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Bad Faith	By : angharad1143 Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 7649 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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A series of explosions rocked the house, staggering Harry as he went down a gradually widening
corridor and sending him into a door that swung abruptly and obligingly open. The room he halfway entered
was still searingly hot, blackened and scorched, the glass windows a melted ruin. Whatever had happened
here, it would have killed whoever was in the room almost instantly. The doorknob scorched his elbow in
passing and Harry jerked back, rubbing where the hairs had been singed.

It was a massive effort, this not thinking; to force his mind to not dwell on who might be dead
already; what he was about to do; who he was about to face. He could feel the air growing colder as he
moved down the hallway, almost as if it were the slimy trail of the Dark Lord, a miasma that followed him
wherever he walked. Drawing a breath that was only a little shaky, Harry closed the door behind him with
a flick of his wand.

Silent rooms surrounded him, in tense anticipation, as if they too awaited the final duel, holding their
breath.

The lightning-bolt scar on Harry’s forehead prickled abruptly. Mechanically, he rubbed it, noticing
the chilled sweat beading across his brow. Whatever the front of his mind might try to tell the back of his
mind, he was terrified.

He didn’t shout anymore; the air was too thick; it was like forcing his way through a line of spider’s
webs to move down the hallway. The metaphor was unfortunate. Harry was reminded of Aragog, of the
Basilisk, of just about every other unpleasant creature he’d ever encountered, crouched in dank holes and
shrouded in shadows. And he searched for Voldemort, the most...unpleasant...of all creatures, in his own
cold, dank little burrow. Harry’s mouth twitched at the thought. At least his luck was consistent.

The hall turned, widening further, to a vast corridor that was heavily furnished, dark paintings on
the walls, stained with age, torches extinguished down the length of it.

There, at the end, a glimmer of light, dancing on the mildewed expanse of a stone step.

His scar twinged again, making his eyes water.

Right foot, left foot, right, left...

It took an age to traverse that dark corridor, Harry’s feet carrying him to the last place on earth he
wanted to go. Terminus, he thought, recalling the spell and the place a grim-faced Professor Welleford had
described in seventh year Defence Against the Dark Arts. The end of all things.

There was a body on the stairs, a shining curtain of platinum blond hair, the delicate frozen face of
Fleur Delacour. Fleur Weasley. She was with Bill now, he thought, and what a cold and useless fucking
platitude that was. She was dead, and Voldemort was directly or indirectly responsible for every death in this
war. For the taking of a life, for the loss of the cool beauty of Fleur, the level-headed good humour of her
husband. The startling courage of Draco Malfoy. His eyes prickled, and Harry forced himself not to
recognize Fleur. Not to think of those who fought and died in the rooms behind him. Later. Later.

Down the steps, into the wide emptiness of a stone-paved room, wooden rafters trembling overhead
with the weight of many feet. This room was as wide and long as the whole of the house, stretching in
flickering torchlight before him, ending on the far side with a dais and throne.

As if he had all the time in the world, Lord Voldemort rose to his feet, dark robes swirling around
his cadaverous frame, crimson eyes flashing as he smiled. On his robes, the Eye glinted and glowed, a
pulsing light that mimicked the rhythm of a heartbeat.

~o~oOo~o~

“Harry Potter...”

Voldemort breathed the name, descending the steps of the dais slowly, bloated with the power of the
Eye and arrogant with it. Long pale hands drew the wand from his pocket, raised it with a flourish.

“This day has been too long in coming...”

“Avada Kedavra!” Harry yelled, deciding to get the worst of it over with. Death Eaters loved to talk,
loved to draw it out, and his patience had worn thin many, many duels ago.

Almost lazily, Voldemort dodged, laughing. Laughing. The shrill screech of it made his hair stand
on end.

“Crucio!”

“Protego! Displodo!”

“Contego!” The shards of stone floor bounced harmlessly off the Dark Lord, and he smiled, lashing
out with his wand as if cracking a whip. The smoky form of a snake burst forth from the tip, airborne, fangs
bared, straight at Harry.

“Evanesco!” Harry shouted, the smoke-snake vanishing, though goosebumps marched up and down
his arms as he and Voldemort faced off. There was nothing like an airborne snake to get the heartrate up,
smoky or not. “Praepetis ardeo!”

The bird burst from his wand in a roar of flame, swooping down on Voldemort with fiery claws
extended.

“Stinguo!” Voldemort shouted, dodging in a blur of dark robes, the firebird vanishing in a theatrical
puff of smoke. “Adsultare!” He added, pointing not at Harry, but at the stone walls, which wrenched
themselves apart and whistled toward the boy.

“Contego! Displodo! Protego!” Harry shouted, skipping rapidly, blocking, blowing up the stones,
and protecting himself from the explosion. “Impedimenta!”

