PRINCESS ➳ harry potter , draco malfoy (OLD VERSION)

113 || The Chosen One

"Just one thing." Harry said.

"If it is not love that will save you this time, you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both," Harry stated, and shock flit across Voldemort's face, though it was instantly dispelled. He began to laugh.

"You think you know more magic than I do?" he jeered. "Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has preformed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

"Oh, he dreamed of it," Harry said. "But he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."

"You mean he was weak!" Voldemort screamed. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

Katie's vision was slipping out of focus more frequently now. She was running out of time. The enormous gash across her stomach continued to bleed, yet neither Draco nor Ron seemed to realise that she was dying, and she could not summon the strength to notify them. Even if she could manage to make them aware of the situation, she wasn't sure Draco or Ron could do anything to save her now.

Too many times she had held her wand to her temple. Too many times she had journeyed to death's door, and now, as she rang the doorbell and stood waiting to be let inside, she did not feel nearly as much fear as she had felt on the occasions when she tried to preform the Killing Curse on herself. Dying meant peace — even if there was nothing but darkness in death, it was a world free of pain, free of grief, and maybe it was selfish to Katie to crave such a sweet relief, but there was little to no point of her wishing death away. He was already descending his staircase, readying himself to unlock his door.

"No, he was cleverer than you," Harry said. "A better wizard, a better man."

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did, but you were wrong."

For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the walls drew breath as one.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort shrieked. "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," Harry said calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."

Katie clung to every word that Harry was saying.

"What childish dream is this?" Voldemort spat, his eyes not wavering from Harry for even a moment.

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," Harry told him. "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realised it, because of the one thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"

Every time Harry used Voldemort's real name, the red eyes blazed with wrath, but still he did not strike.

"Snape's Patronus was a doe," Harry went on, "the same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should have realised — he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"