[From Litha to Lammas]: Conditionally, gen, PG-13, 4/5
Part Three.
Title: Conditionally (4/5)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Past Severus Snape/Lily Evans, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU beginning the summer before fifth year, heavy angst, Severitus, violence, suicidal thoughts, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 6000
Summary: Harry finds out that he’s Snape’s son. It goes as badly as possible.
Author’s Notes: Another of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics. This one will probably have five parts (it has developed much more plot than the original outline). This is not a happy fic; I am trying to work out what would happen and what would change if he discovered that he was Snape’s son with basically no support structure in place to withstand that revelation.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Four
“Mr. Potter! What happened to you?”
Madam Pomfrey hasn’t got used to the idea of his lack of a last name, evidently. Harry doesn’t mind as he lies back on the bed in the hospital wing and smiles at her. “I had to do something about my scar,” he explains. “It worked.”
“It looks as if you stabbed something into your forehead.” Madam Pomfrey scowls as him as she begins rapidly casting spells.
“I did.”
For a moment, her wand pauses and her mouth widens in genuine astonishment. Then she says in a low voice, “What was it?” and casts some more spells, frowning at the results she receives. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if they’re strange. Apart from the fact that phoenix tears would have healed the original wound, she can’t have had a lot of people who have a soul in their foreheads that just died.
“A basilisk fang.”
Madam Pomfrey almost freezes. Then she snaps, “Stay right there,” and hurries away, coming back with an armful of vials that Harry recognizes, from his self-study of Potions, as several different kinds of antivenin, along with painkilling draughts and some sedatives.
“It honestly doesn’t hurt. And Fawkes took care of the venom.”
“You will let me determine that, Mr. Potter. Of all the silly, nonsensical, risky, idiotic…” She doesn’t seem to run out of adjectives as she begins ruthlessly sorting out the potions in the order that Harry supposes he’ll have to swallow them.
Harry shrugs and lets her do what she wants. At least this probably means that he will go to sleep right away, and she’ll be the one to inform Dumbledore.
Harry will have to deal with the man when he wakes up, but not for a while.
*
“Harry. Why would you do something like that?”
Dumbledore is meeting his eyes again. Harry gives a half-smile. At least that means that Dumbledore probably believes the Horcrux is gone, and Harry won’t have to go through some kind of test or fear an assassination attempt in the next few years.
“Because you told me what I had in my scar.” Harry flicks his eyes towards the back of the room. Madam Pomfrey isn’t here right now, but he still isn’t going to use the word “Horcrux” aloud until Dumbledore does. “I decided that I would get rid of it. And it turned out that stabbing the scar worked. It didn’t last time because the fang was in my arm. But my scar was the thing from him.”
Dumbledore closes his eyes. “I certainly did not mean you to go on a suicide mission.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Oh, you mean unlike sending me against a hundred Dementors, sir?” He’s not going to say anything about the basilisk or the Tournament or the Philosopher’s Stone, because there, he’s not actually sure how much Dumbledore had to do with sending him. But there’s no denying that he intended Harry and Hermione to use the Time-Turner to rescue Sirius.
“I knew that worked because of the way that time loops worked. You had survived, so you had to survive.” Dumbledore manages to make that sound reasonable, but Harry only nods as if he’s buying it. He doesn’t really. Dumbledore leans urgently forwards. “You didn’t know if this would work.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“So you were content to die?”
“I wanted to die on my own terms, not by your hand. And you’d told me that I had to anyway, for Voldemort not to win. I don’t understand why you’re so surprised.”
Dumbledore looks away from him. Harry studies the expression on the man’s face, and thinks he finally understands it. Not disappointment, although that’s often been present in the past eighteen months. Not discomfort, even.
Dumbledore is really bloody confused. He didn’t know what to do when Harry was revealed as Snape’s son, he doesn’t know what to do with the disrupted prophecy, and even now, he expected Harry to react in a certain manner and Harry did nothing of the kind.
It sort of delights Harry.
“I did not think you would go off and commit suicide.”
Harry shrugs. “It was a really unsuccessful suicide attempt, sir.” He notices that Dumbledore has a package hovering at his side, and nods at it. “Is that a Christmas present for me, sir?” He doesn’t bother to mask his sarcasm. After all, the last Christmas present Dumbledore gave him was the Cloak, which shouldn’t ever have been his in the first place.
