'Die, then,' he said, and raised his wand, pointed it at Harry — Harry threw up his hand, knowing it was too late, Voldemort was already mouthing the words, green light sparking at the tip of his wand -
Voldemort screamed, staggering backward, the curse jetting from his wand but sailing harmlessly over Harry's head. Lowering his arm, Harry saw that Wormtail, not dead after all, had fastened his teeth into Voldemort's leg and was hanging on for dear life. Blood ran down the Dark Lord's leg and puddled on the floor. Like a rat, Harry thought, dazedly staring at the yellow teeth clamped into Voldemort's calf. Just like a rat.
Once again, Harry tried to raise his right arm, couldn't do it, and fell back against the ground. With his left arm, he reached for the hilt of the sword of Gryffindor, but it was too far away to reach it in time. His groping hand closed on a shard of broken mirror instead, its edges razor-sharp. He gasped in pain, then froze as, with a guttural yell, Voldemort jammed the dagger he held into the back of Wormtail's neck. Wormtail gurgled and let go, slumping to the ground, a bloody froth pouring from his mouth.
Voldemort turned, grinning, raising the wand again, sweeping it towards Harry.
'Avada Kedavra!' he shrieked.
A jet of green light shot from the wand, directly at Harry. Desperately, Harry flung his left arm up, as if he could ward off the deadly spell, knowing the gesture to be futile.
But he had forgotten the shard of mirror that was clutched in his hand — a shard of not just any mirror, but the Great Mirror, one of the Four Objects worthy of the name of God. The green bolt of light struck the surface of the mirror — and rebounded, shooting back towards Voldemort, only this time it was a thousand times as bright as it had been, a thousand times as deadly.
There was only time for a look of incredulous horror to pass over Voldemort's face. Then the light struck him in the chest, with such force that it lifted him off his feet, flung him down against the marble floor with the sound of shattering bones. A howl of agony rose from him — a terrible, shrieking noise that seemed to go on and on as his body twitched and spasmed. Gasping, half-blinded by the brightness of the Unforgivable Curse, Harry struggled to his knees, dropping the shard of mirror to the ground, and began to crawl. He crawled to the sword of Gryffindor, seized it, and kept crawling, painfully, towards Voldemort.
The agony in his broken arm was excruciating. The wind tore at him, the acrid smoke choking his throat, and Voldemort's howls went on and on. If only he'd die already, Harry thought, but the spells Voldemort had put on himself, the ones designed to protect him, to make him nearly immortal, were working against him now. The Aavada Kadavra curse was eating into him, trying to kill him and failing, wracking his more-than-mortal body with agonies Harry couldn't even imagine.
And so, he crawled, the Dark Lord's shrieks ringing in his ears. It felt as if he were crawling a thousand miles, crawling from one end of the earth to another. When he finally reached Voldemort's side he raised the sword in his left hand, and thought again of Draco, who had insisted on teaching him to fight with the hand he didn't favor. In that, as in so many other things, he had turned out unexpectedly to be entirely right.
Harry brought the sword down in an arcing sweep that severed the Dark Lord's head from his body. The blade of the sword bit into the marble floor beneath Voldemort's neck, and his screams stopped, instantly and forever. There was only the sound of the wind. It was over. Harry slumped forward in a dead faint.
'So what should we do with him?' Ron asked, standing over Lucius' limp body. 'Kill him?'
'No!' Hermione stood up, then whitened, swaying, and put a hand to her head. 'No,' she said, again. 'We can't — he might know what the missing ingredient in Draco's antidote is.'
'You'll never get him to tell you anything,' Ron pointed out. 'Not unless you torture him.'
For a moment, Hermione's face was hard as marble. 'I'm willing to do that.' She swayed again, and held out the wand to Ron. 'You'd better hold this,' she said. 'My head — '
Lucius screamed. Both Ron and Hermione jumped back, Hermione stumbling and catching at Ron's arm to steady herself. Lucius' scream went on and on, his back arching up from the floor. He thrashed from side to side as if in pain.
'What's going on?' Ron demanded, flabbergasted.
'I don't know,' Hermione whispered. 'Do you see that?' She pointed.
Hovering above Lucius' head was a small, glimmering ball of bluish light.
As they watched, it darted downward, disappearing into his open, howling mouth.
He went silent, collapsing back against the floor. Hermione, still gripping the wand, bent to his side and pressed her fingers against his throat. 'He's alive,' she said.
'What happened?' Ron said. 'Did I mess up the Stupefy spell? I've done it before, and that's never — I mean, I've never seen anything like — '
Hermione was shaking her head. She looked at him over Lucius' prone body, and he saw the sudden light shining in her eyes. 'I think,' she said slowly. 'I think this might mean that Harry's done it. I think he might have killed Voldemort.'
She didn't tell me that, Draco thought numbly, staring down at Tom. Why didn't she tell me that?
He thought of Ginny, standing in the hallway, her hands out as if she could hold him back from going after Tom.
Nothing, she had said. It's nothing.
She had let him go, knowing he might kill Tom, knowing that it might mean her death if he did, and she had let him go anyway.
I am the cause of this. Tom should be my responsibility.
Tom was laughing. 'I knew you couldn't do it,' he crowed. 'Love and dignity cannot abide in the same house — who was it who said that?
Aeschylus?'
'Ovid,' Draco said, and brought the dagger down, with savage force.
The blade missed Tom by inches, and the heavy hilt slammed into his temple. With a shudder, he went limp.
'I hate it when people misattribute,' Draco said, to no one in particular, and dropped the dagger. He looked down at Tom with some satisfaction.
His blue eyes were rolled up in his head, and his freckles stood out against his pallor. 'That was for punching me in the museum, Finnigan,' Draco added, and reached across Tom to grab the hilt of Terminus Est and drag it towards him.
Once it was thrust through his belt, he frowned. He didn't have enough strength, either magical or physical, to drag Tom back to the Ceremonial Chamber with him, and this was hardly the time to be interrupting Harry with logistics. Leaving Tom here was not an option. He'd wake up and escape, and all Draco's efforts would be wasted, not to mention that whole business of letting a homicidal maniac loose upon the unsuspecting wizarding world again.
Then again, he didn't much fancy spending the rest of his life sitting on an unconscious Tom Riddle, either. There weren't many men in the world Draco wanted to spend this much time pressed up against, and Tom certainly wasn't heading that particular list.
It was then that Draco's gaze came to rest on the black ring that gleamed darkly on Tom's left hand. It was the twin of the one his father had once given him, the carved onyx griffin with the Malfoy sigil on its back. Ah, Draco thought. With a grin, he reached down and twisted the ring, three times, around Tom's limp and unconscious finger.
The faint only lasted a few seconds. When Harry awoke, he was lying face-down in a pool of the Dark Lord's blood. Gagging, Harry rolled over and dragged himself slowly into a sitting position.
The smoke around him had begun to clear. He could see Wormtail, lying dead a few feet away, blind white eyes turned up to the sky. The wind had increased its howling. It tore at Harry's shirt with icy fingers, froze the blood that covered his hands and stiffened his shirt.
