Remember Me

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord shall be born as the seventh month dies.”

Harry’s voice died away, and he raised his head. This was it, then. This was the end.
Voldemort lifted his head also, taking in a deep breath of air. He stretched to his full height, looking at Harry with the air of a conqueror.

“Yes,” he said, hissing a little. “Yes, now I understand…neither can live while the other survives.” His red eyes were bright, shining.

“No one shall question me ever again!” He came nearer to Harry, pacing in front of him. He was excited now, full of energy. “And this is the boy, who they thought had powers beyond anyone.” Voldemort spoke quickly, his words running into each other.

“And look at their hero now.”

Harry wasn’t expecting it; the curse hit him sharply in the chest. Lightening seemed to crackle through his body where it touched him, and Harry heard a loud crack a split-second before a scorching, burning pain shot through him. It was agony beyond anything he could imagine, a line of fire wrapping tightly around his body, and he fell to his knees, his body writhing.

He would not cry out. He would not give Voldemort that satisfaction.

The curse lifted, though the line of fire still seemed to be there. Harry gasped, groaned, and threw up all over the floor.

“Harry Potter!” yelled Voldemort in triumph. “The Boy Who Lived!” The Death Eaters laughed and jeered; Voldemort’s high, maniacal laughter echoed around the room.

Harry trembled uncontrollably, making odd gasping noises as he tried to pull in air. In a gaze of white-hot pain, he saw Ron, still paralysed on the floor. I’ve made my decision, he thought. For them.

Voldemort raised his wand again and Harry was flung across the Hall, banging into the cold stone walls. Another swish as his wand moved through the air, and Harry couldn’t hold back a crying, choking noise as pain exploded in his chest and wand arm, and his shirt became wet with blood.

Someone was lying next to him. He recognised the golden hair, and tried to get up to help Cassandra, but the pain was too great, and he fell back down. His brain was becoming foggy, and he couldn’t think.

Another pain-filled curse hit him, and a horrible, guttural scream came from Harry as he yelled like a wild animal. He couldn’t take much more of this, it was unbearable, it was unendurable, the agonising pain that consumed everything.

It seemed impossible that it would continue, but it did. He screamed and writhed in pain, and knew that he was dying. This would be how Voldemort would kill him. He would not have a quick, painless death. That would have been too merciful for Voldemort. Voldemort would always play with his prey before death.

The pain thundered on, and Harry screamed and screamed. Ron. Help me, Ron. Hermione, help me. Please. Cass. I don’t want to die. Please help me. Somebody help me.

But everyone was helpless, and all they could do was watch as Harry screamed and sobbed on the floor.

*

Godric Gryffindor stood against the wall. It was a good place for becoming acquainted with himself again.

It had been so long since he had been like this! Human, with human skin and human bone. His heart was pounding a steady rhythm in his chest. He moved his head a little to the side, flexed his fingers, raised his chin. What a miracle it was to be able to move, the way the body managed movement with ease, the brain, muscles and nerves working together in synchronicity.

Noises were pounding in his ears, uncomfortably loud after centuries of silence. He listened, enjoying the almost painful noise. There were noises of high, cold laughter, jeers and stamps and, louder than them all, a terrible, tortured scream.

Godric Gryffindor focused his eyes, revelling in the sight. Such bright colours, vivid and glowing, compared to the darkness, the nothingness, the emptiness he was now used to. But then he began to understand the scene before him, and his body froze in shock.

Hundreds of people were lined up around the walls. They seemed to be imprisoned there, for all of them had expressions of horror or they were straining against invisible barriers. Masses of black-clad figures were in the centre of the large room. Everyone was looking at something on the floor, nearby his feet. Gryffindor looked down too, and his gaze travelled over a girl who lay motionless to a boy who was emitting screams, twitching and jerking in agony. Gryffindor felt sick to the stomach, and raised his eyes up to the man with the translucent skin and snake-like features before recognising his surroundings with a jolt.

