Harry Potter & The Chosen Hallows
Title: Harry Potter and the Chosen Hallows
Author: kanedax
Fandom: Harry Potter/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: TV-14 for violence and head-hurting
Spoilers: Chosen (Buffy series finale); Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince
Summary: Harry Potter and the gang launch an all-out war against Voldemort and the army of Death Eaters below Hogwarts.
Notes: One more for the road. It’s not quality, but I felt the urge to write it in two and a half hours, sans beta. Thanks to JK Rowling for the characters and the time, and thanks to Joss Whedon for allowing me to blatantly and lovingly rip off the last fifteen minutes of his seven season masterpiece. I don’t own any of this stuff, they do.
Have fun at the midnight parties, and see I’ll see everyone when we start posting our post-TDH fic!
Ron Weasley’s wand lay broken on the floor of Hogwarts basement, where he and the others had journeyed to find the Mirror of Erised before Voldemort and his Death Eaters. He was unarmed, yet he continued to fight the only way he knew how: with his fists.
Members of the DA and the Order of the Phoenix were falling all around him.
As his left hand connected with the exposed face of a Death Eater (Dolohov, he supposed, although he didn’t have much time to look) he saw Dean Thomas drop to his left. He heard a scream that he vaguely recognized as Hannah Abbott as his right knee found Gregory Goyle’s vast stomach. His mind barely registered the dark-haired body falling in front of him until the hissing voice cut through the red.
“You pulled a nice trick, Harry Potter,” Lord Voldemort said, his wand pointed at the body at Ron’s feet. “You came very close to defeating me. What more do you want?”
Ron looked down in shock as Harry pushed himself to his hands and knees, his hand wandless. Despite the blood dripping from his stomach, the fierce determination continued to burn in his face.
“I want you,” Harry growled into the Dark Lord’s eyes, “to get out of my face.”
Voldemort laughter filled the chamber. Ron looked up, and it suddenly felt as though his world was moving in slow motion. He watched as Voldemort’s wand took aim at Harry’s prone body. Ron quickly realized that Harry’s wand, leaning up against the arm of an unconscious Ernie McMillan, was well out of reach from his bloody hand, but was close enough for Ron to…
“No!” Ron yelled. His foot flicked out, and through a miracle stroke, pushed underneath Harry’s wand and flipped it into the air. Voldemort, his attention pulled from his target, swung his wand around as Ron caught the wand in mid-flight.
The power, his rational mind thought as his instinctual mind aimed the tip of the wand toward Tom Riddle. No wonder Harry is so strong. This wand is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
“Expelliarmus!” screamed Ron.
“Avada Kedavra!” Voldemort replied.
Green light met red, and Ron felt a surge of energy burst through him. His hand tightened onto the wand in an iron grip, which, try as he might, he couldn’t release. He hadn’t been in the graveyard the night the night Voldemort returned, but Harry had spoken to him about the incident enough for him to recognize what was happening.
Priori Incantatem.
“Oh, bollocks,” he muttered as an incredibly strong surge of energy traveled down both ends of the connection. As they met in the middle, an ear-splitting explosion tossed a dozen Death Eaters and Aurors away from the pair.
“Harry!” Ron yelled, his left hand joining his right as the wand vibrated in his hand. “Hermione!”
“Ron!” Hermione yelled from the midst of the battle, which suddenly stopped to watch the event.
Nymphadora Tonks looked around the basement in horror as pieces of wall and ceiling began to fall from the explosion. “Everybody out!” she yelled. “Now!” The surviving members of Harry’s troops quickly pulled themselves together, helping the injured to their feet and hurrying out the door to the staircase. Voldemort’s Death Eaters, with a dawning realization that things were ending quickly, did the same with their own brethren.
Hermione pushed her way through the escaping crowd and grabbed Ron’s arm. His muscles were tight with exertion, and pulling it was like pulling the arm of a marble statue.
“He can feel it, Hermione,” said Ron, smirking at Voldemort, whose face was twisted in pain.
“What?” Hermione gasped.
“His soul,” said Ron. “It’s really there.”
Voldemort let out a howl of agony.
Ron chuckled. “Kinda stings.”
It was an odd mix of students, adults, and masked men that ran through the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Jumping over dead werewolves and powerless Inferi, they quickly bolted to the front hall as the walls shook around them.
The particularly ferocious corpse of Fenrir Greyback fell to the ground, the Sword of Gryffindor shoved through his chest. To its left, the shocked and bloodied face of Draco Malfoy stared at it, barely believing that he was the one who was still alive.
