Written In The Stars VII -[Harry Potter xF!Oc]

Chapter Thirty-Five: Written in the Stars.

Mel wondered if she'd died at some point without noticing. 

Harry was right in front of her, alive. Around her people gasped, cheered, and roared with joy.

"Harry!" 

"HE'S ALIVE!" 

"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry spoke, his eyes settled on hers. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

She didn't speak against it, her heart was pounding and her only coherent thought was Harry's name. Mel lowered her wand, she slowly stepped away. 

"Potter doesn't mean that," Voldemort hissed, it seemed that Mel's silent obedience had worried him. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?" 

"Nobody. There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good..."

"One of us? You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me? Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"

"Accidents!" Voldemort and Harry started walking in a perfect circle that no one dared to break. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight. You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—"

"But you did not!"

"—I meant to, and that's what it did. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?" 

"You dare—"

"Yes, I dare," Harry's voice was calm and collected. She didn't need a connection to his emotions to know that he'd gotten to the same conclusion as her: Voldemort was doomed. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?"

"Is it love again?" Voldemort mocked. "Dumbledore's favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter— and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you from dying now when I strike?"

"Just one thing..."

"If it is not love that will save you this time, you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both." 

Voldemort let out a laugh, it wasn't a pleasant sound, sharp and dry, and clearly unused.

"You think you know more magic than I do? Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

"Oh, he dreamed of it, but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."

"You mean he was weak! Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

"No, he was cleverer than you, a better wizard, a better man."