About the series: "When Space and Time Dissolve" is a collection of one-shots and short stories which marries – or tries to do so – some characters and events from Rowling's and Tolkien's universes. There is no spite intended to both authors and their works by this act, only fun and enjoyment. Readers are welcome to suggest ideas; subsequently, said ideas will duely be credited if used. So far I already have about 55 ideas listed on my own.

Summary: In which Harry Potter met a unique twist of life in Death's embrace, got more questions answered than what he had gotten in his whole existence, in a single visit to a place no breathing being ever trod upon.

Word Count (according to MS Word): 5600

Point of View: Harry Potter, third person, past tense

Rating: PG-13/T

Warnings: death scenes coupled with unexpected, intense fluff

Genres: action, drama, Hurt/Comfort

Story Notes: Dedicated to those who love Lord Námo. Quotations were taken from three separate chapters and tweaked a bit, by the way; chapters 34, 35, and 36 of the E-book version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The references to Harry's maturity level (whether by actual age or the more literal terms of it) depend on what emotional state he is in, so be warned of a slight confusion. That all said, enjoy!

Death's Embrace

Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made not attempt to draw it. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.

"Harry Potter," he said very softly, His voice might have been part of the splitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his—

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear—

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

He soared in the cold air, but he did not feel the cold, nor the wind. He was weightless, formless, and free. But there was someone calling him, a powerful and stern yet benevolent voice, and he obeyed its summons willingly, if not gladly.

For the second time, everything was gone again.

Next he found himself cocooned in a cloud-like substance, but it was not cold; it was warm, and now he could feel it, although vaguely. He floated in it in contentment, not caring about anything and forgetting all. He was less free than he had been, but he was safe and warm and simply happy, as if he was back in his mother's womb.

"Harry James Potter," the voice called again, nearer this time. Harry murmured a grumble of protest, miffed that his little heaven was shattered; but then he halted abruptly, surprised at his own ability to speak, and more when he found that he was no longer bodiless. The voice chuckled; a sound as warm and gentle as the thick fog around the boy: beautiful, ethereal and melodious, but somehow male-like. Harry grinned. A giggle bubbled up his throat, but he did not let it escape his mouth. Giggling was only for children and woman-kind, right?

The voice's laughter became louder and richer, chiming like bells with the undercurrent of tinkling small crystals. A pair of strong yet gentle arms, warmer than the fogs around him, lifted him up into someone's embrace. From the way the person's body shook in time with the laughter, Harry guessed that he had met his summoner at last.

"You are correct, Harry James Potter. I summoned you here, as I do to all kinds of spirits when their time is due. But you have a choice ahead of you, and your stay here may only be very short – depending on the option you take. That is for another time, though."

Harry sucked his breath and tensed in the stranger's arms. "You… can hear my thoughts?" he asked timidly, for the first time lifting his eyes up to meet those of the person carrying him – although just briefly. In the meantime, his mind raced back over the memories he had just forsaken, and brought him a series of recollection about the last one year. He cringed.

"You are Death."

Their eyes clashed, vivid-green eyes against charcoal-grey ones. Harry's stare radiated caution and fear, but his summoner's – whom he began to label as his capturer – only yielded unflappable strength and the same warmth that his body exuded.

"No, I am not who you think I am, but I am indeed Death, in a way." A small smile played on the man's lips. Harry relaxed a little, but now that he viewed the beautifully-ethereal person carrying him as his capturer, restlessness seeped into his once-contented soul.

The man's smile became a sad one. "Cease thinking that you are detained and you will feel free again, Harry James Potter," he murmured, his voice underlain with the same concern as his penetrating gaze. "It is all about choices."

Harry agreed with the man inwardly. But returning to his earlier bliss was like an impossible chore to him now, so he just shook his head and sighed. "Where am I now? What are those fogs? They felt so solid and warm," he asked. He turned away from the man and reached out a hand, but then he noticed that the fogs were all gone and they were in an infinite expanse lit from everywhere and nowhere by a soft silvery light. That unnerved him more than the fogs and he instinctively shrunk deeper into the man's arms; into Death's embrace, literally.

