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Chapter Thirty-One—Sunrise

Harry could feel the golden thread of the magic moving through him, and then transitioning into a river. He was gasping, and the blue jewel on his forehead was glowing with soft, persistent light. He had almost forgotten what it was like to have this much magic pouring through his veins.

But he mastered it quickly, and turned towards the courtroom at the far end of the corridor where Dumbledore was waiting. He held up his hands, and the pressure that was forcing Tom and the others to kneel retreated further towards Dumbledore.

And then stopped. It was clear that Harry wasn't going to have any success in getting his husband or their Knights back to their feet any time soon.

Fine. Harry had reasoned that he'd have to battle Dumbledore by himself anyway since they came here. He strode forwards, with the wind that the clash of power was causing rippling his cloak and making his robes fly.

He reached the door of the courtroom, and found it standing only halfway open. Harry didn't like not being able to see what his enemies were doing. He crossed his arms, and the door flew back from him, hitting the wall with a dead-sounding thud.

The room beyond was as dark as the rest of the Ministry, but Harry could see all he needed to with the diadem sending its soft beaming light forth. Dumbledore, clad in pale blue robes and holding his wand, stood in an iron circle in the center of the floor, surrounded by still bodies. Harry didn't know if they were dead or asleep, but he was sure they were Order of the Phoenix members whom Dumbledore had drained of magic.

"You should not have come," Dumbledore said, his voice half a sigh. "My quarrel is with Mr. Gaunt, not you."

"He doesn't have that name anymore," Harry said evenly. Truthfully, it wasn't that big of a deal, but he knew Tom would want Harry to stand up for him. "He married me. His name is Potter."

"Changing his name does not change who he is." Dumbledore shook his head. There was a wheel of white spoked light around his head, flickering into view and then disappearing. He spread his hands, and Harry felt the return of the pressure that had made Tom and the others kneel. "An inbred Dark wizard."

"And you never had ancestors who married cousins, sir? I had the impression that most pure-blood wizards did."

Dumbledore blinked at him, his manner almost abstracted. "You are mistaken, or perhaps misled by the differences between our worlds. I am a half-blood." He gestured. A heavy iron block began to form in the air in front of him. He appeared to have conjured it, or Transfigured the air. "My mother was Muggleborn."

"And your father was a pure-blood who got sent to Azkaban for torturing three Muggles," Harry said quietly.

Dumbledore straightened, staring at him. Harry raised an eyebrow. "The differences between our worlds don't blind me, sir. I'm giving you one more chance to back out of this, return the magic to the people you drained it from, and surrender yourself to the Wizengamot and our side."

"You are as misled as Mr. Gaunt is," Dumbledore breathed, and flung the heavy block at Harry.

Harry glided to the side, only to have the iron block turn and whip towards him. Harry raised one hand and called as hard as he could on his memory of the Fiendfyre that had devoured the Room of Requirement in his first world—the heat and the height of the flames, rather than the specifics of the spell.

The block was caught in the flames and melted, and Harry turned and aimed his hand straight back at Dumbledore. The man's expression did change a bit when he had to deal with a rain of melted lead.

In the meantime, Harry's gaze fixed on the wand that Dumbledore was waving in conductor-like patterns through the air. It seemed to be made of elder wood, and he nodded. That gave him an idea of what he could do, and if there were a few other casualties when he cast the spell, he doubted they would be many.

There just weren't that many people who had wands made of elder wood, after all.

Harry began to gather his power to himself, but he had to dodge again when Dumbledore concentrated and the melted lead formed into an arching pattern of wings and bones. In a second, the air was filled with burning bats, their red eyes glowing, flapping towards Harry with a series of echoing squeaks that hit his ears, and only got higher and higher as he listened.

Harry cast several spells based on Banishing Charms as quickly as he could, but all of them brushed past the bats like smoke and mist. It was clear that Dumbledore was using the distraction behind their flight to create yet another spell, and also that Harry wouldn't get rid of them unless he knew the countercurse.