“Why…?” he breathed as Lee Jordan ran around the corner and pulled him to his feet, dragging him along with the rest of the group.
“The bus…” Lupin mumbled to Hagrid, who was hauling him along, keeping him moving after a particularly brutal sectumsempra to the stomach. He pointed to the gates of Hogwarts, where Stan Shunpike stood anxiously near the bright purple Knight Bus. “Get them on the bus…”
Hagrid nodded as Stan ran to the pair. Handing Remus off to the driver, he turned to the fleeing students.
“Ever’body!” he yelled, waving to no one in particular as Katie Bell and Colin Creevey dragged a nearly unconscious Cho Chang past him and toward the gate. “This way!”
Neville Longbottom’s one good eye scoured the hall, panic setting in as Fleur Weasley pulled a wounded Bill past him. They were quickly followed by Ginny, who screamed in surprise and threw her hands over her head as a large chunk of archway fell inches from her head. An old Neville would have been nervous that that bloody sword she was carrying might have impaled either of them, but right now he had more important things on his mind.
“Luna!” he yelled. She had been assigned to this corridor. With Draco. Where was she? Where is he?
“Luna!” he screamed, Ginny turning around and pulling him toward the door and away from the nearly split body of Luna Lovegood, which lay out of his field of vision not twenty feet from him.
Hermione dropped to her knee, pulling her arm under Harry’s body and lifting him to his feet. He could barely stand, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder for support.
“Go on, then,” Ron said to the pair, nodding them toward the exit.
“No!” Harry said. “No, you’ve done enough, you can still…!”
“No,” replied Ron impatiently. “You all beat them back. It’s for me to do the clean up.”
“Harry, Hermione, come on!” Tonks yelled from the stairwell.
“Gotta move, luv,” Ron said, looking Hermione in the eyes. “It’s fair to say school’s out for bloody summer.”
“Ron…” Hermione pleaded.
“I mean it!” Ron yelled, releasing one hand from the wand just long enough to keep her away from him. He watched in awe as the echo of Narcissa Malfoy peeled its way from the tip of Voldemort’s wand. “I gotta do this!”
“Ron,” Harry moaned as Ron’s face slipped into something close to contentment. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end, he thought as Hermione’s hand slowly slipped into Ron’s. As they closed around each other, Harry saw the green flame of Avada Kedavra burst in their grip.
Ron’s gaze slowly turned from Voldemort, who appeared to be encased in his own green fire, and looked at Hermione in the eyes. Her eyes were wide and tearful, but her mouth cracked into a grin of pride before falling into the face they had grown to know over the years as her “serious face.”
“I love you,” she said quietly.
Ron stared at her in surprise. A small chuckle escaped his lips.
“No you don’t,” he breathed, looking between the two of them. “But thanks for saying it.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like an eternity, until a blast, even more powerful than any previous, erupted from between the wands.
“Now go!” Ron screamed. Hermione and Harry nodded, and ran out the door. As he heard the pair of footsteps up the stairs through the din, Ron turned his attention to Voldemort, and to the Mirror of Erised behind him.
“I want to see how it ends.”
The huge front door of Hogwarts blasted onto the lawn in a cloud of dust and debris. Though the chaos, Stan watched as Tonks sprinted toward the Knight Bus.
“We can’t stay!” he yelled as she fell in beside him. She nodded, and he pressed the gas, causing the triple-decker bus to squeal away from the school and toward Hogsmeade. The survivors, both good and evil, watched out the sides, afraid that something might attack.
Ginny Weasley, however, had her face pressed against the back window, knowing who was still missing.
Harry and Hermione ran past the Great Hall and toward the front entrance, but discovered that their way blocked by a pile of stone.
“Come on!” Harry yelled, grabbing Hermione’s arm and pulling her toward the next staircase. “Let’s get to the Astronomy Tower!”
“But…” Hermione breathed, still looking back toward the basement.
“Trust me!” Harry replied, and she followed him toward the top of the school.
Ron could see the green flame licking his cheeks. Looking across the gap, he saw Voldemort in the same position. He was hoarse with his screams, and Ron couldn’t tell whether it was from the knowledge of his impending death or from the spirits that circled him. The echoes of Narcissa Malfoy, Amelia Bones, Cedric Diggory, and Harry Potter’s parents tormented him as he backed away, Ron walking forward to make sure the connection didn’t break.
Ron should have been afraid. He knew that this was the end. Yet, as he watched the veil appear in the Mirror of Erised, pulling Voldemort to his death, and Ron Weasley with him, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Look at me!” Katie screamed, grabbing Cho’s bruised and beaten face and pulling to meet her gaze. “This is nothing! Stay awake! This is nothing!”