"Who are you? Where am I? This doesn't look like heaven or hell the Muggles talk about. But then what is this?"

"You have so many questions," the man observed in amusement. He appeared to walk (although Harry could only tell from the movement of his legs, since his feet did not make any sound on whatever surface there might be), and the view changed in just several steps as if they were indeed in a set of rooms hidden from mortal eyes. "I shall answer as many as I can before your time to choose comes," he continued in a more pensive manner.

He seated himself on a sofa and did the same to Harry beside him. "I," he said then, and Harry's head snapped up from his observation of the room's stark interior on the grave note, "am called by many names; many are less flattering than the others. But my brethren call me Námo, when they are referring to me to the younger Children of the One. As for where we are, we are in Mandos, my domain, where the spirits of Men rest for a while and reflect on themselves before continuing on, and the spirits of Elves heal from the demise they should have never suffered."

Harry's eyes widened. "Elves? Brethren? Deathless?" he stuttered, blushing when his gaze caught the man's laughing eyes. He ducked his head in self-consciousness and muttered an apology.

"There are, or were, many races living on the earth. Elves and Men were a big part of the population; the Firstborn and Secondborn of the One. There were many others, but some of them either blended with other races or evolved to match the changing world." He proceeded with a lengthy explanation about many things and subjects, and Harry was enraptured by it. The boy did not notice how he snuggled to the man when Námo's arm came to rest around his shoulders; it felt natural to him, somehow, and he vaguely imagined that it must be how talking to his father must have felt.

The line between reality and dream blurred the longer Námo talked. Hundreds of thousands of years went by, and Harry watched it all as though he was experiencing all himself – the blooming of races, the friendships, alliances, treacheries, victories, losses, changes, evolusions…

But everything in Arda – the earth – was not forever, and the kaleidoscope ended with Námo's gentle reminder: "Now you must meet with someone who has been waiting to beg pardon to you. After that, you may choose to either continue your journey beyond Eä, or return to among your friends and family where you left them."

Harry swallowed hard. He had been unconsciously pining for a chance to decide his life's options for himself, yet now he regretted ever having such thought. The proverb that freedom could be more binding than slavery proved to be true in his case now. What should he choose? He was tired of his life so far, in which he had been the scapegoat and mascot of a community which he had never known until seven years ago, which abandoned him in the slightest push from the mass media, but he also did not want to abandon those who loved him, who saw him as their leader – however reluctant he was on that notion – and joined him in the battle going on Hogwarts' grounds. And Ginny…

"Who is the person who wanted to see me?" he whispered. He had a good idea of who the person was, but he wanted a solid confirmation of it.

"Your guess is true, Harry James Potter," Námo murmured. Harry stiffened.

"Time works differently inside my domain. You have a moment to think about whether to pardon him or not, and later, whether to go ahead or back. However, we do not have all the ages of Arda to muse about options." He smiled in a warm, encouraging manner. His arms wound around Harry when the young man leant against him, seeking for a mental support. After a long, comfortable span of silence, he rose to his feet, carrying Harry in his arms, and walked away from the room – which instantly dissolved once it was unoccupied.

The next room they entered drew Harry's attention. There were six identical horrid-looking small baby-like creatures curled on the drab floor, whimpering and writhing. But his host – whom he would love to think also as his short-term guardian, now that he was past his suspicion that he was being detained – did not pause there. Exitting the room through the opposite door, Námo explained to the squirming boy in his arms, "We could come back later, Harry James Potter. I shall answer any question you have about those… creatures… once the other two matters have been solved." The promise enticed a small smile to grace the corners of Harry's pursed lips. He stopped wiggling, but kept to Námo's word as if to a lifeline. The image of the stunted, pathetic, ugly beings with red-pealed scales for skin was burnt stubbornly before his mind eye, refusing to come off, torturing his conscience.

The Lord of Mandos set his charge on his feet once they arrived at the adjacent door at the end of the deserted hallway. "You proceed alone from here. I shall not interfere unless you wish me to, or if you are in danger," he told the nervous Harry in a soft, fatherly tone the teenager loved the most to hear from him. "You do not have to cry for help. I shall keep watch over you here." He kissed Harry's brow, then retreated to one of the opposite walls and leant against it, his arms crossed. Harry's smile tightened, almost resolving into a grimace.