Dumbledore wakes himself up from whatever daze he was in, and nods. “From Sirius,” he says, floating the package towards Harry. A tap of his wand unshrinks it.
Harry knows what it is the moment he sees the shape, of course. He grimaces. “Tell him I don’t want it.”
“Harry-”
“He took it away from me in the first place.” Harry shoves the wrapped Firebolt back towards Dumbledore. “If he’s changed his mind, I want a proper apology, not just a broom that shows up when I wasn’t invited to Grimmauld Place for the second year in a row.”
“I’m the one who insisted that Sirius not invite you, Harry, since sensitive Order business was being discussed.” Dumbledore peers at him over the top of his glasses. “And Sirius has more comfort with gestures than words. I suspect he will offer you an apology someday, but not if you don’t accept the gift.”
There it is again, the conditions, the demands that Harry do certain things when it should be the bloody people making the demands who do them. Harry is about to refuse again when something else occurs to him.
“Fine,” he agrees, and takes the handle of the broom. Sorrow zips through him for a second. He’s really missed flying. Between studying and the endless detentions he’s attracted now and the fact that Gryffindor wouldn’t want him for their Seeker anyway, he never even tried out the Cleansweeps the way he told Ron he would.
But now he has another purpose for the broom.
“You are not angry at me, dear boy?”
“For what? Being upset that I didn’t die?”
“I am very relieved that you lived, Harry,” Dumbledore says in a soft, repressive voice.
Harry just considers him. “Then what did you think I’d be angry at you for?”
“Insisting that Sirius not invite you to Grimmauld Place. As I said, he did want to, but Order business that you could not overhear was being discussed.”
Harry closes his eyes. “Tell me one thing, sir, and I’ll tell you whether I’m angry. You invited Ron and Hermione and Neville. Why did you decide that they could be there, but not me? Was it just because of the Horcrux?”
“Actually, Miss Granger is of age now and a member of the Order,” Dumbledore corrects him, still gently. “Mr. Weasley was there because his family was, and because they need whatever time together they can have after his father’s shocking death last year. Mr. Longbottom was visiting his grandmother, who is also now a member of the Order.”
“Oh, I see,” Harry murmurs. He’s actually surprised he didn’t think of this before. “I don’t follow the rules like Hermione, and you don’t have an adult that can control me, since Snape never decided to step up and Sirius abandoned the position. So you can’t be sure that I’ll be controllable if I’m there.”
“Harry-” Dumbledore cuts off whatever he wants to say, maybe because looking into Harry’s glittering eyes convinces him that it won’t work. “You know the names Snape and Evans are waiting for you whenever you want to claim them.”
“You actually think I would call myself after a father who abandoned me?” Harry asks in shock. “Or after a mother who cheated on the man she was married to and then ensured that I was going to be miserable?”
“Severus knew it would do you no good to claim you. And I’m sure that your mother loved you very much.”
“You’re sure. Right.” Harry knows that Dumbledore didn’t know he was Snape’s son until Snape explained it, because otherwise he never would have thought the prophecy applied to Harry, but that also means he doesn’t know anything Lily Potter’s internal motivations. Harry has come to accept that he’ll probably never get the full story, because the one person who could tell him shows no interest in doing so.
“You need a last name, Harry.”
“I’ll take my own when I find one I like.”
Dumbledore opens his mouth, then sighs and stands. “I’m glad that you’re recovering. And I’ll tell Sirius that you accepted the broom, and that you’ll be awaiting his apology.” He leaves the hospital wing.
Harry snorts and lies back in bed. Dumbledore didn’t once question him on his living arrangements for the summer, despite Harry admitting no adult has control of him. He must be so used to Harry doing what he’s told in the summers that he didn’t think he had to.
That, or he still doesn’t really care about me now that I’m not the prophecy child and not a Horcrux.
The bitterness of the thought slides away into sleep.
*
Harry is satisfied with what happened to his scar after he stabbed it with the fang. It’s become a faded line, which only looks like a lightning bolt if you squint really hard, around an identical puncture wound to the one that rests on his arm. Still more noticeable than the average person’s forehead, but not as bad as the scar the wizarding world used to identify him.
Other people are not pleased.
“Harry!” Hermione exclaims a few days into winter term, when she’s struggling to finish up some big project for Defense and Harry is looking into the descendants of certain wizarding families. “What did you do to your scar?”
