Summary: The end…

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters, their world or their toys.

Author's Note: It's been a long road in getting here. Stupid life and all, getting in the way. Thanks for a great run! Hope you enjoy the end.

Sacred Bonds

by Rebecca

The Finale

"Camelot is the source of all magic, existing on a plane both beyond…and beneath your world."

Harry's eyes were closed but the glow was bright beyond his eyelids.

"What is this?" he heard a voice, high pitched and slightly shaken, near his ear.

"Forget everything you thought you knew, Harry Potter…it's time you learned who you really are!"

He was drenched from head to toe, that much he could tell even before he forced his eyes open and sprung up from the ground. Beaten and bloody but whole, he quickly focused on the scene before him. The sun was just now setting beneath the surface. The lake itself, quiet and calm. The battles of witches and wizards around him, the Sentinels…indeed everything else was gone. His journey through his world's most legendary rift was complete, he realized. Through a portal into which a dying King Arthur had once flung a magical sword, Harry had pulled Voldemort from Hogwarts and back into Camelot. He was back. Back where he belonged.

"Where have you taken us, Potter?" Voldemort bellowed, though his voice was no longer the hoarse hissing it had been at Hogwarts. This voice sounded different…strained…afraid. "Answer me," he demanded. "Where are we?"

Harry grinned, eying his enemy shrewdly and answered, "Camelot…of course."

If Voldemort was shocked by this pronouncement, he didn't show it right away. In a short time, he too had regained his composure and started to slowly circle around The Boy Who Lived. "Foolish boy," he spat, despite the fact that Harry now stood a few inches taller than Voldemort, as sure a sign as any that obsession and rage had taken a toll on the Dark Lord's resurrected body. "Still believing in fairy tales, Harry?" Harry didn't respond, but stood rather stoic. "I suppose Camelot is as good as any story to believe in for a boy still foolish enough to think his Mudbloodmother's love" – he sneered the word through his rotting teeth – "still protects him."

"I don't still believe that," Harry said, matter-of-factly. "It doesn't protect me."

"Aaaaah," he drawled on, "so you have learned something."

"It never did."

At this, Voldemort stopped in his tracks, "of course it did. My first and only mistake."

"Only mistake, Riddle?" Harry actually laughed. "Last I checked, the D.A. was beating your army to a pulp. I'd call that a pretty bloody awful mistake."

"Casualties of war, Potter." Voldemort waived a hand aside as if he were swatting a fly. "Victory is inevitable. My followers far outnumber yours in the grand design. What are a few thousand foot soldiers compared to my eventual victory and rule over the entire wizarding kingdom?"

"Wizard rule will never fall to you."

"Really? And why is that?" Voldemort spat.

"Because you don't have the power."

It seemed as if this accusation had an even worse effect than having called him 'Riddle'. "Don't have the power? You clearly weren't reading your Ministry news while you were out hiding like an infant, Potter" he sneered. "I killed Dumbledore. I'm the most powerful wizard in the world!"

But Harry only nodded. "In your world maybe. Not in mine."

Voldemort blinked, unable to comprehend the transformation that had clearly taken place in his most hated foe. No one in his life had dared speak to him with such arrogance, such superiority. Not even Dumbledore – whose approach had always been one of cheekily ironic civility – had ever baited him as Harry did now. "What do you mean by that?"

"Look around you, Tom. What do you see?"

Out of sheer curiosity, Voldemort's wand remained at his side as he scanned the scene around him. "Hogwarts, Potter!" he said impatiently. "The grounds of Hogwarts!"

Man has always been blind to what he does not wish to see.

"That's where you're wrong Riddle. You're in a place where you can't do harm anymore. Where you can't kill anymore. We're in Camelot." He held his arms high and reveled in the bright magics that surrounded him, rifts and pulses dancing brilliantly that Voldemort still could not see.

"What are you—"

"I'm not surprised you can't see it of course," Harry said in an almost jovial tone. "You're not really supposed to be here. You shouldn't be able to get here," he paused and grinned. "That was my idea."

The fact that Harry was making absolutely no sense worked in his favor. Voldemort was simply too unhinged and his ego too bruised to do more than listen.

"That door," he pointed to the lake behind them, "wasn't opened to you until my good friend, Neville Longbottom, made a potion from a substance forged by Camelot's magic. Maybe you've heard of it," He added with a laugh, "the Sorcerer's Stone?"

"The Sorcerer's Stone?" he cried, sounding – actually – a little like Ron now. "That was destroyed!"

