Chapter Thirty of 'Inter Vivos" (Part Five): Snake
Thank you again for all the reviews! After this comes the epilogue, and then the story ends.
Chapter Thirty-Snake
Severus acted without thought, because he knew if he waited, then too much thought would paralyze him. He used the same sorts of spells he had used when they destroyed Ravenclaw’s tiara and the Resurrection Stone, and halted the flight of the shard of spirit. It crashed into an invisible wall and floated in place, screaming in a shrill voice that made Severus abruptly wish he was deaf.
The Dark Lord started to speak the first syllables of what Severus recognized as a long and complicated spell that would allow him to regain control of the piece of his spirit. Severus had considerably fewer words to speak. “Accio soul,” he whispered, and it soared towards him, and into the invisible net that his spells had prepared.
For long moments, there was silence. Severus watched as the Dark Lord turned towards him, his eyes empty. That was more frightening than anger would have been. Severus could practically watch the thoughts passing behind those blank eyes without the aid of Legilimency. The Dark Lord knew they knew about the Horcruxes, and he would be working out all the implications of that.
Then the Dark Lord said, in the gentlest of voices, “You will die, Severus.”
“Everyone is mortal,” Severus said, and then gambled. He didn’t know how much of the ritual to remove the Horcrux from Harry the Dark Lord might have recognized. He often knew quite surprising things, given his many years of study in Dark magic. “Including you, now.” He reached out as if he would snuff the piece of soul like a candle flame.
The Dark Lord’s blank eyes widened until Severus seemed to stand on a dusty black plain, beneath a sun that had burned to a cinder. He shivered in the bleak wind that blew around him, and thought he heard Lily’s voice, mourning him. You never did amount to anything in life, Severus, and you won’t see me in the afterlife.
He wanted to surrender, then, to curl up and shake with reaction.
But he remembered the world he was born into, where the sun was bright and the winter wind didn’t always blow, and that gave him the ability to cry out at himself, and at his enraptured and dreaming mind, This is Legilimency!
And suddenly he was free, and able to see the Dark Lord stalking towards him, his wand out and already weaving a net of black strands studded with obsidian, set to capture the piece of soul and guide it towards him again.
Severus leaped back and strengthened his own spells. The Dark Lord halted for a moment and watched him with those same blank eyes. Severus knew he was gathering his power and that the cut, when it came, would be stronger than he could endure.
On the other hand, he had no intention of standing still to meet it.
He summoned up old knowledge, knowledge overheard as he watched victims writhe on the ground in front of the Dark Lord, and used the spell that would lift his body on the wind as the Dark Lord’s had been lifted. In a moment, his feet lost contact with the floor, and he zoomed out through the breach in the wards into the Halloween night.
The Dark Lord howled soundlessly and followed.
*
Draco finished the last Switching Charm with tears streaking down his face. He had seen his mother on the floor, losing more blood than anyone should be able to and live.
Which meant that she couldn’t live, of course. Draco wasn’t in the mood to hide from reality at the moment.
But still it didn’t matter, as long as he and Granger could finish the ritual that would free Harry before the Dark Lord attacked and they all died.
It was a strange place to be in, mentally, Draco thought, as he shuddered back into his body and kept his eyes closed for a moment. To know that one thing was more important than all the rest, to force yourself not to care about someone who was once the dearest person in the world to you, to be able to sacrifice that person…
He shuddered and opened his eyes, turning them sideways before he turned them forwards. He met Granger’s gaze and saw the same kind of suffering and understanding in her face.
Then, and only then, did he feel able to face Harry.
Harry was on his knees in the middle of a tightening circle of Fiendfyre. Draco looked steadily at the flames, but didn’t see the leaping animal and demon shapes he knew would have been there if the fire had burned too long. Instead, it reached wispy tendrils inwards that passed through Harry’s face and arms as if he were a ghost. Harry still flinched. Draco thought he would have, too. Knowing that the Fiendfyre-if Granger had modified the incantations in the right way-could only burn a soul was not reassuring when one had the flames leaping all around one and hissing in one’s ears.
