Chapter 458: The Final Scene

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21 June 1995, Nurmengard

Harry Potter simply stood there, one hand gripping the haft of the scythe as if he had always been meant to arrive in this moment, at this exact place in time, blade already buried in the heart of prophecy. Grindelwald fell to his knees, his hands trembling as he touched the weapon. It was only then that Dumbledore realised that the Dark Lord's injuries weren't healing.

It took a few moments for Gellert Grindelwald to digest what had happened. Harry Potter had survived Albus' spear somehow, the weapon that the Light itself had created from a fragment of its own dimension, a weapon that had been pointed at him, ready to consume Gellert's own soul, for a ritual that he sought to usurp. Then came the pain.

He hadn't felt it for a while, especially given his new body, which was made of energy, not flesh and blood. He had been vaporised, split in half, and the only semblance of pain he felt was when he was hit with his spear, which was beyond dangerous. Albus had been reckless and cruel, forcing Gellert to such a fate. To be undone, to destroy both of their souls for his recklessness, for his foolish dreams. Then again, Gellert would have done it as well. In a way, he had. His soul, his very being, had changed when he used it to channel the ritual.

Nevertheless, physical pain was something he forgot a very long time ago, and yet he felt it with his fake flesh, while he fell to his knees, and yet his mind was filled with something else, something more, clarity. With hindsight, he should have seen it coming. After all, why else would the boy die without any desperation on his face? Why would he accept death so readily during their battle? He had waited, deciding to let Albus and Gellert fight one another, instead of being their common enemy, and then pick up the pieces.

And yet, it didn't explain why Gellert wasn't healing. It didn't explain the sudden clarity he felt, the silence in his mind. He felt his old friend kneel down, try to hold the black blood pouring out of his wound, while yelling Gellert's name.

The Dark Lord ignored him completely and murmured to himself, "It's so quiet now. It's never been this quiet before."

And he wasn't lying. It was quiet. His thoughts were clear for the first time in decades. He had no urges to destroy everything around him, no tempting whispers of conquest. The Dark, he realised. It was quiet for the first time. Did the boy sever his connection to the entity somehow? He didn't know, and he felt grateful to at least taste his freedom, even if he was dying in the process. Then again, it was better than Albus' ultimatum and the idea of losing his own soul.

Meanwhile, the Potter boy retracted his scythe from Gellert's body and stood there, vigilant, his eyes hard with a neutral expression on his face. Albus, though, turned to him and demanded, "Heal!"

"I can't," the Dark Lord responded. He knew that he couldn't. He was practically helpless now, in a body that barely responded to him, a body that couldn't fully channel magic as it was made of the Dark, which he couldn't feel its connection to anymore. The only source of strength he had was the ritual in his soul. His only chance of survival, of achieving his dream, was to buy enough time to activate it, something that he doubted Dumbledore, or the Potter boy, would allow.

The Champion of Light must have seen the truth in his words, and quickly grasped the spear in his hands, and tried to kill Gellert with it, hoping to usurp his soul and ritual within it, completely disregarding his supposed mercy or the idea of removing Gellert's potential afterlife.

There was an irony to it, to how ruthless and pragmatic Dumbledore's decision was. And so, Gellert closed his eyes, accepting his defeat. There was nothing he could do, no tricks up his sleeve. He watched as his old friend's spear was ready to impale him, only for it to fly away from Dumbledore's grasp.

It was a spear created by the Light itself. Gellert had recognised it the moment he saw it. Pure order and authority, enough that it was unravelling Albus with every use. The Light's authority would negate any magic and shouldn't have been affected by any spell, and yet it was thrown away like a common wand hit with a disarming charm. It should have been impossible, unthinkable, really, and yet it happened.

As it fell away from Albus' grasp, its Light slowly faded. The former headmaster turned towards the boy, ready to attack him, only to freeze. Given the frantic panic on his face, Albus's connection to the Light must have been severed, too. It explained a lot, including how the boy disarmed him so easily.

Albus turned towards Harry Potter and asked with a mix of fury and fear on his face, "What did you do?"

The boy didn't answer, just staring impassively at him, and he asked again, "What did you do?"

Finally, Harry Potter's eyes turned towards him, and he answered simply, "I fulfilled my prophecy. Ragnarök is over, and I won."

It took a moment for Gellert to process this little fact before bursting into hysterical and disbelieving laughter. It was all so clear now. He could see it. The boy had played them like a fiddle and fulfilled the prophecy in a way that they hadn't seen it. The Dark Lord had always thought that he understood the workings of Fate, enough to see their working, and yet he hadn't seen this. It was almost a classic, that a prophecy would be fulfilled in a different way than people expected, one that was only understood after the fact.