"Ancient magic can't really be destroyed, Riddle. You should've learned that," he touched his hand to his scar, "when you tried to kill me."

Voldemort grimaced and then seemed to remember something. "The only potion that can be made by the Sorcerer's Stone, boy, is the Elixir of Life. If your pathetic, half-witted friend actually succeeded, you are even more foolish than I anticipated. You have made me…immortal." At this apparent twist in his good fortune, Voldemort's sense of humor seemed to return to him, for he laughed rather insidiously.

"In that world, maybe," Harry countered. "But you're not listening, Tom. We're not in that world anymore. We're in mine. That potion is little more than a Common Room portrait password for you over here, a way to get you through the portal."

Something Harry said sounded vaguely familiar to Voldemort. After all, Tom Riddle was no fool. He had, of course, studied much of ancient magic when he was still a student. And he indeed became quite talented at controlling the darkest and deepest of arts. But then again, no amount of studying would have revealed anything substantial about Camelot. Not even Voldemort had learned every truth about magic, about power. As Hermione had remarked to Ron just a day or so ago, Camelot had been a great secret…for centuries.

"What's the matter?" Harry taunted his enemy, spurred on by Voldemort's returned state of confusion. "You don't think you got that powerful by accident do you? Didn't occur to you all this time that you were using borrowed power? Didn't think that one day, you would have to pay it back?" The Dark Lord's wand itched in his hand, almost as if it craved to kill as much as the Dark Lord himself. "Magic has finally caught up with you, Tom," Harry continued. "Time to pay the price!"

Voldemort seemed to detect the finality in Harry's voice, and though he could not comprehend what Harry meant, it was impossible to mistake the threatening portent behind this final statement. Voldemort raised his wand and cried, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Time in Camelot seemed to slow down to almost a dead stop. Voldemort's yellow eyes blistered with fury as his trademark green sparks exploded from his wand. Magnified by sacred ground and his own rage, the curse shot out toward Harry in a large mass, a sort of green star hurtling forward with catastrophic force. At Hogwarts, it might have seemed the most powerful and unfathomable Killing Curse the wizarding world had ever seen…but here, in Camelot, it was positively negligible compared to the magics surrounding its target.

Harry Potter had risen several meters off the ground and was suspended in the air right at the edge of the Enchanted Lake. Where before Voldemort had only seen the arrogant son of James and Lily Potter, he now gaped at the sight of a hundred or more golden spheres – each of which contained a different, seemingly random object.

On Voldemort, of course, the significance of these objects was lost. But Harry…well Harry felt a joy quite unlike he had ever before experienced as he unmasked the bonds he'd so carefully suppressed and hidden for Merlin years ago.

"All right, Mr. Potter…we'll do things your way."

Despite the scope and magnitude of the magic surrounding him, he could feel them each individually and distinct. In the same way he'd been able to hear muggle voices on the other side of the rifts, he could now distinguish between every unique voice of his peers, his comrades, his friends. They were fighting, each one harder than the next. "Kozar Damnum!" he heard Hermione's voice ringing out like a trumpeter signaling victory. "Expecto Patronum!" that one was Lupin. He could feel the joy it gave Remus to ward off a stray dementor, and through it, he could feel Lupin's own devotion to Sirius. "Obliviate!" cried Dean Thomas; Harry saw Dean closing in on few Death Eaters who had surrounded Seamus Finnigan in the astronomy tower. Dean's spell wiped the Death Eaters' memories clean, and Dean and Seamus embraced like brothers. And then there was Ron's voice: "We help Harry by holding Hogwarts…we help him by surviving." Each member of the Order and Dumbledore's Army fought for him, every successful spell, charm or hex a reaffirmation of their loyalty, their allegiance, their love. Harry could feel them strengthening him, fuelling the enormous collection of power before Tom Riddle's frightened eyes.

The bonds were melding together now, fusing to Harry and to each other as he harnessed Camelot's magic to forge the final, necessary blow.

"You are the weapon, Harry."

It was working just as he'd hoped. By embracing his bonds, not destroying them; by channeling his love, rather than his anger or pain, Harry had become a more powerful force than even Merlin had hoped he'd create.

"Magic protected you…preserved you and implanted in you powers that would one day restore balance to both worlds."

It was time now. Time to restore that balance. And in his last lucid thought before surrendering his body to Camelot, it was the voice of Dumbledore, not Merlin, who rang clear in his head: If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love…it is agony to touch a person marked by something so good."

