Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the final part.

Part Four

"And he didn't even tell me what the damn Horcruxes that he'd destroyed were. He has to keep it so close all the time, like everyone's going to betray him if he doesn't—"

Blaise lets one hand rest on Harry's forehead, and Harry closes his eyes. The scar there has turned into just an ordinary scar now, a bit of rough skin, and Blaise moves his fingers slowly over it. Harry yawns and stretches out his legs. They're in the garden of Mrs. Zabini's villa, and it's a milder day than anything in Britain right now, with soft sun.

"Does it really matter?" Blaise asks, in a soft rumble.

"No." Harry turns and presses his face into the corner of Blaise's robe. He's had his head in Blaise's lap for the past hour, and it just seems so normal and right and accepted. He never wants to move away. "Only that I don't understand him."

"You don't need to." Blaise's fingers seek out the back of Harry's neck and massage it, and Harry gives a slight gasp and relaxes. "Don't think about him anymore. Think, instead, of how we're going back to Hogwarts tomorrow, and you'll work hard on your Defense spells so Snape doesn't find anything to criticize, and I'm going to start teaching you Italian…"

"You are?" Harry pops an eye open, although since it's entirely hidden by cloth, it doesn't make much difference and he doesn't think Blaise notices.

"Of course. Even if we split our time between Britain and Italy after we graduate from Hogwarts, I am going to make sure that you can speak it properly. And it means that you don't have to feel confined to the villas or always make sure Mother and I are with you if you want to go outside."

Harry reaches up and clasps Blaise's wrist. He hasn't said anything about feeling trapped, because honestly he hasn't, but that's Blaise's genius, anticipating ahead of time that he might and making sure he doesn't have to.

Blaise drops his head and leaves a kiss on Harry's cheek. "I'll get you a book of Italian poetry when the spring comes. We can translate it together."

Harry sighs, and feels as though contentment has seeped into his body along with the sunlight.

Harry waits uneasily by the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. It's midnight, long after most of the others have gone to sleep, and Harry is a little worried that one of the prefects will unexpectedly happen downstairs and order him to bed. But he has to do this. He has to know. Sirius sent him an urgent message saying he wanted to talk to Harry, and only Harry. Harry agreed, although he's going to remind Sirius that he'll just tell Blaise everything later anyway.

The fireplace abruptly lights, and Harry sighs a little. "Sirius?" he whispers.

"Hey, Harry." Sirius grins at him. He doesn't seem upset or hurt or sick. Part of Harry that's always waiting for disaster relaxes—partially. "I wanted to let you know that I found and destroyed a Horcrux!"

"You did?" Harry blinks. That's the last news he expected. "Did Dumbledore finally tell someone else where they are and how to find one?"

Sirius shakes his head. "I actually wouldn't have known about it at all, but—I've been thinking a lot about our last conversation."

Harry nods slowly. He just hopes that conversation didn't have bad consequences. He's so used to people not listening to him, not doing what he says, or deciding that they disbelieve him and going and doing something stupid instead.

"I realized that I wasn't thinking much," Sirius says with a gusty sigh, and his head bobs around for a second like he's stretching out in front of the fireplace to get more comfortable. "I'd let Albus do all my thinking for me. I didn't write good letters to you last summer. I thought too little about what it meant that you had that curse on you and Albus could have helped you, but didn't. And I looked at myself and didn't much like what I saw."

"Okay," Harry says. That sounds positive. He's almost glad that Blaise isn't here right now, because he would be pointing out all the ways it's not.

"And one of those things I changed was the treatment of Kreacher." Sirius wrinkles his nose. "He was dirty, but sure, I was dirty when I was living on the run, too. And he worships my mother, but I used to do the same thing when I was a kid, before I realized how awful she was. So I started trying to treat him more kindly."

Harry smiles a little. "Good. That should have happened a long time ago."

Sirius doesn't dismiss him, just nods. "And then one day, he showed me this locket that he said Regulus risked his life to get—"

"Regulus?" Harry knows Sirius has talked about that name before, but the memory is distant for Harry, buried underneath all the things that have happened to him in the past eighteen months. "Your brother?"

"Yeah. The Death Eater. Except now it turns out he's the Death Eater who turned on Voldemort in the end."

"Wow," is all Harry can think of to say. He thought Snape was the only one, and Snape was a special case, since he doesn't really bother not acting like a Death Eater from day to day. "He found the Horcrux?"

