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Magic Never Dies

Chapter 25

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Hermione was as good as her word and within twenty minutes they had the required cauldrons and ingredients; the few they were missing were procured quickly and discreetly by Ron from the twins' shop. He refrained from mentioning they were going to be used by Snape, not wanting to risk any `accidental' contamination incidents. Normally he'd have been quick to jump on the prank wagon when it came to their former potions professor, but the thought of an exploding horcrux in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place - let alone what Hermione would do to him when she found out - made it just not worth it this time round.

Harry prowled the perimeter of the kitchen like a caged lion, pacing. Snape had forbidden his help in the preparation of the potion altogether and even the normally hyper-proficient Hermione was intimidated by his hawkish gaze now that she bore the full brunt of it, for he was minutely particular about the slight variations from the standard brewing of the potion.

"Excuse me for asking, Professor, but you've never actually used this variant on a horcrux before, have you?" she queried at last, her frustration strident even to her own ears.

"As they are not exactly an everyday occurrence and extremely difficult - not to say technically illegal - to come by, the answer to your question must be, as you already well know, no." Snape snapped.

"Then why, exactly, are you so confident it will work? Where did you come by the method? I've looked and looked for anything documented successfully and never seen anything along these lines."

"That would be why I am a Potions Master and you a student lacking even a N.E.W.T. qualification," Snape sneered. "My experience allows me to project and theorize with accuracy. I have successfully used this method on cursed objects of infused consciousness and it has also been effective with particularly recalcitrant boggarts and poltergeists that refuse to budge as well."

"If Hermione doesn't have a potions N.E.W.T., it's my fault, not hers," Harry snarled back, "And if your previous experience dancing his attendance hasn't already clued you in, I've been attacked by both and there's a pretty big difference between Voldemort and Peeves."

Snape made a long suffering sigh and silencio-ed Harry. Harry's eyes narrowed slightly and Snape's hair turned a bright Tonks-ish pink. The effect was so ghastly, and so truly, deeply funny, that Hermione was forced to turn away, shoulders shaking with laughter. Ever on the look out for emotional weakness to plunder in those around him Snape misconstrued her quivering for tears and began in on the uselessness of women who refused to rein in their hormones to further their study of magic.

Hermione had tears dripping from her eyes by the time she lifted them to Harry; she expected his silent fury to be pierced by a satisfied grin but found him gazing at her strangely intensely instead.

Oh, and women were the irrational ones.

Ron popped back in with the missing ingredients, took one look at Snape and dissolved into surprised laughter. Several seconds later he was a very surprised toad.

"Do you have any idea the…" Snape started, spinning around again towards Harry, but the action was enough for even his heavy hair to swing into his face and alert him to the source of Ron's amusement. He rolled his eyes and muttered a finite incantatum.

Nothing happened.

He sighed and pointed his wand upward.

Still pink.

Harry splayed his fingers silently at Ron, and he left off being a toad, stretching to his full height as he transformed. "Thanks. Yuck. I hate getting toaded."

Snape pointed his wand again and actually muttered the words. And then some other words. He ran through the usual cycle of spell-ending possibilities, even trying some Hermione had only read before in books.

He turned his wand on Harry furiously. "Fix it."

Harry shook his head, throwing off Snape's silencio with a shudder. "Make me," he said clearly.

The curse flowed off Snape's tongue and through his wand with practiced ease; Hermione had time only to draw breath but not exhale her warning.

She didn't see him raise a shield and the curse was not repelled. Hermione watched in silent amazement as it was… absorbed. Harry's eyes didn't even flicker.

Snape's did.

"How long," he asked, "have you been able to do that."

"Probably always," Harry told him quietly. "But as usual, no one ever bothered to try to teach me."

"It is not a… usual magical skill," Snape. "It is one the Dark Lord has mastered but even Dumbledore found… difficult, and mostly avoided. All witches and wizards manipulate naturally occurring magic to their will. We are simply good conductors of the flow, and able to varying degrees to affect it. When you begin to absorb magical energy you have embarked upon a different path. It seldom ends well. The human body was not meant for such things. You must learn to balance and discharge what you have taken on, or it will overcome you. It is not simply dark magic that distorts the soul; it's just that most who can do that - what you did - embrace the dark arts."

"Well, I don't," Harry said flatly. "And I won't. I'm done wondering why Dumbledore didn't teach me stuff like that, when he was the one who told me that I gained powers from him through the scar in the first place after I started spouting parseltongue. But you… you embrace all that stuff. You kept telling me I was nothing compared to him, but all you did is tell me. For all you're supposed to be a teacher there's been eff-all teaching going on. Those Occlumency lessons? Those would have fallen a lot closer under the category of mind rape. So excuse me if I get a little pissed off at your teaching style. Stop picking on Hermione and either help us or get out of the way."

"I am finding your choice of retribution… distracting," Snape countered. "Fix it, or carry on on your own."

Harry blinked, and Snape's hair was black again, although Hermione could have sworn it was significantly cleaner.

"How long does that stuff have to brew?" Ron asked, "It's almost time for lunch."

