Puzzle Pieces

Section 15:

Naturally in this, the most perfect moment of my life, Lucius had to find a way to come along and spoil it. Draco had just cast the cleansing charm and the three of us were settling down for a nice cuddle when that damnable bird from Malfoy manor flew into the Great Hall, bringing with it Lucius’ message.

Draco opened the message mostly out of instinct, but it wasn’t really necessary. We all knew what the message said. It said that it was time. With a little sigh of what I liked to think was regret, Hermione pulled herself out of our arms and started sorting through the pile of clothes, handing the pieces of our wardrobes back to us so that we could all get dressed. When we were decent again, Hermione and I tidied up our little nest to leave no visible sign of our activities while Draco went to alert Dumbledore.

The signal went out over our rings, alerting everyone to wakefulness and attention. The rings were the ace up our collective sleeves. Distributed to everyone who would be fighting in the battle that day, the rings had been charmed by Professor Flitwick himself to have a very special property. Invisibility.

Once the spell was activated, every person who wore one of the rings was rendered invisible to everyone who *wasn’t* wearing a ring. Thanks to the ring on my finger, I could see everyone in the room. Sure, they looked a bit blue-tinted and slightly glowy, but they were still perfectly visible. I knew, however, that to anyone who wasn’t wearing one of the rings, the room would appear practically empty. It was an enormous tactical breakthrough. We had all the advantage of invisibility to use against our enemy, but none of the disadvantage of accidental friendly fire to worry about, or the chance of tripping over each other that we’d have to face if we were all truly invisible.

The charm was the greatest achievement of Professor Flitwick’s career, and would have been enough, if documented to earn him fame and recognition such as few ever reached in his field. But he had voluntarily chosen to conceal the spell, destroying all records of it once the rings had been properly charmed, so that the powerful magic would never be useable by Voldemort and his kind. Staring at the ring on my finger (and the load of blue-tinted people surrounding me, ready to fight to the death if necessary) I felt an enormous sense of pride in being part of a group willing to give so selflessly and devoted for the interests of mankind. I grinned a bit to myself. Falling in love with a Gryffindor had turned me into a disgrace of a Slytherin. My behavior had become brave, self-sacrificing, unshakably loyal, and almost entirely unmotivated by personal gain. Sneaking a glance over at the lovely little Gryffindor who had stolen my heart, and the blond haired Slytherin she had brought along for the ride as well, I had to laugh a bit at the irony that acting like a damn fool Gryffindor was making me happier than I had ever been.

Dumbledore gave quite a stirring little speech to the troops, reiterating pretty much exactly what I had been feeling. He told us that with the courage, devotion, loyalty, and determination that we had amassed for our cause, he didn’t see any way in which we could lose. Wishing all of us luck, he sent us off to our positions. The students (which the exception of the younger years, of course) were sent off to the Gryffindor dormitories along with their contingent of Aurors, while the professors headed off to their quarters with the Aurors of their own. Hermione lagged behind the crowd for a moment to say a brief goodbye to Draco and to me where we stood with Dumbledore, ready to embark on our own part of the adventure.

“Be careful,” she whispered to each of us, following her words up with a tight hug and a brief, but fervent, kiss. The last thing I heard before she disappeared into the hallway was Potter and Weasley giving her hell about those kisses… and her giving them hell for acting like overprotective parents in return. When I couldn’t hear her voice anymore, I turned back to face Draco and Dumbledore.

“You know what you are to do?” Dumbledore asked us gently. We nodded. Our instructions were clear. We were to go to the entrances the Death Eaters had selected, let them in, and lead them straight into the awaiting trap. Dumbledore, with the Polyjuice Snape had provided and the hair he had plucked from Pansy’s head, would take her role and lead the group including her father to Dumbledore’s office. I myself would lead the second group to the professor’s quarters. Draco would be leading the group including his father and Voldemort himself to the Gryffindor tower.

