Disclaimer: I do not have any rights of ownership for the characters used except the OC's. All the credit goes to the authors. Only the plot belongs to me. All characters are aged up (above 18) and are consenting adults. This is a work of fiction and does not resemble reality in any way whatsoever.
Chapter 17
~ Harry Potter ~
The air inside the ruined, blood-soaked bedroom of the late Bathilda Bagshot hung heavy and stagnant, thick with the suffocating stench of decay, copper, and the tang of dark magic. The silence that stretched between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort was a physical weight, pressing down on the crumbling floorboards, vibrating with the catastrophic potential of two unparalleled magical titans preparing to collide.
Harry stood his ground.
He did not flinch beneath the suffocating weight of the Dark Lord's aura.
He didn't drop his gaze from those blazing, reptilian scarlet eyes. Instead, a slow, dark, and utterly unapologetic smirk carved its way across his face.
He was a man who had ripped a parasite from the mind of a living witch, a Lord who had claimed the ancient, thrumming power of the House of Black, and he had absolutely no intention of showing this pale, hairless monstrosity a single ounce of fear.
"Let's see if you can put up a better fight than your pet," Harry taunted in a casual tone that echoed with lethal promise in the small room. He twirled his holly wand between his fingers—a reckless, arrogant gesture meant entirely to disrespect the creature standing before him. "Because tonight, Tom, you're the one who isn't walking out of here alive."
Voldemort's lipless mouth twitched.
The mockery, the casual use of his given, Muggle name, struck the Dark Lord like a physical blow. The absolute certainty in Harry's voice was a glitch in the reality Voldemort had so carefully constructed. For seventeen years, this boy had run, had hidden behind the skirts of his mother's sacrifice and the colourful robes of Albus Dumbledore.
Now, he stood alone in a slaughterhouse, grinning like a predator. What had changed?
"You dare," Voldemort hissed. The ambient temperature in the room plummeted further, a flare of magic filling the air in the room as a sudden chill swept through the rotting walls of the cottage. "You stand amidst the ruin of your pathetic past, surrounded by the stench of death, and you dare to speak to me with such insolence? I have conquered this country, Harry Potter. I have broken the Ministry. Your Order is scattered, hiding in the dirt like the vermin they are. And you? You are a child playing at being an equal to my magnificence."
Harry let out a short, sharp laugh. It was a sound that sliced through the oppressive dread of the room. He took a casual step to the side, his posture relaxed, his wand hanging loosely at his side, though his emerald eyes tracked every movement of the abomination in front of him.
"Conquered the country, have you?" Harry asked, his tone dripping with condescension. "Is that what you call it? Hiding in Malfoy Manor while you send your Snatchers out to do the dirty work? You haven't conquered anything, Tom. You're just squatting in a house you didn't build, ruling over a bunch of terrified cowards who would stab you in the back the second they thought they could get away with it."
Harry paused, tilting his head, his smirk widening, mockery etched into his face.
He had spent his entire life being the victim of this man's obsession. Now, it was time to return the favour.
He was going to dissect Voldemort's pathetic, fragile ego, piece by piece.
"And let's talk about that, actually," Harry continued, his voice adopting a conversational, almost bored cadence. "The whole 'Pureblood Supremacy' thing. It's hilarious, really. The grand, terrifying Lord Voldemort, champion of the sacred twenty-eight, destroyer of Muggle blood. Did you ever tell Lucius? Did you ever tell any of those sycophants who kiss your robes?"
Voldemort's scarlet eyes narrowed into slits. The pale, spider-like fingers gripping the yew wand whitened further. "Silence your ignorant tongue, boy."
"Oh, hit a nerve, did I?" Harry mocked, taking another slow step. "Did you tell them that the great heir of Slytherin is a half-blood? That your father was a rich Muggle who lived in a manor on a hill? A Muggle who took one look at your mother, realized she was a desperate, pathetic witch who had dosed him with a love potion, and ran for the hills the second it wore off?"
"Crucio!"
The spell ripped from Voldemort's wand with zero hesitation, a blinding flash of furious red light that tore across the room. It was cast with a speed that defied human reflexes, fuelled by a raw, unadulterated shame that Voldemort had spent decades trying to bury.
