This Just Killed Me. It's So Beautiful ╯﹏╰

This just killed me. It's so beautiful ╯﹏╰

At last, Harry stands before Voldemort in a blood-soaked field, the taste of copper and ash coating Harry’s tongue. The sound of war has faded into the background as the soulmates stare one another down. Things could have gone differently. Harry could have given himself up as requested, could have walked through the Forbidden Forest to his doom. But Harry is not willing to chance that Voldemort will live through this. He’s fought his way through countless Death Eaters to stand here in Voldemort’s way.

It has come to this at last and there are but two pieces of soul left to destroy, one in himself and one in the tall, inhuman frame barely ten metres away.

Harry is tired. Harry is ready for this to be over.

“You have lost,” Voldemort taunts.

“No,” Harry replies simply, raising his wand.

And then Voldemort is tilting his head, studying Harry in a silent moment. His eyes have narrowed, but they are oddly unthreatening.

“No?” Voldemort repeats, tasting the word, his normally high-pitched voice toned low.

“No,” Harry states calmly.

“You should have told me,” Voldemort says, then. There’s a holy fire in Voldemort’s eyes that Harry hasn’t seen ignited before. Unlike the light of obsession and rage and violence, this flame does not call for bloodshed. Instead, it burns with possessive wonder.

And Harry knows, right at that moment, that Voldemort has figured it out. That he hadn’t until then.

“I thought it was obvious,” Harry answers instead, the wand in his grip warming, tone dry, gesturing to the space between them. “How else would you explain this?”

“I suppose it was,” Voldemort replies, considering. “And I have been too far gone to see it. Though, looking back, it explains a much-needed drive to find you. Come here, soulmate. Be with me.”

It’s like a punch in the chest, wringing his lungs dry. It hurts his very soul to hear Voldemort acknowledge their bond, it hurts more than Umbridge’s punishments, more than seeing his godfather fall through The Veil, more than hearing the wails of Hermione as she’s tortured by an insane witch.

But pain is all Harry knows, all he’s ever known. Harry ignores those words, knows Voldemort is trying to draw him in with the same glowing warmth of an angler fish's lure, positioning Harry just before the strike. Harry knows that he must die to bring Voldemort down. That mutually assured destruction is the only way. So he ignores those words, ignores the potential of even more future words that Voldemort will whisper but is physically incapable of meaning, and stands his ground, staring Voldemort down with cold steel in his eye.

“It is considered a foul reflection of one’s character for their soulmate’s first word to be no,” Voldemort states abruptly. “It is poor form for your destined companion to deny you instantly. I would never have considered the words of my soulmate to have been spoken by a toddler as I raised my wand against his mother.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Harry retorts humourlessly, wand-hand beginning to tremor lightly with exhaustion, but he keeps it steadily trained on Voldemort. “Imagine if your soulmark was the death curse.”

Voldemort doesn’t reply to that, instead still and calm, unnaturally at peace.

“I thought I had killed you long ago, for I’ve heard so many noes from so many strangers,” Voldemort then eventually replies, contemplative. “Though if I must have an equal, I suppose I would only accept it, if it were to be you. After all, you already have a bit of my soul, don’t you?”

Harry realizes things are rapidly going downhill. Voldemort has figured out what he is; Harry sees this going one of two ways.

“Fight me,” Harry whispers sharply, inhaling deep.

“No,” Voldemort states simply, lowering his wand, lip twitching as if telling an inside joke.

Harry shrugs, embodiment of indifference, and lowers his wand.

Voldemort smiles and it is a cruel expression.

Harry thinks to himself, quietly in the confines of his mind, Extinguo Animarum. The wand in his hand glows gently at first but then, in a moment of sudden movement, a golden bubble explodes from his wand and entraps Voldemort and himself in a sphere of his own design.

“You didn’t,” Voldemort says.

Harry tries to laugh at the aghast nature of Voldemort’s tone, but a dry sob heaves out of his chest instead.

Voldemort could never expect this, would never, because Voldemort could not possibly imagine doing something like this himself.

“Extinguisher of Souls,” Voldemort whispers and he does not struggle. Voldemort knows there is no way out of this now. “You are mine, Harry Potter, in this life and the next. Do not forget.”

The glowing, golden orb sears ever brighter. It fills with blinding light, piercing into Harry’s chest as it floods Voldemort. Voldemort’s eyes never leave Harry’s, upper lip twitching in an expression Harry cannot decipher.

This is right, this is what you are made for, Harry tells himself in the moment as the light swells to unbearableness, glows in his glasses, a reflection of his life in a solitary beam of light.

Harry hears the words echo in the timelessness between moments as his soul is ripped apart, as he feels his connection to Voldemort shatter as his soulmate is obliterated by purifying, heatless flame, as they are torn violently from the mortal plane in the mutually assured destruction of Harry’s own making.

No.

Avada Kedavra.

What a couple they make.