Okay everybody, welcome to the last chapter of Future of Ruin. I want to apologize real quick for how long its taken to get this out, I've been sick recently and that didn't help matters, but its here now.

Chapter 20: The End of the End

Its amazing how things can go from so right, to so wrong in the blink of an eye. I felt the combined strength of those two monstrosities blend together, and then grow, and continue to grow. Is this what happens when two demons combine strength? What true horrors exist beyond the borders of this dying world? If an abomination is the most powerful thing a wizard can summon, are there things out there beyond that?

I felt Hermione grab my hand and tighten her grip hard enough to hurt, my chest and shoulder throbbed with the pain of slowly knitting tissue, the results of stepping in front of a splash of acid. I waved my metal hand and used my magic to pull my battered armor back together. There was only one thing we could do against a power like this. "I need you to get started love. I'll keep him at bay until you're ready." I tapped my temple with my metal hand. "Let me know when you're finished."

She had tears bubbling up at the corner of her eyes. We didn't have time to argue, or find another way. Our contingency plan was the only thing that would help now. "I can't let you fight him on your own. He'll kill you! I won't lose you, I can't. We have too much to do."

I nodded. "You're right, we do. Come join the fight when you're finished. I know I can't keep you away, so I won't try. And I'll need your help. But I've been fighting him for longer than even your beautiful brain can comprehend. And I've learned a few tricks along the way. Got some real top tier shit saved up for this asshole." I pulled her in close and kissed her square on the mouth. "So hurry up, I like the limbs I got left and I don't want to give him enough time to pull the rest off." She nodded, ready to cry and laugh at the same time.

I waited as Hermione made off for the edge of the clearing, what was left of it, hopefully out of harms way. The creature in front of me didn't seem to have paid us much attention, too interested in its new form, its new power to be concerned with us just yet. It was time I reminded it what it was dealing with.

I disappeared silently in a whoosh of displaced air. I reappeared behind and above it, floating in mid air with primordial magic bubbling in my hands. I wasted no time in releasing it. Green beams of pure, burning energy left my hands and collided with the back of the beast once known as Tom Riddle. The Viridian wave exploded outward on contact and I had to shield my eyes from the blast. I felt his life force waver for a moment before surging forth again, possibly stronger than before. I snarled and released another blast of primordial magic, I felt the sky cloud over at the surge of power, lightning crackled around me as it started to pour fat drops of rain. My very magic was contorting the weather.

This time He was driven back, buried deep in the ground. I waited for the dust to settle and jumped as a blur shot out of the crater I'd just made. Something large and heavy slammed into me, accompanied by a flash of blinding light. I felt my nerves catch on fire as I was sent careening through the air. Smoke trailed my body as I crashed into the ground, digging a long trough through the dirt and rock. I pushed with my magic, digging in and slowing myself. Steam and smoke rose from my tattered clothes as I struggled to my feet.

I eyed my opponent, floating up above me and frowned. One arm hung loosely at his side, and blood seeped out multiple wounds, but he was stitching himself back together, slower than the abomination, but faster than I could. I leapt into the air and summoned a serpent made of fiendfyre with my metallic hand, and a storm of snow and ice with the other. The snow storm solidified into a golemn the size of a large giant. It roared, spitting ice in all directions before snatching a lighting bolt from the sky and charging at Him, swing the crackling energy like an axe.

The serpent spiraled through the air, heading high before crashing back down, swallowing Abaddon whole. The fire snake flicked its tail, sending a smoldering heap flying through the air, right toward the ice giant. With the swing of its lighting, my terrible creation slammed the beast into the ground, before stomping on it with several tons of pressure.

My eyes glowed viridian from the power that flowed through me, the concentration and energy required to summon and control these beasts was incredible, something that would have been out of my reach except for the power of the ward stone. Perhaps Hermione's preparation would be in vain, maybe we wouldn't need their help after all.