And then came the sound of a horrifying scream, one that made Draco shudder and wrap his arms around himself, feeling as if the scream would rip the fabric of reality.
The fire blew out of Harry’s head again, clenched triumphantly around a small, struggling Dark figure that sometimes had a face and sometimes looked like the mass of a squashed bug. The figure freed an arm, and then a shapeless limb, and then the fire seized control of it again and roared. Draco thought he could hear the voice of a lion behind the normal hiss of the fire.
That would be only appropriate, he thought, slightly hysterical. The Gryffindor symbol is a lion, after all.
The figure began to fade and to grow smaller at the same time, as if the Fiendfyre were simultaneously burning it to a shadow and escorting it down a long tunnel into the heart of the flames. The screams grew shriller and worse, until Draco plugged his ears on instinct, though it didn’t help at all. Granger watched, more steadily than he could, her hands white-knuckled on her wand, tears burning down her face.
And then the tiny figure vanished, and the Fiendfyre winked out in the same moment.
Granger whirled around with a cry and ran to where Weasley lay motionless on the floor, surrounded by a large amount of blood. Draco followed her with his eyes, then quickly gulped and looked away. In some ways, he was glad that his mother was dead already-dead beyond denial, her head almost ripped off, and Nagini dead beside her-and he didn’t have to have the desperate hope that she could be saved.
Instead, he reached out his hand to Harry as he staggered slowly back to his feet, blinking and shielding his eyes as he would against a strong light.
*
Harry had never thought about what it would be like to be without the Horcrux. Every stray moment for the last few days had been taken up with worrying about whether Draco and Hermione would succeed, and willing them to do it. He hadn’t dared to think about after. That would imply too much confidence, somehow.
But now it was after, and his head felt lighter and clearer than it ever had. He wondered absently if the Horcrux had been affecting him mercilessly for years, making every experience-like the starvation at Privet Drive-worse than it really was.
“Harry?”
You’re scaring Draco, his conscience scolded him. Draco must be uncertain whether Harry was still sane after all the soul-switching they’d done. Harry blinked away his own speculations and stepped forwards, his hands on Draco’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I owe you a debt that I can’t ever repay.”
Draco gave him a proud smile, but it was with trembling lips, and then he abruptly stepped forwards and clutched at Harry with desperate strength. Of course, he’d been through an ordeal, the same way Harry had, but Harry didn’t think it could all be attributed to that. He put a hand on Draco’s back and looked around for some clues.
He saw Narcissa Malfoy first, almost decapitated, with Nagini motionless not far from her. And on top of the snake, or scattered around her in a circle, were bits of glass and drops of brilliant green venom.
Sirius had just forced Pettigrew to the floor, and was binding him with Incarcerous ropes, his breath ragged and ferocious. Harry could see that he was struggling with himself not to simply kill Pettigrew and be revenged in one fell swoop.
And Hermione knelt beside Ron, whispering healing spells in a stream so constant that Harry hardly dared to speak again, lest he interrupt her.
He couldn’t see Snape or Voldemort, but still, Harry thought he knew what had happened. Somehow, their enemies got through the wards. The Horcrux that was in Nagini had been destroyed, or, at the very least, Snape was doing his best to keep the shard of soul away from Voldemort. Narcissa was dead. Ron was dying.
And with that set of realizations, complete calm fell over him. He had to be ready to destroy Voldemort when he came back, as he surely would. What else had he been training for, waiting for?
Of course, that didn’t mean that other people couldn’t help.
He turned around and tucked his fingers gently under Draco’s chin, lifting it until Draco could look him in the eye. “Draco,” he said. “I need you to help me. Can I borrow the Elder Wand? And can you create an illusion for me?” He dropped his voice into a persuasive tone when he saw the slow way Draco blinked at him. He seemed to have used up all his strength in the ritual, spent all his reserves, because he’d thought that he could collapse afterwards. “Can you create an illusion of the Resurrection Stone and place it in my hand? I need both of them to distract Voldemort when he comes back.”
