Ch. 149

Harry raised his wand, but found a shimmering barrier standing in between him and his wife. He whirled around, snarling at Voldemort. "What is this, Tom?"

"Simple, really. You turn your back on me, you die." The dark wizard smirked. "We haven't finished our duel yet."

Gritting his teeth, Harry kicked the barely-visible barrier before him. It didn't budge. He could only watch in horror as Ginny incapacitated Hermione and Tonks, and prepared to deliver the killing blow to his wife. He mentally kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. Ginny had supposedly portkeyed away to Nair'i'caix - he'd seen her disappear. There was no way Tonks would have been able to get to her. The only way this would have been possible was if Ginny hadn't portkeyed to the fortress at all. She probably portkeyed to Voldemort, then went to fetch Tonks, but Tonks found her first and caught her. Damn! It was right under all of our noses!

To Harry's immense relief, Tonks seized Ginny's legs, causing the shorter girl to topple over. Both of them rolled to their feet. Harry tore his attention away from them and the large puddle of blood that was forming under Bella. Rage bubbled up within him, enough that he actually wanted to cast the killing curse, but he held himself back. He needed to get to Bella first. The hand holding on to his wand trembled. He didn't even notice that Tonks had managed to disarm Ginny, and the two were now slugging it out with their fists and feet. He only saw the expanding puddle of red beneath his wife, feared for her life, feared for the life of their unborn child. He could see her weakly rolling around in the expanding puddle of her blood as she tried to stem the flow even as she went into shock.

"Let me out of here," he snapped at Voldemort. "Let me take care of Bella first, then I'll duel you."

The dark wizard laughed. "Oh Harry, Harry, Harry. It doesn't work that way. You duel me now . You see, here's your situation: you don't have a choice. The only way you're going to get to your beloved Bella to save her is to defeat me first. That is, if you can defeat me." Voldemort glanced over to where Ginny and Tonks were brawling, their wands forgotten. "Oh, and if my little pet doesn't kill her first," he added, almost as an afterthought.

Rage flooded Harry's conscious mind, overriding any other thought in his mind as he realized Voldemort and Ginny could just very well have killed not only his wife, but their child, as well. He hurled the most powerful blasting curse he knew at the barrier, and the impact created an echoing boom in the cavern that shook the entire room from the power the shield had just dispelled. Fear was displaced by hatred, more intense than anything he'd ever felt in his life, far beyond the anger he felt at Voldemort for killing his parents, or for anything else the dark wizard had ever done to him.

" Avada Kedavra !" Harry spun around hurled the killing curse at Voldemort, who merely stood there and let the green bolt pass through him. It splashed harmlessly against the marble walls behind the dark wizard. "What?" Harry stared in disbelief. He could feel the aftermath of the curse, the absolute power singing through his veins. It had felt more powerful than any spell he'd ever cast before. The euphoria of casting it was so great that he almost forgot… almost forgot about his wife lying in her own blood on the cold marble floor, almost forgot about Voldemort and his insane ambition to rule the world.

Voldemort laughed. "You cannot kill me that easily anymore, Harry. I'm afraid I lied. The killing curse will not kill me. If you truly wish to destroy me, you will have to-"

The dark wizard cut off abruptly as Harry appeared in front of him and slugged him across the face. "Shut up," Harry hissed. "Shut up! Shut up!" He continued pounding away at Voldemort's body, uncaring that his knuckles were turning bloody or raw. He only cared about inflicting pain on Voldemort, and judging from the grunts of pain coming from the older man, he was succeeding.

" Enough !" A wave of power exploded from Voldemort, slamming into Harry and carrying him all the way to the barrier the dark wizard had conjured up around their makeshift dueling arena. Motes of light flared up, coalescing around Voldemort's form as he began to glow. "Harry Potter," he began, "now you meet your end."

Harry stood, wiping the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "If I'm going, I'll take you down to hell with me, Tom." He walked forward, until he stood just five paces away from his nemesis. "Let's end this, Tom."

"I agree, Harry." Both of them stood still, Voldemort dissipating his shield. They both knew that this was it - they would go all out. There would be no more running around dodging spells and firing them off - they would be using the most powerful spells they knew, spells that had not been seen on this world for centuries. There would be no dodging those, and survival would depend entirely on who was more powerful. Harry had a vague idea why Voldemort was immune to the killing curse now. Voldemort was a warlock, much like Harry himself. How the dark wizard had acquired that kind of power was something Harry didn't know, but he wouldn't put it past him to use dark rituals.

Warlocks were able to visualize magic flows in space, Hiscophney had explained, mostly in the form of free-floating runes. The Trazkabanian sorcerers were those whose gift of magic was similar, he had explained, in that they directly manipulated magic without the need for a wand as an amplifier. In essence, a warlock was the ultimate mage, capable of forcing the magic to do anything and everything, simply by altering the patterns of the magic they could see.

During one of their discussions on runic magic, Hiscophney had hinted that a warlock, if powerful enough, could transcend the mortal plane and sever his soul, making him effectively invincible to the killing curse by destroying his mortal body and becoming an astral projection. It was a similar concept as to what he theorized that the Rod of Dominion did, tearing the soul free of the body, only that the Rod destroyed said souls afterwards. The only way to combat a warlock at that level, the Count had admitted, was to use spells that warped reality itself. Only a warlock could kill a warlock. Battles between warlocks of that kind of power tended to be highly destructive, which was why the sorcerers had banned anyone from learning any of the warlock-grade spells. Hiscophney had admitted to having illegally learned one of the forbidden spells, and had provided Harry with the material to study the others. They both had hoped that it would never become necessary for Harry to learn them, but it seemed that the time had come.

Calling up on the forbidden magic that he had only read about thus far, Harry settled himself, clearing his mind. He hadn't dared practice these spells anywhere near others because of their destructive power, and even Hiscophney only had a vagues idea of how they worked. His vision cleared as he began to see lines of color floating around him. Runes floated in the air, just waiting for him to combine them in the correct patterns. He raised his wand, and began to cast spells he had never attempted before. Power flooded his veins, and a strange sense of understanding filled him as the world snapped into focus. He could feel the magic around him, instinctively knowing which lines did what… and he began forcing them into the patterns he had studied as a last resort.

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