"Spoke too soon." A blast of lava, pulled from deep beneath the earth, rocketed upward and swallowed my giant, melting him away to nothing. I felt my serpent rear back in panic, an odd emotion to come from a fiendfyre construct, as the lava spun in midair, forming into the rough shape of a Japanese dragon. It swallowed my fyre whole and turned to face me. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end at the sight of the monstrosity. It was beautiful and terrify, like the face of an ancient god.

But I had become something more, ancient in my own way, I wouldn't let this stop me, from stopping Him. I pulled my power into myself, and tunneled it in front of me, from shear force of will, I pumped enough energy to create a nuclear bomb into the space between myself and the beast, and then collapsed it in on itself. The power vacuum created a small back hole between us. It was small and unstable, ravenous for matter, desperate to grow before it collapsed in on itself. The dragon tried to turn, attempted to stop its course, but it was too large, and traveling too fast. The head was pulled inside, thinning out to a tiny stream as it was pulled apart into individual atoms. The body followed in quick succession. I held my breath, feeling the pull of the hole I'd created before ruthlessly slamming it shut before it could grow any larger. Such power was dangerous, left unchecked it could have grown large enough to swallow this dying world.

I took a deep breath, stretching my senses to try to detect His life force. I didn't feel anything at first, until it zoomed toward me, traveling at such speeds to be invisible to the naked eye. I had enough time to summon a blade in my hand and brace for impact before I was slammed into at mach V. The boom shattered my ear drums, making me deaf. I felt the blood slipping down my face as I hurtled backwards. I held onto my sword at tightly as I could with my flesh hand, the metal one was gripping the blade, holding it in front of me, keeping the insane power behind the attack at bay.

He'd changed again, his face growing more monstrous, a sickly grin split his misshapen head, revealing a forked tongue and needle like teeth. That tongue grazed against the side of my face and I felt my stomach churn as we zipped through the air. I poured more primordial magic into my very muscles and bones, giving the strength they lacked naturally. I pushed with all my might, feeling something in my back give under the insane strain, before I was able to push him away from me. I nearly lost consciousness at the sudden lack of pressure. I shook my head as my ears popped and I could hear again. My chest rose, my breath was shaky. My arms were raw from the wind friction.

I heard a dark crackling laughter from behind me, I spun fast enough to snap a normal man's neck, but didn't see anything. I noticed suddenly that we weren't over the clearing anymore, at some point we'd been pushed deep over the forest. I could feel his life force, below me, above me, all around me. He was moving too fast to see with my eyes, I had to rely on my other senses.

The gust of wind from his movement, the stench of him. I felt my heart rate lower as me perceptions sped up. Primordial magic flowed through me and I waited. Quicker than A strike of lighting, I stuck my blade out in front of me, and into the beast's side. It howled and snarled, I'd jabbed it just below the rib cage. I pushed hard and fast, driving the blade clean through til it poked through the other side. Thick black blood oozed from the wounds. It snarled at me.

"Clever, fast for a mortal." I pulled back out of its reach as it tried to swat at me with its clawed arms. I grabbed hold of it on the second pass and apparated us back to the clearing, I wasn't careful enough to prevent it from splinching either. Its opposite arm was missing from the shoulder down, payback for the lost hand.

"You'll never learn, every time you rise up, I will be there to stop you. No matter how long, or how many lives it takes, I will stop you."

It snarled, pulling back from me, holding the stump that was already starting to heal slowly. I held onto the sword, feeling a sense of sick satisfaction as it flinched from the blade pulling free.

"You don't understand Azrael. You will die with this planet, I will live on. I am truly immortal, you cannot return with no home to return to. The cosmos will birth you into existence on a dead world, unable to breath, unable to survive. You will die, the same death endlessly for the rest of eternity, and it will drive you mad, until you are no better than I."

"Shut up you ugly mother fucker." I threw a punch, backed up with ancient magic and watched as he was buried deep in the ground again. I felt bone tired, weak. My body ached, but I wasn't down yet. As I predicted he rose into the air once more, little worse for wear with a new arm as well. This one was different, pale and thin, the arm of a human. I wondered about that, but had little time to as He charged me once again, sword raised.