And so, he laughed at its sheer absurdity, "You planned this from the start, didn't you?"

"Yes," the last Peverell responded, "It was a bit touch and go for a bit, especially when Dumbledore joined you, but I made the move before we started our match."

"It was your attack on the Light and Dark after your duel with Dumbledore, wasn't it?"

The boy nodded, "Yes. You assumed that I sent artefacts that would infect the Light and Dark, get them to attack themselves for no reason. You were correct. It would have done that, but there was a backup. I created a multiversal beacon and a breach, one that would only power if they are attacked with energy. The Light and Dark attacked my traps, hoping to stop them from spreading. They used realms' worth of energies, given the amount of energy within them, and they kept pushing and pushing, until it used enough energy to activate the trap, to create a breach to invite in one of the most dangerous entities that I have had the misfortune to know about."

Gellert froze, waiting for the boy to continue, "They call it the Hunger, the Devourer of Worlds. Or Nidhogg."

"The dragon from Norse Mythology?"

The boy simply shrugged, "I'm not sure if someone just gave it the name or not, but that is what it has been called. I discovered it when I found some idiot trying to summon it as a weapon against the Champions of Light and Dark. It was a relatively talented mage who had found information about it from Solomon's Grimoire itself. He had made connections to it, living weapons that would feed it, and called them Dementors. Fortunately, he was sealed, and when he tried to return, I killed him and all the dementors he created. Nidhogg is not a being. It's a concept of hunger, one that devours dead realms and dimensions, and returns them to the void between worlds, where the energies would gather and grow anew. A cycle of death and rebirth, one that cannot be stopped or halted, and unknowingly, the Light and Dark invited it to feast on them. Fighting it doesn't work. Resisting wouldn't work either. Not that it's stopping the Light and Dark from doing so."

Gellert looked back at his wound, having almost forgotten about its existence, "So, this is why I'm not healing, why they didn't come when I used Gjallarhorn."

"The horn worked as intended. It paved the way for the Light and Dark to come and battle here, but why would they do that when they're too busy trying to slow down their own deaths? Conquest and influence don't matter much when you're fighting for your life, when you're in a battle for survival, not that they have a chance at winning in the first place, they're essentially trying to punch an ocean. Nidhogg always wins. It's inevitable. Sure, you've got some residual energy, which is why you haven't died yet, but it will run out quickly enough, and that would be it. Soon, the Light and Dark will be fully consumed. It might have happened already, for all I know. Time is a material concept, in the end, one that Nidhogg devours alongside everything else."

Gellert murmured to himself the very familiar part of the prophecy, "Only ash will remain, the final scene,

A silent world, cold and unforgivingly serene. This was never about the material realm, was it?"

"Yes. It was about the Light and Dark, and their final destruction. It's poetic, isn't it? They always assumed that it was their final battle, that Midgard would be destroyed, and rebuilt under their influence, their guidance. And yet, it was the complete opposite. Prophecies can be tricky like that. Fate and Death played them like a fiddle."

Their conversation stopped as Albus suddenly summoned his spear into his hand and tried to attack the boy, who casually parried it with his scythe, only for Albus' weapon, the spear of Light, to shatter into thousands of small shards of Light, which dissipated into mist and faded away.

Albus fell down, trying to grasp the fading pieces, slowly accepting that the Light was gone, that whatever hope he had of the boy lying or tricking them was gone, much like his weapon. He turned towards the boy, his eyes shaking wildly, "Do you have any idea what you have done?"

For the first time since his return, the boy seemed annoyed, "Do you have any idea what you would have unleashed? You tried to destroy the world and deluded yourself that it would save it somehow. You tried to enslave our people to the Light and called it mercy. You tried to destroy thousands of years of history because of some foolish notion of a false utopia of order, devoid of innovation or ambition. Ragnarök is over. The ritual is now useless. You're not saving us from anything, and yet you mourn the death of the entity that would have enslaved us. You, Albus Dumbledore, will be remembered this way: you are the fool with too much power who thought of himself as a god, who was fooled time and time again until he almost killed us all. You'll be vilified, even in Death. Your precious legacy, your little narrative as some sort of saviour, is gone. The power that protected you, that made everyone fear you, is not gone and will be forgotten. And knowing that, even before your death, just makes all of the shit you put me through worth it."

Gellert's vision was beginning to blur now, blood, or whatever passed for it in this vessel, slipping between his fingers as he clutched at his side. The Dark's energy was running out, doing its best to keep him alive, and yet it was inevitable. He could feel Death's cold hands approaching, and yet he couldn't help but smile.

