Weasleys gathered around Fred’s body, but Ron must have been with them. And now, sick to his stomach with anticipation, with fear at what he was doing, he knew he couldn’t see Ron before he went.
Because to go inside, to cross to where the Weasley family was grieving Fred’s death, to be drawn into the embrace of the only real family he’d ever known, would make it impossible for him to carry out his task. To fulfil his prophesied fate. And Ginny – warm and bright, devilish smile, something floral in her hair – she’d take one blazing look at him and know. He’d never been able to hide anything from her.
No. He wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Ron.
Ron, his first friend. Fire-bright, beautiful Ron, always feeling too much but never ashamed of it, never afraid to show his hand, to wear his heart on his sleeve. Harry had put him through so much over the years, had put Ron’s family through so much; Ron had suffered through so much because of him. And yet, even now, Ron fought by Harry’s side, for Harry, with Harry, in spite of everything.
Harry swallowed hard over the sudden lump in his throat.
“I’ll come inside in a bit,” he rasped out, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
Hermione’s face creased in sadness. “Oh, Harry,” she murmured, reaching out to cup her hand against his cheek. He leaned into it, closing his eyes. The gathered tears trickled down his cheeks, tickling the stubble above his lip. “It’s not your fault.”
She wasn’t talking about the same thing, but it was. It was Harry’s fault that Fred had died, that all of the others had died and would keep dying if the battle resumed. But he would stop it. He would end it. It would take everything from him, but he would end it.
Hermione let her hand drop from Harry’s face. He swiped roughly at the tear tracks on his cheeks, blinking his eyes clear. He drank her in hungrily; she was so beautiful – how had he never really noticed before? Even covered in blood and ash – perhaps especially – and with a deep cut marring the brown-black skin of her left cheekbone. Gaunt-faced, and that was Harry’s fault, too; he never should have let her come on that cursed hunt for Voldemort’s horcruxes. But he didn’t know what he would have done without her.
Hermione reached out to grab his hand; squeezed once and then dropped it. “Come in when you’re ready.”
“Yep,” was all he could manage, high and strangled, and even that was enough for his voice to crack.
Hermione gave him a last, lingering look of concern before brushing past him to enter the Great Hall.
He stood there, frozen, for precious seconds, unable to move.
The soft chime of the entrance hall clock broke him out of his stupor. Fifteen minutes until his time was up. Fifteen short minutes.
It took impossible effort not to take one last glance into the Great Hall, to see Ron and Hermione and Ginny and the Weasleys one last time, but Harry gritted his teeth and forced himself to cross to the front doors, his neck taut and shoulders tense with the effort of holding himself together. Only a little while longer.
Slipping the invisibility cloak around his shoulders, Harry moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was nearly four in the morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds felt as though the entire place was holding its breath, waiting to see whether he would do what he must. What he had to do.
He walked past Neville, who was one half of a pair that was carrying another body inside from the grounds. Harry glanced dull and felt another dull blow to his stomach, already roiling with nausea and dread: Colin Creevey must have sneaked back into the castle the same way Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had done. He was so small, as pale as he was when he had been petrified in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts. Only this – this was permanent.
“You know what? I can manage him alone, Neville,” said Oliver Wood, and he heaved Colin over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him through the front doors to the entrance hall.
Neville watched him go for a second before he buried his face in his hands. Harry’s chest clenched, aching to go to Neville, to offer something – anything – to comfort him. But it would pale in comparison to what Harry could offer through his death.
And yet –
Harry moved towards Neville, who had dragged his hands down his face and taken in a deep breath. Pulling off the invisibility cloak, Harry said, “Neville.”
Neville jumped. “Blimey, Harry!” And then, suspiciously: “Where are you going, alone?”
The idea had come to Harry out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Dumbledore had said – it could have been either of them that Voldemort could have chosen. It was almost poetic, really, that the prophecy could be fulfilled in this way.