Wart's downfall would be Harry's salvation. Magic had had over a thousand years to progress, to grow, to get it right. This time, it would be different. This time, Camelot would not fall. In a flash of white hot blinding light, Harry Potter became Magic, and in a spectacular explosion, Magic consumed and obliterated the Dark Lord, wiping him from the face of both worlds for good.

…

Victory swept over the whole of the wizarding kingdom. The most immediate effects, of course, were seen at Hogwarts. Here, hundreds of Voldemort's followers shriveled and collapsed in unison as blinding white light seemed to have infected them from within. Hermione and Ron, who were dueling Millicent Bulstrode and Blaise Zabini near the entrance courtyard, stopped mid-hex, their wands still raised, and watched as members of the dark army withered away before their eyes. Hermione looked down at the tip of her wand, and gasped. It was glowing, as if she had just cast a charm, but there were no sparks. Just light. Light which appeared to be directly linked to that which infected Millicent and Blaise.

Hermione held tightly to her wand, her hand steady, and she felt power unlike anything she'd ever felt before flowing through her. She closed her eyes and grasped Ron's arm. "Harry," she said in an impassioned whisper. "It's Harry, Ron. I…I can feel him."

Ron stared rather incredulously for a moment and then turned to eject his wand from the Auror staff. It too was glowing and he closed his hand around it, gasping as he felt waves of power – of goodness – wash over him. "Harry," he murmured, clasping his wife's hand as tears welled in his eyes. "Way to go, mate."

Every witch and wizard who had likewise ever faced evil for Harry felt the same waves of power emanating through their wands. Even more magnificent than Fawkes's blanket of patronuses a few weeks ago, it was as if every single one of them were linked to him, protected by him. Camelot's magic overpowered and conquered the Dark Army swiftly. Death Eaters surrendered. Dementors were driven back. All throughout Hogwarts, Voldemort's followers were laying down their wands in large, almost absurdly embarrassing numbers, begging for mercy, begging to be released from the light now poisoning their tainted souls. The dark threads that had tethered members of the Dark Army to each other under the Dark Lord's reign now unraveled at fleeting speeds, spreading throughout the whole wizarding community, ending the terrible war in every town, city, and alleyway it had been fought. The greatest of all wizard wars was over, the balance restored for many a millennia to come.

…

Epilogue

"I knew a boy once…a boy who loved a girl…"

…

"Come on, Mum. Mr. Smethwyck himself said there had been no change."

"I know but…I was sure that when it ended…I mean I hoped that when it was over…she would…she would be…"

"Awake, mum. We know. But you heard the medi-wizards. We don't know how long it will take."

"Come, Molly. You have a new grandson at home, you know. Ginny would want you to spend this time with him."

"Oh yes. He simply loves his toy wand, Mrs. Weasley."

"I know I just…I was so sure…"

"Mum, I don't think Harry would have…left…unless he was sure Ginny would be ok. Come on. Let's let her rest. He said she needed to rest."

"Oh…very well…p-pleasant dreams my dear."

The voices trickled away from her, and the room was quiet once more. Wait, she thought, don't go! But her eyes were heavy and still. Her body ached as if she had just played Seeker in a Quidditch match against Harry. She begged every muscle in her body to ignore the painful onset of atrophy, and finally, she was able to open her eyes…as the hospital room door closed with a quiet click.

"H-hello?" she wheezed, her mouth dry and her voice hoarse. She swallowed and cleared her throat. "Mum?" she squeaked. "Ron?" But the other voices were halfway down the corridor now, and Ginny's was barely a whisper. She blinked a few times, and moisture flowed back into her dry eyes. She turned her head from one side to the other, straining her neck, surveying her surroundings.

It was a cheery room, full of color and certain comforts of home. On a table stood several half-opened packages of sweets, and vaguely, she recognized her mother's handiwork. Still coming to, she cleared her throat again and squinted against the glorious sunshine streaming through the thin curtains at the end of the room. "Mungo's," she muttered, instantly wishing she were elsewhere. How long had she been out? How many days? Weeks? Months since that awful day in the Forbidden Forest?

Her life came slowly back into focus and memories started flooding in. "Ginny!" She slammed her eyes shut, and she could see Neville, staring at her with frightened eyes, begging her not to…not to…what had she done? "Why, Zach? Why did you turn on the D.A.!" That's right, she'd been held hostage, trapped by Zach Smith. She'd had something in her hand. "No," Neville pleaded. But she knew she'd had no choice—

"Hello, Ginny."