Sirius nods. "I don't know how, but he did something that meant he switched the real Horcrux with a fake locket, and then he told Kreacher to leave him there and escape with the Horcrux. Kreacher wanted to destroy it to honor Regulus's memory, but he didn't know how. Of course nothing he tried worked. House-elves command powerful magic, but it's usually not that Dark."

"How did you destroy it?"

"A spell that you don't need to know the name of—" Sirius catches Harry's eye, and abruptly grins. "All right, yes, you do. I should know better than to think I could get away with that. It's called Fiendfyre. A powerful Dark curse where the flames are sentient and try to escape your control all the time. I doubt I could have controlled it without my rage at what happened to little Reggie powering me. And without the Dark Arts training that I received when I was a kid, too."

Harry whistles a little. He'll have to ask Blaise about Fiendfyre, but tell him the context, so that he doesn't think Harry wants to use it for himself. "So how many Horcruxes does that make, now, with the diary in second year and the one Mrs. Zabini took out of me? And the two Dumbledore destroyed—"

"Five, as far as I know. Which means there should be two left."

Harry nods. It's not like he knew that for sure, although it makes sense. Seven is a powerful magical number and Voldemort would probably want to imitate it when he made the Horcruxes. "Any ideas?"

"I do have one lead, actually. I remember the last time I saw my cousin Bellatrix before she and I were on opposite sides of the war officially. Some distant cousin's wedding." Sirius frowns. "She was bragging about something You-Know-Who asked her to guard, without actually saying it was him. But Bella couldn't be subtle to save her life. She peppered her speeches with all these hints."

"Wow," Harry says again, blinking. "And where do you think she put it?"

"If I had to guess? In the Lestrange vault at Gringotts. I've already looked in all the ones available to members of the Black family, and there's nothing like that there."

"Can you even get into the Lestrange vault?"

"I might have an idea." Sirius's grin is wicked. "Leave it up to me, though, Harry. You said you didn't want to be involved in the war, and I completely understand. This is fun for me, though."

Harry has to shake his head. "I'm mostly worried that you're going to get hurt trying to destroy them. They hurt Dumbledore pretty badly, and he's a powerful wizard."

Sirius's mouth tightens. "The first Horcrux he tried to destroy was a ring, and he tried to put it on, the idiot. That's why it could injure him so badly."

Harry stares. "He didn't tell you why? I mean, why he wanted to put the ring on so badly?"

Sirius makes a disgusted sound. "Of course not. And he wouldn't tell me exactly what the second one was, but he did say it was an artifact he wanted to preserve. I think he probably tried to destroy the Horcrux without destroying the object, and that meant he was more vulnerable to one of the protection spells catching hold of him."

Harry shakes his head. "So it was never all that dangerous, unless you could get tempted by them."

Sirius smiles grimly. "That's one good thing about the combination of my childhood and going to prison. There's no way I'm going to be tempted by any of the Dark Arts objects I come across, no matter what they are."

"Good," Harry says, and looks him in the eye. "I still want you to be careful. And I'm telling Blaise about this."

"I will, and I don't care." Sirius winks at him, and then the green flames billow up and end the conversation. Harry leans back on his heels and sighs a little. The war against Voldemort might really be over soon, and without any of his interference.

It will be wonderful, if that's true.

"Did you notice that there's something wrong with Malfoy?"

"Isn't that my line?" Harry murmurs from where he's studying the scroll that Mrs. Zabini sent to him. He sent her a bunch of Ancient Runes questions, and she replied with the answers, as well as more questions that she wants him to divine the answers to and send back to her for marking.

At the silence around him, Harry looks up. Ron and Hermione are exchanging serious looks, and after a second, Ron nods to her. Hermione bites her lip and then turns around to face Harry, rearranging her hands on her lap.

"Malfoy has been really pale lately," she says. "And spending a lot of time on the seventh floor near the Room of Requirement. And it's only happened a few times, but I've caught him clutching his left arm, like it hurts."

"Oh." Harry blinks. He supposes that is new, although he assumed all along that Malfoy was going to get the Dark Mark. "Well, probably like father, like son."

"But he doesn't have to be." Hermione's face is earnest. "We could show him that there's another way. That he doesn't have to serve Voldemort if he doesn't want to. And we'd like your help to go talk to him."

