Harry looked around the darkness all around him. He felt like he was floating, despite the fact that he was standing on an invisible floor. Out beyond the shimmering golden cage, he could see nothing. The blackness was as infinite as it was perfect, and there would be no way he could orient himself on anything. He glanced down at the staff in his hands that now seemed to be pulsing with energy, then at the empty space around him. He knew he was alone here, and he could almost feel the invisible pressure from the forces of nature as they tried to seal the tear in space he was in. A pocket dimension, Hermione would most likely call it, a hole in the fabric of space-time where there should be none, a place where time had no meaning, because it existed outside of reality.
He briefly wondered if Voldemort had planned on leaving him there forever, then realized that the dark wizard would either return, or retrieve Harry, because he wanted the Rod of Dominion. That realization gave Harry some measure of ease, because as long as he held on to the Rod, Voldemort would return. But he couldn't wait for his archenemy forever - his wife and unborn child needed him. Suppressing the anger he felt at Voldemort, Harry calmed himself and tried to approach the situation logically.
Voldemort had used a spell to transport him there, so there had to be a way to get back. Harry jabbed the staff in his hands at the glowing cage around him, staring intently as tendrils of golden light wrapped around the smooth wood. He could almost feel a connection to the weapon as the lightning reached his hands where he held on to the Rod of Dominion. Reaching deep within himself, the young wizard tapped his connection to the warlock rune, turning the gift that allowed him to manipulate the fabric of reality onto himself. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he forced the area of space around himself to warp to shift him back, but with a tortured groan, the attempt failed and he fell backwards, the connection between the staff and Voldemort's spell lost.
Sitting up, Harry nearly slumped back down when his body was wracked with a violent series of coughs that left his hands bloody. "Damn," he muttered, looking down at the blood from his lungs that now covered the front of his robes and hands. He had a good idea what had caused the sudden attack; channeling too much magical power through a human body was much like a surge of electricity going through it. Regular wizards didn't have much of a problem with it, but sorcerers and warlocks were capable of using much more powerful spells - spells that most archmages were hard-pressed to match.
Count Hiscophney and Bella had both warned him that excessive use of his magical powers would eventually harm his body, but in his duel with Voldemort, Harry hadn't really cared. Killing the dark lord was more important than worrying about damage to his body, and, though Bella found it hard to agree with that statement, she knew that he was right. Harry had believed he had been fine until now, and just the fact that the magical backlash from whatever spell Voldemort had cast on him to shift him out of reality had hurt him this much was an indication of just how truly powerful the dark wizard had become.
Harry slowly rose to his feet, careful to keep his hands away from the edges of the cage this time. "Damn," he repeated, "we throw enough power at each other to rip a hole in space-time, and we're fine. Then he sticks me in a cage and it knocks me over flat." That statement may have been a bit exaggerated, because Harry knew that the spells he and Voldemort had hurled at each other had had at least some effect on his body; not all of the aches and pains he felt were from being electrocuted, or slammed into a marble wall.
How the hell can he use so much power and not even bat an eye? Harry wondered silently. How can he throw around so much energy and not be affected?
The answer came to him a moment later. Voldemort had no physical body anymore. Because he had transcended the bonds of his mortal form and effectively become an immortal astral projection of his spirit, bound to no object or living organism, he could toss around as much energy as he wanted, because he was energy. Harry's heart sank. That meant the only way of destroying Voldemort would mean either entrapping him in a dimensional space much like the one Harry was in, or somehow binding Voldemort's "soul" to an object so that it could be destroyed. In order to kill Voldemort, he would have to be made human again.
The realization chilled Harry to the bone, because as he looked around himself, watching the interplaying patterns of runes and colored lines float about him, he realized just how much knowledge and experience Voldemort must have accumulated to be able to craft such a complex and powerful spell. It wasn't something he could duplicate, not in any reasonable amount of time. But that meant somehow tying Voldemort's spiritual essence to something… and Harry wasn't particularly sure of how to accomplish that one, either.
The Rod… you control reality. When you rip into space, the hole remains. When you tear apart this dimension, it will not heal. You can create your own universe, or destroy this one, because with the Rod, nature will not interfere. That is the true power of the Rod. Voldemort's words echoed in Harry's mind as his eyes went to the staff in his hands.