“I’ve a plan,” said Harry. “There’s something I’ve got to do. But listen, Neville –”
“Harry –”
“Listen,” Harry snapped. Neville’s eyes widened, and Harry wanted to take it back immediately. But it was too late in the hour, and he had somewhere he needed to be. “Listen,” he said again. “You know Voldemort’s snake? A huge snake, calls it Nagini?”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard, yes. What about it?”
“It’s got to be killed.” Like Harry had to be killed. “Hermione and Ron…” He trailed off, but he would not let his voice break again, would not let Neville see him wavering. He swallowed and pressed on through the lump in his throat. “They know the snake has got to be killed, but just in case they –” Nope, nope, nope. The possibility struck him to the core, smothering him in that moment, made it impossible to keep talking. But he pulled himself together again. This was crucial. He must be resolute. “Just in case they’re – busy – and you get the chance –”
“Kill the snake?”
“Kill the snake,” Harry affirmed.
“Alright, Harry. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
Oh, Neville. “I’m fine. Thanks, Nev.”
But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to step away.
“We’re all going to keep fighting,” said Neville, suddenly urgent. “You know that?”
“Yeah, I –” A suffocating feeling extinguished the end of the sentence; he could not go on.
Because maybe Harry was asking a lot, but this more than anything reinforced what he knew to be true: that those he was leaving behind – Neville, Ron, Hermione, Ginny – wouldn’t let this be in vain. They wouldn’t let him die for nothing. And Harry, in return, wouldn’t let them die for him. With the knowledge he now possessed, the fate forced upon him all those years ago, his life was all he could give them.
He hoped it would be enough.
Neville patted him on the shoulder, released him, and walked away to look for more bodies.
Harry swung the invisibility cloak back over himself and walked on. He did not look back.
When he reached the edge of the Forest, he stopped. A swarm of Dementors glided through the trees in front of him; he could feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely past them. He didn’t think he would be able to cast a Patronus – not because he didn’t have the strength, but because the despair of this walk to his own destruction, of saying goodbye to his friends, had left him hollow. But he couldn’t go around – there wasn’t enough time. Voldemort was waiting. It was near the end of the long game that had started so many years ago with that cursed prophecy; Voldemort’s fingers were inches from catching the Snitch, the game was almost done…
The Snitch.
He dropped the invisibility cloak from his shoulders; it fell to the ground with a thump of heavy fabric. He would leave it there, he decided, at the edge of the Forest. He didn’t need it where he was going.
With half-numb fingers, he fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and pulled the Snitch out.
I open at the close.
Barely breathing, he stared down at the Snitch in his fingers. It was small; smaller than he remembered it to be. This was it, he knew. He wouldn’t survive this. Somehow he knew that this was the exact moment Dumbledore had envisaged; Dumbledore had known it would come to this, that Harry would come to this point.
This was the close. This was the moment.
Flesh memories. He pressed the golden metal to his lips as whispered, “I am at the close.”
The metal broke open, revealing the black stone with its jagged crack running down the centre within the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone. It sat there in his palm, glinting in the moonlight.
Harry closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times.
When he opened his eyes again, they were there.
Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He was leaning on a tree, carelessly elegant, smiling softly.
Lily – as beautiful as she’d been in Snape’s memories, young and old at the same time – gave him a small, sad smile. She reached out to Harry, but withdrew her hand before she could try and touch him.
“Harry,” she said, her voice tinged with sorrow. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” he said immediately, automatically. Then: “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.”
“I wish it were.”
“I don’t.”
If the prophecy were true, it would have been Neville facing this fate. If the prophecy was a fantasy, or perhaps even if no one had heard it, it would have been hundreds or thousands of others falling under Voldemort’s wand in his pursuit of power. Here, now, in this world – it was just Harry. It may have been Lily’s sacrifice that brought him here, but – even if he were lying to himself – he would have liked to think that he would have been in exactly the same place, exactly the same situation, had it not. It was probably generous, even arrogant, but he felt like he could indulge himself at this point.
He turned to Sirius, the question falling from his lips before he could stop it. “Does it hurt?”