Harry snorts. "What makes you think it would help? If anything, he probably hates me even more now because I keep defeating him in Defense." Malfoy hasn't tried the Cruciatus Curse on him again, but he sure glares a lot as though he'd like to cast it, and only his own self-protective instincts are holding him back.

"Just that you're the Boy-Who-Lived, and you could probably reassure him—"

"I'm not properly part of the war anymore," Harry refutes with a shake of his head. "I think I'll probably hurt your petition. I'll wish you good luck, though," he adds, and turns back to his scroll. "You'll need it."

Hermione sounds uncertain. "You—you don't think that it's worth trying to stop Malfoy from being one of them?" She lowers her voice, since they are still in the Gryffindor common room, with a few notorious gossipers sitting around. "Why not?"

"I think that it's not going to work, and even if it is, Snape is probably doing a better job than we could." It hasn't escaped Harry's notice how often Snape hauls Malfoy into a corner of the Defense classroom for a "chat," or tells him to stay behind when they leave class. "I think probably he and Dumbledore both know."

"It's a chance to save a soul, though." Hermione is fidgeting with the corner of her robe.

"Why Malfoy's soul? Why not someone else's?" Harry sits back with a long stretch of his arms above his head. He's been hunched over the scroll for a while. "And why us, instead of someone else? No, Hermione, sorry, but I just don't want to take the risk. I don't want to get involved anymore."

"That's what I said," Ron interjects. "I mean, I'll do it with you if you really want me to, Hermione, but I don't think it's going to change anything." He flinches a little as Hermione turns to glare at him, but holds up his head defiantly. "Sorry. I don't."

"I thought we could make a difference," Hermione whispers with a sigh. "It feels like this year is so quiet, and we aren't making a difference like we did the first four years."

"Last year was quiet, too," Harry points out. "I was especially quiet." Ron guffaws, although he sits up very straight and pretends to be serious about it when Hermione glares at him again. "And fourth year, what did we really do? Just struggle to keep me alive through the Tournament. There was nothing else that really happened until the very end." Harry swallows roughly. He still doesn't like thinking about the graveyard and Cedric, and most of his nightmares are about that, when he isn't remembering the green flash that ended his mum's life. "I think you could go talk to Professor Snape if you wanted, Hermione, but otherwise we should stay out of it."

"I did already. He—told me to stay out of it."

Harry chuckles despite himself. Hermione looks wounded, but only until Harry shakes his head and says, "And aren't you going to do what the nice professor tells you?"

"Hardly nice," Ron mutters, but he ducks expertly when Hermione tries to swat him on the back of the head.

"Seriously," Harry says, letting his eyes show just how serious he is, and looking back and forth from one of his best friends to the other. "We did more than enough when we were kids. We stopped Voldemort from resurrecting himself years earlier, figured out that there was a basilisk plaguing the school and how to stop it, and saved an innocent man from execution. If we never did anything more than that, we still would've made a huge contribution to the war effort."

Hermione thinks about it while the fire dims behind them and Harry rolls up the scroll on his lap. It's more than clear that he's not going to get any more work done tonight.

"I think you're right," Hermione says finally. "It's unusual to feel like we should be doing something more and not having someone helping us do something more, but maybe we can just wait and hope for once."

Harry clasps her shoulder. "That's what I've been doing more of this year. It's very restful. Now, I wanted to ask you, did you notice that more mistakes seem to be appearing in the Charms book we have this year? I don't know if Professor Flitwick chose one that was wrong or if the printer did something to them, but it's been driving me mental..."

"And Professor Dumbledore hasn't approached you again about destroying Horcruxes." Blaise asks the question even though he knows, or hopes, Harry would have told him at once if that was the case. He knows Harry trusts him. It's just that Harry spent years not telling even people he trusted about the secrets that are most important to him. Blaise wants to make sure he's changed.

Harry nods against him. They're tucked up in a corner of the library where no one except Madam Pince seems to go on the regular, two chairs shoved together so that they can sit with their legs touching and Harry's head coiled under Blaise's chin. "No, he hasn't. But I wonder if that's because Sirius succeeded in destroying the one, and then he told me last night he destroyed the other."

Blaise tenses. "You didn't bring that up."

Harry looks sheepish. "Sorry, I meant to. But I've got to bed late two nights running, one with the conversation Hermione wanted to have about Malfoy and one with Sirius telling me about the one in the Lestrange vault. Then I had to run like hell to get to Potions on time this morning."