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The locket horcrux was the first to go, and all went pretty much according to plan. After immersing it in the cauldron for a good ten minutes without visible effect Harry fished it gingerly out with a ladle and lay it in a heavy cast iron pot Hermione had found for the purpose. It looked no different and Harry would still not have been entirely unsurprised to find that the whole plan had been an elaborate plot on Snape's part to blow his bits to Greenland, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He went with the comfort of his familiar wand in hand. "Inanis Corpus Anima Concedere."

The locket jumped several inches in the pot, quivered and subsided anticlimactically.

Ron locked eyes with Harry, and Harry looked on to Hermione.

No cursing shred of soul, no explosion of dark energy, no younger Tom Riddle eager to taunt his future nemesis. Nothing.

The horcrux destroyed, a simple Alohamora opened the locket. A small trickle of fluid dripped out of the empty cavity.

Snape's attitude of `I told you so' to Hermione was plain.

"I'll get the cup," Ron offered.

There was nothing to indicate that the cup would respond any differently, except of course, it's obviously stronger attraction to Harry's forehead. In retrospect Hermione was later to wonder that if only they had done them in the reverse order, things might have gone differently. Who knew that the power of each segment might grow as the soul contracted and other parts were permanently destroyed? Or that there could be such a difference in the ferocity of the captured soul?

"I should have," she thought.

The cup fought the entire process like a cat fighting a bath. It seemed to know from the moment Ron picked it up that it was threatened.

"Ow!" Ron yelped, dropping it and startling them from their examination of the ruined locket. "It…erm, it, burnt me. Bloody thing. Look!"

He held out his reddened fingers as proof. Hermione picked up a pair of tongs and spelled them impervious, then reached for the cup.

It rolled away.

She reached again.

It rolled the other way.

She glanced up at Harry and Snape.

"That's not good," Harry reckoned.

"Most unusual," Snape murmured.

"What, compared to our vast experience with the other one?" Hermione asked.

They managed to corner it and Hermione got the tongs on it. Using both hands to steady her grip, she raised the cup with the tongs and swung toward the awaiting cauldron… and kept swinging, despite her desperate efforts to drop it in, right on past it. The cup suddenly grew heavy, many times its possible weight even if filled with solid lead, and slipped from her grip. Its forward momentum took it between Snape and Harry, landing with a crash on the kitchen table and, with an abrupt, splintering sound and the sharp smell of singed wood, right through it.

"What the…" Ron managed, dropping to his knees on the far side of the table.

"Keep your eyes on it!" Snape ordered. "Don't let it out of your sight."

Harry crouched down on the opposite side across from Ron, peering through the chair legs. "Merlin," he said. "I'd swear the thing just growled at me."

"Nope," Ron said. "That was me. It likes you. Look, it's coming your way."

Hermione watched as the little rolling gold cup indeed changed directions. Its movements were severely hampered by its handles; its uneven progress (roll, hitch, balance, thump, roll, hitch, balance, thump,) made it appear almost to have an ungainly limp.

Snape cut abruptly in front of Harry. "Oh no, you don't," he muttered.

The cup flipped, with a hollow, tinny noise that almost sounded like a squeal, and reversed its awkward progress back toward Ron.

Hermione quickly tossed him the tongs; he caught them and lunged under the table. There was a scrambling sound and the reverberating whump of Ron's head clearly connecting with the underside. He reappeared; slightly dazed but in solid possession.

"Bloody little thing isn't it, you'd think…."

Whatever you'd think was lost as the cup suddenly filled itself with a crimson liquid that looked suspiciously like blood and disgorged its contents in Ron's face, effectively blinding him. He cursed explosively and flung the cup away, clawing his eyes.

"Stings!" he howled, and Harry and Hermione both bolted toward him. Harry frantically grabbed a dishtowel and Hermione a cloth napkin; between them they lowered Ron into a chair and began wiping the liquid away.

Snape had barely spared a glance for Ron; he was firing curses at the little golden cup ranging from finite incantatum to petrificus totalus and stupify without the slightest effect. Backed into a corner again, the cup had filled and disgorged itself once more; this time a clear liquid that burnt acid-like holes in Snape's black robes.

Harry muttered a cleaning charm on both their cloths and conjured a bowl of clear water. Poor Ron's eyes were red and irritated, streaming.

"`You simply immerse the object in a cauldron of the stuff prior to doing the releasing spell, you foolish boy.' " Hermione parodied as they worked. "Oh yeah, that works. `My experience allows me to project and theorize with accuracy. I have successfully used this method on cursed objects of infused consciousness…' It appears you neglected to inform the horcrux how well versed you were, Professor."

Black eyes glared at her even as their owner dodged another round of liquid. This time the holes in his robes were left faintly smoking.

"Potter," Snape hissed. "Come here."

Harry handed his towel to Ron and cautiously made his way around the table. The cup began to vibrate as he approached, emitting a soft, high whine.

"Pick it up."

"Don't do it, Harry!" Ron roared.

"Harry…" Hermione started warningly.

Snape turned to them both. "He carried it before without incident. It is not the behavior of the horcrux inside, but a spell to keep any except one who bears a portion of the severed soul within from performing magic upon it. It wasn't activated until we intended to do just that. No one but Potter or the Dark Lord himself can effect a change in it now."

