Voices Beyond the Veil - 8

"So…your plan is to tug me through the Veil with you, is it?" Voldemort asked, regaining some of his bluster. "That's not going to happen today. I can accommodate you, however," he said, lifting Harry's body in the air and flinging it toward the Veil.

Harry managed to land and right himself before he reached it, his fierce desire to protect his friends ringing in his head. He fired a Bone Breaking Curse at Voldemort and was shocked to see his enemy stumble and fall.

In fury, Voldemort fired the same curse back at Harry, who felt the bones in his injured arm and the attached hand shatter. He was weakened and bloody, but it heartened him to see Voldemort in the same condition. This was it; it had to be done.

Focusing with all this might on the love he felt for his friends and his desire that they should have a peaceful life, he fired a Reductor Curse that catapulted Voldemort onto the dais where the Veil stood.

"That was for Remus; and that one's for Bertha Jorkins. D'you remember Bertha? You left her body to rot in the woods. She's been avenged," Harry spat, moving down the steps and closer to the dais. The unearthly light filled the room and began to glow even brighter.

He felt Voldemort's insidious presence inside his mind – searching – seeking to know which Curse Harry was about to use. As Harry filled his mind with the love and great emotion that he had for his friends, he felt Voldemort recoil, his grip on Harry's mind weakening until it finally snapped altogether.

The light and voices from the Veil were obviously frightening Voldemort and throwing him off his mark. This was Harry's chance.

Limping, Harry stepped onto the dais, preparing to charge and ram both Voldemort and himself through the Veil. Before he could do it, however, shouting from the girls stopped him.

"Harry!" Hermione cried. "Use the Curse. The one Moody says you can do, but you didn't think you could."

Harry's brow furrowed with confusion, irritated by the interruption. He barely managed to raise his shield as Voldemort hurled another Cutting Curse at him.

"Do you trust me, Harry?" Hermione asked softly, although he could hear her clearly despite the noise in the room.

There was no question – of course he did. He'd promised to listen to her during the battle, understanding that there were things she couldn't forewarn him about lest Voldemort see it in his mind.

Ginny moved out from behind the rock beside Hermione, and with Chaser precision, tossed something directly to him.

"Use the Curse," Hermione repeated as the object flew through the air.

Although his broken arm hung uselessly at his side, Harry instinctually raised his wand hand in the air and caught the tiny golden object before turning his wand on a still-shaken Voldemort and hissing, "Avada Kedavra."

Immediately as he uttered the hateful curse, his head was ripped open with agonizing pain. A crushing sensation overwhelmed him, dizzying and disorienting him. He felt as if a part of him was being torn asunder. Memories, feelings and emotions swirled, making him feel sick and dropping him to his knees. An unbearable cold consumed him as a sickening, squelching sound filled his ears. His eyes rolled in his head. He was being torn apart. He wasn't even certain who he was. The wind howled, and his vision began to dim.

As Harry slumped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, his hand uncurled around the object Ginny had tossed to him. The golden Snitch that had rested in McGonagall's office – the one Ginny had caught to win the Quidditch cup in the last match before Hogwarts had closed – flew from Harry's hand. It rose in the air gracefully, fluttering momentarily, before turning and hurling itself through the Veil, as if it had been Charmed to do so. The Veil fluttered briefly and the voices rose in crescendo before finally falling silent. The light around the Veil slowly began to dim.