"I thank you, my lord," he stuttered while sketching a bow at Námo, who dismissed the awkward, nervous obeisance with a graceful wave of his hand.

"Call me just Námo, little one, like what you did when you did not know who people have been making me to be," the lord whispered just as Harry turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. The statement somehow created a good impact on the reluctant saviour of the Wizarding World: Harry straightened up his back and walked into the room with much more confidence.

He needed the boosted confidence more than he had ever thought, it turned out.

Albus Dumbledore had been slouching in a far corner when he came in, brooding. It changed in an instance once the old man noticed a newcomer sharing the space he had been occupying. His head snapped up to see who had broken his solitude, and the twinkles in his eyes sparkled back to life when he recognised the scrawny seventeen-year-old young man whose life he had unknowingly been manipulating the most during his stay in the mortal world. This was the moment he had been looking forward to ever since he had departed his mortal body roughly a year ago.

He sobered up swiftly, though, when he noticed that Harry did not move from the open door through which he had come. The boy's face was impassive, and his eyes were dull.

Then he spoke, and Albus winced with profound guilt and sorrow. "Why?" The ostere expression in that one word discouraged him from making any attempt to invite the teen to sit with him. However, the same look also spurred his courage, and at last he blurted, "Can you forgive me? Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man." His gaze was earnest and steady, meeting the oddly-emotionless eyes of his former pupil stare for stare.

He nearly missed Harry's response, so quiet the teen's voice was.

"No matter. People tend to judge everyone and everything, anyway. And you are still the greatest wizard I know, too. At least it was your efforts that brought me and everyone else to this point – so close to the end."

The elderly wizard averted his gaze and nodded. It was the best he could hope from the boy – now a young man – whom he had always been viewed as a grandson he never had, whom he had smothered in layers of protections so thick that he forgot Harry was not an object to guard, an item to hord. The secrets he had kept away from Harry had always been haunting him since his orchestrated demise on the hand of his steady follower, Severus Snape, yet now the guilt he felt ebbed slowly but surely into nothingness, as if Harry had released him from his burden by his soft-spoken statement.

And perhaps he really had.

Grateful, Albus looked up… and did a double take. He failed to mask his surprise upon noticing that now Harry was just an arm's length away from him. And, most importantly, the boy – no, no, young man – was offering him a small but genuine smile.

Their conversation afterwards was quite enlightening for Harry. He parted with his former headmaster in good terms and with a contentment in his eyes. However, the thoughts and ideas swirling in his mind prevented him from registering what he saw. He passed the spot where Námo stood as if the Vala were not there.

A bout of soft chuckling was enough to bring him back to the reality, at any rate. With a small surprised yelp, he turned around and saw that Námo was striding towards him, a sly look on the Vala's ethereal visage – an alien combination, to Harry's unaccustomed eyes. "I take it everything went well?" he asked. Harry just nodded mutely, heat rising on his cheeks. He had truly forgotten that someone had been waiting for him to come out of that room.

Certainly, he would not have felt that way if he were in England now, inside his body and accompanied by his faithful friends.

That brought him to the eminent question that he must answer soon: Which direction to go now?

He felt safe here, free from any dangers. Sure, Námo could be very intimidating, and Harry never doubted the Vala's vast powers. But Námo had never treated him severely, unlike one would have thought about Death… and he could not connect the image of "death god" to this fatherly-amused warm being, anyway. He imagined that, should he "go ahead," he would feel even more at peace and loved…

And should he "go back"–

A light, hesitant touch on the shoulder. A soft-spoken word – "Harry? May I ask a favour of you?"

Dad?

Harry stared up. No. It was Námo. So now the Lord of Mandos had decided to call him by his first name?

A wry smile stretched his thin lips a little. He nodded in permission, meanwhile leaning unconsciously into Námo's soft fingers on his temple, which moved his unruly strands of hair slightly with each affectionate stroke. "What do you want?"

The fingers halted their repetitive – but quite welcome – movement. Harry leant against the Vala in exchange for the lost touch, his heart pining for more parental gestures, regardless of who gave him and in what way.

