They returned to the school much as they had left it, Harry and Hermione as Knight and Sagehunter for the greater speed it gave them when covering ground, Ron on his new Cleansweep with the invisibility cloak balled up under one elbow. They'd all agreed it would be pretty pointless for Ron to cover up on the way back. In the company of a jaguar and lioness, a wizard on a broom (particularly in the vicinity of a magical school) would be the less conspicuous sight for a passerby to notice of the trio. It seemed ludicrous for him to try and hide under the cloak.

It seemed to take an unbearably long time, since Knight and Sagehunter had barely had a chance to catch their breaths after their initial race then their ensuing tussle before they were asked to run again, but they were at last coming upon landmarks they knew with great familiarity. Then it was caution that slowed their pace.

They ducked into the cover of the forest as soon as they possibly could and stuck to the trees, avoiding open areas and roads leading to the great castle. The senses possessed by Knight and Sagehunter aided in their undetected approach to the school.

As they crept close to the tree line, knowing they might have to discuss and formulate a plan of action, Knight and Sagehunter returned their forms to Harry and Hermione. Together, the three friends crouched to avoid being spotted by the enemy and took in the scene before them. They could see that the explosion they had heard from afar had effectively deprived Hogwarts of its hospital wing. Hermione clutched Harry's arm tightly when they saw the rubble that stood where once the hospital wing jutted from the castle proper. The pinch of her fingers on his bicep said all that he was thinking. 'Aberforth, Kimmy, Pomfrey'. Only as an afterthought did the fate of Draco Malfoy, lying witlessly in a bed of his own inside the hospital wing, flit through his mind.

But there was no time to worry about those that might very well already lay dead amid the stone and debris of the hospital wing. There were people still alive that demanded Harry's attention, though from the looks of things they might not stay that way for long.

The area in front of the main entrance to Hogwarts was full of people. The great doors of the castle were shut and the enormous portcullis down, but that served little purpose considering the hole blown in both that had granted the attackers access to the school. It looked as though the wood and iron had been little more than paper that a giant fist had punched through.

Students and teachers alike were gathered on the grounds, held in a cluster like sheep surrounded by a circle of wolves. Black wolves, Death Eaters in coal-colored robes with skull-like masks, who paced a bloodthirsty noose around the survivors of the initial raid. There should be more than those who were pressed together in a knot of fear, Harry noted with cold certainty. Were any of them just missing, or were all unaccounted for individuals dead? Harry surveyed the scene, touching the jaguar to better see the situation that lay before them.

The first to draw Harry's eyes amid the captives were those that were no longer standing. Lavender Brown was on her knees, crying as she clung to a limp body sprawled partially over her lap. From her tears, it could only be Oliver. Harry wondered if the elder Gryffindor had tried to do something bold and fatal, like protect Lavender in a display of gallantry. If he had, he'd managed only to pay for it with his life.

McGonagall was crouched down, shielding a waif of a student (Merlin, had Harry ever been that small?) with her arms while trying to tend to her injuries at the same time. The little first-year was bleeding from the head and seemed on the verge of falling at any moment. Ginny was among the prisoners, she was hard to miss with her red hair. She was hurt. Harry couldn't see for certain how badly, but she was holding her right hand up to her chest, cradling it. From where they stood, it was not the color it should have been. Not flesh-toned but black and red. She was hunched over, whether from internal injury or just the agony in her arm he couldn't say. Whichever was the case, Ginny had not let the pain drop her. She was standing as best she could, never taking her eyes from the human jackals circling the huddled survivors.

Ron tensed at Harry's right. He'd seen his sister and the state she was in, though assuredly not as well as Harry saw it. To Ron's credit, a sharp intake of breath was all he did in reaction to the sight. Harry half feared Ron would dart out in blind anger to try and defend his little sister. Instead, Ron held himself still and waited, watchful and alert.

Hannah Abbot was curled in a ball on the ground, shivering and crying and holding her torn clothes to her body with a palsy grip. Harry didn't want to think of what had been done to her, not when there was a beautiful young witch next to him, looking to enter into the same fray as he. Professor Flitwick was trying to comfort Hannah, with the one arm left to him, but she flinched away from him every time he tried to touch her.