Harry didn't even blink. He didn't dive for cover. With a flick of his wrist so fast it was a mere blur, he transfigured a thick slab of solid granite from the floorboards. The Unforgivable Curse slammed into the stone with a deafening crack, spreading along the rock like a spider's web before dissipating into harmless red sparks.
"Temper, temper, Tommy," Harry chided, stepping out from behind the shattered granite slab, his smirk firmly in place. "Truth hurts, doesn't it? You hate Muggles because your daddy didn't want you. You hate them because he abandoned you to a filthy Muggle orphanage where you were nothing but a creepy, unloved little child. You're not a god, Tom. You're just a rejected kid with daddy issues throwing a fifty-year-long temper tantrum."
Voldemort's chest heaved. The air around him distorted, rippling with the sheer magnitude of his rage. The floorboards groaned, the wood splintering under the pressure of his magic.
"I am Lord Voldemort!" he roared, his voice losing its cold, aristocratic edge, cracking with a monstrous, inhuman fury. "I have pushed the boundaries of magic further than any wizard in history! I have conquered death!"
"Have you?" Harry countered immediately, his voice rising, cutting through the Dark Lord's bluster like a scythe. "Because from where I'm standing, you look like a massive, incompetent failure. Let's review your track record, shall we? Eighteen years ago, you walked into this very village. You were at the height of your power. You came to kill a one-year-old baby in a crib. And what happened? The baby lived, and you got blown out of your own body, reduced to a pathetic wraith hiding in the forests of Albania, possessing rats and snakes just to survive."
Harry took a step forward, closing the distance, his magic flaring, matching Voldemort's oppressive aura. The room was practically vibrating, the air saturated with the magic of two titans of magic.
"Then, eleven years later, you try to steal a stone to get your body back," Harry sneered. "Bested by an eleven-year-old. The next year? Your precious diary, a piece of your very soul, destroyed by a twelve-year-old with a sword and a giant bird and your snake dead. You couldn't even kill me in the graveyard when you had me surrounded by your entire inner circle. You couldn't kill me in the Department of Mysteries. You had the greatest wizard in the world, Albus Dumbledore, killed by your spy. You have the Ministry in your pocket. And yet... almost two decades later, here we are. I'm still breathing, Tom. And you still can't get the job done."
Voldemort's face contorted into a mask of pure resentment. His red eyes flared like twin suns. He raised his yew wand, the air humming with the dark energy of a dozen lethal curses preparing to be unleashed simultaneously.
But Harry wasn't finished. He had one final nail to hammer into the coffin of Voldemort's sanity. He wanted the Dark Lord completely unhinged.
He wanted him reckless.
"You know, for a Dark Lord, you really don't pay attention to your own ranks," Harry said, his voice dropping to a low, conversational whisper that somehow managed to echo louder than a shout. "You rely on monsters and madwomen to do your bidding because you're too cowardly to do it yourself. Take Fenrir Greyback, for instance."
Voldemort's wand tip twitched, a spark of green light leaking from the end. "The werewolf was a blunt instrument. His loss is inconsequential."
"Is it?" Harry asked, raising a single, arrogant eyebrow. "Because he was making quite a mess in the countryside. It was almost a pity when I found him in Wiltshire. He thought he was so tough. Thought his pack made him invincible." Harry's smile turned feral, his emerald eyes flashing with the memory of the roaring, violent flames. "I burned him alive, Tom. I turned your favourite attack dog and his entire pack into a pile of smoking ash. He screamed quite a bit at the end. It was music to my ears."
Voldemort's nostrils flared, his breathing ragged.
The loss of Greyback had been a mystery that had infuriated him, a display of power from an unknown third party that had made him paranoid. To find out it was the boy standing before him, the one he had sworn to destroy... it was a profound insult to his pride.
"But Greyback was nothing," Harry continued, twisting the knife, his voice dripping with a casual, devastating cruelty. "He was just a mutt. Let's talk about something that really stings. Let's talk about Bellatrix."
At the mention of his most devoted, most vicious lieutenant, Voldemort's entire frame went rigid. The air pressure in the room spiked, shattering the remaining glass in the window frames into a million glittering shards.
"You speak her name, boy, but you know nothing," Voldemort hissed. "She is my most loyal. She is a weapon forged by my fire."