I don't get it, he thought. How does it do that? Why doesn't it let me get out of here? If it can control reality, then shouldn't I be able to get out of here? He fingered the long, smooth staff, knowing that he was missing something. Voldemort couldn't have been stupid enough to imprison Harry with the only tool in existence that could get him out… could he? Did Voldemort know something about the staff's function that Harry didn't?
Frowning, Harry turned his inner eye on the Rod again, trying to carefully decipher the layers of runes and spells that it had been enchanted with. He pushed past the outer layer, past all of its defensive enchantments, but before he could go any further, a jolt of pain went through his body, causing Harry to collapse on the ground. All of his nerves burned for an instant before it faded, and when it was gone, Harry sat up, but the darkness around him had been replaced with bright, white light.
"Great, first everything's black, then everything's white," he muttered, not really concerned with his surroundings. What was more important to him was the fact that he could now see runes and spell patterns without having to try. A deep sense of understanding filled him as he realized he could simply look at one particular patterns and instinctively understand its functions, as if all of the knowledge of the universe was at his command. The feeling was as exhilarating as it was frightening. By accident, he stared at the patterns of Voldemort's spell, and a deluge of knowledge filled his mind, so much that he panicked as it overwhelmed him.
A few moments later, he was breathing heavily, having managed to clear his mind of everything that had accidentally come to him, but he was left with one piece of knowledge that he had held on to through it all. The Rod was tied to whoever wielded it.
Voldemort smirked as he stood in the room as the only person who was still conscious. After he had tricked Harry into his pocket dimension, knocking out Snape and Shacklebolt was easy enough. He snorted in disgust. The Order with their stupidity in holding up Harry had given him enough time to regain his strength. He was impressed, though, that Harry, wounded as he was, had managed to fire off one last spell capable of taking out the Order. He kicked at their unconscious forms. They truly were useless… more than useless, in fact, because instead of helping, they made matters worse for Harry. Deep down, Voldemort couldn't help but feel disappointed. The duel between him and Harry was something he had been looking forward to; now it would most likely never be finished, because of their interference. He snorted, tempted to kill them all right now, but he decided to let them be. They would die eventually.
The only problem he now had was that Harry still held the Rod. However, Voldemort was confident that the boy would not escape from his dimensional prison. The pocket plane itself would not collapse as long as it was sustained by the Rod of Dominion. He had no intention of letting Harry die in there, however… but he needed time to gain a bargaining chip. The lives of his friends and his wife would do nicely, Voldemort decided, which was the reason they were all still alive. Most of them, anyway. Bella was just barely breathing, something that gave Voldemort both great pleasure and a feeling of disappointment. Bella had been one of his most promising followers, a truly twisted and sadistic individual who relished pain, and relished inflicting it on others even more. She had been wonderful, killing, torturing, and coming up with ever-creative ways of keeping her victims alive to feel the pain.
And then, almost as if a switch had been flipped, her cousin's death had turned off her psychosis. It snapped her back to reality, and Voldemort was disgusted at himself for not having seen her betrayal from the moment they had left the Ministry that fateful year. It was a waste of a perfectly good sociopath. He stared down at her curled up form.
"A pity, Bella. We were so good together."
"Screw you," she whispered hoarsely, regaining consciousness.
A cold shudder went through him, as if part of his soul had just been severed when she glared at him, but he ignored it, turning around to mutter a spell that would bring Harry back. A few seconds later, the glowing golden cage reappeared with Harry inside. The teenager was gritting his teeth, but remained silent. Voldemort spread his arms and gestured around the room.
"Now, Harry, we can do this the easy way… or I can kill them all, and you as well, and take the Rod."
"You're just going to kill us all anyway, right? So what's the point?"
Voldemort seemed to geniunely consider that for a moment. "You'll be saving yourself some pain," he finally answered with a shrug.
Harry took two steps forward, then tossed the Rod at Voldemort. The dark wizard caught the staff easily, and nodded. "Wise choice.'
"You know, Tom," Harry began, "there's really something you should know."
"Oh? What's that?"
"It's about something you told me, really. You remember how you said the Rod of Dominion basically allows you to control reality?"
"Yes… what about it?" Voldemort asked, genuinely curious as to what Harry was referring to.