Harry looks up with an eyebrow raised. “Kind of you to assume that I did something to it rather than something happening.”
Hermione blushes. They’re in the replica of the Gryffindor common room again, although Harry is getting tired of it and now makes it look like something else when he comes here by himself. “I only-I didn’t notice it, and you didn’t write to us about something happening over the holiday.” She glances at Ron for support, but Ron is just watching Harry thoughtfully.
“Yeah, well, why would I send letters into a silent void?”
Hermione looks away. “It’s just for a few weeks, Harry. And for a few weeks in the summer. Professor Dumbledore said-”
“You could still write to me about ordinary things, you know. The kinds of gifts you got. It doesn’t have to be about Order business.”
Hermione takes a deep breath. “Professor Dumbledore is still worried that our letters could be intercepted and reveal something about the nature of headquarters.”
Harry shrugs. “And you put obeying him above communicating with me. Another reason that I didn’t send you letters, Hermione.”
Hermione closes her eyes for a long second before she murmurs, “We’ll talk about this with you when you’re not as upset.” She slams her book shut and stands up. “Coming, Ron?”
“I think I’ll stay here for a second. Almost done with my Defense essay.”
Hermione nods curtly and leaves. Harry shrugs a little. Every time stings less. He wonders if that means he’s becoming as emotionless as Snape, withdrawing from the people who brought him comfort.
“Mate.”
Harry looks up. “Yeah?”
Ron hesitates, then says, with entire earnestness as far as Harry can tell, “You’re better off out of the war. For some reason, Dumbledore thinks Neville has to be trained or something, that he’s the one who’ll face You-Know-Who. It’s like Dumbledore’s really gone barmy. I don’t know. And this holiday was awful, really. All these awkward silences when someone mentioned you, and no one knew what to call you.”
Harry has to smile at the image. “I don’t like it that you didn’t write to me, but I don’t blame you, really. Dumbledore’s hard to say no to. And I suppose it’s true that one of my letters or yours could be intercepted and reveal something about Grimmauld Place.”
“Mum keeps arguing with Dumbledore. Saying that you should be the one getting the training and that you’re no more likely to betray us than Neville is. But Dumbledore won’t budge.”
“What does Sirius say?” Harry asks, because if he’s going to get actual insight into this, he wants to know. “And Snape?”
“Sirius keeps trying to call you Potter and pausing. Then he glares at Snape.” Ron’s grin is fleeting and bitter. “Snape doesn’t say much since he’s not a spy anymore. Snipes at Sirius, mostly, and Professor Lupin.”
“What does Remus say?” Harry asks softly. The last letter he got from Remus, months ago, still told him that Sirius would need more time. Since then, Harry hasn’t bothered to write to him for the same reasons he didn’t write to Ron and Hermione over the holidays.
Ron frowns. “I don’t think he knows which end is up. He’s said that it was unfair the Potter vault got taken away from you, because you dad-sorry, Mr. Potter died believing you were his son. And then he turns around when one of the twins complains about leaving you out and says that Dumbledore knows best and the Order of the Phoenix are the only ones really fighting the war.”
Harry nods. He supposes that if Sirius decides to apologize to him someday, then Remus will do the same thing. Harry might accept them if they do. He just isn’t holding out hope or pining for it. “Thanks, Ron.” He dives back into his book.
Ron finishes up writing his essay, then puts a hand on his shoulder when he leaves the room. Harry looks up.
“I’m not going to join the Order of the Phoenix when I turn seventeen,” Ron says firmly. “I thought about it, and I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing anymore. And they’re just pushing poor Neville around all the time, and his gran lets them. I think she wishes he was the hero instead of you.” He clutches Harry’s shoulder harder. “I’m sorry for not writing to you. I want to be your friend no matter what your name is.”
Harry reaches up and clasps Ron’s hand back. It took Ron a long time, but because of the way that Harry tried to help the Weasleys through their grief for Arthur last year, he didn’t drift as far away as Hermione in the first place. “Thanks.”
Ron nods to him, and leaves. Harry flips another page in the book he’s holding and smiles.
He has to check a few more tomes to be sure, but it doesn’t seem like there are any laws or customs against what he’s planning to do.
*
“I noticed that you haven’t been flying on your Firebolt, Harry. I thought you would rejoin the Gryffindor Quidditch team after Christmas.”