"Oh, I know all about how she was forged," Harry said, his voice turning deadly cold, the banter vanishing entirely. "I know what you did to her, Tom. I know about the Vinculum Animae. I know you forced a piece of your filthy soul into her mind, breaking her, turning a brilliant witch into a raving, psychotic puppet."
Voldemort's scarlet eyes widened in absolute, unadulterated shock. It was a secret he had guarded with his life, a piece of dark magic so obscure and horrific that not even his most trusted inner circle knew the truth of Bellatrix's madness. For Harry Potter to know this... it was impossible.
"How..." Voldemort breathed, the word slipping out before he could stop it.
Harry grinned, a triumphant, savage expression that promised absolute ruin. "Because she came after me two nights ago. She attacked the Tonks family. And I didn't just beat her, Tom. I didn't just capture her."
Harry leaned forward, his voice a mocking purr similar to the lunatic before him. "I brought her back to reality. I broke your pathetic soul bond, I reached into her mind, and I dragged your shadow out of her by the throat. I burned your soul to ash, Tom. And then... I saved her."
Voldemort let out a high, keening sound of pure, instinctive denial. The psychic backlash of losing that decade old connection had driven him to his knees days ago, but he hadn't known the source. He hadn't known it was him.
"You're lying!" Voldemort roared, his denial absolute. "She is mine! Her mind belongs to me! She would never—"
"She's sitting in my drawing room right now, Tom," Harry interrupted, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "She's sane. She's free. And do you want to know the best part? The moment I filled the void you left behind with my own magic; she imprinted on me. She calls me 'My Lord' now. She sleeps in my bed. Your greatest weapon, your most fanatical follower, would gladly cut her own throat if I asked her to. She belongs to me."
It was the ultimate rage-bait.
The utter destruction of Voldemort's pride, the theft of his most prized possession, the desecration of his dark arts, all wrapped up in the arrogant, mocking smile of the boy who refused to die.
Something inside the Dark Lord simply snapped.
Voldemort let out a scream that was entirely inhuman. It was a sound that tore at the very fabric of reality, a screech filled with such profound hatred that echoed through the degraded, old house.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The Killing Curse that erupted from his wand was not a simple jet of green light. It was a roaring wave of absolute death, fuelled by the hatred for the boy who dared to mock his brilliance. It rushed towards Harry with unprecedented speed.
Harry didn't rely on dodging. The space was too tight, the spell too massive. He met power with power.
Drawing on the immense, bottomless well of magic that had stabilized within his core since the removal of his own Horcrux, Harry slashed his holly wand upward in a violent, desperate arc.
"TERRA CLYPEUS!"
The earth beneath the foundation of the cottage groaned. A massive, ten-foot-thick wall of compressed bedrock and frozen earth tore upward through the rotting floorboards, erupting between them an instant before the Killing Curse struck.
The impact was catastrophic.
The green light slammed into the wall with extreme force. The shockwave blew the roof completely off the cottage, sending thatched straw and snow blasting into the night sky. The wall held for a second before detonating inward, showering Harry with stone shrapnel.
Harry threw up a silent, golden Protego, the stones pinging harmlessly against the shimmering barrier, though the sheer force pushed him backward, his boots sliding through the blood and debris.
He didn't wait for the dust to settle. He was a seasoned fighter now, trained by necessity, fuelled by the magic running in his blood. He stepped through the cloud of pulverized rock, his wand moving in a blur as he set off his own chain of spells.
"Confringo! Sectumsempra! Diffindo Maxima!"
Harry chained the curses together flawlessly, a relentless barrage of explosive force, invisible cutting blades, and overpowered slashes that sought to rip apart everything it touched.
Voldemort, floating inches above the ruined floor, batted the spells away with practiced ease. The blasting curse was redirected into the ceiling, obliterating what remained of the second floor. The slashing curse was absorbed by a shield of condensed, black mist. The cutting curse was redirected towards the other end of the room, finding its way through the hall and ending up through the kitchen as it destroyed the appliances left there by the late witch who had been gored and left to rot.
Steam filled the room as the two took a second to assess the situation.
Through the blinding fog of the steam, Voldemort retaliated.
