Betrayal of the Best Kind
Duel
By Draco664
Duel
"Hello, Harry. Ready to die?"
With a startled yelp, Cho broke away and spun to face the owner of that sibilant voice. Voldemort stood there, his robes blackened and torn in places. Arrayed behind him were dozens of people, including several of his Death Eaters and other followers.
Harry had clutched his scar and was moaning in agony, one hand on her shoulder supporting him.
Wormtail was there, sneering, dried blood caking his nose and chin. His left arm was in a hastily constructed sling. Lucius stood to the right of his master, his own robes bearing the evidence of the previous evenings excitement. Harry fancied that he could still see a tiny tendril of smoke rising from a burned patch near the hem.
Macnair looked almost dead on his feet, though his eyes blazed with anger. Obviously, Voldemort had not been happy at his unwilling assistance in Harry's escape. Harry's eyes swept over the assembled throng, Avery with a bandaged head, Nott on a crutch. Goyle had lost a hand in the assault, and obviously had not had time to get a silver replacement from his master.
Even Narcissa was there, surrounded by the other recent recruits. In all, nearly half the people on Harry's list were here. Less than a handful were uninjured.
With a supreme effort, Harry stood and pushed the unexpected pain in his scar away. "Hard night?" he asked, a forced smirk on his face.
With a flick of his yew wand and a snarl, Voldemort sent Cho flying into the trunk of a nearby tree, where vines roped themselves around her. "You didn't answer my question. Are you ready to die?"
"Of course I'm ready to die, you idiot!" Harry yelled. "What the hell do you think I've been preparing for?"
Whatever reaction he had been expecting from Harry, an explosion of anger and affirmation of a willingness to die was not it. Not one of Voldemort's followers had anything other than surprise registered on their faces.
Harry was glad he already had his wand in his hand. He could feel the comforting weight of a few of his defenses resting in his robe's pockets, but he needed time to get to them.
The echoes of Harry's surprising revelation could still be heard as Voldemort recovered from his surprise. He opened his mouth to respond, but Harry beat him to it.
"Took you a while to finally come after me. Did the tracking charm you placed on me not work? Or did it take you a while to torture Macnair first?"
"You know about the tracking charm?"
Harry gave the Dark Lord an evil smile. "Not until just now, but it is what I would have done." He watched as confusion and anger fought for dominance in the Dark Lord's eyes. Just as Voldemort was about to say something else, Harry again interrupted.
"And now you are here. Nice isn't it. Just perfect for an ambush." Harry watched the reaction of Voldemort's followers as he cranked up the paranoia a notch or two. "You came earlier than I expected though, I'm not quite finished with the booby traps. There should be enough to finish you all off though."
"You're bluffing."
"Of course. A mere Gryffindor couldn't come up with a scheme to trap and kill a devious Slytherin now, could he? Oh, I did mention that the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin first, didn't I?"
Harry felt a surge of victory as the assembled minions all started silently, but nervously, looking around for signs of traps. Several whispered "Finite Incantatem!" charms could be heard, fired in random directions, as the assembly tried to disable the traps Harry had hidden from view.
"You are here to kill me, but you just can't resist torturing me first. Pity. If you'd killed me straight away, you would have managed to escape. Not now though." Harry gave Voldemort his biggest smile.
"So be it." Voldemort raised his wand and shouted, "Avada Kedavra!"
But Harry was already moving, his scar had sent a bolt of pain through him an instant before Voldemort cast the spell. He leapt at the makeshift table holding his creations, feeling the shockwave of the curse as it sped past him. He grabbed a handful of the caltrops, not feeling as the sharp metal points dug into the palm of his hand, and threw them into the air towards the Death Eaters.
But Harry had landed on the wrong side of the log, and was hit by three of the dozens of curses fired at him by the other minions. One smashed into his shoulder and numbed his left arm. The second struck his right leg, buckling it under the weight of his landing, while the third grazed his temple, stunning him.