The two of us clashed in the rain, our blows drowning out the loudest cracks of thunder. Ever block, slash, nick and near miss came and went within the blink of an eye. A mortal standing on the sidelines would have missed the entire show, crediting it all to a particularly nasty storm. My energy, my power, drained a little more with every attack, every time I blocked a swing, or delivered one of my own, I felt my power fraying. If I could find a few precious moments to catch my breath things would be looking up, but no matter how quickly my power recharged, it was taking massive amounts to stop every attack. If I hadn't absorbed the ward stone, I would have been dead before we even started. I pushed and fought, pouring more energy outward, doing everything in my power to land a mortal blow, but no matter what I did He wouldn't die. Then I made a mistake.

I lunged forward, intent on burying my blade in His forehead, when he vanished from sight. I was too slow, moving as fast as I was, I couldn't turn in enough time to stop the next blow. I felt the dark blade pierce my skin, and bury itself deep inside me. The tip of the blade burst through, just below my sternum. I felt fire pool in the wound, sending bolts of agony through me with every tiny twitch of the blade. I held on to my power by a hair's width, not willing to die so soon. I tightened my grip on my sword, and drove it back behind me, into the head of the beast known as Abaddon. He snarled and choked in surprise as the blade buried itself deep within His rotted brain. I felt the grip he held on his sword loosen as he fell backward toward the earth. The blade slipped from within me in a jarring jolt, and I fell with him.

The two of us crashed to the ground like fallen titans, beaten and defeated. One of my lungs had been nicked, I felt it deflating as I lay in the mud, wheezing my last breaths. I turned my head and watched in satisfaction as the beast thrashed across the ground, in the middle of some sort of seizure. "I know that won't kill you, but I hope to hell it hurts like a bastard." I felt my hold on my magic slipping as it desperately attempted to heal me. The magic worked its way into the wound, pulling arteries closed, reconnecting muscle and tendons, but I don't think it would be fast enough this time. After all the fighting, I simply didn't have enough to finish the job before the wound killed me. Then I felt her.

"You are such an idiot Harry James Potter." Warm soft hands found their way to my chest, and I felt renewed energy course through me, boosting the healing process. I was dizzy from weakness, and I doubted I'd be able to stand, but I had to ask.

"He won't be distracted much longer… is it finished?"

She hesitated for only a moment, tears dripped silently down her rain slicked face before she nodded. "Just say the word, you're the one they owe a favor to." I nodded and tried to sit up as I felt the bleeding finally stop completely. The wound was still open, but not nearly as deep, and no longer tunneled straight through me. It was no longer life threatening. I've died so many times before, but this time I was actually afraid, afraid of leaving her behind. She would have had so much to do by herself.

I looked her in the eye. "I love you." She cried then, louder and hugged my gently.

"I love you too, you moron, what would I have done if I'd lost you?"

I shrugged. "You're Hermione, you're awesome, you'd have figured something out." I thought she was going to hit me, but she must have felt sorry for me, considering the near life threatening wound I was still recovering from. "Help me up love, I feel like I need to be on my feet for this next part. Got your fingers crossed? Good, I hope this works."

I scowled at the still thrashing monster, my sword buried halfway through his forehead. "Levitate the bastard into the circle love, It'll be a few more minutes before I'm useful again." She chose to ignore the jab I made at myself and levitated the twisting snarling demon into a containment circle she'd been constructing since our fight began. As soon as it was in the center, its arms and legs snapped outward, as if held taught with chains. The thrashing stopped and the ring glowed with power, straining to hold the beast in place. I grinned, it was working so far.

"Quick Harry, that's the strongest binding I could find, and it might last a few minutes, if we're lucky."

I nodded and took a deep breath, closing my eyes and letting my dwindling magic reach out into the void. "Iarraim ort, fae ghrianstad, teacht a íoc do chuid fiacha."