Draco gave the reflexive flinch at the sound of the name, but nodded hesitantly. Then he held up the Elder Wand and cast the illusion. And since it was that particular Wand acting in concert with Draco’s will, the illusion was perfect. Harry smiled grimly down at the stone they’d put so much effort into destroying, and then accepted the Elder Wand from Draco’s nerveless hand.
This time, he could feel its malevolent power, the way it immediately reached out to him and tried to judge his strength and whether it could overwhelm him and use him. Harry raised an eyebrow and ignored it after a moment. He didn’t think he would really be tempted by the Wand’s magic.
And he didn’t have to use it.
He stepped into the center of the room, nodding at Sirius and whispering soft encouragement to Hermione, arranged himself so he should be the first thing anyone saw if they Apparated in or flew through the window, and then waited.
*
Severus hadn’t flown more than a few Muggle streets before he knew that he would have to turn back soon. This flight spell was exceptionally draining, which was the reason that more wizards didn’t use it. And he didn’t have the Dark Lord’s immense reservoirs of magic to draw on.
But if he went back too soon, then Granger, Draco, and Harry might still be involved in the ritual, and the distraction would have been for nothing.
He glanced over his shoulder. The Dark Lord still soared after him, his eyes fixed not on Severus but on the net that contained the struggling shard of soul.
Severus sneered. That is another reason you must turn back. You know that you can’t maintain the net and fly at the same time.
And that undeniable fact gave him an idea for another distraction. He let himself waver, and then drop straight down, as if his ability to support the flight magic had suddenly failed.
The Dark Lord zoomed after him, cackling and cawing like a crow that had suddenly seen a baby bird with a broken wing.
Severus let himself fall as far as he thought was safe, subduing his own fear with inner calculations of speed and distance. This was another reason not many wizards used the flight spell. It unnerved them, or they spent too much time glorying in the unusual situation as a dream come true, and either way they lost track of the strength that was supporting them and which they needed to keep such careful track of.
Severus had never had that problem. Joy could surprise him, but it could not overwhelm his senses, because he would not let it.
He spun in a circle, though sideways, so it would look less like the controlled spin it really was, and then shot up behind the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord, meanwhile, had committed too much to his own momentum to reverse that quickly. He slid past Severus and then turned around-by which time Severus had used his carefully marshaled strength to rise to gliding level again and shot back towards the house. This time, the cry behind him sounded like a hawk’s hunting scream.
Severus felt the tingling ache in his muscles, and nodded. He had given Harry and Draco all the time he could spare. They would have to be ready to confront the Dark Lord when he and the Dark Lord returned to the house.
If not…
Severus did not let himself think about that possibility, or about the possibility that the Dark Lord would cut him down with a curse from behind before they ever reached Grimmauld Place. He leaned on the wind and flew, and behind him came doom and death, silent after that one furious cry.
*
Draco sat beside his mother, and watched Granger cradling Weasley in her arms, her expression one of pure bliss. He would need intensive Healing to repair the skin lost on his arms and shoulders to the Flaying Curse, but he would survive.
Unlike Narcissa.
Draco gently pushed her hair away from her neck, the strands catching in and sticking to the blood from the wound, and ignored the constant muttering from behind him. Black was telling Pettigrew in loving detail about the tortures that he would inflict on the coward and traitor the moment Harry said he could. Draco knew those tortures would never happen, for a whole host of very good reasons, but he didn’t really care about them right now.
Narcissa could never have lived. Draco knew that. The fangs had gone in at an angle that both opened a jagged wound and pumped her full of poison. It was remarkable that she had lived long enough to dash a vial of basilisk venom over the snake’s head.
Granger was right after all about that being useful. I’ll have to remember to tell her so.
If any of us survive what’s coming.
