Twenty-Two
Ultimately, Hermione's tenure as Minister of Magic lasted just longer than a day. By the time she arrived at the Ministry, the Wizengamot was already in session with several nominations already confirmed. Shortly thereafter, Hermione's name was added to the list and the Wizengamot began the voting process that they had just completed over a month earlier.
Initially, Hermione seemed in a good position to retain the role. A number of Wizengamot members, even those that Hermione wouldn't necessarily consider close allies, spoke up in favor of the young witch. However, the memory of Lord Voldemort's appearance from the day before was too fresh, too raw in the minds of many members of the Wizengamot. Voldemort had Apparated into the Atrium of the Ministry and then murdered more than a dozen Aurors in only a matter of seconds. Finally, he had tossed Penelope's severed head onto the floor and promised the same for the next pro-Muggleborn Minister of Magic.
Unfortunately, with Penelope's death, Hermione was now the most high profile pro-Muggleborn candidate the Ministry had. By the middle of the day, it was clear that Hermione stood no chance of retaining the Minister's job. However, it was still unclear who would get the job. The initial list of candidates was noticeably similar to the last list with a few notable additions in Amelia Bones and Augusta Longbottom.
At noon, the first straw poll was held and the results were not what anyone was expecting. Augusta Longbottom and Roger Davies were neck and neck, both of them with roughly twenty-two percent of the vote. Amos Diggory and Malfalda Hopkirk both had roughly seventeen percent. Those four had quickly separated themselves from the rest of the pack.
Behind them, Tiberius Ogden had twelve percent and then the trio of Theodore Nott, Percy, and Amelia brought up the rear with four, two, and two percent of the vote respectively. Hermione received two votes, one from Arthur and one from Augusta Longbottom herself.
After that first vote, everyone assumed that Augusta and Davies would push forward. August would likely pick up the votes from those that had voted for Percy and Amelia while Nott's voters would likely abstain from the rest of the voting. At that point, it would be a race to determine which of them could gain the support of other candidates.
There were rumors flying around the Ministry that while Augusta Longbottom met with Amos Diggory, Roger Davies and Malfada Hopkirk were busy cannibalizing each other. Davies and Hopkirk had been allies in the first election but only out of necessity. They notoriously disliked each other and with the very real possibility that either of them could be the next Minister, neither was looking to concede.
While everyone assumed that would be advantageous to Augusta, they were wrong. Instead, when the numbers came out after another straw poll at two, the results had taken a surprising turn. While Amos Diggory had slipped to a disappointing five percent of the vote, it was Tiberius Ogden that had taken advantage of the fighting between Davies and Hopkirk. As the two of them bickered, Ogden was meeting with their supporters, claiming that he would listen to their concerns without resorting to the kind of political suicide that Davies and Hopkirk were currently engaged in.
If either of them had budged, Ogden likely would have been left on the outside looking in. Instead, he took thirty-five percent of the vote in the second straw poll. That number was followed by Augusta Longbottom with twenty-six percent, Hopkirk with twenty, and Davies with fourteen percent of the vote.
At that point, the math was clear: if Ogden could garner the support of either Davies or Hopkirk, the job would be his. While Augusta Longbottom worked frantically to pull votes away from Ogden, in the end, it was all for naught and by six o'clock that evening, Tiberius Ogden was appointed the next Minister of Magic.
While his term wasn't slated to technically start until the next day, Ogden wasted no time in making massive changes to the Ministry of Magic. Within an hour of his appointment, a memo had been passed out to the Undersecretaries and Department Heads with a surprising demand: their immediate resignation. It was clear that Ogden had no intention of retaining Penelope's progressive direction and that included the hires that she had made.
Hermione, understanding that it was well within Ogden's right to ask, had submitted her resignation immediately and returned to their apartment where Harry had been waiting. That night, she got a letter from Ogden requesting a meeting as soon as she could come to the Ministry. Personally, Harry had expected that Ogden would be offering Hermione a new job.
It turned out that he was right.
"That old bastard!" Hermione roared as she walked back in the front door of their apartment less than fifteen minutes later.