This…this was Hogwarts! His school…the one they had worked so hard to create. Despite his nausea, his felt a rush of self-satisfaction. It was still as grand as it had been when it was newly built, still proud and unbreakable and beautiful. A place of learning, a place of knowledge…and his head snapped round to look at the boy with messy black hair and glasses, whose blue shirt was soaked in his own blood, and whose hand flopped lifelessly, dripping blood onto the cold stone floor.

And this was what Hogwarts was being used for.

Torture.

Rage exploded in Gryffindor and he strode forward. The invisible magic barriers did not affect him, and he walked through them as if they were air. The man with the red eyes, the man who was hurting the boy spun round, his wand held high, pointing into Gryffindor’s face. The people with masks who were gathered in the centre mirrored his actions. Godric Gryffindor did not care very much about them. He wanted to get to that man with snake-like features, to hurt him for destroying his beloved school. Gryffindor reached into the scarlet robes he was wearing, and touched the wood of his wand, hidden in the pocket where it had always lived.

The man seemed to be confused, staring at Gryffindor in amazement. “How did you get through the barriers?”

Gryffindor looked back, and the answer came easily to his lips. “Because part of me resides in the land of the dead.” He saw shock flit across the man’s face, and something more than shock in his blood-red eyes. Fear. The idea, however, did not scare Gryffindor himself. He was not afraid of death now.

“Do you not recognise me?” Godric Gryffindor carried on. “We were legends in our own lifetime, all four of us.” He glanced to the front of the Great Hall, and swelled with pride as he saw the Hogwarts emblem still there on the wall. “Yes, that’s right,” he said as the man’s eyes darted to the emblem too. “Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts. And you,” he continued, raising his voice and drawing out his own wand too. “You are polluting my school.”

The man sneered. “Polluting? Everything I have done is to try and cleanse the Wizarding World of the bad blood that threatens it. It was you, you and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw who polluted Hogwarts with your foolish ideas of Muggle-borns.”

Godric held his wand higher. “It was Slytherin who was the fool, not I.”

“And it was you!” screamed Voldemort, “You who insulted my noble ancestor, Salazar Slytherin!”

It was Gryffindor’s turn to be shocked. “Salazar?” he murmured. “His ancestor?” He raised his voice even louder. “So now I understand why you have done this to all these people. That boy – who is he? Some innocent Muggle-born, no doubt. As all these people probably are!”

Gryffindor waved his wand, and all the people tied up around the walls of the Great Hall found their bonds flying off and the ropes wrapped themselves around the Death Eaters.
The magical barriers had vanished, but everyone stayed where they were, as if frozen, watching and waiting.

The two wizards acted at the same time; Voldemort and Gryffindor cast their spells. A ring of flames flew from Gryffindor’s wand, and they swallowed Voldemort up in a burning mass of red before Voldemort lifted them up off of him and they turned into a million daggers, which zoomed towards Gryffindor who turned them into wisps of smoke. Voldemort waved his wand again, and a Killing Curse hurtled towards Gryffindor, who performed a Shield Charm so powerful, he was forced back a few inches.

“You cannot frighten me with death!” he yelled at the wizard facing him. “I have died before and I have nothing to fear from it!”

“Then you are not alive!” screamed Voldemort. “You are just a spirit!”

Gryffindor sent another curse at the wizard, and Voldemort flicked his wand to repel it.

“I swore that I would revenge Slytherin!” Voldemort screamed. “I swore that I would destroy the Gryffindor’s!”

Gryffindor laughed, but the next curse Voldemort fired hit him in the chest with an oddly chilling sound that reverberated around the room like a gong. Gryffindor froze and then, like a puppet falling gracefully, toppled back onto the floor.

Something strange was happening to his body. He could not die again, as he had not truly lived again, but his body was becoming fainter, transparent. His body dimmed and faded, and soon all that was left of Godric Gryffindor was little wisps of smoke, which flew around the room and around all of Hogwarts, making it glow faintly golden for a few seconds.