Námo obliged. Smiling, he stooped down and swept the teen into his arms, letting Harry drape himself against his body. "Do you still remember the… creatures… we passed earlier?" On Harry's absent-minded affirmative humming, he continued reluctantly, "You know them, actually, my son. They are a part of one person."

"Voldemort," Harry whispered. He tensed up and tightened his limbs around Námo. Now that he felt like a small child again, the notion that he had faced the results of an evil-incarnate's soul-splitting rituals terrified and revulsed him more than ever.

A long, weary sigh. "Yes."

"Then?" Harry dreaded the answer, but he must know, and if whatever it was was the reward for the treatment Námo had been giving him—

"No, little one. I am asking you not out of a sense of repayment."

"Then?"

"I… I am appealing to your chivalrous side to succour a man who had been hurting you. And you may decline."

"Why?" Harry's voice was bitter now, and he loosened his embrace on the Vala's body. "Why don't you just order me to? You have the right and the power. I am in your domain, and currently I'm bothering you too."

"Oh. I thought you would like me to—"

"No! I'm sorry. Please no." The limbs tightened again, just as Námo was about to release him from the Vala's strong arms. "I… I think I am just taken aback and… and…" He inhaled a rasping breath and buried his head on the nook of Námo's shoulder, refraining from crying out of sheer shock and confusion.

Then, a minute – or perhaps an age – later, "How can I help?" – spoken by the voice of a seven-year-old.

Silence reigned supreme for a long while. Both the Vala and the human seemed contented not to continue on the train of their unfavourable topic of discussion. Námo strode down the empty hall in a slow, measured pace, while absent-mindedly rocking the soul of the bereft child in his arms – his temporary charge. Harry, meanwhile, drifted into a blissful trance-like rest, for once in his life feeling warm and overall sated – forgetting what they had talked about just now.

They knew that they must part soon, regardless of what Harry's choice would be, and so they strove to use the meantime as best as they knew how.

Eventually, or so Harry felt, they arrived on the point where he had arrived an indefinite time ago. There Námo seated himself on the sofa, but this time he let Harry sit in his lap, still wrapped in his heartfelt embrace. There the boy realised that he had come to the end of his allotted time to muse over his choices and their consequences. And apparently the Vala felt the same, for he then spoke quietly, "Shall I escort you back or ahead, Harry?"

"What about those Hocruxes?" Harry asked back in a tone just as soft. He looked up into the Vala's eyes and said, "I would like to help. Show me to him. I – You would like me to convince him to truly regret his decision, don't you? So… so that he can go ahead and stop the torture he's committed to himself…"

Námo dipped his head fractionally, pain in his wet-slate-coloured orbs. Harry smiled with bitter irony. "Let's just do it, then. But I'm warning you, he might just turn me down right away."

"Don't I know that?" Námo murmured with a sardonic smile – which anyway managed to appear grim and forbidding. Harry was taken aback; more because of the words than the message in the Vala's response. Since when Námo had become so… modern?

"It is not that I am not aware of the way people talk nowadays, you know." The bleak smile dissolved into a full-blown amused smirk. Harry blushed and arched a grin of himself. He wiggled free, then stood up and squared his shoulders. In a way, he was indeed going into a battle – or so he thought.

Ten minutes later (Yes, this time he kept track on the time through mental counting.), he backpaddled on his assumption.

The six creatures – no, hocruxes – agreed that they did not want to be tortured anymore, once Harry offered the solution to them. No agony was greater than being forced to split up like this, they said – or rather, squeaked. Harry was torn between pity, disgust and loathing on hearing the declaration. How many people had died in tortures similar to what they had so deservedly endured? But, as Námo reminded him as they were walking back to the room with the sofa, whether someone deserved something was not his decision to make; and it was not Námo's either, or so the Vala stated.

There was only one decision Harry had to make, Námo pointed out, and it had been postponed long enough. There was no denial of it, and no more lingering either. It helped, though, that the both of them wished otherwise.

And they both knew, too, what path Harry would choose.