Harry collapsed in a heap at the base of the log, moaning. Laughter spread through the throng of minions, taking pleasure in his predicament.
Voldemort's voice rang out over the laughter. "Well, Potter. It seems that you may not be such a chall-" when the world went white.
Avery had moved forward to get a better look at the pitiful boy. On his third step, he put his foot down on some freshly dug earth. Freshly dug earth concealing a muggle mechanism, transferring the pressure of his step directly onto a double volume of a potion mixture Harry had prepared earlier...
Since Harry was already lying on the ground, he was relatively protected from the massive explosion that rocked the clearing. Avery had indeed followed normal protocol when stepping on a mine, which was to leap twenty feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area.
At least six of Voldemort's nearby minions were killed instantly by the blast, which stunned the rest.
What they, or Harry for that matter, didn't expect, was the shockwave traveling through the ground managed to set off the other half dozen potion mines hidden around the clearing.
Harry covered his head with his arms for almost a minute before the soil landing on him stopped falling. In that time the pain in his scar pushed the fog away and he had recovered his wits. He managed to stand by holding his weight entirely on his left leg.
The scene resembled nothing short of a battlefield; seven large holes in a forest clearing, surrounded by robed bodies. The ringing in his ears rendered him effectively deaf, but Harry felt a surge of triumph.
Until the bodies started to move. Though less than one in three of Harry's attackers were struggling to rise, he was still outnumbered by more than twenty-to-one.
Harry climbed onto the log table and stood, tall as he could. He aimed his wand at the closest wooden pole he could make out, holding up the power lines, and shouted, "Radicitus Recro!"
Immediately, the wooden power pole thrummed with vibrant life. It thickened and grew roots, which delved deep into the earth. Branches sprouted from knots in the wood, and the pole became a tree once more. Growing ten years of height in ten seconds, the power lines tightened under the strain, then snapped, and fell to the ground.
Right in the middle of the slowly rising Death Eaters.
Harry was profoundly glad he was deaf, the sight of the robed figures dancing as the high voltage flooded through them was terrible enough. Knowing that some of the twitching was done by corpses didn't help matters. Suddenly, the twitching and dancing stopped, smoking corpses again fell to the ground. Obviously, the sub-station had stopped the flow.
Harry shook his head, he was still outnumbered. Reaching into his robes, Harry withdrew a bag of powder and hurled it at the figure of Voldemort.
The Dark Lord had managed to find his feet, and was far enough away from the fallen lines not to have been affected. The look on his face showed his murderous fury. He waved his wand and conjured an almost impenetrable magical shield. Only the strongest curses and spells would have a hope of penetrating it. No spell a measly sixteen-year-old could cast could harm him.
Which is exactly why Harry didn't use a spell.
The bag of powder crashed into Voldemort's shoulder, after passing through the magic shield like it was smoke. The Dark Lord's quick inhalation of breath in his surprise drew a lungful of a potent hallucinogen into his lungs.
Harry saw a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, and he was blasted from the log by a curse he didn't hear. It crashed into his chest blowing him over like a leaf. Harry felt a number of wet snaps in his chest, signaling the breaking of several ribs. His troubles were not over though, as he smashed into the trunk of a tree, spinning round, and feeling his right arm wrenched from its shoulder socket.
Harry swooned in agony. His hearing was slowly returning, and he could hear Voldemort's voice, shouting in hear, firing curses in all directions. A half dozen "Finite Incantatem"'s could be made out. The Dark Lord's minions obviously thinking he was under the effect of some sort of spell.
Another curse sped Harry's way, and struck him in the chest again, making him gasp at the fresh wave of white hot pain that flooded through him. Looking up, Harry could make out the figure of Lucius Malfoy limping his way towards the tree Harry slumped against.