“Gentlemen, let me remind you, you still have a chance to change your mind. There is enough Polyjuice Potion for the professors or Aurors to take your places. You’ve done your part by preparing us for this engagement, and I’m certain no one will think any less of you if you choose not to participate directly.”

Dumbledore had been pushing this option from the beginning, but Draco and I had been adamant that we be allowed to play our own roles. This was the part we had earned in the whole royal mess of it, and we weren’t about to give it up.

“We understand sir,” Draco replied. “But we haven’t changed our minds. We’re ready.”

“Then I’ll wish you both Godspeed, gentlemen, and look forward to congratulating you for your successful part in this encounter at our victory breakfast.” He shook our hands before swallowing down his vial of Polyjuice. When he had transformed into Pansy, he threw us both a quick wink before strolling away in a disturbingly accurate copy of Pansy’s hip-wiggling walk. When the door closed behind him, Draco and I shook the upsetting image from our heads and turned to face each other.

“This is it,” I said.

He smiled. “I love you.”

“It’ll all be over soon,” I added.

His smile widened. “I still love you.”

Unable to stop myself, I grinned back. “I love you, too.” I pulled him into a quick kiss. “And once this is over, we can celebrate in bed with our beautiful little witch while I show you how both how much.”

He grinned back. “Now there’s a reason to get started. Let’s go.”

We exited the Great Hall together in silence, with our hands joined, and walked down the hall together until we reached the place where our paths parted. He held on to my hand as long as he could before squeezing it hard and releasing it. Neither of us said a word as we went our separate ways.

I found the secret entrance without any difficulty, and pushed the knob to open it, descending down into the tunnel that it revealed and through to the exit on the other side. The knob on that door responded instantly to my touch and swung open. The Death Eaters, masked and ready, were standing as expecting, just outside.

“Zabini?” a rough voice that was, thankfully, completely unfamiliar to me asked from behind one of the masks. “Where are you?”

I let out a small internal sigh of relief that the ring was working properly. I hadn’t doubted that it would, but… it was nice to have proof that my loved ones were as safe as our little magic trick could make them.

“I’m right here,” I answered. “The potion has a bit to go before it wears off. This way.”

Alerted by sound to my location, the gruff-voiced man clasped a hand onto my shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to lose track of you now, would I, boy?” he asked, gripping my shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Need to keep an eye on you so that you can get your reward when the time comes. Now lead the way.”

Fighting the urge to shiver, I turned toward the tunnel and led the Death Eaters through to the other side. They followed me in silence until we reached Hogwarts’ hallways.

“This is it!” one of the Death Eaters from the back stated eagerly and far too loudly as they shuffled in from the tunnel. “I can hardly believe it!”

I winced at the sound of the voice, grateful that no one could see me. That was a voice I *did* recognize. I hadn’t known that Leon Shipley, a Slytherin less than a year out of Hogwarts, had joined the Death Eaters. It made it harder when I had a face to put with a mask. Shipley had always been something of a bully, and the thought of standing up to him, fighting against him, was something I would normally never have dared.

“Maybe you’d like to run up to the Quidditch pitch and tell everyone from the announcer’s box just how glad we are to be here,” the man gripping my shoulder stated snidely, though in a cautiously quiet voice. “Or don’t you understand the idea of a *surprise attack*?”

Shipley wisely fell silent. “Lead on, boy,” the man commanded, digging his fingers more firmly into my shoulder.

I lead the way, wincing at the echoing sound my shoes made against the hallway in the otherwise complete silence surrounding us. Apparently, the man noticed as well.

“Quiet, you fool! Just because *you’re* invisible doesn’t mean the rest of us are! Do you want to give us away?”

“Too late,” an amused voice announced from beside us. I sighed with relief as the Death Eater, shocked at the voice coming out of nowhere released my shoulder. One of the Weasleys who I thought I had heard referred to as Bill winked at me as I pulled away.

“Who’s there?” the Death Eater asked, sounding more annoyed than nervous, obvious thinking this was some kind of prank.