“Dying?” said Sirius, stepping off the tree and towards Harry. “Not at all. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
The corners of Sirius’ lips twitched, turning his smile dark and ironic. He knew Harry had known how hard it had been for Sirius to sleep after escaping from Azkaban; there had been many late nights at Grimmauld Place when Harry had heard him pacing the halls, restless and agitated.
Harry took a shaking breath. “Stay with me?” he asked them.
“Until the end,” said Sirius. Lily nodded once, her eyes still terribly sad.
And Harry stepped into the Forest.
The Dementors’ chill hit him like an icy wave, sinking into his bones like he’d dived into the lake in the cave by the sea, the lake Regulus had died in. Lily and Sirius strode beside him, acting as Patronuses when he could not cast one, their unearthly forms repelling the Dementors from him. Together, they moved through the old trees with their twisted roots, their gnarled forms curving overhead to form a thick canopy, dense and claustrophobic.
Harry strode on, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but somehow sure that he would find him. He could have used his scar, used their connection to gain some idea of where Voldemort might be, but Harry somehow knew that he wouldn’t need it. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, Lily and Sirius followed at his shoulders like a ghostly praetorian guard, escorting him on this final path to his death; twin Chirons on the River Styx.
They had travelled for mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead.
He turned to Lily and Sirius, knowing that it was time. Harry drank in their faces as he had Hermione’s not long before, suddenly starved – would he see them again? Would they meet again in death? He couldn’t be sure.
Lily reached out again, and this time he let her small, pale hand take the Resurrection Stone from his palm, letting his eyes slip closed.
When he opened them again, they were gone.
This was it. He was finally here, at the moment. The close. Neither would live, neither could survive.
Leap of faith.
With numb hands and nerveless limbs, Harry climbed under a fallen tree and into the clearing where he knew Voldemort was waiting.
A bonfire burned in the middle of the huge clearing, illuminating the gathered crowd. He knew this had been the place where Aragog had once lived; the remnants of his vast web were there still, but the swarm of descendants he had spawned had disappeared. In their place was a dark mass of Death Eaters – hundreds of them. Voldemort’s army.
Some of the gathered Death Eaters were still masked and hooded; others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the amassed Death Eaters, casting massive shadows over the scene, their faces crude and impassive as rough-hewn stone. Harry saw Fenrir Greyback at the back of the clearing, skulking, chewing his long nails; the great blond Rowle was dabbing at his bleeding lip. Lucius Malfoy stood beside the fire, defeated, his blond hair lank, Narcissa clutched to his side. Her sunken eyes were full of apprehension.
Harry stepped into the flickering light of the bonfire and a disembodied gasp echoed through the crowd of gathered Death Eaters.
Voldemort stood over the fire with his back to Harry, his head bowed, the back of his long, pale neck exposed. At his feet, Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, twisting and coiling.
“I knew you would come,” Voldemort said quietly into the flames, without turning.
Suddenly, Harry felt his magic surge towards Voldemort, forcing him to take a hard step forward to keep his feet. Panic filled him, hot and poisonous, and he pulled at his magic in desperation. It took several seconds of struggling before he clamped it back down beneath his skin, breathing hard, heart pounding. It was too much to hope no one had seen it swirling from his skin, black like smoke – not with every eye in the clearing fixed on him.
He tried to bring himself back under control; it was far, far too late to back down now.
Standing there in the deathly-silent clearing, surrounded by Death Eaters, mere feet from Voldemort, Harry felt very alone. It gripped his chest, the loneliness tightening like a vice around his ribs. He wished Ron and Hermione – no, no, he didn’t. He didn’t want them to see this. This was something he would do alone. He would die alone.
Voldemort raised his head. Slowly, he turned to Harry, his robes rustling the leaves at his feet. His red eyes locked onto Harry’s, his face curiously impassive.
Harry took another step towards him. Towards death. He would do this. He would not falter.
Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering, and a singularly mirthless smile curled his lipless mouth.