Harry bent slowly over and approached the cup as one would a wild and threatened animal. It lay, inanimate, before him. His fingers slowly grasped the handle and lifted.

The cup seemed to come willingly into his hand, then quickly accelerate. It appeared for all the world as if he simply picked up the golden object and smacked himself in the forehead with it, hard enough to land him flat on his back, out cold. Ron and Hermione watched as his hand fell limply away to the floor and the cup remained quite firmly attached to his scar.

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"If we don't get this effing thing off my effing head within the next effing half hour," Harry groaned, "I'm drowning myself in the cauldron. I've had it. Basilisks and swords at least have some dignity. This is… beyond unbearable. If Voldemort walked in the door right now I'd kill him with my bare hands."

"The idea has merit," Snape said. "The first part, anyway."

Harry glared at him balefully from beneath the cup. He now sported a black eye on that side and was the proud owner of a truly exquisitely splitting headache. Hermione's idea that the pain in his scar had become as much the horcrux within trying to get out as Voldemort trying to get in was clearly brilliant; the cup was every bit as annoying as its creator had ever been. All it lacked was a conscious voice to taunt him, and he was grimly sure if he didn't get rid of it soon it would develop one.

"You've got four bits of You-Know-Who's soul there, Harry. Surely you can think of some really nasty way to get it off. Ask yourself what he'd do."

"Ron!" Hermione chastised. "Just to refresh you, we'd like Harry not to get in touch with his dark side right about now."

"Well, if Snape's actually right - for a change, mind you," Ron said with relish, "and this really was You-Know-Who's plan to keep the horcrux safe there must be some way around it. Harry said even Dumbledore had to think like V…V…Voldemort to get into the cave to find the locket."

"He has a point," Harry admitted, shutting his eyes and resting his head back on the floor.

Hermione closed her eyes as well and really pictured Voldemort. She had never actually seen him prior to his appearance at Durmstrang; before that she'd only had Harry's descriptions for her mental image. The reality had shown her how much Harry had spared them; if ever there was a picture of evil, Hermione thought, Voldemort's likeness would be the one to appear in the dictionary under E. Or M, for malevolent. That distorted, skull-like visage, those crimson, hate filled eyes… What sort of a spell would that shriveled, twisted soul answer to? What might override it?

Hermione thought of Harry absorbing Snape's curse earlier, and what Snape had said.

She opened her eyes and pointed her wand straight between Harry's, glad that his were closed.

"Reducto!" she cast quickly before she could second guess herself, with as much force and precision as she could muster.

The spell dislodged the cup; as it should have. It did not render Harry a lump of mangled bones; as everything they had ever been taught at Hogwarts indicated that it would. He slid further across the floor from the force of it, but absorbed the bulk of the magical energy released with a quick gasp of sucked-in breath and a shudder.

A simple case of floor burn had to be worth it to get a horcrux off your head.

Ron and Snape were still gazing at her open mouthed as she made a rapid grasp for the stunned cup in the spelled tongs and deposited it in the cauldron. Harry was fingering his bruised eye and attempting to sit up at the same time.

"Love you, too," he said shakily.

Her heart was thumping madly now that the deed was done. She'd been so sure it would work, and it had.

But what if it hadn't?

She sat down suddenly and hard, glad there was a chair behind her, her brain abruptly swimming with the possible consequences of her action.

It had been such a Harry thing to do. Hardly Hermione at all.

"What the hell, Hermione, you could have …" Ron started, but Harry glared at him and whatever she could have done died on his lips.

She could have killed him.

"How very Slytherin, Miss Granger," Snape allowed, peering into the cauldron. "And what's more, it seems to have worked."

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They let the cup soak in its bath of living death for a good while, spelling clean the kitchen and making a simple meal in an almost wordless haze, taking turns staring at the motionless horcrux.

After they had eaten Harry nodded to Hermione. "It only says I'm supposed to face Voldemort himself," he told her. "It doesn't say a word about the horcruxes. You earned this one. You do it."

Hermione felt all of her fear and anger and resentment for all that had befallen Harry flood to the forefront of her mind. She thought of all that was keeping them both now from the life they might otherwise have led, of the loss of the six people whose lives had been forfeit for Voldemort's sick attempt at immortality and the innumerable others whose lives were destroyed along the way. The images seemed to shimmer softly and flow like heavy silver through her veins, down her arm and into her wand.

"Inanis Corpus Anima Concedere," she said softly, but clearly.

The cup twitched and seemed to glow, brightly at first and then fainter and fainter until the gold turned a tarnished, poisoned black. A bubble was released; although where exactly it came from she could not say. It rose to the surface of the cauldron through the potion and burst on the surface of the liquid, releasing a disproportionate scream of fear and rage and resignation that its final moment had come, and was gone.

"Well done, Miss Granger," Snape intoned into the silence that followed.

"You did it, Hermione," Ron informed her, more than just a trace of respect lowering his voice.

Harry simply held open his arms to her without a word, and she found that most gratifying of all.

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They retired early that evening, the need to seek the oblivion of sleep and recover from the events of the day apparently house-wide.

