Faery Heroes

Chapter 49: Wages of Sin

Disclaimer: Did Harry beat Voldemort by being the master of the Elder Wand, even though by the book's logic Voldie killing him in the Forbidden Forest would have given the bad guy possession of the deus ex machina? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.
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Panting for breath, Voldemort shot a quick glance over his shoulder and leapt over a fallen tree trunk to crouch behind it. How long had they been chasing him? Days? Weeks? Months? It was impossible to tell anymore, if he ever could at all.

A horn blasted to one side rather than behind him, and he cursed harshly before running again. He had not slept in three days, nor eaten in five, and it was beginning to show. His endurance was running out; he needed to find someplace to rest, even if for a few hours, but there was nowhere for him to hide in this damnable forest!

"Potter, when I get out of here, I'm going to mutilate you," he hissed through his teeth. "You and everyone you know and love, starting with those slags of yours. I'll make you regret ever doing this to me!"

"Rennervate."

Voldemort groaned as awareness flooded back into him, and a moment later his memory returned as well. The intruders! He tried to stand, only to find thick metal rings binding his wrists and ankles and bands of leather wrapped around him to hold his legs together and his arms to his torso. The only part of his body that he could still move freely was his head, and he twisted that around to glance at his captor.

"You," he growled upon seeing the black-clad figure looking down at him, the red fox mask displaying its eternal smirk.

"Me." The wizard laughed in his metallic voice. "You know, I thought taking you out was going to be hard. We spent an entire year working to bring you down, and it turns out that getting rid of your Death Eaters was actually the hardest part. You? You were laughably easy."

He gnashed his teeth silently at that. Finally, he demanded, "How did you sneak into my lair?"

The red-masked intruder rubbed his chin for a moment. "You know, I don't really want to tell you." Chuckling again, he pulled out a pale wand and pointed it at the Dark Lord. Voldemort was sure that he was about to be on the wrong side of a Killing Curse – again – but all the other wizard did was levitate him to an upright position. "Besides, I think you should be more concerned with where you are now."

What is he talking about? Voldemort looked away from the man, and his eyes widened at what he saw. Right in front of him, not ten feet away, was a raised dais, and on top of that was a floating arch with a thin curtain falling to the floor.

The intruders had brought him to the Veil of Death.

"Evanesco." He suddenly felt a breeze on his skin and heard a series of clinking on the ground, and from behind him appeared the blue-masked thief. A witch, judging by her voice, though the distortion made him the slightest bit unsure. "There, that's better. I have to admit, I knew you kept iron on you at all times, but I was not expecting you to have quite this much."