"What happened?" Harry asked as Hermione collapsed onto the couch next to him.
"He offered me a job."
"I thought he might," Harry replied. "If he offered you a job, then why are you so upset?"
"He was offering a position as the Assistant Head of the Department of Magical Transportation."
"Oh," Harry replied. It would have been less offensive if Ogden had publicly fired Hermione. There was no one at the Ministry whose star had risen as fast as Hermione's had in the last few years. From a menial assistant position to the chief advisor of the Head of the DMLE to the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, Hermione's rise had been steady and steep. If not for the circumstances of Penelope's death, Hermione would have certainly been among the leading candidates for the Minister's job.
Tiberius Ogden, however, did not appear to value Hermione's ability. Among the Department at the Ministry of Magic, there was a clear hierarchy. The Departments of Magical Law Enforcement and International Magical Cooperation were clearly the most powerful and influential Departments in the entire Ministry.
The Department of Magical Transportation, on the other hand, was about as far from influential as possible. But it wasn't even that it was a bottom-tier job, even if it was. If Ogden had cared about giving Hermione the ability to shape any sort of policy, he'd have sent her to The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures or even assigned her as an ambassador to another Ministry. Instead, he'd intentionally sent her to a position where her talents and her desire for change would be wasted. He couldn't blame her for feeling frustrated.
In the end, to no one's great surprise, Davies and Hopkirk were announced as Ogden's new Undersecretaries. However, it was a surprise when Amelia Bones was relieved of her position, replaced by former member of the SAF, Samantha Williamson. Bones managed to turn the situation in her favor by being named as the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation.
Unfortunately, Tonks did not fall as gracefully. The tension between Williamson and Tonks had been a rather open secret in the Aurors for years and so it was no surprise that Williamson immediately replaced Tonks with her old friend, Michael Goran. What was a surprise was that Tonks hadn't just been demoted, she'd been demoted all the way to Junior Auror. Much like Hermione, Tonks was not about to accept just an incredibly offensive demotion and immediately resigned, followed by the resignation of more than a dozen Aurors.
Thankfully, in the mess of the transition, there were a few bright points. The first was something that didn't happen. In the hours after his appointment, rumors flew around the Ministry suggesting that Ogden was considering Percy Weasley as his Senior Undersecretary. Thankfully, a number of Ministry officials told Ogden in no uncertain terms that if he hired Percy, they'd revolt. Needless to say, Percy was immediately dropped from consideration.
The other bright spots were also related to Weasleys. While a fair number of Aurors resigned, Ron had not been one of them and after years of working with Williamson, Ron had earned her trust enough for her to strongly encourage Goran to name him the Head of the SAF. At the same time, the Wizengamot, due to some arcane Ministry rules about the number of Ministers of Magic a Chief Warlock was allowed to serve under, was forced to elect a new Chief Warlock. In the end, Arthur Weasley was able to corral enough support to be named to the position, an encouraging sign that some members of the Wizengamot were not about to allow Ogden to reverse the few pieces of legislation that Penelope had passed during her time as Minister.
While all of this was going on, Harry had been dragged in front of Ogden to explain how exactly Penelope Clearwater had ended up dead. Thankfully, Ogden understood Harry's actions. The public believed that Voldemort had murdered Penelope and Ogden had no interest in correcting the story. The last thing anyone needed was a crisis of confidence in the one person that anyone believed could actually defeat Voldemort.
Of course, Harry himself was dealing with that crisis regardless of who else knew about it. He could tell that Hermione was aware of his struggle and was just waiting for him to talk to her. Harry knew that he would talk to her eventually, but in the meantime, there was someone else that Harry wanted to talk to. Thankfully, he was relatively close to the Head of the SAF and that was good enough to get him access to the cells at the Ministry. While it wasn't completely unsupervised, the Hit Wizards that followed him down into the bowels of the Ministry would wait at the far end of the cell block as Harry approached her cell.