Snape was still alive, but his privilege to the status of being counted among the living seemed on the cusp of being revoked. He'd been singled out from the other professors for reasons that hardly needed clarification. He was apart from the pack of Hogwarts survivors, on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. The Death Eaters were striking him mercilessly, with hand, fist, wand, knife… anything they fancied. They were playing with him, trying to draw a cry from him with every blow. Harry had to credit the Potions master his damnable arrogance… he wasn't cracking to their whims or giving them the pleasure of his scream. Though his face was bloody and bruised, he did not give them the satisfaction of breaking.

Professor Sprout was standing before a quartet of frightened students, like a mother bear looking after her cubs. She had her arms splayed wide, guarding her charges, what of the survivors she could handle claiming as her responsibility. When a Death Eater came too close she kicked and yelled at him… the Death Eaters seemed to delight in watching her have a fit, like a tethered mad dog, and goaded her, counting coup by jumping in and poking her with the ends of their wands only to sidle away with a laugh before her feet could catch them.

Hagrid was nowhere in sight, and that did not bode well for the massive groundskeeper. He would not have run with the school in danger. He would not have abandoned the students to save his own life. Harry decided that their dear Hagrid was probably dead, very likely slain trying to save Fang from the Death Eaters when they came busting down his hut's door. It would be just the sort of thing Hagrid would do, putting himself last even after a dog. Harry noted that there was no sign of Fang, either, and he lamented for a second that Hagrid had failed. Had Hagrid been alive, he would have been terribly aggrieved to learn his Neapolitan mastiff had been killed.

There were only eight Death Eaters in all by Harry's count, but over a collection of women and children well enough to subdue the school. Though not without a fight. It seemed the initial vanguard against Hogwarts had consisted of more than eight Death Eaters… those who had fallen victim to the defensive fervor of the residents of Hogwarts, doubtless professors and students alike, were strewn in the snow, still as death in the lovely white drifts.

Valiant, but not enough.

Harry's every hair stood on end and his nerves seemed to crackle with electricity and the scar on his forehead burned like fire when a black-clad figure emerged from the hole in the castle's doors. It emerged from the shadows like a Dementor, self-assured and unapologetic. Death's harbinger and without possessing the barest fraction of regret for commanding such a dark purpose.

Voldemort.

He breezed down from the ruined school, as easily as one might step out for an afternoon stroll. He glanced toward Snape, beaten and bloody on the ground but still refusing to scream, and appeared bored with the whole affair. "Enough of this," Voldemort said, and with a flick of his wand Snape gargled and seized when a gash was opened in his throat from ear to ear. Blood poured from his neck, lost in the black of his robes, then he toppled face-first into the snow.

Students cried and pressed closer together as they watched the professor die. Harry held a hand to his head, trying to function past the blinding pain in his scar.

Hermione leaned in closer to Harry and whispered in his ear, "What do we do now?" Ron glanced over at his companions to hear the answer to the barely breathed question.

Harry shook his head and rubbed at his scar, his heart a pulsing lump in his throat. What to do? He didn't know.

Voldemort glanced at one of his Death Eaters loitering nearby and gave a nonchalant tick of his head, like a master bidding a butler to answer the door. The masked man nodded obedience and reached into the cluster of survivors. They moved away from him as one like a school of fish shying from a seal, and he pulled a squirming, fighting, frightened boy from the crowd.

McGonagall said sharply, "Stop this! Do what you will to us, but let the children go!"

"And why would I do that, my dear professor? Would you have me believe a child is harmless?!" His words started off calm and smooth as venom sliding the length of a knife's blade, but at the end he was yelling. Mad. Completely mad with hate and evil.

"Now," Voldemort turned to the student who'd been brought before him. "Since Professor Snape was most unhelpful, I ask you… is Harry Potter here?"

Harry tensed and his teeth ground together.

The boy shook his head feebly, sobbing and shaking as he wailed in reply, "I don't know!"