“Well,” Weasley drawled, circling around the man to keep him from getting a lock on his location, “there’s me.”

“And me,” one of the Aurors announced from his position in the corner.

“And me,” Professor Sinistra added, pulling out her wand.

“And me,” Professor Snape hissed in the man’s ear.

“S-snape?” the man whispered, no longer sounding tough or confident. Instead, he sounded shaky and nervous. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Spain!”

“Surprise,” Snape replied sarcastically. “Petrificus Totalus.” With a snap and a thud, the man fell stiffly to the ground. For a moment, everyone on both sides just stood there and stared. Then, the battle began.

I got away as soon as I could. The professors and the Aurors had things well under control. They were picking off the Death Eaters like flies, and quite visibly didn’t need my assistance. I couldn’t stay down there any longer while I knew that Draco and Hermione might be in danger up in the Gryffindor tower.

I had no way of knowing just how good my timing would be. The battle in the tower was raging full-on by the time I arrived. Potter was dueling with Voldemort in the corner of the room, but that was far from the only action taking place. The Death Eaters had sent a larger force to the tower than we had expected, and the crowded space meant that every spell that was dodged ended up hitting *someone*, whether friend or foe. My brilliant Hermione had obviously taken the proper measure of the scene for instead of firing aggressive or defensive spells at Death Eaters, she concentrated on disarming them before freezing them in place. She already had her own small pile of them around her, wandless, petrified, and neatly bound with magical restraints, and I could see others in the room starting to follow her example. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her.

The smile quickly disappeared when I caught sight of Draco. Lucius had, apparently, caught hold of his son in spite of the invisibility spell. It’s possible that Lucius put together the clues and figured out that Draco was to blame for the failure of his grand plan. It’s also possible that Lucius was simply taking out his frustrations on Draco without really caring whether or not the situation was, in fact, Draco’s fault, the way that he always did. But whatever the reason, he had his hands wrapped around Draco’s neck, preventing him from breathing, much less casting a spell in his own defense, and was slowly choking him to death.

A wave of red hot anger washed over me and took hold of me completely. All I could see was *Lucius* being strangled like that, being trapped and caged and crushed by something that he couldn’t control. I could picture it so clearly, so perfectly.

I wasn’t aware of the wand in my hand pointing in their direction. I wasn’t aware of my mouth opening to shout out the words. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t for the life of me remember what words I said as I pointed the wand in the direction of my lover and his murderous father, but whatever it was, the results were unmistakable.

Lucius didn’t have a chance to react as the tapestry behind him came, seemingly, to live, turning into a massive, powerful, greedy batch of Devil’s Snare, grabbing hold of him and crushing him in its embrace. He reacted quickly enough once the snare had him in its grasp (releasing Draco who quickly stepped out of range) but by then it was too late. The snare didn’t kill him, but it grabbed hold of him far too tightly for him to be able to get away, squeezing him slowly, and tightening its murderous hold just a fraction more every time he tried to struggle away.

Draco’s face lit up as he spotted me and he immediately began pushing his way across the room to my side, stunning two Death Eaters on the way who were stupid enough to be obstacles in his path to me.

“My hero!” he said with melodramatic flair, the effect of which was somewhat ruined by the enormous grin on his face.

“I love you,” I replied.

“Love you, too,” he answered. “It’s almost over. Look.”

He pointed in the direction of Voldemort and Potter, and I saw that he was right. The combatants were visibly tired from the effects of battling each other, and I could tell that the fight wouldn’t last much longer. The sun was starting to rise, visible through the windows of the tower, and it illuminated, to my eyes, at least, Voldemort in his dark clothes and Death Eater’s mask and Potter, who with the brightening effect of the ring, seemed to be glowing.

