Ch. 154

The Rod… you control reality. When you rip into space, the hole remains. When you tear apart this dimension, it will not heal. You can create your own universe, or destroy this one, because with the Rod, nature will not interfere. That is the true power of the Rod. Voldemort's words echoed in Harry's mind as his eyes went to the staff in his hands.

I don't get it, he thought. How does it do that? Why doesn't it let me get out of here? If it can control reality, then shouldn't I be able to get out of here? He fingered the long, smooth staff, knowing that he was missing something. Voldemort couldn't have been stupid enough to imprison Harry with the only tool in existence that could get him out… could he? Did Voldemort know something about the staff's function that Harry didn't?

Frowning, Harry turned his inner eye on the Rod again, trying to carefully decipher the layers of runes and spells that it had been enchanted with. He pushed past the outer layer, past all of its defensive enchantments, but before he could go any further, a jolt of pain went through his body, causing Harry to collapse on the ground. All of his nerves burned for an instant before it faded, and when it was gone, Harry sat up, but the darkness around him had been replaced with bright, white light.

"Great, first everything's black, then everything's white," he muttered, not really concerned with his surroundings. What was more important to him was the fact that he could now see runes and spell patterns without having to try. A deep sense of understanding filled him as he realized he could simply look at one particular patterns and instinctively understand its functions, as if all of the knowledge of the universe was at his command. The feeling was as exhilarating as it was frightening. By accident, he stared at the patterns of Voldemort's spell, and a deluge of knowledge filled his mind, so much that he panicked as it overwhelmed him.

A few moments later, he was breathing heavily, having managed to clear his mind of everything that had accidentally come to him, but he was left with one piece of knowledge that he had held on to through it all. The Rod was tied to whoever wielded it.

...

Voldemort smirked as he stood in the room as the only person who was still conscious. After he had tricked Harry into his pocket dimension, knocking out Snape and Shacklebolt was easy enough. He snorted in disgust. The Order with their stupidity in holding up Harry had given him enough time to regain his strength. He was impressed, though, that Harry, wounded as he was, had managed to fire off one last spell capable of taking out the Order. He kicked at their unconscious forms. They truly were useless… more than useless, in fact, because instead of helping, they made matters worse for Harry. Deep down, Voldemort couldn't help but feel disappointed. The duel between him and Harry was something he had been looking forward to; now it would most likely never be finished, because of their interference. He snorted, tempted to kill them all right now, but he decided to let them be. They would die eventually.

The only problem he now had was that Harry still held the Rod. However, Voldemort was confident that the boy would not escape from his dimensional prison. The pocket plane itself would not collapse as long as it was sustained by the Rod of Dominion. He had no intention of letting Harry die in there, however… but he needed time to gain a bargaining chip. The lives of his friends and his wife would do nicely, Voldemort decided, which was the reason they were all still alive. Most of them, anyway. Bella was just barely breathing, something that gave Voldemort both great pleasure and a feeling of disappointment. Bella had been one of his most promising followers, a truly twisted and sadistic individual who relished pain, and relished inflicting it on others even more. She had been wonderful, killing, torturing, and coming up with ever-creative ways of keeping her victims alive to feel the pain.

And then, almost as if a switch had been flipped, her cousin's death had turned off her psychosis. It snapped her back to reality, and Voldemort was disgusted at himself for not having seen her betrayal from the moment they had left the Ministry that fateful year. It was a waste of a perfectly good sociopath. He stared down at her curled up form.

"A pity, Bella. We were so good together."

"Screw you," she whispered hoarsely, regaining consciousness.

A cold shudder went through him, as if part of his soul had just been severed when she glared at him, but he ignored it, turning around to mutter a spell that would bring Harry back. A few seconds later, the glowing golden cage reappeared with Harry inside. The teenager was gritting his teeth, but remained silent. Voldemort spread his arms and gestured around the room.

"Now, Harry, we can do this the easy way… or I can kill them all, and you as well, and take the Rod."

"You're just going to kill us all anyway, right? So what's the point?"

Voldemort seemed to geniunely consider that for a moment. "You'll be saving yourself some pain," he finally answered with a shrug.

Harry took two steps forward, then tossed the Rod at Voldemort. The dark wizard caught the staff easily, and nodded. "Wise choice.'

"You know, Tom," Harry began, "there's really something you should know."

"Oh? What's that?"

"It's about something you told me, really. You remember how you said the Rod of Dominion basically allows you to control reality?"

"Yes… what about it?" Voldemort asked, genuinely curious as to what Harry was referring to.

"Well, it turns out that in order to give you the power, it's got to anchor your soul." Harry pulled his right hand from beneath his cloak, revealing a muggle handgun. "Now that you're holding it… goodbye, Tom."

Voldemort's eyes were wide with surprise when Harry pulled the trigger, and the dark wizard's body flew backwards from the impact of the four bullets. Standing over his enemy, Harry looked down into his still face, expression still frozen into surprise and pain. Just to make sure Voldemort was really dead this time, he emptied the rest of the rounds into his body, before incinerating it with a quickly muttered fire spell.

Once he was sure Voldemort was dead, Harry dropped the gun, letting it clatter to the floor as he knelt next to Bella. The adrenaline faded, causing him to almost collapse on top of her. " Enervate," he muttered, bringing her fully awake as he looked at her wound.

"H-Harry?"

"Shh. It's okay, I'm here," he whispered to her. "Stay still, I'm going to try and stem the bleeding." He quickly tore off strips from his robes and pressed them to the gash in her side. Taking a longer strip, he tied it around her waist as a tourniquet. He couldn't help but glance down at the large puddle of blood underneath her, and hoped that he wasn't too late. From the moment she'd been stabbed until now only a few minutes had passed, but with his focus entirely on killing Voldemort, it had seemed like a small eternity.

"H-how did we do?" she asked weakly.