All I Ever Wanted

DISCLAIMER: Warning! I make no claim to any property of J.K. Rowling's, and am in no way profiting by this. I do offer her my sincerest thanks for allowing us this garden of the mind in which we play. Further Warning! This story...and likely any I ever write…are dominated by gay themes and characters. That's how it is, if this in any way makes you uncomfortable...do not read further.


All I Ever Wanted…chap. 53 'The Final Battle (part 2)'


Severus Snape stumbled across the grounds towards the castle. He’d Apparated in with the rest of the attacking Death Eater’s, cast a few very visible spells at buildings, then slipped away as soon as he could.

He’d been under close watch for days, never given a chance to sneak off. He had to get back into Hogwarts and pass along what he had learned. The Order could free Dumbledore with what he knew, and Albus could tip the balance in their favor. None of this would happen, if he didn’t make it to the castle alive, and that was a distinct possibility.

That miserable little shit, Pettigrew, had spotted him slipping away, and before Snape knew the little vermin was around, he’d been cursed from behind. His entire right side was half numb, burning and tingling from the spell, and if Pettigrew had been a better wizard, Snape wouldn’t still be running for his life.

He could hear that insipid voice calling for him. Snape’s wand was in his left hand now, and he flung a few curses behind him at random, just to keep Pettigrew’s aim off.

The Shrieking Shack was just ahead. Snape looked up at the cloudy sky, and as the wind parted the clouds, a fat full moon hung above him. Severus had a plan.

Peter Pettigrew had never liked Severus Snape. Not in school, and not in Voldemort’s ranks. Every time Snape got near Voldemort, his poison tongue let slip comment after comment that subtly disparaged Peter. He knew what it was about. Severus had wanted to see Peter tortured and cast out, only to take his place by Voldemort’s side!

As soon as the battle had started, Peter intended to kill his rival in the confusion, but even better opportunities arose. Why fight in town when he could chase and kill a cowardly traitor in relative peace? He followed Severus’ every step, right to the front of the Shrieking Shack.

He’d seen Snape slump in the doorway, then heave himself through and slam the door behind him. There wasn’t any time to lose, the greasy bastard would only be more dangerous if he recovered!

“Alohamora! You’re finished Sev! This isn’t like school days. You’re not getting a pantsing in front of your precious girlfriend. I’m here to kill you, and I plan to drag it out a little.” Peter stepped cautiously through the door, peering around the room, looking at the different doors before him. He listened carefully, hoping for an easy clue as to where his nemesis had fled.

Then there was a faint creak, a shuffling noise, and soft whine from behind the door in the back, and Peter braced himself as he moved forward. One traitor, soon to be extinguished, complete with glory for Peter Pettigrew, the servant who brought their master back to life!

“Reducto!” Hmm. It didn’t work! “Alohamora!” Nothing! What had the tricky bastard done? There was a creaking sound behind him, and Peter whirled, suddenly realizing that he was in a house…alone…with no magic. Even wounded, Snape was a tricksy devil. Maybe an exit would be a timely choice.

Severus‘ voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. “Oh, Peter. Since we’re having a little reunion, I thought you might want to see another old dear friend. Say hello, Remus!”

The creature that leaped from out of one of the rooms was a living nightmare of fangs and claws, uncoiling like a spring, hot to slake its lust for blood and violence on the first visible target that presented itself!

Peter’s screams were drowned out by the cacophony of snorts, howls, and roars, and his world ended in a red haze of snapping bone and tearing flesh, while the beast above him glutted its blackest lusts for fresh meat.

Severus took the opportunity to slip out the door Peter had left unlocked, and then close it behind him, while the werewolf devoured its fresh kill. He couldn’t imagine why magic had stopped working, but who would have known a talent for ventriloquism would turn out to be so useful.

He smiled while he limped towards the castle, aching with every step. Nothing cheered Severus up like cruelly beautiful irony, and if he’d had both legs working, there would have been a spring in his step as he finally made it home.

---------------------------------------------------


Draco Malfoy stepped out of the alleyway, a wand in each hand, and put his best ‘game face’ on. Then he proceeded to march down the street, sticking close to the walls of buildings, curses ready on his lips.

Each time he ran into a Death Eater, they were usually fighting someone else at the moment. Usually it was Order members holed up in alleys, fighting clusters of black robed wizards that generally outnumbered the Order by two to one.

Draco, who wasn’t really expected, moved down the streets like a well dressed whirlwind of destruction and mayhem, blasting, hexing, and cursing every Death Eater within range, often times with several curses for each enemy. The maimed or distracted Death Eaters were easy pickings for the Order members, once Draco had evened the odds a bit.