As I watched, their wands locked. I had heard about brother wands before, but I had never known that it looked like this. Two lines of magic headed directly for each other, crashing together in the middle and bringing the combatants literally off the floor with the force of their magic. I watched, breathless, squeezing tightly to Draco’s hand as I waited to see how it would end. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Accio wand!” a clear, unmistakable voice called out from the corner. As abruptly as that, the light show ended as Voldemort’s wand sailed into Hermione’s hand, causing Voldemort to land on the floor with a thud, staring rather stupidly in Hermione’s direction, wondering what had just happened. I suppose it never occurred to him that anyone would dare to interfere in his duel. The shock cost him several precious moments while he stood immobile. Hermione took advantage of his surprise.

“Harry!” she called out, making her equally dumbfounded friend turn his head to face her. “Here!” she shouted, casting a banishing spell that sent Voldemort’s wand straight into Potter’s hand. “End it!” she ordered. Voldemort had recovered by now from his surprise, and had pulled a wicked looking knife out from somewhere in his robes. He was charging toward Potter with it, obviously ready to kill, when Potter snapped up both wands in his hands and shouted out what he later said was nothing more and nothing less than the first thing to come into his head in his automatic response to doing whatever Hermione said. End it, she had commanded him. So he did.

“Finite Incantatem!”

A flash of golden light broke out from both the wands, slamming into Voldemort with the force of a rogue bludger, knocking him off his feet. All of us, Death Eaters and students alike, watched in absolute shock as the magic broke over the wizard known as Voldemort, doing what *no one* had ever expected to see.

He melted. Not his flesh or his skin or anything physical about him, but his *magic*, the strength and power that allowed him to terrorize our society seemed to leak out of him. The air was full of energy glowing in the sunlight, but Voldemort, who was always described as having power crackling at his very fingertips, could do nothing but stand there dumbfounded as power dribbled off of him. It was like watching layers of enchantment strip away, especially when all the Death Eaters in the room fell to the floor, screaming in pain as the magic maintaining the Dark Marks on their arms faded away. When it was over and done with, shouting and all, Potter stood there staring down… an old, frail man, wearing robes far too large for his shriveled frame, and an expression of absolute shock as he tried to channel the power inside him and found that it had gone.

It was an act that scholars would argue about for years to come. Was it sheer chance that Potter had shouted that particular spell while holding Voldemort’s wand, the only wand in the world capable of undoing the elaborate enchantments its owner had wrought? Was it an accident that The Boy Who Lived, the one hand-picked by fate to be the end of Voldemort, should happen to be the owner of the brother wand and, therefore, the only person capable of wielding Voldemort’s weapon and having it respond? Was it fate? Was it destiny? Was it luck? … Given the results, did it matter?

“Petrificus totalus,” a clear voice echoed out, breaking the silence. We all turned to see Hermione standing calmly, wand in hand, looking cool and collected as she petrified the Dark Lord. Summoning his frozen form across the room to join the rest of the Death Eaters she had subdued, she cast the same spell on him as she had on them, binding him in magical restraints. With that done, she took a glance around the room, saw all the Death Eaters either passed out from pain or whimpering pitifully from the floor, and slipped her wand into its holster.

“Well, thank heavens that’s done,” she said lightly. “Can we have breakfast now?”

Weasley responded with a war whoop that seemed to literally shake the room, and raced across the room to grab Hermione in a bear hug, picking her up and swinging her around. That seemed to set off some sort of strange, Gryffindorian signal that everyone one else in the room appeared to understand as they all immediately began jumping up and down, hugging everyone around them fiercely (except for the Death Eaters, of course) and screaming out wordless yells of victory. Even the Aurors, businesslike and thorough as one would expect from such professionals, couldn’t hide their grins as they went around making sure all the Death Eaters (Lucius included, once they managed to pry his body, unconscious from the pain of the Dark Mark disappearing, away from the Devil’s Snare) were properly restrained and ready to be sent to Azkaban.

A tug on my hand reminded me that it was still holding on to Draco. I turned to face him with an expression of shock on my face.

“It’s over,” I stated, half expecting him to contradict me.

“Yes,” he answered. “It is.”


End Section 15