So Harry just invoked their natural enemies instead. He lifted his arms, and winged serpents poured forth from them, fires igniting along their scales as they soared. They slammed into the bats and entangled them, bearing them towards the floor.

Dumbledore hesitated long enough to stare, and Harry spoke in Parseltongue. "The veins of his legs, turn against him."

Dumbledore screamed a second later. The veins under his skin were writhing like snakes, and when Harry spoke more invocations to the veins in Dumbledore's arms and hands, they did the same thing. Dumbledore was shaking as he dropped to his knees, but he wasn't out of the fight, and any moment might be the one he would use to cast the spell that harvested Harry's soul, or Tom's, or any of the other Knights who had come with them.

And he was giving Harry no time to concentrate on the spell that would destroy his wand, of course. His wand struck down at the floor, and he said something in a language that sounded like French.

The floor beneath Harry's feet turned to water.

Harry held his breath as he dropped abruptly down and into the cold water—of course it was cold—while his heart leaped in his chest like a frightened bird. He struck out for the shore, but the pool was rapidly expanding around him. Dumbledore had already ended the curse that Harry had unleashed on his legs, and was floating in the air on a small man-made island that apparently existed to carry him above the water.

Dumbledore sighed and shook his head. "Mr. Potter, I never thought to face an enemy this feeble-minded. I would have appreciated it if you had at least come against me with a plan."

"His heart," Harry hissed softly as he trod water beneath Dumbledore, "bite him with serpent fangs."

Dumbledore screamed as his ribcage constricted and bounced, and perhaps he did end the spell too quickly before the serpent Harry had imagined could burst out of his chest, and it definitely wasn't enough to pay for what he had done to Tom, but it was still damn satisfying.

Meanwhile, the water had stopped expanding as Dumbledore had to turn his concentration to dealing with the heart attack. Harry rolled onto the dry floor and cast a spell that made the water waft off his clothes as steam.

Dumbledore's eyes fixed on him, furious, while his face locked in harsh lines. "I do not believe that you will be seeing the sunrise," he breathed. His wand rose.

Harry knew that he would cast the spell from the book Dorea had mentioned. And he locked his own hands together and called to mind all the images of destruction that he had ever heard of or seen.

Earthquakes shaking the ground above them. Flash floods rolling through riverbeds. Bones breaking and cracking. Fires racing through fields of dry grass. Disease leaping from one person to another in flashes of infection.

He brought his hands together, dimly aware that he was struggling against some overwhelming force. There was so much resistance there, and it was poisoned, swarming resistance. There were images of destruction fighting back against the ones that Harry was swimming through, and he knew that it was the spell that wanted to reap his soul, and Tom's, and the soul of everyone who stood against Dumbledore.

No.

Harry had endured endless pain in some parts of his life. He had never thought he would be grateful for it, but now he was. He bore against Dumbledore with the will that had brought him alive through the torment of the Dursleys and made him count on his eighteenth birthday when he knew nothing about magic and the end of the summer when he did.

He bore against Dumbledore with the pain of dying of a basilisk bite, and yet still grabbing the fang to stab into a Horcrux.

He bore against Dumbledore with the agony of walking to his death in the Forbidden Forest, knowing how much a man he had trusted in his first world had lied to him.

He bore against Dumbledore with the pain of thinking that he might lose Tom otherwise, and his soul, and his Parseltongue gift, and his quick smile, and he loyalty to his Knights, and all the things that made him Tom Potter.

Harry abruptly staggered. He had felt as if he was being crushed between enormous rocks and now, suddenly, he wasn't anymore. He staggered again and stood upright, looking around.

Dumbledore was staring down at his wand.

It was cracked in two, a crack deep into the heart. Harry could see the fugitive glimmer of something that might have been a hair from a thestral's tail in the middle. He smiled and shifted his glance to Dumbledore's face, a portrait of loss.

"You are going to die," Harry breathed.

Dumbledore threw the wand from him. His gaze was steady, his face already losing the fear that Harry would have expected. He shook his head. "Perhaps the wand is gone, but I have my wandless magic."