Draco looked up. Black, the only one who had any reason to pay attention to Professor Snape and the Dark Lord, had said they’d both flown out through the breach in the wards. He couldn’t tell when they would be back, but he didn’t seem concerned. He believed Harry would handle everything from now on, Draco knew, because he lived in a world of heroes and believed that was possible.
He looked down at his mother. There was his last heroine, dead. He touched her hair again, and this time he brushed it across the wound. Then he scooted back from her and wrapped his head in his arms.
He had to be like Black, now. He had to trust, though not as blindly. There was no one else to stand up and save them, and he had done his part in forcing the Horcrux to release its hold on Harry’s soul, so that the Dark Lord could be defeated.
At the moment, he was tired and grieving and had nothing left.
So he sat there and waited for Harry Potter to save them all.
*
Harry lifted his head when he saw Professor Snape soaring in through the window. Here it comes. And he’s holding-
A piece of Voldemort’s soul!
It was the one thing Harry hadn’t planned on. He had thought for sure that the Horcrux in Nagini had been destroyed, because, after all, Snape had watched Hermione cast the Fiendfyre incantations and knew them, too. He should have destroyed it-except that he wouldn’t have if he kept it to lure Voldemort, the same way that Harry was trying to lure him with the illusion of the Resurrection Stone still existing.
Harry took a deep breath. He wanted to let the cool plans collapse and run to Hermione, because she was the one who had done the Fiendfyre before and they didn’t have any basilisk venom left.
But she was busy. And he’d done the least of anyone in the battle so far. Even Ron had been wounded fighting wand-to-wand against Voldemort, and thanks to Hermione studying some Healing spells, he would get the chance to tell everyone all about that.
Unless Harry failed.
He lifted his wand, cradled in his right sleeve beneath the Elder Wand, and saw Snape hit the floor, rolling. At the same moment, he tossed the magical net with the shard of soul wrapped in it straight towards Harry. Harry moved forwards, wand out, and chanted the incantations he’d used when they were destroying the Resurrection Stone. He wanted contained Fiendfyre, not the kind that would char everyone in the room to ashes.
He didn’t think he got it quite right, because the Fiendfyre blasted in several directions at once, and only one splash went where he commanded it. The net vanished in midair, and the shard of soul didn’t even get the chance to scream. Harry took a deep, cleansing breath, and then yelped as he saw the Fiendfyre circling back.
Snape was on his feet in a moment, though, chanting strongly, and the fire recoiled and fell back from the same invisible barriers that Harry had constructed once before. He would have smiled his thanks, but Voldemort landed on the floor in front of him just then, and Harry whirled towards him, holding the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone up high.
“Voldemort.” His voice cracked in the middle. That was all right. The whole point was to give himself enough time to do what he had to, whilst convincing Voldemort he was frightened and desperately trying to bargain for his friends’ lives.
“Harry Potter.” The hissing voice was worse than the voice Harry had confronted through Seamus, or the shade of the original Tom Riddle he’d seen in second year, because it had more power and more malice behind it. Voldemort stalked a few steps closer, never taking his eyes from the objects in Harry’s hand. “What have you there?” His words were almost gentle this time.
“The Elder Wand,” Harry answered, “one of the Deathly Hallows. And another one of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone-and one of your Horcruxes,” he added.
Inwardly, he began the spiral. He needed love, and he needed hatred. Hatred for the curse, as you needed it for any of the Unforgivables, and love to make sure he wasn’t a monster when he cast it, because love would be the reason for the curse.
Hatred. That was easy enough. The Dursleys, and everything they had done to him, were a black hole of hatred waiting to be exploited if he dug into it, like a tarpit. He plunged into it and came up stinking and slimy.
Love. The first time he’d ever felt anything like it was when he saw Hermione shyly smiling at him and Ron after they defeated the troll. And then she lied to McGonagall for them, and Ron looked at her thoughtfully and decided that she was all right after all. And they were friends.