For some reason, Dumbledore has called Harry up to his office again, and is dancing around the subject as usual. Harry fixes his gaze on the perch where Fawkes is staring at him as if to make sure that he isn’t bleeding basilisk venom from the forehead again, and smiles at Dumbledore a little. “No, I sold it.”
Silence, except for the crackling of the fire and the rustling noise as Fawkes shakes out his plumage. Harry watches the phoenix. He wonders if it’s his imagination that Fawkes is keeping his side or tail pointed towards Dumbledore, never facing him directly.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Why would you sell it?”
“To have money, so I can survive the summer.”
“Given that you will be living with your relatives, I hardly see-”
“And to have money to buy my supplies for my seventh year, of course. Since you didn’t bother buying me anything for this year, I assume that I’ll be on my own for that, as well.”
Dumbledore has gone back to the subtle confusion again when the door that leads to the moving staircase abruptly opens and Neville storms in, throwing his hands about. “No!” he shouts when Dumbledore opens his mouth, maybe to tell him to calm down. “I refuse! I am not going to be the blasted Boy-Who-Lived anymore! I quit!”
Harry blinks. Dumbledore blinks. Neville throws something into the middle of the floor-it looks like a scroll-and storms out again.
“You were putting pressure on him to become your new Boy-Who-Lived, weren’t you?” Harry asks, and shakes his head. Now he can show his knowledge, since Neville himself has revealed it. “You shouldn’t have. Neville could be a hero, but not the way you want him to be.”
“What would you know about it, Harry?” Dumbledore’s voice is weary. He steps around his desk to pick up the scroll. It unrolls briefly enough to show some pictures that make Harry think it’s a scroll on battle tactics.
“Because I’ve seen how brave Neville can be,” Harry murmurs, thinking of how Neville stood up to him and Ron and Hermione in first year when he thought they were wrong, and how he kept going to Potions classes with Snape for five years despite being terrified of him and attends Defense classes now, and the way he joined Hermione’s rebel Defense group last year. “You can’t train him to kill Voldemort, though. Or stand there and let himself be killed. Could he even do that?” he adds. “I don’t think he’s a Horcrux.”
Dumbledore closes his eyes, his face slumping into weary lines. “I must ask you to leave again, Harry.”
Harry shrugs and stands up to do so. He suspects now that Dumbledore wanted him there to say something about heroism to Neville, or instruct him in how to be a “proper” Boy-Who-Lived, or something.
Well, it doesn’t matter now. Dumbledore doesn’t have a hero. Harry supposes he should be terrified by that, but Voldemort has left him alone now for long enough that he doesn’t feel like part of the war. Just surviving takes all his energy, anyway.
*
“He can’t make me part of it again!”
Neville is serious enough about his “quitting” that he lifts his voice against Ron and Hermione outside Defense class the next week. The hilarious part is that Hermione is trying to hush him, and Ron gives Harry a look of embarrassment, both of them looking as if they won’t discuss it in public.
Just to be a bastard, Harry leans on the wall where he was walking past on his way to NEWT Charms, and lingers.
Neville glances at him and seems to find strength from his presence. “Ask Harry,” he snarls at Ron and Hermione, stabbing his finger towards Harry. “What he was having me do was inhuman. Just like all the pressure he put Harry under when his last name used to be Potter!”
“Neville, let’s not talk about this here,” Hermione hisses. She reaches out to take his arm. Neville shakes her off. Harry wonders if it’s the first time Hermione has really realized how tall and muscular Neville’s grown.
“No. There’s nothing to talk about. I quit.” Neville stalks off. Harry shakes his head and follows him. Neville will be on his way to NEWT Charms, too.
Harry does glance over his shoulder once, because he’s still being a bastard. Ron is holding Hermione back and saying something softly to her. Probably trying to convince her that no matter how “unreasonable” Neville is being, it won’t do any good to go after him now.
And Snape is standing in the door of the Defense classroom, watching either Harry or Neville-Harry can’t tell which-with dark eyes and a drawn brow.
“I’m sorry,” Neville says, drawing Harry’s attention back to him.
“For what? You didn’t do anything.”
“But that’s the problem. All these years and I never spoke up when you were doing something heroic and people got after you for it. Or when Dumbledore was trying to put you under this kind of pressure.” Neville grimaces and rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t even know how you can stand to be friends with me when I just-looked aside.”