He moved with the impossible, fluid grace of a man who had been fighting for over half a century. He didn't just cast simple spells; he wove a chain of dark magic that sought to flay Harry alive. Curses the colour of bruised organs, spells that whispered with the voices of the damned, arcs of dark lightning that crackled and burned the oxygen from the air.
Harry met him step for step. He was a whirlwind of motion, his body moving on instinct. He parried a curse that would have boiled his blood with a perfectly timed flick, sending it crashing into a rotting wardrobe. He ducked beneath a sickle-shaped blade of dark energy, springing back up to unleash a torrent of transfigured glass daggers, turning the shattered window panes into a deadly swarm of shrapnel that rushed the Dark Lord.
Voldemort shrieked in frustration, a blast of concussive magic from his wand pulverizing the glass into fine sand before it could strike his pale skin.
"You are nothing but a thief!" Voldemort roared over the din of the collapsing house, his red eyes burning through the swirling dust. "You dare steal my followers! You steal my magic! But you cannot steal my immortality!"
Voldemort raised his yew wand high above his head, his skeletal fingers twitching. He began to chant in a guttural, archaic language that made Harry's ears ring and his teeth ache. The shadows in the room began to lengthen, stretching unnaturally, peeling themselves off the walls and the floor, coalescing into physical, thrashing forms.
Fiendfyre?
No. Shadows.
Massive, writhing serpents made of pure, abyssal darkness erupted from the tip of Voldemort's wand, their jaws unhinged, their eyes glowing with a sickly, toxic green light. They slithered through the air, completely ignoring gravity, rushing toward Harry from all angles, their sheer proximity radiating a cold so profound it felt like sub-zero against Harry's skin.
Harry's breath hitched. He couldn't shield against this. The curse seemed to consumed light and magic alike.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Harry poured every ounce of his determination, every memory of Narcissa's warm embrace, of Fleur's laughter, of Apolline's teasing, and the recent memory of his parents' gravestone into the spell.
A blinding, iridescently glowing stag erupted from the tip of his wand, but it was not the simple, ethereal construct it used to be. Fuelled by the vast reserves of his stabilized core, the stag was massive, blindingly bright, radiating a holy, pure light that burned like a miniature sun.
The stag charged, lowering its razor-sharp antlers. It collided with the shadow-serpents, a clash of light against absolute darkness. The shadows hissed and shrieked as they were pierced, evaporating into harmless black smoke, the sheer magnitude of Harry's positive magic overwhelming Voldemort's dark conjuration.
Voldemort recoiled, shielding his eyes from the blinding silver light, a snarl of genuine disdain twisting his skeletal features.
Harry didn't hesitate. He saw the opening, the lapse in the Dark Lord's impenetrable defence. He surged forward, dropping low to the ground, his wand snapping out in a vicious, horizontal arc.
"Diffindo Maxima!"
The overcharged severing charm ripped through the air, aimed directly at Voldemort's midsection.
Voldemort's eyes widened. He threw himself backward, apparating a mere three feet to the left, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid it entirely. The invisible blade caught the edge of his billowing black robes, slicing through the fabric and grazing his pale, unnatural skin. A thin line of black, viscous blood welled up along the Dark Lord's ribs.
Voldemort stared down at the cut, his expression one of absolute, uncomprehending shock.
He had been wounded. By a boy. In a straight duel.
The shock lasted for a fraction of a second, immediately consumed by a rage so vast, so incredibly violent, that the very air in Godric's Hollow began to vibrate.
"I WILL FLAY YOU ALIVE!" Voldemort screamed, his voice shattering what little remained of the cottage's wall behind him.
He unleashed a barrage of magic so dense, so terrifyingly rapid, that Harry was forced entirely on the defensive. Harry's holly wand was a blur, weaving shields of gold and solid stone, each one buckling and shattering under the sheer magnitude of the Dark Lord's wrath.
Harry was forced backward, step by agonizing step, his boots slipping on the debris, his muscles burning with the effort of holding back the tide of death.
He was so focused on the onslaught, so entirely consumed by the necessity of parrying Voldemort's relentless, blindingly fast curses, that he forgot the cardinal rule taught to him by Mad-Eye Moody.
Constant Vigilance.
Nagini had not fled.