Sometimes the elementary curses worked best; Voldemort blasted back into the wall, vanishing an
instant before impact, obviously having mastered the art of “skipping” himself. Screwing up the back half
of his brain, Harry vanished as well, making several wild circuits of the room before Voldemort reappeared.

“Avada Kedavra!” He shouted again, and Voldemort spun and ducked, lashing out with his wand
again, a snake that was emphatically not made of smoke winding around Harry’s waist and raising its head
to strike.

“Flagrate!” A line of fire scythed through the snake, which fell writhing to the floor, and Harry
crushed its head under the heel of his boot. “Accio Eye!”

The Eye made to leap off Voldemort’s chest, and only a quick protego! saved it. Snarling, the Dark
Lord’s head snapped up, fixing Harry with the full weight of those inhuman eyes and wordlessly informing
him that playtime was over.

“Avada–”

“Petrificus Totalus!” Harry spat out, Apparating before he could see whether it struck its mark. It
did not, but it successfully stopped Voldemort completing the Killing Curse, which would be an unholy
thing, backed by the power of the Eye. He skipped again, and again, raining curses on the Dark Lord,
focusing entirely on diverting him from the Killing Curse. Vague strategy formed in his head, and a low
voice breathed, get the Eye...

“Accio Eye!” He shouted again, cursed and skipped as the Dark Lord shielded it. “Confractum!
Contusum!” The bolts exploded almost simultaneously from his wand, the first silver, the second gold,
forcing the Dark Lord to skip again. The Crushing Charm tracked him, pinwheeling around the room and
finally exploding into the wall beside the Dark Lord, grinding the rocks to powder.

The faintest line of blood ran from Voldemort’s temple, and Harry smiled.

“First blood, Voldemort.”

“Avada–”

“Locomotum throne!” Harry roared, skipping to the back of the dungeon, not really expecting the
throne to damage Voldemort, but appreciating the irony nonetheless.

Voldemort rose from underneath the shards of his throne, eyes glowing with their own crimson light
in the darkness, trumping the fluctuating brilliance of the Eye. “Serpentsortia!” he shrieked, and not one
snake but a dozen soared from his wand, streaking toward Harry with unnatural speed.

“Repello!” The Banishing Charm scattered them, but with a hiss, the snakes surged back toward him.
Dimly, he heard Voldemort’s avad–

Harry skipped again, Disapparating just long enough to shout, “Impedimenta!” Appearing on the
dais, slightly dizzy from all his skipping, turning back to the snakes. “Incendio!” And to Voldemort,
“Incarcerus! Expelliarmus!”

Thick magical ropes lunged toward Voldemort, and his wand flipped out of his hands. “Accio Eye!”
Harry yelled, and Voldemort’s eyes widened slightly as he struggled to keep it, splitting the ropes with a
diffindo and snatching up his wand.

“Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!”

The red jets of light blasted around the Dark Lord, forcing him to Disapparate again. Panting, Harry
followed him, dodging around the room in a blur of skipping and curses, stones flying at his head from all
directions.

“Impedimenta!”

Too late, too slow, too damn bad.

Harry was blasted off his feet, reeling from the force of the curse. Rapidly, he tried to collect his
scattered wits, but the floor was faster; he bounced along it, rolling to a stop at the base of the dais, gasping
for breath and shaking his head.

The Eye...the voice in his head repeatedly urgently, and he snapped at it to shut up, what did it think
he was trying to do...

Voldemort loomed above him, wand at the ready, and Harry groped thickly for his own wand,
vaguely remembering it falling from his fingers when he struck the floor.

“Acc–accio wand,” he wheezed, and skipped dizzily again out from under the Dark Lord, knowing
it was the worst possible thing he could do...aside from remaining where he had been.

Apparating, he fell, his legs flatly refusing to support him any longer, his vision blacking out in the
edges. In his head was Moody’s voice. Well, Potter, now what are you going to do?

A piercing note, a flame beside him, and something clanked heavily onto the stone floor at his feet.

The sword of Godric Gryffindor.

Weaving to his feet, Harry stooped and hefted the blade, focusing with renewed determination on
the Dark Lord, who watched with narrowed eyes. Lifted his wand–surely he couldn’t be moving that
slowly–and Harry had all the time in the world to move, sword in his left hand, wand in his right, sensing
a certain poetry as Voldemort drew a shield from thin air, emblazoned with a serpent.

Around the room again, an endless dance of light and destruction, the sword clanging off
Voldemort’s shield, sparks flying as both Harry and the Dark Lord deflected curses, Harry moving with a
speed and grace he had never felt before. The sword was an extension of his arm as he turned, whirling,
finding balance between the weapon and the Muggle fighting Kingsley Shacklebolt had pressed on his
Aurors.