Hermione had gone up first to have a bath and wash her hair when the fire whiskey came out; she had no desire to see how creative Ron's insults toward Snape could get with liquid assistance. She heard someone take their turn after her while she found and donned clean pajamas. She found the book she had begun the night before and held it open on the bed with her knee while beginning the not insubstantial job of combing through her wet hair.

The realization that she had become lost within its pages came to her as she finished the chapter, along with the sudden knowledge that the fingers patiently working the comb through her hair were no longer her own, and the weight upon the bed behind her was in fact Harry. She had not been truly conscious of his arrival or surrendering the comb to him; it occurred to her then that she had expected him, though he still had a room of his own.

When she crooked her neck to have a look at him he was as lost in thought as she had surely been, his eyes far away, fingers moving carefully but automatically.

She was reminded for no real reason that she could imagine of Bill and Fleur's wedding, moving through the happy crowd of well-wishers to offer him a sickle for his thoughts. He'd appeared so pensive and alone even surrounded by the wedding party. She'd thought she was with Ron then. Her mind reeled at the very idea of not knowing, of never knowing Harry as she knew him now.

"Two down," he said, focusing more closely on working out a snarl as if he had suddenly become aware of her watching him. "Three to go. Do you really have a plan, or were you just putting off Snape?"

It seemed it was time for The Talk.

She waited until the comb ran smoothly through the last strands and then took it from him, setting it on the night table.

"My turn to look after you for a bit," she told him, and pressed him down gently to the bed with a brief kiss. She removed his glasses and set them on the table beside the comb. "Hands up then."

He grinned, a shadow of his old one, but lovely none the less. "Don't shoot," he said. "You can have it all."

"That's right," she affirmed, and grinned in return as she pulled his tee shirt over his head. "Roll over."

When he was sprawled face down she carefully straddled his lower back and began to work over his knotted shoulder muscles with the pads of her fingers. He was so tight it felt like massaging velvet covered wood; she wondered sometimes how he moved at all.

"Must be really unappealing, this plan of yours," he mumbled from the pillow.

"Just be quiet for a bit, you," she told him. "It will seem much more appealing when you haven't got a broomstick for a spine."

One green eye rolled back to meet hers and the very corner of his mouth curled. "It'll swap for broomstick somewhere else if you keep on like that," he warned.

"I think I can handle that." She allowed her fingers to work their way up his neck to the very base of his skull, probing gently as they flexed.

He made a soft humming sound of content and went silent.

"I did have a plan, actually. I'd been meaning to talk to you about it to see what you thought but things kept popping up. You know, unplanned portkeys, visiting with Voldemort, not speaking thestral. One thing after another."

"Hunh," Harry said. His eye had drifted shut and Hermione could feel him softening like candlewax beneath her.

"The thing of it is," she continued. "Snape's right."

"Hnuh uh," Harry mumbled negatively.

"Yes, he is. He has years of experience to put into play against an unknown factor, and he can make a projection based on that experience. All I have is school book learning, and you've managed to prove to me pretty completely that books don't have all the answers. Particularly when it comes to you."

"Hmmm," was the best he could manage in the face of that.

"I'm having a parseltongue problem," she said regretfully.

Harry hissed something Hermione was fairly sure a lady snake would have found really enticing, just by the sound of it.

"Harry, if the horcrux was still intact, you shouldn't actually be able to do that."

The green eye reopened abruptly, and blinked. "Bloody effing hell." He rolled to his side beneath her fingers.

"If there was no merging between your soul and his, where exactly did the parseltongue come from? Why did the sorting hat want to put you in to Slytherin? And if the scar isn't a horcrux itself but rather just the mark of one, why haven't the other two soul fragments reunited with the one you already had? If they have, and you have three-sevenths of Voldemort's soul in you, why isn't it having more effect on you?"

"The Imperius thing," he explained in relief after a bit of panicked mind scrabble. "Remember I told you how I realized that little voice I hear reminding me I don't have to do stuff under imperius is my Mum's? If Snape told her what Voldemort wanted to do the way he said he did, and it was already in her mind to protect me from him, maybe that's just what she did. Maybe that's why it can't force me to do anything. Maybe it isn't part of me; it's just floating around inside me with nowhere else to go."

"Then why didn't it flee to him first year? It needs to reunite with the largest or most powerful concentration of itself the way a magnet needs to point north. It's an irresistible primal force of our creation. It must be anchored in you somehow. And if it is, that affects the way it has to come out."

First year, Voldemort had been barely alive, his soul shredded and without a body to call home, and still Harry's scar had ached in his presence. It occurred to them both then what Harry's effect on Voldemort must have been as well.

"Think about it," she wondered aloud. "He must have been utterly and unconquerably repulsed by you not to simply abandon Quirrell and take over you instead."

"He didn't know then for sure what he'd done to me that night," Harry said, "but thanks for that."

"Repulsive in the best possible way," she told him, stroking his shoulder absently. "It shouldn't have mattered if he actually realized you had part of his soul or not, he should have felt compulsed, not having a body of his own. No, he must have sensed or known somehow that if he came to you that it was he that would be subsumed, that you could have resisted him even then."

