As Voldemort raised his wand for what looked like a finishing blow, Harry did something unexpected.
He hissed.
"Reducto."
The spell, cast in Parseltongue exactly as the ancient book had taught, carried a primal force that ordinary magic couldn't match.
Voldemort reacted just in time to avoid the main impact, but the aftershock from the explosion caught him squarely, sending him tumbling across the scorched ground. He landed hard, his robes smoking.
"What—" Voldemort began, pushing himself up. His eyes widened with genuine, ugly surprise. "What was that?"
"Parseltongue," Harry said, unable to hide a grin. "Did you really think it was just for chatting with snakes?"
Voldemort immediately hissed back, attempting to cast his own spells in the serpent tongue.
But nothing happened.
The words came out as mere hisses, carrying no magical weight.
There was a specific method to Parselmagic. Without that knowledge, Voldemort was just speaking snake, not wielding its power.
"Where did you learn this?" Voldemort demanded in English, abandoning his futile attempts.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Harry's grin widened as he pressed his momentary advantage.
But advantages against Lord Voldemort rarely stayed advantages. The Dark Lord was nothing if not adaptable. While the Parselmagic was powerful, the spells themselves were still, at base, school-level hexes amplified.
Once Voldemort adjusted to their increased power and unusual attack patterns, he found ways to counter them through sheer magical might and decades of combat experience.
The tide turned once more. Voldemort's responses became increasingly precise, using transfiguration to create obstacles that absorbed the serpent-magic's impact, conjuring shields at angles that deflected rather than blocked.
Soon, Harry was purely on the defensive, his energy flagging with each exchange.
"Do you see?" Voldemort called out, ensuring everyone could hear. "This is your champion? This child you pin your hopes on? He fights well for a child, but he cannot win. None of you can. I am beyond death itself!"
Harry laughed.
It wasn't forced or bitter. It was genuine amusement, and it made Voldemort pause.
"Beyond death?" Harry straightened despite his exhaustion, actually lowering his wand slightly. "Is that what you tell yourself in your dreams, Tom? That your little soul-jars make you immortal?"
The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
"What did you say?" Voldemort's voice had gone deadly quiet, more terrifying than any shout.
"Horcruxes," Harry said clearly, ensuring every Death Eater heard. "That's what you call them, isn't it? Pieces of your soul, hidden away like a coward's insurance policy?"
"How do you know about them?" The question came out as a hiss. "Dumbledore?"
"Yes, Dumbledore," Harry confirmed with a nod. "Although I should probably thank Mr. Malfoy as well — if I can find him. That diary I destroyed in my second year? It told Dumbledore your secret. From Dumbledore, I learned the rest."
Voldemort's expression shifted, the rage giving way to cold calculation. "So you're proud of destroying the diary? Allow me to disappoint you — I am still immortal."
"Oh, you mean your other Horcruxes?"
"How—" Voldemort cut himself off, regaining his composure. "It doesn't matter what you know. You'll never find them. They're hidden in places beyond your reach."
"Really?" Harry adopted the insufferably knowing tone he'd learned from Arthur. "Let's count them off, shall we? The ring — Dumbledore found that one. The Gaunt family ring, your grandfather's heirloom? Destroyed."
"Lies—"
"The locket," Harry continued conversationally. "Salazar Slytherin's own locket. That one was surprisingly easy. Bad idea showing a Black your secret to immortality. Regulus and Kreacher retrieved it from your clever hiding place. You can imagine how it ended."
Voldemort's confident facade was cracking. Arthur watched from his perch with genuine enjoyment — this psychological dismantling was almost artistic.
"The diadem," Harry pressed on, his voice growing stronger with each revelation. "Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem. Did you really think hiding it in Hogwarts was clever? That room isn't as secret as you believed. It's been gone for years."
Voldemort's wand hand was trembling now — whether from rage or dawning fear, even Arthur couldn't tell.
"The cup," Harry's smile turned sharp as a blade. "Hufflepuff's cup. You gave it to Bellatrix, didn't you? Your most faithful servant?"
Every eye turned to Bellatrix Lestrange, who had gone pale beneath her wild hair.
"My Lord," she started, her usual manic confidence deserting her. "I— I can explain—"
"The cup was taken from you?" Voldemort's voice was silk wrapped around a razor. "And you did not tell me?"
"My Lord..." Bellatrix's voice cracked. "It was the Hayes boy. He destroyed it. I was no match for him. I could not— I failed to guard it."
"SILENCE!"
Voldemort's fury flared like a struck storm; the force of it knocked several Death Eaters to their knees. Magic crackled around him like barely contained lightning.
