Harry watched, horrified, as (Y/n) slumped to the floor, her hair curtaining her face, preventing Harry from seeing her. He was unsure of what spell Voldemort had cast on her, but that was the last thought on his mind right then. All he could properly process was the fact that (Y/n) was there, lifeless, on the ground.
No. No. This couldn't be, Harry thought. He felt helpless. Two instances of the same feeling. Two instances of Harry not being alert enough. Voldemort's cold voice was but a distant echo at the mere thought (Y/n) (Y/l/n) had gone out with the same fate Cassius Warrington had.
"Does she look like an intelligent Ravenclaw to you?" Voldemort drawled, kicking (Y/n)'s limp hand away from him. "Did you, too, grow fearful of what you were before finding out you were, indeed, a wizard? Why not turn it into a game? Let's see if she ever wishes to touch our books again once she discovers what she is... Although, I don't suppose you will live to see her fail, are you, Potter? You have irked me too often, for too long. AVADA KEDAVRA!"
Harry had not even opened his mouth to resist. His mind was blank, his wand pointing at the floor.
But the headless statue of the wizard in the fountain had sprung alive, leaping from its plinth, and landed on the floor with a crash between Harry and Voldemort. The spell merely glanced off its chest as the statue flung out its arms, protecting Harry.
"What—?" said Voldemort, staring around. And then he breathed, "Dumbledore!"
Harry looked behind him, his heart pounding. Dumbledore was standing in front of the golden gates.
Voldemort raised his wand and sent another jet of green light at Dumbledore, who turned and was gone in a whirling of his cloak; next second he had reappeared behind Voldemort and waved his wand toward the remnants of the fountain; the other statues sprang to life too. The statue of the witch ran at Bellatrix, who screamed and sent spells streaming uselessly off its chest before it dove at her, pinning her to the floor. Meanwhile, the goblin and the house-elf scuttled toward the fireplaces set along the wall, and the one-armed centaur galloped at Voldemort, who vanished and reappeared beside the pool. The headless statue thrust Harry backwards, as Dumbledore advanced on Voldemort and the golden centaur cantered around them both
"It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom," said Dumbledore calmly. "The Aurors are on their way—"
"By which time I shall be gone, and you, dead!" spat Voldemort, sending another Killing Curse at Dumbledore. It missed, instead hitting the security guard's desk, which burst into flame.
Dumbledore flicked his own wand. The force of the spell that emanated from it was such that Harry, though shielded by his stone guard, felt his hair stand on end as it passed, and this time Voldemort was forced to conjure a shining silver shield out of thin air to deflect it. The spell, whatever it was, caused no visible damage to the shield, though a deep gong-like note reverberated from it, an oddly chilling sound...
"You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?" called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. "Above such brutality, are you?"
"We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk toward Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. "Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit—"
"There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!" snarled Voldemort.
"You are quite wrong," said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. Harry felt scared to see him walking along, undefended, shieldless. He wanted to cry out a warning, but his headless guard kept shunting him backwards toward the wall, blocking his every attempt to get out from behind it. "Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness—"
Another jet of green light flew from behind the silver shield. This time it was the one-armed centaur, galloping in front of Dumbledore, that took the blast and shattered into a hundred pieces, but before the fragments had even hit the floor, Dumbledore had drawn back his wand and waved it as though brandishing a whip. A long thin flame flew from the tip; it wrapped itself around Voldemort, shield and all. For a moment it seemed Dumbledore had won, but then the fiery rope became a serpent, which relinquished its hold upon Voldemort at once and turned, hissing furiously, to face Dumbledore.
Voldemort vanished. The snake reared from the floor, ready to strike—
There was a burst of flame midair above Dumbledore just as Voldemort reappeared, standing on the plinth in the middle of the pool where so recently the five statues stood.
"Look out!" Harry yelled.
But even as he shouted, one more jet of green light had flown at Dumbledore from Voldemort's wand and the snake had struck—
Fawkes swooped down in front of Dumbledore, opened his beak wide, and swallowed the jet of green light whole. He burst into flame and fell to the floor, small, wrinkled, and flightless. At the same moment, Dumbledore brandished his wand in one, long, fluid movement— the snake, which had been an instant from sinking its fangs into him, flew high into the air and vanished in a wisp of dark smoke; the water in the pool rose up and covered Voldemort like a cocoon of molten glass—
For a few seconds, Voldemort was visible only as a dark, rippling faceless figure, shimmering and indistinct upon the plinth, clearly struggling to throw off the suffocating mass—
Then he was gone, and the water fell with a crash back into its pool, slopping wildly over the sides, drenching the polished floor.
"MASTER!" screamed Bellatrix.
Sure it was over, sure Voldemort had decided to flee, Harry made to move out from behind his statue guard, but Dumbledore bellowed, "Stay where you are, Harry!"
For the first time, Dumbledore sounded quite frightened. Harry could not see why. The hall was quite empty but for themselves, the sobbing Bellatrix still trapped under her statue, and the tiny baby Fawkes croaking feebly on the floor—
And then Harry's scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance—
He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature's began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape—
And when the creature spoke, it used Harry's mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move...
"Kill me now, Dumbledore..." Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again. "If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy..."
Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us... End it, Dumbledore... Death is nothing compared to this...
And as Harry's heart filled with emotion, the creature's coils loosened, the pain gone, Harry was lying facedown on the floor, his glasses gone, shivering as though he lay upon ice, not wood...
And there were voices echoing through the hall, more voices than there should have been: Harry opened his eyes, saw his glasses lying at the heel of the headless statue that had been guarding him, but which now lay flat on its back, cracked and immobile. He put them on and raised his head an inch to find Dumbledore's crooked nose inches from his own.
"Are you all right, Harry?"
"Yes," said Harry, shaking so violently he could not hold his head up properly. "Yeah, I'm— where's Voldemort, where— who are all these— what's—"
The Atrium was full of people. The floor was reflecting emerald-green flames that had burst into life in all the fireplaces along one wall, and a stream of witches and wizards was emerging from them. As Dumbledore pulled him back to his feet, Harry saw the tiny gold statues of the house-elf and goblin leading a stunned-looking Cornelius Fudge forward.
"He was there!" shouted a scarlet-robed man with a ponytail, who was pointing at a pile of golden rubble on the other side of the hall, where Bellatrix had lain trapped moments before. "I saw him, Mr. Fudge, I swear, it was You-Know-Who, he grabbed a woman and Disapparated!"
"I know, Williamson, I know, I saw him too!" gibbered Fudge, who was wearing pyjamas under his pinstriped cloak and was gasping as though he had just run miles. "Merlin's beard— here— here!— in the Ministry of Magic!— great heavens above— it doesn't seem possible— my word— how can this be?"
"If you proceed downstairs into the Department of Mysteries, Cornelius," said Dumbledore, apparently satisfied that Harry was all right, and walking forward so that the newcomers realized he was there for the first time (a few of them raised their wands, others simply looked amazed; the statures of the elf and goblin applauded and Fudge jumped so much that his slipper-clad feet left the floor), "you will find several escaped Death Eaters contained in the Death Chamber, bound by an Anti-Disapparation Jinx and awaiting your decision as to what to do with them."
