Harry thought he knew of pain before, having undergone unbearable amounts before. However, he realised that he couldn't have been more wrong in anything in his life before, as a new world of agony opened up to him.
The killing curse connected with his body, and yet, both his soul and Tom's were still in his body. Except, they were both trying to leave it.
'Damnation,' he thought, and guessed that the only reason Voldemort hadn't cast another spell at him was the shock he himself was experiencing.
The big difference between the two, though, was that the pain had rendered everything unimportant to Harry, and he was trying his best to instinctively hold his souls from leaving.
He then felt the brush of Death on his soul—an experience no living being should undergo—and shuddered.
Harry hid his consciousness behind walls and walls of Occlumency and waited for Death's presence to leave. He couldn't deal with It now.
Thankfully, after a moment, Death realised that it was a false alarm and let him go, but It didn't leave…
Harry wanted to really curse someone as he returned to consciousness. The pain was still there, but he couldn't do anything about it, considering it was soul pain.
However, by some miracle, Death's touch had actually numbed it a little, and Harry could think.
He belatedly realised that it was his draconic form that kept him tethered to the plane and that—
'Oh God… I have to transform so that I can fully pull my souls back.'
Wasn't that a nice revelation one wanted to come to just before a battle with the most feared Dark Lord of recent times?
Said wizard, broke out of his stupor, which had lasted less than a second, and was furiously casting a barrage of killing curses at Harry.
'You'd think he'd cast something else,' he thought, slightly amused, before closing off his conscious thought process.
Slabs of stone made from the chamber's floor rose to intercept the spells, saving Harry from finding out whether he'd be able to survive a third killing curse.
Stone split and dust rained down from the arches as his barriers fell.
His lungs burned, and he could feel Voldemort just beyond the haze of smoke and shattered rock.
Harry's vision swam.
He rose—unsteady, bleeding lightly from many cuts through his body.
The next barrage of Killing Curses came like green lightning.
Harry didn't dodge. He moved through them—each curse veering just enough to miss him, bent away by invisible force. Manipulating air was handy like that… and also impossibly hard.
Voldemort snarled and hurled another chain of spells.
Spears of darkness cut through the air at incredible speeds. Harry couldn't even see them. Instead, he sensed them as they were being formed and masterfully conjured bits of light inside them, untangling them before they reached him.
While doing that, Harry also had to fight a small tsunami that'd make him wish for the Torture curse if it managed to just touch him. He threw tons of sand on it, which sucked the liquid in and neutralised it.
Harry flicked his wrist, and three Blood-Boiling cruses shattered midair, scattering like glass under a hammer.
"Still think yourself a god, Tom?" he rasped, his voice layered. "You're just a frightened man in a borrowed body."
"You are nothing but my echo!" Voldemort screamed, his voice cracking with fury. "A parasite feeding on my fragments!"
Harry laughed, low and unsteady. "Then what does that make you?"
They continued exchanging spells.
Water turned to steam, statues exploded, serpents carved in stone bled dust and flame.
Voldemort's silhouette blurred as he cast spell after spell.
Harry, not one to fall behind, copied him, casting the same spells as him and putting both of his souls behind them.
Voldemort cast a complex ancient Roman spell that Harry hadn't seen before.
He couldn't quite figure it out before his enemy cast it, and he spun, catching the spell mid-flight, and twisted.
The curse folded back—like a snake devouring its own tail—and struck Voldemort squarely in the chest.
The Dark Lord screamed as black veins spread across his skin, pulsing with his own magic turned against him.
Harry lifted his wand. "Exuro Anima*.*"
A torrent of white fire roared from the tip, the kind that ate not flesh but soul. Voldemort countered, thrusting his wand forward with both hands, summoning a shield of pure shadows.
The two forces met with a sound that wasn't sound at all—it was the air ripping, reality straining to hold itself together.
For a heartbeat, everything froze.
Harry's mind was split—half will holding the fire, half holding his soul from tearing free. His body was burning, every nerve screaming.
He pushed harder.
The shield shattered, and the white flames hit.
Voldemort let out a cry of pain, but somehow managed to extinguish them.
Harry felt like dropping dead from exhaustion, but he held on.
'Think, think, think. How do I win this?'
Voldemort was coming up with ways to defend against all of his attacks, and the fight couldn't go on forever.
Harry was stronger, however, he had little use of that strength now.
He was afraid to tap fully into his magic, knowing that he was, as it was, a step away from losing control.
'Can I use Death?' he wondered for just a moment, sparing the hiding deity a glance.
He doubted that…
He could feel It—an ancient weight at the edge of perception, neither benevolent nor cruel. Just present. Waiting.
Harry clenched his jaw. His hand trembled around the wand.
Voldemort moved first.
He raised his wand high, screaming a curse that had no name in any human tongue.
Shadows bled from the walls, forming a storm of serpents—black fire coiled into sentient shapes, all hissing in some forgotten language.