In the two days since her arrest, Parvati's hooded cloak had been replaced with the Ministry's standard issue prison outfit, a beige shirt and pants combo that had no personality, no style at all. Even Parvati's black cloak, simple as it might have been, had a style of its own, a pointed hood that had made her look more intimidating than someone of her size had any right to.
Now, she sat on her bunk, staring at the other wall.
"How are you?" Harry asked.
"I'm great, Harry," Parvati said. Her voice was emotionless and she didn't even bother to look at him.
"Really?"
"Dolohov is dead. That's all that matters."
She looked like a dead person. Her eyes were lifeless, her voice flat. Hell, the stumbling corpses that Voldemort had summoned in Godric's Hollow had more life than Parvati Patil, a seemingly impossible feat.
"You know that you still have people who care about you, right?" Harry asked. "Padma cares about you. I care about you."
"If you cared about me, you wouldn't have abandoned me."
In all of their fights over the years, Harry and Parvati had addressed this a number of times. But she'd never used that word: abandoned. It carried a different weight than simply saying that he left. It implied that he hadn't simply gone, but that he'd had a responsibility to her, one that he abdicated every time he'd left.
"That's not true," Harry said firmly. "Whatever you want to believe is your right, but this, all of this, your current situation, you made those choices, Parvati. You chose to murder people."
"They were aiding Dolohov," Parvati replied.
"Really? Those children that you killed? How were they aiding Dolohov?" Harry fired back. Parvati, who still had yet to even look at Harry, lowered her head. Harry was glad to see that she at least had the sense to feel shame for that.
"I didn't abandon you," Harry said. "I left because I cared about you. I left because I had to defend you and Ron and Hermione and everyone else that I care about. I could have stayed here and trained. I could have gone back to Hogwarts for another year and been Head Boy and pretended that everything was fine and Voldemort would have killed me. He would have won."
"I didn't want this. I've never wanted this, but it is my responsibility. My parents died in this war. So did my godfather, my classmates, McGonagall, and Dumbledore. If I had neglected my duty, then they all died in vain. I'm not happy about the way things turned out. I never wanted you in here. I never wanted Daphne to get captured by Death Eaters and I never wanted Dumbledore to die for our cause. But we're close to getting him, Parvati, and if I can stop him, if I can end him, then leaving was the right choice and given the chance to make the same choice, I would do it again."
Finally, Parvati looked at him and he saw the hurt and the pain on her face.
"I know," she whispered. "I just had the bad luck to fall in love with The Boy Who Lived."
"Do you really feel good about this?" Harry asked. "I thought that I would feel better when I killed Bellatrix. I thought I'd get revenge for Sirius and for Neville. I did. It didn't help."
Parvati looked away. "I set out to kill him. That's what I did."
"That's not an answer."
"He killed my family. Why wouldn't I feel good about it?"
"Again, not an answer," Harry replied.
"What do you want me to say!?" Parvati shouted, finally standing and coming face-to-face with him.
"I want you to tell me the truth!" Harry barked back. "Dammit, be honest, if not for me, then for you!"
Parvati looked at Harry, the fire finally returned to her eyes. He could see that she was full of rage, a rage that had not suddenly disappeared when Dolohov had died. And for the first time, Parvati might have realized that too.
"I thought it would feel great," Parvati muttered. "I thought that he would die and I'd hear trumpets in my ears and stand over him triumphantly. Instead, he just...fell."
Parvati suddenly sank to the floor. She never cried, but Harry could tell that she was distraught. Even when she did speak, her words came slowly as if each one was a dagger stabbing her in the back.
"I have nothing left. I think about the day before the Yule Ball. I had you. I had Lavender. I had my sister. My life was as good as it would get. Now, I don't have you, Padma hasn't talked to me in months, and Lavender has been dead for years."
Parvati turned to him and smiled at him sadly.
"I tried to move on when you left the first time. But every day, I thought about that night at the Yule Ball. I thought about what things were like when I was happy. Every day, I thought about my parents and the years that they never got to have together. I projected all of that anger, all of that sadness onto Dolohov. That's all I had. Now, he's gone. I have nothing."