“Dumbledore actually didn’t try to put me under the kind of training he did you. He had something else in mind for me, I think.”
“Yeah?”
Neville is giving him such a look of undisguised curiosity, and they’re in the middle of an empty corridor, and Harry has got good at privacy charms, and anyway, Neville probably already knows about Horcruxes. Harry gives in to temptation and lifts his strongest charm around them, one that makes the world outside the boundaries fuzzy. He leans towards Neville. “You know what a Horcrux is?”
Neville jumps and gasps. “Y-yes,” he says, with a return of his stutter.
“Well, my scar had one.” Harry taps his forehead, and Neville follows the motion of his fingers with a look of fascinated horror. “I think Dumbledore’s plan was for me to confront Voldemort and die. That would get rid of the Horcrux, and it would help make him easier to kill. I don’t think he ever meant for me to fight Voldemort, but then you didn’t have the Horcrux in you, so that was what he would have had to train you to do if you were going to fulfill the prophecy.”
Neville looks ill. “But he did something to your scar so you don’t have to?”
“No, I did that. Got rid of the Horcrux.” Neville swallows but doesn’t say anything, so Harry adds, “Stabbed myself in the forehead with a basilisk fang.”
“Harry!”
It’s an appalled noise, but Harry just laughs. “I thought it might work, that’s all, and I wasn’t going to go around being a Horcrux or let Dumbledore kill me. And it worked, definitely. The Horcrux is gone now.”
“How did you survive?”
“Fawkes came and cried tears for me, just the same way that he did in second year when I faced the basilisk for the first time.”
Neville shakes his head, looking overwhelmed. “And that’s why I can’t make a good Boy-Who-Lived, Harry. I could never do something like that and survive.”
Harry grips Neville’s arm. “Don’t think of yourself that way. If you really want to chew on something, chew on this. The title wasn’t about the way I survived Voldemort’s Killing Curse, or Dumbledore would never have started doubting that I was the right prophecy child. It was about a symbol, someone who could inspire hope. Don’t chastise yourself because you refuse to be Dumbledore’s figurehead.”
And for the first time in what seems like a full year, Harry sees Neville smile.
*
Harry paces in a circle around the bathroom and looks out the window again. It’s a serene night, the night after the exams that have ended his sixth year, and the view from Gryffindor Tower is grass and woods and more grass and more woods. Harry sees a flicker near the edge of the trees that’s probably the herd of thestrals he met through Care of Magical Creatures grazing. They would be alarmed if something was wrong, he thinks. Which means he should get out of the bathroom and go to bed.
But he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.
He happens to be looking in exactly the right direction to see a flare of movement near the Forest, and to see the thestrals abruptly break into a canter and take flight. Then dark, robed figures are flooding out of the trees. There is something running on four legs beside them, and overtaking them, moving faster than a charging horse towards the castle.
Harry glances up at the moon. It’s full.
He wishes now that he’d kept the Firebolt. It would aid him in getting to the battle faster. On the other hand, he can hardly fight them by himself. He raises his wand and casts a variation of the firework spell that Dumbledore tried to use to get people’s attention last year when Harry was questioning Umbridge under Veritaserum.
As the night explodes into red and gold, and light rips across the grounds, Harry casts Sonorus on himself and yells as loudly as he can, “DEATH EATERS! DEATH EATERS ON HOGWARTS GROUNDS!”
Then he’s running out of the bathroom, shouting to wake up Ron and Neville and the others, and pounding down the staircase to the portrait hole, ignoring the unhappy and confused sounds behind him. His mind is clear, pointed crystal, more sharply focused than it was even during the battle in Diagon Alley he fought in. He knows what he has to do and he knows how he’s going to fight.
When he gets out of the portrait hole, he pauses to repeat the firework spell and the shouted warning, ignoring the scolding of the Fat Lady behind him. Then he casts another charm on himself, one that Professor Flitwick talked about in class but didn’t actually teach them to cast. Another place where Harry’s self-study came in useful.
His body becomes light, almost floating off the floor. Harry runs to the stairs and hurls himself down.
He bounces and rolls from step to step, going down far faster than he would have been able to otherwise, and when he hits a corner, it’s the work of a moment to push himself off the wall and down the next flight. He reaches the ground floor of the castle in two minutes, and casts the firework spell and roars the warning one more time, before he cancels the Human Balloon Charm.