"Well, it turns out that in order to give you the power, it's got to anchor your soul." Harry pulled his right hand from beneath his cloak, revealing a muggle handgun. "Now that you're holding it… goodbye, Tom."
Voldemort's eyes were wide with surprise when Harry pulled the trigger, and the dark wizard's body flew backwards from the impact of the four bullets. Standing over his enemy, Harry looked down into his still face, expression still frozen into surprise and pain. Just to make sure Voldemort was really dead this time, he emptied the rest of the rounds into his body, before incinerating it with a quickly muttered fire spell.
Once he was sure Voldemort was dead, Harry dropped the gun, letting it clatter to the floor as he knelt next to Bella. The adrenaline faded, causing him to almost collapse on top of her. " Enervate," he muttered, bringing her fully awake as he looked at her wound.
"H-Harry?"
"Shh. It's okay, I'm here," he whispered to her. "Stay still, I'm going to try and stem the bleeding." He quickly tore off strips from his robes and pressed them to the gash in her side. Taking a longer strip, he tied it around her waist as a tourniquet. He couldn't help but glance down at the large puddle of blood underneath her, and hoped that he wasn't too late. From the moment she'd been stabbed until now only a few minutes had passed, but with his focus entirely on killing Voldemort, it had seemed like a small eternity.
"H-how did we do?" she asked weakly.
"Don't talk. Save your strength." He lifted her head into his lap, unable to do much more. Now that the battle was over, he felt each and every one of his injuries… including the broken ribs and the broken left arm. And that wasn't even considering that every single one of his nerves felt like it was on fire, and that his mucles were torn and hurt from the energy that had coursed through them when he'd been hit with Voldemort's spells. He didn't think he had the strength to stand, much less support his wife. And since he'd given his emergency portkey to Ginny…
Bella glanced over at the ashes that was all that remained of Voldemort. "You did it," she said quietly.
"Yeah… yeah, I did." Harry looked down into her eyes. "I'm sorry, Bella. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have left you. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me."
She grasped on to his wrist. "You did what you had to. He didn't give you a choice." She smiled weakly. "And you're here now, that's what matters."
"Bella… I-I don't think I can get us out of here." He left unsaid that she needed medical attention, and quickly. A cough racked his body, and when he pulled his hand away, he grimaced when he saw the blood that was splattered all over it.
"My portkey," Bella informed him, "in my robes. Left side."
Harry reached into her robe and quickly found pocket. When he pulled it out, though, he'd come up empty. "You must've lost it in the fight." He looked around the chamber to see if he could spot anything, and spied a speck of silver not too far away. When he summoned it, though, he grimaced at the molten and twisted piece of silver that refused to react to his commands.
"Looks like it got caught in the spells we were throwing around," he told her. He spotted the Rod laying discarded among Voldemort's remains and reached over, a crazy idea forming in his head. "Tear a hole in reality, eh?" he muttered as he forced his magic to work one last time.
Then the world turned black.
"He's a lucky fella, that's for sure."
"The man's got nine lives, I tell ya."
"Must be part leprechaun."
Harry blinked as he slowly came back to consciousness. Blurred shapes formed in front of his eyes as he forced them open. It wasn't too terribly bright - from the light coming in through the curtained windows, he assumed it must be shortly after sunrise. Then he recognized the voices.
"Luck has nothing to do with it, brother dearest, the man's got skills," Fred commented.
"No, it's luck… definitely luck," Harry muttered as he fumbled around for his glasses.
"Ah, he wakes!" George grinned broadly. "Welcome back to the land of the living, yer majesty!"
"Ooh… my head's killing me," Harry mumbled as he sat up, experiencing a sudden bout of vertigo.
"Get the man a bucket!" George cheerily announced, to which his twin brother immediately produced one.
"There ya go, mate."
Harry took the bucket and promptly emptied the contents of his stomach into it. When there was nothing left to empty, he let himself fall back onto the bed. "What happened?" he asked hoarsely.
Fred and George looked at each other. "We don't really know," George finally admitted, "we only woke up yesterday."