Blaise nods and says, "It's fine," because without that kind of verbal reassurance, Harry will be worrying all day. He smooths his fingers down Harry's palm, delighting in the little shiver and gasp that wrings from him. "And what about this rumored seventh Horcrux that Black mentioned?"

"I have no idea." Harry shakes his head. "Maybe it's some personal possession like the diary, and that could be anywhere. I don't have much idea about Riddle's childhood other than what the diary shade told me, and most of that could be lies."

He pauses for a second, then rears back enough to look Blaise in the eye. "Why? Do you want to try destroying them?"

"No. I want them destroyed, though, so the Dark Lord can't hurt you."

Harry shrugs and leans his head on Blaise's shoulder. "I think it will be sooner or later. Dumbledore is probably seeking it, and if he can't find it before he dies, then he'll have to pass on the knowledge to Sirius, or maybe Snape for all I know."

"Or your friends." That's what Blaise worries about the most, that Granger and Weasley will get some secret letter from Dumbledore or a bequest in his will and then drag Harry into it. Granger's already shown a distressing tendency to want to interfere in things just because she successfully interfered in the past.

"Don't worry about them, Blaise." Harry's voice is low and firm. "They might want to, but even if they do decide to take off into the wilderness for some reason, I won't go with them. I promise."

Blaise closes his eyes and nods. He's never wanted to make Harry choose between his friends and their love, but it's comforting to know that Harry takes his promises seriously, and will, at the very least, choose safety over danger.

They finish up their essays and leave the library, walking side-by-side with their hands occasionally brushing. They don't get many scowls or stares now, except from the most stubborn of the Gryffindors who still believe the lies the Prophet spreads about Harry. Blaise frowns as he thinks about that. Harry also forbade him from trying to take vengeance on the editors of the paper, small-minded petty fear-mongerers though they are.

Harry catches the frown and stops to rake his fingers gently through Blaise's fringe, pushing it out of the way. "Hey," he whispers. "It's almost the Easter holiday. We'll have that week together, and then we can start planning for the summer—"

A giant explosion rocks the school, so enormous that the whole building seems to lurch sideways. Blaise clutches at a wall and stares up at the cloud of smoke and ruin rising outside the windows. There's the smell of fire, and the horrible ringing sensation in the back of his head that something has gone wrong, something that should be singing is silent, something that should be alive is dead.

Harry, beside him, goes still and stares out the windows at the fire with savage intensity. "Voldemort," he breathes. "That's what he was doing. Gathering up the power and followers to launch an attack on the wards of the school."

Then he begins to run.

Blaise, luckily, is half-waiting for that, on edge as he already was from the discussion of Weasley and Granger possibly taking off to hunt Horcruxes. He reaches out and snatches Harry's arm, pulling him back and swinging him around. Harry is tugging at his hold before he can speak. "Let me go, people could be in danger—"

"What was that about choosing safety over danger as long as you're with me?"

Harry's mouth works for an instant, and then he sighs and steps back, nodding curtly. "Fine. I'm sorry. I just—" He glances out the window. The smoke is roiling in clouds that tell Blaise part of the fire must be Fiendfyre by now, and there are screams distant and near and soft and loud. "I want to help people."

"I know that," Blaise says firmly. "But while we're probably better-trained than most of the students in the school, we're not of age yet and we're not going to fight him. We'll find the professors and you can tell them anything you think they need to know, and then we're going to the Room of Requirement."

Harry nods. Blaise doesn't have to tell him that being down in Slytherin while Harry's up in Gryffindor Tower isn't something Blaise will tolerate. "Right." He still gives the smoke in the window a slightly wistful glance before he lets Blaise lead him away.

They find Dumbledore in the middle of the central staircase, his arms spread wide, directing traffic. His booming voice appears to come from the walls instead of his mouth. "Students, return to your common rooms and stay there. Professors, to me on the third floor. We will plan the defense of Hogwarts. Students, return to your common rooms and stay there. Professors..."

He pauses when he sees them and nods to them wearily. It's obvious to Harry that he doesn't expect them to help. Harry just asks outright. "Sir, is there any hope of defeating Voldemort when he attacks?"

Dumbledore sighs a little. "Not when he still has at least one object tethering him to immortality," he says, which is so direct that Harry sags a little against Blaise. "I know what Sirius has done, but we still lack the seventh. It might be his snake, Nagini. But I am not certain."