Now he has to fight. He’s done what he can to try and alert.
Harry stands within the door of the entrance hall, and sees the moment when the Death Eaters cross under the line of the light that’s starting to fall from the upper windows. There is a werewolf next to them, a twisted nightmare much larger than Remus in his animal form, with grey fur and a long streak of silver down his spine. And crawling next to them on the other side is a serpent so large that Harry stares.
That has to be Nagini.
Which means Voldemort has to be around here somewhere.
But Harry doesn’t hesitate. Some of the Death Eaters split off, heading around the wall to strike at doors they probably think will be unprotected, but the majority of the group, and the werewolf, is coming straight for the entrance hall.
Harry feels wild joy surge up through him, joined by rage as he pictures what that werewolf could do to innocent students. He aims his wand and casts no incantation, just reaches into the center of himself and pulls the way he did when he was in the Room of Requirement last year.
The beast-fire answers him.
Suddenly the darkness is torn into long slashes as golden chimeras stalk through it, and dragons wing above them, red-orange flickering abruptly into white as Harry’s will give them heat. They don’t even glance at Hogwarts and Harry; his will is too firmly clamped onto them this time. Instead, they head straight at the Death Eaters, and particularly the werewolf. Harry watches as one huge clump of flames becomes a looming golden werewolf, jaws parted and howl ringing through the night.
The Death Eaters freeze for a moment, looking genuinely surprised. Then they start trying to set up shields-all but the werewolf. He hurls himself straight at the golden one, paws stabbing out in front of him and answering howl rising.
Harry has a moment to wonder if the fire will be enough, given how resistant werewolves are to magic, before the wolves meet each other in midair. There’s a long crackle and hiss, a smell of burning flesh, and then a pattering of something landing on the ground. When Harry can see past the flash that accompanies everything, he knows that it’s the werewolf’s blackened bones.
The Death Eaters are frozen and staring again. Harry jerks himself back to the battle. He has to take advantage of their surprise while they’re still caught in it and haven’t figured out a way to fight his fire yet.
“Pluviasempra!” he calls, another charm that Professor Flitwick mentioned but they didn’t actually cover in class.
The miniature rainclouds form at once over each Death Eater’s head, dumping down so much rain that it can drown people, the professor said. There’s a lot of screaming and cursing and countercursing, but Harry doesn’t care.
He’s turning to face Nagini.
She’s closer than he thought she would be, drawing back for a strike. And she’s hissing something that sounds meaningless to Harry, which brings a smile of fierce joy to his face. He had no way of testing before this whether his Parseltongue abilities had actually died with the Horcrux.
But they have. And Harry sings out the command to the fire that’s crowding up behind him, eager to gnaw on his spine if it can’t have anything else. “Come!”
Once again, the flames take the shape of the beast they’re confronting as they loom up before Nagini. This one is a basilisk, fittingly enough, curled scarlet plume standing up from its head and its body solid and thick with dark red scales. It hisses defiance at Nagini, who hisses right back, and they collide with each other.
That worries Harry, for a second. Voldemort must have put powerful protections on his snake if she thinks she can take on a fire that charred a werewolf to pieces-
But not powerful enough, Harry realizes with relief a second later as Nagini bursts into flame. The basilisk breaks apart at the same moment and reforms with open jaws around Nagini, tearing her and swallowing her, chunk by burning chunk. It makes Harry shudder a little with the violence, but he doesn’t turn away. It’s still not as violent as his rage that the Death Eaters would dare to attack the school at all.
Then, at the last moment as the basilisk swallows something that might have been a piece of Nagini’s tail, the screaming begins.
Harry staggers backwards, his hands flying up over his ears and making his wand clunk into the side of his head. That’s the sound he heard from his scar as the basilisk venom struck.
Nagini was a Horcrux? His fire can destroy Horcruxes?
Harry’s mind flies back to the moment in the Room of Requirement when something screamed as he destroyed it, and a slow smile widens across his face. That would mean that he’s actually destroyed four of them now, and while he has no idea how many Voldemort made-for all he knows, it’s hundreds-it feels damn good.
“Snape.”
Harry glances over his shoulder automatically, and Snape is fighting behind him, although his gaze is fixed more on Harry than the Death Eaters he’s cutting, shielding from, blasting apart. His face is pale, though.