When Voldemort had arrived, the massive serpent had retreated to the shadows, slithering beneath the wreckage of the floorboards, obeying the silent, psychic command of her master. She had waited, patient and lethal, cloaked in a heavy, flawless disillusionment charm cast by the Dark Lord himself. She had masked her heat, her scent, merging entirely with the ruin and the rubble.
As Harry took another step backward, his heel caught on a shattered floorboard. He stumbled, his balance shifting for a fraction of a second.
It was all the opening she needed.
From the debris directly beneath Harry's right leg, the disillusioned serpent struck.
In a blur of motion that Harry didn't see coming until the very last second, a shimmer in the space near his thigh, it got him. He tried to pivot, tried to pull his leg away, but his momentum was already carrying him backward.
The jaws snapped shut.
The pain was not immediate. For a singular, suspended heartbeat, there was only the horrifying, immense pressure of the massive jaws clamping down around his right calf, just above the top of his dragon-hide boot.
And then, the fangs pierced his skin.
Harry let out a raw, agonizing scream that tore from the very bottom of his lungs. It was a sound of torment, echoing over the roar of the magical duel.
The fangs, thick as daggers, drove deep into the muscle of his calf, scraping against the bone with a sickening, grinding crunch. But the physical trauma of the bite was nothing compared to the venom.
As Nagini clamped down, her venom glands pumped a lethal dose of highly concentrated, dark-magic-infused poison directly into his bloodstream. It felt like someone had injected molten lava mixed with shattered glass straight into his veins. The fire raced up his leg, an agony that made his vision white out completely. His muscles seized, a horrific, agonizing cramp spreading through his entire side.
He collapsed onto his left knee, his right leg trapped in the crushing vice of the invisible serpent's jaws.
"YES!" Voldemort hissed, a cruel, triumphant laugh erupting from his lipless mouth. He didn't stop casting. He stepped forward, unleashing a barrage of dark, tearing curses, aiming to finish the crippled boy while he was trapped.
Through the blinding, white-hot haze of absolute agony, Harry's survival instinct screamed.
He did not drop his wand. He did not grab his leg.
Gritting his teeth until he tasted copper, tears of pure agony streaming down his soot-stained face, Harry forced his arm up. His holly wand trembled violently in his grip, but his magic, energised by a stubborn, refusing-to-die resilience, flared brightly.
He parried Voldemort's incoming curses from his knees. A golden shield erupted, deflecting a purple curse into the ceiling. A swift slash of his wand batted a bone-breaking hex into the far wall. He was screaming, a continuous, breathless sound of pain, but his arm did not falter. He was a Lord of the House of Potter and Black, and he would not die on his knees in the dirt.
But Nagini was not finished.
The massive serpent, sensing her prey struggling, began to writhe. She coiled her thick, muscular body, her invisible scales shifting against the floorboards. She tightened her jaw, her fangs sinking deeper into the bone, and began to twist.
She was going to rip his entire leg clean off at the knee.
"GET OFF ME!" Harry roared, pointing his wand blindly down at the shimmering distortion around his leg.
He fired a blasting curse, but the angle was impossible, and the pain disrupted his focus. The spell grazed the invisible scales, merely angering the beast further. The pressure on his leg increased, the sound of his own muscle fibres tearing audibly in the quiet spaces between spell-fire.
His vision was darkening at the edges. The venom would soon reach his heart.
He was losing. He couldn't fight the Dark Lord and a twenty-foot magical serpent hell bent on amputating him at the same time.
Voldemort walked closer, his red eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure. He raised his wand, pointing it directly at Harry's forehead, aiming precisely for the faint, lightning-bolt scar that no longer housed his soul.
"The boy who lived," Voldemort whispered, savouring the moment. "About to die."
Harry glared up at him, his green eyes burning with defiance even as his body failed him. He gripped his wand, preparing to cast one final, explosive curse that would take the cottage, the snake, and the Dark Lord straight to hell with him.
But before Voldemort could speak the words of the Killing Curse, and before Harry could unleash his suicidal retaliation, the atmosphere in the ruined cottage changed again.
It was not a drop in temperature. It was an explosion of warmth.
A sudden, blinding flash of golden-red light erupted in the centre of the room, so intensely bright that both Harry and Voldemort were forced to shield their eyes. It was a light that carried no heat of destruction, but the radiant warmth of a summer sun breaking through a storm cloud.