"Because of the prophecy? Because he believed it?" Harry stared at her. "Do you mean that if he had tried me then I might have just been able to absorb him some how and none of this, Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, none of it might have happened?"

"No," she said vehemently, snapping back from the depth of her thoughts at his tone. "And don't even start down that path. You were eleven years old, Harry, you'd only just found out about magic at all. And remember, he couldn't even touch you then because your mother's protection was still so strong, that has to have been at least part of what put him off trying." She was thinking aloud again, voicing her musings as they came to her and trying to marshal them into some semblance of order.

"He thought it was her blood, old blood magic, and that's why he stole your blood fourth year… but by then you had naturally grown, your mother's protection was already being taken over by your own magic. Your own ability to love others despite the darkness had started kicking in. That was the year you noticed Cho…"

"That wasn't love," Harry objected. "I loved you, and Ron and Sirius and Lupin and the Weasleys. That was… a mistake."

"That was still you having all the right thoughts, though. Looking past yourself in a way Tom Riddle probably never even tried. He never noticed another human being, be it witch, wizard or muggle except for what he could do to them or get them to do for him. His soul was corrupted before he even… oh!"

"Please," Harry begged, looking pained. "Please don't make that sound when you're thinking about him. That's exactly what you do when you… when you're about to… and, well, I'll never enjoy it the same way again if I think…"

"That's it!" Hermione cut him off, her eyes aglow with that special look she got when something she'd read somewhere suddenly became useful. "I've been looking for an opposite to murder, something as strongly good as the murders he used to sever his soul were evil. But you're good already, you're already his opposite. We need to work backwards and restore your soul to its own pure form. That's old magic as well, predating wizard manipulation of magical force. What we need is a purification!"

"A what?" Harry asked suspiciously.

"A purification ritual. They were used by ancient magical cultures to cleanse the soul before life-changing events, including before important battles. By the very nature of it, if we cleanse your soul, we'll drive out only his. Then we can destroy it, whether it's three separate segments or one. If it works, we could destroy the last horcruxes without injuring you at all!"

"I have to admit I sort of like the sound of that," Harry said with a slow smile. "What do I have to do?"

"Well, traditional methods would have a couple of different stages, with a ceremony for each. Usually you'd start by sweating out the impurities from your body and then we'd beat them out of you with birch rods or switches. Birch is a very purifying wood…."

"Erm…" said Harry.

Hermione laughed. She felt light hearted, even slightly light headed somehow. Why had she never thought of it before? She'd been so focused on reversing the horcrux process she'd thought herself into a corner. If this worked…

He'd still have to kill Voldemort.

But if that worked…

She knew without looking that his protest was a joking one. He trusted her; he always had, but it was heartfelt and unthinking now and she'd felt the weight of it as the horcruxes were found and they'd drawn ever closer to the moment when she'd have to keep her promise and find a way to keep him from sacrificing himself. She'd asked him to put aside his fatalism and fight as if he stood a chance of living and he had.

This had to work.

She looked at him then and saw only dear, familiar Harry with his wayward hair and tentative smile and those old, old eyes. How could anything evil manage to survive in there? He was still naïve somehow, still hopeful and faintly bumbling despite the enormous power that ranged within him, the enormous expectations laid upon him. He hadn't hardened, still wanted nothing more than to come through this whole thing alive and be done with it. He had no more illusions of regaining anything lost.

No wonder the magic found him when he needed it most; he was still unlikely to find it. But who else would be brave enough - or blindly trusting enough - to walk his path?

Hermione felt a swift surge of heat flush through her, an odd combination of desires riding its wave. She wanted to both to protect him somehow and to ravage every part of him, marking him forever as her own, come what may. More than anything else she desperately wanted and needed for him to want her that same way. She leaned forward and kissed him, closing her eyes as she did and letting the same reckless tide that drove her to point her wand between his eyes earlier that day wash over her now.

`Don't think. Just feel,' ran through her mind, although whether she thought it herself or he did, she couldn't say. She had never felt like this before, as if every touch they shared literally made her hunger for another, for more, for it to be harder, deeper, warmer, wetter, wherever they joined. Intellect fell to want and want to need until she truly felt as if the only thing left in her brain was the recognition of sensation. His name was constantly on her lips but she wasn't altogether sure she could have remembered her own if he hadn't been keening it back to her.

They made use of every inch of each other; as soon as she felt as if that burning need might finally be slaked he moved and set it off again. She found herself guiding his hands and hips and lips in ways she never could have imagined, asking for things she'd never known she'd wanted before and he denied her nothing. He was dripping sweat, muscles tensed and rock hard again, driving with every ounce of energy he had to please her. Meeting the intensity of the green eyes above her she knew with absolute certainty that for that single moment she was the center of his universe and there was no loss, no pain, or fear or regret. She could give him nothing more than that moment, that perfect, arching, reaching moment when everything was about to happen but was still a breath, a heartbeat away.

She cried out when he did, in loss and completion both. She had nothing left to give, nothing more that was not already his. She could only hope that Dumbledore somehow was right and the power Harry knew was love.