Voldemort falling back, Voldemort with the Eye falling back, Harry ruthlessly pressing his
advantage, driving him back to the dais, giving him no time to recover, no time to skip, no time to breathe.

“Intritum! Impedimenta!” The stone steps crumbled beneath Voldemort’s feet; the second curse
blasted him backwards, and breathless, Harry stretched out his hand. “Accio Eye!”

The Eye wrenched free of the Dark Lord, soaring at Harry, and he felt a surge of power unlike
anything he’d ever known, the Eye pulsing in his clenched hand, speeding to match the rapid tempo of his
heartbeat as he leveled his wand.

There would be no capture, no Ministry execution for Lord Voldemort. He died here.

Their voices sounded together, as one, wands focused on each other with a scant few feet of distance.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

The force of the curse that left his wand sent Harry staggering back, Voldemort’s curse, a puny thing
in comparison, was absorbed in the wall of green light that smashed through the room, a whistling darkness
that devoured all things, dropping the Dark Lord like a puppet with severed strings.

But it was not dead; not dead, screaming, a shrivelled blackened thing that crawled in the shadows;
screams rising to an agonizing pitch as it writhed, and Harry’s hands went to his ears to block out the sound,
feeling the walls tremble with the force of it. That sound alone was going to kill him, his scar was searing,
no one could feel this much pain and live...groping mentally, Harry dropped the sword and pointed his wand
again, forcing the word from long ago to his tongue.

“TERMINUS!”

The spell that had not been used in living memory, the name of a place where nothing could grow,
a barren stretch of rock that was the westernmost point of the world...Professor Welleford’s voice lectured
in his deafened ears as the spell whooshed forward, striking that crawling thing in the corner with a
spectacular collision of shadow and absolute darkness.

Fire flared and Voldemort screamed, a pillar of flame roaring up, he was burning, the ceiling was
burning...

Harry staggered back without realizing it, and someone tackled him, beating the flames out of his
robes, shouting incomprehensibly...

Another voice, a tug on his sleeve, and he dimly recognized Ron’s long-nosed, freckle-faced visage
(spattergroit, Harry thought with an entirely inappropriate and mostly hysterical laugh) and Charlie helped
haul him up the slick stony steps, almost tumbling back down as the room exploded below, the ceiling falling
in. Paused to snatch up Fleur’s body, and Ron took her from Harry, reverently brushing her hair back from
her cold face.

...Upstairs, the ruin of tortured halls and melted glass, scarred floors and shadowy corners fractured,
the walls crumbling, as if Voldemort’s will alone had held them together...

...the cracks of Apparation as Death Eater and Order alike vanished, taking their wounded with them,
leaving their dead...

Ron again, his mouth shaping slow words...

“Once more, Harry...”

They vanished.

Author’s Notes:

Spells first. Hopefully you could tell what they did from context, but just in case:

Praepetis ardeo–firebird.

Stinguo–extinguish

Adsultare–to leap upon, assault.

Contusum–to break, demolish

Confractum–to crush. (This was described, but not named, in the Battle in the Department of Mysteries.)

Intritum–to crumble, wear away.

Terminus–the end.

Hopefully “terminus,” didn’t come too far out of left field, but it was such a cool spell I couldn’t resist. It
basically demolishes everything in its path. It doesn’t just kill it, it obliterates it. I figured something more
than an “avada kedavra” was necessary to kill Voldemort. And on that thought, did this battle seem too easy
for Harry? It was something I was concerned about in the original version, too. All the build-up to
Voldemort, it could have taken several chapters to kill him thoroughly. Unfortunately, I haven’t the patience
for that.

And to skip back a couple chapters, I’ve had a few comments on the time paradoxes from the Time-Turner,
so I’ll explain a bit. When Hermione returned and faced herself, she changed her own memories. She didn’t
remember Dumbledore giving her the Time-turner, because in the altered version of time, he hadn’t. But
since Hermione-of-the-Present went back in time, she completed the loop. It was a paradox, but a completed
paradox.

This is also the last time I ever fiddle with time travel in my stories, because it confused the hell out me,
never mind my readers. I tried to be as linear with it as I could, and tried to make it clear what the two
Hermiones were doing.

Oh, and one more thing--one of my reviewers made an excellent point about Priori Incantatum going into
effect when Voldemort and Harry's wands were forced to duel. Not knowing what JK Rowling is planning
to do with this obstacle, just assume Harry's original wand was destroyed sometime in the six years prior
to this story, and he got a new one.

Lastly, thanks again to the University of Notre Dame translation site and the Harry Potter Lexicon for
the spells, to my reviewers for reviewing, and JK Rowling for creating such a detailed and complex
world. It’s a lot of fun to play with.
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