A thick, despairingly sickly green light, like a venomous snake lunging out of hell.
The terrifying Killing Curse, carrying a will of death pure to the extreme, erupted from the tip of the elder wand.
It aimed straight for Harry's life!
Wherever that green light passed, even the air seemed to have its life drained, freezing into crystals of dead silence.
Almost at the same time.
"Expelliarmus—!"
Harry also used all his strength, roaring out the spell he was most familiar with and believed in most.
The blazing and pure red light was no longer the unripeness of his youth.
Carrying the expectations of countless comrades behind him, his parents' legacy, and the majestic torrent of his desire to protect everything at this moment, it shot out fiercely from his wand!
One red and one green, representing the two extremes of life and death, collided violently in the center of the Great Hall of Hogwarts!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no deafening roar.
At the intersection of the two lights, a golden sphere of light formed, so dazzling that it was impossible to look at directly.
It spun and expanded frantically, emitting a hum like the whisper of a god.
Countless golden threads shot out from the sphere, connecting the two wands tightly like red-hot chains.
Two souls, two wills, were engaged in a primitive and cruel struggle within this tiny space!
Standoff.
A suffocating standoff.
Lord Voldemort's scarlet pupils suddenly constricted!
He felt his magic being frantically neutralized by that seemingly unremarkable red light.
Even more terrifyingly, a phantom pain of his soul being burned and eaten alive was surging back through the magical connection like a maggot on a bone!
This is impossible!
His mind uncontrollably conjured images of that rainy night, the lightning scar on the baby's forehead, his own body falling apart... but what was clearer and sharper was what had happened not long ago in the Forbidden Forest, when Nagini was completely devoured by some unknown existence.
That excruciating pain of a soul being uprooted and completely erased!
Now, this pain he had forcibly suppressed was being infinitely magnified by Harry's resolute light of protection through the collision of spells!
Those mortal fears he had regarded as weaknesses and forcibly stripped away.
In his broken and extremely unstable soul state, they were like a bursting flood, instantly washing away the dam he had built with arrogance and madness.
In a battle between masters, a single flaw in the mind is an abyss of eternal damnation.
"You can't kill me!"
Harry's voice echoed in the light, clearly reaching everyone's ears in the hall, carrying the boy's lonely courage, resolution, and faith.
"You couldn't before! And you can't now!"
That red light, as if receiving endless support, suddenly erupted with unprecedented power.
A roaring crimson spell-light instantly overwhelmed the wavering, dimming green light, slamming fiercely into Lord Voldemort's chest!
"No—!!!"
Lord Voldemort let out a shrill scream that didn't sound human.
The elder wand in his hand let out an overburdened wail, flew out of his grasp, and landed in Harry's hand.
And Lord Voldemort's body, like a puppet with all its strings cut, fell backward powerlessly, crashing heavily onto the cold stone floor, its life extinguished.
Dead?
A deathly silence filled the hall, as if it lasted for a century.
Three seconds later, a tentative cheer of joy and tears rang out, like a pebble thrown into a lake.
Immediately after, a tidal wave of ecstasy completely submerged all of Hogwarts!
Surviving students embraced, screamed, and cried, celebrating this hard-won victory.
Victory... had truly arrived.
However, by the quiet window of Gryffindor Tower.
Hermione suddenly gripped Lia's hand, her knuckles turning pale from the excessive force.
At the very moment Lord Voldemort fell, when everyone was reveling in their survival.
Yet through that tightly connected soul bond, she clearly felt a bone-deep, icy void named "despair" coming from Lia.
There was no joy of victory, no comfort of relaxation, only a boundless wasteland where even the wind had died.
Something was wrong.
Lia "watched" all of this calmly, her sky-blue eyes showing not a single ripple, like two frozen lakes.
In her eyes, the entire world had long since lost its physical colors.
A golden flame of protection burned on Harry, brilliant and warm.
And Lord Voldemort's fallen shell was nothing more than a rapidly decaying husk.
The true horror lay above the corpse: a ball of filthy, broken, yet stubbornly burning black soul-fire.
It did not dissipate.
Suddenly, Lia's pupils froze.
An extremely thin but incredibly resilient black thread slowly extended from that inextinguishable soul-fire.
It penetrated the layers of Hogwarts' walls, through the noisy battlefield.
Ignoring time and space, ignoring all magical barriers, it connected directly to an... ultimate anchor.
No... not somewhere far away.
Lia slowly and stiffly raised her hand, looking at her snowy-white, tender palm.
The final connection point of that thread... was right here.
No, more accurately, it was "growing" out from the depths of her soul like a rooted vine!
At this moment, time seemed to stand completely still.
She could feel with absolute clarity, deep within her soul, those soul fragments belonging to Tom Riddle that she had devoured and assimilated as her own.
The vanity and manipulative ambition of the diary.
The ring's arrogance regarding bloodline and its desecration of death.
The locket's fanatical objectification of pure-bloods.
The goblet's greed for wealth and status.
The diadem's jealousy and instrumentalization of wisdom.
Nagini's bestiality and twisted "immortality."
Everything was creating an unbreakable, fatal resonance with that inextinguishable fire of the main soul!
They had awakened inside her body.
They were cheering, leaping, celebrating... their true master was about to "return" to the warmest and strongest home!
She had always thought that devouring Horcruxes was weakening him, clearing obstacles from Hermione's path.
She felt proud that she could "eat" those disgusting things and protect Hermione.
Until now, when all the puzzle pieces were forcibly returned to their places by the final piece—Lord Voldemort's "death."
An absurd, cold truth, enough to completely crush her, stabbed mercilessly into her consciousness.
Every devouring was not an erasure.
It was a fusion.
It was a sacrifice.
It was she, Lia, who had personally taken Lord Voldemort's most fragile and core soul fragments.
Bit by bit, she had hidden them inside the safest and most indestructible container in the world.
Inside her own body.
She finally no longer just "understood" that prophecy, but through her very existence, "became" the final answer.
Why Lord Voldemort couldn't be killed.
Why he displayed such insane confidence in where his soul was hidden.
Because of her, Lia, this Cat-girl who only wanted to stay by Hermione's side and eat Dried Fish.
All along, she had been his last, most indestructible, and most unexpected one.
The Ultimate Horcrux.
-------------------------
If you enjoy this story, you can read 70+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
Webnovel will keep getting 1 new chapter every day but Patreon readers can stay far ahead.
Maybe it's not a big deal now… maybe it will be later.
[email protected]/Greyhounds
"And If you're enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!"