His two wands never dipped as he stalked the street, determined to find Harry if he had to kill everything in his path to do it. He wasn’t using the ‘nice’ curses, either. Everything he’d cast had come from old texts at Malfoy Manor that were so dark most wizards wouldn’t touch them without gloves.

One Death Eater wound up turned inside out, frantically attempting to keep a hold on his own entrails as they slid down and hung about him, leaving him a wailing wreck in the middle of the street.

He could see pretty well in the street, since the small random fires lit Hogsmeade moderately well, and he trained his wands on two figures at the edge of a cross street. One of them was on the ground, motionless, the other held the head of the first in his lap, and knelt weeping. Draco took a step through the smoke and gloom.

“Goyle?”

“Draco…they…I couldn’t…he’s gone, Draco. It was his father…his own fucking father! He just killed him. Avada Kedavra. Just like that, an’ he was gone. I was crawling my way back up after a Stunner. I saw a green light, and when I got up, Vince was down. I saw his father put his mask back on before he left. His FUCKING FATHER, DRACO!” Greg was coming unglued fast. He started to sob uncontrollably onto Vince’s collar.

Draco was numb. It was war. People died. Maybe he would die. He had imagined Harry dying, and the notion had terrified him. He hadn’t really thought of all the others that could be, that were dying…out there…right now. So much death. So much hate. Maybe death was better than being in a world like this. The sound of shattering glass, and the scream of a woman snapped him back to reality.

‘Greg! Trip your Portkey! Get clear! If you can’t fight, get to cover, and make sure you stay alive. I’ll see you again when it’s over. THAT’S AN ORDER! GO!”

Seven years of instinctive following kicked in, and Goyle triggered the Portkey and disappeared, still holding his fallen friend’s head in his lap. Draco blinked and caught his breath again. Then he headed back into the street. The fighting was tougher close to the center of town, and he could hear it coming already.

Draco kept going, relieving beleaguered members of the Order and desperate Hogsmeade citizens as he went. It only took minutes to make it to the center square of Hogsmeade, but it felt like hours had passed. He’d lost count of the number of people he’d cursed, but he had made certain that they’d suffer…assuming the bastards even lived.

He turned a last corner, and stopped in surprise at what he saw. Voldemort stood in the center of the street, completely surrounded by black robed wizards, and they were all connected by the greenish light of raw magic, like spokes on a wheel, with Voldemort as the hub! They were all feeding him power.

With hundreds upon hundreds of followers, the Dark Lord had picked a crop of magi with the same skill that he and Harry possessed, and had used them like an enormous generator. He didn’t have to concentrate to draw power! It was spoon fed to him by the knot of servants around him.

Harry stood alone in the middle of the street, facing all of Voldemort’s might single handedly. Massive spells exploded off his shields, and he fed from them, stealing some of their strength to fuel his own counter-spells.

Harry’s own spells couldn’t seem to penetrate the ring of shields that guarded Voldemort’s cohort, but he was holding his own, a single red and gold standard that stood proudly against a tide of black.

Draco watched in awe as the two combatants pounded each other with spells that made what he’d just done look like child’s play. The air itself felt alive, as gouts of raw magic leaked back into the fabric of the universe, released in quantities that defied magical logic, and in a way that hadn’t been used actively in hundreds of years. Even then, it probably hadn’t been like this! Draco felt every hair on his body standing on end, reacting with atavistic apprehension to the clashing of titanic forces in front of him.

Draco paid attention…and he realized that he might just be able to help after all. If he could angle himself just so, he might be able to interrupt one or two of Voldemort’s cronies, and screw up their little system. If he could just throw a Muggle wrench into the works, Harry could mow that lot down like wheat!

Draco moved slowly forward, keeping well to Harry’s right. As any skilled duelist knew, most shields did not cover everything. They usually covered the area most likely to be attacked. The face and torso most often. Draco knew this well, and proceeded to aim several select spells at the feet of Voldemort’s magi.

It worked like a charm, quite literally! One mage broke free of the chain, dancing about as his feet lit on fire, catching the hem of his robe and igniting the rest of his clothing. Another one lost a foot entirely to a Crushing Curse, bones pulped to liquid, and dropped out of the circle, screaming in incoherent agony. Voldemort took note, quickly, and turned his hideous gaze to the interloper.

Harry saw Voldemort’s attention shift, and turned in horror to see Draco behind him, smiling wild with the flush of his success. He looked so fierce and proud, with his blond hair still perfectly in place, and his outfit from the ball making him look like a noble wizard of old. He looked so very alive when he smiled right at Harry. Harry’s mouth just barely opened to say something, and his eyes were wide with terror.