We waited with baited breath, my Gaelic was rusty, but I thought I'd got the phrasing close enough. I started to relax as the rain falling around us shifted, and became snow. A chill filled the air, and our breath became visible. I'd called someone from the winter court, I wonder who would answer?

Appearing within the blink of an eye, the little fae girl I'd rescued from Abaddon's prison appeared, in the soft flurry of snow. Sapphire eyes and hair so white it was almost blue, lithe frame, porcelain skin. She was clean now, and wore a dress as white as her hair.

"Hello Azrael, you've... changed since the last time we've met." She scrunched up her nose, like a child think hard about something, before they sprung open in surprise and darted between Hermione and me in rapid succession. Then she smiled. "My, you've both changed, you're a lot more like me than you were before. The future is going to be so much fun!" She laughed and spun around in a circle before skipping closer to us. Time with her own people seemed to have healed much of the damage He had inflicted on her.

She reached over and slightly touched the outline of the wound on my chest, it didn't hurt, it cooled and numbed the wound. "I'm not sure if even that would have truly killed you anymore. You two haven't yet realized what you've done. Tell me, what did you do with the ward stone? Was there energy left over?"

Hermione and I shared a look. "There was a bit left, at least of fourth of its original power. We have it, in a safe place." She nodded, smiling knowingly.

"I know what you plan to do, and I must say I approve, but I have to warn you, the fae know of where you are going, and we do not travel there. It is… not a safe place." She skipped over to Hermione and whispered something in her ear. I watched as my love's eyes lit up with shock, and possibility, before settling on excitement.

"That's possible?"

"Oh yes, it will take time, years even, but then, so will your journey. There's much sleeping in your future, Hermione Granger, sister of the Fae." I'd never heard that particular title given out before. It worried me a little, but not much. Mione looked at me and smiled, before winking.

"Now, I think I know what favor you wanted answered." She turned and glared at Abaddon, the innocent girl turning into something otherworldly, alien, but no less beautiful. "You have much to answer for."

My sword faded from his head and the binding circle dropped. I tensed, ready to continue fighting, even if I felt like death warmed over. But he didn't move, he couldn't move. It took me a moment to realize that the Fae had him, holding him in her power.

She looked at me then. "I cannot kill him, just as I could not truly kill you, he would return, in one form or another. But look at what he's done to himself. He's made this particular mortal shell practically ageless, and nearly limitless. So, instead of snuffing out his life again, just for it to return. I will take him with me, and make him my pet, for what he's done to me."

I blinked, and suddenly felt the slightest glimmer of pity for him. He had no idea what he was in for. "Very well then, I'd hoped for a permanent death, but this will work nicely."

She smiled at us then. "Who knows, maybe we'll even be able to reform him to an extent, scrub some of the evil out of him, even if it requires barbwire." She smiled at us a final time, "good luck, you're going to need it." With that she vanished, and took Him with her.

I blinked, the snow stopped, and the rain faded with it. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds.

I fell to my knees, suddenly feeling lost and confused, my heart hammered in my chest, so loudly it hurt. I don't know how long I sat there like that, before a pair of warm, comforting arms encircled me and pulled me close. I sniffed and realized I was crying.

"Shh, its over now." I turned my head and buried my face in Hermione's mass of curls, and wept, for all the dead, all the lost, and all the pain and sacrifice. It might have been minutes, or days, I lost complete track of time, and cried for all my lost friends and family, for the world that lay, dying even now that the cancer had finally been purged.

Eventually, the tears slowed and stopped, I pulled back and looked Hermione in the eyes, just now noticing that she'd been crying as well, crying for me.

"Well, what the hell are we supposed to do now?"

She laughed and wiped her eyes. "We've still got so much to do silly. A whole world's worth of people to save, or those willing to come with us at least."

I nodded, and felt my strength return to me. Of course.

**Epilogue**

Ten years, damn did time fly. Both of us had been worried, about how long it would take, how long we still had before the world just stopped being alive anymore, but here we were, we'd managed it.