And then, a sound filled the air.
It was an ethereally beautiful melody, a trilling that was both a battle cry and a lullaby. To Harry, the song sounded like hope, like the gentle touch of his mother, like the fierce, protective love of the women waiting for him. It bolstered his failing heart, pushing back the dark, numbing effects of the venom.
To Voldemort, the song sounded like burning ash, like the agony of a soul being ripped apart. The Dark Lord clamped his hands over his ear-less head, a hiss of profound pain escaping him.
Fawkes had arrived.
The magnificent phoenix materialized directly above Harry, his crimson and gold plumage glowing with an internal, holy fire. He did not merely hover gracefully.
With a fierce shriek, Fawkes plummeted toward the invisible distortion clamped around Harry's leg. He extended his sharp, golden talons, but he did not merely slash.
Fawkes ignited.
The phoenix burst into a roaring sphere of golden-red fire. He slammed into the invisible serpent, the divine flames clinging to Nagini's scaled hide like burning pitch.
The disillusionment charm shattered instantly under the magical assault. Nagini became visible, writhing in sudden, unendurable agony. The holy fire of the phoenix was the absolute antithesis of the dark, corrupt magic that was flowing through her and housed the fragment of Voldemort's soul. It burned not just her flesh, but her very essence.
Nagini opened her jaws, releasing Harry's leg to let out a deafening, terrifying shriek of pain.
Harry scrambled backward, dragging his ruined, bleeding leg across the floorboards, putting distance between himself and the thrashing, burning serpent.
"NO!" Voldemort roared.
The Dark Lord abandoned his duel with Harry completely. The sight of his precious familiar, his Horcrux, being consumed by the flames of Dumbledore's phoenix shattered his mind. He threw himself forward, his skeletal hands outstretched, screaming incantations of water, of ice, of anything even remotely useful to put out the flames of a phoenix.
Torrents of black water erupted from his wand, crashing over the thrashing serpent. But a phoenix's fire was not natural. It devoured dark magic. The water evaporated instantly into clouds of foul-smelling steam, doing absolutely nothing to quench the flames.
"Nagini!" Voldemort screamed, dropping to his knees, his hands reaching into the flames, uncaring as the holy fire blistered his own pale skin. He tried to cast containment fields, tried to siphon the magic away, his red eyes wide with a frantic, desperate terror that Harry had never, ever seen on his face before.
He was watching a piece of his own soul burn to death, and he was completely, utterly powerless to stop it.
Fawkes hovered above the burning snake, singing a triumphant, piercing note that shook the remaining walls of the cottage.
With a final, sickening crack, Nagini's massive body went rigid. The thick, scaled hide blackened and split, and a dark, oily cloud of screaming black smoke erupted from her open jaws. It was the soul fragment, thrashing in the air for a fraction of a second before the golden flames of the phoenix consumed it entirely, reducing it to absolutely nothing.
Nagini collapsed, a charred, smoking husk upon the ruined floorboards.
Another Horcrux, dead.
Voldemort let out a scream of such profound, soul-tearing agony that he collapsed forward, clutching his own chest, his body convulsing as the phantom pain of his severed soul fragment hit him.
Harry lay against the far wall, his vision swimming, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He looked at the smoking remains of the snake, and then at the crippled, screaming Dark Lord. He raised his wand, his hand shaking violently, preparing to cast the final curse. He could end it right now.
But his body betrayed him. The venom, though slowed by the phoenix song, had done its work. The world tilted violently on its axis, his wand slipping from his numb, blood-stained fingers, clattering against his side. The darkness was pulling him under.
Fawkes did not wait for the Dark Lord to recover.
The phoenix swooped down in a graceful, sweeping arc. He extended his golden talons, latching gently but firmly onto the fabric of Harry's robes, right at the shoulder.
With a flick of his golden tail feathers, a swirl of heat enveloped them both. The world dissolved in a blinding flash of golden fire, the ruined cottage, the dead snake, and the screaming Dark Lord vanishing instantly into the void.
~ Harry Potter ~
Harry hit the ground hard.
The sudden, wrenching displacement of phoenix travel deposited him unceremoniously onto a bed of freezing, damp pine needles and deep, untouched snow. The impact sent a fresh, blinding wave of agony shooting up his mangled right leg, tearing a choked, breathless groan from his throat.