The power began to build around him, whirling in globes of light and cold around his feet, then his robes, then climbing towards his arms. Harry firmed up his own shield, aware that his magic was bulging and trembling at the edges. How much had he expended already? How much was waiting for him?

The endurance of pain hadn't exhausted him, but it had tired him. And he had no idea how much further there was to go.

The ice globes began to overwhelm the colored light ones as Harry watched. Frost was crackling and shifting in Dumbledore's beard, and around his head in a crown of ice.

Harry snorted despite himself. "Do you want to give yourself royal airs? Or are you trying to imitate my diadem?"

The diadem.

Harry's breathing deepened and slowed. The diadem was a reserve of power that he could draw on if he had to. He turned a little to more fully face Dumbledore, who was frowning at him in what looked like honest puzzlement.

"Royal airs?"

"The ice around your head is forming into a crown." Harry nodded at the ice, which by now had spikes on it and a diamond shape in the front.

"This is only the shape that my magic naturally takes. If you see it as a crown, perhaps you have a guilty conscience." Dumbledore shrugged and reached up into the air. Ice was beginning to sheathe his hands, forming gauntlets that had ice spikes in the fingers. Harry imagined those spikes being shot at him, and winced.

If they were going to be shot at him at all. He still didn't know for sure what the end process of this magic was going to be.

"I will freeze your heart," Dumbledore announced a moment later, and the ice crown began to slide down his shoulders to form what looked like a helmet.

You cannot let him become fully sheathed in ice.

Harry knew that, although he didn't know if the voice speaking to him was the diadem, or Tom's advice he would have given if he could, or his own common sense. He focused, and the churning, tattered power in him came together. He flung out his hands, and a blaze struck from them.

Dumbledore shrieked in what sounded like indignant protest. For a second, Harry wondered if he had learned to defend "the form his magic naturally took" against fire.

But even if he had, it seemed that he might have invested too much magic in making the ice-cloak. It was melting and coursing down Dumbledore's sides in rivulets as Harry called more and more flames and light into his hands.

"You cannot—keep doing that."

"I can keep doing this as long as I need to," Harry said, and then shut up. He needed to direct his concentration towards the magic, not impressing someone who was an enemy.

Dumbledore was forcing some of the light and heat back towards him, though. There was a balanced ball of light between them, the way there had been between Harry and Voldemort's wands so long ago in his first world, in a place and time that were lost. Harry stared straight into the brilliance and wondered for a fleeting moment if this was like Priori Incantatem.

In one way, it was, he decided, as the ball rolled sharply towards him. He would lose if that light touched him. He fed more power into the ball, and it shuddered and rolled "uphill" towards Dumbledore and his attempt to drape himself in a waterfall of ice.

The ice was melting again. Dumbledore said, "Did I tell you that I can reap your soul without a spell?"

Harry nearly faltered, but he clenched his teeth and focused on his fire. That was an attempt to undermine him, demoralize him. It was only words. He couldn't let it work, or let Dumbledore triumph.

"It will work. I have tested it. Perhaps I wasn't powerful enough on my own, but with the magic I have gathered from my followers, I am now."

Harry fought back his outrage at the idea that Dumbledore might have taken a soul from an Order member or a member of the Wizengamot as a bloody test. That wasn't important right now. What was was making the mingled light of their magic retreat towards Dumbledore.

"Shall I take your soul? Will that diadem on your head preserve you from such a project? I think not."

Harry kept his eyes on the ball of light. It was barely moving at all now, caught in the middle, trembling with the intensity of the power they were both pouring into it.

"I think I shall."

Harry pulled himself together like a fist. He knew that Dumbledore wouldn't be able to reap his soul and control the ice of his magic at the same time. Harry's best chance was to strike the minute Dumbledore turned his attention away, and kill him before he could release whatever spell he needed to take Harry's soul.

He locked his eyes with Dumbledore's, and saw the way his head turned a little to the side, his eyes moved. Harry hurled himself forwards then, physically as well as magically, and the ball of light between them broke apart with a thunderous blast.

