Voldemort had a split second to decide to protect himself. His wand came up, not to cast but to physically intercept the spell. The wand met the explosion charm head-on, and in that moment of contact, there was an explosion that forced Arthur to back up.
The wand shattered. Yew and phoenix feather exploded into burning fragments as the explosion overwhelmed it. But Voldemort had gained the second he needed.
Using that opportunity, Voldemort propelled himself backward while his other hand dove into his robes.
He withdrew a vial—the desperate last resort he'd prepared for his inevitable clash with Arthur. He'd believed it unnecessary after his power surge from the shattered prophecy, but now, wandless and outmatched, barely clinging to survival, he had no choice. The consequences be damned.
The vial was at his lips before Arthur could stop him. Whatever was inside the vial went down in one desperate gulp.
"NO!" Arthur launched forward, but it was too late.
Black power erupted from Voldemort like an explosion. His eyes became voids. Dark energy crawled across his skin like living tattoos. The very air around him began to warp and twist.
"The Draught of Thanatos," Voldemort said, his voice reverberating with inhuman power. "A last resort. Brewed from ingredients that no longer exist, following instructions written by wizards who went mad from the knowledge. It draws on the user's very life force, burning decades of vitality in minutes to grant power beyond mortal comprehension."
He flexed his fingers, watching the dark energy dance across them with satisfaction.
"I will be weakened for months afterward, perhaps years. But that assumes there is an afterward." His lipless mouth curved in what might have been a smile. "Everything is worth surviving. And now, Arthur Hayes, you die."
Arthur studied him for a moment, then sighed. "You're literally burning your remaining lifespan for temporary power? That's your master strategy?" He shook his head with genuine disappointment. "Even if you somehow survive tonight, Tom, you'll be helpless afterward. No Bellatrix to shield you. No Death Eaters—the defenders will see to that. No servants, no allies, no one. You'll die alone and weak, probably in some forgotten corner."
"Perhaps," Voldemort acknowledged, dark power crackling around him like a storm. "But I'll have the satisfaction of taking you with me. And sometimes, boy, spite is worth any price."
He raised his hand—wandless now—and reality bent.
Arthur barely got a shield up before the attack hit. It wasn't a spell in any traditional sense. It was pure magical force, will made manifest. Almost similar to Ancient Magic.
Arthur's shields, reinforced by all his power, held for three seconds before shattering.
The battle had stepped up to another level.
Voldemort moved. Not Apparition, not flight—just pure speed that shouldn't have been possible. One moment he was hovering thirty feet away; the next, he was inches from Arthur with a dark spell ready to attack.
Arthur Apparated away just in time, reappearing on what looked like a reflected version of the Astronomy Tower. But Voldemort was already there, dark magic erupting from his hands in a wave of destruction that shattered the tower into fragments.
Through the collapsing debris, Arthur created a portal, emerging behind Voldemort with a spell chain already cascading from his fingers.
But Voldemort turned and roared. The sound was magic given voice. Arthur's spells simply ceased to exist, overwhelmed by the raw power. The shockwave caught Arthur, sending him tumbling through the twisted space.
He recovered mid-fall, creating a portal beneath himself that deposited him on stable ground—or what passed for it here. But Voldemort was already attacking, dark magic pouring from him in torrents.
The battle transcended anything Arthur had fought before.
Arthur apparated again but Voldemort followed, matching him move for move. The battle became a blur of motion and magic, two forces of nature colliding again and again across the impossible landscape of the Mirror Dimension.
They fought through reflections of Hogwarts castle, their war reducing towers to dust and courtyards to craters. The Mirror Dimension's version of Hogwarts died piece by piece, sacrificed to their war.
Hours passed, or minutes—time meant nothing here. Both combatants pushed beyond normal limits.
Arthur combined everything he'd learned, everything he was. The Master of Death's power, the mystic arts, his enhanced body, and the condensed knowledge of two lives, every trick and technique pushed to its absolute limit.
Voldemort met it all with the terrible price of the Draught—his future life burning in the present, granting him power that shouldn't exist.
They became forces of nature given human shape, colliding again and again across the impossible landscape. Each impact created shockwaves that shattered more of the Mirror Dimension, cracks spreading like a virus through infinite reflections.
Neither gave ground. Neither showed weakness.
But nothing lasts forever—especially power bought with life itself.
The first sign was a flicker in Voldemort's aura. Then another, longer. The black energy began to fade like smoke in wind.
"No," Voldemort breathed, looking at his hands as the power began to fade. "Not yet! I need more time!"
Arthur didn't waste words. He was there instantly, close enough to see fear creeping back into those red eyes.
"DEPULSO MAXIMA!"
The banishing charm, point-blank with Voldemort's power failing, sent the Dark Lord flying. Arthur had already opened the portal. Voldemort flew through it, ejected from the Mirror Dimension into the real world.
Arthur stood among the ruins for a moment, breathing hard. Then he opened his own portal and stepped through.
He emerged under a gray sky on a barren island in the North Sea—just rocks and scrub grass and the endless sound of waves. Voldemort was struggling to his feet where he'd crash-landed, his fine robes torn, his pale skin bearing cuts that weren't healing as they should.
The Draught of Thanatos had extracted its price. The Dark Lord who'd been throwing around god-like power minutes ago could barely stand.
Crack!
Arthur Apparated ten feet away. No dramatic entrance, no final speech. Just a young man ready to finish a very long night's work.
"Goodbye, Tom," Arthur said quietly, almost gently. "Ready to meet your maker?"
Power gathered in his palm—not just a simple cutting curse, but a modified and enhanced cutting curse with ten times the power of the simple curse.
He drew his arm back and released it with every ounce of his strength.
This was it. The end of the Dark Lord. The conclusion of—
But as the spell flew towards its target, Voldemort did something unexpected. He threw his arms wide and screamed to the empty sky:
"I ACCEPT! I ACCEPT YOUR CONTRACT! SAVE ME!"
Arthur's instincts screamed. He didn't pause to understand, didn't hesitate to analyze. He poured everything into accelerating his killing strike.
But then came the laughter—from everywhere and nowhere, a sound that bypassed the ears and resonated directly in the soul.
"WISE CHOICE!" the voice boomed with terrible amusement. "YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!"
Arthur didn't care what forces Voldemort had invoked. His spell had already reached its target, inches from Voldemort's chest. He watched it expand, saw the Dark Lord's eyes widen in shock as reality itself seemed to slow—
The spell struck. Blades of pure magic sliced through flesh and bone, carving Voldemort into sections with surgical precision.
"STOP!"
The voice roared with genuine anger now, but Arthur was beyond stopping. He did not want to face a powered up Voldemort again.
"No," Voldemort whispered through blood-frothed lips, his bisected form trying to speak even as it fell apart. "He promised—"
Tom Riddle never completed the sentence. After decades of running, death finally claimed him. His body collapsed into separate pieces, the light fading from those red eyes for what should have been the final time.
But Arthur wasn't finished. He wanted to be thorough.
"Fiendfyre!"
The cursed flames erupted in a controlled wave, consuming the pieces of what had been Voldemort. Arthur shaped the fire into a perfect dome, containing it, intensifying it, ensuring that nothing—not flesh, not bone, not even ash—would remain.
He stood there, watching everything burn, orange light reflecting off his exhausted face. Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably seconds, he exhaled slowly, tension bleeding from his shoulders.
Whatever power Voldemort had been about to gain from that mysterious person, he was glad he hadn't had to face—
"YOU DARE!"