"That's not true," Harry responded softly. "That's never been true. You let yourself believe that, but you're wrong. Your sister has spent the last day and a half talking to everyone that she could to get your sentence reduced. She's already sent me about two dozen letters and I'm certain that I'm not even on the top of your list."
"She should stop," Parvati replied. "It's not like it's going to matter much."
"Well, she's sending me letters because I told her that I would do everything I could to get your sentence reduced."
"What?" Parvati said, a look of surprise on her face.
"Listen, you did horrible things. There's no way that you're not going to Azkaban for those things. You admitted to your crimes in front of a bar full of Aurors. But, the Ministry of Magic currently has no support system in place for people that have lost loved ones to this war. While you are responsible for your actions, the Ministry does bear a certain amount of responsibility for failing to help you when you were clearly struggling."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that you'll spend time in Azkaban. Your sentence won't be short and you'll never get to work for the Ministry again. But you'll get out of Azkaban before you're too old to appreciate your freedom. You'll get a second chance at life. I just need you to promise me something."
"What?"
"When you get out, help people," Harry said. "You've brought a lot of violence and chaos into this world. Remedy that."
"I'll do my best," Parvati promised. "Will I see you again before my trial?"
Harry shrugged "We're close to finding him. If things go well, then yeah, you'll see me again."
"Then promise me something."
"Sure."
"Kill him," Parvati said in a voice that was oddly soft for such a violent request. "Kill him so that you and I never have to kill anyone ever again."
Harry nodded sadly. "I'll do what I can."
After speaking with Parvati, Harry returned to Potter Manor, intending to do the work that would lead them closer. However, as Harry walked into his study, he noticed an object on his desk that had not been there the last time he'd been in this room.
Sitting on his desk was a clear vial full of the same murky liquid that Dumbledore had left him. Harry quickly checked the wards of the house and was able to confirm that all the wards around the Manor remained in place. Yet, somehow, this vial had managed to end up on his desk.
Harry would figure out the mystery of the vial later. For now, he needed to view the contents of the memories inside. He gave his wand a flourish and Summoned the Penseive from its hiding place. It soared across the room and landed on his desk. He quickly pulled the stopper from the vial, poured its contents into the Penseive, and then plunged his face into the Penseive, feeling the telltale pull of its magic as it dragged him into a memory.
Moments later, Harry landed. Normally, when landing in a memory, you saw a memory. That was, after all, the point of the Penseive. Instead, as Harry's feet hit the ground, he landed in a black void. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. It wasn't like he landed in a dark room.
Instead, it was as if he landed in the blackness of space. He was in the absence of anything.
"You are wondering why it is so dark, aren't you?"
That voice.
"Acquiring Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder is easy when you know the formula. However, unlike those blood traitors who sell it to children, I use it in the way that it was originally designed."
Suddenly, out of the darkness, Harry heard a scream.
"You see, the version that is sold in Diagon Alley is a weakened version. In truth, Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder lasts for hours. Combined with a few additional spells, it provides the foundation for a room devoid of light and sound and all other sensations."
Another scream was followed by laughter, the same cold, high-pitched laugh that had haunted his dreams as far back as he could remember.
"Miss Greengrass has been a guest of my room here for almost two days now. Already, I can see her grasp on reality starting to slip. In the darkness, she sees things that are not there. In the emptiness, she hears the voices of those that would save her, only to be met with the cold reality that no one is coming. You are not coming."
"When you visited me at Malfoy Manor, you saw the means to the end of our battle, Potter. Now, I have finished it. I could go back in time today if I wanted. I could go back to the beginning and ensure that you never get the chance to break me. But, I've heard that you are close to catching me. In your research, you've even identified the location where I've hidden the device. So, I've decided that I will give you a chance to prove your worth. In two days at midnight, I will use the device. You have until then to stop me. The device is already in place and I will be waiting here with Miss Greengrass. Don't disappoint me."
Then, Harry heard Voldemort's laugh echo throughout the void as Harry was pulled back from the Penseive at the end of the memory. He landed back in his study, sweat covering his brow.
Two days.
They had two days to find Voldemort and save Daphne before he went back in time and destroyed everything.
