It Could Have Gone That Way; A Harmione Fanfiction

Chapter 79: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Voldemort raised his wand to Molly Weasley.

"Protego!" Harry roared, throwing off his invisibility cloak as his Shield Charm expanded in the middle of the Great Hall.

"Harry!" Ron yelled in sheer disbelief.

"HE'S ALIVE!" Hagrid bellowed.

"Yes, yes!" Hermione screamed.

Their words were silenced instantly as Harry and Voldemort looked at each other and began, at the same moment, to circle each other.

"I don't want anyone else to try and help." Harry said loudly,"It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

Voldemort's red eyes widened as he hissed,"Potter doesn't mean that. That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"Nobody." Harry said simply,"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?" Voldemort's whole body was taut and his eyes never left Harry's,"You think you'll live, do you? You, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, then, was it, when my mother died to save me?" Harry asked coolly, maintaining the same distance from Voldemort as they circled each other,"Accident, when I decided to fight you in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself in the Forest tonight and still survived - returned to fight again?"

"Accidents!" Voldemort screamed, but he still did not strike. The watching crowd was frozen as though they were petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but Harry and Voldemort. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and snivelled behind the skirts of greater wizards and witches, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight." Harry said, mind flickering to Remus, Tonks, Fred, Colin, and everyone else his side had lost that night,"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!"

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

"You dare-?"

"Yes, I dare." Harry snapped,"I know things you don't know, Tom. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some before you make another big mistake?" Harry had absolutely no idea from where inside of him his words were coming, but he let them slip from his tongue as his eyes pierced Voldemort's, challenging him to make the move that would fulfil their prophecy.

Voldemort did not speak straight away. He continued to prowl in a circle, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might know a final, crucial secret. "Is it love again?" He jeered,"Dumbledore's favourite 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 no one of the hundreds in this room seems to love you enough to run forwards this time and take my curse for you. 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," Voldemort said,"then you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"