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"There's an ancient Welsh holiday called Mwfydnfud." Hermione told Harry and Ron over toast at breakfast the next morning. She had a copy of `The Magical Year: Rituals for every Season and Reason' propped open on the sugar bowl in front of her.

"God bless you," Harry said, and yawned. "Someone really needs sell the Welsh some vowels."

Ron snorted.

"It just so happens to stand, in English, for `Mess With Forces You Do Not Fully Understand Day'. I thought it would be the perfect day for your purification, Harry," she announced with a grin.

"That's called baring your arse to the gods," he retorted. "Forget it. Let's pick a nice, meaning-free day like, oh, tomorrow, and get it over with instead."

Ron glanced from one to the other. "Why are you trying to purify Harry?"

"She's going to steam me to get Voldemort all hot and bothered and then beat him out of me with a birch stick," Harry informed him, lifting the book and spooning sugar into his coffee. "The birch is a symbol of purity, you know."

Ron snorted again. "I told you, I don't want to hear about what you two get up to in the privacy of your bedrooms," he said. "Although I warn you, Fred and George could have a field day with that."

"Mention it and die," Hermione reproved. "We may be joking around, Ron, but I'm dead serious about the idea of it. I need your help as well. What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Picking up Luna from the Express. She's coming straight here for Christmas because her Dad's covering that squib ma… he's out of town and staying with her Aunt."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Accio Quibbler."

There was a thumping sound at the door to the front room, like a bird beating its wings against a closed window.

Ron pointed his wand at the door. "Incendio Quibbler." A popping noise came from behind the door and wisps of smoke leaked through the edges of the doorframe. "Look, mate, you're dead. There's not a thing you can do about any of it. If this purification thing means you're a step closer to putting You-Know..V…Voldemort out of it for good, then I'm there. Save me a birch rod and let's do it."

Harry turned imploring eyes back to Hermione. "You're not really going to let him have a go, are you?"

She sighed. "No one is going to be beating you with anything, Harry. We can use birch bark instead. Relax. Let me do a little more research on one aspect and I'll show you exactly what our options are, okay?"

Snape appeared in the doorway, furious and holding the smoldering remains of the Quibbler.

"This never happens with the Daily Prophet," he snarled.

"That rag's too wet to burn," Ron informed him. "And I greatly doubt you're mentioned in it today, either. On the plus side, the Cannons won last night, 210 to 90."

"And still the sun shines, and the earth turns," Snape muttered wonderingly, and went off in search of a clean mug for his tea.

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Hermione put a great deal of thought and preparation into the purification attempt. She researched the whole topic thoroughly and chose several basic ritualistic practices closest in purpose to what they wished to achieve with Harry. Luna proved, in the end, to be a fount of useful if esoteric information as well.

It was Snape who convinced her that it should be done at Hogwarts, but to be fair Hermione readily agreed. She met with Professor McGonagall in order to secure her permission to use a room in the castle and with Madam Pomfrey to make her promise to remain reachable by floo, just in case.

She prepared herbs and oils and special candles, secured magical chalks for markings, learned spells to simulate the sweat lodge effect and chants and focusing charms to help Harry isolate Voldemort's presence within him. She spent hours warding every crack and corner of the old classroom on the third floor Professor McGonagall allotted them. She even convinced Harry to let her invite Remus and Tonks to help out should anything go wrong.

So she was more annoyed than anything else at first when her meticulous plans were disturbed.

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They were in Professor McGonagall's office, Lupin and Tonks having just arrived through the floo, when they heard it.

It started with a dull rumbling, like thunder, followed by a distant boom.

"Oh shit," said Harry Potter, recognizing the sound of fate laughing at him yet again the moment he heard it.

The last thought he'd ever wanted to have facing Voldemort for the last time was "I'm not ready."

It was inescapable under the circumstances, however, so he did what he'd always done best before.

Swallowed down the terror and ran with it.

They were all looking at him with varying degrees of concern, although Hermione was too preoccupied to believe it could really be Voldemort and Ron was no stranger to the lure of denial. Snape holding his left arm and cursing was never a great sign, but hey, there were always extenuating circumstances if you tried to find them hard enough. Lupin eyeing him quite that assessingly, however, boded absolutely nothing good.

"Harrrrrrrrrry Potterrrrrrrrrr!"

The unmistakable sibilant voice of Voldemort himself, hopefully enhanced by a sonorous spell (Harry really didn't want to know how he was hearing it from the very bowels of Hogwarts else) echoed through the room.

Lupin jumped into action without hesitation. "He's hardly come through the front door from the sound of it, and it looks as if he wants us to come to him rather than coming directly for you, Harry. We need to keep from being trapped. Tonks, you're to keep a way clear to the front door at all times. Take Hermione with you."

"I'm sorry, Professor Lupin," Hermione said. "I don't mean to second guess you or Tonks, but I'm not leaving Harry and Ron. Not now."

Remus shook his head, "Hermione, I…"

"I'm not. It's not a question. We're not children, and if it means leaving the Order for insubordination, I'll do it."

Harry was about to add his voice to hers when Tonks beat him to it.

"She's right, Remus. You know she is. Take her, Luna can help me."