Harry's Occlumency strained even further at the sudden psychic pressure. He bit down a cry and flung his wand upward.
He thought of casting Arx Lumina Sancta, but decided against it, having already tried it against Voldemort.
Instead, Harry intoned the meaning of light, in a language he didn't even know.
A pillar of light descended—pure, burning white. It tore through the Chamber's ceiling like the wrath of gods, colliding with Voldemort's serpentine storm. Light met darkness, and the world screamed.
The explosion tore the floor apart. Waves of molten stone rolled outward.
The Dark Lord rose through the chaos, his face twisted, veins glowing a poisonous red, and cast multiple spells at the light, finally dimming it into nothingness.
"You cannot kill me!" he shrieked, voice breaking under strain. "I am eternal!"
"Not anymore," Harry hissed.
He had had enough of everything.
He'd end it now.
Harry raised both hands now—his wand in one, raw magic pulsing in the other.
"Anima Confluere."
For a heartbeat, everything was still. Then the world itself convulsed.
The Chamber of Secrets vanished.
The floor liquefied into black mirror and the world seemed to expand infinitely, with no ending in neither cardinal direction.
Voldemort's reflection was a writhing storm of serpents and smoke, eyes burning red like coals.
Harry's… was fractured. A thousand shards of light struggling to stay whole, flickering between gold, green, and something else...
One more presence had tried to establish itself in the soulscape, but both wizards attacked it until it relented.
The spell had done its work. Anima Confluere—the merging of souls.
Voldemort grinned, though his expression flickered, distorted by the strange half-space between life and death. "You fool," he whispered. His voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "You've brought us where I am strongest."
Harry didn't bother answering.
Voldemort lunged forward—not with his body, but his essence. The darkness in him surged outward, coiling around Harry's light like a python strangling its prey.
The pain was instantaneous and absolute. Harry gasped, his form splitting in places—his outline fracturing into overlapping layers of himself. The part that was Tom snarled inside him, clawing at the invading soul.
"Get-out-of-me!" Harry roared, and the air burned white around him.
He saw memories again, flashing through his mind like falling stars—his own and Voldemort's, tangled together. Hogwarts' halls dripping with candlelight. Myrtle's corpse. Dumbledore's calm eyes. Fleur's laughter.
The memories collided, fought, and devoured each other.
Voldemort's voice rose through the maelstrom. "You cannot separate us now! You took too much—you are me!"
Was that the case, though? Harry was more Voldemort than Voldemort himself.
He clenched his fists, and light erupted from his cracks like molten gold through stone. "Then let's see which one of us survives!"
Harry thrust his hand forward, gripping at the very substance of the Dark Lord's soul. The shadows screamed, morphing into monstrous forms—faces, hands, serpents with mouths full of fire. They struck at him, tearing through his light.
Harry's soul staggered, dimming, but he refused to fall. He dug deeper—past pain, past fear, past the boundary that marked where Harry Potter ended and Tom Riddle began.
He drew it out like a sword and cut.
The light erupted outward, carving through the serpents, through the storm, through Voldemort. The scream that followed wasn't human—it was the sound of something being unmade.
Voldemort's soul recoiled, splintering under the force. His shadow warped, twisting back upon itself, every piece trying to flee, to cling to Harry, to hide inside the light.
Harry didn't let it.
He flung both arms wide and roared. He didn't know what came by him, but that seemed to do the trick, as the Abyssal Reaver's soul fire encompassed both of them.
Light and darkness collided and merged, spiralling into a sphere that pulsed like a living sun.
For a moment, Harry felt everything—Voldemort's terror, his longing, his pride, his hatred—and beneath it all, the one emotion that had driven him beyond death: fear.
"I see you," Harry whispered.
He reached into the storm and seized the last fragment of the Dark Lord's soul. It burned his hand, his arm, his chest—but he held on.
Voldemort's form was unraveling, his red eyes wide with disbelief. "No—no! You can't—"
Harry pulled.
And the soul tore.
Voldemort screamed—a sound that cracked the very fabric of the void—and his essence exploded into a million shards. The black shards dissolved into nothing before they could touch the ground, while the white ones entered Harry. There was another essence, and that too, scattered into nothingness.
Silence followed.
The darkness bled away, and the Chamber reassembled itself around him. Water dripped from the ceiling.
Harry fell to his knees, gasping.
Voldemort was gone.
Truly gone.
Dumbledore's body was unmoving and devoid of life.
Harry's hand trembled as he pressed it against the wet stone. The surface was still warm, as though it remembered the fire that had just burned through reality.
He exhaled, long and shaky.
"Over," he muttered. Then, quieter, almost to himself, "It's finally over."
.
.
.
Discord Link... [https://discord.com/invite/NJ3WV9RVgR]
Patreon Link: [https://www.patreon.com/Mr_0ne] or do a Google search of 'Patreon Fake Violinist'
Chapter 131: It's Finally Over