He rolled onto his back, his chest heaving, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the pain. The cold was a sharp contrast to the heat of the duel, shocking his system, forcing his sluggish heart to pump the venom-laced blood slightly faster.
Slowly, agonizingly, he forced his eyes open.
He was no longer in Godric's Hollow.
Above him, a canopy of towering, ancient pine trees stretched up toward a star-filled, indigo sky. The wind here was gentle; unlike the destructive roar of the battle, he had just fled. It was a forest, deep and secluded, completely isolated from the prying eyes of the world.
A soft, trilling note sounded near his head.
Harry turned his head, his cheek resting against the freezing snow.
Fawkes was standing beside him. The magnificent bird looked slightly ruffled, his golden-red feathers puffed out against the cold, but his intelligent eyes were fixed on Harry with a profound, mournful concern.
Harry swallowed dryly, his throat feeling like sandpaper. He looked at the phoenix, the creature that had belonged to the man who had manipulated his entire life, the creature that had just saved him from absolute certainty of death.
"Why?" Harry rasped, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper. "Why did you come back? Dumbledore is dead. You were free. Why did you come back for me?"
Fawkes cocked his head to the side, examining the broken, bleeding young Lord. The bird took a small, hopping step forward, closing the distance between them.
Harry reached out a trembling, blood-stained hand. His fingers were numb, but he pushed past the pain. "You don't owe me anything, Fawkes," Harry whispered, his eyes swimming with unshed tears of exhaustion and pain. "You aren't bound to me. You aren't bound to Dumbledore's plans anymore. You can fly away. You can choose to come and go as you please. You're free. Freer than I ever was."
Fawkes let out a sound that was not a mournful cry, but a soft, happy trill that vibrated in the quiet forest. It was a sound of acknowledgement, of absolute, pure affection. The phoenix did not take flight. He did not leave.
Instead, Fawkes lowered his majestic head. He leaned forward and gently, affectionately, tapped his golden beak directly against the centre of Harry's chest, right over his heart.
The moment the beak touched him, a sensation bloomed within Harry's chest.
It was not the burning, destructive heat of the fire that had consumed Nagini.
It was warmth. It was joy.
It seeped through his combat robes, through his skin, sinking deep into his sternum and wrapping around his slowly beating heart. It was a comforting, familiar warmth, a sensation of absolute safety and unconditional love.
It was a warmth he had not felt since the day a snowy white owl had fallen from the sky after protecting him, plummeting into the dark night.
Harry's breath hitched, the sudden swell of emotion tightening his throat. Hot tears pricked the corners of his eyes, spilling over his soot-stained cheeks and freezing in the bitter winter air. But for the first time in what felt like an eternity, the tears weren't born of grief or rage. They were tears of overwhelming happiness and gratitude.
He managed a weak, exhausted smile, reaching up with a trembling, bloodied hand to stroke the phoenix's magnificent crimson plumage.
"You chose me," Harry whispered, his voice cracking. "Thank you, my old friend. But remember... you are not bound to me. You aren't tied to my war or Dumbledore's ghost. You can choose to come and go exactly as you please. You're free."
Fawkes let out another trill, this one bright and unequivocally happy, rubbing his warm, feathered head affectionately against Harry's frozen cheek.
But the tender moment was sharply interrupted by a violent spasm in Harry's right leg. The phoenix's presence had bolstered his body and magic, fighting off the immediate lethality of Nagini's venom, but the massive, jagged wound was still bleeding sluggishly, the corrupted poison burning through his muscle tissue like molten, acidic lava.
Harry gritted his teeth, suppressing a groan. He reached into the pocket of his combat trousers, his fingers closing around a slender vial filled with a neon green liquid.
Narcissa's stern voice echoed in his memory. "Never leave the wards without it, my Lord. Your recklessness is a trait we will have to manage."
It was a highly concentrated Wiggenweld potion, brewed personally by the Lady of the House. Harry uncorked the vial with his teeth and poured half the vibrant green liquid directly over the mangled flesh of his calf.
The reaction was instantaneous and agonizing.