Harry laughed again, the sound carrying across the silent pitch. "Five down, Tom. Five pieces of your soul, destroyed. You made one more, didn't you?"
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, but in the silence, everyone heard: "Nagini. Your familiar. Your last Horcrux."
Voldemort's pupils dilated; he searched the field with a quick, animal panic and found her curled near the Forbidden Forest's edge, apparently safe.
"She is safe—"
"Is she?"
On cue, a figure materialized near the massive snake, appearing from nowhere.
Neville Longbottom stepped forward, throwing off Harry's Invisibility Cloak with a flourish. In his hand, Gryffindor's sword flashed in the moonlight like liquid fire.
He hadn't been among those watching the duel because he'd had a far more important task — and now was the moment to complete it.
Nagini sensed the threat instantly, rearing up with fangs bared, her hood spreading wide.
But Neville was already moving with the confidence of someone who'd rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his mind.
The goblin-forged blade, still carrying basilisk venom from Harry's second-year adventure, swept through the air in a perfect arc. The snake's head separated cleanly from her body, both parts hitting the ground with dull thuds.
Voldemort's scream was beyond human — a sound of pure anguish as another piece of his soul was violently torn away. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest as if trying to hold himself together.
In the distance, though his words couldn't be heard, everyone could see Neville kick the snake's head away with vindictive satisfaction before jumping in triumph, pumping his fist in the air.
"Well done, Neville!" Harry called, voice bright even in the chaos. "Six soul pieces down. The seventh being your own soul, still in your body." He shook his head, mock disappointment on his face. "Seven Horcruxes. How terribly predictable, Tom. Seven's such a cliché."
The Death Eaters stood frozen, watching their supposedly invincible master gasping on his knees like a wounded animal.
"Mortal," Harry said quietly, but his words carried in the silence. "You're mortal now, Tom. Just another wizard who can die."
Voldemort's recovery was swift and vicious. His head snapped toward the acromantulas waiting at the forest's edge. "KILL HIM!" he roared, pointing at Neville. "TEAR HIM APART!"
The massive spiders surged forward, eager to obey, their many legs creating a thunderous skittering. But before they could close even half the distance, arrows whistled from the forest depths, finding gaps in their armor with deadly precision.
The centaurs had arrived.
They burst from the tree line in a coordinated charge, bows singing their deadly song. "The stars have spoken!" their leader bellowed. "The forest stands with the light!"
Neville, still wielding Gryffindor's sword and now backed by centaur allies, turned to face the arachnid threat with newfound courage. Together, they began cutting through the disorganized spiders.
The Death Eaters watched this unexpected development with growing unease, looking to their master for orders.
But Voldemort had eyes only for Harry. His face had transformed into something beyond rage, beyond madness — pure, distilled hatred given form.
"AVADA KED—"
But something extraordinary happened before Voldemort could finish his spell.
Harry felt his wand move as if by its own will, dragging his hand with it. He was not casting — the wand was.
A beam of golden-red light erupted from the phoenix feather core, but this wasn't any spell Harry knew. It wasn't even a spell he was consciously casting. The magic came from somewhere deeper, more primal.
Arthur leaned forward on his perch, genuinely shocked.
He remembered reading about Harry's wand acting independently in the original timeline — during the aerial chase from Privet Drive, it had attacked Voldemort autonomously. That had been explained as an effect of their prior connection, twin cores recognizing each other and Harry's phoenix-feather wand choosing violence.
But this was different. This was older, deeper. Arthur recognized it from his months of study in Slytherin's vault.
Ancient Magic.
Harry wasn't casting a spell. He was channeling something far more fundamental — magic responding to pure need, pure intent, pure destiny.
The same power that had guarded him as a baby was back.
The golden light moved like a living thing, coiling and uncoiling through the air with single-minded purpose.
Voldemort's eyes went wide with an expression nobody had ever seen on his face before.
Fear. True, mortal fear.
The Dark Lord threw every shield he knew in its path. The golden beam sliced through them like tissue. He raised walls of stone and iron; they crumbled to dust where the light touched. He tried to flee; the light adjusted, tracking him with an almost predatory will.
"What is this?" Voldemort snarled, desperation creeping into his voice.
Harry looked as surprised as anyone, his arm extended, wand humming with power he wasn't consciously controlling. But instinctively, he knew not to fight it. Instead, he opened himself to it, letting whatever this was flow through him.
A voice from the past whispered in his memory: "And he will have power the Dark Lord knows not."
This was that power.
The light was almost upon Voldemort now. There was nowhere left to run, no defense left to try.
Everyone watching — Death Eater and defender alike — knew with bone-deep certainty:
This was the end. Lord Voldemort was about to fall.