Take Me With You
How It Ended
By Anne B. Walsh
Movement several scrys over caught Harry’s eye. Letha was running, her feet echoing eerily in time with Meghan’s sobbing as the only light within his baby sister’s room, the scry through which she’d been able to see Neville and Ginny, winked out the way Harry’s had. Sirius, in the image between the two, knelt in place, his breathing harsh and ragged, dementors beginning to converge on him.
Go for Padfoot, Harry willed Letha, staring at her figure in the scrying bowl. There’s still a chance for him. He can use the dog form to stay away from the dementors, and to smell his way out if you open the door to that maze he’s caught in. I know they have magic over you that means you’ll die if you get that close to him or Pearl, but at least he’ll be alive, he’ll be free—there’s a chance he could get to Pearl himself, get to Moony and Danger, a few of us could still make it out—
Thinking of his other Pack-parents sent his eyes to them. The water was halfway up Moony’s chest now, and nearly to Danger’s chin. She wore a look of intense concentration, and a few of the lines of fear had smoothed away from Moony’s face. Harry hoped wherever they were dreaming together, it was better than here.
Hard to see how it could be worse.
A dementor’s hand stretched out and caught Padfoot’s hair. He snarled and struck it away, transforming to the black dog and bounding out of the closing circle, but Harry could see his godfather was weakening. Meanwhile, the noises from the scry he’d hidden, the scry holding Ron and Luna, were rising to the point where he couldn’t ignore them, not without sticking his fingers in his ears, and that would mean he couldn’t hear anything else—
"Dadfoot," Meghan said in a tone so quiet Harry could hardly have heard it in silence, and had to strain his ears to the utmost to hear now. "Mama Letha. I’m sorry. You aren’t nothing to me. But Neville..." A tiny pinging sound, as of the cap of a vial being dropped. "He’s everything. He was my future. I don’t want one without him."
The black dog put on an extra burst of speed, barking with the few scraps of breath it could spare. Letha skidded around a corner, her face as near to white as it went.
"I’m sorry," Meghan repeated in a whisper.
A shriek and a hoarse shout from behind Harry’s curtain of fire coincided with the sound of shattering glass from the darkness. Harry shoved his fist against his mouth, fighting a shout of his own, then tore down the shielding flames with a savage gesture. There was no use hiding from the truth anymore.
Ron lay panting across the bed, his hair and back soaked with sweat. Luna, barely decent with the aid of a corner of sheet, looked rumpled but vaguely pleased, as though something had worked the way she wanted it to. One hand worked itself free from under Ron’s weight and went to her opposite wrist, sliding off the silver bracelet she was still wearing.
"Please," croaked a voice, and Ron raised his head. Harry flinched back from the depths of shame in the blue eyes. "Please—before they stop you again—"
His face changed, hardened, the Imperius taking hold of him, and he lunged for Luna’s arm, but she was too fast for him. Her hand darted out, there was a dull thud, and Draco’s green-stoned dagger, released from its disguising curl, buried itself in Ron’s back. He stiffened, then relaxed utterly. "Thank you," he breathed.
"I’m only sorry I wasn’t quick enough earlier," Luna murmured in answer, stroking his hair. Her fingers drifted down and closed his eyes, which had gone unfocused and glassy. "Hermione will forgive you, I promise."
She bent her head and kissed the top of his, then applied both hands to the dagger and pulled it free in a gush of blood. Its edge pressed against her throat. "Harry," she said in a quiet, carrying voice. "Don’t be afraid. We won’t go far."
The dagger passed through her skin and flesh with deceptive ease, and her blood redyed the sheets on which she lay. The scry went blank as her eyes closed.
We won’t go far? What does that mean?
Harry whirled back around as a cry struck his ears, a cry scarcely human. At the sight of Letha, crouched beside the unmoving form of her daughter, he felt his last frail hope crumple in his chest. It was over, there was no one left, no one who wasn’t dead or dying or seconds from losing their soul forever—
"Sirius, I’m sorry," Letha whispered, cradling Meghan to her. "I tried."
The black dog howled in anguish and flung itself at the nearest wall, cracking its head and falling to the floor as the human Padfoot. Harry strained his eyes, trying to get a look at his godfather through the gathering darkness—
Both scrys went out at once, leaving Harry with two images burning against the backs of his eyelids: Letha collapsing bonelessly, her arms still around her daughter, and Padfoot, looking up at the dementors with bleak and terrified understanding.
Of course they wouldn’t let him die. Their army has to be fed.
Choking back bile from the knowledge of what was happening to his godfather, fighting to remember his duty to the Pack, what remained of it, Harry turned to the last scry left to him.
Water lapped against Danger’s face, and Moony swallowed hard before ducking down to let her raise herself far enough to get a breath. He barely waited until she was finished to shoot back up, gasping in air as though he’d been submerged for minutes rather than seconds. His eyes swirled brown as Danger’s did blue, and after a moment they both nodded once, firmly, cementing a silent decision.
Raising his hands, Moony planted them on the sides of the pool—
And stood up, pulling Danger underneath.