She let out a sort of half-cough, half-scream as shock and adrenaline forced her fully awake and she sprang upright in her bed. The sight before her startled her further since she was fairly certain it had been Ron, Hermione, Professor Lupin and her mother in her room just now, and not the strange little man sitting on the edge of her four-poster. Her first thought was Dumbledore! But she dismissed it immediately. He was a short, funny-looking white-haired bloke, dressed in a shabby tweed suit, black hobo gloves and a bowler hat. Everything about him seemed completely out of place and yet…strangely familiar.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The question seemed to amuse him. "A friend," he said. "What is the last thing you remember, dear?"

Her expression became dubious. "Are you a Medi?" she asked.

"No."

"Auror?"

"No."

"Then why do you want to know?" With each question, Ginny gathered more strength and courage, her voice clearer, her eyes sharp.

"Spoken like a true soldier," the man proclaimed. "But surely you know there is no need for such precaution now."

She stared at him, open-mouthed, not entirely sure if she was required to respond. His answer sounded like a riddle…Ginny hated riddles.

"What is the last thing you remember?" he repeated himself, and this time, it felt like she was being tested.

"The…the forest," she replied, slowly. "The forbidden forest with Neville and—" She stopped herself. The man's expression had changed – hope giving way to disappointment, to doubt. Ginny closed her eyes and searched again. She saw Neville and Zach just as before. She remembered crushing the Liquid Cruciatus into their skins. She knew that it would drive her insane but it was the only way to save Neville, to take out Zach, to—Let go of me…

Her eyes flew open; the man still waited by her bedside, but his posture suggested he was about ready to leave. "Harry," she said quietly. The man sat back down. "Harry was…was here."

"Yes?" he prodded, smiling again. "And?"

Ginny huffed. It was like trying to remember a dream…a dream that couldn't possibly be real. "He…he gave me something." She looked to him for confirmation. He nodded. And then an image came to her – bright and gold and clear. Instinctively, her hand came around her neck. It wasn't there. She surveyed the room again. Surely they would not have taken it from her. Surely her mother would have known she'd want to have it close. She scanned the table of half-eaten sweets and unopened presents. She looked on both windowsills, all four bedposts. Next to her bed sat a small nightstand with a tiny drawer. Frantically, she reached over, ignoring the aches and pains in her shoulders as she twisted her torso around to open it. And there it was lying next to her wand at the back of the drawer: the tiny golden snitch at the end of a silver chain.

She drew the necklace out of the drawer and pulled it over her head. As she did, the old man before her sighed. "You have no idea the trouble that little trinket has given me," he said with a chuckle. He seemed to be enjoying a little private joke, but his voice turned rather thoughtful and nostalgic as he went one. "He knew better though."

Ginny was about to ask who 'He' was, but before she could, another image flew into her head. She closed her eyes again and focused. In her mind's eye she saw the forest once more, but this time, it was not the clearing where she and Neville had met a tragic fate. No, this was the forest's edge at the Enchanted Lake. Someone was floating above it, grinning. He was surrounded by the most beautiful array of colors. Golden spheres swirled about him and the whole world seemed to erupt in a stunning spectacle of white light. Overcome by the intensity of the vision, Ginny grasped tightly to the chain now hanging around her neck. It warmed her as her hand closed around the miniature snitch. She felt safe…and whole. "Harry," she whispered again, smiling now. She opened her eyes and beamed at her strange guest. "He did it, didn't he! He defeated Voldemort." The old man nodded, but Ginny needed no confirmation. "He pulled together all the good magic in the world and just…just…destroyed him!" she said excitedly, knowing her vision to be the truth.

"Now how…could you possibly know that?" the man asked, but he was grinning as if she'd already answered the question.

"It's over," she sighed, clapping her hands together with great relief. "We won."

"Indeed."

She leaned forward suddenly, now fiddling with the chain. "So where is he? Where is Harry?"

The man did not reply.

In a flash, Ginny kicked her legs out from beneath the sweat-soaked sheet, grabbed her wand out of the still open bedside drawer, murmured a quick spell that transformed her hospital smock into robes, and planted herself in front of him as if ready to duel. "Where is he, old man?" she asked. "I know you know."

Her spunky display merely amused the wizard as he too rose from the bed and stood in front of her. "Would you believe me if I said…Camelot?"