*

Harry hadn’t noticed the arrival of Godric Gryffindor until he became dimly aware that Voldemort was no longer flinging curses at him. He thought he should get up and help, but he felt as if he would never move again. His teeth were chattering. Was he cold? He couldn’t tell, but he was also sweating, so he supposed not.

He could feel himself getting weaker, almost drifting away as blood flowed out of his body. Pain was pulsing in his body like a new heart, thumping and burning. Harry opened his eyes, and immediately saw a cloud of airy, dark-blonde hair.

“C-Cass,” he choked, trying to reach towards her. She looked horribly still. Her eyes were closed and her face was pale. “C-Cass.”

Her arm was stretched out to something, and Harry saw it. The wand that she had been trying to tell him about was lying very close to him. He stretched out his injured right had towards it, gritting his teeth tightly as white-hot pain snapped through him. His bloodied fingers closed tightly around the wood just as Godric Gryffindor fell to the ground.

He had to do it. He had to do it now, right now. People were depending on him. He was the Boy Who Lived, he was the only that could do it. He had to kill Voldemort.

He aimed the wand at Voldemort’s back, but somehow he could not find it in him to say the Killing Curse. He tried again, thinking of all the horrible things he had ever seen Voldemort do. He thought of Cedric, his parents, Sirius. And still, Harry could not say the words that would put an end to all of this.

Voldemort turned slowly back to face Harry now, his face alive with triumph. And Harry knew that Voldemort would not wait now, that he wanted it over, finished quite as much as Harry did.

Harry raised the wand and murmured the only spell he could think of while Voldemort screamed a curse loudly.

“Avada Kedavra!”

“Expelliarmus!”

The red jet of light and the green flew towards each other, met in mid-air and collided. They met with a bang that created red and green sparks. And as they hit one another, the spells were forced back the way they had come. Harry felt the wand fly out of his fingers, and the green light flew towards Voldemort and hit him. Voldemort’s eyes went blank and he crumpled to the floor.

There was a moment that seemed frozen in time, a moment of quivering silence. And then the Hall erupted.

Cheers filled the air, and there was a sound of rushing footsteps as everyone surged forwards as one to Harry, who still lay helpless on the floor. But Harry weakly raised up his hand to stop them, because there was something else he needed to do too. He couldn’t process Voldemort’s death. He was numb. He could hardly feel or think. It was as if it had been a job on a list of meaningless things to do, and it was just one that he had finished now, but a new chore was beginning.

He didn’t have much strength left now. He had to do it quickly.

“There’s a rift…between Slytherin and Gryffindor,” he said, trying to control his chattering teeth. His words were quiet, but he heard someone whisper “Sonorous,” and when he spoke again, the words echoed clearly around the Hall.

“And all of this…everything that Voldemort has done happened because of it. A-And we can’t let that happen again. So we’ve got to heal it.” He found he no longer had the strength to keep his head up, so lowered it to the floor. “Heal the rift between Slytherin and Gryffindor.”

He collapsed on the floor next to Cassandra, his breathing erratic as he gasped for air. When he opened his eyes again, he was surprised to see Draco Malfoy there. Malfoy looked embarrassed, his grey eyes darting from Harry’s face to his now scarlet soaked shirt.

“I – I wanted to say that I didn’t…I didn’t mean it to happen,” Malfoy said, his pale cheeks flushing. “He threatened me…said he’d torture my parents if I didn’t…”

“You were trying…save parents,” muttered Harry with difficulty. The pain was rearing up now, making it hard for him to do concentrate on anything else. “Would have done the same.”

Malfoy nodded. “Sorry,” he said.

Harry managed a shadow of a grin, and his hand twitched. Malfoy saw the movement and understood, his face twisting into a wry smile.

He shook Harry’s hand once. “Thanks.”

He looked at Harry’s face again, which was screwed up in agony. “Um, Granger and Weasley are here, they’ll, um…” Draco trailed off, standing up and leaving Harry with relief.

Harry saw Hermione and Ron rush forwards, saw the crowd standing around him move, but the pain in his body grew and grew until he could think of nothing else.