“Why didn’t I die?” Draco chanted as Hogsmeade flew by the windows outside.
Ginny continued to stare out the back window. Where are they? she asked as the centuries-old Hogwarts castle collapsed behind them. Where are…?
Her mind shut off, though, as she saw a shape in the distance, visible even through the smoke and dust of Hogwarts’ ruins.
“Buckbeak?” she breathed.
Harry looked down at the scene of devastation below. With Hermione in a death grip around his waist (she was never much for heights), he watched in horror as the crater that was once his school widened to envelop the front lawn, the front gate, the moat around the school…
Thank God the Ministry evacuated Hogsmeade, he thought as the hole sucked the Three Broomsticks, Madam Puddifoot’s, and Hogsmeade Station into its depths. He hoped with all his might that the Bus below would move a little faster as the cobblestone path fell away feet behind it.
There went the Hogs Head. And Honeydukes.
As the Knight Bus passed the edge of town, the chasm stopped almost as suddenly as if it had reached some invisible wall.
“They’re safe,” Harry yelled to Hermione, who merely nodded against his back, her eyes never opening. Harry smiled despite himself, and nudged Buckbeak toward the stopped Bus.
The back of the bus flew open as Harry pulled Hermione from the back of the hippogryph. Ginny jumped out, a huge smile on her face as she wrapped her arms around Harry and kissed him. Hermione looked away sadly, turning back to the ruins until Ginny pulled away from Harry and gripped her in her own bone-crunching hug.
“I don’ understand,” Hagrid said, squeezing his way through the rear door. “Wha’ did this?”
“Ron…” Hermione whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek. She walked to the edge of the new canyon, and watched as a sign reading “Welcome to Hogsmeade” reached a tipping point and fell into the ravine.
“So, did you see...?” Neville pleaded, grabbing Draco Malfoy as he walked, zombie-like, from the bus.
“I, I was scared…” Malfoy muttered. “I’m sorry…”
“Did you see what happened?” Neville said more forcefully, putting his hand on Draco’s shoulder. “I mean… was she…?”
Draco paused in mid-step, for the first time allowing rational thought to enter his mind since the battle began. He looked up at Neville, and smiled a warm, sincere smile. It felt foreign to him, yet it felt right.
“She was incredible,” he told Neville, whose lip twitched in a way that Draco couldn’t tell was sadness or joy. “She died saving my life.”
Neville nodded, the tears close now, and patted Draco on the shoulder. “That’s my girl,” he sighed. “Always doing the stupid thing.”
Draco nodded, and as he watched Neville walk toward the rest of the group, he couldn’t help but look toward the front of the bus, where there was nothing but an endless road.
I think I can start over, he thought, smiling. Being the good guy’s not that bad.
“It’s not bad,” Tonks said, standing up. Remus Lupin’s were rolled up in their sockets, and he looked like he was trying his best to not pass out. “You just sit here, I’ll get someone to help…”
“Hey…” Lupin gasped, freezing Tonks in mid-step. He swallowed hard. “Did we… did we make it?”
Tonks dropped to one knee beside him, nodding. “We made it. We won.”
Remus Lupin smiled, and stopped breathing.
Nymphadora’s eyes widened. No, she thought. Not now… not now… She reached for Lupin’s limp, hand and took it in her own. Slowly she reached up to his eyes, open but lifeless and began to pull them closed.
Lupin gasped and coughed, his body jerking itself awake. His eyes opened wide, and looked around as though seeing things for the first time. He caught Tonks’ gaze and smiled.
“Surprise.”
“Voldemort’s gone, Harry,” Hermione said quietly as Harry walked up to the edge beside her, Ginny at his side. “What do you think we should do?”
“Yeah,” Nymphadora said from behind them, joined by Hagrid and Neville. “You’re not the One and Only Chosen anymore. Just gotta live like a person. How’s that feel?”
“Yeah, Harry,” Ginny said, her hand tightening on his own. “What are we gonna do now?”
Harry looked down on the smoking crater. He thought of everything he had been through in the last seven years. Everything he had learned. Everyone he had lost.
His godfather.
His mentor.
His friend.
Yet here they stood, at the end of their journey. Alive, just as his parents wished when they sacrificed themselves sixteen years ago.
The prophecy has been fulfilled, he thought to himself. And we still have our whole lives ahead of us.
Harry Potter considered what was next.
And smiled.