Then the voice speaks again, and Harry realizes that it’s coming from in front of him, and it’s familiar, and it’s addressing him.
“Sorry, not who you’re looking for,” he says conversationally as he turns around. “But it’s nice to see you here on the battlefield, Voldemort. Not hiding behind rats and snakes for once, huh?” A simple flex of his will, and his fire rears up at his back, this time coalescing into a single huge Nundu that makes the ground crumble and burn beneath it with a stamp of its paw.
Voldemort stares at him with live, furious eyes. But Harry doesn’t think he’s imagining the fear in them. He has no idea if someone would have told Voldemort about the change to Harry’s scar; he has no idea how many spies Voldemort has in the school. His gaze now is constantly on Harry’s forehead rather than his wand.
“How did you get rid of the scar?” he rasps.
“None of your fucking business,” Harry replies cheerfully. He’s so full of rage and joy that there’s no room in him for fear. He whips his arm forwards, and the Nundu leaps over his shoulder straight for Voldemort.
Voldemort spits a counter, and the fire dissolves into cold mist in the midst of its leap. Harry glares. Then he pulls raw magic up his wand and hurls it at Voldemort, with no idea what it’s going to turn into. Maybe more fire?
Instead, it becomes a huge, swinging blade of a sword that glitters like ice. Voldemort barely ducks the sweep. When the sword comes back around, he does manage to raise a shield that cuts it in half, but that still leaves a big piece of it that nearly stabs him in the heart. Voldemort barks a sharp word that makes it flicker apart into little sparks of light.
By now, people other than Snape are finally starting to pour out of Hogwarts. Harry hears Dumbledore call, “Surrender, Tom. Surely you now by know that you have no Death Eaters left.”
Wow, really? Harry’s fire must have been more destructive than he thought, or maybe Snape and the others took care of more of them than it seemed.
Voldemort doesn’t bother responding to Dumbledore’s demand, just shoots a corkscrew of green light at Harry that he dodges, and then the duel is on.
Harry is careful to create spell effects that can strike back at Voldemort from a distance or in front of him or that are aimed at the ground and air around him, because locking their wands in Priori Incantatem again is not what he wants. It seems that Voldemort is being careful to do the same thing, although his eyes glitter with such hate that he probably wishes he could just cast the Killing Curse and be done with it.
Harry laughs as he watches the rock he tore from the ground bounce off a shield next to Voldemort. Voldemort bares his teeth. “Why are you laughing, you foolish child? You must know that I will win.”
“I’m making you struggle for it,” Harry says simply, and then he goes back to saving his breath for the spells he barks.
Voldemort is beating him back, though, slowly but surely, towards the school. He’s less tired than Harry is, and he knows more spells. Harry can feel his heart hammering so much that he thinks he’ll lose it out his ribs any second now, and his breath comes in pants more than it comes in spells.
Then Voldemort explodes the ground in front of him, and Harry isn’t quick enough. He half-tilts into the opened pit at his feet. Voldemort takes a step forwards. Harry looks up defiantly. Dying like this is still better than the torture he’d face if he was taken captive, or the death Dumbledore had planned for him.
“Sectumsempra!”
The spell that travels part Harry isn’t like anything he’s heard of before, and he watches in shock as Voldemort’s chest is the thing that practically explodes this time, showering Harry in blood. Voldemort is screaming in pain and fear, although he doesn’t die. He simply steps back and vanishes with a shimmer of motion that doesn’t seem like Apparition.
I’ve got to learn that spell, Harry thinks, blinking blood out of his eyes, at the same moment as a hand closes on his arm and hauls him roughly out of the pit.
“What were you doing, you stupid boy?” Snape is looming over him with frantic fury in his eyes.
“Fighting,” Harry says, and grimaces as he realizes some of the blood got in his mouth. He spits and takes a deep breath, looking around. The ground is covered with bodies in several directions, but at least all of them seem to have the white masks that the Death Eaters wear. There’s barely a sign left where his fire burned the werewolf and Nagini. “Is everything over with?”
“Yes, thanks to you.”
There’s a note in Snape’s voice that Harry doesn’t want to listen to and has no idea how to answer. “Oh. Good,” he says vaguely, and then crashes to the ground with exhaustion.
Part Five.
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