Lupin inclined his head and turned to Dumbledore's portrait. "Albus, if you could martial the braver portraits to report back his location and how many he has with him, that would be an enormous help. Professor McGonagall, I know you will wish to remain here and alert the rest of the Order and the Ministry. Ron, Harry, Hermione, with me. Severus, I believe we'll allow you to lead."

"If you are insinuating I somehow informed the Dark Lord Potter would be at Hogwarts you are much mistaken." Snape growled, his hackles clearly raised.

"Well, it's not your name he's hissing through the halls, is it? And given the fact the Harry hasn't been a student here since Albus died and Voldemort thought him dead as well, someone must have gotten awfully good at Divination all of a sudden." Lupin snarled back.

"That rules out Trelawney, then," Ron said with a nervous laugh, but Harry felt a vague stab of wonder. He hadn't seen Professor Trelawney since her aborted attempt at hiding her empty sherry bottles in the Room of Requirement the night Dumbledore died, and the combination of her drinking and her hurt fury at being usurped by Firenze might easily have been enough to send her the wrong way. Fraud though she was as a teacher Harry knew she was capable of real prophecy every now and again; she'd certainly managed to screw up his life with one before.

Not that it really mattered who'd done it now; he was here. The chances of throwing Voldemort off once more to buy the time to rid himself of the scar horcrux were slim; Harry knew he'd pushed his luck about as far as it was likely to go.

He supposed he'd made a good run at it.

He found Hermione in his arms, kissing him as if her life depended on it and without the slightest trace of embarrassment or awareness of anyone in the room. "Be careful, be careful, be careful," was all she could say in between kisses, and he could find no answer to that but "I will," mumbled regretfully in response to each one. There was so much more he wanted to say.

They were not the only ones in the Castle; most had thankfully left already for the approaching holidays but they came across a spooked Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbot with a small herd of lower years at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, heading blindly for the supposed safety of the Headmistresses' office.

Hannah was sent to take the young ones along to help Professor McGonagall and Neville quickly drafted to come with the rest of them. Harry remembered his steadfastness in the Department of Mysteries and was glad.

"I never really thought you were dead, Harry," he whispered as they made their way on. "You're going to beat him, I just know you are."

Harry wanted to say something appreciative or comforting, but found his mouth was dry, his brain blank. He nodded instead.

They added Flitwick to their numbers as they passed the Charms corridor, and Hagrid shortly after, called by Tonks' patronus as she and Luna guarded the way to the front door. He was swinging his pink umbrella determinedly and clapped Harry reassuringly enough on the shoulder to send him halfway down the next flight of stairs.

All was suspiciously quiet from below. The portraits began to weigh in as they got closer to the dungeons.

"It's him! It's him!" they whispered. "And his Death Eaters and worse! Inferi, Ogres, Trolls! In Hogwarts! He's come! He's opening the chamber! The Chamber of Secrets!"

Harry's stomach cramped painfully. He didn't want to be trapped there, under ground in that slimy cavern surrounded by Salazar's legacy. It was the very last place he wanted to die.

Remus pulled up then.

"There's no point in going down there. Not like this. If he's going to the Chamber he's digging in - or looking for something. Either way, the smartest thing to do is wait for reinforcements and hold the doors. Thank goodness there are so few students left. Anyone still down in the dungeons is more than likely Slytherin. I doubt they'll mind the company."

A nice respite, Harry reckoned, but alas not to be. The corridor ahead grew suddenly dimmer and cool; the despair so thick you could cut it with a knife. Dementors. And before them, a Death Eater too well known to Harry to bother with a mask.

Lucius Malfoy made his way toward them accompanied by his very own band of a dozen masked followers. Harry wondered absently if Draco was one of them.

"The most terrible enemy, Harry, is the one who has nothing left to fear. The Malfoys can not fail again, father or son. Be on your guard." Lupin said softly, his wand drawn and pointed.

"Snape," Lucius greeted him smoothly, his eyes moving on hungrily to Harry. "The Dark Lord is most pleased with your assistance, but sent me along to be sure all was well. He became… concerned, when you did not heed his call."

"Cut the crap, Lucius," Snape said, surprisingly plainly and with more than a tinge of what Harry was quite sure was actual fear in his voice.

That couldn't be good.

Malfoy cocked one perfect dark eyebrow in mock surprise. "Severus. How… uncivil. Having second thoughts?"

"My thoughts, regardless of their numerical standing, are no concern of yours. The brat is here, your Lord is there and the rest of us are wand fodder between. I fight for no side but my own, now. And for now, this is where I stay. What do you want?"

Lucius laughed, and the herd of Dementors following him stirred restlessly behind the line of dark wizards. "The boy of course." His wand hand rose abruptly, pointed not at Harry, but Ron.

Several things happened quite suddenly for Harry with the movement of that wand.

Time slowed around him, but still he felt he could slip through it like a hot knife through butter. His consciousness seemed to swell and spill around him like water. He could feel the castle walls like his own skin; hear the murmuring of voices throughout, from the squeals of house elves in the kitchens to the breathing of mice in the eaves and the stirring of spiders in the corners. He was one with the magic of the castle itself and he could feel Voldemort hiding in its depths like a cancer, pulsing.