The Slashing Spell that Voldemort had cast struck Draco head on, opening him from chest to throat, and nearly severed his head. The blood spray as arteries opened was sufficient to spatter Harry from more than a dozen feet away. Harry watched that shredded body fall ever so slowly to the ground. He could taste his lover’s lifeblood on his lips. The copper rich stink of it stole away all reason. Voldemort’s laughter was in his ears. Then Harry’s world went black.

Harry had no recollection of that time. The matter was pieced together by witnesses after the fact. Voldemort’s spells continued to crash into Harry’s shields, and Harry ceased to fight back. At a guess, examiners of the phenomena that followed would say that, despite losing his conscious mind, Harry still absorbed every iota of magic thrown at him.

As Voldemort and his allies pummeled Harry with every spell they knew, some slid away from him like oil, and others were absorbed whole. None of them noticed that the light around Harry grew brighter, and it was much too late by the time they realized that he was floating several inches off the ground, a living battery, containing more magic than had ever existed in a single space at one time.

His eyes were flickering with green balefire, and just as the knot of Death Eater’s began to realize that their situation was becoming tenuous, Harry, by all reports, reached out his arms…and pulled.

Behind Harry, Arthur Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt had seen Draco fall. Mr. Weasley grabbed Draco’s body and Portkeyed out to safety. Shacklebolt stayed behind to keep tabs on Harry. He knew enough to stay back from whatever was transpiring before him.

Harry drew in more. Not merely more, but rather, all the magical energy he could reach. Wands everywhere faltered, spells in operation faded, curses and wards collapsed and vanished. All through Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, magic flooded toward Harry, leaving only the faintest wisps behind in its wake.

It was recorded that at some thirty-three minutes after midnight that night, every clock in Hogsmeade lost approximately 47 seconds. Time itself held its breath while every iota of magic for a mile in any direction answered only to Harry.

Voldemort stood in the street, his magi rendered helpless, his own wand useless, with no more strength than a Squib. The enormity of what was happening was just penetrating his mind, and the primal urge to flee suddenly flooded him. As he turned in nervous indecision, his followers broke and ran in a panic. The green and glowing young god that hung in the air before them, finally spoke.

“Not you.” Those two words were heard everywhere in Hogsmeade, and every head turned to listen. Of course, the only sound most of them heard after that was a roar.

At the center of town, the magical powerhouse hovering a foot above the street reached out a hand, looked dispassionately upon the pitiful creature known as Tom Riddle and later, as Voldemort, and chose to snuff that creature’s life out like a candle.

Harry unleashed the magic he held…all of it.

Voldemort had used others to channel for him, as his own channel wasn’t that vast. As a consequence, he had no hope of coping with what was unleashed upon him. No creature was ever intended to have so much raw magic strike them at one time. Suffice it to say, that the best description of what occurred was still a bit blurry, but essentially accurate.

Lord Voldemort was slowly, and apparently quite painfully, annihilated by the same magic that he once believed marked wizards as a superior species. There was nothing left of him, and it should be further noted, that even though it is hard to prove, most experts now agree that the very particles from which his body was created, were disassembled in that magical holocaust. Reality itself rippled for a moment in shock.

The followers who once idealized him as their natural and rightful lord, had sudden and immediate reason to regret that choice. Voldemort had linked each of them to his soul through the Dark Mark, and magical energy is a great deal like water, going wherever a path is easiest cut for it. The backlash of that blast struck every Death Eater, everywhere, at the same instant.

In every city where people were fighting for their lives, black robed killers fell screaming to the ground, clutching arms that burned. Most passed out from the blinding pain. A few of the most elderly followers passed away of heart attacks as the pain struck, most simply fell to the ground and could not cast spells for at least a minute or so.

Their intended victims, sensing weakness, wasted no time, and by the thousands, Death Eaters were captured, killed outright, or incapacitated. The few in Hogsmeade that kept their wits about them despite the pain, quickly fled the town.

Unfortunately for them, the Forbidden Forest was not a good place to run into. Dragons, Acromantula, Centaurs, and a very testy giant and his half brother, as well as two very irate Weasleys, were waiting for them. It was a brief and ugly encounter. It would be enough to simply say that a great many shreds of black cloth could be found in samples of monster spoor for several days to come.

As for Harry, when the magic left him, so did the light. He tumbled to earth like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Kingsley Shacklebolt ran to his side, picked up the tattered, pale body of the Boy Who Lived, and tripped his Portkey to the nearest Healer. For better or worse, the war here was over, and it was time figure out what to do next.


End of Final Battle (part2)…be watching for The Last Chapter and the Epilogue!