Dumbledore cried out as Harry's fire caught and consumed him, and Harry thought for a second he had burned to death and everything would be all right. But then he felt the cold clutch of the hand that reached out to him, a hand that seemed to be made of choking ash.

It struck into him, fingers raking through his chest, and Harry screamed as it seized something that felt deeper than his viscera. It tugged, and Harry fell to his knees and lost control of the fire. It splashed on the floor and the walls and against a shield that Dumbledore had brought up without Harry even being aware of it.

Probably before I came in here, Harry thought muzzily, his head sagging. He could hear Dumbledore standing and walking towards him, but he could do nothing about it. His focus had changed yet again. Now it had to be on fighting the spell that wanted his soul and seemed to be making its way out of his chest with it, a little at a time.

"Why are you still alive?"

Harry lifted his head against the intense pain, and blinked at Dumbledore through teary eyes as the man took a step towards him. It was probably his imagination that Dumbledore looked fearful, Harry thought as the jewel in the diadem caught fire and sent shadows fleeing. It wasn't important. Harry was dying. He knew it.

"Why are you alive?"

Or maybe—maybe it was important. Harry pummeled his brain in the right direction, and he saw Dumbledore's hands trembling. He reached out and clawed at the air, and a second hand came raking down towards Harry.

Harry stared at it, fear eating him. He was sure that he couldn't bear the pain of a second tug on his soul, but he couldn't make himself stand up and reel away from it, either. He had to kneel there and watch as doom fell.

At least until something small darted over and grabbed the hand in midair. There was a flare and a sizzle that reminded Harry of a Muggle telly dying, and the second hand dissolved. At the same time, the one pulling on Harry let him go with a long sigh.

Harry scrambled back on his knees, the stone on the diadem still furious. The small thing that had destroyed the second hand darted over to him. Harry recoiled from it, but it hovered in front of him, and he finally recognized it.

The Resurrection Stone.

"Why did you not die?" Dumbledore demanded again.

Harry extended his trembling fingers to the Stone without answering. The Stone fell into his palm. It was as warm and bright as the jewel in the diadem. Harry cradled it close to him, shaking his head.

"Why did you come for me?" he whispered. "I left you behind in my first world." The Invisibility Cloak was the only one of the Hallows he had taken from his first world, and it had been years since he'd even thought about his supposed title as the Master of Death.

The Stone nestled down in his hand, and a warmth flooded out that seemed meant for a specific purpose. Harry understood as it melted away at the wounds and the cold in the chest of his chest, where the spell Dumbledore had conjured had been pulling.

That wouldn't have been an ordinary death. That would have been Dumbledore reaping the power of his soul, in a way that the Deathly Hallows perhaps didn't permit. Or maybe even just the Resurrection Stone didn't permit. The Cloak and the Wand hadn't shown up out of nowhere, after all.

Harry gave a look at the shattered remnants of Dumbledore's wand on the floor as he climbed to his feet, but it didn't repair itself. Maybe it had been a different version of the Elder Wand, or not it at all.

"Why did you not die?" Dumbledore asked. He was standing on the far side of the room now, although Harry knew better than to think that was pure retreat. It was just retreat from the incomprehensible thing Harry had become.

Harry glanced at the Stone, and another part of the answer came into his mind like drifting mist. He had left behind so much in his first world: his friends, the Hallows, his reputation as the Boy-Who-Lived, memories of a kind Dumbledore. But he had also left behind his magic stabilizing and guarding that portal.

He had not taken all his magic into himself again.

Harry looked up with a smile, and Dumbledore did stumble back a step now. Harry raised his hands, and felt the link between him and that first portal, across the dimensions, across the strange space the Resurrection Stone must have traveled.

"I am more powerful than you know," Harry said, finally answering Dumbledore's question, since he wasn't about to mention the Hallows. "And more powerful than you can understand."

And he opened his soul and called all his magic back into him, finally home.