I ran my metallic hand over the hull of the massive ship, grinning in spite of everything. It had taken years of research, modifying everything to work with magic, and years more of research to keep everyone alive during the journey, but we'd managed it. Before me stood a ship, with a conical shape with no seams or windows. It was nearly five stories tall, and another three across. The inside had been enchanted to be nearly five times the size of the outside. It was based off of a design I'd found while we were still trapped inside His prison, blueprints that had survived for hundreds of years, buried in an old desk. If his expansion charms had been just a little different, that room might not have survived, and everything in it could have been warped and destroyed, but those old blueprints had survived.

It had given me the idea then, over ten years ago. We couldn't save the world, we'd have to escape it. So that's what we'd been doing, ever since merging with the ward stone, we'd found a world then that had magic and so it should be able to have life.

The hardest thing though, had been convincing people to come with us. The increased earthquakes helped some, as did the erupting volcanoes and the massive storms that grew more frequent over the years, but all the same, not many wanted to come with us. We managed to convince just over seventeen hundred people that the journey would be worth it, and now it was time to go. It would be a tight fit, with all the plant and animal sample we planned on bringing with us, but we'd made it work somehow. I looked over at Hermione and smiled at her. She looked just a beautiful as the day we met, thousands of years in the past, and then again when she fell through that hole in time and space, right back into my life again. Neither one of us had aged a day since we'd absorbed the magic of the ward stone. Mione had theorized that we were aging, just at an extremely slow pace. At this point I just went with it, magic was weird, and it did weird things.

At least we'd be together.

"Ready Harry?" I grinned at her. Today would be the first step in a very long journey.

"Oh yes, ready and willing." I turned to face the crowd of people. They each had a small bag, enchanted to hold what they'd need to take with them. They were all scrubbed clean and magically sterilized to prevent bringing harmful germs with us. I used magic to increase the strength of my voice.

"My friends, it has been a lot of hard work, these last few years, but the day has come. For us to set out to find a new home. We'll all be asleep for much of the journey, but that doesn't mean we'll be idle. When you wake up, you'll be disoriented, we've designed the ship to impart knowledge to you all, knowledge that should help us survive, and thrive on our new world." People murmured in excitement, and a little trepidation. "You'll have access to magic when you wake, we've found a special way to wake it up in people, even those that normally wouldn't be able to use it." That had been what the Fae girl had whispered to Hermione. We'd drained the majority of the power from the ward stone, but it had absorbed so much over such a long period of time, that there was still a massive amount left. We couldn't make people as powerful as us, but we'd wake the dormant magic up in every muggle aboard the shuttle and kick start the development of their core. Every living thing had magic, its the building block of life after all, and now all these people would be able to use it.

"With a little bit of practice, everyone will be able to use it. Now, please take your place in line, and we'll get you all sorted." It took several hours to get everyone on board and into bed, as soon as they lay down in the specially designed cots, a runic ward scheme would come to life and begin the process of imparting knowledge to them, and begin the trickle of power that would jump start their magic. By the time we landed, hundreds of years from now, they'd all be as powerful as your average adult wizard.

Hermione sighed and slumped against me as the last few stragglers lay down for the long rest. "Do you think we're doing the right thing Harry? Changing people like this?"

I shrugged. "Humans have been adapting and evolving to suit their environments since we've been around. We gave them the choice, I think that's the important part." She hugged me tight and nodded into my chest.

After one last once over of the ship to make everything was in order, we looked out on our dying world one last time, before stepping inside the ship ourselves.

I held Hermione's hand tightly as we climbed into the cockpit and the screens lit up in front of us, a beautiful marriage of magic and technology. I looked at her and smiled. "You ready?"

She took a deep breath and grinned at me, manic excitement evident on her face. "Punch it."

I activated the controls, and grabbed the yoke. With the rumble of massive, magically powered engines, we were off, heading for our new home.

The End.

Well, that was fun. Thank you all for reading and reviewing my first completed story on this site. Keep an eye out for the sequel to this if you're interested in more, it won't start showing up for a few months yet, but there's one coming.

Thank you all,

-Harkon