HP/LOTM: Visionary - 431

Chapter 431: Shattered, the Strange Light, and She Who Chose to Sacrifice

At the centre of the battlefield, Gideon forced his arm up again. His duel with Voldemort had left him covered in wounds, but his dragon blood only burned hotter. Battle-lust roared through him.

His magic surged, gathering faster and faster until it seemed to catch fire in the air itself. The sheer force of it warped the space around him. A phantom dragon reared up behind his back, its gaze locked on Voldemort alone.

A small twitch flickered at the corner of Voldemort’s eye. He knew this was Gideon’s last throw. If he took this one head-on, the Prewett would have nothing left.

"Confringo!"

The Blasting Curse, normally jagged like lightning, straightened under Gideon’s power into a blazing lance. It shot for Voldemort’s chest.

Everything in its path crumbled to dust, as if a dragon had loosed its breath.

"Hah."

Voldemort did not bother with the incantation. He simply clenched his hand.

Black slime wrapped him in an instant. Layer upon layer of Shield and Barrier Charms flared to life over the sphere.

The explosion shook the world.

The blast flung Sirius and Remus like rag dolls. Dust boiled up and swallowed everything. No one could see who still stood.

A flash of spell-light cut through the grey. Something heavy hit the ground.

When the dust thinned at last, only one figure was still on his feet: a man with no hair at all. His right hand was flayed and bloody, but he did not seem to notice.

Voldemort crooked a finger. Eleanor’s body drifted through the air to hang before him. A murmured charm brought her back to herself.

She gasped, gulping air into her lungs.

"Open your lovely eyes and see who is here with you," Tom said.

He leaned back. Stone writhed and rose under him, shaping itself into a chair.

"Gideon! Fabian!"

Eleanor saw them at once, hanging from living vines. Before each of their hearts floated a green curse, steady as a held breath.

"Good. You grasp the situation," Tom said.

"Hand over your Prewett Protocol, and I'll let them live."

He lifted his hand, calm as if they were discussing a business deal.

So intent was he on savouring the moment that he never noticed the other presence slipping into the courtyard under a veil of strange power.

Augustus Rookwood.

Something drifted at his back: a knot of eerie light, a small body made of purple flame, floating like a foetus. Its right arm was missing, as if something had maimed it.

"Kill them. Force the Dark Lord’s rage to break loose. Then you can take the Final Protocol."

Honeyed whispers poured into Rookwood’s mind. He raised his wand.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Two jets of killing green shot toward Gideon and Fabian, where they hung in midair.

Tom’s face snapped from smug delight to pure fury.

"No, Augustus. What are you doing?" he roared.

Too late.

The twin curses struck. The dragonkin’s lives were snuffed out in an instant.

"No!"

Eleanor’s grief broke free. It tore her Occlumency to pieces, sent her mind-force surging. Her thin thread of dragon blood answered the call and erupted.

Grey-white scales and wings of a Mind Dragon unfurled from her back. The Fourteenth Protocol flared under her will. Colour bled out of the world. Everything hung frozen. Time stopped.

The Chaos in Voldemort’s body could not even struggle. The silver-white tide of mind-force swept through it and scrubbed it clean.

Eleanor flicked her hand. Voldemort flew.

He smashed through wall after wall and vanished.

"Yes. That is it," the little flame-being at Rookwood’s back laughed.

The Protocol was already weak. Being forced to give up power, then to rewrite reality on such a scale, drove more and more cracks through the jewel that anchored it.

"So it is you," Eleanor said.

Her silver-white pupils turned on Augustus. The purple little man on his back tore at reality, chewing a hole in the border between world and Deep Realm.

"Poor Fourteenth. Go with your mistress. Share her oblivion," the purple thing crowed.

It never finished.

Two dragon claws punched through its escape route, wedging the hole shut.

"We have been waiting a long time, friend. You were not easy to catch."

"You actually dared to use my human like a game piece. You deserve every second of this," a second voice said.

The two Manipulators of the Visionary Pathway had been lying in wait in the Sea of Consciousness. The instant the flame-creature tried to slip away, Arthursi and Lada reached out and pinned it in the material world.

"Now. Take this properly," Eleanor said.

She stepped in front of it. Her fist, wreathed in silver-white fire, crashed down.

The purple creature shattered. In its last instant of sight, it saw the gem’s core splinter as well and laughed in ragged triumph.

Coughing, the Fourteenth Protocol broke.

Eleanor could no longer hold back the flood. Her mind-force slipped its leash and ran wild.

Pure mental power spilled across the ground and began to take form, twisting everything it touched toward the Deep Realm.

"You two…" Eleanor lifted her head.

She saw the ripples of time and space clinging to the two demigods’ forms.

"So. The future?" she said, and smiled at them, gentle as ever.

"Ma’am—" Arthursi reached out, trying to help her rein the power in.

Eleanor caught her hand and turned it aside.

"No. The Protocol is bound to my life. I am past saving. Do not waste your strength. And… thank you," she said.

She hooked her fingers. In an instant, she had both of them in her arms. Her mind-force surged, helping their bodies finish digesting the potions inside them.

"Go and do what you came to do. I have my own task," Eleanor said.

Light began to leak from her skin.

Mind-force twined with magic. Everyone still counted as "people" in that ruined courtyard vanished, sent far away. In Remus’ mind, she left two things: the location of the old Prewett manor, and the name she had just chosen for her son.

Aiden Prewett.

There was no strength left to hold the Protocol in check. So Eleanor made her final choice.

Sacrifice.

She gave all her life and magic to seal the rampaging Protocol. Her body melted into a sphere of silver-white light.

"Go to him. Stay by his side, and guard him for me. And… tell him… I love him," she whispered.

It took everything she had left to shape the words.

She hurled the light with all her strength and watched it fly, high and higher, until her eyes could no longer follow.

A silver-white meteor crossed the British sky and fell at last on the old Prewett manor in Byberil village. It sank into the tiny body lying in the cradle.

The baby woke and began to cry.