Harry gasped, but Moony wasn’t finished. A sharp clap resounded as he brought his hands firmly together. From afar, Harry felt the twinge of fire magic being worked, and a brief burst of bubbles surfaced in Danger’s pool. Then there was only Moony, leaning wearily against the wall, two tears tracking down his face to add their own tiny contribution to his private hell.
"You always forget something," he said in a conversational tone, his right hand going to his throat. "No matter who you are or what you’re doing, you always forget some insignificant detail that has the power to ruin everything. Like forgetting to make us fireproof along with everything else." He turned his head to look into the scry, his eyes wholly blue for the first time in Harry’s memory. "Thank God."
He convulsed, his face a mask of pain, then relaxed, slumping forward into the water. Nothing disturbed its calm rippling around him. He might have been a dummy, left carelessly behind by some lifesaving course, except—
Except he’s not.
The scry blacked out. Harry stood alone in the dark.
He’s not.
He had sometimes wondered, as a child, what it would be like to be completely alone. Now he knew. It was pain, and blackness pressing in, and awful shivering cold as the sounds and the sights rushed back to taunt you, and wishing, wishing with all your heart it had been you, that just one of the horrible things you’d seen had happened to you instead. "We won’t go far," Luna had said, but the Pack and the Pride had gone farther than he could possibly go, they were parted forever, he would never see any of them again—
"I think that will be quite enough of that," said a firm voice somewhere near his right ear.
I’ve gone mad, I’m making it up, I’m hearing things—
"Moony?" Harry quavered.
"Who were you expecting?" The voice was teasing but kindly, exactly the way Moony had always sounded when Harry was frustrated with his Patronus or his Animagus work. "Sit down, you don’t want to fall and hurt yourself. Three steps back if you need the wall to lean on."
Harry slid his feet backwards, one, two, three, and found the wall, pressing his back against it and letting it guide him to the floor. Warmth wrapped around him, tame fire sheathing his body, though he had not willed it and he still saw nothing. "Where are you?" he asked, reaching out a hand, then letting it drop.
"Nowhere you can’t come. Which you ought to have known." Moony’s voice took on a hint of scolding. "Voldemort’s little melodrama is no reason for you to forget what we’ve taught you. We aren’t gone forever. We haven’t even gone far. Just like Luna said."
Harry shut his eyes, letting relief overwhelm him. "Take me with you," he whispered. "I don’t want to stay here alone."
"You won’t have to." The fire swirled around him, Moony’s version of a long-distance hug. "You know, or you should, what Voldemort thinks he has to do with you. But we’ve found out something rather interesting. It seems that scar on your forehead isn’t only a scar."
"As if I didn’t know that," Harry muttered.
"Yes, true enough, we’ve known that much for years. What we didn’t know until just now was that it is, and don’t repeat this aloud, a Horcrux."
"A—" Harry clapped a hand over his mouth. "It is not," he said when he could trust his voice again.
"Oh, it is. Which explains why we always thought there was one we couldn’t find." Moony chuckled. "But you’ll enjoy this. We got all the others, which means you’re the last of them, and do you know what happens when a wizard who’s made a Horcrux destroys it himself?"
"Please tell me it takes him down with it," Harry said fervently.
"It does indeed." Another laugh. "Hold your head high, Harry-kins. You’re going to win the war for us after all."
Harry laughed in return, feeling the warmth of the fire striking inward, chasing away the earlier chill. "Are the others with you?" he asked.
"Yes, Sirius just arrived, so we’re all here. As will you be soon. They’re coming for you."
"Good." Harry got to his feet. "I hate long waits."
The Death Eaters who opened the door to his room seemed surprised to see his smile. Certainly they were baffled when he came willingly at their summons, and his quick, light tread as he walked the halls with them confused them utterly. But it was all right, Harry thought. They’d probably never had a prisoner like him before.
Screaming, fighting, trying to bribe them, that they’d understand. But I want to go where they’re taking me.
One Death Eater pulled open the door, and Harry stepped through into a vast hall. The handful of jeering Death Eaters lining its walls, even with his two escorts added, seemed pitifully small, but the sheer presence of Lord Voldemort, at the hall’s other end, made up for a great deal of that.
"Harry Potter," purred the Darkest wizard in a hundred years. "You have seen my power demonstrated. Now you come to taste it yourself. Do you have any last words?"
Harry folded his arms. "Snap it up, Tommy boy," he said. "I’m late for den."
The look on Voldemort’s face was one Harry knew he would remember for the rest of his life.
Not terribly hard.
The yew wand swung up to point at Harry’s chest, but he never heard the two words spoken. His ears were too full of the laughter of the people he loved, the people he was going to rejoin, and fulfill his life’s purpose by so doing.
Harry Potter died with a smile on his lips.
Author Notes:
So now you, my dear readers, have a decision to make. Do you like this ending for the story, or do you want a final chapter with a twist? The choices are yours and yours alone! Let me know, and more BC (and yes, FD too) will soon be forthcoming no matter what!