"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry said loudly to everyone listening in the Great Hall hours later, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me." Yes, now that he had understood what the prophecy meant, he was ready to embrace it.

Voldemort hissed.

"Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"Nobody," said Harry simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good…" – And joined the six others waiting in Mandos in agony, waiting for the seventh piece to make them whole again.

"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?" Oh yes, Dumbledore had been pulling some strings – one too many, maybe. The ultimate card to win was not the former headmaster, though, and both opponents understood that well. Besides, now Harry's nearest reason of outliving Voldemort did not lie on himself or even his friends. If only Voldemort knew what he would see upon coming to the Hall of Waiting…

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?" And if he had realised how good it felt to taunt the healthy-looking, able-to-fight-back, menacing Voldemort, he would have agreed to choose this path much earlier.

"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but the two. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—"

"But you did not!"

"—I meant to,and that's what it did. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?" Námo had explained it to him some time after he had chosen his way, because not even Dumbledore knew the depths of the ancient magic working in his blood, which now he had enacted to do the same to the people he loved.

"You dare—"

"Yes, I dare," said Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake?" `– One which will send you straight to Námo's waiting embrace, which might not be as welcoming as I experienced. And he might be generous so as to divulge some more information, if you'd be polite to him.`

Voldemort did not speak, but prowled in a circle, and Harry knew that he kept him temporarily mesmerised and at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed kno one final secret – Again, if only he knew…

"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore's favourite solution, love, whichhe claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter — and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you from dying now when I strike?"

`Oh. Love did claimed Death. He was quite reluctant to part with me, and so was I. And you did not stamp my mother – You only did it to her body. And well, Námo has threatened to send me into an isolation cell if I come back there too early again, so I'll do my best to send you there instead,` Harry thought. Out loud, he said, "Just one thing."

"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snake-like face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humorless and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.

"You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamt of?"

"Oh, he dreamt of it," said Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done." `And anyway, he did not know everything still, like the extent of willing sacrifice in relation to blood and soul magics. You'd better ask Námo for that; if you dare, that is. He's rather upset with you presently.`

"You mean he was weak!" screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!" Said by someone who titled himself Flight from Death, which meant he was afraid to die, as shown by how many Hocruxes he had made just to stay alive, to avoid facing judgement in the end of his sojourn on the mortal earth as a responsible being would have done gladly. So which part in it could be considered "dare"?

"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry calmly, serenely, "a better wizard, a better man." `And you are not even a human anymore.`

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did," said Harry, his tone admonishing and slightly patronising, "but you were wrong." Very.

For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the walls drew breath as one.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as though they would cause him unendurable pain. "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle. I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore's dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant." A sneaky old man.

"What childish dream is this?" said Voldemort, but stillhe did not strike, and his red eyes did not waver from Harry's.

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's; Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realised it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?" `Uh. I did not mean to make him look more like an item like that.`

Voldemort did not answer. They continued to circle each other, like wolves about to tear each other apart.

"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realised," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"

"He desired her, that was all," sneered Voldemort, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him—"

"Of course he told you that," said Harry, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape finished him!" He hoped Voldemort heard the triumphant crow ringing faintly in his mild tone. That would spur the crazed, pathetic evil-incarnate to a rash action, and therefore end this stalemate. He was beginning to tire of it, that was why.

"It matters not!" shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt attention, but now let out a cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love! Oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand!

"Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy — I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up, I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"

"Yeah, it did," said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done… Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle…" He prayed that, in that way, there would be a swift end to the Hocruxes giving Námo – and himself – grief; a good solution to all parties concerned.

"What is this?"

Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry saw his pupils contract to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.

"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left… I've seen what you'll be otherwise…" – `What you've been so far, in the Hall of Waiting.` – "Be a man… try… Try for some remorse…"

"You dare—?" said Voldemort again.

"Yes, I dare," said Harry firmly, "because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired on me at all. It's backfired on you, Riddle."

Voldemort's hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds away.

Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.

Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall upon it.

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" whispered Harry, oddly saddened. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does… I am the true master of the Elder Wand."

A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand at his opponent:

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Expelliarmus!"

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snake-like face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell.

His task was complete, every part of it rounded to the fullest.