Immediately, Harry sent for Hermione and Ron. Moments later, the two of them arrived and together, they viewed the memory. When they were ejected from the Penseive, Harry articulated exactly what the others were thinking.
"This is it," he said firmly. "If we don't stop him, he goes back and ends it."
"So, where is he?" Hermione asked as she approached the board of potential locations. "According to Voldemort, one of these locations is where he's hiding. Which one is it?"
Harry stared at the board, considering each of the locations. Hogwarts. Glastonbury Abbey. Stonehenge. Llyn Ogwen.
"It's Godric's Hollow," Harry realized in frustration. Weeks ago, they had considered Godric's Hollow. At the time, both Ron and Hermione had pointed out that it was the most likely location. It had been Harry's own fear of what that would mean that had prevented him from acting on it.
"How do you know?" Ron asked.
"He told me," Harry said. "He said that he could go back now. He could go back to the beginning. The beginning of what? The beginning of our battle. He views this device as the end of our battle. If that's the end, then Halloween night 1981 is the beginning."
"He's going to go back and change everything," Hermione replied. "It's just like we feared. If he goes back to that night, he could kill you. He could change...everything, anything."
"It makes sense," Ron said. "The fortress is already there, so he has the structure that he can manipulate. It's in the middle of nowhere and cursed to hell which means that no one is going near it. It's also within an easy Apparition distance to the town."
"We could have moved on this weeks ago," Harry said, his frustration boiling over. "We knew that this is where he was going to do it."
"No, we didn't," Hermione replied.
"You two knew," Harry argued. "You two laid out every reason why he would do it. He's lost a lot there. He lost everything there. He's got the structure and the protection. It's perfect. Why didn't I see that then?"
"Because there were other options."
"None of them were as good as this one," Harry pointed out.
"That might be true," Ron replied. "So what? Do you think you're right this time?"
As much as it pained him, Harry understood Voldemort better than anyone. Even Dumbledore, who'd had decades fighting against the Dark Lord, admitted as much. Once the puzzle pieces had finally all been laid out in front of him, the method, the location, the motivation, Harry had no reason to doubt himself.
Godric's Hollow was where the fate of their world would be decided.
"I'm certain," Harry confirmed.
All three of them looked at each other, each of them silently wondering what to do next. It was Hermione who asked the first question.
"Do we tell the Ministry?" she asked.
"Do you think we should?" Ron responded.
Hermione nodded. "We don't know who is going to be there. It could be Voldemort himself, but it could also be Voldemort and a dozen Death Eaters and who knows what else. At the very least, with some Aurors, we'd have backup."
"But we'd also have to let people at the Ministry know," Ron replied. "There has to be a leak at the Ministry already. How else would he know that we'd discovered where he was hiding?"
Ron made a good point. The members of the SAF had seen the board as had Hermione. In theory, they should have been the only ones to know about the board. Instead, Voldemort himself had somehow known.
"Is it possible that it was Malfoy?" Harry asked. "He was never here, but he did spend some time alone with Daphne. Maybe he got the information out of her somehow?"
"It is possible," Hermione admitted. "But I don't think Daphne would have told him anything. She hated him just as much as we did."
Harry knew that it was possible that Malfoy was the leak, but he just didn't feel comfortable involving anyone else. In the end, there were only two people who he wanted to fight beside.
"It'll be just us three," Harry said firmly. "I don't know who else to trust, but I trust you."
Hermione and Ron just nodded, although Harry noticed that they both looked nervous. He couldn't blame them. They were walking into the fire alone. But then, they'd also been separate from everyone else. It seemed fitting that it should be the three of them in the end.
"What do you do now?" Ron asked.
"We grab all the gear that we can find and we go to Godric's Hollow," Harry said.
"Gear?" Hermione parroted. "Gear for what?"
"I want to scope out the fortress before we just go charging in there," Harry replied. "That'll take a few hours. Ideally, we'd scope the place out, stay the night, and then attack in the morning."
"Stay the night?" Ron asked. "In what?"
Harry smiled. "Does your Dad still have that tent?"