“Harry Potter,” he said, very softly. His voice lilted, like he was recounting a fairy tale. “The Boy Who Lived, come to die.”
And he had, hadn’t he? He’d come, just as Dumbledore had known he would, just as Voldemort had known he would, to the very precipice of the end. The edge of the tallest cliff. All that remained was the act itself.
The clearing was so silent he could hear the Death Eaters breathe, hear the fire crackle. Everyone, everything was waiting. Waiting.
Voldemort raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, curious and considering.
Harry looked right back at him, and with a sudden rush of fury thought, Do it now! Do it, coward! Before he lost control, before he lost everything –
Voldemort’s mouth moved. Harry braced for the flash of green light, and it took him a moment to hear what Voldemort had cast.
Not the killing curse.
Legilimens.
“No –” Harry choked out, recoiling. He raised an arm to shield his face, but it was too late.
The spell hit him hard enough he staggered backwards, mind shaken, his fragile mental defences scattering with the force of Voldemort’s spell. Voldemort took full advantage of the opening, of Harry’s weakness, to force himself into Harry’s head. The connection they shared through Harry’s scar simply gave Voldemort another avenue in, another way to loop around and ambush from the back as well as attack from the front.
It burned. He could hear himself screaming, could feel it in his throat, but he couldn’t resolve the two sensations into one action. He clutched both hands to his head and sunk to his knees, unable to stand against the onslaught of Voldemort’s mental attack. He couldn’t think. The pain filled his head like he’d shoved it into the bonfire, hot and sharp and driving everything else out.
He curled into the ground, into a useless protective ball, as small as he could. He could feel Voldemort’s furious focus, cold and controlled, as he drilled down into Harry’s mind, breaking each fragile wall Harry tried to shove in his path. He pushed harder still, until he was right where Harry didn’t want him to be –
There, in Dumbledore’s office, a mere half-hour before.
“No.” Harry felt himself whimper more than he heard the word spill from his lips. “No,” he pleaded. Voldemort couldn’t know, couldn’t –
It wasn’t meant to happen like this.
It took everything he had left, a herculean effort, to push himself to his feet again. He listed sideways, hands still clenched to the sides of his head, stumbling where he stood. He couldn’t see properly, the dual worlds of the clearing and the pain of Voldemort ripping through his head splitting his vision into fractals, nauseating and unfocused.
He lurched forwards – hell, he didn’t have half a clue what he was doing, just that he wanted all of this to stop – and blindly lashed out at Voldemort.
Voldemort caught his arm as Harry swung, his long, cold fingers wrapping around Harry’s wrist like a manacle.
The moment their skin made contact, a jolt shot up Harry’s spine like an electric shock. He gasped wetly, blood in his mouth, as every single last bit of control he had over his magic dissolved like parchment in water. It surged to where Voldemort’s hand gripped Harry’s wrist, cold black swirls coiling between Voldemort’s fingers like a lover.
Voldemort retreated from Harry’s mind in surprise; he watched Harry’s magic curl around his hand with wonder. Harry pulled at his grip, straining, but he couldn’t break free. Voldemort was too strong, and Harry’s magic betrayed him still, clinging to Voldemort’s hand even as Harry tried to pull himself free.
Voldemort broke in his fascination with Harry’s magic, turning his attention back to Harry. They were still connected enough through the Legilimens that Harry felt Voldemort’s intention the second before he dived back into Harry’s mind, twice as focused as before. He made up the ground he’d retreated from in seconds, cutting through like a hot knife through butter.
But this time, he went deeper. Harry choked on blood, Voldemort’s mind seeming to fill his throat like a rag until he was gagging, unable to breathe. Still Voldemort pushed. It was – violating. Voldemort pushed and pushed and Harry could do nothing. He may as well have invited Voldemort in, for how feeble his mental defences were. Seeking what Harry had seen in Dumbledore’s office, in Snape’s memories, Voldemort batted away Harry’s attempts to eject him like he was swatting away flies but with half the effort involved. Harry couldn’t stop him – he was inside and he wouldn’t get out, no matter how loud Harry screamed, no matter how hard he pushed.