Before Harry could ask another question, the door to the infirmary of Nair'i'caix opened, admitting Snape, Moody, Tonks, Count Hiscophney, and Hermione. The five clustered around Harry's bed when they realized he was awake and peppered him with questions. Well, Tonks and Hermione did. Snape, and Hiscophney were stoic as ever, though one could swear there was a hint of concern in their eyes. Moody merely watched the entire spectacle with a bemused grin, before clapping Harry on the shoulder hard enough that the boy winced in pain.
"Good one, Potter. You had us scared there for a while, but it seems you've pulled through yet again." Moody grinned.
"What happened?" Harry repeated, causing the seven people around his bed to look at each other. Harry noted that two people were conspicuously absent. "Where's Bella? And General Rotan?"
After a long pause, Moody grumbled and took it upon himself to answer the question. "Well, Potter, your wife's going to be fine. She's still recovering."
"She is? How is she? How's the baby?" Harry tried to rise from the bed again, only to find himself pushed back on by the grizzled old auror. He turned his head around as the memories returned. "Oh god, she got stabbed… the baby-"
"Yes. Over that way," Moody gestured towards a curtained bed at the other end of the room. "They are both fine. She was just as lucky as you, that blade missed most of her vitals, and it missed the child. They're both safe. As for the General… well…"
"General Rotan did not make it off the battlefield," Snape finished, a tone of regret in his voice.
"What? How did that happen?" Harry felt an immense sense of relief that his wife and child were safe, so much so that he felt a little guilty for not feeling as bad as he probably should have that the General was gone.
"They made their stand long enough for us to pull back and into the building," Hiscophney explained, "and he and his men guarded the entrance until everyone was inside. They were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. We were able to hold the building, but by the time we had gotten the heavy cannons operating again, it was too late."
"I think we better start from the beginning," Moody rumbled.
Snape and Moody exchanged a quick look. "When you left the battle, the goblin reinforcements allowed our northern and central flanks to fall back far enough to reconnect with Rotan's southern flank. Once there, we realized that despite the help from the goblins, standing our ground outside would be almost impossible, so we decided to retreat into the building, to the inner defenses," the potions master recounted. "Rotan volunteered his regiment to cover our retreat."
"Once we gave up the northern cannons, we were overrun," Hiscophney added. "The ice people's weapons were the only thing keeping Voldemort's forces from rolling all over us, and once we fell back, we no longer had the weapons emplacements."
Moody nodded in agreement. "That was another reason we decided to get everyone inside. The Count here had his people set up the weapons inside so that we could take out anything that came through the door. Once the enemy realized that we were falling back, they came at us like bloodhounds after a wounded animal."
"They overran all of our sentries, crushed our frontline, and forced us almost to the doorway." Snape looked grim. "We lost several hundred people just from that. Rotan was one of them. He led a counterattack that bought us just enough time to bring the weapons to bear."
"How many did we loose?" Harry asked, unsure as to whether he really wanted to know the answer.
Moody shook his head. "We haven't counted all of the dead yet, but I'd estimate there's at least four thousand. Sixty percent of our forces are gone."
Harry was silent. He had expected losses, of course, but now that the fighting was over, and he realized the staggering loss of life that had been caused by just that one battle, he couldn't help but feel a rising sense of overwhelming guilt. "Dear lord…" he whispered.
"Voldemort's forces didn't get of scot-free, either," Moody told him. "They were almost entirely wiped out before they retreated. They never made it past the inner defenses, once we got them up."
Like that's any consolation, Harry thought bitterly. Four thousand people were dead because of him and his decision to fight it out with Voldemort. He shuddered involuntarily. He couldn't even imagine that number of dead bodies. Four thousand, that was the entire contingent the Ice people had brought to his aid. Just imagining all of them dead made him sick to his stomach.
"The goblins?" Harry licked his dry lips, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat.
"They got off pretty well. Lost a few ships, but since they were behind Voldemort's troops, they managed to dish out a whole lot more than they took." Snape replied. "Once we knew the fighting was under control, I took a number of people to go to Azkaban. You know what happened ten."
"Yeah…" Harry paused for a moment, before looking over at Tonks. The auror had been quiet up until now. "How are you, Tonks?"
"Fine. Ron packs one heck of a punch when he wants to." Tonks managed a weak smile. "I'm sorry I went missing so often, Harry. I really am… but Dumbledore told me that it was important. We needed to flush out the traitor." She shrugged. "Too bad we were tracking the wrong one."