Albus had always cared so much about the story. About how history would remember him. How the world would judge his actions. The noble Champion of Light. The wise protector. The man who saved them all, the man who would create a utopia that would change the magical world. Not anymore.

The former headmaster shook in anger and sent a blast of fire at the boy, who redirected it with a flick of his wand, and banished him away, snorting, "You've gotten reliant on the Light's power. I have fought you both at the height of your power. Did you think that this poses any threat anymore? You're probably hoping to kill me, not because of some ritual, but because you don't want me to tell the world your story. Well, newsflash, it's completely useless. Did you really think no one noticed your little war? You two reshaped the landscape. They'll have to redraw the damn maps."

"Scrying won't work," Dumbledore argued, while slowly standing up, his body finally showing its face, though his voice faltered for the first time. "Not through this level of magic. The ICW will deal with the aftermath. Obliviate the witnesses. Wipe the slate clean."

Harry's tone was sharp now. "That's true. Normally. But what if someone arranged for a stable connection for divination before the battle even began? What if someone acted like a filter, just in case things went wrong, so that the world would remember what happened today? Dozens of magical governments are probably watching right now, Albus. They saw him," he gestured at Grindelwald, "blow the horn and threaten to end the world. They heard you admit that you wished to do the same, only do it on your own terms. They saw you lose your strength, the power that defined you for so long. If you die, then you'll be remembered just as I stated. If you live, then they'll know that you're vulnerable and they'll take it out of you. How many lives have you ruined, governments that you pressured with your power? There's no way you can win here. I made sure of that before I even came to Nurmengard."

Albus froze, realisation dawning. And Gellert? He laughed. Oh, how he laughed. They really had been outplayed from the start. It had always been a waiting game for the boy, and he could see it so clearly now. During their fight, the boy hadn't tried to kill him, not really, but contained him, delaying him in fields of frozen time, in prisons, waiting for his plan to take place, for the Light and Dark to perish, and moved only when his position was secure. It was poetic, in a way, that Gellert would lose, not through Fate's hand, but by being outplayed. He had even planned for what happened after. That boy really held a grudge against Albus, and it showed; he had destroyed Albus, taken away everything he ever treasured, his purpose and his dream.

There was only the ritual's energy left to deal with, the tempest in Gellert's soul, ready to be unleashed, and he was sure that Peverell had planned for it as well.

As he expected, Albus took that reveal poorly and raised his hand, trying to attack the boy, only for the boy to conjure a bubble of time that froze him, mid-swing, and then pulled him to the ground. And Harry turned.

Gellert didn't move. Couldn't.

The boy approached, slow and deliberate, the scythe still fractal, reality-weaving, dripping threads of potentiality.

"No tricks left?" Harry asked, not cruelly, just tired.

"No," Gellert whispered, "I suppose that this is checkmate, right? You do know that killing me will probably wipe out half of Europe, right? The ritual inside my soul will unravel. It won't be pretty."

"I know. I'll be ready," he answered simply.

Gellert's eyes widened as he saw the solemn look on his face, "You're going to die if you do this."

The boy didn't answer, and Gellert felt the scythe enter his chest like a whisper. Clean. Final.

He coughed once, his body shuddering. His limbs twitched, but not from pain, from fading. There was no scream. No theatrics. His body was slowly being undone, and it was final.

"Tell me," he rasped, "the muggles… they're a threat. You know that, right? You need to save our people."

Harry met his gaze. "I have a plan."

Of course he did.

Gellert Grindelwald smiled, soft, nostalgic. The weight of centuries, of sins and ambition, finally slipped from his shoulders. He had passed his torch to a successor, one that would save the magical world, and he knew it. It might have been an enemy, someone who worked to destroy everything he had worked for. But who else would be worthy enough to guide the magical world than an equal, than the boy who beat him at his own game?

"For the greater good," he murmured.

And then, his body finally faded away, the last fragment of the Dark in existence. His soul moved on, and the energy within it was released.

The greatest ritual in the history of humanity was unravelled, and it started to pulse.

The world held its breath for a fraction of a second, and then everything turned white.

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AN: Damn, that was extremely hard to write. I had it all planned in my head for so long. The idea was to reveal how the Light and Dark were killed, essentially tricked by Grindelwald's false divination on Harry's plans, and using Nidhogg, which is what Solomon arranged for him to see in Azkaban, as a weapon against them. I also wanted to unmake Dumbledore, essentially take away everything he ever cared about, his dream, his plans, his legacy as a hero, which would be undoubtedly ruined now. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.