Voldemort tisked disapprovingly, "Filthy lies," and with an easy slash of his wand the boy gagged and screamed and coughed out his tongue. Blood dribbled from his mouth to the snow where his tongue lay between his trainers. Soon after, yellow stained the snow at the boy's feet.

Harry shivered in fury. It was like watching a nightmare unfold but knowing he could not simply wake up and make it stop.

Harry was watching in horror the travesty playing out on the school grounds, trying desperately to think of something he could do. What in the name of Merlincould a fifteen-year-old boy do to stop the torment and torture he was seeing? He was so intent on the scene before him that he almost missed the sound of scraping bark to his left. Were it not for the jaguar heightening his senses, he may not have heard it at all, not until it was too late, for neither Hermione nor Ron gave any indication that there had been a sound.

Harry glanced over, past Hermione, into the branches of the trees beside them. A sliver of light reflected off the glassy, lifeless eye of the huge python that had slithered from the trees and was poised in the shadows a matter of inches from Hermione where she was crouched, unaware of the snake's presence as she watched the tragedy that had befallen their beloved school.

The snake had snuck up on them while they watched their classmates and professors cower; it was within striking distance of the closest of the three friends… that person being Hermione.

Harry breathed in.

Nagini flicked her tongue out to savor the air and its flavor of a healthy young woman. The python was intent upon Hermione so very close to her ready jaws. "Sssssssssweet," the snake hissed in hungry anticipation. The word sliced through Harry's brain in sibilant parseltongue, an alluring language turned vile and malicious by the creature that spoke it.

Nagini coiled to strike.

On instinct, before he could even think, Harry grabbed Hermione, jerked her toward him and away from the snake, and in a second had his wand drawn and was shouting "Reducto!" even as Nagini lunged for Hermione's tender flesh, fangs bared.

The explosive spell boomed around the three friends hiding in the woods. Nagini crashed to the forest floor, a tremendous length of snake missing a head. Her body continued to writhe as Hermione, realizing how close she'd been to death, scrambled back out of the way and stared at the headless serpent.

Ron whimpered and drew his wand, for all the good it would do now against a dead attacker.

When they collected themselves enough to turn their attention back toward the scene playing out before Hogwarts, they found every eye turned in their direction, those of the Death Eaters and Voldemort included.

Harry froze with dread when the implications of that hit him like a punch in the stomach.

"I know you're there, Harry Potter!" Voldemort called in a slimy, insolent tone.

Harry's heart was hammering in his ribcage. The three friends looked at one another, motionless and lost for what would constitute the right thing to do in their predicament.

"Come forward or watch everyone here die!" Voldemort followed his threat with a wand pointed at the frail child in McGoangall's arms. Green flared. The professor gave a sharp cry of protest and alarm when the child collapsed in her hold, dead before McGonagall could do a thing to stop it.

Harry looked at Hermione, desperate and apologetic all at once, but Hermione only gave him a grave nod and was the first to step from their cover of the forest. Harry and Ron were quick to follow her.

Death Eaters were swarming around them instantly. Hermione and Ron were stripped of their wands. When one of the Death Eaters tried to take Harry's wand, Voldemort stopped him. "No. Not Potter's. Leave him his wand. Harry and I have a duel to finish."

Harry's scar was throbbing in time with his heartbeat, but the pain was nothing compared to the fear he felt for his friends as they were separated from him.

Harry watched helplessly as Hermione and Ron were herded into the pack of Hogwarts survivors by their Death Eater escort, then he looked purposefully toward Voldemort. Harry approached the dark wizard with insides quaking, but he did not let his terror show. He dare not. It would only work against him. It could only mean he might get his friends killed or tortured if he showed weakness. He didn't look to Hermione or Ron again for fear they would suffer for his hapless glance. Let them be just classmates in the eyes of the Death Eaters… anything but the best friend and the love of Harry Potter.

Voldemort gave Harry a vicious smile, as though he were a long-awaited guest at a gruesome party. "Why, Harry… has it only been a few months? I would have owled, but you've been cursedly difficult to track down these days."