"I'm sorry for doubting you. If I hadn't, then-"
Tonks waved him off. "You were right in doing so. For all you knew, I may have been the traitor, instead of Ginny."
"How is Ginny, anyway? Anyone ever figure out what happened to her?" Harry asked, his tone suddenly a few degrees colder.
"Voldemort put a very obscure, very old compulsion charm on her," Snape replied with a heavy frown. "We assume that she went out snooping around some of the seized Death Eater properties back when the Minister gave the order, and was caught then. We found traces of an erased memory that seem to confirm that theory. We purged the spell from her, not that it matters, since the dark lord is dead."
"Yeah… about that…" Harry began. "Are we really sure he's really dead this time?"
Snape and Moody looked at each other, unable to answer. Hiscophney shrugged and withdrew his hand from under his cloak, handing Harry the Rod of Dominion. "Considering the fact that you were holding this when we found you, and that his body is a pile of ashes, I assume it would be safe to say that he is quite dead."
"Dead as a doornail," Fred grinned.
"Dead as the Flungarian Waltz, even," George added.
"We found you unconscious down in the lower levels of Azkaban," Hiscophney continued. "Along with everyone else." He left unsaid that had they come a few minutes later, Harry or Bella most likely would not have survived.
"So… how long was I out this time?" Harry asked.
"Four days," Moody told him. "Considering the condition you were in, it's a minor miracle you're awake yet."
"What do you mean? Bella was much worse off than me."
"Nope," Moody shook his head. "Sure, it may have looked bad, but her wound missed all of her organs. She was suffering from blood loss more than anything else. You, on the other hand, were a right mess."
"Odd… I didn't feel like a mess." At least not until the end, Harry mentally amended.
"Well, you were, Potter," Snape smirked. "Four broken ribs, a punctured lung, shattered tibia and femur, broken collarbone, shattered elbow, broken wrist, internal bleeding, high-degree burns, extensive nerve and tissue damage… I would say that you have broken your own record for injuries sustained during a single day, Potter."
Harry was about to retort when he caught sight of the faint smile crossing the potions master's face. It was gone before Harry could be sure. Snape, smiling? Naaah . Harry chalked it up to hallucinations. He thought for a few moments. Bella was safe, which was a relief. Now that he could finally clear his head from the medication and unconsciousness, he could feel her presence, and true to Moody's word, she wasn't far away, peacefully asleep. Voldemort was dead… really dead this time. Deep down, he could feel it. It was as if a weight had been lifted from his soul. There was no rational explanation for it, except maybe the connection between them through his scar, that let him feel Voldemort's death. Reaching up to brush his hair aside, his fingers found smooth, unblemished skin. The scar was gone. So was Voldemort.
"That reminds me, Potter," Moody said, pulling a muggle gun from his cloak. "What by Merlin's beard is this thing?"
Harry blinked at the old auror, taking a moment to wrap his head around the question. "Uh… it's a gun, Moody. You know, to shoot people with?"
"Gun?" The auror queried, a puzzled look on his face.
"It's like a crossbow," Hermione came to Harry's rescue. "Only it doesn't need to be reloaded as often, and fires bullets instead of arrows. It uses a chemical charge to…" she trailed off with a blush as she realized that she had been about to get carried away. "Anyway," she said, clearing her throat, "that's about it. Though where Harry got one, I don't know."
"General Rotan gave it to me," Harry told them. "The Ice people make weaponry very similar to muggles. He gave it to me as a backup, just in case I ever needed it. Just like most Ice soldiers carry one along with their swords. I didn't actually think I'd have to use it." He looked down at the finely-crafted weapon. The chrome-polished barrel gleamed in the early morning sun, revealing exquisite detailing along its length. The weapon tapered off into an ivory-plated grip and curved trigger that made it seem like it was more an object of art than a tool of war.
"Thanks, General," Harry muttered quietly.
"You want to tell us what happened on your front, Potter?" Moody finally asked. He and everyone else wondered just what had transpired that had ended in Voldemort being reduced to a pile of ash and Harry and Bella being in the condition they had found them in.
"Sure…" Harry took a deep breath and laid out his final confrontation with the dark lord.