Malfoy had not escaped Harry's traps. The whole left side of his face was bright with burn, his long white hair now shriveled and smoking. His left arm hung loosely at his side, covered in blood and grime.
Harry reached into his robes once more, and closed his rather numb left hand around a block of clear ice, the frozen liquid charmed to stay solid. With a smile, revealing teeth ringed with blood, Harry tossed the ice into the air towards the evil man with an under armed motion. He whispered "Finite Incantatem", aiming his wand at the ice with his wrist.
Harry's ending of the freezing charm turned the ice block into liquid immediately. A small core of pure water mixed quickly with the larger outer layer of fluoric acid.
The water instantly heated to the point of boiling, spraying concentrated fluoric acid all over the approaching Death Eater.
For one precious moment, Lucius had no idea what Harry had done. It soon became apparent however, as the drops of acid began to eat their way through his clothes, wand, flesh, muscle and bone.
The Death Eater squealed louder than Harry had ever heard someone under the influence of the Cruciatus curse. He swatted the holes appearing in his skin, in a vain hope of killing whatever was causing the agony. He scratched at his clothes, he rolled on the ground. Malfoy even managed to cast a spell, jetting water over himself.
Nothing worked. The highly corrosive acid ate its way through Draco's father. Harry watched dispassionately as gaping holes appeared in his scalp, face and arms. Lucius' robes smoked and disintegrated around him.
Again and again, Malfoy tried everything his panicking mind could think of. In his thrashing, the lower half of his left arm fell off, dissolved through above the elbow.
Harry struggled to rise, his mouth fixed into a grin. 'To dilute, always put acid into water, not water into acid.' the warning label on the fluoric acid had said. "They were right." Harry said, blood bubbling in his mouth.
The last vision the pain-ravaged mind of Lucius Malfoy registered was that of the Boy-Who-Lived, grinning at him in satisfaction.
Cho had watched the events of the ambush with alarm. After being flung against the tree and restrained, Harry had collapsed under the barrage of hexes and curses fired at him by the assembled Death Eaters and Dark Lord's supporters.
The first concussion had hit her before she registered the explosion. Powerful wizards, whose mere presence inspires terror into most of the wizarding world, were flung around like muggle toy dolls. One robed figure had been thrown left from the first blast, then to the right and finally backwards by subsequent blasts before he actually hit the ground.
Cho had closed her eyes and mouth, turning her head away from the rain of dirt, small rocks and twigs. The scene looked as though from one of her grandfather's stories about the muggle war. Bodies lay everywhere in various states of repose. Harry was struggling to rise next to the log he'd been using as a workbench.
Cho's heart leapt with the realisation that Harry was alive. She watched as he climbed onto the log and cast a spell at a pole, holding up some thin cables.
Her mouth opened in amazement as the wooden pole became a tree again, forcing the cables held by it upwards, stretching them too much, and making them snap and fall to the ground.
An obscene puppet show then took place, a dozen of the slowly rising figures jerking around to some omnipotent being's will. After what felt like an hour, they finally were released from the manic grip, and collapsed to the ground, smoking.
She screamed a warning to Harry, but he couldn't hear her. Horrified, she watched helplessly as Lucius Malfoy took aim at her love. Harry tossed a bag of something at the Dark Lord, before being struck by the curse.
She screamed as Harry flew backwards and connected sharply with a tree, spinning around and obviously dislocating his shoulder. Her heart skipped a beat as a thin trickle of blood emerged from the corner of Harry's mouth.
Lucius Malfoy stepped forward, making his way towards Harry. Behind him, Voldemort was panicking, screaming, and firing curses in all directions. In less than ten seconds he had killed or wounded seven of his followers. The rest were desperately trying to end the magic obviously controlling their master. The dispelling charms aimed at him were either bouncing off the shield he erected, or if they hit from behind, having no effect.