The wound hissed, bubbling with white foam as the potion neutralized the dark magic and forced the torn muscle fibres to knit together. It was a shallow, superficial heal—the bone still ached, and the leg would need proper magical tending—but it sealed the fatal bleeding and stopped the venom from necrotizing his limb.
He downed the rest of the potion in one burning gulp, tossing the empty vial into the snow. Using a nearby pine trunk for leverage, Harry forced himself to his feet. His right leg trembled, barely supporting his weight, but it held.
He took a deep breath, the icy air filling his lungs, and finally took in his surroundings.
The forest was ancient, the pines towering so high they blotted out the stars. But it wasn't just the sheer age of the woods that caught his attention. It was the distinct, suffocating taste on the back of his tongue, the heavy pressure in the air that made the hairs on his arms stand up.
Wards.
Heavy, aggressive, dark wards.
Fawkes craned his majestic neck as he perched himself on Harry's shoulder, his eyes fixing on a specific direction through the dense, snow-laden thicket. He let out a low, warning note.
"Yeah, I feel them too," Harry murmured, his emerald eyes narrowing with focus. He followed the phoenix's gaze. "Let's see whose backyard we crashed into."
With a sharp flick of his holly wand, Harry cast a flawless Disillusionment Charm over himself and his new companion. The magic rippled over his combat robes, bending the light until he blended perfectly into the snow and shadows of the forest. He moved forward, his steps agonizingly careful, testing the weight on his injured leg with every silent crunch of the snow.
Thankfully, they didn't have to walk far.
The treeline broke abruptly, revealing a sprawling, menacing estate built of jagged black stone. It sat upon a rise, surrounded by neatly trimmed grounds.
Nott Castle.
Harry recognized the architecture from the old pureblood registries in the Black library. It was an ancestral fortress, and tonight, it was swarming.
Dozens of figures in heavy black cloaks and silver masks patrolled the perimeter. Death Eaters. But it wasn't the guards that made Harry's blood run cold; it was the sprawling courtyard just beyond the wrought-iron gates.
It was a playground of torture.
Muggles and Muggleborns, stripped bare and shivering violently in the freezing air, were chained to heavy wooden posts erected in the snow. The mocking, cruel laughter of the Death Eaters rang out into the night, punctuated by the agonizing, throat-tearing screams of their captives. They were casting the Cruciatus Curse casually, treating the suffering of innocent people like a late-night sport.
Harry stood at the edge of the treeline, perfectly invisible, perfectly silent.
He was exhausted. His magical core had been tested to its absolute limits by the duel with Voldemort and the destruction of Nagini. His leg throbbed with a dull, sickening ache. The logical part of his brain—the part Narcissa was trying so desperately to cultivate—told him to apparate back to Grimmauld Place. To heal, to rest, and to let somebody else handle this. He could leave a note, a patronus to the ICW, to the Order, anybody.
But as another scream ripped through the night air, the Gryffindor-ish heroism flared within him, intertwining with his own deeply ingrained hero complex.
He couldn't walk away. He wouldn't.
He was Lord Potter. He was Lord Black. And he was absolutely sick to death of watching these masked cowards terrorize the weak.
With a tight, exhausted smirk, Harry raised his wand and conjured a small, elegant piece of parchment and a self-inking quill.
Cissy, Fleur, Apolline, Bella,
I'm alive. The snake is dead. Fought the noseless bastard as well. Landed near Nott Castle and found a mess that needs clearing. I might be a little late for bed. Keep the food and our bed warm for me. And send my cloak (I had to send it back to make sure Voldemort does not get it) and the emergency potion kit with Fawkes.
Harry.
He folded the parchment precisely and held it up to the bird perched over his shoulder. The phoenix took the folded letter gently in his golden beak.
"Take this back to the girls at Grimmauld Place," Harry whispered. He turned his gaze back to the courtyard, his emerald eyes burning with the promise of absolute, uncompromising violence. "It might take me a little while to clean up the filth here."
Fawkes trilled a soft note of agreement, flashing away in a soundless burst of golden fire.
Harry gripped his wand, the wood warming eagerly to his lethal intent, and stepped out of the treeline.
Author's Note
Surprise. Another character introduction on the way and some more heroism before I take it back to Hogwarts for the finale. Hope all of you are enjoying this story as much as I am writing it. I would love to hear your thoughts and the comments always help.
See you soon.