And the betrayal beyond all others – Harry’s magic welcomed Voldemort in like an old friend.
Harry couldn’t feel his body anymore. He felt ripped apart, blasted to pieces, Voldemort’s mind the only thing holding all of him together. He felt – light, like he was floating through a void. And there, in the inky blackness, he saw what Voldemort had been searching for.
The very core of him. His soul.
A horror he didn’t know he was capable of feeling rushed up in him like a wave, even as his spun. He was falling through the void, his head rushing, nausea rising in his gut.
Because Harry saw his own soul and he knew. He knew the charcoal-like mass, rolling in and out of itself in the void of his core, glinting sickly like an oil slick, wasn’t really his.
And Voldemort knew it, too.
Harry saw – felt – Voldemort reach forward, his mind probing. Harry was powerless to resist; he could only witness something he knew would change everything, would change everything forever.
Because when Voldemort reached out and held Harry’s soul in his mind’s hand, he felt everything shift. That close to Voldemort, with Voldemort inside his head, Harry felt the exact moment Voldemort realised.
Realisation came with confusion. With clarity. Anger, fury. And then finally – a possessive feeling so fierce that Harry burned with it from the inside out, everything hot-hot-hot and red. And Harry soared. He felt lighter than air. Where before he’d felt like he was falling through the void, he now felt like he was floating upwards and upwards, untethered.
“Mine,” Voldemort hissed in Harry’s ear, yanking him back to his body, sending shivers down his limbs. Inside, Voldemort twisted his tight hold on Harry’s soul, strangling and wrong.
But there was something about it that felt impossibly right.
Abruptly, Voldemort withdrew fully from his mind. Harry stood there, empty, shaking like a leaf, frozen with horrified elation. He could still feel Voldemort’s grip on his soul, both alien and familiar, repulsive and soothing, even as Voldemort had released the Legilimens and was no longer inside his head.
Harry just stood there, sick to his core and frozen with horror, knowing that nothing would ever be the same again. Because Voldemort knew. He knew Harry was one of his horcruxes.
There was no chance Voldemort would kill him now.
Voldemort whirled around to face the gathered Death Eaters, his movements stiff with some barely-controlled emotion, his robes swirling around his feet.
“Return to the Manor,” Voldemort commanded the crowd of Death Eaters, who had apparently watched the entire scene before them unfold without moving an inch. “There has been a new development. We will finish this battle in time.”
Lucius took a step forward, trembling, “My Lord –”
Voldemort’s wand flashed and Lucius cried out, folding over at the waist. Narcissa grabbed him by the sides to keep him upright, her eyes large with apprehension.
“The Manor,” Voldemort repeated, voice flat with disgust, returning his wand to his robes.
The clearing echoed with the cracks of apparition, no other Death Eater seemingly brave enough to argue. As the crowd dispersed, the giants stood from their seats at the edge of the clearing, turning to head deeper into the Forest, each slow step heavy enough to shake the earth. Bellatrix was the last Death Eater to disapparate, fixing Harry with a wild look that might have been something like jealousy. Then, with a crack, she was gone as well.
Then, the clearing was empty but for Voldemort and Harry, who hadn’t been able to make himself move. He stood, shaking and terrified, waiting for what Voldemort would do with him. Fear clouded his head like cotton. He was too terrified to think.
“Nagini,” Voldemort called, reaching down a hand towards the snake. She slithered out of her cage and up Voldemort’s arm to settle around his shoulders, long body draped over his collarbones like a scaly shawl.
Turning back to Harry, Voldemort slid his hand down the side of Harry’s neck to rest on his shoulder, almost a caress. Harry felt his magic reach up to interlink with Voldemort’s fingers there, betraying him again.
Voldemort’s red eyes bore into his, bright with malevolence and that same possessive need as before. “Come, Harry. We need to have a talk.”
And the world disappeared.