Two hours later, after Ron had managed to convince his father to give them the tent for a "camping trip," Harry, Ron, and Hermione Apparated to the edge of what used to be Godric's Hollow. During Voldemort's initial surge to take over Britain, his Death Eaters had attacked Godric's Hollow. In the end, they'd burned most of the town to the ground including the home where Harry's parents had been murdered.
After almost five years, the only thing that remained was the belltower of the church. Even the piles of rubble that had been left behind the last time they'd visited were starting to sink into the ground. In a few years, Godric's Hollow would be nothing more than a collapsed church tower, dirt, and ash.
The trio set up a tent on the edge of town before they each pulled out a set of binoculars and began observing the collapsed ruins of Voldemort's fortress. Much like the town itself, the fortress was a shell of its former self. While the main chamber appeared to be largely intact outside of the hole that Harry had blown in the roof, the exterior portions of the castle were largely collapsed.
In fact, as they looked closer, it appeared that the former entrance had, at one point, been completely caved in, based on the piles of rock that sat on either side. If Harry had to guess, that was likely the only way in or out of the fortress, especially when you took into account the eight guards that surrounded the chasm.
Of course, the most foreboding part of the fortress wasn't even the structure itself. When the fortress had been at the height of its terrifying and imposing power, a storm had perpetually surrounded the castle, bringing an unnatural amount of rain and lightning with it. Now, that storm seemed to have fallen to the ground, cursing the land outside the fortress. Where there had once been grass, there was blackened dirt and the entire area simply gave off a bad feeling, almost as if something was wrong with the ground itself.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched the fortress until the sun finally slipped behind the horizon. No moon or stars lit the night sky, leaving the three of them to sit in the pitch black as they considered their options.
"Well, it looks like there's about a dozen Death Eaters guarding the exterior of the fortress," Hermione said.
"We don't know what's inside," Ron conceded.
"It will be less," Harry said. "These guards are for show. Voldemort wants us to get to him."
"No, he wants you to get to him, Harry," Hermione said. "We need to be careful. I'm worried that it's going to be just like the last time. We thought that we'd taken his army, taken his fortress. Then, he triggered his trap."
"I know," Harry said. He'd been thinking the same thing. While he was desperate to get to Voldemort, he knew that they ran the risk of walking right into a trap.
"But, he is in there," Harry added, pointing to the fortress. "He's in there right now, waiting for us. We don't have any choice but to go forward."
"We could get the Ministry," Ron said. "At the very least, we could get the Legion."
"That would just get other people killed," Harry countered. "The three of us can take them easily. We get to the Fortress, we take down the guards, and we get inside. From there, we go to the main chamber, his throne. That's where he'll be. Once we get there, you two secure Daphne and I'll take care of Voldemort."
Ron chuckled. "You make it sound easy."
"It is," Harry replied. "This part is easy. Getting from here to there, that's easy. It's everything that it's taken for us to get here that's been the hard part. Knowing that I was destined to be here, knowing that I had no chance of beating Voldemort and deciding to do something about that, that was the hard part. Watching people that I know and love die to get me here, that's hard. Getting in there and killing him? That's what every day for the last twenty years has been for."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione agreed to wait to attack until just after sunrise. They each slept fitfully, knowing that the end of the war was coming the following day one way or another. As the first light began to creep over the horizon, they awoke and ate a cold breakfast in silence. Then, they packed up their camp and turned towards the fortress.
"Last chance to back out," Harry said as they looked at the foreboding structure.
"Mate, my last chance to back out was when we saved Hermione from that troll," Ron replied.
"Same, but the third floor corridor instead of the troll," Hermione added. "We're going with you, Harry. We're with you until the end."
"Thank you," Harry said, tears forming in his eyes. He turned to Hermione and opened his mouth. However, before he could say anything, she put her hand over his mouth.
"Don't you dare," Hermione said furiously. "We are going in there together. You are going to win and then, when all of that is done, you can tell me that you love me every day for the rest of your life."
"I do," Harry whispered softly.