Malfoy sent another curse at Harry, striking him in the chest yet again. Harry's face showed his obvious pain at this new assault. Cho thrashed at her bonds, using every last shred of strength to get free. She missed Harry removing a block of what looked like ice, but saw the effects of his final trick for Malfoy.
What looked like a short burst of rain landed on the Death Eater, but it was soon obvious that it was not water. Malfoy squealed like an animal being eaten alive. It was not far from the truth really.
Holes appeared in the aristocratic features of the blond Death Eater. He thrashed about in agony, wiping the acid around, to do even more damage. Cho closed her eyes, and was grateful that the explosions had temporarily deafened her. Even so, Malfoy's screams echoed in her mind.
It was not long after the screams stopped that Cho felt the vines loosening and dropped to the ground. Harry stood before her, swaying. His wand was still clutched in his right hand, but his right arm was noticeably longer than the other. Blood ran from both his scalp and his smiling mouth, staining the front of his clothes. He turned around and slowly limped over to the log containing his traps.
Harry was able to cast a dispelling charm at Cho to release her from her bonds. Smiling at her in a light headed way, Harry turned and made his way over to his makeshift table. The explosions had scattered almost everything. One package was still there though, filled with a substance with the same viscosity as the jelly they served at Hogwarts.
Harry looked up. Voldemort was still in the grip of the hallucinogen, but wouldn't be for much longer. Only three wizards still stood against Harry.
A spell finally brought the Dark Lord out of his frenzy. The three turned to face Harry, anger beyond imagining behind the serpent-like eyes. Again, the blazing pain in his scar pushed the fatigue and numbness from his mind. Unable to raise his wand, Harry aimed with his wrist and cast a banishing charm on the package.
The thin wrapping burst as the jelly was hurled at the three remaining enemies. Three curses struck Harry together, spinning him round, shattering his lower spine and tearing at his internal organs. He fell to the ground one final time.
Voldemort stood over him, a terrible expression on his face. "Now you die, Potter."
"I'm already dead," Harry mouthed at him. He coughed, spraying blood over the three wizards.
"But your girlfriend is not," Voldemort threatened.
Harry weakly shook his head. "You haven't learned anything, have you?" he whispered.
Voldemort looked at the wreck of a boy. Every time he had tried to torment him, Harry had got the upper hand. Not this time.
"Very well, a quick painless death. For both of you."
Harry nodded. "Just stay for a few more seconds."
The smiles on the Death Eaters vanished. One by one, they desperately scraped off the gloop clinging to them like glue.
"Here they come," Harry whispered.
From every direction, a buzzing sound grew louder. First a couple, then dozens, then hundreds and thousands of insects flew straight towards the only standing wizards. In seconds, insects covered them, biting, sucking, feeding.
Harry and Cho watched as Voldemort and his two remaining Death Eaters ran around swatting at the tiny assassins and screaming. Uncontrolled magic burst forth from the trio as they danced and fought.
For long moments, three wizards danced and ran, rolled and slapped.
A loud thunderclap, and all the insects in the area dropped to the ground, stunned. Voldemort stood alone, his last minions having fallen to the tiny killers Harry had summoned.
Not a single patch of the Dark Lord was free of blood. It looked as though he had no skin. He swayed, unsteady from loss of blood. Cho ran forward and grabbed Harry's wand. She aimed it at Voldemort, and shouted, "Stupefy!"
The Dark Lord snarled, and apparated away before the spell reached him.
An unreal silence covered the clearing.
Cho's wail broke the silence, and she fell to her knees cradling Harry's head. "Harry! Please! Stay with me! Don't go!"
Harry looked up at the girl who had saved his soul. With an effort, he gave her a smile. The gaps between his white teeth were stained red with blood. "I love you, Cho," he said, his voice nearly inaudible. "I always will."
Cho watched in agony as Harry's emerald eyes began to lose focus.
For a long time Cho held Harry close to her chest, crying. She didn't notice the arrival of several wizards dressed in Auror robes, who stood stunned at the carnage.
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