"So you expect to fight him and die," Blaise says, in a tone that says what he thinks of that plan.

"Either that, or destroy his snake and die," Dumbledore says, with a slight nod. "Someone else will have to destroy Voldemort." For a second, his eyes dart to Harry.

"I don't have the training to destroy Voldemort," Harry says. He glances at Blaise. "But what do you think about destroying Nagini?"

Blaise gives a long sigh that seems to start from the very bottom of his soul and whirl up around it and out his mouth. "You aren't going to give this a rest, are you, Harry?"

"Not really, no," Harry says, and then grins in a way that he knows startles Blaise. "But I said that I would choose safety, so that means taking someone with me." He raises his wand and calls out the same spell that he did two years ago in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. "Accio Firebolt!"

The broom speeds towards him and then slows down so that he can grasp the shaft. Dumbledore is staring as if he doesn't believe his eyes and isn't sure he wants to. Harry leaps up onto the broom and then stretches out a hand to Blaise.

Blaise eyes him and then the broom. "Can that thing carry two people?"

"Of course! It'll be a little slower than normal, but it's pretty fast already."

"Fine, you mental person," Blaise mutters, and then leaps up. Harry pulls him at the same time as he casts a Lightening Charm in Blaise's direction. The last thing he wants to do is have Blaise hang like dead weight from his hand. He's sturdy enough that it would hurt.

Blaise catches his breath as he drifts up behind Harry and lands on the broom. Then he winds his hands around Harry's waist, and Harry nods at Dumbledore and says, "We're going to go kill Nagini. Then you go kill him!"

"Harry, I do not even know if Nagini is the last—"

"Well, at least losing her will be really bad for his morale," Harry says cheerfully, and then he and Blaise fly out the nearest broken window and towards the fire.

It takes all of Harry's skill to steer the double-loaded Firebolt through clouds of smoke, flying curses, drifting patches of stench, and swooping figures that look like conjured hawks towards Voldemort. But Harry knows where he'll be as if the link in his scar is still active and pulling him. Or maybe he just knows the cowardly bastard and his tendency to lurk at the back of his troops well by now.

"Why do you want to do this?" Blaise shouts in his ear as they twirl past the Whomping Willow, which is frantically trying to strike out at the Death Eaters while burning. Harry casts Aguamenti to dump a ton of water on it and hopes that helps. It's out of sight in the next moment.

"I owe him for the Parseltongue curse!" Harry shouts.

After a second, Blaise nods. He must know as well as Harry that this is their best chance, their last chance, to get revenge on Voldemort. They certainly haven't been anywhere close to him since that night in the graveyard.

The broom twists some more over the battlefield, and then Harry sees Voldemort. He's unmistakable, even with the dark hood of his cloak pulled over his face. He's taller than almost anyone else, and his white hand gestures wildly in the air from where he stands atop a slight hill near the Forbidden Forest. Nagini is coiled at his side.

"Prepare a shield for me!" Harry yells over his shoulder.

"The Portable Protego?"

"Yes! That one!"

Harry's wand is already glowing with the overpowered Shattering Curse that Mrs. Zabini taught him over Christmas. He stoops down towards Voldemort. Blaise is muttering quietly behind him, readying the Shield Charm.

Nagini is the one who sees them first. She uncoils, her head flinging back. Harry can see the gleam of venom on her fangs and knows that it would be a really stupid idea to get close enough to let her bite him.

Harry aims the Shattering Curse directly at the middle of her, while Blaise holds up the shield, projecting from his wand, so that it covers their sides and the broom.

The Shattering Curse lands in the middle of Nagini—and things fail to happen. Harry curses as he realizes that she's still alive and not in bits all over the ground. He turns the Firebolt as hard as he can, skimming over the side of the hill.

"Harry!"

Blaise screams it in his ear just before the spell from Voldemort's wand lands and makes short work of their shield. Harry hears a ringing noise in his ear, he feels something like overpowered bits of magic fly past him, and then he's rolling on the grass with Blaise right behind him, cutting his hands on splinters of wood.

His Firebolt. His Firebolt is gone.

Harry hardly has time to absorb that before he whips around and sees Nagini slithering straight at him. In desperation, his hand goes to his pocket, and he pulls out the holder wand that Mrs. Zabini gave him for Christmas.

She charged it with a spell. Harry didn't want her to, argued against it, but she told him that it was for his protection, and that he could replace it with another spell as soon as he wanted to.