He felt himself empowered but still feared he was doomed. It was a wretched combination. Even the castle was reaching out to him, but he'd failed to destroy the final horcruxes, he'd failed them all.

He threw up a shield in front of Ron and cast a reducto that sent the line behind Malfoy ducking for cover. The Dementors surged over them and the battle began in earnest.

At first it wasn't any worse than the Department of Mysteries had been. Patronuses charged and wheeled. Curses flew and hexes struck. Some were easily reversed, some simply had to be borne, the victims limping or hopping or careening wildly in their midst. The two sides were fairly matched but Lupin was able to lead them through the first line and into the wider hall beyond where they fanned out into niches and doorways and behind suits of armor, anything that could help block the Death Eater's fire. Harry tried desperately to adjust to his altered sense of perception as he fought.

There was another wave behind the first and Malfoy managed to send them on, dodging curses as he went. There were inferi mixed in to this lot and trolls larger and marginally less stupid than the one Quirrell had set on Hermione first year. Somewhere down below a werewolf howled and Harry saw Lupin's eyes take on a manic gleam.

The battle widened and the destruction began to deepen. The suits of armor came to their aid, clashing and clanging with swords drawn. Even the ghosts took sides; the Bloody Baron could be seen amongst the ranks of the Death Eaters while Nearly Headless Nick and the Gray Lady and even Peeves flew over the Hogwarts contingent, deflecting hexes and generally adding to the chaos of battle.

Finally Harry heard voices and shouted orders from above as well; Order members and Aurors were arriving in the front hall.

Why would Voldemort trap himself in the Chamber and allow reinforcements to arrive?

Harry kept tightly to Hermione and Ron, battling himself as hard as the enemy. Every instinct in him wanted nothing more than to simply protect his friends and survive, but he knew with dread certainty that the fight could not be won that way. He needed to stop it all, and there was only one thing he could try that might do that.

He needed to go on, to get to Voldemort.

He'd wanted to do it differently for Hermione, and quite honestly for himself. He'd wanted to live. But people were falling wounded now, dying, because he'd failed to manage it properly and it was time to do whatever was left to him to do.

Hermione was exchanging hexes with a masked Death Eater, half hidden behind a statue. Harry flung himself into the niche behind her. Ron crouched in a doorway directly across from them; Harry'd watched him covering her.

"Hermione, I've got to go on now. He's down in the Chamber, I can feel it, and I need to get to him there. It's the only way to stop this before everyone dies."

"Then let's go," she said simply, "because you aren't going anywhere without me and Ron."

They tried to push forward through the line ahead and found themselves pushed back equally powerfully by the physical brawn of the creatures and the dark magic of the Death Eaters. They'd been knocked down, hexed and coated with the stone dust of thousands of spells careening off the Castle walls. Harry felt as if his whole body was one enormous bruise. Ron's fiery hair was gray, and it occurred to Harry that this was what he might one day look like if he lived to grow old.

"We're not getting anywhere," Ron snarled in frustration. Harry was ready to agree with him when Hermione grabbed both their arms and dragged them into an unused classroom, shutting and sealing the door behind them with a colloportus.

"The window," she gasped. "We can't get to the stairs to go down, we'll have to go out and then come in again as far down as we can."

They flew to the window and Ron blasted the glass out. Hermione managed to conjure a heavy rope from the impossibly dusty and faded velvet curtains and secure it to the center window frame. Harry nodded.

"Go on - both of you. I'll cover you and come behind."

The sounds outside the door were growing louder; they'd obviously realized the object of the battle had disappeared inside.

Ron went first, repelling down the wall and kicking in the window two floors below, as far as the rope would reach. Hermione shivered. It was freezing, and she hated heights.

"I'm so sorry," Harry told her sadly. "I wish that we were escaping. It would be so easy to just climb out, find brooms and fly somewhere far away…"

"No it wouldn't," she said, shaking her head determinedly. "You'd never really be happy, and it would never be over. I wish we were too, but I know that I love you because we aren't, if that makes any sense at all."

Harry kissed her then the way she'd had the sense to kiss him before it all began; blindly, desperately and to the exclusion of everything else, if only for a moment. His over-acute hearing, the odd sense of being with the castle that he'd felt since the beginning of the battle extended to her as well; he could hear the beating of her heart speed up as his lips covered hers. He drew her tightly against him, trying to recapture for one last time the sensation of joining with her. The pulse and flow of their hearts seemed alter their beat until they were one as well.

One and a bit. One and an odd, small thump. One and a dear God what have I done.

Harry felt as if his own had stopped, but still he heard it. Thump… bittybump. Hermione, and… another. Not his. Another.

The door smashed in, and an enormous troll followed after. Fortunately he forgot to duck the door frame and knocked himself flat, something of an impediment to the Death Eaters behind.

Hermione's arms locked around Harry's chest as he propelled them both through the window and down the rope at breakneck speed. Ron was waiting impatiently below, pulling them both inside. They crunched across the kicked in glass and raced across the room, slitting open the door to peer in relief to empty hallway beyond.

The trio set off once more at a run for that only too familiar sink in Moaning Myrtles' bathroom.

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