Hatred. He understood, now, some more of what he’d felt when Seamus destroyed his possessions. It was there, and it could burn him if he let it. He’d frozen in his shell as he did at least in part to prevent the hatred from burning him, and everyone else around him.
“Harry Potter,” whispered Voldemort almost lovingly. “How did you learn of the Horcruxes?”
Love. In third year, seeing Sirius for the first time, realizing that here was someone with a viable connection to his parents, realizing that here was someone stubborn enough to keep digging through all the barriers that might be put up against him.
Hatred. Fourth year, and the way Snape had turned against him at the end of the year. He’d been so furious, breathtakingly angry.
“You always did underestimate Dumbledore,” Harry said. It took an effort to speak the words, to force them out against the overwhelming pressure of the emotions. Mostly, he wanted to stand still and feel.
Love. In fifth year, and Draco and Snape finding out and pulling him away from the abuse despite his digging in his heels and screaming. And Ron and Hermione hadn’t reacted as badly as they could have, either. Harry stood there and felt love blaze up in him like an enormous flame, emerald as his mother’s eyes. He thought he could remember her eyes, sometimes, if he let himself, but the real memory of love came from his friends, and his mentor, and his lover.
“And if I want one of my Horcruxes back?” Voldemort took a step nearer, and Harry tightened a hand warningly around the illusion of the Resurrection Stone.
“I want your promise that you’ll let us all go first,” he said, and made his voice harsh. “I don’t care about the rest of the wizarding world. They abandoned me, hurt me.” It was no effort to give his voice a petulant edge, as he thought about the abuse he had suffered at the hands of the Dursleys and how many people had ignored it. “But I want your word that you’ll let everyone in this room go free and not hurt us for the rest of our lives. Then I’ll give you the Stone and-and even the Wand. What do I care if you conquer the world?”
Hatred. Suffocating, it had been, the hatred for Bellatrix when he realized what she’d done to Snape and what she’d made him live through during that year. And the disappointment in Dumbledore was sometimes not very far from hatred, given that he kept doing the wrong thing again and again, and he wouldn’t give up his obsession with the Stone.
Voldemort laughed softly. He was falling for it, Harry saw. He was hurt by the circumstances of his own childhood, the orphanage and the lack of care from anyone for himself, and he had damned the world when he started making Horcruxes. He would think it entirely reasonable for Harry to do the same thing. He was limited by his own emotional reactions.
I feel sorry for him, Harry thought, the suffocation of the emotions too much again, and then the pity crowned the last emotion he pulled up.
Love. So much love, these last months, as he understood fully what he was fighting for. As he honored his friends for their stubbornness and willingness to help him across time and distance. As he explored Draco’s body. As he watched Sirius heal. As he finally started trusting Snape again, after so many years.
The love flooded through him, and burned out the hatred. Harry blinked and gasped slightly. He had thought he needed the hatred, but he didn’t, not really. He simply needed to acknowledge it as part of who he was, so that he didn’t become trapped in repeating the same actions again and again, the way Voldemort had.
At the moment, he was far more whole than he had ever been before.
And it was pity that made him raise his wand, because Voldemort would never know anything like this, and whisper, not the Unforgivable he had intended to use, but something simpler, because Voldemort was mortal now, and didn’t need to die by the Killing Curse.
“Acer.”
Voldemort watched the golden beam of light approach him without trying to do anything about it, because he thought he was still immortal, that a Horcrux still existed. Harry thought, in the moment he had before the spell hit, that he could wave his own wand and banish the illusion of the Resurrection Stone, so that Voldemort would know it was hopeless.
But he held his hand in the end. There was no need for cruelty.
The Slicing Spell sliced across Voldemort’s throat and took his head off. His expression was still expectant, still full of laughter, as his head soared across the room and his body fell, spouting blood. Harry immediately used another spell to contain its spread and then sat down, hard, as the strength and the emotions left him all at once.
But with Draco suddenly on his left side, supporting him, and Snape’s steady hand on his shoulder, he did not fall.
Epilogue.