Honestly, Harry's almost forgotten it since they've been at Hogwarts. It isn't dangerous at the school when you stay out of shit the way he has been this year, and he certainly didn't anticipate finding himself in a corner after a duel in Defense or something like that.

But now—

Harry holds the wand in both hands as Nagini slithers towards him. He can hear Blaise yelling at him, but then Blaise shuts up even before Nagini gets in range, maybe because he remembers the spell his mother put in the holder wand as well as Harry does.

Harry breaks the wand as Nagini lunges for him, mouth wide open.

The brilliant green light of the Killing Curse fills the battlefield.

Harry can feel, for a second, an incredibly cold wave of power pass over his hands, and he hears Mrs. Zabini's voice whispering, as though she stood beside him, "Avada Kedavra." And it strikes Harry as wonderful, in a way, that the spell that killed his blood mother is now going to save him when cast by the wand of his adoptive one.

There's a moment when everything seems to fill the world with light, and Harry almost wonders if another Killing Curse has flown the same way and caught him, too. Then he looks down, and finds Nagini motionless on the battlefield in front of him.

The Killing Curse works on living Horcruxes, if she was one, Harry thinks, and swallows. Thank Merlin.

"Harry!"

"Harry Potter."

Harry jerks his head up. Voldemort is stalking towards him, hood pulled back now so that those red eyes can burn into him. Harry feels a surge of the terror he did in the graveyard, when Voldemort bound his voice with the Parseltongue curse, but he buries it. He's tougher now than he was two years ago, and he's been through a hell of a lot more. He readies his wand.

"Do you know what you have done?" Voldemort's voice spirals up into a shriek like the cry of a hunting bird, and Harry is suddenly and absolutely sure that he's right, that he knows what Voldemort means, the same way he knew for sure that Fawkes and the Sorting Hat were there to help him in the Chamber in second year.

"Destroyed your Horcrux?" Harry asks.

Voldemort goes still, his eyes wide and shocked. Harry is aware that Blaise is stirring next to him, probably preparing a spell or a carefully coordinated rush off the battlefield, but he doesn't look away from Voldemort's face.

Yes. That's right. His seventh Horcrux is dead.

Voldemort is mortal.

Harry wants to laugh and charge him, but Blaise hisses right in his ear, "You promised me," and Harry manages to step back with a sigh. Besides, he can see a white-robed figure hurrying towards them across the battlefield, and he reckons that Dumbledore is on the way to keep his own promise.

Harry steps back, feeling Blaise's arm coil around his waist. He wouldn't even dare to do that much, but Voldemort has noticed Dumbledore now. He's turning to face him, his hood billowing behind him, his eyes full of hatred.

Harry wonders for a second if Voldemort will flee, which would be a terrible thing, but then realizes that Voldemort doesn't know that the rest of his Horcruxes have been destroyed. It's one thing for his enemies to be aware of them and another thing to realize that they've tracked down all of them.

And the Death Eaters are here, watching, an army of them. Voldemort probably doesn't dare make his followers think he's a coward or afraid of losing.

"Let's get out of here," Blaise insists in a whisper.

Harry casts a powerful Disillusionment Charm that will hide both of them, and they do.

"Sirius says he'll buy me a new Firebolt."

"Oh, good. I was so worried."

Harry leans his head back and laughs. Once again, they're in the garden at Mother's villa, and Harry has his head in Blaise's lap. But Blaise feels so much lighter than he did at Christmas that there's no comparison. The Dark Lord is gone, and if Dumbledore is the hero of the hour and everyone seems to be confused that Harry didn't defeat him, that only means he has more time to spend with Blaise.

"You should have been, you wanker. What kind of Dark-Arts-proficient Slytherin can't even hold a Shield Charm that can save a broom?"

Blaise leans down and kisses Harry instead of answering. Harry gasps and reaches up a hand to clutch at his hair.

Blaise cradles Harry's head in his arms and bends down further, ignoring the pain in his neck, reveling in the fact that he can kiss Harry for as long as he likes and no one is going to come after them.

No one will separate them. They might have a funeral to attend in a few months, Albus Dumbledore's funeral, but in the end, Blaise can't even resent the old man that much. He did what he should have done from the beginning, and he protected the school well enough that there were only injured students, no dead ones.

Blaise will go, and pay his respects, and know that, in the end, he's the one who won.

Him and Harry.

The End.