Ginny scoffed, her jaw clenched, and she was tempted to transfigure the crazy man's tweed suit into a flock of sparrows…but then she stopped. Camelot…she thought to herself, and that odd feeling of familiarity she'd felt when she'd first seen him at the foot of the bed returned to her. She peered at him as if scrutinizing a very old painting or tapestry, and at last…a name came to her. "Merlin?" she said, startled by her own voice.

The man shook his head almost in disbelief, chuckling as he glanced again at her necklace. "I'll be damned." He spotted a chair that had so frequently been occupied by Mrs. Weasley, and drew it up to the side of the bed. "You wear a rather remarkable trinket around your neck, Miss Weasley."

She sank back to the bed, clasping it tightly.

"I imagine its origin is rather commonplace – cheap medals forged in the back room of a shop in Diagon Alley?"

"Hogsmeade."

"I see. Hung among dozens like it on a rack I suppose?"

"What are you getting at?" she asked.

"Despite its mundane beginnings, your necklace belongs to a rather exclusive class of extraordinary items now, Ginny.

Ginny started, looking between the miniature snitch in her palm and the wizard beside her.

The old man dragged his chair closer to her and removed his bowler hat. "May I?" he asked. She hesitated, but did not protest as he examined the chain carefully. "You say you remember Harry…giving this to you?"

"Yes. Well – er, no…not exactly." She looked up as he pulled away, waiting for her to continue. "He gave me this," she squeezed its solid form, "years ago. Before he left for…for…well, Camelot?" He nodded. Everything in her training and education screamed for her to reject the ridiculous idea of a place everyone knew to be myth, but Ginny surprised herself by her own rapid acceptance of something she just…knew to be true. "But when he came to me last week," she continued, "I…he erm…well…it was more of a…" she trailed off, remembering exactly what had happened now, remembering him pass her the image rather than the item itself, but was unable to put it into words. She sighed, giving up, and asked, "What happened to him?" The man took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, the same way her father used to before launching into one of his lengthy explanations about strange muggle devices with funny names like DVD Player and cellular phone.

"That necklace came to symbolize something very important to Harry," the man paused, meeting her gaze. "He loved you…very much."

She swallowed hard, "I-I know."

"You were, for him, a source of enormous strength and courage. Something he always understood far better than I allowed myself to see. But you know," he said leaning forward, "not even Harry could have predicted how such a powerful bond would act in the presence of such…unprecedented magic."

"What do you mean?" Ginny gulped again, feeling with every passing moment as if she were hearing a tale she'd once heard as a child and had long forgotten.

"Harry passed this bond to you so that the entirety of his love for you rested solely…here." He indicated a point just above the necklace – her heart. "He thought that releasing himself from your bond would enable him to complete his destiny…and allow you to fully heal."

Ginny struggled to keep up. "And that…didn't happen?"

The man waved his hand aside dismissively, "Oh of course ithappened. But that's not the point."

"Then what—"

"My best guess," he paused again, "and I can only guess, Miss Weasley, is that by giving sole ownership of your bond to you, Harry actually left a part of himself behind – tethered himself to this world. In a way, I believe you were his anchor, a lifeline back to this…corporeal existence, once destiny was fulfilled." Her jaw dropped as he added, "At least that's what I surmised had happened when I ended up here."

Ginny's heart was pounding furiously, "Is he…still…alive?" she whispered fiercely.

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "But I believe so. I believe he is…the new keeper of the woods."

She sprang up once more from her bed. "How do we get there?"

"We don't," he said. "It is Camelot that gives us our power, Ginny, not the other way around. Harry restored the balance between good and evil. But one wizard cannot be allowed to harness all that power indefinitely. The portals are all sealed, the rifts repaired." The man rose from his chair and stretched a bit like an old cat after a long nap, and she heard a small crack as he straightened out his spine. "And I for one am looking forward to living out the rest of my life in anonymity and…finally," he eyed her with sudden glee in his eyes, "be allowed to die."

Ginny ignored a faint sinking feeling in her stomach, struggling to get her recently recovered mind to comprehend what the man was telling her. "So are you saying," she now clung to the necklace, "that he's…he's stuck?"

"The woods must always have a keeper," the old man moved to the door.

Ginny groaned in frustration (her sister-in-law was far better at decoding these cryptic turns of phrase). "They why are you telling me all of this?"

He just smiled, opened the hospital room door and glanced back over his shoulder. "As I said, Miss Weasley. That is a rather…extraordinary trinket you wear around your neck." And with that, he placed his hat atop his head and left the room.

THE END