"Merlin, get a room, you two," Ron chuckled from just over Harry's shoulder. Harry couldn't help but laugh. Even at the end, after everything, they were with him, making him laugh, making him happy. There were several days that would define his life, the day that Voldemort was actively trying to change being among the most important. However, his first day at Hogwarts and the day that they saved Hermione from the troll, the days that he became friends with Ron and Hermione, were just as important. Without them, he wouldn't be alive. Without them, he wouldn't have made it here.
Without them, Harry Potter would be a footnote, a boy who was foolishly prophesied to defeat the most terrible Dark Lord that Britain had ever seen. With them, the end of his journey was in sight.
"I know," Hermione replied. "Now, let's go."
The trio had decided against some complicated strategy. Harry likely could have taken the Death Eaters guarding the fortress on his own. Besides, Voldemort knew they were coming anyway. So, rather than trying to get too fancy with their planning, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger walked from the ghost town of Godric's Hollow across the cursed fields to the fortress where Harry and Voldemort would finally settle their battle.
As they approached, the Death Eaters that stood outside the fortress clearly saw them coming and alerted others to their presence. In the end, it wouldn't matter how many they invited. The closer they got to the fortress, the more Harry began to channel his magic, creating a white aura that seemed to almost radiate off of him like fire. Just looking directly at Harry was difficult when he was in this state, a perfect balance of power and control.
Once they were within range, spells came from the Death Eaters by the dozen. None of them hit their target. Most missed, a few were blocked by Ron and Hermione, but the ones that would have hit Harry were immediately deflected back at their caster. Before any of them could realize what was happening, they'd been taken down, leaving the odds even more stacked in Harry's favor.
He cut through the rest of them with ease. None of them died, although Harry was certain that they wished they had. However, none of them would have any sort of lasting injury. The only person that Harry would kill today was Voldemort, just like he had promised Parvati.
Reinforcements did eventually arrive in the form of another dozen Death Eaters, but their presence only added to the number of downed Death Eaters surrounding the entrance to the fortress. In the end, two dozen Death Eaters lay around them, each of them unconscious.
Harry imagined that was likely the bulk of Voldemort's defenses. As Harry had noted, Voldemort wanted Harry to get to him. With the outer defenses dealt with, Harry led Ron and Hermoine into the fortress, allowing his magical aura to fade away in order to conserve energy. Memories of that fateful day when the Coalition had attacked the fortress came rushing back to Harry, memories including the corpses of his dead parents shuffling towards him.
Ignoring the uneasiness in his stomach, Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way to the throne room with ease. As Harry had expected, the defenses were more for show than anything else. The throne room was much as Harry had left it, although it was in slightly worse shape than Harry had remembered. In truth, the chamber really only had one wall and although the bones of the dome above remained in place, most of the ceiling was gone, letting them see the clouds in the sky above.
At the front of the room, where there had once been a throne, stood the device that Voldemort intended to use to go back in time. Just in front of it stood Lord Voldemort, his eyes closed and arms crossed. Honestly, he could have been asleep if not for the fact that he was standing up.
Harry walked towards him, his magic slowly starting to build again. As he did, Ron and Hermione split away, Ron on his left and Hermione on his right, each of them slowly marching towards the dark wizard, surrounding him.
They were only a few meters from him when his eyes suddenly opened.
"Harry Potter...and friends," Voldemort said, his eyes darting towards Hermione, "welcome."
"This is it," Harry said firmly. "We end this now, one way or the other."
"Oh, I am quite aware," Voldemort said with a cruel smile.
"Harry."
He turned to Hermione who wore a look of concern on her face.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Where's Daphne?"
Harry quickly looked around the throne room and saw nothing. Daphne Greengrass wasn't there.
"Where is she?" Harry demanded.
"She is exactly where she's supposed to be," Voldemort said. "Don't you worry about her."
"Tell us where she is!" Harry shouted.
"Very well," Voldemort replied. Then, he waved his hand. It wasn't a spell. More like a gesture, an order given to someone standing behind him. Harry turned around to look at who or what Voldemort was gesturing to.
When he did, the room suddenly went black.