Harry stood tall before the dark wizard, quelling any tendency he felt inside him to be afraid. And he very much had a tendency to be afraid as he faced Voldemort again, the first time since the man had inflicted the Cruciatus upon him. "You have me now, Voldemort… let the others go."

"Oh…" Voldemort looked to his captives calculatingly, looking as though Harry had asked nothing more important than that he put out the dog. "Oh, I'm afraid that won't do at all."

Harry swallowed and stumbled on his words. "You… you said if I surrendered you wouldn't kill them." He cursed how halting his voice sounded to his own ears.

"Well, didn't you hear the pretty words you wanted to hear then? I said come forward and you wouldn't have to watch them die. You can't very well do that if you're dead first, now can you?" The dark wizard gave a bare shake of his head, looking a tad amused by the very idea. "Let the others go. Really, Harry… did you think I would show such a Dumbledore-like weakness?" Voldemort smiled cadaverously.

Harry spared his own glance at his huddled (and equally doomed) classmates and professors. He let himself seek out his friends only from the corners of his eyes. Hermione and Ron had wormed their way over to Ginny and were bracing her from either side. McGonagall looked close to tears as she watched Harry as he confronted Voldemort… close to tears, but she did not cry. McGonagall was too formidable to cry, but fear was not beyond her capacity to experience. Flitwick was favoring his side where he'd been dismembered, but it had not killed the fire in his beady gaze. Harry had never seen Professor Sprout look so bulldog in her ferocity. Harry had never truly realized before that moment just how much his professors were warriors… warriors who would take up arms at that very instant, but ultimately warriors left without weapons or a means to fight.

"Your wand, Potter," Voldemort snapped testily.

Harry jerked his eyes back to the dark wizard and he itched to draw his wand on reflex. He forced himself to reach for his wand slowly and to draw it deliberately from his back pocket. He didn't want to risk Voldemort presuming Harry was trying to pull a fast one and kill him before he'd even managed to arm himself. It granted him only a handful of seconds, but when they may be the last he would live to see, every second mattered. "We'll duel if that's what you bloody want," Harry said evenly, "but there's no reason to keep the others."

"You see, but there is reason. First, they'll watch me kill you once and for all, the famous Harry Potter, then they'll die. Then I'll have your corpse strung up in the Great Hall over that meddling old fool's chair. Theirbodies," he gestured at the whimpering prisoners, "shall attend you; the Great Hall was built for students to fill, after all." Voldemort sighed wistfully. "What I wouldn't give to see the look on the muggle-lover's face when he walks into his precious Great Hall to see his tables of lifeless students and professors, but most of all, you. Let his failure look down upon him every minute of the rest of his life, short as that will be. Never again shall he presume to think he can defy me!" Voldemort moved to stand directly across from Harry, setting the stage for a one-on-one match. "Elegant in its simplicity, don't you think? And I should think the message will be quite clear. Now," Voldemort gave an elaborate bow, black robes billowing. Harry could not mistake the gesture. Voldemort invited the final duel, the last show-down between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. A part of Harry railed; he'd hoped he'd have more time before it came down to this.

The students and professors watching nearby went deathly silent, each seeming to understand they were about to watch history be born, regardless of which way the winds of fate blew today. A terrible or glorious moment remained to be seen, but an unforgettable turning point in magical history either way.

They would see Harry Potter defeat Lord Voldemort, or they would see the Boy Who Lived die. Harry couldn't begin to predict which outcome would prevail. But he need not speculate, because the moment was upon him. He'd know soon enough.

Voldemort rose from his faux-courteous bow and eyed Harry.

Harry tensed, his spine stiffened, but he knew if he didn't bow as a proper dueling partner would to his opponent he would only be forced to do it with a stab of pain in his gut. He'd danced this deadly waltz before, and he'd just as soon avoid needless, pointless agony. With rigid muscles, he dipped just barely at the waist.

Voledmort smiled. "Shame that it's only before your death that you learn your manners," he said lowly. "Farewell, Harry Potter."